Identifying the Core Books of My Heart (and Head)

As I continue to think about books and how I want them, their physical selves, in my space and what I want that to look like, I keep coming back to the idea of the "core" books that hold meaning for me. These core books are those (relatively) few out of the thousands in our house that are the absolute most important, the ones that, if I had to reduce my book collection to only what would fit in one or two bookcases, would be the ones sitting in that honored space.

I can't quite imagine actually reducing my collection that far (unless out of necessity brought on by circumstances, such as dramatically reduced living space), but it has been helpful to me to think about what those collections would be--and to create them digitally through the collections function on LibraryThing. I have created four collections there:* Core Heart, the clutch-them-to-my-chest reads that are my absolute favorites; Core Head, the books that speak more to my head than my heart that I would feel somehow lost without; Secondary Heart, chest clutchers that just aren't quite important enough to me to be core; Secondary Head, ditto for those "head" books that I could probably do without but would very much rather not. 

This has been a fascinating process, though one that constantly threatens to descend into the depths of absurd hairsplitting. (Is Harry Potter's Bookshelf head or heart? Okay, but is it core or secondary?) I find that if I stop thinking about it so hard, most of the books I've considered (many of my books are definitely not even in contention) fall pretty solidly into one of those four categories. The trick is to stop thinking. That's the hard bit.

Some things I've learned by doing this so far:

*Most of my Core Heart books are things I read early in my life--if not in childhood, then certainly by my early twenties. This feels both right and slightly sad. (Cue Kathleen Kelly quote about childhood reading.) Right because, well, childhood reading. Sad because *sobs* why can't reading be like it was when I was twelve anymore?

*Despite the fact that I mostly can't seem to read series these days, a lot of the books in my Core Heart collection *are* series (Harry Potter, the Little House books, the Minnesota Christmas romance novels, The Lord of the Rings (that one is not really a series, but in the sense that I read three books back-to-back-to-back.) I suspect this points to my love of character over any other element of fiction. 

*Books I've read more recently that end up in Core Heart are more likely to be graphics-based than not (comics, graphic novels,  picture books).

*The line between Core Heart and Core Head is not terribly logical, but it is the distinction I have the least trouble feeling. JRR Tolkien's collected letters are Core Heart; C.S. Lewis's are Core Head. Pride and Prejudice is Core Heart; the rest of Austen's novels are Core Head.

I still have some work to do on the collections--every other day or so a thought strikes me in the shower or over breakfast: "Did I put such-and-such book into one of my core collections?!" And of course they will get fine-tuned over time, with books shuffling among collections, new reads getting slotted in, and perhaps, the odd book falling from favor entirely.

What books would you put in a core collection? And would you divide them differently than I have (or not at all?) 

*If you're, like, super interested, you can navigate to those collections on LT through my profile.

The Pleasures and Perils of Serialized Narratives

It's no secret that I've fallen down an Arrow-shaped rabbit hole this summer. I have been speeding through the whole series, rewatching the first four seasons and then moving on to seasons five and six, which I had never seen before. I should finish season six some time in the next week or so, meaning that I will have consumed a show that was designed to unfold over six television seasons in just under two months. Arrow operates as a serialized long narrative each season, and I am *terrible* at consuming that kind of media the way it is "supposed" to be consumed (or at least, as it is originally presented), that is, one episode, roughly once a week, for months on end. I lose interest if I have to wait so long to see what happens next, and what's more, I lose the thread of what was happening. 

This has long been true of me, but I only really put it together once streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime made it easy to go back and watch entire series that I missed when they aired. Suddenly I was free to watch a show exactly on my own terms. One episode every night until you're through all of it? Fine. A giant binge of seven eps at a time twice a week? Whatever keeps your yacht from going down, man. The whole of a season in one weekend? You very much do you. Of course this was possible before streaming, what with DVD sets, but they require so much more effort and stuff. (I have a fair few complete DVD sets of TV shows. They are organizing themselves into a union and planning how to force us to build them their own addition off the back of the house.) And if you were getting those sets from Netflix through the mail or from the library, sometimes you only had one disc worth of show when you were in the mood for so much more. And the last disc of the season often only had one ep on it! (The horror!) You pick up the facetiousness I'm putting down, I'm sure. The point is simply that over the course of my adulthood we went from being largely SOL if we wanted to watch a TV show that wasn't currently airing (or in reruns) (unless you had big bucks to buy the set) to being able to watch thousands of shows in their entirety for a flat monthly fee. This development hasn't so much changed the way I watch TV but gotten me to watch TV (again).

