On Tuesday, I am supposed to go to my friend Kat's classroom with my favorite book. A student will interview me about why it is my favorite, what is it that makes it stand out above all other books that I have read, and give a brief synopsis of the storyline. To finish, they will take my picture and make a "Got Milk" style poster that they will hang around the high school to encourage our students to read beyond the classroom.
I read a book every three days; this is not of my own accord. I am finishing my Literary Criticism degree this semester: my final semester. Three literature classes and one foreign language. The literature classes are the last of a long line of a course load that has taken me well beyond my reading capabilities. I have studied literary theory (Post Colonial Theory, Feminism, Marxist Readings, and Formalism in US Literature), world literature classes (African American Studies, Indian Lit, Caribbean Lit, European Lit, and US Lit 1914-1945), to literary genre (Satire, Young Adult Lit, Business Writings, and Gothic Lit). I have studied single authors (Early Shakespearean Works, Later Shakespearean Works, The Complete Milton, and The Complete Chaucer) and even classes wrapped around two (Hawthorne and Melville).
Each class, and I did not mention them all, required a minimum of ten books and, University rules, a minimum of three essays. This means, from the classes listed above alone, I have read more than two hundred and fifty books within the last three years.
And yet, somehow, I even found time to read on my own: Life of Pi, The Professor and the Madman, Devil in the White City, The Kite Runner, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Hey Nostradamus, Monster, Friday Night Lights, Will in the World, The Stranger, and Hairstyles of the Damned to name a few.
I read, therefore I am.
So which book is my favorite? How do I separate them? Do I pick my favorite books from my schooling? If so, Sidhwa's Cracking India, Atwood's Surfacing, or Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises jump to mind. Or do I go with the classics, the things that will exist well beyond all things? The Canterbury Tales, The Divine Comedy, or The Iliad? Short story collections like Rushdie's East-West or Kafka's Metamorphosis and Other Stories? Something contemporary like the unbelievable Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh - it did make me start going to dance clubs for a while? What about the companion books, the ones that give great detail of the authors who shaped our world? The Riverside Companion to Shakespeare or Milton's World? What about poetry? A Bukowski collection? What about Ginsburg? Something with "Howl" in it: the only poem to make me stand up on my chair and scream at the top of my lungs as it released some hidden demons?
How do you do this?
I carried a book called Life After God around with me for nearly three years, I gave it to people and told them they had to read it. It's a collection of short stories by Douglas Coupland, an author who I have outgrown, that wrap around a general theme that we are the first generation born without God. In the end, the finale concludes that although we were raised secular, we need God and possess God within us all. I read this book at a time that I needed to read a good book, something life changing.
I was very low in life when I picked up the book from The Crow Bookshop on Upper Church Street when I was 19 years old. I was lonely and was in a dark place. People around me were advancing and I was not. I was disconnected and disjointed; disappearing was wished for everyday. I daydreamed of standing in the middle of the highway and letting fate take its course. But some employee at the bookstore turned the spine of Life After God inward, exposing its cover: a child in a swimming pool, his head tilted backward. His eyes are closed. His face is in a state of pure relaxation as the water cools his head. I saw that cover and bought the book. I never was the same.
But I don't feel like opening myself up like that. I don't want to tell 14 year olds about the days that I thought of death on a regular basis; those days are gone now and dwelling on them is unimportant. Lonliness is universal. Patience, time, and experience, also people and places, heal our suffering. I am not the only person to be at this place; we all move on if we make it.
So I will bring in Kafka on the Shore: a book that my good friend Vickie recommended to me early in our friendship. I noticed a Shakespeare poster in her room, I said something about it, we talked about Big Bill, and she recommended Kafka to me. I never told her that I went to a bookstore that night and bought a copy of the book and read it in two days: all because I wanted to have something to talk about with her. It's a good book, a book I love dearly for the story as well as the memories it brings back of my friend now gone to bigger and better things in the Big Apple. It will also be my own personal little kick in the shins to the school for letting go a great mentor and kindred spirit.
But I will not tell them about Life After God. Those memories are mine and mine alone. But, I will tell you that this book saved my life. I was distracted for a little while from the thoughts in my head and dove into these beautiful stories of people searching for a reason to anything.
That is mine.
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