A History in Books

When I was in kindergarten, my next door neighbor was placed in front of a Hooked on Phonics tape. She bragged to me while we sat inside a large cardboard box on my front lawn, pretending to be frogs, "I know how to read. Do you?" I was five and I already knew shame; I wore it like a glove, buried it deep into my pockets and carried it with me.
"Ribbit," I responded and called it a day. I was embarrassed then, as I dragged my feet up the driveway and confronted my mother.

"Why don't I know how to read?" I pouted, on the brink of tears. Pre-school had already revealed the hardships of life to me, uncovered my true nature as a perfectionist. If Natalie could read, then surely I could! I was used to being the best in my class: the best at recognizing colors, the best at using crayons to put those colors onto paper, the best at counting to ten, the best at tying my shoes...This kindergartner would not be had for a fool!

"Well, If you want to learn..."

So I learned, I recited, I wrote, I sounded out, I recognized. And soon enough, I could say to Natalie and all the kids in my class, "I know how to read!" Of course, she needed to tell me that she read at a third grade reading level. So I read more and improved and discovered Dr. Seuss, The Berenstein Bears, Little Critter, Paddington Bear, Clifford, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, The Velventeen Rabbit. Eventually, it didn't matter what Natalie was reading, it only mattered that I had my hands on the goods - the books.

Over the next four years, I grew into the books my older sister read: The Babysitters Club, The Boxcar Children, and finally settled into the first story that would actually change my elementary school outlook on life.

Growing up in a predominately Caucasian suburb of Detroit doesn't provide a child with any notion of diversity. In fourth grade, I read Maniac Magee, the story of a runaway boy who finds himself staying with a black family in a completely segregated town. I was nine and I realized that race was something we created, and that if Maniac Magee could integrate a city, we could look past skin color too. Every once in a while, I still consider the scene in which Maniac Magee looked into the mirror and discovered that no part of his body was purely white, the same as no part of his host family's skin was truly black. I was changed.

In sixth grade, I helped out in the school library during lunch. Surprisingly, this was the cool thing to do that year, and reading was also cool in some ways. The entire sixth grade class fought tooth and nail when a new Goosebumps installment settled into the shelf. There were breathless races and thrown elbows until one student ultimately triumphed, holding the tome above their head and pumping their other fist. The rest of the class hurried to add their names to the wait-list and divided Night of the Living Dummy, Welcome to Dead House, and The Haunted Mask amongst themselves. The librarian beamed at all the excitement over books, an excitement which would probably not last for most of us young people. But the Goosebumps series captured our imaginations and was probably the forerunner to the reverence most of my high school classmates felt for Edgar Allen Poe.

Something else happened to shake up my small literary sphere in sixth grade. Sitting in the back of the class, I listened attentively as Mr. Decker mentioned a new series that had apparently gained popularity in Britain. Two friends and I went to the library that very day to check out copies, each choosing one of the three novels that had so far been released. I went home that day clutching Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban to my chest. Unfortunately, starting with the third book in a series isn't exactly the best route to take. A little confused by what was happening in the magical world, I decided to wait until my friend had finished the first book and then start anew. Starting Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was like setting my little sixth-grade life on fire. I was ten years old, going on eleven, just like Harry.

Contrary to appearances, the Harry Potter series is not about magic or spells or potions. The series encompasses the struggle between good and evil, morality, racism, choices and consequences, the power of friendship, and the ability of one to choose their own destiny. I see a reflection of the Muggle-world in Harry Potter: the results of corrupt government, the devastation of war, and the strength it takes to grieve profound losses.

While I haven't picked up a Goosebumps book since I was eleven, I've never stopped reading Harry Potter books. In fact, the years have only caused me to read with new fervor. I still cry when Dumbledore dies and cheer when Fred and George escape from Umbridge's tyrannical claws. My years with Harry will always leave him a special place on my shelf and in my heart.

