One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey

I know that this is really weird, but the high school that I went to didn’t have a library. None. A school. No books.  This is for real.  When we had to read a book for class that wasn’t a group-read, a lady would bring a cart of books to our classroom and we’d have to pick one out.  The rest of the time that cart of books was stored in the room where they washed the towels that the athletes used.  So, needless to say our reading selection was slimmer than slim.  Luckily (??) we usually only had to read a book of our choosing once a year or so.

My senior year, I had already read just about everything on the cart, mostly outside of school.  This skinny book was laying on the bottom shelf and I picked it out for just that reason- it was probably the shortest book on the cart.

I frigging loved it. I remember being really lost at first, and then as everything came together I realized that I was reading something amazing.  It is inspiring, well written, provocative, and a little bit eerie.

And here’s my confession: I took it.  There was no check-out system from our fake library and I kind of got this idea in my head that no one would even miss it.  I was right.  It’s on my bookshelf right now.

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The Berenstain Bears

Do you remember these!? I had forgotten all about them before I saw one in my nephew’s book collection the other day.  I think we probably had about 300 different Berenstain Bear books while I was growing up.  I frigging loved them.  I loved how the kids didn’t (as far as I know) have names, they were just Brother Bear and Sister Bear.  I loved how they taught these little lessons.  And I really loved when my brother was little and we got more of these how they had started making “modern” ones… and my little cousin has one that talks about texting and stuff.  Awesome, right?

I do, actually, have a specific memory tied to these books.  I went into Kindergarden knowing how to read really well.  I remember my teacher telling me to bring in a book every week and I could read it to the class.  The first one I read was one of these and for the first and only time being able to read made me cool.  The other kids in my class could not believe that I knew how to read.  For days and days afterwards they would point to words around the class room and ask me what they said.  I felt like I was awesome.  They figured out soon enough that I’m just a nerd, but for those few blissful Kindergarden days…

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The Velveteen Rabbit, by Margory Williams Bianco

The original Toy Story, right?  I remember my mom reading this to me and me beeing just totally into the idea that maybe my stuffed animals (of which I had about 45 million) came to life when I wasn’t around.  The idea didn’t really freak me out but it did make me nicer to them- I was one of those kids who was pretty hard on toys

Seriously though, this book is pretty beautiful.  It is a kid’s book, but I read it again when I was older and got so much out of it.  One little part I copied down into one of my high school planners and read over and over:

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

That still kind of gets me in the gut.

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Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective

To say I loved Encyclopedia Brown would be quite the understatement.  I was a little bit obsessed.  What I loved about these books was that they weren’t really set up like a story, they were more like a collection of “cases” so I didn’t have to read the whole book every time I needed  a fix, I could just open up to my favorite cases and read them over and over and over.  I loved that the reader was given all the clues that they needed to solve the mystery but it was pretty much impossible until Encyclopedia used his huge brain to put it all together.

I remember the big case-breaker in one was that someone confessed in the beauty shop but there was no way that anyone could hear because all the women were under hair driers…. but oh my word!  One of the women is deaf and can read lips.  Crazy, right?  It didn’t fool Encyclopedia Brown for even one minute.  That’s why I loved him, folks.  Brilliant

I’m sure that they would seem pretty dated now, but man oh man, this series was incredible.

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Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell

This is another one of those books that immediately takes me back to a time in my life.  When Shaun and I first started dating, we were living in Columbus and I was working as a waitress and going to school.  I got a big fat paperback of Gone with the Wind for a few bucks and was so excited because it was somewhere around 1500 pages and I figured that it was just more book for my money.  I would read it during my commute on the city bus (oh COTA, how I miss you!) and when we were slow at work.  I seriously fell in love.  This is one of those books that just absolutely transported me. It was winter, I was taking stupid classes and working a pretty crappy job and this book was the perfect escape.  I have two pretty strong memories associated with this book:

1-  While I was reading on the bus, a man confronted me.  He got all up in my face and asked why I’d read a book that revised history so much.  He went on and on about slaves and Scarlett and what kind of person Margaret Mitchell was.  I just stared at him the whole time.  Before I got off, I just looked him right in the face and said, “You realize this is fiction, right?” and he just shook his head, genuinely disgusted.  I’m absolutely positive he never cracked the cover of this book.

2- This is a happier memory  That year, during spring break Shaun and I decided to take a road trip.  We thought we’d just drive and stop when we wanted and just do whatever seemed fun.  We knew we wanted to go south and get some place warm, and when we ended up in Georgia, I must have asked Shaun 7,000 times to find Tara and maybe we could take a tour.  He just stared at me and said, “You realize that was fiction, right?”  Ha.  Ah well.  We did end up going to Margaret Mitchell’s house in Atlanta and they did have a fun little tour.  It was wonderful.

Since that first read, I’ve probably read this book 3 or 4 other times.  I seriously love it, which is funny because historical fiction and romance are not really my areas, but I think it’s just about the greatest book ever.

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Cujo, by Stephen King

This is one of the first times that I noticed that not everyone was hugely into reading like yours truly.  I know I’ve bragged on my mom before but she really is the reason I’m a big reader.  She was always reading to me and around me and providing me with great books to read.

When I was in 6th grade, I had made the leap to Stephen King and I was pretty much enamored. This was also the same time that my mom started dating my now-step-dad.  One weekend, he invited my mom and my brothers and I on a canoeing trip with a big group of his friends.  I was so excited.  I knew that since I was young I’d end up sitting in the middle of someone’s boat for the whole day.  Of course, I saw it as perfect reading time. I packed myself a little backpack of supplies that included Cujo in a ziploc bag.   After we were in the water and the novelty had died off a little, I got into my bag, pulled out my book and started reading.  My step-dad and all his friends kind of teased me about brining a book on a canoeing trip, but it hadn’t even crossed my mind to leave for a relaxing day without a book.  It’s logical, right?

