Lose Yourself (In a Book)

Books! Oh books. My oldest, dearest friends. I used to spend hours reading or being read to. Before I knew how, my grandmother would read to me from a blue hardcover called The World’s Best Fairytales. It was a two volume Reader’s Digest anthology from 1981. She read from them so often that I got to a point where I could move my finger along the words and recite the stories verbatim. I don’t remember which ones we read together. Maybe if I could see the books again, I could recall. I just remember how loved I felt in those moments with my grandmother.

My grandmother and I visited the public library regularly. We were either checking out VHS tapes of old musicals or spending hours looking at and picking out books to read together. I often found myself plopped on the ground in front of the bottom shelf of kid’s biographies. There was a collection called the Childhood of Famous Americans biography series. I read nearly all of them.

When I was in elementary school, one of my favorite times of day was library time. We got to go have stories read to us picked out books to read. I always wound up with armfuls of A Tale from the Care Bears books. I read that series probably twice through before I moved on to other books.

To say that I was a voracious reader was more than a bit of an understatement. I frequently read books well beyond my age group. It added to my weirdness. I found it easier to hold conversations with the adults around me than I did the other kids. I used vocabulary dissimilar to my peers and where the language was the same, I applied the words in—we’ll say—unique ways. I went to elementary school in a town with a population of under a thousand. Around Louisville, where I spent my high school years, I would’ve been able to easily find others like me. As it was, I struggled to make friends. Like a lot of people I know now, I got put into the Gifted and Talented program. When it was explained to me, I thought it would be an advanced class type situation where we would learn things our peers weren’t learning. We spent the hour once a week doing art projects or reading silently to ourselves. It was a throw away class, but I was happy to spend the time reading.

Had I been allowed, I’d’ve spent every recess reading, but I was never permitted to bring a book onto the playground unless I was being punished (I sometimes abused this just so I could sit and read). Instead, I’d make up stories in my head about daring adventures or play pretend with the boys in class. Despite my protests, I was always playing the role of damsel in distress. Though I often fought the villains myself when the boys took to long to “rescue” me. Much to their dismay. Because the boys liked playing with me, most of the girls hated me. Their parents would often try and force them to be friends with me, but I inevitably found out, often the hard way, how little they liked having me around. Typically, by being shouted at for being strange and told I was only invited because their parents made them.

It was a lonely childhood, but I had books. (And movies which we’ll address later.) I was never truly alone because I had the company of the entirety of Wayside School, or Ramona Quimby, or the Babysitter’s Club girls, or mystery solving Mandy, or, of course, my favorite Anne Shirley. I was never far from companionship. I earned Book-It rewards like a damn boss. No one came close to me in number of books read every week. Until 4^th grade when I started reading books for adults. Then my numbers began to dwindle.

After the movie version of Jurassic Park came out, I begged my mother to let me read the real book. I’d read the kid’s movie adaptation multiple times, and it was okay, but I wanted more. She relented and I devoured it. I finished it in just a handful of days. It was the first experience that I recall of falling fully into a book. It began an addiction to Michael Crichton novels. I read Sphere, Andromeda Strain, Congo, and The Lost World as quickly as I could. These books let me disappear completely. They did for me what some movies I’d watch did. They let me find a character and become that person for however long I was reading. And a strange, new phenomena occurred that didn’t happen when I read the kids’ books. When I would read, the words would vanish, and I could see the pictures in my mind. I wasn’t reading about dinosaurs or underwater research stations. I was physically in them. I had to have more.

Did I understand everything I read? Absolutely not, and I’m pretty confident that was the only reason that my mother allowed me to read the books. After I read every Michael Crichton book we had in the house, I moved on to see what else I could find. Next came The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux, then A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickins, then Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. As you can see, my mom kept classics in the house mostly. The little Penguin Classics they sold cheaply at bookstores. I read Wuthering Heights, Gone with the Wind (my mother was OBSESSED but we won’t get into that bag of mess), Frankenstein, and others I can’t recall at the moment.

At some point during middle school, I stopped reading so much. I finally started to make some friends. I guess some part of me thought that I didn’t need books the way I did before. I still read, don’t get that wrong, but not like previously. I think the book I spent the most time reading from middle school to high school (and part of college) was the Bible. I nearly had the beast memorized by the time I gave brain space back to other literature.

