That Book

I believe all of us have that one book that they can fall back on. The book that kept them reading. I found a book in seventh grade that held my imagination. A fictional work where it felt as if the author had written the main character for me. I discovered the book lying by the bookshelves that were in front of my door in the upstairs hallway when I lived in Pensacola, Florida.

It was a paperback book. The cover had some embossed shapes on it, the reflecting light on the dimpled cover is really what made me look at it further. It had a space ship landing on it, and I figured it looked decent, might as well pick it up and start reading. The book is Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card.

Shirer was going off to Ole Miss and my family and I were going as laborers to help move her in. It was near a ten hour trip and I needed something to read. I found the book to be so delightful and entertaining that I fought off carsickness to coninue reading it.

The reader meets the main character, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, at the beginning of the book. He is a 7 year old boy that is monitored by the government, but the reader does not know why. Two voices emerge from the onset, the first is that of government/beauraucratic talk and the other is the thrid person narrator that follows Ender.

Card tells the story of Ender being seperated from his parents, his psychotic brother and his sister, his emotional rock. He goes to a government funded military school, and through his brilliance and perseverance woops up on any challenge before him. The author does a good job of accounting for Ender's pathos, which similar to Gerry Durrell's novel, becomes quite voyeuristic and addictive. Ender saves the world at 11 or 13 by destroying another race (you would not believe why or how), but the novel does not stop there. It follows Ender until he is the age of 25, through his dealing with never being able to return home, through his void of destroying another race, and through his writing of what becomes a new religion in the future, The Speaker for the Dead.

I probably read Ender's Game 15 times before I thought of finding the rest of the series. What Card intended to be a three book series quickly turned into four, Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide and Children of the Mind. These books were of the original chronical of Ender's life... Oh! SO GOOD! But then, because so many characters in the story had strong individual characters Card had to write their stories, no Rosencrantz and Gilderstern here, by God! So he released books following other characters, Ender's friends, from the books, Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppets, and First Meetings.

I read Shadow of the Hegemon last year and I am wanting to read the last two of the series. So, Mr. Card, if you are reading this, feel free to send me hard-bound, autographed copies of the series. I am currently reading Ender's Game again, because, yes, it is that damn good!

As my buddy Peter said, it is my Catcher in the Rye.

A Phoenix Rises

Let's just say I was not the most motivated student. In my first year of tenth grade I got the reward for least handed in homework. I transfered schools and had the opportunity to repeat tenth grade.

After graduating high school I was accepted and attended Centre College, in Danville, KY. I spent the year doing as little work as possible and on Academic Probation. I was not a big fan of reading outside of class with the exception of comics, and poetry.

So at the end of that year I took a year off from college, and applied to the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) to attend a semester in Baja, Mexico. I chose this section because I really wanted to sail. This course would last three months and in that time I would hike through the San Pedro Martir Mountains, as well as Sea Kayak and Sail the coastline of the Sea of Cortes.

Reading over the packing list one of the things I was told to pack was a book I didn't understand why, but did what the list said. Not having a big library of my own I asked my sister, Shirer, for a recomendation. She thought I would like Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Rings, so in my backpack it went, I didn't think about it for quite a while.

About two weeks later, several Kilometers into NOLS' FSBI forray into the mountains, I needed some time to myself. Not time with my two other tent mates. Not time in the kitchen trying to distinguish plastic bags of dehydrated potatoes from parmesan cheese, and not time finding smooth sticks in the woods (for all you NOLS alum out there). I needed something that would stimulate my mind, and then I remembered packing the book. I went over to my tent group, if I remember correctly Mike was teaching Big Joe to play cribbage... maybe. I went for my pack and pulled The Fellowship of the Rings from it told the guys I was off to read and walked for a good 5 or 10 minutes.

I found a good boulder with a view over a pasture enclosed by trees and began to read. It did not last long. Me and Tolkein don't mix. I tried to read it for thirty minutes but had to keep going back several pages to where my mind began to wonder. "This is for the birds," I thought, and left my perch in pursuit of another book.

Going back into camp I found another member of the trek, Minnesota Katie, or "Kater" as we called her. I offered a book swap, LOTR for a book in her library. She did not want to trade books but fortunately for me she did have one available, My Family and Other Animals.

I immediately fell in love with this book written by Gerald Durrell. The title in and of itself was full of wit and humor; comparing his family to that of wild animals... I had a feeling I would like the book. And I did. It was nothing like the Shakespeare or Dickens I had to read in the ninth grade in Pensacola, Florida. It wasn't something that needed to be studied and graded like the books I had to read in Switzerland or Canada. More important than either of those I felt like I could relate to the author. Durrell talks about his youth being an ex-patrtiot of England, growing up in Greece. For me the book has a feeling of familial closeness, anthropologic study as well a glint of voyeursim since you are watching a real family from the inside. Durrell's imagery would be alive in my head and I could often see his imagery in the landscape around me. One could say it was the right book for the right time.

After I finished My Family, I was in a reading bonanza. It was rare I did not have a book in my posession. Granted they were books that others had brought with them, but they were books none the less. Several of the books were adventure books, speaking to man taking on the elements: Into Thin Air, Into the Wild, and Touching the Void. Into Thin Air and Into the Wild were both written by Jon Krakauer. Into Thin Air recounts Krakauer's personal experience in the 1994 Everest Tragedy that rocked the world of Eco-Tourism: the most shocking image from the book I recall is that of the amount polution that has been left, from spent Oxygen canisters to dead people. Into the Wild is an account of a real life "Holden Caulfield", Christopher McCandless, who decides to shirk his final term of school for a taste of real life, the real life finally bights him in the ass when he is found dead in an old school bus in Alaska; the book recounts his life from the point he leaves school to the point he is found. Touching the Void is another true story of disaster, and redemption. In this book the author and his friend decide to take on a new route up a mountain in the Peruvian Andes. The author makes it out alive, barely.

I would argue that this sharing of personal books, of ourselves made us a stronger, more complete group.

Feet First First Time

The class of a graduate course I am in has been asked to create a, "Literacy Autobiography."

A fellow student, Veronica, decided she was going to Blog hers. "What a novel idea," I thought, and asked permission to use her idea as well. So here it goes...

Where do I start, at the beginning? Of being little and watching my two older sisters read?

Do I start where my parents and sisters, "spelled," topics around me?

Or do I start where I believe my enjoyment of reading began?