Rewards for Reading

Awards and rewards

When I was 16, I read Gone With the Wind for the first time. I imagined myself in scenes, and as a high school senior I extracted a scene from the book, memorized and performed it for my drama class assignment. 

Next I competed against 35 girls who represented 23 schools in the Dallas area UIL speech tournament. The scene where Mammy helps Scarlett get dressed for the barbeque at Twelve Oaks––I played both parts––won me a first place trophy.

Seated near the back of the high school auditorium, stage right under a balcony, when the announcer called my name, I was as overwhelmed and mystified as any Academy Award winner. 

Breathless and speechless by the time I got to the stage, I accepted that award. But afterwards, in the picture taken for our school newspaper, I look askance, nervous, self-conscious, wearing a dress I had made, back when dresses were all a girl could wear to school.

Hide and Seek

At this stage of life, I know that most actors hide behind the characters they play, and when they must come out from behind the camera or the footlights, their insecurities pop out like a red-head's freckles after a day in the sun.

Still, I remain fascinated by drama in its many forms. Whole worlds get compressed between the pages of books and during the screen hours of a movie. And there, the reader or watcher loses himself. 

And if he or she is lucky, they might find themselves too.

That's what happened to me back when I picked up the 1,037 pages of Margaret Mitchell's story of the Old South. I found myself in Scarlett O'Hara's character, enough to know that I didn't want to be like her, or rather, end up like her.

In a way, Scarlett set me on a course, a trajectory pointed away from innate selfishness.

Even author Margaret Mitchell said of "my poor Scarlett" that being compared to her was not a compliment. "Scarlett was a hussy and I am not."

Fact and Fiction:  Mirrors of self

When I read any book worth reading, I expect resonance. 

I expect, because I am a human being, to see some aspect of myself revealed––good or bad. Most often, both. I expect that what the writer took the time and care to capture in words will be worth the reader's time to follow. 

I expect a carrot or a stick. A reward or a reminder. A good book will show me something about life.

Because each of us is the main character in our own story, you and I are interested in ourselves and how our story will turn out. 

And we are never more interesting to ourselves––or more human––than when we can recognize ourselves in the mirror of another person's life.

The Time of My Life

A Fall Retreat

Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes, "There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under heaven." But I never know for sure when I put something on my calendar whether that planned time and activity will come to pass.

In December, when invited to speak at the Melonie Park Women's Retreat scheduled the last weekend in September, those dates seemed like a mirage––the kind I used to see when walking across the Las Vegas, NV desert between grade school and home. Now that far off weekend has come and gone. And now I can give thanks for both the invitation and every provision along the way that made this special experience a part of my story.

As promised, because I got so many requests for the song lyrics I "sang" (to the tune of "My Favorite Things") and wrote to go along with an emphasis on reading, here you go. Thank you for the cheers and applause. I had no idea I'd written a hit.

 

My Favorite Books

Brothers Karamazov and Anna Karenina

Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia

To Kill a Mockingbird has what it took:

These are a few of my favorite books.

Gone with the Wind and A Room With a View

All of Jane Austen, What else could I do?

Look Homeward Angel, End of the Affair

Brideshead Revisited at least once a year.

Seabiscuit, Lindbergh, and Gift from the Sea

Gilead and Home and Cold Sassy Tree

Wuthering Heights and Angle of Repose

These are just some of my favorite prose.

When the rain comes

When the day’s long

When I’m feeling blue

I simply remember my favorite books

And then I know what to do.

At the retreat, I talked about time, and story and creativity. Soon, look for postings on my website, Footnotes to Stories, summaries of the 3 sessions covered in the workbook. "The Time of My Life––Ecclesiastes as Story," will continue to benefit from the comments and feedback I receive.

People

Thank you, Melonie Park Church, for the privilege of sharing with you at this annual event. And thanks too for the gracious hospitality extended to others who came from beyond Lubbock. Wonder if anyone got more sleep in the cabins than they would have at home?

Places

The conference center at Ceta Canyon made a wonderful backdrop for a weekend getaway. It even rained, giving us cooler temperatures and that first bite of fall.

Things to Do

A Minute-to-win-it: Empty a box of Kleenex with one hand.

Creative method: hold the box down with body parts, but not the other hand. Clever girl.

