LJ Idol Week 29, Stage 3, Topic C: Favorite Book and Why
I have always been an avid reader. As a child I would read three times the number of required books for any given class. I took special English classes in High School so that I would get the broadest education in literature possible, and I was a Literary and Cultural Studies major in college. And although I was a writing major in graduate school, I generally read more in one semester than an average person reads in a year, maybe two.
I read traditional fiction, science fiction, fantasy, mystery, crime, horror, adventure, romance, comedy, history, speculative fiction, alternate history, science, biography, autobiography, essay, memoir, children's literature, and books that are so off the wall that they are hard to classify. I once realized that I had not read many of the classics that many people read in high school, since I had been taking Shakespeare and Greek Mythology and Gothic Literature and The American Short Story as classes instead. I decided to read them on my own.
I read. I read a lot, and I read fast.
Of all the books I own--and I own many, many books--there are a few I will pull out for a good and quick re-read. I might pull out something in Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos series, or some early Anne Rice. I find myself re-reading Harry Potter books occasionally, and The Stupidest Angel by Christopher Moore gets a good re-read around Christmas time. But none of these can be called my favorite. None of them has the bent cover, the oh-so-loved look of my very favorite book.
My very favorite book has at least four creases in the cover. A few of the pages are beginning to fall out, too. It is my third copy of this book. My first was lost sometime in the 1990s when I moved from Pittsburgh. I bought two to replace it, just in case it ever went out of print. The second copy I loaned to someone a few years back. It was never returned. I don't remember who I loaned it to, but I cannot blame her for keeping it. My third copy I will never loan out. If anyone wants to read it they can just read it in my house in my presence.
Oh yes. It is my favorite: Why I Hate Saturn, by Kyle Baker. It's a graphic novel. That's right. The Great Reader's favorite book is a comic book. Give it a read and it might become your favorite, too.
I hear you laughing now, I really do. This is what makes Why I Hate Saturn the book that I read over and over and over again.
The book was originally given to me by my friend Hugh. He thought I would relate to the main character, and he thought it was especially funny that, at the time, I was going through one of the exact problems that she faced in the book.
You see, Anne, the main character, is a New Yorker. She does not drive and does not have a driver's license. Because she has no driver's license, she cannot open a bank account and often cannot get an alcoholic drink. When I first came to the DC area, I faced the same problem. As a non-driver, I was absolutely unable to get a traditional bank account, and for the first several weeks after I moved, I had to ask friends to deposit my paychecks for me into their accounts and give me cash. This level of verisimilitude in the book immediately made me relate to the character, and I was hooked.
The book begins in a perfectly realistic way. Anne and her friend Ricky are in a bar, making observations about people and discussing men and women. It moves on to a scene at Anne's place of work, where we find out about her inability to open a bank account. Boring as this might sound, it makes the truly ridiculous scenes to come absolutely believable.
You see, Anne's sister believes that she is Queen of the Leather Astro-Girls of Saturn. She arrives and hilarity ensues.
Kyle Baker takes every scene to its logical extreme, all the while keeping the details of life itself completely realistic. Anne's trip to California during the course of the story is particularly funny to New Yorkers--if there is a polar opposite to a New Yorker it is a Californian, and Anne's observations do not let us forget it.
Probably best of all, Why I Hate Saturn is an intelligent read, has fantastic, though occasionally grotesque illustrations, and takes all of an hour to read if you are me--two if you are new to the book and want to pay extra attention to the illustrations (which you do). But you're going to have to go out and get your own copy, because I'm on my third already so you can't have mine.
I read traditional fiction, science fiction, fantasy, mystery, crime, horror, adventure, romance, comedy, history, speculative fiction, alternate history, science, biography, autobiography, essay, memoir, children's literature, and books that are so off the wall that they are hard to classify. I once realized that I had not read many of the classics that many people read in high school, since I had been taking Shakespeare and Greek Mythology and Gothic Literature and The American Short Story as classes instead. I decided to read them on my own.
I read. I read a lot, and I read fast.
Of all the books I own--and I own many, many books--there are a few I will pull out for a good and quick re-read. I might pull out something in Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos series, or some early Anne Rice. I find myself re-reading Harry Potter books occasionally, and The Stupidest Angel by Christopher Moore gets a good re-read around Christmas time. But none of these can be called my favorite. None of them has the bent cover, the oh-so-loved look of my very favorite book.
My very favorite book has at least four creases in the cover. A few of the pages are beginning to fall out, too. It is my third copy of this book. My first was lost sometime in the 1990s when I moved from Pittsburgh. I bought two to replace it, just in case it ever went out of print. The second copy I loaned to someone a few years back. It was never returned. I don't remember who I loaned it to, but I cannot blame her for keeping it. My third copy I will never loan out. If anyone wants to read it they can just read it in my house in my presence.
Oh yes. It is my favorite: Why I Hate Saturn, by Kyle Baker. It's a graphic novel. That's right. The Great Reader's favorite book is a comic book. Give it a read and it might become your favorite, too.
I hear you laughing now, I really do. This is what makes Why I Hate Saturn the book that I read over and over and over again.
The book was originally given to me by my friend Hugh. He thought I would relate to the main character, and he thought it was especially funny that, at the time, I was going through one of the exact problems that she faced in the book.
You see, Anne, the main character, is a New Yorker. She does not drive and does not have a driver's license. Because she has no driver's license, she cannot open a bank account and often cannot get an alcoholic drink. When I first came to the DC area, I faced the same problem. As a non-driver, I was absolutely unable to get a traditional bank account, and for the first several weeks after I moved, I had to ask friends to deposit my paychecks for me into their accounts and give me cash. This level of verisimilitude in the book immediately made me relate to the character, and I was hooked.
The book begins in a perfectly realistic way. Anne and her friend Ricky are in a bar, making observations about people and discussing men and women. It moves on to a scene at Anne's place of work, where we find out about her inability to open a bank account. Boring as this might sound, it makes the truly ridiculous scenes to come absolutely believable.
You see, Anne's sister believes that she is Queen of the Leather Astro-Girls of Saturn. She arrives and hilarity ensues.
Kyle Baker takes every scene to its logical extreme, all the while keeping the details of life itself completely realistic. Anne's trip to California during the course of the story is particularly funny to New Yorkers--if there is a polar opposite to a New Yorker it is a Californian, and Anne's observations do not let us forget it.
Probably best of all, Why I Hate Saturn is an intelligent read, has fantastic, though occasionally grotesque illustrations, and takes all of an hour to read if you are me--two if you are new to the book and want to pay extra attention to the illustrations (which you do). But you're going to have to go out and get your own copy, because I'm on my third already so you can't have mine.