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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A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, by  Betty Smith

The title of this book refers to a persistent little tree that is growing through the concrete in the Brooklyn neighborhood that Francie is growing up in.  The tree comes around time and time again as an analogy to Francie’s life.  What is great about Francie is that she sees everything with these big, innocent eyes.  She gets excited about every little thing, when the fact is her life kind of sucks.  Her family is pretty much shot:  she has this tragic, alcoholic father, a crazy aunt, a favored brother… and she just continues to see life as totally magical.  It’s wonderful.

Of course, I loved Francie too because she was a big old book nerd.  One of my all time favorite quotes comes from this book:

“From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood. There was poetry for quiet companionship. There was adventure when she tired of quiet hours. There would be love stories when she came into adolescence and when she wanted to feel a closeness to someone she could read a biography. On that day when she first knew she could read, she made a vow to read one book a day as long as she lived.”

The whole book is just funny and sweet and kind of perfect.  This is another one of those great-girl-heroine books that I read about a dozen and a half times growing up.  So good.

Also:  From the minute I read this book until this very second I LOVE the name Francie.  LOVE IT. If we have a girl, this is going to be on our list of potential names.  It is one of my all time favorites.  That’s all.

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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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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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Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand

I know that this seems like a weird flashback, especially since I usually focus on books I read when I was really young, but this one has been on my mind lately and I thought I’d share.

A couple years after I graduated high school and right before I started college, I worked at the Post Office for a few months.  It was a third shift job and I was basically just doing a job a monkey could do.  All night I was lifting mail into and out of machines.  It was the most tedious, brainless job I’ve ever had to do.  It was horrible.  During that same time, I bought a copy of Atlas Shrugged because I loved The Fountainhead and because it was only 8 dollars and was like 1,500 pages.  More bang for your buck, ya know?

Every night, in the break room I would sit down with this giant book with all this serious philosophy and  all these confusing plot lines and I would put my brain to work.  I loved it.  I loved the stories, the characters, the ideas presented… I even loved the teeny tiny print and the lack of margins.

I know that this seems like a strange piece of escapist literature, but that is what it was for me.  I’d read 10 or 15 pages during my break or on my lunch and then I’d have something for my brain to chew on for the next few hours while I slung mail around.

I’ve thought a lot of times about re-reading this because I loved it so much when I read it the first time, but I’m pretty sure that it would be a very different experience this time around.

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The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum

When I was really young, probably 3 or 4 years old, I got totally obsessed with the movie The Wizard of Oz.  I would watch the whole thing, rewind it and watch it again.  I remember laying on my grandparents’ floor and watching it on their console TV.  Ahhh. Memories.

A few years later, I remember my mom bringing in a copy of this to read to me before bed.  We always read before bed but had probably only done one “chapter book” before this one.  I had not the slightest idea that this was a book as well as a movie and I thing I probably actually squealed.  This isn’t a particularly long book but I think it took us a couple of weeks to read the whole thing.  This is the first time I remember the excitement that comes with having a good book waiting for you.  I’d even try to bump bedtime up so that I’d get to hear more of the story first.

Later, when I could read on my own the Oz series became something that I came back to over and over again.  I still love the movie of course, but nothing can top these books.  They are fantasy and sci-fi and fairy tale and just incredible.  I read to Isaac every day already but I can only hope that he’ll get as excited about these books when the time comes as I did!

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