Another Minute-to-Win-It

I'm forever blowing bubbles …

 … first person to empty the bottle wins.

These girls had to bounce out 8 ping pong balls from the box tied to their hips. Wiggle, wiggle, hop, hop.

Because women have to keep so many balls in the air, here, try this.

That's my girl, daughter Erin. So competitive.

Of course, I wasn't surprised that Erin won.

Retreat is a Treat

And beside quiet times and hikes and meals and snacks and crafts, hours of conversation filled every free moment. So much scope for the imagination. So many stories to tell. And hear.

Time, the way we spend it, reveals what we value.

The Last Book Sale

Summer Serendipity

Archer City, TX city limits, as of 2010, population 1,834 in the whole county

County Court House means this town is the county seat.

Crossing the street between Booked Up No. 1 and No. 2

On a lark, my husband and I drove from Lubbock to Archer City, TX near Wichita Falls, to check out the auction called The Last Book Sale of more than 300,000 books, gathered over the course of 40 years by antiquarian book collector, Larry McMurtry.

What I didn't know about book auctions soon became apparent. If only I had read Larry McMurtry's memoir, Books, before the sale instead of after, I could have better appreciated this experience. But then, being there was 80%.

A steady stream of people sat in those chairs to hear McMurtry (wearing suspenders) spin his stories.

Book buyers from all over the country came early in the week to scope out titles and to determine which lots and how much to bid for the books McMurtry had decided to part with. He's keeping Booked Up No. 1 open with an inventory of about 120,000 books, plus he has 28,000 books in his personal library at home. 

"I'm proud of my carefully selected twenty-eight-thousand-volume library and am not joking when I say that I regard its formation as one of my most notable achievements," he said in Books.

Before that weekend, my husband would give me a hard time for my book purchases, but that weekend he bought several books, which he has since read, and now he talks about getting a couple more bookcases for the room in our house we call the library.

A Writer on Writing

While I thought it was amazing enough that Larry McMurtry has written 29 novels, 3 memoirs and more than 30 screenplays, seeing that many books collected, sitting on shelves in 4 buildings in this tiny town felt like a visit to the Library of Congress or the British Museum, where books sit in silent judgment on those who enter, almost daring a person to take and read.

When I read Lonesome Dove soon after watching the television production, I sent a copy to my mother, who sent it back to me saying it was trash. Her reaction shocked me at the time because she was a reader who read widely, and in some cases, wildly. 

I always tell people when loaning or recommending a book that "A book is only as good as it is timely," my own caveat for whether or not someone else will respond to a book as I did. In my mother's case, bad timing.

Lonesome Dove is perhaps McMurtry's best known work, and if so, the iconic characters, Captain Call and Gus, portrayed by Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Duval in the television production had a lot to do with the book's success. Given the time constraints of film, Lonesome Dove as a mini-series brought to life the dying of the Old West. "We don't sell pigs."

 But Larry McMurtry does sell books.

"One reason I've hung onto book selling is that it's progressive––the opposite of writing, pretty much. Eventually all novelists, if they persist too long, get worse. No reason to name names, since no one is spared. Writing great fiction involves some combination of energy and imagination that cannot be energized or realized forever. Strong talents can simply exhaust their gift, and they do." McMurtry said this in his memoir called Books (1 of 3 memoirs he has written).

View of movie theater in Archer City linked to McMurtry's breakout novel and screenplay, The Last Picture Show

A Reader on Reading 

"What depressed me most in D.C. was that the various great houses I was invited to contained so few books … In our thirty-two years in Georgetown, we sold only one real book to a member of Congress …."

This he said in the context of his 1972 success of the movie version of his novel, The Last Picture Show, a success that afforded both the means as well as continuing opportunities to write both books and screenplays.

"In the cyber revolution that we're now in the midst of, where do readers stand?

I am not fully convinced that the big chain stores … draw off that many readers from the secondhand shops, and if they do, there's a rapid flow-through factor. Since, as nearly as I can tell, few young people are forming personal libraries today, the books bought new at the chains soon trickle back into the secondhand market …

What does any of this say about the most important factor of all, when it comes to books: reading? Book selling will never quite expire unless reading expires first." (Books, by LM)

He also made a point to emphasize at the sale and in Books, the importance of purging books, what he calls being "a junk rejecter." His "iron rule is that good books do not pull bad books up: bad books pull good books down."

