Seaworthy Books

"Don't let me get sappy on you, but when you get right down to it, every collection of letters is a magic spell, even if it's a moronic proclamation by the Emperor. Words have their impact, girl. . . . I may not know how to fly but I know how to read, and that's almost the same thing."
~ Gregory Maguire, from Out of Oz

Are you a Reader? As in: I can't imagine my life without books.

Have you ever tried to count how many books you've read in your lifetime? How about in the last year?

That's strictly an I'm-curious question. Being a Reader has nothing to do with how many books you read or even what books you read. It's more about how you see yourself.

A friend once posed this question:

If you were sailing on a yacht, say for a year or so, and you had only the shelf over your bed to hold books, which books would be on that shelf?

I love this question, and here's why: I think I'd pack it with books that I wouldn't normally pick up and read, like The Complete Works of Shakespeare and maybe a big fat Norton Anthology. It reminds me of the places we take an out-of-town visitor that we wouldn't usually go to, even though we live close. After I moved to Colorado, I took a friend to California to see some of the sights, and we went to the Mystery Spot just outside of Santa Cruz. I lived in that area most of my life, spent a year living in Santa Cruz, and never went to the Mystery Spot.

Same with books: Shakespeare and more than one Norton Anthology are on my shelf. I can read them anytime I want. Instead I go to the library or download a book to my Kindle or buy one on sale to read. But if I'm going to read on the open sea (in between bouts of throwing up over the yardarm - or whatever), I need variety. I want to be able to reread, study, get inspired, ponder, wonder, make notes in the margins. And most of all: I wouldn't want to run out of something to read. Is that a Reader's nightmare or what?!

I'm curious: What books would be on your little shelf over your narrow bed in a cabin (in a cavern, excavating for a mine) of a small ship (is a yacht a ship?) on the ocean for a year? Here are mine - in order of importance - at least for today:

• The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
• The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present (ed: Phillip Lopate)
• The Norton Anthology of [fill in the blank]
• Some anthology of modern poetry
• The I Ching
• The Tao Te Ching
  
• The Holy Bible (probably - maybe)

And tomorrow? Hmmm . . . .

 

 

 

Comments

[Laurie]

Wow, how small is that shelf? Or how big?!
This is a hard one, mostly because, at some point I'd have to begin rereading and if a book wasn't good the first time, I'm not sure if I'd want to read it a second time... hum. OK, I know that I would have The Blue Place by Nicola Griffith. And maybe Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldman. So of course then I'd have to have an empty book to write in as well! The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, an AA staple that I like way better than the "Big Book". Gosh, this is not apparently something I can come up with on 1 and a half cups of coffee! :-) Love you my friend. So glad you're blogging!
Laurie

[Robin Song]

Hey Girlfriend,
I would take my Nook and make sure there is a solar energy charger on deck. Then I would buy a gift card with lots of $$ on it so I could buy whatever is interesting to me at the time. We are in the information age after all!

For the shelf I would have my 2 volumn Oxford English Dictionary and a good thesauris and lots of empty journals. Oh, and for laughs (and a few tears) I would have copies of all the letters we have written to each other.

Love you!
rs

[wisewebwoman]

Gosh Verna I do tally books I've read in the year on the left side of my blog, being doing it for years now....average about 65/year.
My list, very partial would be:
And Ladies of the Club (read twice already, still love and it is a BIG book.)
Philip Larkin - any of his poetry anthologies.
Some of my favourite thriller authors and I'll pretend I don't know the ending.
An assortment of philosophy, some Howard Zinn and Naomi Klein....how big is this shelf?
I have very good sea legs so do not anticipate being sick and what about a Kindle to simplify things greatly???
XO
WWW

[Kylie]

That's fabulous! I absolutely agree. There would have to be a few epic ponderous tomes, but then I think I'd have to include a few well-loved novels too... soul food :) Great post - thanks Verna. Kx

[Elizabeth]

I really like your list -- I'd add Doestoyevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov," Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse," Michael Ondaatje's "The English Patient," Colum McCann's "Let the Great World Spin," and some books of poetry -- Yeats, Wallace Stevens, Emily Dickinson, Mary Oliver, George Herbert, Bob Dylan.

[Elizabeth Westmark]

Just a quick off topic hello from the piney woods. Missing our back and forth and hoping the spring is beautiful there. . . Beth