One of the first widow blogs I ever read is the work of a fellow educator in Illinois. It was Rob who pointed her link out to me and urged me to take a look. At this early point in my serious attempt to write, via my own blog, I was writing in a vacuum, more or less. Interested really in my own endeavors and not comparing my work to anyone else’s. However, for growth to be achieved, one must start measuring themselves against others. Marsha’s blog was and continues to be an excellent yardstick. 

The other day I read another of her “tagged” pieces. Blog tag is a bit of a game where another blogger will assign you a writing task and after you have completed and posted it, you assign or “tag” someone else. The tag topic was ten books that have influenced your life. She didn’t tag me specifically, but her readers in general. After a bit of thought, I took up the challenge. And it is a challenge. I was a voracious reader from my earliest years. Until Will’s illness, I continued with a minimum book a week habit. I am not sure where my love of books and reading came from. I am really the only reader in my family and though I was given plenty of encouragement by my parents, who struggled to keep me in printed material, that I became a bookworm at all is a mystery. Although I am still suffering from the widow’s peculiar inability to finish a book, I still read. The matter is shorter now, but I still read daily. 

I found it difficult to cull ten choices from all the books I have ever read. I found as I thought about different titles that books have largely been of the moment for me. Profound at the time but in retrospect, not of long lasting significance. So, in no particular order, here are my ten books:

Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh – I was probably a little old for this book when I first read it. I was in the fifth grade at the Church of the Resurrection Grade School. My friend, Lisa, who is now a radiologist, gave me her copy to read because the title character, Harriet, reminded her of me. I could see why immediately. Harriet carried a spiral notebook that she used to write down her thoughts and observations about life and the people around her. She wanted to be a writer and had been told that writers need to be able to observe life and in effect, mimic it somehow through the written word. I too was nearly as a compulsive scribbler as I was a reader. Like Harriet, I had a notebook that I carried about, writing stories, poems and journaling madly about the world around me. I journaled daily until I was in my late twenties, but I don’t have a single one of those journals today even though I toted them from home to college and through  succession of apartments. I destroyed them all one weekend, deciding that the last thing I would ever want was for someone decades hence to sit down and read them out of context. Occasionally I regret that. The novel though validated me. I didn’t know anyone who wrote, and after I met Harriet, I didn’t feel so alone.

The World According to Garp by John Irving. I think this was the first novel I read based on the strength of a review. Today I often seek out novels I have read about in newspapers, magazines or on the web, but this particular book marks the very first time I did that. I was eighteen and weeks away from leaving for college. It is definitely one of those “books of the moment”. I still have the exact copy I bought from the Walden’s Bookstore in my hometown’s dinky little mall. When I leaf through it now, I recognize it as a literary version of a Top 40 hit. I don’t think it has stood up, but at the time I had never read anything like it. The offbeat characters and situations allowed me to see just how far an author could push the boundaries of belief suspension and still tell a viable story. The one thing that stuck with me from the novel was the “under-toad”. Garp’s younger son, Walt, mispronounces the term “undertow” which is a current that can catch ocean swimmers unaware and sweep them out from the shore. Garp comes to view the under-toad as a symbol of unexpected tragedy and something to be guarded against. I have never even seen the ocean, let alone swam in it, but the the under-toad is a concept that has stuck with me since I read that book. Another reason it still resonates is that John Irving came to campus that same fall and did reading from his next novel, The Cider House Rules. It was the first time I had ever listened to another writer talk about his work and the process.

I’m Grieving as Fast as I Can by Linda Feinberg. I read numerous books on grief and grieving the summer after Will died. Partly because I thought I was supposed to do this. Apparently though it is not required. The other reason I sought out this type of material was that I felt so alone. Freakishly so. I didn’t know any widows even remotely close to my own age. No one seemed to know how to talk to me, and I had no way to communicate my sorrow or needs to anyone else. Of all the books I read, this one was the one that most spoke to me and likely formed my rather militant stance on the grieving process. I came to the conclusion that grief and its manifestations were as individual as a finger print. While we all have fingers, however the prints on mine are different from everyone else’s. There was no right or wrong, though I have discovered since there are degrees of intensity and variations in timetables. This book was the least clinical and preachy. It provided the most concrete examples and was the least condescending. It drips with common sense. Common sense, Rob likes to say, is not so common.

