R is for ...

R is for... reading.

Actually, this post started out about Religion.

It was a response to the people after the presidential election who were wringing their hands and moaning that the US was no longer a Christian country (uh, read some history, folks, freedom of religion means you get to practice the faith you want, not have one religion dictated over all of us) and then again as a response to the people who had the nerve to say that if God was allowed in our schools, tragedies like the Sandy Hook massacre wouldn't have happened (no comment).

Then I saw the film version of Life of Pi, which ponders religion, at least three of them, as well as the likelihood of survival when one is forced to share a lifeboat with a 450 pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.

And after seeing and re-reading Life of Pi (one of three completely perfect books, in my opinion, the others being To Kill A Mockingbird and Charlotte's Web) I got thinking about the meaning of religion, especially in regards to myself.

I've never found the things in organized religion that others do: comfort, guidance, reassurance, trust, joy. And as I wondered if there was something else in my life that might provide those things to me, I realized that yes, there is. It's been there all along. (Well, since I was 2 1/2 years old, anyway.) It's reading. Reading is my religion.

When I'm upset, I turn to books. I'm never happier than with my nose buried in a book. Books remind me of how I want to live, instruct me on how to become the kind of person I strive to be. They bring me joy, allow me to experience others' suffering, teach me about the world around me and the beings who inhabit that world.

Books are where I turn to when I need inspiration, salvation or direction.

Books save.

Never have I been so despondent that a book wouldn't pull me from the depths. Ernest Hemingway said, "There is no friend as loyal as a book."


And beyond the joys of owning books, of treasuring your own collections, is the vast embarrassment of riches that is our public library system. A big building- or a small storefront or a van, it doesn't really matter- full of books that you can just take, read and then give back for others to use. What a miraculous concept.

I've always believed libraries pumped antidepressants through their air vents. A few minutes in a library and suddenly the world isn't quite as bad as it once seemed. Maybe there's a special compound that's released from the marriage of ink and paper of large groups of books. Holly Golightly got it wrong- libraries are the real Tiffany's. "The quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there."

And so, in salute, here's an abbreviated list of the books I keep coming back to, that I've read and re-read a minimum of five times, most more. Books that warmed me, shook me, frightened me, enchanted me, made me happy to be on this planet, made me long for other worlds. Books that made me thoughtful, sad, and hungry. (Minus the three perfect ones I mentioned above. They are in a class of their own.)

1. A Prayer for Owen Meaney- John Irving
2. The Twenty-One Balloons- William Pene DuBois
3. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn- Betty Smith
4. Anna Karenina- Leo Tolstoy
5. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay- Michael Chabon
6. Where the Wild Things Are- Maurice Sendak
7. Outer Banks- Anne Rivers Siddons
8. Here's Your Hat, What's Your Hurry- Elizabeth McCracken
9. Haven: the Dramatic Story of 1,000 World War II Refugees & How They Came to America- Ruth Gruber
10. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings- Maya Angelou
11. Carter Beats the Devil- Glen David Gold
12. The Final Confessions of Mabel Stark- Robert Hough
13. Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates- Tom Robbins
14. The Wind in the Willows- Kenneth Grahame
15. Ramona Quimby, Age Eight- Beverly Cleary
16. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe- Fanny Flagg
17. Fortunate Son- Lewis B. Puller, Jr.
18. No Ordinary Women: Irish Female Activists in the Revolutionary Years- Sinead McCoole
19. The Outermost House- Henry Beston
20. The Lone Ranger & Tonto Fistfight in Heaven- Sherman Alexie
21. The Prince of Tides- Pat Conroy
22. Anne of Green Gables- L.M. Montgomery
23. In the Castle of the Flynns- Michael Raleigh
24. Johnny Got His Gun- Dalton Trumbo
25. The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases From a State Hospital Attic- Penney, Stastny, Whitaker & Rinzler

And honorable mention: Mister Dog- the Dog Who Belonged to Himself by Margaret Wise Brown

Of birthdays, baba ghanouj, and bibs

So yesterday was my birthday, but technically I celebrated it on Thursday. I knew we would be traveling (and packing) the day of my birthday to go to my parents' for the holiday and I wanted the entire day to myself.

