For the last three weeks, you’ve been reading guest posts. If you’ll recall, I scheduled these guest bloggers because I was trying to participate in NaNoWriMo, the goal of which is to write a novel in a month. To win NaNoWriMo, you must write 50,000 words in 30 days. My personal goal was 30,000. Alas, I am a NaNoWriMo loser: I wrote a paltry 20,000 words this month.
Hey. Wait a minute.
20,000 words is pretty rockin’ awesome. It’s 20,000 words I hadn’t written a month ago. So maybe I’m not quite such a loser after all!
Anyhoo, while I was cranking out those 20,000 words, y’all heard from six writers who told us what their desert-island books are (even if Dan cheated and chose three). I don’t know about you, but reading their impassioned responses to these books made my eyes mist. The book lover in me (and probably the writer in me, too) rejoiced to hear that books matter, that they make a difference in people’s lives, that they inspire us to be better people, to live larger lives, to love more freely.
If I needed a reason to keep writing (and some days I do), these posts gave it to me: the hope that someday someone will read something I write and it will be for them what these books are for my guest bloggers.
Now it’s your turn. Yesterday was Thanksgiving. So I want to know: what book (except for the Bible) are you most thankful for? And I want to know why you love it.
OK Kimberlee, so since LOTR and Owen Meany are both taken already, I’ll go for the book that lingered most on my mind this past year: The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
Not just because the movie came out on Thanksgiving, but this book did make me feel profoundly thankful for things I take for granted: family, safety, community and food. And sometimes faith.
As a father of a son, this book also haunts me on a level I’m still trying to process. It’s not Owen Meany, and it’s not Tolkien. And it’s sure not a happy read. But there’s something in this book that is lasting. I wonder if even my son Theo will be reading it someday.
It has been ten years since a girlfriend handed me the book that changed everything. And yet, it sat on my coffee table for months because I despised reading. Loathed it! For me, reading was a painful process and an unending source of stress — I suffered from debilitating anxiety if forced to read aloud. When I finally opened that book, I was unprepared for the pull of the words. I inhaled every page as if it were oxygen, essential to my survival. I was bewitched.
I love Harry Potter and I am so very grateful to JK Rowling for giving him to me (oh yeah, and the world). Without this book, I fear I may never have discovered the intoxicating world of the printed word. For those who have never been without books, it is impossible to explain what it was like to finally have the veil pulled aside. There are so many books I have discovered since those early days – more literary, more profound, more amazing. And yet, Harry will always be the one I love the most. He is who I am most thankful for because without him, I would never have discovered the rest.
*I am fully aware of the melodramatic quality of this post; and yet, I can not find another way of expressing my feelings about this particular subject. I happily submit this cheesy, over-the-top comment.
Steve, I am with you all the way. THE ROAD is the best book I have ever read–EVER–and there are images that will be with me until the day I die. Incredible writing.
(I also wrote a review of it on my blog, but I am not fishing for followers…)
Jen,
I love Harry Potter, too, if only because he helped you love books. I can’t imagine our relationship without all our booktalk. Go Harry!
How could it be possible to choose just one book? Many of my long-time favorites — Lord of the Rings, Owen Meany, and yes even Harry Potter (Jen, your post made me a little misty, I’m so glad JK Rowling could teach you to love reading!) — have already been mentioned. Even with those taken care of that leaves a list that is far too long, and which is constantly changing. But one book that always remains on the list is another of Kimberlee’s favorites, Pride and Prejudice. I still remember my first time reading it, at a cozy little retreat center on the north coast of Northern Ireland in May, 1999, surrounded by rolling green hills and grazing sheep. It was one of my first ventures into “classic” literature, and before reading it I never would have dreamed that I could so easily connect with a book written more than 150 years before I was born. Luckily Lizzie and Darcy won me over, utterly and completely. My life, and book loves, have never been the same since.
Cathee, you rock! (And so do Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, long may they live.) I wish I’d been able to read Pride and Prejudice for the first time in Ireland. I was in sunny central Cali, which makes it sound like a nice place to be, instead of the roaster oven it was. Still, wretched hot weather notwithstanding, Jane Austen transported me to England and 1810. Here’s another toast to truly great books that let us live lives other than our own!
Kimberlee, I just re-found your blog & am so glad I did! What fun post ideas you have! For me, hands down, it’s To Kill a Mockingbird. I love that Bobby & Lexie named their child Scout, I’ve been contemplating doing that 🙂 Scout’s character is one of the most refreshing, innocent, intriguing and delightful characters I have ever run across. And it was always my goal in life to be somewhat of a cross between the fresh-eyed innocent Scout and the steady person of integrity Atticus is. I read it for the first time my freshman year of high school, and it has been a re-read for me every couple years.
I reread many books yearly, including Robin McKinley’s The Blue Sword, Kathleen Norris’ The Cloister Walk, Georgette Heyer’s The Nonesuch (and others). I love Harry Potter and Tolkein, but I don’t tend to reread them. I do reread Pride & Prejudice every couple of years. Our good friend, Mark Oppenlander, came through NJ on his US tour last September and challenged me to be reading new books, so I’m reading some fun ones, like the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series by Rick Riordan (not as good as Harry but still fun) and other serious ones as well. I do like to read a good book review which is how I end up checking books like The Shakespeare Wars and The War that Killed Achilles out of the library. I don’t always finish them, but when I’m reading them, I don’t feel like my degree in English literature was wasted, which in my daily life as the mother of two special needs children, it really is. We do have a fabulous library, for which I am very thankful.