Made up of all the books I have ever loved
That prompt that’s been going around on Facebook
I couldn’t resist.
Writing made me who I am. Reading taught me who I wanted to be.
Ten books that have stayed with me, in no particular order:
1.
Harry Potter
by J.K. Rowling
From sixth grade to sophomore year in college
Of course. Not that this needs any explanation, but: because these books culminate in the ultimate triumph of love over hate. Good over evil. Because they confirm what I want to believe about the world: that you have the power to choose the person you want to be. That most people are good. Because I’ve reread the seventh one twenty times, at least, and sometimes when I think about Snape, I still tear, no matter where I am or what I am doing. :’(
2.
Stargirl
by Jerry Spinelli
Middle School
Stargirl. From the day she arrives at quiet Mica High in a burst of color and sound, the hallways hum with the murmur of “Stargirl, Stargirl.” She captures Leo Borlock’s heart with just one smile. She sparks a school-spirit revolution with just one cheer. The students of Mica High are enchanted. At first. Then they turn on her.
Because during my awkward teenage years I found a book character who was laughably strange, yet obliviously kind and courageously different. Stargirl sings “Happy Birthday” to kids she has never met while playing the ukelele in the school lunchroom. She attends strangers’ funerals. She cheers for both teams during sporting events.
Because though her classmates shunned her for her rawness, vulnerability, heart, I loved her for it. Which I took to mean there are people who love rawness, vulnerability, heart.
3.
The Babysitter’s Club: Claudia’s Big Party
by Ann M. Martin
Elementary School
Because this was the first novel I have ever read. Because I don’t remember anything that happened in it but I still remember carrying it around with me like a badge of adulthood. Because this book began for me a love affair with reading that culminated in that time my mom yelled at me for turning down an invitation to go to Toys ‘R’ Us so I could stay inside on a gorgeous summer day to read.
Because… of… that time I was forced to go have fun at Toys ‘R’ Us…
4.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
by Jonathan Safran Foer
High School
Meet Oskar Schell, an inventor, Francophile, tambourine player, Shakespearean actor, jeweler, pacifist, correspondent with Stephen Hawking and Ringo Starr. He is nine years old. And he is on an urgent, secret search through the five boroughs of New York. His mission is to find the lock that fits a mysterious key belonging to his father, who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11.
Because Jonathan Safran Foer writes the way I want to write. Because he sees things I want to see, thinks things I want to think—
“He promised us that everything would be okay. I was a child, but I knew that everything would not be okay. That did not make my father a liar. It made him my father.”
Because on every page I wanted to put down the book and underline some phrase, some poignant observation about the world, some whimsically reframed truth—
“Humans are the only animal that blushes, laughs, has religion, wages war, and kisses with lips. So in a way, the more you kiss with lips, the more human you are. And the more you wage war.”
“…only someone who’d never been an animal would put up a sign saying not to feed them…”
“Anyway, the fascinating thing was that I read in National Geographic that there are more people alive now than have died in all of human history. In other words, if everyone wanted to play Hamlet at once, they couldn’t, because there aren’t enough skulls!”
Because he wrote things that explained to me my own thoughts.
Because he invented one of my favorite literary rituals in the world.
And finally, because he gave me permission to write about things I don’t feel like I have the right to write about.
“What do you think of the criticism that you haven’t earned the right to write about 9/11?”
“I think about this a lot—about using historical traumas as events, about art as barbaric/exploitative. But it’s weird to think of art as that. When I’m writing about something (making art out of something), I’m most attentive to it, most careful with it.
Making art out of something is the act of engendering compassion.
And the imagination is the vehicle of compassion.”
— Jonathan Safran Foer in an interview at Columbia University, 1/23/2009
5.
The Vampire Chronicles
by Anne Rice
High School
Because Anna Rice’s characters see beauty everywhere. Because they love deeply or not at all. Because they are supernatural and that makes them instinctively disdainful of human weakness yet tenderly, enviously enamored of human fragility.
Because vampires are immortal, which means there is no heaven for them and by necessity they make all their meaning on earth.
Because nothing I could write would do justice to the sensibilities and charisma and magnetism of Anne Rice’s characters. I love nearly every one of them.
“I never lie,” I said offhand. “At least not to those I don’t love.”
—Lestat
6.
Chicken Soup For the Teenage Soul
Junior High
Because I was a ridiculously shy and awkward teenager and these stories made me feel less shy (though still awkward).
Because these books taught me how to deal with hardship, how to be kind, and how to be grateful.
Because these stories are the reason I am optimistic. Believe that people are inherently good. Happy.
7.
