Things in Print Thursday :: 10 books I have read very, very many times indeed

Sort of in order of how many times I’ve read each (though I don’t have exact numbers for any).

10. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
I have several Sedaris books.  I don’t think I’ve ever told you guys the story about the time I met David Sedaris, but that’s why my copy of Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim has a jack o’ lantern drawn in it.  (It was the day before Halloween.)  And I’ve read all of the Sedaris books I have many, many times, but Me Talk Pretty One Day was the first one I bought, so I’ve read it the most times.  Somehow it never gets old, either.  But as this list proves, I am one of those insane people who can read something they like over a thousand thousand times and never get tired of it.

9. Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery
I’ve got all of the books in the series, but by virtue of this one being both the first book in the series and therefore the one I acquired first, I have read it the most times.  Honestly, I’ve only read the ones about her kids a couple of times, being as I acquired them later in childhood and being as I cared less about her kids than I did about Anne herself.  I didn’t not like them, but I have a soft spot for those childhood adventures­­­­ when Anne and her friends were being fanciful and absurd and theatrical, possibly because when we were young, my friends and I tended toward the fanciful and absurd and theatrical.

8. Strange But True by John Searles
I’m not even sure why exactly I’ve read this book so many times.  I remember reading a chapter of it in – I think it must have been Seventeen, but it might have been YM, it was back in the day – and I thought it was interesting enough, so I found the full book.  And the chapter that the magazine contained, while interesting, was very much not indicative of how dark and weird the book was.  It’s timeline-jumpy, it’s dark as hell, it’s got plenty of characters who are in one way or another emotionally grotesque; as per the timeline-jumpiness, parts of it are written in present tense, and despite the fact that I tend to default to writing fiction that way, I don’t read many novels that are that way, so it sort of blew my mind.  I just remember the first time I read one section, where it was describing Melissa, one of the protagonists, in her living room, and started in with “look on the coffee table,” “look in the fridge,” “be careful not to drop it because you’ll wake her.”  I remember that that part sent chills up my spine.  Also I’ve read it so many times because I notice something different each time.

7. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
I’ve discussed this one before, yes.

6. Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress by Susan Jane Gilman
I mentioned this one too, a really long time ago; how I’ve read it so many times the cover’s fallen off, how it means a lot to me even today (the first time I read it, I was probably about thirteen or fourteen and didn’t yet self-identify as a feminist, but I was on the way, and I’m sure this book helped me get there, whether or not I knew it consciously).  There are parts of the author’s experience that I relate to on a really intense level and parts of it that I am still oblivious to, but I find all of it still quite interesting and refreshing.

5. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
This is one of my blatantly obvious lists in a lot of ways, though considering how much this book means to me, it’s sort of surprising it’s not higher up on this list: this is because though I’ve read it many, many times, I’ve also leant my copy to so many people so many times that it’s rarely in my own possession.  I don’t even know who has it for sure (I think I know, but) and though I want it back someday to look over all my old high school age scribblings in the margins, I might just buy another copy to make sure I have one.  I wouldn’t mind owning two copies.  It’s that kind of book.

4. Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl
I’m about due for one of my rereads of this book; I don’t know how many times I’ve read it, but it’s a lot.  And I’m not going to talk much about it right now, because once I’m done with that reread, whenever that may be, I plan on writing a giant post about it.  It really is a lovely book and I love it in a lot of strange, messed up ways that are indicative of my warped sense of humor and also my warped everything else.

3, 2, 1. Little Women, Little Men, and Jo’s Boys by Louisa May Alcott
I’m pretty sure you all could figure this out.  And honestly, if I was putting them individually on this semi-quantitative list, I’d probably put Little Men around the middle and Jo’s Boys toward the end.  This is another one of those chronology-of-acquiring points; this is also because I have reread the original multiple times as an adult, but I haven’t reread the sequels since I was in junior high.  One of the reasons these books top this list is because I have read them all countless times by myself and also read them multiple times with my mother when I was a child.  (If I remember correctly, these and Anne of Green Gables the original were the only ones we read out loud multiple times; we read a lot of books once, but we’d often cycle back to these out of affection.)  And anyway, these will always be some of my favorites.

–your fangirl heroine.

Things in Print Thursday :: an ode to snark essayists

I don’t read a lot of nonfiction (though I recently picked up a book on neuroscience and have been devouring it dorkily) but I do love a good snark essay.  David Sedaris, Sarah Vowell, Susan Jane Gilman: these people are my people.  I love them.  I love what they write, I love what they have to say, I love their outlook on life.  I love everything about their work, basically.

