This month’s six-word memoir is not “by” me — but it is what has been on my mind, so — departure though it may be from previous months’, it is a better epitaph for this, my 28th birthday month, than anything trite or silly or sentimental I could come up with on my own.
Unto me is this grace given.
The subject of books we read in school came up at dinner with friends the other night. As is always expected when individuals of varying life experiences and approaches to life are assembled in one place for the purpose of eating, there were many differing opinions about many things, including reading.
There are actually just a few books that I read in school that I remember. Sadly, I remember considerably more about the “pleasure” reading to which I devoted so much more time. Yes, I went through a “sick books” phase. “Sick books” – in the event you never experienced one – are books in which one of the main characters takes ill (probably leukemia, a brain tumor, or a preexisting heart condition the character has had from birth which only serves to make the story that much more heartbreaking) and probably dies, most likely leaving behind his or her one and only true love. Happily, I did outgrow them.
Here are the assigned books that I actually remember reading (minus one which I omit because I have nothing either entertaining or remotely positive to say about it), and what I remember thinking about them at the time.
With a cover like this, can you blame me? Image via amazon.com
Hatchet, by Gary Paulson. It was about a boy who was stranded in the woods in the middle of nowhere after a plane crash. I remember long accounts of shelter-building and being very bored indeed.
White Fang, by Jack London. Seriously, the only thing I remember about this is descriptions of blood and violence. And it’s hazy enough that these may be just my lasting impressions rather than actual memories of scenes in the book.
Where the Red Fern Grows, by Wilson Rawls. I remember sitting in the classroom during silent reading time and trying very hard not to cry, and not succeeding. If you can read this book without crying, you may be entirely heartless.
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. This is one of the few books assigned that I actually enjoyed, and it is perhaps one of the first books I read that, once I came to the end, I sat in awe for a few minutes to think about it. It’s still on my list of favorites.
Cosette, or the Little Matchgirl? You decide. Image via amazon.com
Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo. My principal memory is of sitting in my parents’ living room on a Sunday afternoon and finishing the novel, and my parents finding me weeping, which they seemed to find hilarious. These same parents had a copy of this novel on audio cassette, and I can remember how it almost always went with us on road trips. For whatever reason, I had it confused for the longest time with the “little matchgirl” story, because the picture on the front was how I imagined the little matchgirl to look. So you might say I remember hearing this story long before I understood it.
The Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad. In his dedication to Good Poems, Garrison Keillor said, “To all the English teachers, especially the great ones”, and it is only because of one of those great English teachers that I will never forget this book, for more reasons than I probably have time to tell tonight. Thanks, Mr. Robertson.
Harry Potter and I share a birthday. Perhaps because of this I feel that he and I, fictional character though he may be, have a special bond.
After the last book came out, I regretted never attending a midnight release party for one of the books; I suppose I thought I’d be surrounded with noisy children, or (worse) be surrounded with noisy children while I, an adult not accompanying a child, attended a midnight book release party alone. (There is definitely something to be said for having people around who enjoy the same things you do – it’s not something to be taken for granted.)
So, with the release of the final movie installment of the Harry Potter saga, I decided I had to attend the midnight premier. I’m not going to talk about the movie, other than to say that somewhere between five and ten Kleenex were used by me alone, and that – finally – they got it right.
This last weekend, with a little too much time alone on my hands, I spent a lot of time thinking about this ten-year journey. I started reading Harry Potter in college; J. K. Rowling had already written four books before I read the first one. But I was immediately hooked. I reread the first book this last weekend, and I was reminded of all the things that made me love the books in the first place.
First there was this lonely, orphaned little boy, who escaped his unhappy life with his guardians; he was kind and brave and easy to love. There was Hagrid and Ron and the Weasley twins. And then I met Hermione, who was rather like a braver version of my eagerly overachieving, rule-abiding, tightly wound self, and as I think we all delight in characters to which we personally relate, so I did in Hermione. It’s nearly impossible to single out characters from this series, though, without instantly thinking of others you should have included, like the strict but fiercely loyal Professor McGonagall, the patient and kind Dumbledore, and Dobby and Kreacher!
