Books

Daisy tagged me...and I am going to tag Erica (because I know she reads at least as voraciously as I would like to if I had the time), j2 (because anybody who likes the Swedish chef is okay in my book), Erin (because it might inspire her to get started on her blog) and Betty (because she's got it goin' on...and I apologize for tagging you twice, Betty...I know your revenge will be served just that much colder).

Number of Books I own: 182

Last Book I Bought: My Dog Skip, by Willie Morris. I'm reading this for the "book rapport" group at my church. It falls into the category of "Books I Would Never Think To Purchase On My Own But Now That I'm Reading It, I'm Enjoying It Immensely". I know that some of you may be surprised to learn this, but I am not a dog person. I do not dislike them, but my connection with them has been a sad one. When I was a boy, I had a relationship with dogs that was shaky, at best. Our first dog, a mostly-beagle mutt named Pepper, chewed up my blankie and bit me in the process. I don't remember how old I was, but I do remember that the blankie was so far gone that my parents had to have "the talk" with me about being a big enough boy that I no longer needed a security blanket. I was probably three, so they were right, but I still blamed it on the dog. Shortly after that (and too soon for any trust between us to be restored), Pepper contracted Distemper and had to be put down. A while later, we got two cats, whom we named Romeo and Juliet. Romeo was My Best Pal growing up, though we only had him for 8 years or so. As house cats go, Romeo was...to borrow Mike Myers' phrase..."friggin' huge." He weighed 28 pounds, and not an ounce of fat on him. Romeo was bigger than our neighbor's beagle, Tuffy. When Romeo was in our back yard, Tuffy would charge the fence, barking up a storm, and Romeo would studiously ignore him. More than once, I'd see Romeo hop the fence between our yards and casually stroll across Tuffy's yard, and Tuffy would simply sit and watch him go. He'd learned the hard way that Romeo was the real owner of that back yard, and my folks had a couple of vet bills to prove it. Romeo was smart and affectionate and playful and patient with my sister and me. I don't remember him ever being as snooty as non-cat-people accuse all cats of being. In fact, when he'd come into the house in the morning, he'd walk right by his breakfast bowl and climb into bed with me, wriggling his way under the covers and making himself comfortable by pressing against my side with his back. When I got up to have breakfast, Romeo would get up and have his breakfast, too. Years after his death, when I was about 14, another neighbor's dog, Snoopy, solidified my mistrust of dogs by biting me after I'd been told it was okay to pet him. I wound up in the emergency room, and still have scars on my left index finger, so for many years, I just accepted the fact that dogs and me had no chemistry.
And then along came Chessie. A year or two before I married her, my ex-wife bought a tiny toy poodle who very quickly adopted me as her real owner. It took me a while to get used to her little nuclear heater routine, but during our winters in Chicago and Maine, I really came to appreciate Chessie's love for the comfy spot between my legs when I was in bed at night. Before my older daughter was born, Chessie was our baby. She herniated a disc (which apparently is a common problem with poodles) and we had to choose surgery or euthenasia. Neither of us could stand to lose her, so we gladly paid for the surgery. The vet called after the procedure and said he wasn't sure she'd be walking again within a month, if at all, so great was the damage. He was very sorry he hadn't been able to do more. We were allowed to see her the next day, so I went in on my way home from work...Chessie was nestled on her favorite blanket in the recovery kennel, but when she saw me, she leapt up to her feet and danced around the kennel. The vet was genuinely amazed, and chalked it up to the power of love. Chessie was with us for several more years, and loved the idea of a baby in the house, never once showing jealousy at the attention she had to share with this pink interloper. She had, however, lost a bit of control over her bowels, so whenever she got excited, she'd bark out one end and let out little pellet from the other. Answering the door became an exercise in extreme physical agility; at the sound of the doorbell, Chessie would charge at the door yapping her delighted welcome and depositing a trail of carpet mines we'd have to dodge on the way to the door and apologize for if the visitor was coming in. I admit that after I'd stepped on a mine or two and had to hop one-footed to the door a couple times, I took to bellowing at Chessie to shut up as I threaded my way through the minefield...but I don't feel responsible for how she met her end: a sleeping baby, knock at the door, Chessie barking and mining under foot. My ex-wife place-kicked Chessie so hard she hit the wall about three feet up, breaking one of her forelegs so badly that the choices were to amputate or put her down. I wasn't home at the time, but my ex-wife felt guilty enough to tell me the story, finishing it up by blaming her actions on my "hatred" for the dog as evidenced by my frequent reaction to her barking and mining on my way to the door. I sat with Chessie on our bed for a long time, both of us shaking...her with pain, and I with a mix of tenderness for Chessie and rage at my wife. That was the afternoon I finally understood the woman I married.