Of course eventually the canoe that I was in got tipped and my book (of course) got soaked.  I was heartbroken… mostly because that meant that the whole car ride home I’d be bookless… and I NEEDED to know if the dog devours everyone or if they make it out alive.  I guess that’s the risk you take when you read in a boat or in the bath or whatever… I am one that always considers it worth the risk

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Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery

Really, though, who didn’t love Anne?  Everyone has a soft spot for an orphan, of course, but Anne wasn’t just any orphan.  She was sweet and quirky and funny and… a redhead!  You guys know I have a soft spot in my heart for redheads (have you seen my husband and baby?!), and that includes characters out of books.

I love books that have these girls with big, strong personalities.  Anne was seriously a handful.  She was always getting into something or saying the “wrong” thing or just acting exactly how she wanted to act.  I was never a quiet kid and I loved how much I could relate to Anne.  She loved laughter and fun just for the sake of fun.  She was one of these characters who had everything against her but just overcame using her strength and guts.  What’s not to love?

I know that at one time I probably read this whole series.  To be honest, the only one whose plot I can really remember is Anne of Green Gables.  It wasn’t one that I read a lot but I remember just absolutely loving it.

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Aesop’s Fables

From my earliest memory, we had this giant, beautiful copy of Aesop’s Fables.  I’m sure my mom just got it from a thrift store or something, but it was just this wonderful book.  It was bigger than my little-kid lap and had these really strange ink drawings to go with a lot of the fables.  I loved it.  I would sit and read it for hours.  I would beg mom to read it to me at bedtime.  I maybe understood about one out of every ten fables, but I loved them anyway.  I don’t know why, it was just one of those weird things.

One day, I was laying on the picnic table in our back yard reading this book.  It was during the summer and somehow I got distracted. Probably I went inside to pick a fight with one of my brothers or something equally as nice.  I left the book out on the picnic table and totally forgot about it.  In the afternoon, it stormed like crazy.  The next day when I went outside, this big beautiful book was laying there totally ruined.  The pages were stuck together in this big, thick, wet mess.  I sobbed.  Mom put it over a vent to dry, and eventually it did… with about half of the pages still readable.  I tried to peel the pages apart and did all I could to save it, but it didn’t work.  Since then, I’ve been a major stickler about taking good care of my books.  I’ve also been on a 20 year hunt for a big, pretty copy of this book.

I love that my flashback about Aesop’s Fables has a moral.  Perfect, right?

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Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck

I told you guys a couple of months a go that I am a crier when it comes to books.  To be honest, I’m kind of a crier when it comes to anything, but books are one of my favorite things to cry over. This is one that has destroyed me more than once.

This is one of those books that we had to read in high school.  I was one of those kids who didn’t have to try very hard to make passable grades and I was perfectly fine with being mediocre in my schooling.  I loved to read but I never really got into what we were reading for any class and I was far to cool to show that I cared about anything that was going on around me…. and then we read Of Mice and Men in high school english class.

From the very first word, I was totally sold.  I was all the way in love with George and Lennie.  Their talk by the river when they were on their way to the farm is one of my absolute favorite scenes in any book I’ve ever read.  From that point on, I was into it.  I was reading ahead. I was talking about it and thinking about it outside of class. Crazy, right?

Some chapters we’d be assigned to read outside of class and some chapters we would read aloud during class.  I plowed through the book in the first few days after it was given to us and then slowed down and read along with the class.  When the teacher announced that we’d read the last couple of chapters aloud in class I was so excited because I wanted to catch everyone’s expressions at the “big twist” at the end.   That didn’t happen at all.  For some reason, even though I knew how it ended, hearing it read aloud just tugged at my heartstrings.  I started crying and I was kind of embarrassed, but I didn’t think anyone noticed.  The teacher kept reading and I totally lost it.  I was sobbing crying.  I felt like an idiot but I looked around and realized that there were several girls in various stages of having breakdowns.

Looking back at how cavalier I was about everything but how much this tore me up, I’m totally impressed.  That has to say something about his level of skill, that John Steinbeck could write something that could reach across the decades and truly touch a mean, hormonal teenager.  That’s incredible, right?

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Go Ask Alice, by Anonymous

Sometimes books will have this one scene that just sticks with you.  I have to admit that I don’t remember all of this book.  I remember that it is written as a diary and it is about this girl, Alice, that gets totally screwed up on drugs.  I remember Alice being full of angst and insecurities and seeming totally real.  I remember that she starts off a normal, middle class girl and ends up just an absolute mess.

But here is what I remember most:  One night, Alice goes over to a neighbor’s to babysit.  She is pretty doped up.  She starts hallucinating and ends up in the family’s coat closet.  She thinks that she is in a coffin and that there are bugs all over her. She scratches at her skin and she can’t get them off and they are everywhere and she is totally freaking out.  I don’t know what the kids did this whole time, but the parents come home in the evening to find Alice in the closet, screaming and torn to absolute bits.

To say that this scene haunted me after I read the book is putting it lightly.  It totally freaked me out.  The idea of bugs crawling all over me gives me the creepy crawlies anyway, but the idea that she just thought that they were… to the point of tearing at her own skin?  Now that is haunting. Alice was my anti-drug.

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