Everyone gets asked their favorite books - even the author's profile for blogspot asks those questions. The theory is that by knowing what books a person likes, a window into the core of the person will be thrown open. Doubtful. The book is a vessel - it is like a cigar box with characters and stories living inside. I'm indebted to every book written or read. They mark the route that led to here. So...
Even though memory can't be trusted if facts are the pursuit, I believe it was during the time of convalescence after the final surgery on my leg, I began to read books, novels. Not only did the stories transport me to times and places where I couldn't go, the pain of bones knitting where the surgeon's saw or scalpel had severed them was driven from my conscious mind. Reading became as addictive as morphine because when immersed in the lives of characters who were more real, complex and complete, than flesh and blood, pain didn't exist. So it was and continues to be.
A story transformed me into a worker for Ari Ben Canaan and to be a friend to Dov Landau. Together we gave birth to a new nation but the cruel cost to those displaced lingered as long as the exhilaration of the vote for partition. Widespread fears born in nuclear dawn and confirmed by arsenals sufficient for mutually assured destruction (MAD), Dwight Towers, Moira Davidson and I carried on a conversation extended from the pages of their story. The talk twittered around what to do when the inevitable, lethal fallout from a nuclear explosion reached the beach where we were laying.
Lots of characters from hundreds of pages shared their stories. I spoke with them in flights of thoughts that extended the written words of chapters, or worse, finished the stories of trusted friends when the words ran out at each book's end. Jack McCall and his brothers, and maybe more importantly, his friend Jordan helped me look at my actions during the Viet Nam War already punctuated by the loss of friends who went instead of me. Atticus Finch may have defended Tom Robinson against deep seeded prejudice and the prevailing trends of his time, but Scout taught every would-be father what fatherhood had to be.
Adam Dalgliesh and Arkady Renko are both detectives - and literate poets. For them life is not a puzzle to be solved but revelations about the frailty of unexamined lives. Gabriel Allon traded duty to country by avenging a horrific wrong for a life of hiding from himself because of transgressions he couldn't reconcile. His escape is restoring important works of art; what is mine? Eddie Rake made me debate the cost of doing the right thing against the risk that I might be wrong about what the right thing is. Eddie helped me see the question more clearly.
There are scores more acquaintances who walked off the pages to live in my life. I won't try to say something about them all but each one is reincarnated in the mind of every new reader. Just a word about books. Every book is unique but books you love share two important traits. When you're reading and sleep comes to overtake you, you fight to stay awake with your friends. But you close the cover, and exit the room where they must stay. You take solace in the knowledge that the door can be opened again. When the words run out there is a sense of loss and then a dawning - if there is to be "the rest of the story", it will be in the marks they have left on the pages of your life.
-- td
Even though memory can't be trusted if facts are the pursuit, I believe it was during the time of convalescence after the final surgery on my leg, I began to read books, novels. Not only did the stories transport me to times and places where I couldn't go, the pain of bones knitting where the surgeon's saw or scalpel had severed them was driven from my conscious mind. Reading became as addictive as morphine because when immersed in the lives of characters who were more real, complex and complete, than flesh and blood, pain didn't exist. So it was and continues to be.
A story transformed me into a worker for Ari Ben Canaan and to be a friend to Dov Landau. Together we gave birth to a new nation but the cruel cost to those displaced lingered as long as the exhilaration of the vote for partition. Widespread fears born in nuclear dawn and confirmed by arsenals sufficient for mutually assured destruction (MAD), Dwight Towers, Moira Davidson and I carried on a conversation extended from the pages of their story. The talk twittered around what to do when the inevitable, lethal fallout from a nuclear explosion reached the beach where we were laying.
Lots of characters from hundreds of pages shared their stories. I spoke with them in flights of thoughts that extended the written words of chapters, or worse, finished the stories of trusted friends when the words ran out at each book's end. Jack McCall and his brothers, and maybe more importantly, his friend Jordan helped me look at my actions during the Viet Nam War already punctuated by the loss of friends who went instead of me. Atticus Finch may have defended Tom Robinson against deep seeded prejudice and the prevailing trends of his time, but Scout taught every would-be father what fatherhood had to be.
Adam Dalgliesh and Arkady Renko are both detectives - and literate poets. For them life is not a puzzle to be solved but revelations about the frailty of unexamined lives. Gabriel Allon traded duty to country by avenging a horrific wrong for a life of hiding from himself because of transgressions he couldn't reconcile. His escape is restoring important works of art; what is mine? Eddie Rake made me debate the cost of doing the right thing against the risk that I might be wrong about what the right thing is. Eddie helped me see the question more clearly.
There are scores more acquaintances who walked off the pages to live in my life. I won't try to say something about them all but each one is reincarnated in the mind of every new reader. Just a word about books. Every book is unique but books you love share two important traits. When you're reading and sleep comes to overtake you, you fight to stay awake with your friends. But you close the cover, and exit the room where they must stay. You take solace in the knowledge that the door can be opened again. When the words run out there is a sense of loss and then a dawning - if there is to be "the rest of the story", it will be in the marks they have left on the pages of your life.
-- td