My Life in Books
Okay, I said I had this big plan to write about books I'm reading and that this would somehow be interesting to my friends list. Occasionally I contemplate joining one of those "50 Books a Year" things, but, um, well, I don't know, I just never do. This place lacks anything resembling structure, if you haven't noticed, and I strongly suspect that I keep it up only for the sake of my increasingly outlandish entry tags.
I had planned to do a sort of summary of recent books I've read, which includes Jane Austen's Emma, the first of the Captain Alatriste novels, a few tales from Henry James and, yes, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows. (They were all good, but I'd rate Emma the best of the lot, followed by the Alatriste story-- I haven't been this excited about following a series in a while, and Perez-Reverte is one of my favorite authors still alive and publishing stuff.) But bisou recently wrote a kind of Harry Potter/life retrospective, and in addition to being a joy to read, it seemed like it'd be kind of fun to right as well. Now, Harry Potter really isn't that big a part of my life, but books are, so I thought I'd give a kind of bibliobiography.
You know, for all that this livejournal has become an extended commentary on the correlation between Sailor Moon and Final Fantasy IV, words are my first love. And I say words deliberately-- not literature, not even books-- just words. There were never enough books when I was a kid so I had to read furniture catalogs, the backs of cereal boxes, random scraps of litter, etc. I'm sure this could be turned into a charming anecdote of the kind that always find their way into "about the author" blurbs, but I think it just goes to show how boring my childhood was.
"Stop! You must not hop on Pop."
I'm not sure what the first book I read was. It was either Hop on Pop or a picture-book version of Disney's Cinderella. Hop on Pop was definitely earlier, and it went down in family lore as the book that I read first, but from what I remember I just memorized the thing and recited it. The Cinderella book I actually remember reading, pretty much at any opportunity I got. In sixth grade, we had to do a project about "The First Book We Ever Read" and I used Hop on Pop, which was, in retrospect, a horrible idea, because a lot of it was a basic plot analysis and summary, and that book is about nothing. It made for a really awkward presentation. ("Uh, there are these...creatures...and they have a really, uh, limited vocabulary?") Really, I "read" it enough to have it memorized at the age of five, and the only thing that I remember was that there was a page about hopping on pop, and whenever we got to that page, underage terrors that we were, my brother and I would take that opportunity to jump on top of our father who was the one who read the book to us. I'm really surprised he kept reading it, because that always happened, and it couldn't have been fun for him.
"You'd be amazed by the colors that go together. Take pink and gold. You might not think to wear pink socks with gold stretch pants, and then add a gold turtleneck under a pink sweater. But that's what I did yesterday, and then I added blue jewelry. It was great! I looked like a human sunset. The outfit made me very happy."
By the time first and second grade rolled around, I had moved on to chapter books. Mostly, this meant the Baby-sitter's Club, a series I followed religiously. I seriously have over one hundred BSC books stored somewhere in a box in the garage. I subscribed to the book club service through the Scholastic catalogs the school handed out. Every month they'd send the next three books in the mail, starting from number one, and I also worked my way backwards by buying the latest stuff at the bookstore. For the record, my favorite was Claudia, and in the fourth grade my wardrobe was a regrettable pastiche of Kishi-stylings by way of the Clarissa-who-explained-it-all.
"We can't tell you who we are. Or where we live. It's too risky, and we've got to be careful. Really careful. So we don't trust anyone. Because if they fnd us ... well, we just won't let them find us. The thing you should know is that everyone is in really big trouble. Yeah. Even you."
By fifth grade I'd decided I was too old for the BSC, mostly because all the books I owned had the RL4 stamp, and I was in fifth grade, dammit. Luckily, this was about the time Animorphs started showing up. (Which, for the record, were RL5.) For a brief shining moment I was the most popular kid in Miss Mabbot's fifth grade class, because I had Animporphs 1-5. Everyone wanted to borrow them! Then I lent the first one to Jack Moreci and he promptly got sick and covered it with cooties, and afterwards no one would touch it, so my days of popularity were over. But Animorphs is still a surprising cultural touchstone-- most people I've met my age know at least the basic outline of the Captain Planet theme song, which one was their favorite Power Ranger, and that wandering through construction sites at night can sometimes change you into an emo hawk.
