I got asked the Most Horrible Question today. No, not the one from “Me-Stories of My Life”, by Katherine Hepburn:
“How are you?”
“Fine, if you don’t ask for details.”
A friend threw out this question as if she was skipping a flat stone into a still pond:
“What is your favorite book?”
“…he continued to read; and so his mother died while he sat in the chair next to her, reading a fat book. After that, he more or less stopped reading. You could not trust fiction. What good were books, if they couldn’t protect you from something like that?”-American Gods, Neil Gaiman
I (predictably) had a minor public temper tantrum. Broke out the caps lock and everything: “ONLY ONE???? What are you trying to do to me??”
“He suddenly realized he was guiding his way forward by the single lights of cigarettes, the sign of other people moving, disembodied through the dark…And he had nearly burst out crying in the street. Those tiny red lights going forward and moving away, those single Lucky Strikes, that’s what it was to be human. We lived and we died, all of us-lucky strikes. Single lights and voices in the dark.” -The Postmistress
The inquisitor did not relent: “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Only one.” And then, she left for work. It was like a drive-by shooting. (Shut up. I am not being “overly dramatic. Again.” I am not!)
“Looking for truth is not some kind of spazzy free-for-all” -Eat, Pray, Love
People started answering her question right away like it was no big deal:
“Lord of the Rings”
“Atlas Shrugged”
“Band of Brothers”
“Goodnight Moon”
as I sat there stunned. One book. Only one book. The Favorite.
“The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters.” -The Secret Life of Bees
“The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.” -Ernest Hemingway
I let loose with a bit of necessary whining: “I can not choose one favorite; it’s just impossible: how do you decide if poetry moves you more than prose, or if you need laughter more than tears? How do you choose between a book you’ve loved since you were a child and one you just discovered a month ago when both have become grafted into your heart with the scar tissue that grew after they broke you?
You might as well ask me to choose which of my children I love most.”
“There’s nothing wrong with this guy that a little honest bitching wouldn’t cure.”-The Sparrow
Someone commented that even narrowing it down to one favorite genre was difficult, a statement with which I completely agree. I imagined myself walking into Barnes & Noble. The books by the door call out to me: “Learn Origami!” “1,000 Chicken Recipes!” “The Complete Works of Shakespeare!” All on sale today for $8.99! Whole worlds on sale for nine dollars…how marvelous is that? I hadn’t even made it into the bookstore proper yet.
“It was easy to disappear in America. A man had only to grow a blond moustache, lift weights, buy a pickup truck, and wear a tool belt. A woman had only to frost her hair, wear a blue suit, and drive an SUV. By adopting names like Randy, Jason, Jennifer, or Cheryl, you could walk through walls.” -Freddy and Fredericka, by Mark Helprin
Once inside, it’s heaven: stacks and stack of words, knit and hammered together into structures and patterns of every conceivable size and shape, bound in leather and paper and fabric with glue and thread. The possibilities in the stacks of pages before me are just endless.
“With pleasant anticipation, Frannie walked back towards the library…”-A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
One favorite. Only one.
Good night, Irene. If pressed, I would say “fiction” is my favorite genre, simply because one can incorporate every other sort of writing into fiction, in addition to illustrations and photography. So, here’s the My Top Ten, categorized by genre:
“It ain’t dying I’m talkin’ about. It’s living.”-Lonesome Dove
(Bear in mind, I use the term “Top Ten” quite loosely.)
“It is a sin to write this.”-Anthem, Ayn Rand
1. Classics: To Kill a Mockingbird, Don Quixote, Little Women, The Lord of the Rings, Atlas Shrugged
2. Western: Lonesome Dove, Zeke and Ned, Gone With the Wind
3. Modern Literature: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, 11/22/63,The Language of Flowers, The Hummingbird’s Daughter, Tinkers, Caleb’s Crossing, Freddy and Fredericka, Sarah’s Key, The Help, Pillars of the Earth, The Sparrow, Someone Knows My Name
4. Biographies: Me-Katherine Hepburn, Spoken From the Heart, An Arrow Pointing Toward Heaven, Same Kind of Different as Me, On Writing
5. Children’s Literature: The Complete Tales of Winnie the Pooh, The Bronze Bow, Little Bear, Frog and Toad Are Friends, The Phantom Tollbooth, The Giving Tree, The Harry Potter Series, Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry, Little Britches, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Red Sails to Capri
6. Books of the Bible: Psalms, Job, Ecclesiastes, Ephesians, Mark, John, 1 John, James, Revelation
7. Poetry-Horoscopes for the Dead-Billy Collins, Psalms, Poems and Songs-Leonard Cohen, The Complete Works of Emily Dickinson
8. Pop Fiction: The Stand, The Firm
9. Comics/Humor/Illustrated Works: Calvin & Hobbes, Just Enough Jeeves, Griffin and Sabine
“All I think when I look at you is hallelujah.”-Room
The thing is, one reads for a thousand different reasons: to learn, to laugh, to escape, to broaden the mind, to appreciate beauty, to grow, to be alone, to spend time with others (the most precious times I have spent with my kids have been when we are snuggled together enjoying a great book like “The Complete Tales of Winnie the Pooh” or “The Phantom Tollbooth”). And then, there is this thought: to choose a favorite book is a demonstration of an awful sort of pessimism, because with so many wonderful books out there, I really hope I have not read my favorite book yet.
“Being human means losing everything we love best in the world. But would you ask to be anything else?”-The Dovekeepers
To read is to live. As Scout Finch said, “Until I feared I’d lose it, I did not love to read. One does not love breathing.”