Before 9^th grade, my family moved from Southeastern Kentucky to Southern Indiana. I left all my friends and my confidence behind. I rediscovered books a bit. I read Star Wars novels because my stepfather had them. I started watching a TV show called Babylon 5 and so I started reading all the books based on that show. (The first fanfiction I ever wrote was a self-insert for Babylon 5. I created a character called Catherine Dienova who was the secret half-sister of Susan Ivanova. I was 15, leave me alone.)

I hated most of the high school assigned readings. The only readings I really enjoyed were poems by Maya Angelou. I loathed The Great Gatsby. It still makes the list of worst books I’ve ever read. My wife told me about the books that she read her senior year of high school and honestly, I was so jealous. She read some great books that I never even considered or had suggested to read. I didn’t want to take the test to get into the AP English class (I clearly should’ve despite major test anxiety) so I took the college prep class which was supposed to be the equivalent of an honors class. My teacher meant well, and she was nice enough but the class was not challenging. She assigned Animal Farm to us to read at one point, stating that it would be difficult for us to follow. My wife said she read that book in something like 9^th grade. She even signed my senior memories book saying that it was a challenge to “keep me on my toes.” I did not feel prepped for college. Much as I hate to admit it (because we hated each other) my 11^th grade English teacher did more to prepare me for college than the college prep class.

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”—Jane Eyre

I don’t remember why I picked up Jane Eyre my senior year. I don’t know if someone suggested I read it or if I just found it on my own. I carried it with me everywhere while I was reading it. Every second I got to read more; I took. It spoke to me in ways I’m not quite sure I can even articulate. Between the conversational style of writing, acknowledging me as a reader, to majorly identifying with Jane, I was hooked. I took my time with the book, as much as I could. I didn’t want it to end. I wanted to keep reading it forever. It’s a book that I try to reread once a year (I don’t succeed often but around December every year, I pick it back up again and at least start rereading it. While I never really liked Mr. Rochester, I loved my Jane. She was smart, funny, capable, and despite the many tragedies that littered her life, hopeful. She was a bit like Anne, if Anne had never met the Cuthberts. Where Anne was given a home in which to grow and mature into a healthy, functioning adult, Jane had to find whatever kind of healthy functioning worked through her layers of trauma. She was resilient like no character I had ever met before. Her experiences should have broken her, by rights, and yet she thrived in her own way.

Somehow or the other, I managed to miss out on reading Jane Austen books. I’m not quite sure how it happened. I’ve since read Pride and Prejudice and seen several movie adaptations of some of her other works. My mind always connected the two authors and I believed Charlotte Bronte to be the superior author, so I never felt inclined to read Austen. I like Pride and Prejudice, but it never gave me what Jane Eyre gave. There is something more gritty and real about Jane than about Elizabeth Bennet to me. I suppose I’ve always had a soft spot for the orphan. I’ve film and miniseries adaptations of Mansfield Park and honestly that novel is the most likely that I would enjoy (not that Fanny Price is an orphan). It’s been on my to-read list for ages. I just never work my way around to it. Perhaps one holiday season I’ll give Jane Eyre a break and read Mansfield Park. Highly unlikely, but a nice thought.

When I was in college, I had a creative writing professor during my last semester. Her name was Dr. Estella Conwill Majozo. She changed my life. She introduced me to authors I had never heard of, some I had but had never read, and encouraged my writing. From her, I learned about Zora Neale Hurston, was reintroduced to Maya Angelou, and Alice Walker. After the first writing assignment, she pulled me aside and told me that my prose resembled the style of Nikki Giovanni and that I should read her work to expand my horizons. She also told me about Audre Lorde (who immediately became one of my top three favorite poets). Dr. Majozo believed in my writing in a way I’ve never experienced before or since. She told me that I should seek publication for my works. That I could tell stories that mattered. In a way that drew people in. No one ever believed in me before. I will be forever thankful for the seeds of hope that she planted. She made a mark on me and introduced me to the writer who published the book that has made the single biggest imprint on my life.

“If you lie to yourself about your own pain, you will be killed by those who will claim you enjoyed it.”—Possessing the Secret of Joy

Alice Walker is problematic. I have since learned things about what she believes that I just cannot support. I didn’t know then what I know now about her as a person and her anti-Semitism. I read Possessing the Secret of Joy not long after graduating college. I remember sitting in my car outside a coffeeshop when I finished it. I closed the book and sobbed. I sobbed for so long I wasn’t sure I would be able to stop.