As I said, my connection with dogs in this life has been a sad one, and I doubt that I will relate Chessie's full story to the group at church next Monday evening. Through Morris' book, though, I am discovering the joy of befriending a remarkable canine, an experience I missed as a boy. Whether you have ever owned a dog or not, this is a book you should read.

Last Book I Read: The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde. Imagine a world in which time travel is not merely commonplace, but sometimes unavoidable, and public fervor for literature is greater even than our real-life passion for sports. This is the first book in the Thursday Next series, in which the intrepid Literary Detective Thursday Next enters not just Jane Eyre's world, but the original Charlotte Bronte manuscript itself in order to prevent the evil Acheron Hades from destroying one of the world's great pieces of fiction by kidnapping the young governess. Fforde's England is populated by such wierdnesses as "Baconians" (who go door-to-door, trying to convert people to their belief that William Shakespeare's plays were in fact written by Francis Bacon) and pet dodos produced largely by their numerous owners using "home cloning kits". One of the most popular plays in Thursday's home town is "MacBeth", which is played to packed houses by members of the audience and heckled by those not on stage, as though it were The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It's actually even funnier than it sounds...

Five Books That Mean A Lot To Me:

1. Dune, by Frank Herbert. I read this book while I was in high school, deep in the throes of puberty, and I related to Paul Muad'Dib like few other characters before or since.

2. Odd Girl Out, by Rachel Simmons. If you've seen the film, "Mean Girls", you will recognize The Plastics when you read this book. I received this book as an unexpected gift on a first date, and have been amazed at the insight it's given me regarding not just my daughters, but women in general. As she handed it to me, my date said, "This book changed my life." I have no doubt. Whether or not you have (or have been) a daughter, you should read this book. Simmons explains that aggression is a normal human emotion, and how society forces girls to sublimate their aggression by teaching them that their role is primarily the nurturer...there are few accepted avenues for girls to express their competitive urges, so that girls often either become devastatingly cruel or the victims of such cruelty. She coins the term "girl bullies", and talks about the ways in which girl bullies and their victims can be affected throughout their lives by things society simply ignores or passes off as nonsense. I am not doing justice to her work at all, and for that, I apologize. Read it.

3. Illusions, by Richard Bach. Though Richard and I have never met in person, I have flown across Europe on a stormy night with him and spent a summer barnstorming in an old, oil-dripping biplane, selling ten minute rides for three dollars a pop. We are both reluctant writers, he and I. As he puts it, "If I can turn my back on an idea, out there in the dark, if I can avoid opening the door to it, I won't even reach for a pencil." Like him, an idea must seize me by the throat and demand I that I set it on paper.
Reading Richard's story of Donald Shimoda, the modern-day Messiah who tried to turn his back on what he was and escape into the air, is a voyage of self-discovery every time I read it. This book contains perhaps the greatest Truth of my experience: "There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts."

4. The Martial Artist's Book of Five Rings, by Miyamoto Musashi (interpreted by Stephen F. Kaufman, Hanshi 10th Dan). Musashi has been standard reading for those seeking to get ahead in business for many years, but most translations make it difficult to glean anything useful from the great Samurai's teachings. I bought Kaufman Sensei's interpretation after I had been studying martial arts for a year or so, and have found it to be much easier to understand. I had long considered myself to be a warrior, in the sense that my service in the military was more of a calling than a vocation, but after reading this book, I began to be able to quantify what it means to me to be a warrior. The nine basic attitudes of the warrior, as written by Musashi:

"1. Think honestly within yourself in all your dealings with men.
2. Constant training is the only way to learn strategy.
3. Become familiar with every art you come across.
4. Understand the Way of other disciplines.
5. Know the difference between right and wrong in the matters of men.
6. Strive for inner judgement and an understanding of everything.
7. See that which cannot be seen.
8. Overlook nothing, regardless of its insignificance.
9. Do not waste time idling or thinking after you have set your goals."

5. One Continuous Mistake, by Gail Sher. The subtitle of Sher's book is "Four Noble Truths for Writers" and it is not a spoiler to list them here:

1. Writers write.
2. Writing is a process.
3. You don't know what your writing will be until the end of the process.
4. If writing is your practice, the only way to fail is to not write.

I know that this seems at odds with my penchant for eagerly avoiding writing, a la Richard Bach. One Continuous Mistake is about overcoming that avoidance. It is indeed a problem whose gift I need.

If there is a single guiding principle to my writing, it comes from Sher, "The greater the depth at which you tap your own personal truth, the greater relevance your writing will have to humanity."