I finally realized what I’m looking for every time I go to the small, segregated “non-fiction” section in the bookstore (which is far from the travel essays and the autobiographies and the ethnography stuff). Ex Libris–Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman. I’ve read this book at least 30 times over the past 8 years. The first hardback edition came out in 1998, and the paperback edition came out in 2000, which is right when I bought mine–as is scrawled on the inside cover by me–a habit I’ve stopped after doing a bit of research into the world of book sales and first editions. (By the by, if you are the proud owner of a first edition of Ex Libris, I am in the market!) The note I’ve scrawled reads as follows: Purchased at Barnes & Noble in Woodland Hills on a Sunday, November 26, 2000, and read in one afternoon with Mathew over several cups of Chamomile tea while sitting outside in the sun. Quite picaresque; sounds like a lovely afternoon.
That used to be a regular reading habit for my sweetheart and me–heading to the Bookstore near our apartment every Sunday and having brunch, then buying a book small enough to read in several hours. Sometimes we’d carry over a longer book, but not often, because part of the joy was in browsing for something new. I even kept a reading diary of what I read and how I felt about it–looking back in my diaries, this recording habit of what I read first began after several readings of The Gnome from Gnome, about a gnome who lived in Alaska and is looking for ways to get warm. (The answer is love and friendship!) That book may have influenced me in my graduate school choice years later, when I packed my bags and headed for Fairbanks. My reading entry at age 11 reflects quite a bit on Alaska and what a magical place it must be; and several of my sentences are devoted to the Gnome’s special paint that makes snow turn to gold! But I digress.
Why did I keep a reading diary? I don’t know–but recorded in the pages of my diary amidst the boy crushes and rant sessions about my “totally unfair” parents are entries on the Sweet Valley High series, everything by Jack Kerouac, several rereadings of Franny and Zooey, my James Baldwin phase and more. Sometimes these recordings were personal reflections–how I felt about what I read and what the book meant in my life. Sometimes I wrote in the form of a book review (very big in high school when I was book and movie reviewer for our school newspaper), but that usually digressed back into ruminations on where I was in my life and how the book made connections for me. I have over 60 entries on The Diary of Anne Frank over a 20 year period. More than any book, that one has influenced me the most, and I do keep returning to it over and over again. I’ve read it many times over the years as different editions came out, as well as background material, the playscript, Anne Frank’s biography etc. Her diary had such an impact on me because I first read it when I was Anne Frank’s age, I think; I even began calling my diary “kitty” and would go back and reread and comment on my own diary entries.
When I came upon Fadiman’s book that first time, what I loved most was peeking in on her personal reading history and learning that there was someone out there in the world who was as crazy about books as I was. Oh, I have friends who “love books” and who quote poems and passages of prose from memory–but would they admit to reading all of the books in the V.C. Andrews series, even after poor V.C. Andrews died and books kept popping up? Or would they be as crazy as I was about finding an egg-stained and sagging copy of James Beard’s cookbook? Have they ever gone to the “books by the pound” used bookstore? Ah. I see you’re still with me. So, you must be in need of an intervention as well! But, it was lovely to find someone out there who would probably go on and on with you over coffee about the sailor’s account of Architoothus reproduced from diaries in the Georgian era. I had a realization that I was this “common reader” too–despite graduate school and literary analysis classes trying to pull me into a different direction–and, that being a common reader was a good thing. Knowing that I mark the history of my life in books–that’s okay.
In her preface, Fadiman says:
“I began to write Ex Libris when it occurred to me how curious it was that books are so often written about as if they were toasters. Is this brand of toaster better than that brand of toaster? At $24.95, is this toaster a best buy? [ . . .] This model of readers as consumers–one I have abetted in many a book review myself–neatly omits what I consider the heart of reading: not whether we wish to purchase a new book but how we maintain our connections with our old books, the ones we have lived with for years, the ones whose textureds and colors and smells have become as familiar to us as our children’s skin.” This is why my marked up, spine-cracked, high school, paperback copy of Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters is right next to a tattered copy of Coming Through Slaughter with my sticky notes tacked inside. These books mean something to me–Salinger when I was 16, Ondaatje my first year of graduate school (found in a small little bookstore next to Hot Licks ice cream in Fairbanks–as is scrawled on the inside cover, along with “read in a single afternoon at Sourdough Sam’s). Old habits die hard.
Looking at my own “library” of books, I see so many I own that I’ve read over and over again. I’ve begun to slowly thin out my books, passing on beloved, gently used volumes to friends–but I am keeping the ones that, as Fadiman says, “wrote our life story, and as they accumulated on our shelves (and on our windowsills, and underneath our sofa, and on top of our refrigerator), they became chapters in it themselves.” This idea of books marking our lives has been on my mind for several weeks. My introductory composition students have just read several essays about reading, including Malcolm X’s “Learning to Read” and Richard Wright’s “The Library Card.” Teaching these essays coincided with a reading workshop for teachers that I took recently–meant to help teachers help struggling readers. The first “ice breaker” activity involved having us make an autobiographical time-line of our reading lives. It was wonderful to peek into people’s histories and to hear about their beginnings as common readers. Some started with memories of trips to the library with parents, and being allowed to choose a book. Others talked about first reading magazines while sitting on the floor in the book section at Target or Walmart while their parents shopped. Some had fond memories of parents reading them children’s books, while others noted trying to read the subtitles on a television set as they learned to speak English.
What was interesting for me about generating my own reading history time-line was that I could easily see where I became a writer. One of my fondest memories is sitting at the table with my grandfather in the mornings. He would make me a cup of coffee with a lot of sugar and would hand me a section of his newspaper even though I couldn’t read yet. Occasionally he would share something he read in the paper, and I began to share things I “read” too, making up stories based on a photo or the one or two words I could recognize in the column title. I began to think about how reading influences our identities in striking ways.
My boyfriend shared his “learning to read” memory with me as an explanation for why he believes he became a cartoonist. His great-grandmother often bought him comic books when he was a young child, even though he couldn’t read yet. He remembers sitting in the corner of a room with cookies and milk and studying the pictures, and then squinting at the word balloons and imagining what the words in the word balloons said in comparison with the picture. He says that often, when he’s reading a book, he’ll picture it in his mind like panels of a comic book page.
I’m sure everyone has stories about becoming common readers–becoming word lovers or book addicts. I hope you’ll share them here. And, if you’re more inclined to read about other people’s reading habits, Fadiman offers a list of books about reading at the back of Ex Libris. In the meantime, as you’re finishing up your novel-writing challenge, why not start your own December Reading Challenge? Get yourself to the bookshelves.