I caught a lot of programs in reruns as a kid, and throughout middle school and high school I had my shows that I did. not. miss. (Even if that always meant recording them to watch on the weekend.) Here's the thing though, whether because television was just like that back then or because I cannot watch ongoing plot arcs over the course of months, none of those shows required me to remember anything specific from one episode to the next. (Except for maybe the last few seasons of DS9. Which, you guys, I have almost no recollection of. Like, what even happened after the war started? I have no idea.) But once the shows I started watching in high school ended, I... pretty much stopped watching TV. This was partly situational--it's harder to follow a weekly television program in grad school, though I watched *a lot* of movies during that period, so it wasn't strictly a time issue. I did watch some TV I missed during that time as well (Queer as Folk, Doctor Who), but only when I could get my hands on at least four episodes to watch in one go.  

Since I have had access to streaming services, I have caught up on a lot more TV, and I have gotten into shows I otherwise never would have. Farscape, Veronica Mars, and yes, Arrow, are all shows I've watched over streaming, entirely on my own terms as far as how much at once and how often, that I'm quite sure I would have bailed on if I had watched them weekly as they aired. These shows are serialized continuous narratives, where little clues to the major plot of a whole season might be dropped one at a time, episodes apart. Sometimes a character is introduced in one episode and then returns four episodes later and you have to remember who they are! What they look like! Their name! What they were up to! I just can't hold these things in my brain over weeks and weeks, especially if I leave that narrative world for a long time in between installments (like say, over the winter hiatus of a show. And if there's a cliffhanger at the end of the season, forget about it.) But if I watch that same material over the course of a week or two, I'm golden. 

Arrow provides an excellent case in point. A dear friend and her husband casually suggested over dinner while I was visiting them a few years ago that I might enjoy this show based on the Green Arrow comics character. I think some variation of the phrase "Oh, you'll like Oliver Queen" may have been employed. (Understatement.) Shortly thereafter, I found Arrow on streaming, fell in love (the first nine episodes of season one are seriously like someone buttonsmashing all of my narrative kinks over and over for six hours), and tore through the first three seasons, rushing the last one a bit to be caught up in time to watch season four as it aired. Aaaaand I hated season four, not because it wasn't good but because trying to watch it threaded out over nine months (nine!) made me lose all interest in what was going on... because I couldn't remember what was going on. And when season five rolled around, I just didn't bother. Season four is still my least favorite season,* but I'm convinced that my disappointment stemmed mostly from the way I was watching it. When I rewatched it this summer at my own speed I was like 8,000 times more invested in it than I was the first time.

I have precisely this same problem with books. If I put a book down for more than a day or two without reading at least some of it, I lose all connection to it and no longer have much interest in jumping back in and trying to pick up the threads again. I used to think this was some sort of weird fickleness on my part, but I'm more inclined now to lump it together with narrative TV shows with continuous story arcs. Once I fall out of the narrative, it is really hard for me to get back in. Explains my terrible track record with book series too. I can do series where each book is basically just another adventure with a set of characters, but multiple books that tell one long tale? Major barrier for me. I would like to be able to read some of those, but I know that if I don't read them back-to-back-to-back (which, honestly, I'm far less likely to do than I am to binge watch a whole season of a TV show), I am probably not going to be able to keep the whole story in my head. Alas. I'm more than happy to wait for most TV shows to be over (or well into their run) before I watch so I can see all or most of it at once. But my trouble getting through book series *does* bother me, as there are several I would quite like to read. 

So while I'm over here agonizing about what to do in October when Arrow's season 7 begins airing (watch it a week at a time, knowing this might make me less likely to love it? save up two or three eps to watch in one go? wait til *gasp* the whole thing is out and risk being spoiled?), tell me about your relationship with serialized narratives. Can you watch your TV one episode at a time? How do you fare with book series?

*Of those I have seen. I'm seven eps into season 6 right now, and so far I am... perplexed. Though that is pretty much how I was feeling about season 5 at this point in the season, and I loved S5 to torturous little bits by the time it was over, so. We'll see.