A Million Miles in a Thousand Years
by Donald Miller
2 Years Out of College
After writing a successful memoir, Donald Miller’s life stalled. During what should have been the height of his success, he found himself unwilling to get out of bed, avoiding responsibility, even questioning the meaning of life. But when two movie producers proposed turning his memoir into a movie, he found himself launched into a new story filled with risk, possibility, beauty, and meaning.
Because this book articulated quite eloquently 3 of the few things I know to be true for living a good life:
1—That it should be thought of as an attempt at a bestselling novel or a blockbuster movie
“I’ve wondered, though, if one of the reasons we fail to acknowledge the brilliance of life is because we don’t want the responsibility inherent in the acknowledgment. We don’t want to be characters in a story because characters have to move and breathe and face conflict with courage. And if life isn’t remarkable, then we don’t have to do any of that; we can be unwilling victims rather than grateful participants.
But I’ve noticed something. I’ve never walked out of a meaningless movie thinking all movies are meaningless. I only thought the movie I walked out on was meaningless. I wonder, then, if when people say life is meaningless, what they really mean is their lives are meaningless. I wonder if they’ve chosen to believe their whole existence is unremarkable, and are projecting their dreary life on the rest of us.”
2—That magic is a matter of choice
“I asked Bob what was the key to living such a great story, and Bob seemed uncomfortable with the idea he was anything special. But he wanted to answer my question, so he thought about it and said he didn’t think we should be afraid to embrace whimsy. I asked him what he meant by whimsy, and he struggled to define it. He said it’s that nagging idea that life could be magical; it could be special if we were only willing to take a few risks.”
3—And that stories matter, that being able to tell good ones is a source of tremendous power.
“A good storyteller speaks something into nothing. Where there is an absence of story, or perhaps a bad story, a good storyteller walks in and changes reality. He doesn’t critique the existing story, or lament about his boredom, like a critic. He just tells something different and invites other people into the new story he is telling.”
“I also knew from the McKee seminar that most of our greatest fears are relational. It’s all that stuff about forgiveness and risking rejection and learning to love. We think stories are about getting money and security, but the truth is, it all comes down to relationships. I tried not to think about that stuff. I knew a story was calling me. I knew I was going to have to see if my father was alive. And once you know what it takes to live a better story, you don’t have a choice. Not living a better story would be like deciding to die, deciding to walk around numb until you die, and it’s not natural to want to die.”
8.
Memoirs of a Geisha
by Arthur Golden
High School
This is cheating a bit, but actually all I really remember of this book is that it inspired me to watch the movie. Because when I got up out of my chair and walked out of the theater afterward, I murmured, “Wow.”
The cinematography was stunning. The beauty of it delighted the aspiring visual artist in me. But, watching this movie, it also dawned on me that there is such a role as a master storyteller. That a movie ends up the way it is because of a single person’s (or rather, a handful of people’s) creative vision and direction and insistence. There are a few people who are directly responsible for a movie’s phenomenal success or abysmal failure.
A friend of mine working in lighting in Hollywood put it to me this way: getting the lighting wrong will not doom a movie. Getting the script wrong will. Getting the casting wrong will. Getting the cadence of the story, the message of it, the feeling of it, the heart of it wrong… will.
No risk of failure = no success.
And master storyteller = film director = my dream job (eventually).
9.
The Fault in Our Stars
by John Green
In 2013, while 25
I loved this book before I ever read it. I collect quotes. Topping my list of favorites was this one:
“I’m in love with you,” he said quietly.
“Augustus,” I said.
“I am,” he said. He was staring at me, and I could see the corners of his eyes crinkling. “I’m in love with you, and I’m not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I’m in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we’re all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we’ll ever have, and I am in love with you.”
Because, like this quote, this book—despite being about cancer and grief and dying—is full of optimism and wit and an acute awareness of how little time we have. Because this book is full of a determined, stubborn, defiant insistence on love (and that is the kind of love that I want in my life):
“Oh, I wouldn’t mind Hazel Grace.
It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you.”
Because “Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book” and I think TFIOS is a mighty good candidate for that.
10.
You Can Learn to Draw In 30 Days
by Mark Kistler
In 2013, while 25
Because this book kind of changed my life. In following and finishing Mark’s 30-day drawing curriculum, I learned that:
- I am not, in fact, naturally doomed to be bad at drawing.
- Spending a little bit of time doing something every single day is better than never doing anything at all. (Duh.)
- Most things can be broken down into units of work that can be completed in a single day. “Read more” should be “read 5 pages of a book every day.” “Eat healthier” should be “eat at least one healthy meal every day.” And “learn Ruby” was “watch 1 video a day.”
I’m using this “don’t break the chain” technique with almost every single thing I want to learn or do now.
It works wonders for me.
You?
What are your ten? Ten books that have stayed with you. Don’t think too much into it.
Go.
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