That leaves me facing more to do than buy and read books. The Last Book Sale marks a time for me to select and reject too.

This store will remain open to house 120,000 books for sale.

Books, books and more books

"Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body," said the writer of Ecclesiastes. Now I have seen what a half million books looks like––stacks floor to ceiling in 4 bookstores in the tiny Texas town of Archer City.

Auctioneers cleared the inventory in 2 days of bidding.

These books, sold in lots of 100–200, are all gone.

And so are these. These books are now somewhere else, but not in Archer City.

On Sick Days

At first it felt like a novelty, giving myself permission to lie in bed all day … Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday … giving my body the chance on its own to heal, and most of all taking time to read. But while I read I also felt guilty for not writing.

My plans got waylaid. After building a head of steam, the manuscript I had begun again to complete before the end of March waits like my husband's truck, which has been in the shop for a month. Starts and stops compete with all things out of our control.

So with 2 books that had arrived the day we got home from our trip to Houston, I chose to read first Pat Conroy's My Reading Life. I read the whole book in a day. A feat. And then I took notes in my journal to summarize what helps me both as a reader and a writer.

Like mine, Pat's mother made him a reader. Although I came to reading for pleasure much later than he did, my mother surrounded me with books. Displaced me with books would be more accurate. And for that reason, I felt as if books were my rival.

And my mother used reading to punish me. More than once she made me read a book and write a report on what I had read. The one I remember, in particular, was a volume of the Time Life series on world nations, which she had purchased. She made me read France.

So I thought about that book I had read in the fourth grade when I got to visit France, twice. And the cookbook my mom gave me in high school, written only in French. She was trying to elevate me, the same way she and Peg Conroy educated and elevated themselves.

Pat Conroy writes, "Peg Conroy used reading as a text of liberation, a way out of the sourceless labyrinth that devoured poor Southern girls like herself."

Ah, yes, my mother was born in Dallas in 1931. After her mother died when she was 7-years-old, she was raised by relatives in East Texas. Poor indeed.

Thus I have come to appreciate reading as a reward. Time out for good behavior. And I do agree with Pat Conroy who goes so far as to say, "The most powerful words in English are 'tell me a story.'"

A Story Footnote

Surprised by the kitten who popped out of the box, Ava loves her new pet.

Kitty spent the first night in her new home sleeping in a pink crate on the nightstand next to Ava's bed.

Ava read to her kitty two books about home safety "so she would know what to do."

Ava asked Mom, "Should I say meow or read to her in English?"

Fellow Reader, how would you answer that question?

A Cat After My Own Heart

Keeping this sweet kitty since Saturday until tomorrow when she makes her debut at Ava's birthday party. A gift from Mom and Dad who have planned this surprise, Ava wants a kitten even more than she wants her ears "peered."

Kitty sat on the book I was reading this morning. She sat there for a long time, warming herself under the lamp.

Granddaughter Ava, six-years-old tomorrow, had 3 stacks of books on the foot of her bed which she intended to read yesterday afternoon.

I can envision Ava curled up with a book and her kitty. A girl––and a cat––after my own heart.

"He became what his language made him"

Guaging from this NYT article, 

"From Books, New President Found Voice,"

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/19/books/19read.html?_r=1&th&emc=th 

I have more in common with Barak Obama than with George W. Bush. At least in reading tastes.

"He became what his language made him" refers to Abraham Lincoln, a biographer's ascription to the man whose statue towers over Washington, D.C.'s changing guard. Would that any leader could emulate the man who knew the Bible so well as to seamlessly incorporate its words into his Second Inaugural Address. A nation divided by slavery and salvo, Lincoln refused to cut the baby in half.

Pity that reading material alone cannot produce results or transmit character. But the love of books, therefore of words and ideas, elevates even the most pedestrian among us. 

Blessings and prayers for the man who will lead us as a nation (Romans 13:1–2, 1 Timothy 2:1–2), who has already inspired individuals to hope for a future free from tyranny, terror and corruption. 

That's what I hope for: a lot less venom and corruption spewing from both sides of the political aisle. Mote and beam, you know. 

And may the reading President lean as Lincoln did on the everlasting arms.