Wee Narrative Knots I Can't Untangle

Most of the time when I come across something in a novel or TV show/movie that just... doesn't make sense, I crinkle my nose at it and move on. But every once in a while these little errors stick in my mind and I can't seem to leave them alone. But why is it wrong? Why didn't someone catch it? Am I *missing* something? I think of these minor errors as narrative knots, and I just can't let go of the idea that there *must* be a way to unravel them that I haven't picked up on yet. Here are some of my favorites. 

But How Does He Not Know?: Harry Potter and Arrow 

In episode 17 of the fourth season of Arrow, Oliver says that someone is "not Voldemort," and then has this exchange with other members of the team:

Thea: [makes surprised noise]

Oliver: What?

Thea: Nothing. It’s just… well, it’s shocking that you know who Voldemort is.

Oliver: Well, I mean, I’m not immune to pop culture. I read a few of the Harry Potter books.

Diggle: Really? Was gonna bet Thea that you just saw the movies.

Oliver: There were movies? 

This little scene reads a lot like ones from season one where Oliver's missing knowledge about pop culture from the five years he was stranded on the island is played for laughs. But that can't be what's going on here, since all of the Harry Potter books and the first five movies were all out before Oliver got stranded (in the last third of 2007). So maybe it's just commentary on how Oliver doesn't seem like the kind of guy to know about HP? But Oliver would have been exactly the right age when the books were first coming out to have been into  them? Even if *he* wasn't, I do not buy for a second that an American kid of Oliver's background who was thirteen in 1998 (when the first novel was released in the US) could get through the next nine years of his life without knowing who Voldemort is. And to be unaware that there are movies? What? The "there were movies?" line feels dismissive more than confused or surprised, so maybe Oliver is kind of joking, like he's a book purist? Who refuses to acknowledge the existence of the movies? Which, okaaay? Or maybe this scene is an inside joke outside the narrative? I thought maybe this was a haha dig at Tom Felton (who played Draco in the HP movies), as he joined the cast of Arrow's "sister" show The Flash, but Felton joined The Flash in the TV season after the season in which this episode appeared, so? I give up.

But He's Just Little?: Pippin's Presence in Early LotR

In chapter two of The Fellowship of the Ring, we're told that Frodo lived alone but had lots of friends, "especially among the younger hobbits... who had as children been fond of Bilbo and often in and out of Bag End. Folco Boffin and Fredegar Bolger were two of these; but his closest friends were Peregrin Took (usually called Pippin), and Merry Brandybuck (his real name was Meriadoc, but that was seldom remembered)."* This passage comes in the middle of an expository section about how Frodo spent his time between Bilbo's leaving the shire and Gandalf's return and the subsequent revelations about the ring and the beginning of Frodo's journey. We hear about Frodo's wanderings throughout this period, including how he went "tramping all over the Shire with them [Merry and Pippin]." After this description, the narrative goes on to say, "so it went on, until his forties were running out, and his fiftieth birthday was drawing near."** The progression of this description implies that Frodo was wandering with Pippin before his forties were running out. But the marker of Frodo's fiftieth birthday also tells us how much time has passed since Bilbo left (that is, seventeen years, as Frodo was thirty-three at Bilbo's party). So, it seems that Pippin has been hanging out with Frodo for something in the vicinity of seventeen years. Fine. Except. We find out later that Pippin, during the bulk of the narrative, during the attempt to get the ring to Mordor et cetera, is only twenty-nine years old. When a Gondorian tells Pippin that he looks like a child, "a lad of nine summers," Pippin responds, "Though you are not far wrong. I am still little more than a boy in the reckoning of my own people, and it will be four years yet before I 'come of age', as we say in the Shire."*** We know that hobbits come of age at thirty-three****, so Pippin must be twenty-nine (33 minus 4). If he is "little more than a boy" at twenty-nine, he must absolutely have been a child at twelve, the age he would have been seventeen years earlier, when he was, apparently, "tramping all over the Shire" with Frodo. Friends "among the younger hobbits," indeed. If we grant that Tolkien is not absolutely specific about when Pippin started hanging out with Frodo, I guess we can assume that Pippin started doing so somewhere in his early or mid-twenties, which makes things make a bit more sense. But that certainly isn't the impression the description gives. It sounds like Frodo is bacheloring around, keeping company with the young relatives he likes better than his fuddy-duddy peers, for seventeen years while Gandalf is off not finding things out as quickly as one might like wizarding. But surely an eleven-year-old kid is not old enough to be a friend to an adult, not in this sense of "we take long walking holidays all around the Shire." With this age difference, it would make more sense if Frodo had adopted Pippin, as Bilbo did Frodo. But that certainly is never implied. It's tangled up, you see? And this one is particularly strange because Tolkien was notorious for niggling over exactly these kinds of details to make sure they were right.