But as much as I love Harry and Ron and Hermione, my favorite character of all just might be Severus Snape. Maybe I’m just a sucker for tales of tortured souls and stories of unrequited love, but to me, he’s the unsung, tragic hero, who loved deeply and lost much; whose sacrifices, because not obvious, would never be celebrated as other characters’ were.
Beyond the characters, it was the minutiae of the wizarding world – the many little details and the care taken in their creation; things like butterbeer, the entire village of Hogsmeade, Mrs. Weasley’s charmed dish-scrubber, the tents (and handbags, for that matter) that were bigger on the inside, Hermione’s Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare. All of the thought and feeling behind the action of the story – these are the precise things that you don’t get from the movies and which together conspire to make the true magic of the Harry Potter stories.
So, happy almost-birthday, Harry Potter, and thanks for the many magical late nights when I stayed up reading far later than I should have done.
The final installment of Harry Potter movies was released here in the U.S. yesterday, and all over the Internet I’ve seen lots of commentary about Harry Potter and the phenomenon of Harry Potter. I’ll be writing more on Harry Potter soon, myself.
With all of this, though, it only seems appropriate that this month’s book dedication be from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. (In the book, the dedication is laid out in the shape of a snake; I’m afraid, since I won’t attempt to imitate that here, you’ll have to use your imagination.)
The dedication of this book is split seven ways: to Neil, to Jessica, to David, to Kenzie, to Di, to Anne, and to you, if you have stuck with Harry until the very end.
Dedication from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by J. K. Rowling. Published in the United States July, 2007, by Scholastic Inc.
You, my anonymous (or, as seems more likely, not-so-anonymous) reader(s), will remember that I’m in graduate school. This summer, I’m doing an internship in an academic library. This is in addition to working full-time, and lest at any time in the future excessive tiredness should overwhelm my capacity to express gratitude, let me say now that I am very grateful to my employers for letting me work an alternative schedule during the seven or so weeks of my internship. I am also very grateful to my internship hosts for the opportunity to gain some real library experience.
This alternative schedule means that, Monday through Thursday, I’m working – either at work or my internship – from about 7 in the morning to 7 at night. Friday I spend a regular day at work, and then I spend Sunday afternoons at my internship again. So, needless to say, I’m pretty tired. In fact, I’m amazed that I’m still awake right now.
The biggest project that I’m working on for my internship involves sorting through two year’s worth of interlibrary loan request data and ultimately performing some data analysis once I’ve gotten through all that sorting. But the sorting is very tedious work. Up until yesterday, looking at every single line of data in a several hundred thousand line spreadsheet has been an entirely humorless process, and one during which I have debated sticking toothpicks into my eyes to keep them open, if toothpicks were available.
Yesterday, however, I noticed a few of the titles that had been requested through interlibrary loan, and I would have laughed out loud in my dark little room on my not-height-adjustable excruciatingly uncomfortable intern’s chair, but I didn’t have the energy. This photo demonstrates the level of enthusiasm I found myself able to muster outwardly.
Without further ado, the titles requested by users of my academic library:
Teaching Grammar in Context, Human Rights Watch 2004. Now, I suspect that this is one of the many data errors in the data I’m looking at, but I still found it funny, if it were true, that a human rights organization would be the publisher of a work about teaching grammar in context. It’s funny, right? In my head the humor is entirely bound up in the idea of grammar being pristine and inviolable, and my sense of people in general viewing their abuse of grammar as a basic human right. Ha ha ha!!!
The Ethics of Star Trek. I’m hoping there was an analogy they were making somewhere.
The Ultimate Verbal and Vocabulary Builder. Last time I checked, verbs were vocabulary, too. Does using two words that mean essentially the same thing count as building one’s vocabulary?
And now, my personal favorite:
How to Write A Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing. Oh, there’s just so much that could be said about this title. For instance, are we sure that “a lot” is really the best descriptive term with which to title a work about academic writing? Then, there’s the obvious question about whether any academic writing is productive. But put those two things together, and it’s been my experience that having as a goal to write “a lot” does not lead to “productive” writing, unless you measure productivity by quantity of words, rather than quality, or by the overall work’s ability to stand the test of time. I’m just saying. Maybe they could have spent a lot more time on that title.
Ms. Grammarian 