I was recently asked to name my top ten books and was at a loss as to how to narrow my choices - loved then - loved now - coming to the conclusion that it would be best to go with the Facebook note qualification - 'which ones stuck with me'. I am still loath to limit myself, different books for different times, the list would change over the years, but some would keep finding their way back into the queue - some would stick. I remember getting one of my first books as a gift, a golden book of Frosty the Snowman. I loved singing the hit 50's song along in my head as I read it. There was another children's book about a beaver that dug his own swimming pool, patting down the sticks and mud on the sides with his flat paddle tail, I later used his technique of sticks and rocks and mud to create little lakes in our sandbox. There were walks to our little local library with Mom, at first she read to me the books we brought home and later on I read them all by myself. She would tell me ho
w as a child I would get so excited about whatever current book I was reading that I would follow along beside her, relating choice excerpts to her while she weeded. A favorite as a kid was Miss Pickerel Goes to Mars. A chapter book that I could read! - and I owned it! It was about a little old farm lady who inadvertently rides along on a spaceship trip - outer space was a favorite topic at our house. Dad's old paperback science fiction collection was stored up in our attic in cardboard boxes and I remember getting distracted reading through them trying to decide which ones to bring down to my room, It was Southern California and perpetually summer, our attic was a stifling crawlspace, sweat poured dow
n my neck as I sped through each smelly yellowing paperback, stopping occasionally to look at the lurid cover graphics - the cool ones were the double editions where you could flip the book over and the other story was printed upside down, both ends meeting in the center. Two for the price of one! Dad couldn't resist a bargain! As I grew older and had acquired more books of my own, I catalogued them, putting numbers on their spines with a blue felt pen and writing out an index card for each so that when my sisters and friends 'checked' them out I had a record of their whereabouts - the ying and yang of possessing and 
sharing. In my high school years I would drive a carload of little sisters to the library once a week to exchange books, wandering around the stacks as the ding ding of 'library closing in ten minutes' sounded and rounding up little strays amongst the piles of books. When stuck at home, we would park ourselves in the short passageway that connected the entry hall and our living room. In that narrow passage were floor to ceiling bookshelves that held novels, biographies, magazines, math books, travel books, and various Time-Life series. There we would lose ourselves in our search for something for a school report, or spend hours distracted by the pictures in National Geographic Magazines. Sometimes we would expand our range, meandering through Dad's old college math books, with their odd numbers and graphs - such fascinating gibberish, magical in it's indecipherability. we'd climb up the shelves seeking out obscure texts - every so often finding a long lost Easter egg that had been a little too well hidden. Mom loved historical fiction - books with characters that actually lived through epic events. She was continually shoving books at us. I refused to enjoy The Bobbsey Twins and found Gone With the Wind's heroine not a strong role model, but an irritating bitch. Years later she sent her very first Bobbsey Twins volume to my young
daughters. It was given to my Mom when she was 8yrs old by her Aunt Nida. Mom enclosed a letter with it describing how she and my sister found it propping up one of the bunk beds at our cabin - obviously no longer the cherished tome of her youth, but still playing a supportive role in our lives. I wish I had the WWII first aid manual we kept in our family room. Mimicking the diagrams I would use torn sheets carefully rolled up into bandage rolls and t
russ the wounds of willing little sisters who played war casualties. After they had endured hours of binding they were dispensed medication in the form of 'smarties' candies to speed their recovery. My list includes some of my parent's favorites and others I found by following the paths they carved out for me in my youth. Some of these I made my own kids read and they expressed their gratitude with a mix of tears and kisses and groans and curses. Years later when we children gathered to divide our parents' possessions, it was the book collection that took us the longest. As we read excerpts and shared memories together, one in-law declared that they could read one in the time it took us to sort through them.
w as a child I would get so excited about whatever current book I was reading that I would follow along beside her, relating choice excerpts to her while she weeded. A favorite as a kid was Miss Pickerel Goes to Mars. A chapter book that I could read! - and I owned it! It was about a little old farm lady who inadvertently rides along on a spaceship trip - outer space was a favorite topic at our house. Dad's old paperback science fiction collection was stored up in our attic in cardboard boxes and I remember getting distracted reading through them trying to decide which ones to bring down to my room, It was Southern California and perpetually summer, our attic was a stifling crawlspace, sweat poured dow
n my neck as I sped through each smelly yellowing paperback, stopping occasionally to look at the lurid cover graphics - the cool ones were the double editions where you could flip the book over and the other story was printed upside down, both ends meeting in the center. Two for the price of one! Dad couldn't resist a bargain! As I grew older and had acquired more books of my own, I catalogued them, putting numbers on their spines with a blue felt pen and writing out an index card for each so that when my sisters and friends 'checked' them out I had a record of their whereabouts - the ying and yang of possessing and 
sharing. In my high school years I would drive a carload of little sisters to the library once a week to exchange books, wandering around the stacks as the ding ding of 'library closing in ten minutes' sounded and rounding up little strays amongst the piles of books. When stuck at home, we would park ourselves in the short passageway that connected the entry hall and our living room. In that narrow passage were floor to ceiling bookshelves that held novels, biographies, magazines, math books, travel books, and various Time-Life series. There we would lose ourselves in our search for something for a school report, or spend hours distracted by the pictures in National Geographic Magazines. Sometimes we would expand our range, meandering through Dad's old college math books, with their odd numbers and graphs - such fascinating gibberish, magical in it's indecipherability. we'd climb up the shelves seeking out obscure texts - every so often finding a long lost Easter egg that had been a little too well hidden. Mom loved historical fiction - books with characters that actually lived through epic events. She was continually shoving books at us. I refused to enjoy The Bobbsey Twins and found Gone With the Wind's heroine not a strong role model, but an irritating bitch. Years later she sent her very first Bobbsey Twins volume to my young
daughters. It was given to my Mom when she was 8yrs old by her Aunt Nida. Mom enclosed a letter with it describing how she and my sister found it propping up one of the bunk beds at our cabin - obviously no longer the cherished tome of her youth, but still playing a supportive role in our lives. I wish I had the WWII first aid manual we kept in our family room. Mimicking the diagrams I would use torn sheets carefully rolled up into bandage rolls and t
russ the wounds of willing little sisters who played war casualties. After they had endured hours of binding they were dispensed medication in the form of 'smarties' candies to speed their recovery. My list includes some of my parent's favorites and others I found by following the paths they carved out for me in my youth. Some of these I made my own kids read and they expressed their gratitude with a mix of tears and kisses and groans and curses. Years later when we children gathered to divide our parents' possessions, it was the book collection that took us the longest. As we read excerpts and shared memories together, one in-law declared that they could read one in the time it took us to sort through them. here's my list - in a random order and omitting oh so many
Barthomew and the 500 Hats by Dr. Suess
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
Cheaper by the Dozen by Frank B. Gilbreth
Franney and Zooey by J. D. Salinger
Tarzan of the Apes series by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
The Good Earth by Pearl Buck
Island by Aldous Huxley
Fahrenheit 451 and the short stories by Ray Bradbury
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Fatu-Hiva by Thor Heyerdahl
Julian by Gore Vidal
any and all Agatha Christie
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Our Mutual Friend and lots of others by Charles Dickens
No comments:
Post a Comment