"...for one of the nicest things about mathematics, or anything else you might care to learn, is that many of the things which can never be, often are. You see it's very much like your trying to reach Infinity. You know that it's there, but you just don't know where-but just because you can never reach it doesn't mean that it's not worth looking for."
The summer between fourth and fifth grade, I went to summer camp and it was my first time alone away from home for any sort of extended period. I got homesick, which was pretty much to be expected, but it sucked an awful lot and I was too embarrassed about the random crying to go talk to anyone about it. There was only one book in the whole camp, I think, and it was called The Phantom Tollbooth. Pretty much a classic in the truest sense of the word, I didn't think it would be good from the back of the book description, but I didn't have much of a choice. The book is wonderful. It didn't make the homesickness go away, exactly, but it did stop me from crying, and I was lost in a completely different sense of the word. There's a saying that I'm fond of: "Keep a diary and one day it will keep you." I think books are the same way. Because for all that I honestly believe that reading can make you a better person, that's not why I do it. I do it for the innocent entertainment, mostly, but also for those profoundly selfish moments when the world is out to get you even when it isn't but goddamit Edmond Dantès is always there for you and because of that you know it will all be alright. This was the first time that it happened, and that single instant made all the years of searching out whatever books I could find worth it.
"Black can appear white when the light is blinding, but white loses all its luster at the faintest sign of darkness." (Sadly, this is the only thing here I can still quote from memory.)
By the time middle school rolled around, I moved one step up in the Scholastic ladder and started reading Christopher Pike. Pike was my favorite author throughout my middle school years (go figure) and I still can't bring myself to put his books in storage, though I do hide them in the closet. I always hated Goosebumps when I was younger, and I still kind of detest R.L. Stine for no real reason, but I was a huuuuge Pike fan. The Last Vampire series was by far my favorite. Vampires just appeal to me on a fundamental level, which I think is true of a lot of once and future teenagers, and Pike's vampire story was one of the first I read and is still probably my favorite. I loved that Sita was grounded in Hindu myth, that she was five foot two and blonde and still kicked the crap out of everything, I loved how the end of her story was really just a return to the beginning. A lot of times when people think I'm referencing Buffy I'm referencing The Last Vampire-- I only got into Buffy in college, but Alisa Perne is what my middle-school dreams were made of. I read the books now and know they're not as fabulously deep as I imagined them when I was twelve, but God help me I still get a kick when Sita corners the creep vampire gang leader in the ice cream truck at the end of book two, and asks, "What flavor would you like, little boy? Cherry red?!" before cutting his head off with an axe.
"It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: All right, then, I'll go to hell - and tore it up."
I was pretty deep into high school before I got off my YA Horror phase, and the book I think that did that was Huck Finn. My junior English class is pretty much my go-to example of why I'm glad I didn't take all honors courses. Now, I got an award for Taking a Crap Load of APs in high school, but I never took honors English until senior year, when I dropped AP Science after a bout of what-the-heck-was-I-thinking? (I'm a decent but unexceptional science student, but I'm good at English and I like it.) Still, I can't regret anything because while all my friends were suffering through AP Comp lit, I got treated to a year of books I loved without suffering the oppressive grade-hungry atmosphere that plagued all the AP classes at my school. It was awesome. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was the first in an all-star lineup of books I'd eventually go on to own fanlistings for, and remains one of my favorite books of all time. I love pretty much everything about it, but what I love most is the fact that you can go back and find something new there every time. I'll still be learning lessons from that book when I'm seventy, and I'm so glad I was introduced to it in an environment where I got the chance to just savor the book instead of focusing on the term paper that would come after it. If not taking Honors American Lit my junior year kept me out of the Ivy Leagues, it was 100% worth it because it opened my eyes to a whole new set of books and got me thinking about a whole new set of questions, and honestly, really, actually-and-factually made me a better person, which school's not supposed to teach you but still does sometimes in spite of itself.
"'My,' said Basil to Lord Henry, 'Didn't Darlington say that in Lady Windermere's Fan?'"
