Loving Book Memes Even More...

Update HERE!!!!

It turns out there are some very self assured motherfuckers on Cath@vwxynot?'s blog, who think that because they didn't fall out of a frakking sailboat, that they haven't been tagged with this meme!!!11!!!1! So chall (I don't care if you're a godless fucking Swede - we still want that list, even if half of it won't be in Americanish), T. Joseph and Mrs. Ch - you are now officially fucking tagged!!!!111!!!!

There have been some interesting discussion arising from this little book meme that we managed to bust out of the confines of FaceBook (which I have managed to get into again - but only because I got "friended" by someone I don't think I've seen or heard from since about 4th grade)...Stephanie wonders why so many of the folks who have outies instead of innies, seem to like 1984, while it was distinctly missing from the lists of most of the innie types. And also...Why The Fuck Does Anyone like that shit!!!!111@!!?????@???!?//!! (Ok, she didn't put it quite like that, because that would be more like something I would do, not Stephanie, but still...

And in comments there, Greg was lamenting the fact that so many people decided to forgo the rules - as he saw it. Only he wasn't talking about my horrifying decision to go all ADHD, when reading his initial post and making a rather longer list. He felt that folks were listing books that might not have had that much of an impact. He gave a three part criteria - A. did I read this a long time ago and B. can I tell you significant detail about what was in the book, and C. does at least some of this detail still matter......

I actually did a lot of discussing 1984 over there and would heartily recommend you check it out...I also responded to Greg, but less adequately than I like. While I can say that for the most part, everything on my list fits Greg's ABC, that is only because I didn't consider posting Don't Remember, But Fuck All Was That Important To Me... Because honestly, some of the most influential books I have read - the ones that really stuck with me, are the ones that I mostly remember by their affect on me. Ones that I may have a few vague images of (I am one of those people who totally animates everything he reads) and nothing more - except the vivid recollection of how it changed my thinking.

I only listed a few children's books for this reason. It's not that there weren't many more (although I still am frakking pissed that I didn't get the Chronicles of Narnia down there) of those children's books that really mucked with my mind - there were a lot more of them. There were, for example, a couple of other books that had much the same message that Matilda did for me. One of them came quite a bit earlier than Matilda, and was much more inclined towards the theme of financial poverty, with intellectual, creative and emotional wealth, being superior to the opposite. Haven't the slightest clue what it was called and seem to recall that at some point financial wealth is also acquired, but that is a couple books on and is entirely secondary to the all important wealth of mind and heart.

I believed then and still today, that love and mind are far more important than material wealth - not to say that material wealth isn't important...But in all honesty, if it were just me - no kids, no Juniper - I would be perfectly content with barely enough. Live in a small studio, with a small space to sleep carved out of the piles of books - along with a small space to sit and eat and write...I am entirely confident that I could have been satisfied with that. But kids and the most beautiful and brilliant lover a man could ever dream of having in his life, this is not such a laudable goal in life. So when I will never be an old women and I shall never where purple...

And there are other books that I simply can't remember, that nevertheless are still a part of my life and who I am. For example, before Encyclopedia Brown, there were other boy detectives and similar adventurers who sparked my sense of justice. Characters who drove solidly home the notion that justice is more important than most anything - including at times, the rules or the law. That underlying the rules and the laws - some of which might actually contradict it, was an evermore important code of conduct - code of justice. And that sense, that drive for justice that began when I read a book at about six or seven, eventually evolved into a pretty absolute belief in the rule of law, true justice and a firm reliance on my moral framework. The absolute I hold these to now, was sparked when I read that now forgotten book at six or seven - though the principles have evolved considerably and matured a great deal in the last twenty-six, twenty-seven years.

So really, my list would have been fleshed out nicely with about eight or nine; Don't Remember, But Fuck All Was That Important To Me...I would even have been willing to give up some of the books on that list to include those.