If you would’ve asked me why I was crying, I’m not sure I would’ve been able to answer in a way that justified the level of grief I felt. I cried for the characters in the book, and for the real women who experienced the things Tashi did. I cried for the chords that it struck in me when the secret of joy was finally revealed. It’s not easy to explain when something plucks a string in your heart in just the exact right way to undo you. And not undo as in destroy but undo as in unravel knots that kept you in a chokehold. It was freeing and humbling and overwhelming with its frankness. Up to that point, I hadn’t really read a book that dealt so candidly with trauma and its effects and sexuality and its expressions. It was not a book I was ready for before that exact moment. Any sooner and I’d’ve put the book away a chapter in and not finished it. It was an example of Divine Timing.

It was also the first book that I read that was composed in first person for various characters. From a creative perspective, I was intrigued by how Walker kept everything so easy to follow. The perspective jumps in the hands of someone less capable would’ve left the story jarring and muddled. Somehow the threads wove together, and the voices played off one another in a way that was inviting rather than off-putting. I was fascinated just as much by the construction as I was moved by the content.

I spent the next few years devouring stories written by African American women. My eyes started to really open to the privilege my skin afforded me. I started to realize how so many of the ways I was brought up to believe were bullshit. The lessons that some members of my family tried to teach me finally started to unstick. I’m ashamed the process of undoing racist beliefs didn’t start earlier. I’d love to go back in time and slap around my younger self a bit. It’s a lifelong process to untangle the racism (subtle and overt) that we are inundated with since birth in this country. I fuck up on a regular basis. I like to hope, however, that I can take criticism with grace at this point in my life, and genuinely make change to my behavior. I’ve been blessed with some beautifully patient (and sometimes not so patient but still beautiful) friends who hold me accountable. I digress a bit, but I think it bears mentioning that accountability is always good, and growth only happens when we allow people to call us on our shit and really listen when they say we hurt them. “I’m sorry. Thank you. I’ll do better,” from a genuine attitude, these words can heal small hurts we cause.

“All your questions can be answered, if that is what you want. But once you learn your answers, you can never unlearn them.”—American Gods

If I were to point you to an author who, creatively, was the biggest influence in my life, I’d point you immediately to Neil Gaiman. If you’ve read his work—in either comic form or novel form—you know this man is ridiculously creative. I was introduced to Neil through Tori Amos. I can and probably will talk about Tori AT LENGTH when we come to the music portion of our program. The first Neil I read was Neverwhere. I knew that it was the novelization based on the BBC mini-series and in the version, I read, it felt obvious that it was pulled into novel from script form. I fell into the story immediately, however. The choppiness of the writing itself tried to draw me out several times but the story was so compelling that I couldn’t quit. Then I picked up Stardust.  Stardust read like a comic book to me. It was sparse and again still a bit choppy. The story was so good that I soldiered through.

Finally, I came to American Gods. Compared to Stardust, it was easily triple in size. Part of me worried it would continue the trend of being compelling but choppy and I wasn’t sure I could get through such a large novel like that. I opened the book on a lunch break at work one afternoon. Like Jurassic Park in my youth, I disappeared immediately into the book. I fell headfirst right next to Shadow Moon in this amazing world. I was furious when my break was over and I had to get back to work. I couldn’t stop thinking about the story and wondering what was next. As soon as my shift ended, I drove home. I stuck my nose back in the book and did not remove it until my eyes closed against my brain’s wishes at 5am. I spent every single free second of my day reading this book. I finished it in three days and immediately started it again. I had to make sure I hadn’t missed anything.

American Gods was the perfect intersection of my interests. The idea that the gods lived among us, brought to this country by immigrants over the years, tickled every part of my imagination. I was introduced to deities I had never heard of before and happily spent days researching to learn about their stories. After that, I had to own everything Neil had ever written. I sought every comic book, every collection of short stories, all his novels; I needed to read everything. I came close enough to owning the Neil Gaiman collection (I’m a couple books behind in both owning and reading, and a few comics are missing from my collection.) The Sandman series remains one of my favorite comic series of all time. I even accomplished one of my bucket list Halloween costume goals a couple years ago and went as Death of the Endless.

It’s been a long time since I’ve picked up a book that made me lose myself or feel something so deeply it resonated in my bones. My list of books to read is far too long. I find that I get overwhelmed by it sometimes and then wind up not reading anything. It’s frustrating because I miss the feeling I’ve found in books.

What are some of your book recommendations? Why do you love the books you love? Who is your favorite author?