Ten Books that Stick with You

This is one of those Facebook memes that I think will make a good blog entry, so feel free to do your own spin in your own space. But Tria tagged me for this one where you list ten books that stick with you. All immediately came to mind. It took no effort to think of this list at all, which shows how each of these has truly stuck with me over the years.

1. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. Though I am not ranking this list, this one has to be first. It has literally followed me for years. I read it the day I graduated from high school. Yeah, I did. I woke up that morning, picked this up, and read it from start to finish. That was not perhaps the smartest move, to read a book about someone who has a seemingly bright future but who then falls apart. But I did read it fast since there was an instant connection. I wrote two papers on it in college, at least. I taught it, and I led a discussion of it at local libraries, one last year and one last month. I couldn't get away from this book if I tried, and I'm not trying.

2. Beloved by Toni Morrison. I read this in college and loved it so much that I was afraid to read it again and find out that I was wrong about it. But when I taught it a few years later, I found out that I clearly wasn't wrong. In arguments about what is the great American novel, I always say that this is my choice. It's the one, in so many senses of the word.

3. Angels in America (Part One) by Tony Kushner. I read this in grad school and chose to teach it the next year. What I have loved about it ever since is that I find it so easy to teach. There is so much in the text and so many ways to go at it. When I decided to teach it again years after last teaching it, I went to the file I had for it and found a ton of notes and articles and ideas. I love talking about this one.

4. Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place by Terry Tempest Williams. People always say that they can never choose just one favorite book, but I can. This one. She does an amazing job of weaving together the stories of her mother's death and the destruction caused by the rising of the Greast Salt Lake. This book is about intense, incredible pain, but it has such a tone of hope and joy. I love how this book makes me feel. I haven't read it since my mother died, and I'm thinking I should.

5. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction by Michel Foucault. I once quoted Foucault in an article, and one of the reviewers said that no one should ever quote Foucault because no one understands him. Whatever. I just know that this book really spoke to me and was one of the few texts to get me excited about critical theory (an excitement that has not lasted). At the end, when he writes, "Sex is worth dying for," I get chills. So much richness.

6. Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson. This book has come to me in my life at two points when I was in despearate need to process the pains and pleasures of being in love. Both times, I read it in one fell swoop and just let me feel everything it made me feel. It's such a sensual text.

7. In Memory of Angel Clare by Christopher Bram. I found this in a used bookstore in Houston about six months after Blane died. I read the back cover, which described a young man who had lost his older lover to AIDS and how the older lover's friends and families disliked the younger man, which made him feel more even more alone. That was my exact story in a nutshell. I bought it, went back to my apartment, and crawled into bed for the day to read it. Bram is more known for Father of Frankenstein, which became the film Gods and Monsters, but this out-of-print novel is the one that means the most to me.

8. The Dead and the Living by Sharon Olds. The summer after graduating high school and before starting college was a difficult one. But it was the events of that summer that led me to Sharon Olds. For the next few years, I would study and practice the craft of poetry, and the narrative, experiential poems of Olds always spoke to me more than the poetry of anyone else (including Plath). This was the first one, and it contains some of the work, like "My Father's Breasts," that still speaks to me the most.

9. Dry by Augusten Burroughs. I read Running with Scissors because I thought I should, and I liked a lot of it, but it also bugged me because he wanted to use humor to discuss something so serious. He wanted to do what David Sedaris did, but in Dry, which came out right after I read Scissors, he didn't try to be funny. He just told an incredibly touching story of loss and suffering. And I knew I'd read everything he ever wrote after it.

10. Between the Lines: Relating Composition Theory and Literary Theory by John Schilb. This is not his most famous book. In fact, it's out of print. But when I read it my last semester of coursework, I felt like I found the book that brought all of my previous thinking about the career I was about to enter together. I was amazed at how he wove all of English studies together in a way that argued for its place in a democratic education. I quoted form it heavily in my dissertation and think of it often.

The One-Word Meme

USING ONLY ONE WORD! It's not as easy as you might think! Copy and change the answers to suit you and pass it on. It's really hard to only use one word answers.

