Remembrance of Books Past and Two Contests!

When I was in 8^th grade, sick in the hospital with a terrible asthma attack, an English teacher I had a huge crush on gave me something that would prove more important to me than his heart: a book. Richard Hughes' A High Wind in Jamaica. While I was drifting on my hospital bed with a respiratory infection, machines whirring around me, my parents hovering, I stopped seeing the drip of the IV or feeling the tightness in my lungs, and instead, I was transported onto a pirate ship, one of a brood of proper English kids. When I left the hospital and was well again, I left every one of my possessions there, never wanting to see any of them again. Except for that book.

As you can see from the photo, I still have the same copy that was given to me. Dog-eared, battered. Recently I reread it, and it still meant a great deal to me. There are some books that do that, and I still treasure them.

Every year, for the whole unhappy seven years of my first young marriage, I made it a point to read Larry McMurtry’s Moving On. I loved it that Patsy, the young, married heroine was always upset and thinking about leaving her husband. I read that book until I actually did what Patsy did in the novel: I moved on, I left my husband. I started a new life. And I took Patsy with me.

I  know a lot of writers who still have ties to the books of their past. Katharine Weber, author of Triangle and the upcoming True Confections loves the book, Millions of Cats by Wanda Gag. “I think it's a book that has that primal feeling of a folk tale, with a lesson about judging beauty, and humility. Every time I see a gathering of many cats I think of the lines, 'Hundreds of cats, thousand of cats, millions and billions and trillions of cats,'" says Katharine.

Victoria Zackheim, editor of For Keeps  and the upcoming The Face in The Mirror, champions In Henry’s Backyard, by Ruth Benedict. The book is about a racist who becomes ill and needs a transfusion and becomes deeply grateful to get it from a Black man. “I grew up where my family was singled out for being “liberal” and this book was really comforting to me.,” she says.

Sandra Novak, the author of Precious, is a big fan of The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. "As a child, I remember being fascinated by "quite contrary" Mary's temperament (she was so dour!), by her loneliness and her abandonment by her parents, first through neglect and then death," says Novak. "I remember thinking how children might not always be happy and how that was okay in this fictional world. It was a book I couldn't put down as a child. I can still conjure the magical feeling I had being in this world, just by talking about this book now. Makes me want to read it again." Beth Bauman, author of Beautiful Girls and the upcoming Rosie and Skate, also loves this book. "I love stories about cranky children," she says.

There is a series of books I loved as a child that I can’t find--which drive me crazy. My mother had loved these novels (and she doesn’t remember the titles) and guided me to them at the Cape Cod library while we were on vacation. There were three books, all about one family, which included Elizabeth, Sally and Pierre, and the books followed them as they grew up, married and had families. I remember being really shocked (I was ten!) at how Pierre ripped the buttons off his girlfriend’s suit when he kissed her, and horrified that Sally ended up alone in a New York City tenement. But I so loved those books because they were so adult for me, so unlike any other book I had ever read. If anyone knows the titles of these books, I will make you a watercolor of a coffee cup and a spoon in return! 

I am also giving away a copy of an anthology I am honored to be a part of: Feed Me: Writers Dish About Food, Eating, Weight and Body Image, edited by Harriet Brown.  (My essay, The Grief Diet, is about a toxic ex who would not let me eat, and why grief made me stay with him.) To get this, you don't have to do a thing except enter a comment and say you want it!  First come, first served!