I’ve read, for example, Me Talk Pretty One Day at least eight times.  Possibly more.  Part of it once out loud in varying situationally-inappropriate accents.  It never ceases to make me giggle, and this is impressive because most books don’t make me do more than smirk and mentally acknowledge “oh, that’s funny.”  I learned so much from him.  And when I was learning French, or attempting to, I happily recalled much of his humor on the subject.

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim is much of the same.  I haven’t read it as many times, but I do have his signature in it, complete with jack o’ lantern (it was the day before Halloween).  From that same night, I have in my purse a gold condom he gave me as a gift for spending my evening listening to a grown man read: because, he could tell, I just “really liked anal sex.”  I’ve never seen my mom look so embarrassed.  I was just amused.

Sarah Vowell’s Partly Cloudy Patriot is one of the only times I’ve ever enjoyed reading about politics.  Ever.  Particularly amusing were her rants on historical tourism and the entreaty for Al Gore to be more of a Willow and less of a Giles.  (No, really.)

And Susan Jane Gilman is my hero.   Kiss My Tiara is a feminist manifesto that even someone who hates loaded words like “feminist” or “manifesto” should be able to enjoy.  I adore how she can dissect everything so neatly and wittily.  And Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress may be one of my all-time favorite books of all time.  Literally, I’ve read it so many times the cover has fallen off.  It’s beat to hell but it’s just well-loved.  And especially as I get a little older and more grown up and start to think about life things like jobs and the theoretical of marriage (emphasis on theoretical) I realize how sound her advice really is.

They’re all wisdom for sarcastic pop-culture nerds such as myself, and I love them for it.

–your fangirl heroine.

Things in Print Thursday :: why I reread everything I love

Many a time, my mom has seen me reading a book and asked, “Haven’t you read that before?”  The answer is almost always “yes,” for several reasons.  As far as I’m concerned most of the books I love take more than one sitting to really set in, you need all the readings to catch all of the beautiful little details.  And I just love them so deeply I don’t want to let them go, that’s true, too.

Take Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl.  It’s been — oh, four years, a bit more, since the first time I read the book.  I loved it on sight, and once I got to know its protagonist Blue, I was even nuttier about it, but I can safely say I’ve read it at least ten times over now and I enjoy it a little more every single time.  Special Topics has a page count only commonly found in Harry Potter books, and any shorter would just harm its precocious setup and amazing development.  It begins as a high school sort of drama, intellectual girl has intellectual debates with herself over every single thing (that in and of itself I love, because I am the same way, albeit to a less well-rounded extent, probably).  Then halfway through, BAM!  It’s suddenly a high school film noir like Brick with more pop-cultural references.  And man, oh man, do the pop-cultural references abound.  She even properly cites them, and one of my favorite things to do over rereads is to see which references I better understand this time around.

I read David Sedaris and Susan Jane Gilman over because I know it will give me a chuckle, and this last reading of Susan Jane Gilman’s Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress was especially a revelation, as it countered much of what I’d been feeling from repeated viewings of TLC’s Say Yes to the Dress.

I read Margaret Atwood over to catch details and to know the characters more intimately.  Her tale The Blind Assassin is another I’ve read upwards of ten times now, and each time I read it I feel I’ve discovered something new about Iris and Laura.  Subtle things that I may not have noticed the first nine times.  And the beauty of Atwood’s language is just unparalleled, I think; it isn’t particularly flowery, but it’s just perfect.

I’ve read The Perks of Being a Wallflower countless times, too, and anyone who’s ever seen my scribbled-in copy knows I’ve devoured it.  The narrator Charlie was one of my first crushes.  This book, incidentally, I’ve been meaning to read over again, as each time I do read it I seem to be at a different stage in my life and certainly the last time I read it, I was different than I am now.  I’m sure I would find something new in it.

I love, too, reading books that I was acquainted with at a younger age.  I love when they can retain their beauty.  Like Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle.  I first read it when I was about twelve, but being as it’s a story about romantic adult-type things, I decided to pick it back up again recently.  Unsurprisingly, I find myself more willing to take said romantic things seriously; I was never a romantic sort of child.  I’m not particularly romantic now, but I do remember why I first loved it: the narrator, Cassandra, is sort of adorable.

Anyone who’s never made a habit of rereading things really should try it.  Of course, I’m the sort who longs to dive back into worlds the minute I’ve left them, so I could be a tiny bit biased.  But there’s always more to catch.

 

–your fangirl heroine.