The summer between junior and senior year I spent at Georgetown with a really generous allowance, no parental supervision, and a Barnes and Noble within walking distance. I bought so many books that summer, from The Three Musketeers to Don Quixote. Most notable is probably The Picture of Dorian Gray, because I became absolutely obsessed with that book for at least five months afterward. It's really no wonder, that book has prettyboys and immortality and great one-liners, and Dorian made an appearance in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen that summer. (And Dorian's totally the best thing about that movie, except perhaps Secret!Agent!Tom Sawyer.)
"'People make money in books and I've found that I can always do the things that people do in books. Really they are the only things I can do."
Which segues into This Side of Paradise pretty nicely. See, while I'm aware that The Great Gatsby is F. Scott Fitzgerald's best book, This Side of Paradise is and probably always will be my favorite. It's just...so much of my life was being an absolutely obnoxious pretentious asshole with an Oscar Wilde quote for every occasion, and then I got to read a book about an absolutely obnoxious pretentious asshole with an Oscar Wilde quote for every occasion! Right after I read and became corrupted by The Picture of Dorian Gray, Amory Blaine read and became corrupted by The Picture of Dorian Gray! It was perfect! Despite being from a different time period and getting way more action than I ever did, I identified with Amory more than pretty much any protagonist before or since (which is scary considering how much of a self-insert he is on Fitzgerald's part) and the lessons he had to learn were the ones I still kinda do.
Your House? No idea. Honestly. My friends say Slytherin, but I've been sorted into Gryffindor with equal frequency. And the rest of this post is a major hint at my Ravenclaw tendencies. What do you think?
Favorite book? Prizoner of Azkaban, followed strangely by Chamber of Secrets.
Favorite teacher? Does Neville count? Otherwise the ghost history teacher. Because the damn kids were ungrateful and that's an awesome subject, dammit.
Favorite class? Defense Against the Dark Arts is sorta where the action is.
Favorite spell? Lumos.
Favorite ship? I don't ship anything Harry Potter. See also: why I am not involved in this fandom.
Favorite character? It's been Neville since book two. I'm going to become a jackass "I liked Neville before it was cool, dammit." There are dated comments on wanderlight's journal attesting to this fact.
Character you think is the best written? Weasley twins? Dumbledore? Yeah, Dumbledore.
Character you never expected to like in the end? I guess I'm surprised I don't dislike Ron.
Character you’re most like? So remember that ghost history teacher?
Character you want to be like? Cedric Diggory.
Character you’d most want to spend a day with? One of the Weasley twins.
Character you’d shag in a heartbeat? I have no answer for this.
Top five favourite scenes in the entire series? 1) The last chapters of Prizoner of Azkaban.
2) Neville breaks the curse, grabs the sword, and decapitates a giant snake.
3) That scene on the train when Draco totally owns Harry.
4) It turns out Tom Riddle is Lord Voldemort.
5) Harry says he's about to die.
Favourite quotes? Would you believe the only line I can think of is, "Harry, however, had never been less interested in quidditch; he was rapidly becoming obsessed with Draco Malfoy."
First generation (MWPP) or second (trio)? Seriously, who says the trio?
Death Eaters, the Order, or Dumbledore’s Army? Despite having the dumbest name of the lot and featuring Harry Potter in a leadership role, I'm gonna have to go with the DA.
What would your Patronus be? Shoot. Some...kind of bear? Maybe? I have no idea.
What would your Animagus form be? A cat! Cat ♥
If you could live anywhere in the WW, where would it be? London. Wizard London? Is that just called Diagon Alley?
If you could have any career in the WW, what would it be? You know that ghost history teacher?
And ultimately…were you happy with Deathly Hallows? Yes. Fitting end to the series, all I wanted from it, lame epilogue and all.
On the videogames homefront, the following is an actual conversation that took place tonight, when one of my housemate's friends wandered into the basement:STRANGE GIRL: What are you playing?
ALEX: Shadow Hearts. Shadow Hearts 2.
STRANGE GIRL: Oh.
ALEX: The gay vampire wrestler is fighting the dominatrix.
STRANGE GIRL: Oh.
JOACHIM: ...No one can face the might of my rippling muscles!
