When books are more than just books

As I continue reading Lord of the Rings, I am getting further and further drawn into Middle Earth. My love for Sam Gamgee is growing very quickly, and I got chills while reading the stories told in the Counsel at Rivendell. Seriously--chills. I could think that I shouldn't have put off reading the book for so long, but on the other hand, I wonder if I needed to be where I am now to enjoy it as much as I am. It's been long enough since I've seen the movies that nothing from them is fresh in my mind (besides remembering Orlando Bloom as Legolas...), so I feel untainted as I read. I just came off reading another fantasy book that set me up for reading about lands unfamiliar to anyone but fans of the books, which prepped my brain for reading a lot of names of places that only exist on a hand-drawn map in an appendix. It also helped, I think, that I was ready to read a book that went into more detail about the fantastic journeys of the main character--if you remember from my last post, I mentioned that as one of the few things I didn't enjoy about A Wizard of Earthsea. I wanted more details from it, and Lord of the Rings gives me more detail about its story and characters. A lot more detail. So my brain and my book soul are happy.

It amazes me that we all have those books that we have to read at just the right time to really get the full impact of them. I have several books that sat on my shelves after buying them for a long time (or that sat on my books-to-read list for a long time), only to get picked up at just the right moment for me to enjoy them most. Books included in that category are Rebecca (Daphne du Maurier), The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (Aimee Bender), Garden Spells (Sarah Addison Allen), Lake of Dead Languages (Carol Goodman), The House at Riverton (Kate Morton), The Secret History (Donna Tartt), Water for Elephants (Sara Gruen), The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows), Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen), and The Inner Game of Stress (W. Timothy Gallwey)--among other great books. These--and others like them--are then the ones that I often talk about most and share most freely with friends. And yet they're often the ones that take me the longest to pick up.

I think that avid readers--or maybe it's just me--have a sort of book ESP. We know when we pick up a book or choose one from the store that it's going to change the game for us. Maybe the book is going to make us look at life differently or at other books differently. Maybe the book is that comforting friend we may need in a time of craziness. Maybe that book will serve as our private moment of escape when we need it most. Because of that special little bit of knowledge that largely remains unconscious, we avoid picking up the book until the right moment--whether it's a week or three years down the road. Then, when we do read it, it becomes a part of us. I can't look at some of the books on my shelves without being taken immediately to the feelings I had when first reading the book. I can't part with most of my books (even though books are heavy to move, and we seem to move a lot) because, to me, they are more than just books.

I also acknowledge here that I don't get that feeling about all books that end up becoming very special to me and were, in fact, impulse purchases that I read immediately after buying. The Help (Katheryn Stockett) and The Thirteenth Tale (Diane Setterfield) are examples of books like that. However, maybe that impulse is the same as the impulse I get to read a book I already own--maybe it's all connected.

I think people who read for the love of reading have a very special connection that non-readers just can't understand. That's why my husband can't figure out why I get miffed when I'm interrupted mid-chapter in a book that I've been buried in all day. That's why people don't always understand how hard it is for me to put down a book in the morning to start working on things that actually have to get done. Books feed my soul. And the really good books--the ones that touch me most--become a part of me. The characters cease to be words on pages and become role models, friends, stories of my own past.

That's some deep thought for a Wednesday morning... It's also completely different than what I had intended to write when I sat down to type a post. Funny how those things work.

Complexities in Bradbury's SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES

Back in October, Angiegirl (of the Angieville blog) wrote a post called "The Parents of YA"; in it, she talks about how a lot of young adult (YA) books feature crappy parenting (often a necessity for the main character to end up on his/her own to struggle through the world) but then goes on to feature some YA books that offer good parenting (or at least parents who are trying their best).  I thought it was a brilliant post, but I didn't think of continuing the discussion on my own blog because I didn't have much more to add to what she had already said (outside the short comment I wrote on her blog).