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. My favorite book really. One I have read countless times. It made history a story. I have loved historical fiction, and even non-fiction historical tomes,  ever since. If I hadn’t been an English teacher, I would have taught history. History is rich and the most amazing thing about it is that it really happened. The characters were real people. The situations and places existed. The book is often criticized for its racism, but I am one who believes you cannot judge people or works of the past by today’s standards. Novels, like historical events, have to be seen within the context of their times. We can learn from history, but we can’t change it. It is what it was.

The Stand by Stephen King. In my high school days, I was a Stephen King fanatic. I read everything he wrote. I thought he was a brilliant story teller and writer. Yes, I was studying his style. Even then it was hard for me to read and not absorb lessons about writing. I have since come to regard King as a writer who cannot end his stories. Some of the weakest endings ever written were written by him, and The Stand is no exception. The story-line moves like gangbusters until the nuclear explosion destroys evil, and Las Vegas, about a hundred or more pages from the end of the book. It flounders after that. I still admire King’s ability to create characters and make them seem as real as the guy who lives next door, and his ability to craft dialogue is enviable. He has an ear, and this leads me to my next pick.

Night Shift by Stephen King. It was the first book of his I ever read, and it was the first book of short stories I had read that made me appreciate the beauty and power of the genre. I think perhaps that I am more suited for this type of writing than novel writing, though I plan to try the latter this fall, but I had never considered it an important type of literature until I read this collection. 

Nickeled and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich. I was assigned this book as part of my seminar class for my masters. I had read about it and even seen an interview with the author, but hadn’t been interested in reading it. It was an easy read. She has a light, flowing style that is important for a researcher who wants to reach the masses beyond her field. The book was about the difficulties of living paycheck to paycheck as a minimum wage earner in the United States. None of the information was new to me. I had been a teacher too long to not know how the majority of Americans live. The practices of service industry employers continues to shock me however, and it really made me start to question my role as an educator in this process. I came to believe that I was as much a part of the problem as I was a part of the solution. It was one of the many pieces in the puzzle that was slowly prompting me to the realization that I was going to have to devise a plan for a career change.

Freedom Writers by Erin Gruwell. Seldom have I read such a poorly organized, marginally written piece of self-aggrandizing crap. But, the thing that truly irritated me about this book was the fact that nothing this girl did was new. I knew many teachers who had employed nearly all of the “tricks’ that she used. I had a computer lab myself back in the early nineties and knew firsthand what a difference computer access can make in the teaching of writing. What most teachers don’t have are the contacts this girl obviously did coming from a background which she skillfully plays down. I don’t doubt that her students, and that school, were lucky to have her for the time they did, but I have problems with idea that she invented any wheels and with the fact that she is yet another “dabbler”. Someone who puts four or five years in the trenches and then bounces off to make a “real living” do something else. Real teachers, in my opinion, are in it for a longer haul despite the hard work and personal drain on them. This book taught me true appreciation of those I worked with or had worked with who are real teachers.

Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk. I am including this one despite the fact that I haven’t finished it. It was Rob who introduced me to Palahniuk. As a matter of fact some of our earliest correspondence centered, almost disastrously, around the fact that I reminded him of a character from another of Palahniuk’s novels. As with most things I read now, I appreciate the writing and pay close attention to what the author does to facilitate the story. Palahniuk has a choppy style. Short sentences. Incomplete sentences. I felt a kinship. One of the things I always told my students when we would study grammar was that it was okay to break grammar rules as long as you knew that you were doing it. It’s called voice. I appreciate Chuck Palahniuk for showing me that a good writer stays true to his own personal voice and style.

So here is my list. Now, tag! You’re it.