Ornament= shitty gift

My birthday has traditionally been kind of sucky- two days before Christmas, everybody's busy with their holiday preparations and people try to cheat and give you Christmas-themed gifts. (Let me state for the record that the worst present you can give a small child is an ornament that goes straight to the tree and gets put away for the year once the tree comes down.)

I've only ever had one birthday party, the year I turned seven, and even that was fraught with mishaps. The week before my birthday, I'd been playing out in the back yard, climbed up a tree after my hat that had been tossed up in the branches, and fell. A branch tore a jagged cut in my upper thigh. Never tore my corduroy pants and never bled. I only knew that my leg hurt and when I went inside and went to go to the bathroom, I saw the gaping wound in my leg and started screaming. So I went to the ER and got a bunch of invisible stitches, as well as seven that would need to be removed. So, get this: 7 days before my 7th birthday, on a day where the temperature was about 7 degrees, I cut my leg, needed 7 stitches, which were removed 7 days later and left me with a scar 7cm long. Spooky!

Anyway, so that particular year, when I finally had a birthday party, I was laid up with stitches in my leg and couldn't really move around much. So much for fun.

So since then, I take it upon myself to have an adventure day for my birthday. In years past, I've gone for massages, pedicures, outings to places only I'd like to visit to take photos. It's always a solo excursion- I like to have the time to myself and more often than not, no one is free to go with me anyway. My favorite book when I was real little was by the author of Good Night, Moon called Mister Dog which was about a dog named Crispin's Crispian who belonged to himself. It pretty much explains just about everything about me, especially my adventure days.

This year, I went to the Division of Rare Books & Manuscripts at Cornell University and faked a research project to look at E.B. White's first draft of Charlotte's Web, one of my very favorite books.

1st page of 1st draft. Note picture of Charlotte in corner.

I spent about two hours with the manuscript, which was just awe-inspiring- written on plain unlined yellow paper in pencil, with all his scratchings and notes. My favorite was where he drew a bracket around a small paragraph and in the margins wrote, "Fix. Make better."

After I was done there, I went to Collegetown for a much-needed hair cut, then I took myself out to lunch at a middle eastern/mediterranean restaurant called Aladdin's. (Unfortunately, they were out of tabbouleh, which is my very favorite, but the baba ghanouj, hummus, felafel and spanakopita were delicious.)

Still giggling because I spent the day at the Kroch Library,
followed by the Johnson Museum. Say it out loud. You'll get it.

After that, I went back to campus and visited the Johnson Museum of Art. Besides this really cool and incredibly old cuneiform tablet that was found sealed in a terra cotta envelope, I was mostly impressed with the view from the 5th floor. I swear I could almost see my house.

Love to eat those little claws ...

And then later, the coup de grace- lobsters at the Antlers! Always fun to dine with friends when you're all wearing bibs.

So, now I'm back in my hometown, at my parents' house,  the dogs anxious that this is where we live now (Frances will not let me get two feet away from her) with Christmas almost upon us. But I'm more excited for New Year's, not necessarily for the party we're planning on having, but for the start of resolutions. I love the fresh start of a new year, even though New Year's Day is almost always written off as a day to rehydrate and laze off a hangover.

My resolution for the coming year is to write every day. Hopefully, through this I will finally finish the book I have been working on FOREVER, but also to become more disciplined at this game. I've signed up for a 750 Words A Day challenge, which shouldn't be too bad, considering it's about half the daily word count that NaNoWriMo was. I'm also going to try posting on here everyday. May not be good, but hopefully it will be consistent.

So happy holidays to you and yours (unless you're one of those people who get pissed off at folks for saying something other than Merry Christmas, even though these same people's idea of "keeping Christ in Christmas" is to buy a 500-inch television at WalMart on Black Friday and litter their lawn with plastic reindeer).