On Books

I'm sure you've all (and by all I mean the 4 people who read this blog) noticed the list of books and authors I've got posted on my page. It's a little short right now but only because all of my books are in boxes right now and I can't remember the titles and authors of all the ones I love. There are hundreds. I would consider them my prized possessions. Right now they are packed into 15ish boxes and sitting on the floor of our new duplex. I think I've only read a little over half of them. By themselves they took about two days for me to pack only because, as addicted as I am, I felt the need to go through them one by one, read the jacket or the back, mark them as mine with my little stamper (this is the only deformation of books that I can handle without freaking out), remember all the one's I've read and still love, get excited about all the ones I haven't read yet, and wonder once again if my reading is ever going to catch up with my collecting habits. Secretly I hope I never catch up. You could say I have a problem.
I still remember when I first discovered the wonderful world of books. It was a program they started in elementary school called Accelerated Reader that really kicked off my habits. The program was designed create such a love for books as the one I developed but I remember most of the kids hated it. The idea was to assign point values to books based on reading level, length, and other similar factors and then test kids after they read them. A perfect score would give students the full point value with each missed question diminishing the point value. We were required to get a certain amount of points every six weeks (remember six weeks?) and then at the end of every semester they would have point sales where you could use your accumulated points to buy things like posters, candy, more books, and things like that. It was a wonderful system. For me it felt like constantly winning.
This system was what first introduced me to some of the original books and authors that I still love. Laura Ingalls-Wilder and her "Little House" books were wonderful. Maniac McGee. Ann McKaffrey and her dragon books. "Where the Red Fern Grows" and "Summer of the Monkeys" are still two of my all time favorite books. I'll admit that Red Fern still brings tears to my eyes every time I read it. There are so many more and I wish that I could remember them all. Sometimes I walk through the kid's section at the bookstore just to remember some of those old books that, in my opinion, are no less masterpieces for being kid's books than many of the widely recognized adult classics. It was walking through this section the other day that I realized my addiction started much early than I first thought.
First I found Winnie-the-Pooh (which I promptly bought, read, and then bought two more copies to give to my niece and my cousins daughter for Christmas) which is almost profound in its simplicity. If you don't believe that try reading "The Tao of Pooh". Milne is concidered a bhudist master for his stories of Pooh. It's not hard to see why. Then I saw Dr. Seuss and almost bought all of those books. There's another master no less astounding. Then I found the series that I was addicted to when I really started reading on my own. They were the first books I bought with my own money. They were "The Boxcar Children". I still have them. They are in a box waiting for my children. There are many of these in the series but I still believe that for young readers it is still one of the best. I'm itching to buy the rest of them. I grew to higher levels of reading much faster than I could buy and read all of the Boxcar books but one day I will have them all. I intend to read them all. I doubt if my brother realizes it but I also have all of his "Hank the Cowdog" books which I never had time for because of my Boxcar books. For awhile we had a contest to see who could read more faster. I think I'm still ahead.
It didn't take long for me to get to the point where I was reading faster than my allowance allowed, and so I found the library. Here was a wonder. Not only were there lots of them in town but they were full to the brim of thousands of books only a fraction of which I would ever get to read. Not only that but you could take them for free. FREE!!! Then I realized that school librarians, seeing a young person with a fully developed love for books like their own, were easily talked into fudging the rules on how many you could take at a time. Especially when they knew that you would be back in a few days looking for more. They absolutely love that. They also love to talk about their favorites as much as any other book addict. Conversations like this could (and have) gone on for days.
Taking books back is hard though. You find ones you love, and then you have to take them back, watch other people read them and inevitably tear them up. It's a terrible thing to see. So you find ways to get as many as you can for the small amount of money coming to you in those years. For birthdays and holidays all you ask for is books. You find amazing things like used bookstores and library sales where you can get books they don't even carry in stores like barnes and noble anymore. And you can get them cheaper. You can also trade but this is almost as hard as giving them away. Almost. Then some genious invents gift cards. The first time I got a gift card to a book store I realized I had really hit the jackpot. Not only was someone giving you money, but they were giving you money that you couldn't spend on anything other than books. I didn't even have to justify the purchase anymore. You would be amazed at how fast I can spend a bookstore giftcard. I still am everytime.
It took quite a few years, however, to convince people that if they were going to give me something for a birthday or Christmas I REALLY DID only want books or the means to buy them. I have so many I haven't read but I still have a whole list in my head of ones that I want. I'll never have them all. One of the main reasons I miss school is that I had so much time to read. For somewhere close to ten years I was reading six or seven a month, sometimes more. Teachers were constantly telling me to stop reading and pay attention. Everyone around me soon realized that if I was reading something, I did not in any way see or hear the real world. I don't know when that happenned but now when I read my surroundings no longer register. If someone says something to me it can take up to half an hour for me to respond. If I respond at all. It takes my mind that long to realized something happenned outside of the story, that there IS an outside of the story, and that maybe I should try to figure out what is happenning in that outside. I can't help it, but it pisses people off to no end. It usually takes some sort of physical contact to break my trance. The same thing happens when I'm writing, but I do that less. I'm less good at that. By far.
For all those interested, however, I highly recommend this trance type reading. I don't know how it's done but I do know that you feel like you're in the story. Really in it. Your eyes are reading words but they SEE the world you're reading about. All your senses work the same way in this state. You hear, you smell, you taste, and you can feel all the things you're reading. People often wonder why I enjoy the fantasy genre so much. I'm sure you can understand why when this is the way I experience it. I start reading and without realizing it at all 7 hours can pass and so can 300 pages. I remember none of that but I remember everything in the pages. This takes an excellent author however. Only the best can get you this deep into a book. J.K. Rowling is up there in ways that even some of the best aren't. Most authors hit a very specific group of readers with very specific interests. She hit the whole world. Age, race, preferred genres, and pretty much any other wall to most authors didn't stop her. She's just that good and I don't the she even knows how or why. She's not the only one though. She's just the newest that I know of. C.S. Lewis. Tolkein. There are many others and in other genres too. I just don't remember a lot of their names by memory. Every author and book on my list over there, though maybe not of the same caliber, are authors that I enjoy reading and re-reading.
Some of them start their career off strong and then something happens, who knows what, and they lose that thing they had that made them great. Eddings was like this with his newest series. Even his loyal followers are wondering what the hell happenned. With others it seems that either they changed or their readers changed around them. Michael Crichton seems to be this way. I've read almost everything he's written only missing the ones that I can't find and I've always enjoyed them. Some are better than others. Some more political. But all of a sudden the political types are fighting over books that he writes which say, in the very front of them, fiction. Not fact. Whatever. Some people will fight over anything. He's a very entertaining author though. If anyone has old books by John Lange let me know and I'll buy them.
Anyway I could write on this one for hours. I'm sure everyone has already stopped reading it. It's pretty long. Whatever. It entertains me. If anyone wants to talk about books, I'm always up for it. Always.