First among my gifts I count intellect and wit. Then maybe compassion, but that’s not really a gift to the person who has it. Relative beauty makes the list, too. The fact is that if something “counts” (style, size, dollars), then there is at least one decision or set of conditions for which this criterion is the deciding factor. I hope, when I get to a day this year when all the things I love about myself are not enough to tip the balance toward “joyfully accept,” that I don’t feel too crummy standing next to a woman with a salon blow out and the perfect pair of jeans knowing I won’t be soothing my insecurity with the balms of acquisition and display.
I pride myself most on the hundreds of books, articles, essays, and factoids whose contents are filed away in my mind, synthesized with my own experiences and related readings. Photos today are the bookshelves in my living room. Last year I read 24 books. So far this year I am on number 14, which is Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. I like big books because the world that the author conjures up remains solid in this dimension for that much longer. Nobody makes a place like Michael Chabon.
What'cha reading?
Other notable texts in this first picture are 1421: The Year China Discovered America by Gavin Menzies, and A Prayer for Owen Meany. If you haven’t read 1421 or seen the PBS special and you are looking to get your world rocked, check that out. John Irving was my favorite living American author for many of my teen years and into early adulthood. He’s an excellent storyteller.
I collect children’s literature too, and I like unconventional books. I have all of the Gryphon and Sabine books by Nick Bantock, and both of the hardcovers for Clive Barkers’ adventure, Abarat. If you have any young people in your life that like adventure, or if you read all the Harry Potter books, Lord of the Rings, Alice in Wonderland, or love Roald Dahl, you need to read these books. If you like art, phantasmagorical shapes and allegorical characters, do not miss Abarat.
Also on that pic is The Elegant Universe, which I haven’t read. I read the first couple chapters like four times. After that my brane iz to tired phor more fisics.
Below that we have some non-ficiton, and some Dave Eggers.
External Hard Drive
I bought What is the What not long after the first promising reviews at a local bookstore in Key West. I loved You Shall Know Our Velocity equally well at least. The Power of One by Bryce Courtney is also can’t-miss, as are A Fine Balance, and The Rice Mother.
References to health and cooking are on the bottom with the big books, including my favorite aunt’s copy of The Giving Tree, and Helpful Mr. Bear, Allumette, I Wonder What’s Under, and Ms. Suzy from when I was a child, plus all the classics: Matilda, Peter Pan, The Chocolate Touch, Scary Stories to Tell In the Dark, The Twenty One Balloons, Pinnochio, and The Little Prince (in both French and English).
I am subject to the same superficiality that threatens to subjugate all of us, and I may be more insecure than some. Style and clothes are part of how I see myself and how I interact with the world, and if there is such a thing as real value in retail therapy, then my simply closing that avenue for mood regulation only eliminates that intervention as an option: it does not supplant the need for it or mitigate the circumstances that set it in to motion.
