Reading lists

I read a lot. But when asked to come up with a list of my favorite books, I falter. And yet, I find myself saying, “Oh! That’s one of my most favorite books. An all-time favorite.”  All the time. About many different books, of many different genres. I must be fickle. 

I find myself saying, “Oh! She/He is one of my favorite authors. I want to read everything they have written.” All the time. About many different authors, of many different genres. I must be fickle.

I never fail to closely peruse a reading list when I see one. I love it when it when people have the wide perspective to put together a list of their favorites. In a year. Or a lifetime. I will excitedly examine a reading list, looking for the ones that I may have missed, to add to my list of next books.

Books make us feel. Books make us think. Books bring us characters we love and hate, the ones we see in ourselves, the ones we want to learn from, the ones we want to stay far away from.

I may continue to read, but I am growingly aware that I may not immerse myself in a book, the way I did as a child or teenager. An odd thing to say, I suspect. For with age, comes perspective and experience and wisdom. So, do all these “good” things somehow stop us from plunging with abandon into a book, its characters, and its world?

Don’t get me wrong, I still immerse myself completely into a good book, and believe the make-believe characters to be my family and friends for a little while. So much so, that I’d rather stay with them, than cook dinner. Oh well…

And yet, just somewhere, the head rules over the heart. And that, right there is the distinction between the books I read as child and youth and the ones I read now. I now rationalize. I now think. I now analyze. I no longer simply feel, and leave it at that, as I did before.

An odd realization, I suspect. I may be writing this before I have processed it, or writing this is my processing.

I recently came across a reading list, in a book by the same name. It had a list of books that help and give perspective to a bunch of people who need it at the time. I was excited to read the list.

I had read all but one from that list. Of the ones I had read, I had read all but two as a teenager or younger. For the couple I had read more recently, I thought, “Oh those are good books, and I can see why they’re on the list”.

But for the ones I had read a long long time ago, I simply went,  “Sigh… how I loved that one.” I didn’t necessarily have any analysis of why they were on the list, but I simply felt the feelings I felt when I first read them. From my heart. And not so much from my head.

On this list, was Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. I loved Daphne Du Maurier so much that when I was done reading all her books that I could lay my hands on, I started on her autobiography. I did the same with Agatha Christie. I wanted to know the writers hiding behind the words I had so hungrily devoured, behind the stories they had woven, the characters they had created, and the worlds I temporarily inhabited with them.   

Of Du Maurier’s book, Frenchman Creek, was an all time favorite. A bored and beautiful noblewoman, ahead of her time, confined and restless in the expectations of English society, finds adventure with a swashbuckling French pirate. I read it at 13 or 14 and loved her free-spirited sense of adventure and rooted for her to stay true to her spirit.

I read it again in my 30s, as a young mother and wondered, “what about her kids? Will she feel guilt and loss, and miss them?” I pondered these and other “grown-up” concerns that were mundane practical and related to her children, that might have a bearing on her emotions later.

Sigh… I simply could never read it the way I had read it at 14. My life experience and ideas of responsibility and correctness would no longer allow me to root only for her spirit, even when I did.

Perhaps, it’s a truth we accept. We can never go back to being the person, we once were, even when that person still lives inside us.

Funny that a reading list should make me see that.