*****

I think that some books just need to come to us at specific periods in our lives. I first picked up The Bell Jar when I was 15; it took me almost a month to read. It felt like something was missing, something was slow-moving in the pages. A year later, I tried again and found myself completely captivated, flying through it in two days. Somehow, Plath had spoken to me like none before. I found myself entwined in her words, copying down lines onto notebook paper, and wondering how someone could have put my own thoughts so perfectly into writing.

Upon graduating high school, I spent a summer feeling particularly disoriented in my own skin. I felt that I had no direction in life or even in reading. Wandering aimlessly down the aisles of the public library, I stumbled across a hardcover copy of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Intrigued by the cover - an orange handprint bearing the title in an interesting font - I checked it out and lost myself in it for a few days. Phrases like, "sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living" seemed to encapsulate my post-grad woes. I was on the brink of my entire life, yet in a state of non-living. The story was quite good, but it was the prose that Jonathan Safran Foer had written that was entirely new and completely heart-wrenching to me. I moved onto his previously written novel, Everything is Illuminated.

Of all the books I've read in recent years, Everything is Illuminated stands out the most. It was slightly more difficult to read than Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close; sometimes the story was slow-moving and the lack of indented dialogue could become tedious, but I was rewarded in the end. The novel played perfectly into my fascination with Nazi Germany as well as my desire to identify with Ukraine, the only country that I am certain my own family came from. I laughed out loud at Alex's letters, felt my heartstrings tighten when I read about the town of Trachimbrod and cried shamelessly over its devastating destruction. Recently, I've found myself flipping through the pages randomly and reading passages that jump out at me. It gives me a strange certainty about things.

Countless books I've read have given me something, taught me a lesson, strengthened my resolve, encouraged me to write, left a smile on my face, or made me feel things I thought I was incapable of.

Fahrenheit 451 and The Handmaid's Tale taught me the value of the written word and my own ability to interpret it. Bradbury captured my quiet ambition to "hold onto the world tight someday". So few words can carry such a large burden.

Nabokov proved that prose can be anything but prosaic and commonplace, that it can soar softly off of the page and burrow itself into our marrow, like a secret to each reader's soul.

In Frankenstein, I found a message about the power, and horrors, that can arise from human knowledge. I saw that naivety may save one from the harshness of reality and it may decrease pain, but knowledge is almost impossible to ignore.

The Trial presented me with an absurd, inescapable justice system, in which no normal rules apply. Kafka wanted to show us that the real world is just as absurd, leaving us with virtually nocontrol over our own lives.

While I didn't think much of it while reading, the memory of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go strikes me every so often with its immense sadness.

*****

I wrote this because I was having a bad day. I picked up a book of Miranda July's short stories and read over passages I had previously noted. It was a slow tension that had built in me and held stagnant throughout the day and I felt it culminating as I stood there. I set down No one belongs here more than you and then flipped through The Journals of Sylvia Plath, intensely underlined. Then, I sat in front of my bookshelf and resolved to finish Babylon Revisited by F. Scott Fitzgerald that night.

Finally, I began to wonder why I always turn to books in times of need. Why are books my constant? Most importantly, why do I read at all?

At first, I thought that I could trace my answer out systematically, examine the books I've loved over the years and they would divulge their secrets to me. I learned how to read because I was embarrassed that I couldn't. I continued to read because I was proud of my own ability, then out of the simple rapture that books gave me. Certain books certainly changed me, but there must be more.

Upon examining aspects of my own life, I find that a lack of truly meaningful personal relationships leads me to find connections to humankind indirectly. To love a story, is to love what a writer painstakingly produced, and is to forge a path between reader and writer. This is how I see the world - through stories, through someone else's eyes. Unable to share a profound bond directly with another human being, I read about other people's lives in books. However, a strange desire to attach myself to authors via a string of well-chosen words is honestly not my only motivation to go to Barnes & Noble. I have too many reasons to read to count.

I read because Frank O'Hara paints the sky a different shade of blue. Because Jane Austen renders me temporarily romantic. Because I will only ever see war through the eyes of Kurt Vonnegut. Because to write is to live, to write is to make life real. And to read is to dive into the marrow of life and interpret what one finds there.