Inspired by the Best and the Worst

photo by Jason Michael

I started reading Brandon Sanderson's new novella, The Emperor's Soul, today. I'm only a few pages in, but already I'm inspired. What if the little signature stamps that the Japanese and Chinese put on everything had magical properties? From that simple premise, Sanderson has built a rich fantasy world, a complete magic system, and a compelling story.

Stories like this make me start looking at the world in a new way. Ideas start fermenting in my head and I can't wait to write them down. This is what the best books and the best authors can do.

However, I am also inspired by the worst books I've read. One I often think back on is James Patterson's Kiss the Girls. It was so terrible that I threw it away after finishing it (Of course I finished it! It was a mystery and I had to know whodunit.). I couldn't in good conscience inflict that book on anyone else by giving it away. His debut novel was a steaming pile of poorly-edited crap, and yet it got made into a big-budget movie and Patterson remains one of the best-selling authors of our time. I don't know whether the rest of his books are any good because I've never been able to bring myself to read one, but if he can start out that badly and end up where he is, there's hope for me, too.

Why I Didn't Get The Catcher in the Rye

My sophomore year in high school, I read The Catcher in the Rye. I considered it just another slightly dull Great Work of Literature that American high schoolers were required to read in order to be considered properly educated. All I took from it was that Holden Caulfield had gray hair and an incomprehensible relationship with his landlady, and that the title of the book was too subtly meaningful to make sense to me.

illustration by Rakka

I checked off that box and moved on. Years later, I heard peers of mine mention how inspirational Catcher was to them as teenagers. "Did they read the same book I did?" I wondered. I heard people praise Caulfield's disdain for "phonies" and admire his cavalier attitude toward authority and refusal to do what was expected of him. None of that came across when I read the book. I just saw a narrative of an odd man doing random things. The characters and setting had absolutely nothing in common with me or my life.

At fifteen years old, I was an avid reader. (Still am, in fact.) My favorite book at the time was Watership Down by Richard Adams, but I also tore through V.C. Andrews' entire pre-mortem oeuvre, anything by Ray Bradbury, and Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series. These books are all fantasy or have fantastical elements, but they spoke to my reality. True, I am not a rabbit or an orphan; I never fought evil fascist overlords or rode a dragon. But in those books, despite the superficial differences between their characters and settings and my ordinary suburban life, I found a lot of common ground. I wasn't struggling with authority, but I was struggling with emotions. I didn't need to be told it was all right to rebel - I already felt like a quirky outsider, and I needed to hear that there was strength in being unique. I didn't want to drink, smoke, or have sex, and I didn't really fit in with all the kids who were into that sort of thing. I just wanted to find my compadres, my friends, the people who knew me and loved me for who I was.

One's experience with a book is colored by one's experiences in life. When I read The Catcher in the Rye, I have to suppose I was in a very different place than the kids who found it meaningful. For that reason, I don't think the fact that it left me cold makes me an ignoramus, any more than it makes J. D. Salinger any less of a great author.

The Books I Can't Part With

The site Lovely Listing features a bookcase of the day, and today's is titled "Limited Selection."

The site asked, "If you could only choose a couple dozen books to keep, what would be at the top of your list?"

Faced with having to pare down my large collection, my first inclination is to keep the books that mean the most to me. That is, the physical books which hold some special meaning and can't, for me, be replaced by an ebook or a library copy.

• My 3 old Bibles
• My 1975 copy of Sybil
• King's Highway, the book I did the cover art for
• Hind's Feet on High Places

The next group of books I'd keep would be the ones that need the printed page and just don't work as well electronically.

• Art books filled with prints and etchings
• How-to books with lots of pictures and diagrams

Finally, I'd have to keep all the rare and out-of-print books.

• Old science fiction anthologies
• Books from my and my husband's childhood (Never Steal a Magic Cat, McBroom Tells a Lie, The Pop-Up Book of Star Wars)
• And probably many more

It's a good thing I do have more space than the little bookshelf in the picture, because I don't think everything I'd want to keep would fit there. But making this list has helped me think of a lot of books I can easily get rid of.

And by "get rid of" I mean "take to the used book store," where I can turn them in toward credit on more books!