Also, in regards to this post, I have successfully forced Captain America comics on to two of my friends, and the universal consensus seems to be that yes, they are good, and that Bucky is indeed badass. Take that, any semblance of my own coolness!
I had planned to do a sort of summary of recent books I've read, which includes Jane Austen's Emma, the first of the Captain Alatriste novels, a few tales from Henry James and, yes, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows. (They were all good, but I'd rate Emma the best of the lot, followed by the Alatriste story-- I haven't been this excited about following a series in a while, and Perez-Reverte is one of my favorite authors still alive and publishing stuff.) But bisou recently wrote a kind of Harry Potter/life retrospective, and in addition to being a joy to read, it seemed like it'd be kind of fun to right as well. Now, Harry Potter really isn't that big a part of my life, but books are, so I thought I'd give a kind of bibliobiography.
You know, for all that this livejournal has become an extended commentary on the correlation between Sailor Moon and Final Fantasy IV, words are my first love. And I say words deliberately-- not literature, not even books-- just words. There were never enough books when I was a kid so I had to read furniture catalogs, the backs of cereal boxes, random scraps of litter, etc. I'm sure this could be turned into a charming anecdote of the kind that always find their way into "about the author" blurbs, but I think it just goes to show how boring my childhood was.
"Stop! You must not hop on Pop."
I'm not sure what the first book I read was. It was either Hop on Pop or a picture-book version of Disney's Cinderella. Hop on Pop was definitely earlier, and it went down in family lore as the book that I read first, but from what I remember I just memorized the thing and recited it. The Cinderella book I actually remember reading, pretty much at any opportunity I got. In sixth grade, we had to do a project about "The First Book We Ever Read" and I used Hop on Pop, which was, in retrospect, a horrible idea, because a lot of it was a basic plot analysis and summary, and that book is about nothing. It made for a really awkward presentation. ("Uh, there are these...creatures...and they have a really, uh, limited vocabulary?") Really, I "read" it enough to have it memorized at the age of five, and the only thing that I remember was that there was a page about hopping on pop, and whenever we got to that page, underage terrors that we were, my brother and I would take that opportunity to jump on top of our father who was the one who read the book to us. I'm really surprised he kept reading it, because that always happened, and it couldn't have been fun for him.
"You'd be amazed by the colors that go together. Take pink and gold. You might not think to wear pink socks with gold stretch pants, and then add a gold turtleneck under a pink sweater. But that's what I did yesterday, and then I added blue jewelry. It was great! I looked like a human sunset. The outfit made me very happy."
By the time first and second grade rolled around, I had moved on to chapter books. Mostly, this meant the Baby-sitter's Club, a series I followed religiously. I seriously have over one hundred BSC books stored somewhere in a box in the garage. I subscribed to the book club service through the Scholastic catalogs the school handed out. Every month they'd send the next three books in the mail, starting from number one, and I also worked my way backwards by buying the latest stuff at the bookstore. For the record, my favorite was Claudia, and in the fourth grade my wardrobe was a regrettable pastiche of Kishi-stylings by way of the Clarissa-who-explained-it-all.
"We can't tell you who we are. Or where we live. It's too risky, and we've got to be careful. Really careful. So we don't trust anyone. Because if they fnd us ... well, we just won't let them find us. The thing you should know is that everyone is in really big trouble. Yeah. Even you."
By fifth grade I'd decided I was too old for the BSC, mostly because all the books I owned had the RL4 stamp, and I was in fifth grade, dammit. Luckily, this was about the time Animorphs started showing up. (Which, for the record, were RL5.) For a brief shining moment I was the most popular kid in Miss Mabbot's fifth grade class, because I had Animporphs 1-5. Everyone wanted to borrow them! Then I lent the first one to Jack Moreci and he promptly got sick and covered it with cooties, and afterwards no one would touch it, so my days of popularity were over. But Animorphs is still a surprising cultural touchstone-- most people I've met my age know at least the basic outline of the Captain Planet theme song, which one was their favorite Power Ranger, and that wandering through construction sites at night can sometimes change you into an emo hawk.