1. Where is your cell phone? desk
2. Your significant other? kind
3. Your hair? wild
4. Your mother? dead
5. Your father? alive
6. Your favorite thing? television
7. Your dream last night? recurring
8. Your favorite drink? chai
9. Your dream/goal? serenity
10. What room you are in? living
11. Your hobby? photography
12. Your fear? ordinariness
13. Regrets? inevitable
14. Where were you last night? Dakota
16. Muffins? yes
17. Wish list item? Japan
18. Where you grew up? isolated
19. Last thing you did? blogged
20. What are you wearing? green
21. Your TV? on
22. Your pets? dead
23. Friends? special
24. Your life? unstructured
25. Your mood? calm
26. Missing someone? Mama
27. Car? Saturn
28. Something you're not wearing? shoes
29. Your favorite store? Borders
30. Your favorite color? red
33. When is the last time you laughed? constantly
34. Last time you cried? regularly
35. Who will resend this? irrelevant
36. One place that you go to over and over? NYC
37. One person who emails me regularly? Tria
38. My favorite place to eat? Italian
39. Why you participated in this survey? self-absorption
40. What are you doing tonight? vegging

Twenty-Five Random Things About Me

Have you heard of the twenty-five random things meme on Facebook? Yeah, right, you somehow missed it. Well, I've been tagged for it numerous times and am finally sitting down and getting this done. I'm not posting the directions or tagging anyone except the people who tagged me so they can know that I did it. I'm a geek who loves readings these things, which is why I'm posting it on my blog, too.

1. Da Man and I see a movie every Friday night. We park in the same spot in the parking lot and sit in the same seats in the whatever theatre we're in.

2. I refer to my husband as "Da Man" because he prefers to remain anonymous online. It's why he's not on Facebook even though numerous people have tried to get him to join.

3. I played trombone in the school band from sixth to ninth grades. I would have stayed, but I hated marching band, and we had no separate symphonic band like larger schools did.

4. I doubt we'll ever get another dog because losing the last one was so hard.

5. In 1990, I won tickets on the radio to see Psychedelic Furs; a week later, I won tickets from the same station to see Tears for Fears but was told I couldn't win more than once a month, so my mother got on the phone and was named the official winner. She gave them to me, though.

6. I develop strange crushes on guys in TV commercials, which basically means watching the commercial each time it's on. Right now, one of those guys is the father in the blue shirt in the Wal-Mart commercial where the family sings "We Will Rock You."

7. I love TV shows that feature voiceovers from major characters: Sex and the City, Grey's Anatomy, Gossip Girl, My So-Called Life.

8. You know that game where you figure out your porn name based on the name of your first pet followed by the name of the street you grew up on? That makes me Swappy Central.

9. According to the BMI, I am obese, but I have a real ambivalence about my weight. I've always dated men a bit older and larger than I am, and I think I look better now than I ever have before. I'm trying to base my attitudes about health on my actions and not on the number on a scale.

10. I tend to annoy people with my politics because they are too radical for some and too bourgeois for others. I've been told I'm "part of the problem" for years by conservatives, liberals, and libertarians alike.

11. I am vast; I contain multitudes.

12. I do not believe in any monotheistic religion because I can't imagine supporting a particular belief system and, thus, implying that those who do not practice it are wrong about their conception of god. I am not an atheist, however.

13. The guiding spiritual force in my life is a belief in synchronicity. I believe that things happen for a reason and that the universe sends us messages all the time.

14. I would rather take public transportation than drive, something I cannot easily do in my part of Connecticut.

15. My last year in Houston, I had a red Suzuki moped that I used to get everywhere when I thought the bus wouldn't be the best choice. People I knew would often come into stores I was in and say, "I knew you were in here because I saw the moped!"

16. Houston is still one of my favorite cities, surpassed only by Chicago. London, England, and St. Petersburg, Russia are also on the list. I kinda want to put San Francisco on the list, but something stops me.

17. I am a grammar nerd, even though much of my online writing is full of mistakes since I rarely ready anything I post anywhere twice.

18. I have never played any sport, not little league or any school team. I don't say that to brag. In fact, I wish I'd played tennis in high school since the coach encouraged me to try out for the team after watching me play in PE.

19. My greatest fear in life is that I'll wake up one day and be ordinary. I'm constantly being told that no one can actually imagine such a thing happening.

20. I was obsessed with Bret Easton Ellis until her wrote American Psycho, and then I got over it. I even had a binder in high school filled with all the book reviews and interviews I could find.

21. When I look at iTunes, I see that most of my music comes from Depeche Mode, Pet Shop Boys, Madonna, Dido, Alanis Morissette, and Suzanne Vega.

22. I seriously considered becoming a Marine Biologist.

23. In seventh grade, I won first place in the junior divison for photography at the county fair. Sometimes, I wish I'd pusued that more, which is why I'm trying to do more with photography now.

24. My first partner died in July 1992. Sometimes, I feel guilty for having seemingly moved on from him to someone else so easily, even though it wasn't.

25. I doubt I've earned my last college degree.