You Can Do What Now?: Brick and His Crutch in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

In Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (the 1958 movie), Brick hurt himself and is walking with a crutch.***** His father, Big Daddy, tries to get Brick to talk about his alcoholism, and they have this exchange, during which Big Daddy takes away Brick's crutch and Brick falls:

Brick: This talk, it’s like all the others—it gets nowhere, nowhere! And it’s painful!

Big Daddy: [shoves Brick, who falls] All right, let it be painful! [takes Brick’s crutch away]

Brick: I can crawl on one foot and I can hop if I have to…

Big Daddy: If you're not careful, you're gonna crawl right out of this family.

Brick's last line, surely, is inside out? "I can hop on one foot and I can crawl if I have to" makes more sense, right? In that one doesn't crawl on one's feet? And in that hop-to-crawl would be progression toward the most desperate action within the sentence? And in that Big Daddy's next line picks up on "crawl" as if that's the last thing Brick said? But if Paul Newman got the line wrong, why didn't they do another take? Was this the best one they had (it *is* good)? And even if that was the case, they couldn't ADR the right line in? Did they not do ADR in 1958? My knowledge of film history definitely doesn't stretch to knowing that. Or maybe the line in the movie *is* correct? To demonstrate how distraught Brick is? I dunno. Every time I see this excellent, excellent film, this little curiosity tosses me out of it for a moment.

So those are my favorite narrative knots I'd love to untangle. What are yours? And do you see what I don't that might explain any of mine? 

*p. 41 of this edition of FotR

**p. 42

***p. 746 of this edition of RotK

****p. 21

*****This is a gross oversimplification of what's going on in this scene. If you've never seen this movie, do yourself a favor and go watch it. It's amazing.

Recommending Favorite Books to Favorite TV Characters

Here's a fun little game I like to play sometimes: which of my favorite books would I recommend to my favorite fictional characters? In this iteration, I'm imagining what I would suggest to some of my favorite TV characters, should I ever fall through my TV screen and have the opportunity to inflict my bookish opinions on them.

Father Brown (Father Brown): The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell

Father Brown can't leave a mystery alone and is deeply invested in both his faith and in doing what is right in order to help people. The Sparrow, in the way it weaves together questions about faith and humanity with the mystery of what happened on a Jesuit-run first contact mission to another planet, should be irresistible to him. 

John Crichton (Farscape): The Princess Bride, William Goldman

Crichton comes slowly unhinged over the course of Farscape, but never (permanently) descends fully into madness. He learns to embrace the absurdity of his situations, often with good humor, and thus he should feel right at home with the tongue-in-cheek, postmodern adventure story of The Princess Bride. 

Phryne Fisher  (Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries): Ms. Marvel, G. Willow Wilson

Phryne has no time for your prejudice, whatever its form, and she hasn't met a sticky situation she wouldn't jump into headfirst. I think she would follow the adventures of Kamala Khan and her transformation into Ms. Marvel with delight.

Hercule Poirot (Agatha Christie's Poirot): Copenhagen, Michael Frayn

Frayn's play about Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, quantum mechanics, and war is so delightfully thinky without ever losing sight of the human cost of all the questions it brings up that I think Poirot would find himself and his little grey cells, perhaps surprisingly, enraptured by it.

Oliver Queen (Arrow): The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien

So many of the big things LotR is *about* seem like they would resonate pretty strongly with Oliver and maybe, maaaaybe help him hold on to the slivers of hope he sometimes manages to find. The concept of "the long defeat," Gandalf's counsel against despair, and the Scouring of the Shire all seem like bits that would be heartbreakingly relevant to Oliver Queen.

Who are your favorite TV characters, and what would you tell them to read?

The Second One is *Definitely* a Gate to a Portal World

Well, space rats, I had a nice ol' blog post all planned out for today, but to tell you the truth it was not a little grumbly and contained more than a dash of Get Off My Lawn. And after supper I took a lovely stroll around the neighborhood with the Blonde Wonder, who spotted rabbits and braved trotting past an old armchair left for bulk collection tomorrow and "heck?"ed at a bird chirping on a wire, and I smelled the clover that grows all along the side of the road and marveled at some flowers and appreciated some golden dappled evening light. And after all that, I'm just not very grumbly anymore. So I leave you with a handful of pictures from our walk and wish you peace.