"...for one of the nicest things about mathematics, or anything else you might care to learn, is that many of the things which can never be, often are. You see it's very much like your trying to reach Infinity. You know that it's there, but you just don't know where-but just because you can never reach it doesn't mean that it's not worth looking for."
The summer between fourth and fifth grade, I went to summer camp and it was my first time alone away from home for any sort of extended period. I got homesick, which was pretty much to be expected, but it sucked an awful lot and I was too embarrassed about the random crying to go talk to anyone about it. There was only one book in the whole camp, I think, and it was called The Phantom Tollbooth. Pretty much a classic in the truest sense of the word, I didn't think it would be good from the back of the book description, but I didn't have much of a choice. The book is wonderful. It didn't make the homesickness go away, exactly, but it did stop me from crying, and I was lost in a completely different sense of the word. There's a saying that I'm fond of: "Keep a diary and one day it will keep you." I think books are the same way. Because for all that I honestly believe that reading can make you a better person, that's not why I do it. I do it for the innocent entertainment, mostly, but also for those profoundly selfish moments when the world is out to get you even when it isn't but goddamit Edmond Dantès is always there for you and because of that you know it will all be alright. This was the first time that it happened, and that single instant made all the years of searching out whatever books I could find worth it.
"Black can appear white when the light is blinding, but white loses all its luster at the faintest sign of darkness." (Sadly, this is the only thing here I can still quote from memory.)
By the time middle school rolled around, I moved one step up in the Scholastic ladder and started reading Christopher Pike. Pike was my favorite author throughout my middle school years (go figure) and I still can't bring myself to put his books in storage, though I do hide them in the closet. I always hated Goosebumps when I was younger, and I still kind of detest R.L. Stine for no real reason, but I was a huuuuge Pike fan. The Last Vampire series was by far my favorite. Vampires just appeal to me on a fundamental level, which I think is true of a lot of once and future teenagers, and Pike's vampire story was one of the first I read and is still probably my favorite. I loved that Sita was grounded in Hindu myth, that she was five foot two and blonde and still kicked the crap out of everything, I loved how the end of her story was really just a return to the beginning. A lot of times when people think I'm referencing Buffy I'm referencing The Last Vampire-- I only got into Buffy in college, but Alisa Perne is what my middle-school dreams were made of. I read the books now and know they're not as fabulously deep as I imagined them when I was twelve, but God help me I still get a kick when Sita corners the creep vampire gang leader in the ice cream truck at the end of book two, and asks, "What flavor would you like, little boy? Cherry red?!" before cutting his head off with an axe.
"It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: All right, then, I'll go to hell - and tore it up."
I was pretty deep into high school before I got off my YA Horror phase, and the book I think that did that was Huck Finn. My junior English class is pretty much my go-to example of why I'm glad I didn't take all honors courses. Now, I got an award for Taking a Crap Load of APs in high school, but I never took honors English until senior year, when I dropped AP Science after a bout of what-the-heck-was-I-thinking? (I'm a decent but unexceptional science student, but I'm good at English and I like it.) Still, I can't regret anything because while all my friends were suffering through AP Comp lit, I got treated to a year of books I loved without suffering the oppressive grade-hungry atmosphere that plagued all the AP classes at my school. It was awesome. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was the first in an all-star lineup of books I'd eventually go on to own fanlistings for, and remains one of my favorite books of all time. I love pretty much everything about it, but what I love most is the fact that you can go back and find something new there every time. I'll still be learning lessons from that book when I'm seventy, and I'm so glad I was introduced to it in an environment where I got the chance to just savor the book instead of focusing on the term paper that would come after it. If not taking Honors American Lit my junior year kept me out of the Ivy Leagues, it was 100% worth it because it opened my eyes to a whole new set of books and got me thinking about a whole new set of questions, and honestly, really, actually-and-factually made me a better person, which school's not supposed to teach you but still does sometimes in spite of itself.
"'My,' said Basil to Lord Henry, 'Didn't Darlington say that in Lady Windermere's Fan?'"
