The real world can be a difficult place to live. As we navigate the world around us, we encounter hardship, sorrow, fear, uncertainty, and conflict, sometimes all at once. Even more overwhelming is the feeling of isolation that often accompanies such complex experiences. We don't know who to turn to, who to talk to that might possibly understand.
And truly, in the darkest moments of our lives, there may be nobody in our circles who ever could understand what we are experiencing. Though our loved ones express their heartfelt sympathy, they lack the intimacy that can only be borne of experience similar to ours. Unfamiliar with our heartache, they do not always know how to guide us forward. Our stories are simply too complicated.
At the times when life seems like nothing more than a series of cruel, disjointed vignettes, we often turn from the real world toward the worlds within books. Within the pages of good fiction, we see the human experience captured in all its splintered glory. Fiction shapes those vignettes into a cohesive narrative with structure and motion and purpose. In books, we come to see that conflict, pain, and even the tedium of exposition, the moments in life where nothing seems to be happening, have a place in the story; without them, in fact, there would be no story at all. And when at last the story resolves, we feel the possibility of joy ahead in our own lives. Rather than facilitating our permanent escape into fantasy, fiction can empower us to live well within our own stories.
Thanks to my dear parents, who ensured that I and my three brothers grew up surrounded by books, I got to befriend many wonderful characters in my childhood, everyone from Anne of Green Gables to Encyclopedia Brown to the Pevensie children. Although I have come to love nonfiction as well [check out some of my favorite nonfiction books in Part One of this post], fiction will always be my first love. Of the countless stories I have read in my life thus far, these are some of the ones that have been most influential in shaping my story.
I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew, Dr. Seuss
It's a true shame that not every child could grow up with my father reading this little-known Seuss classic complete with all the voices. Like all Seuss's best books, the inventive setting and outlandish language of this story speak to a broader truth about the real world: we can't escape our problems, but with wit and wisdom, we are more than capable of managing them. Who needs the Cat in the Hat when you have General Genghis Kahn Schmitz and the perilous Poozers of Pompelmoose Pass?
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, Kate DiCamillo
Kate DiCamillo's books have been a part of my story ever since one of my favorite babysitters dropped The Tale of Despereaux into my lap. While I have loved all of DiCamillo's writing, Edward Tulane is the one children's book I think should be required reading for all of humanity. Although its premise seems to be a sophisticated turn on the plot of Toy Story (a sentient toy rabbit in the possession of a doting child), The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane is a poignant portrayal of what happens to a heart that has closed itself off to love and hope. While I enjoyed this story as a child, I didn't fully appreciate its power until, at one of the darkest times of my life, a boy sat down with me on the floor of Barnes & Noble and read it aloud to me. There I saw myself reflected in Edward's refusal to love freely and realized that isolating myself from other people could never protect me. Vulnerability, though uncomfortable and even terrifying at times, allows us to connect with the people around us. As for that boy? Reader, I married him.
Our Town, Thornton Wilder
On the surface, this 1938 play seems like it should be boring. Its characters are small-town folks at the turn of the 20th century who do nothing more exciting than get married and die. But that's precisely the reason it's still popular--most of the people watching or reading it aren't much more exciting than its main characters, George Gibbs and Emily Webb. They too are ordinary people living simple lives in humble places. This understated drama celebrates both the ordinary and the universal, challenging its audience to "realize life while they live it, every, every minute." I'm not a crier when it comes to books, movies, or much of anything other than my own existential crises, but this story wrecks me every time.
e.e. cummings: Complete Poems 1904-1962, e.e. cummings
I had no business reading the complete works of e.e. cummings as a fifteen-year-old, but when you're fifteen and somebody introduces you to "i carry your heart," you're going to read more. As I read and annotated the battered secondhand copy of this anthology my mom gave me, I saw poetry as I had never seen it before, poetry that was wild and passionate and playful and, at times, utterly bizarre. To someone who disdained free verse and incorrect grammar, cummings's poetry was a revelation of what poetry can be. While some of it is kind of gross and some of it is unintelligibly weird, e.e. cummings's body of work as a whole is truly a wonder.
The Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling
I got lucky: I didn't get into Harry Potter until the summer of 2007, which means that I had to wait only a couple of weeks to read Book 7. From that summer until the summer before my senior year of high school, I reread the series every year. Each time I revisit them, I am stunned anew at the depth and wonder of J.K. Rowling's wizarding world. The series champions the supremacy of choice, the beauty of sacrificial love, and the possibility of redemption in a manner unparalleled by any other endeavor of contemporary fiction. I can't wait to have children solely because I know my husband and I are going to have the time of our lives raising the next generation of Potterheads.
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
Unless you want to get sucked into a three-hour conversation, avoid bringing up TKaM in my company. Having devoted over a year of my life studying Harper Lee and her magnum opus, I have more than enough material for discussion and am all too happy to share it. I unabashedly love this book. It is more than just a staple of high school English curricula; it is a brilliant, funny, monumental story. It stands as a timeless reminder to stop and listen, to look at the person across the table as exactly that—a person, one with inherent dignity and worth, one who longs to be listened to and understood. It shows that ideas ought to be fought, but the people who wrongly hold those ideas ought never be casualties. It teaches that citizens should not merely talk about their values, but live by them. And above all, it reveals the sense of compassion and wonder that arises when a person truly looks at others and, finally, sees them.
