Just One Book

I saw this over at Sex Ed In Higher Ed, a wonderful blog that makes me feel better about my brief foray into teaching at an unnamed online U. I thought just those students had issues; apparently many students do. Teacher Lady has a great way of conveying the bizarre situations.

Anyway, as I try to read every day (and I succeeded before I had kids), I thought I'd give this a go.

1. One Book That Changed Your Life:The Long Quiet Highway, by Natalie Goldberg. I read this book when I was living in Minnesota, and she described studying Zen Buddhism in Minnesota. Her descriptions made it sound ... normal. And accessible. And like something I needed. She inspired me to seek out classes, and I took a class in mindfulness on the model of Jon Kabat-Zinn. While I am not good about continuing to practice, the lessons I learned from it continue to help me every day. I think they are particularly helpful as a parent. I know I should focus on the present moment, which conveniently enough is the same thing my children are doing.

2. One Book That You've Read More Than Once: I've read John Steinbeck's East of Eden at least twenty times. I first read it when I was about 10, and now I think "it is nice that I could read at that level, but maybe there were a few ideas there I shouldn't have covered." In particular, after I read it I asked my mom what a "wh-hore" (I pronounced it with two syllables) was. My mom told me it was a "woman who sold her body." Existential little kid that I was, for ages I thought "she sells her body. So does her soul drift around the universe until she finds a cut rate body?" I spent quite some time trying to puzzle it out. I'm not sure when I realized what "wh-hore" actually meant, but I've always wondered why my mom didn't give me a more direct answer since I was familiar with the facts of life.

Anyway, even on multiple readings I love Steinbeck's writing and his characters. I've only spent a little time in Northern California, but I'd love to go and see more of the landscape he describes ... though I suspect that Silicon Valley has changed it radically.

I just went to get the link for this book, and I find that Oprah has discovered it too. I'm not sure if that is positive or negative. I read a lot of books multiple times, so I could pick another. But this is definitely the one I've read the most.

3. One Book You'd Want on a Desert Island: I'd hate to limit myself to one. I've been wanting to re-read Possession, and that does have a book-within-a-book, so I think for today I'd go with that. It brings back memories of long hours in dark libraries, and of a time when studying could be exotic.

4. One Book That Made You Laugh: Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady. Florence King's description of her first post-coital douche still makes me laugh out loud. She grew up in Northern Virginia when it was Virginia, not a suburb of D.C., and if you've ever lived in the south some of her images will be familiar.

5. One Book That Made You Cry: I have to think about this. I don't cry over books much. I did have a hard time with the crime description that opens Jon Krakauer's Under The Banner Of Heaven since one of the victims was the age of my girls. Nevertheless I think it is an important book.

6. One Book That You Wish Had Been Written: "Stories of Successful Sequencing." As an alternative to "stay-at-home mom" vs. "working mom" "wars" this book would tell stories of women who had done both, particularly left and re-entered the workforce, and how they managed it. It would be a little like Po Bronson's What Should I Do With My Life? but would focus on moms and will have a bigger socio-economic cross section of the population than that book did.

7. One Book That You Wish Had Never Been Written: I can't say I've actually read a book that I think shouldn't have been written; the act of writing is important to people. Now if the phrase was "One Book That You Wish Had Never Been Published" or "One Book That You Wish Hadn't Been Promoted So Much" I could come up with more. I was going to say "anything by Ann Coulter" but to be fair, I've only read her essays not her books. So a book I have read and hated is: "What To Expect When You're Expecting." No link, because I don't think you should read it.

8. The Book That You Are Currently Reading: I just finished Sandra Tsing Loh's A Year In Van Nuys. It was fun and it made me laugh and I particularly liked her sketches of your brain in "dream marriage" and "actual marriage." I probably missed half the LA-area jokes, but I got the NPR ones.

9. One Book That You've Been Meaning to Read: Toni Morrison's Beloved. I've carried it with me on several trips; my copy has a sticker on it that I know is from the security clearance in Bangkok. Somehow the sticker moved from my shirt onto the book. And yet I've never found the block of time I need to really focus on it, and I think it is a book that requires focus.

10. Five People To Tag. I haven't really met a lot of people inside the computer yet, so I won't do this. But if you want to do this meme tell me. I'd love to read your list!