tag, you're it

In response to suttonhoo:

A book that changed your life:
Well, I don’t know if I could say it changed my life, but Karen Kingston’s Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui certainly changed the way I look at my stuff. I inherited pack-rat tendencies from my father and this book helped me let go of a lot of things I had been keeping “just in case”.

A book you’ve read more than once:
When I was in elementary school, we had a book fair every year. As I remember it, you would preorder from a catalog and then go to the library to pick up your books. I always had a huge stack.

One of my selections from the 4th grade was the 1962 Campus Classic edition of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. It was 1973 - obviously the publisher had overestimated the book’s popularity with students.

I, however, was intrigued by the description – “A dark deception stands between the shy, plain governess and her handsome, moody employer…What is the strange, crazed laughter she hears in the night? What forbidden secret is Mr. Rochester concealing from her – and the world?” I was big into mysteries at that time – Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, Agatha Christie – so this sounded right up my alley.

When the books came I couldn’t wait to get home. Finally sequestered in my room, I plopped down into my bean bag chair (it was the 70s people) and began reading Jane Eyre. I was hooked. The mystery drew me in but the romance and Jane’s triumph brought me back again and again.

The spine has been permanently cracked at page 278 where I thrilled to Mr. Rochester’s proclamations of love:

You-you strange–you almost unearthly thing!—I love as my own flesh. You—poor and obscure, and small and plain as you are—I entreat to accept me as a husband.

That passage was underlined with a blue ballpoint pen – I managed to use it later in a high school term paper.

A book that made you laugh:
I think I actually snorted in public while reading this story from Sand in My Bra and Other Misadventures: Funny Women Write from the Road.

A book that made you cry:
Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead, the diaries and letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh from 1929-1932 takes you from the excitement and flying adventures during the early years of her marriage to Charles Lindbergh through the tragic kidnapping of their first child.

Sunday, September 25, 1932
The wind howls at night. I think of last winter. I will never accept it—cannot accept it or get used to it or get past it. It is not like a death—not like Daddy—which I knew would happen sometime. It is not a “normal” sorrow. Back of it is always “It need not have happened,” and that is a torture. I suppose I can only swallow it whole. It will not be absorbed but always be there, and always hurting, like something in your eyes. Nature does not absorb it but gradually provides a protective covering which numbs the sharp pain, but you are always conscious of it.

Gets me every time.

A book that you wish had been written and a book you wish had never been written:
I’m drawing a blank on this one so I’ll just move on.

Books you’re currently reading:
Still working my way through the pile on my nightstand.

A book you’ve been meaning to read:
My husband has a copy of A Cook's Tour: In Search of the Perfect Meal on his bookshelf. I love food and I love travel and think Anthony Bourdain is a hoot but am not sure my stomach can handle some of the more *descriptive* passages re. food preparation. I’m trying to work up my courage to read it.


In the spirit of passing it on, brigita, tag, you're it.