My Bookprint

Victoria wrote last about her Bookprint. The books that have imprinted themselves on her life. It is a fascinating idea and got me thinking about my Bookprint as well. As she said, these are not necessarily favorites (though many of them are) but the books that have changed me - become a part of my makeup.

My Bookprint:

The Giver by Lois Lowry
I know that I have written before about the greatest reading year of my life, the fifth grade. That was the year that my brain was opened to the possibilities of books. Not just that reading was fun but that it made you feel things and experience the world differently. Studies have shown that an active reading life (especially of fiction) increases empathy - my link to that well of empathy begins here. The Giver is about a harder set of choices than I had ever to face and reading it woke me up to the world outside myself.



The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

Our understanding of literature both on a personal and communal basis is fluid. Interpretations change as society changes. I have always been familiar with this concept, but reading O'Brien's memoir-novel-stories-truth about his experiences in the Vietnam War taught me a deeper understanding of literature. He explains that a true war story is not about whether or not the events described actually happened - all true war stories are true. Literature is truth.

Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut
I have taken so much from Kurt over the years, but he gives so freely. He offers solace, a laugh, a punch in the gut, and many buckets of cold water bringing reality back to my world view. The reason that this book has made it onto this particular list though is that it has altered the way I think. I am a full believer in thinking things through; this was another gift from Kurt Vonnegut. Thinking things through means bringing a thought to its furthest logical (and sometimes illogical) conclusion. Sure this makes me crazy neurotic, but I wouldn't have it any other way. Satire is just the literary equivalent of neurosis, but as O'Brien taught us - it is true. Taking action (or not) without thinking of not just the consequences but the full range of meaning behind that action is the greatest plague upon society. History only repeats itself because we allow it to. Most of us look neither forward nor back; we all need to learn to think things through.

The Collected Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs
I inherited a collection of pulp Burroughs paperbacks from my uncle at around age 9. I read one almost every day for close to a full year. These vintage books featuring buxom beauties on the covers felt so adult, and at a difficult time in my life when so much felt out of my control I turned to them. They made me feel grown up (and grown-ups can take care of themselves) and they gave me an escape. I went on adventures with Tarzan and John Carter. I traveled to Mars and the land that time forgot. I lived in these books. And now, almost twenty years later, it is still books that I seek when I'm overwhelmed, in need of a friend or an adventure.

The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer
Definitely the most recent read on this list. I finished The Interestings very recently, but this book absolutely resonated with me. The hopes, pretensions, even the envies of the characters all so closely matched my own. And their fumbling into adult made me feel...okay. This novel gave me pause to say to myself that no one else knows what is going on either. Very few of us have it together. I may never be an Adult in the way that my siblings are, but I'm cool where I am and I am definitely not alone.

World Book Night: The Fourth Batch

Ann Patchett's Bel Canto is a fictional version of a hostage situation that occurred in Peru in the '90s. During the birthday party of a prominent international businessman, guerrilla terrorists took everyone in attendance hostage, from the vice president of Peru to the opera singer hired for the evening's entertainment. I was lulled into this book just as the hostages Patchett describes were lulled into a sense of normalcy within their terrifying situation that took place over weeks. I was excited in the beginning, got a bit bored, and then I became sympathetic to everyone involved. Patchett did a great job of not judging her characters. She laid out their motivations and left the rest for the reader to mull over.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini was another of these books that I had already made my mind up about before opening the cover. Frankly, I feel that all of my suspicions about this one proved true. So heavy handed were the themes and "morals," so utterly contrived was the plot. I felt that this was as manipulative as My Sister's Keeper, but it is more widely accepted because it is about men (and foreign men at that). Every page screamed at me: life is hard! People feel things! But in the end, I felt nothing but frustration. I even rolled my eyes a few times, which I haven't done since I read Stephanie Meyer.

Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried is amazing. It is practically a perfect book. I haven't settled on exactly what type of book it is though. It's a memoir that's also a novel that's really a collection of short stories about the Vietnam war. O'Brien describes the time in Vietnam as it really happened, but in order to do this he differentiates between story-truth and happening-truth. The point is not whether or not the things that are described actually happened. As O'Brien explains, with a true war story you don't have to ask whether or not it really happened; it is true nonetheless. The way that these two forms of truth oppose and compliment each other coupled with the way O'Brien the forty-year-old writer steps in to the story of O'Brien the twenty-year-old soldier make this an absolutely unforgettable book that everyone should read.

Scifi is really not my thing, so I did not expect to love Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. I got so bored with the descriptions of starfighters, null gravity, and battle simulations. This is just one of those situations where the book and I did not mesh. However, I can see why it is popular and definitely what makes it a good choice for the classroom. It is the story of Ender Wiggin, a strategical child prodigy and the adults who manipulate him to their means. There is also a heavy subplot about Ender's siblings that I was actually much more interested in than Ender's story (where Ender's story was militarily based his siblings' told the political side of this world at war). All in all a good book, just not the right fit for me.

Another batch of books that I can claim. As I mover further down the list (only five books to go), I can't wait to find out what I will be reading this time next year.