But then I started reading Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury for the upcoming Good Books Club discussion this weekend and was inspired to write about three types of complexities in the book, starting with one of the parent/child relationships portrayed in the book.

Looking at the title and cover of this book, it seems odd that I'd be using this book as an example of good parent/child relationships, and yet Bradbury beautifully writes the complex relationship between one of the main characters, 13-year-old Will Halloway, and his parents.  As a disclaimer, in my following discussion, I am speaking from the experience of having a prototypical parent experience (i.e., my parents weren't perfect but they also weren't "crappy").

One of the first scenes that touched me is when Will walked in one night to see his parents sitting together in the family room; his mom was happily knitting and humming while his father sat there broodily contemplating a book.  He stood in the entryway, unable to take his eyes off them and came to a realization:

He wanted to be near and not near them, he saw them close, he saw them far.  Suddenly they were awfully small in too large a room in too big a town and much too huge a world.  In this unlocked place they seemed at the mercy of anything that might break in from the night. ... Suddenly he loved them more for their smallness than he ever had when they seemed tall.

Bradbury uses this simple passage to reflect a complex moment in a kid's life: learning that parents are not impenetrable giants but vulnerable people.  Kids reach this knowledge at different stages in life, yet it is an integral moment for any child.  Or maybe I should say "person" because I know adults who still struggle with seeing their parents for who they are--they look at their parents, expecting them to have all the answers, expecting them to save the day, expecting them to live forever.  And here, a 13-year-old boy sums up what people who experience this change in relationship try to say but often can't: you're able to love your parents more deeply when you realize how small they really are.

Later on in the scene, Will is lying awake listening to the sound of his father's voice through the walls.

And the odd thing in Dad's voice was the sound truth makes being said.  The sound of truth, in a wild roving land of city or plain country lies, will spell any boy.  Many nights Will drowsed this way, his senses like stopped clocks long before that half-singing voice was still.  Dad's voice was a midnight school, teaching deep fathom hours, and the subject was life.

I love that portrayal.  Earlier Will had already come to the realization that his father was "small" and yet he still listened for his father's voice, wanting to hold on to his father's words.  Will is on the verge of growing up in this book and has a hard time letting go of childhood behaviors; his father can relate to what his son is going through but finds he cannot communicate well with his son.  Bradbury has a talent for taking horribly complex ideas and expressing them in beautifully constructed snapshots of the characters' lives.

The parent/child relationships are not the only complex relationships tackled in the book; Bradbury also explores the friendship between Will and his best friend Jim:

So there they go, Jim running slower to stay with Will, Will running faster to stay with Jim, Jim breaking two windows in a haunted house because Will's along, Will breaking one window instead of none, because Jim's watching.  God, how we get our fingers in each other's clay.  That's friendship, each playing the potter to see what shapes we can make of the other.

Will and Jim are opposites in every way--including their looks.  That opposite-ness keeps the relationship strong while at the same time breaks it down.  The way he describes friendship as each involved person playing the potter is beautiful yet frightening (perhaps that makes it hauntingly beautiful).  It provides a visual representation that we leave our marks on our friends but also reminds us that who we choose to be our friends will influence who we turn out to be.

Furthermore, the language itself is complex.  I am not quite finished with the book because, at times, I am finding it difficult to concentrate on the plot as I get lost in the language.  My inner linguist is being a jackanapes, interrupting my reading flow by wanting to analyze the language because Bradbury's style is simplistic yet otherworldly.  For instance, instead of writing something like "he paused," he writes things like "he waited until his heart beat twice."  My inner linguist rejoices at the literary freedoms taken with the language, but my inner reader shakes her fist at the linguist, wanting to finish the book to see how the story unfolds.

In case you were wondering, I am proud of myself for being able to use "jackanapes" in a sentence after watching it scroll across my computer screen earlier as one of the words of the day on my screensaver.  At least my inner linguist wasn't wearing galligaskins.

Happy reading!