The summer between junior and senior year I spent at Georgetown with a really generous allowance, no parental supervision, and a Barnes and Noble within walking distance. I bought so many books that summer, from The Three Musketeers to Don Quixote. Most notable is probably The Picture of Dorian Gray, because I became absolutely obsessed with that book for at least five months afterward. It's really no wonder, that book has prettyboys and immortality and great one-liners, and Dorian made an appearance in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen that summer. (And Dorian's totally the best thing about that movie, except perhaps Secret!Agent!Tom Sawyer.)
"'People make money in books and I've found that I can always do the things that people do in books. Really they are the only things I can do."
Which segues into This Side of Paradise pretty nicely. See, while I'm aware that The Great Gatsby is F. Scott Fitzgerald's best book, This Side of Paradise is and probably always will be my favorite. It's just...so much of my life was being an absolutely obnoxious pretentious asshole with an Oscar Wilde quote for every occasion, and then I got to read a book about an absolutely obnoxious pretentious asshole with an Oscar Wilde quote for every occasion! Right after I read and became corrupted by The Picture of Dorian Gray, Amory Blaine read and became corrupted by The Picture of Dorian Gray! It was perfect! Despite being from a different time period and getting way more action than I ever did, I identified with Amory more than pretty much any protagonist before or since (which is scary considering how much of a self-insert he is on Fitzgerald's part) and the lessons he had to learn were the ones I still kinda do.
Your House? No idea. Honestly. My friends say Slytherin, but I've been sorted into Gryffindor with equal frequency. And the rest of this post is a major hint at my Ravenclaw tendencies. What do you think?
Favorite book? Prizoner of Azkaban, followed strangely by Chamber of Secrets.
Favorite teacher? Does Neville count? Otherwise the ghost history teacher. Because the damn kids were ungrateful and that's an awesome subject, dammit.
Favorite class? Defense Against the Dark Arts is sorta where the action is.
Favorite spell? Lumos.
Favorite ship? I don't ship anything Harry Potter. See also: why I am not involved in this fandom.
Favorite character? It's been Neville since book two. I'm going to become a jackass "I liked Neville before it was cool, dammit." There are dated comments on wanderlight's journal attesting to this fact.
Character you think is the best written? Weasley twins? Dumbledore? Yeah, Dumbledore.
Character you never expected to like in the end? I guess I'm surprised I don't dislike Ron.
Character you’re most like? So remember that ghost history teacher?
Character you want to be like? Cedric Diggory.
Character you’d most want to spend a day with? One of the Weasley twins.
Character you’d shag in a heartbeat? I have no answer for this.
Top five favourite scenes in the entire series? 1) The last chapters of Prizoner of Azkaban.
2) Neville breaks the curse, grabs the sword, and decapitates a giant snake.
3) That scene on the train when Draco totally owns Harry.
4) It turns out Tom Riddle is Lord Voldemort.
5) Harry says he's about to die.
Favourite quotes? Would you believe the only line I can think of is, "Harry, however, had never been less interested in quidditch; he was rapidly becoming obsessed with Draco Malfoy."
First generation (MWPP) or second (trio)? Seriously, who says the trio?
Death Eaters, the Order, or Dumbledore’s Army? Despite having the dumbest name of the lot and featuring Harry Potter in a leadership role, I'm gonna have to go with the DA.
What would your Patronus be? Shoot. Some...kind of bear? Maybe? I have no idea.
What would your Animagus form be? A cat! Cat ♥
If you could live anywhere in the WW, where would it be? London. Wizard London? Is that just called Diagon Alley?
If you could have any career in the WW, what would it be? You know that ghost history teacher?
And ultimately…were you happy with Deathly Hallows? Yes. Fitting end to the series, all I wanted from it, lame epilogue and all.
On the videogames homefront, the following is an actual conversation that took place tonight, when one of my housemate's friends wandered into the basement:STRANGE GIRL: What are you playing?
ALEX: Shadow Hearts. Shadow Hearts 2.
STRANGE GIRL: Oh.
ALEX: The gay vampire wrestler is fighting the dominatrix.
STRANGE GIRL: Oh.
JOACHIM: ...No one can face the might of my rippling muscles!
Also, in regards to this post, I have successfully forced Captain America comics on to two of my friends, and the universal consensus seems to be that yes, they are good, and that Bucky is indeed badass. Take that, any semblance of my own coolness!