Maybe I'll share the cane-shakey post another time, but for now I give you a semi-rural southeast Virginia evening in June:

Fun Ways I've Seen Authors Interact with Readers

I've been to a lot of author events, readings and signings and the like, and they can be a fun, inspiring way to interact with favorite authors. I recently saw Madeline Miller give a reading and short talk and got to meet her briefly while she signed my copy of Circe. It was a lovely evening, and it got me thinking about other ways I've seen authors interacting with readers and fans. Here are a few that never fail to make me smile. 

Patreon Rewards
I see more and more authors starting Patreons so fans can support their work monetarily if they like, and while my feelings about that as a thing that published authors have to do are complicated, the support flowing toward the author and the engagement of the author with fans this allows warms my heart a bit, NGL. And many authors get nicely into the spirit of things, providing exciting and fun rewards for their Patreon supportors, like book swag and exclusive content like short stories in the world of their books. 

Engaging on Tumblr
A fair few authors post on Tumblr, but what I love is to see an author with an open ask box who periodically picks some questions to answer. This could be such a chore, and I can certainly see why an author might just keep that ask box closed even if they maintain a presence on the site, so it feels real nice to see authors thoughtfully answering reader questions and engaging with them. Whenever I see a fan tell an author how much they love their work and then the author is all genuine and pleased in response, it gets me right *there,* ya know? Two authors I know of who do this are Neil Gaiman and Diane Duane, should you want to check them out.


Signing Airport Bookstore Stock
This is perhaps my favorite of all the ways I've seen authors engage with fans, probably because it carries with it such potential for genuine surprise and delight for a lucky fan. I've never come across a signed book in an airport bookstore, but several of the authors I follow on Twitter frequently mention that they've signed all the copies of their latest book in the shop in Terminal Whichever at Such-and-Such Airport. And it makes me grin when I see those tweets. Some fan might pick up a book idly and have that little moment of "Oh!" when they see it's signed. Or! Imagine hanging out at your gate scrolling Twitter and seeing that one of your favorites has just finished signing copies in the very airport in which you sit! Such fun.

How do you see authors engaging with fans that hits you in the warm fuzzies?

Favorite Reads by Publication Year

In the back half of last year, it seems everyone I knew on LibraryThing was compiling a list of their favorite books published from each year of their life. I avoided making my own for a while, not because I disliked the idea (I love lists) but because I thought it would take a lot of doing. But eventually the excitement of putting together such a list was too much for me to resist, and I spent a delightful afternoon pouring over publication lists by year and marking out possibilities for each year of my life. The resulting list is below, with links to my reviews of those books where I have a review online. (Be aware that some of those reviews might be spoilery, though most of them probably indicate as such near the beginning of the review itself. The reviews are also presented "as is"--some of them are over ten years old, and I'm sure there are errors and bits I would do differently now. They form a snapshot of my life in the same way the list itself does, I suppose.) 

I intend to keep this list updated as the years continue to pass, perhaps revising some of the earlier years as I read more backlist. It's a fun way to envision a life. 

Are any of your favorites here? Which books would you choose?

1981—Early Autumn

1982—Howliday Inn

1983—A Solitary Blue

1984—Star Trek: The Vulcan Academy Murders

1985—Lonesome Dove

1986—A Murder for Her Majesty

1987—Calvin and Hobbes

1988—Matilda

1989—Number the Stars

1990—Jurassic Park

1991—Heir to the Empire

1992—Textual Poachers: Television Fans and ParticipatoryCulture

1993—Trainspotting

1994—The Chamber

1995—The Courtship of Princess Leia

1996—The Sparrow

1997—Moab Is My Washpot

1998—About a Boy

1999—The Perks of Being a Wallflower

2000—J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century

2001—Atonement

2002—The Midwife: A Memoir of Joy, Birth, and Hard Times

2003—The Namesake

2004—Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell

2005—Twilight

2006—The Thirteenth Tale

2007—Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

2008—Melusine

2009—1Q84

2010—Annabel

2011—The Song of Achilles

2012—Mrs Queen Takes the Train

2013—Fangirl

2014—Yes, Please!

2015—For Real

2016—The Nix

2017—The Tea Dragon Society

2018—All Out