Sep 12 2008
Waves Books Make
I didn’t blog yesterday, half because I was busy working on my English course (begins on September 23) and half because I was reading a book for my book club, a book called Eat Cake by Jeanne Ray.
It was a very good book. Nice plot, real characters, funny, poignant, meaningful…only that is NOT the point I want to make about it. From chapter one, the book stirred a longing in me I had not felt in a long time. Suddenly, repeatedly, as I read through its pages, I longed, longed, to bake a cake.
I do like to bake…it might be the only kind of cooking I truly enjoy…but I haven’t really spent time baking in years. Only now I long to pull out the cake pans, buy myself some genuine cake flour, and make a lemon cake. Or a gingerbread cake. Or a pumpkin cake. If my husband were reading this, he’d ask for a carrot cake, with cream cheese frosting. (Did I tell you I loved cream cheese frosting?)
You see, even a simple book can create significant changes in a person. Books, for me, have been life-changing (so have movies, though not to the same extent). I attach myself to a character whose situation is like mine, and suddenly his/her solution seems like it might work for me. Like Jane Eyre, I can leave a situation when it becomes too unbearable. Like Elizabeth Bennett, I can speak my mind and hold my own opinion of myself, despite what everyone else thinks. I can make harder choices, see more clearly, improve my marriage with the right book as an example.
And it isn’t just me. One of my students, after reading Tenant of Wildfell Hall in my class, wrote in her journal that if the main character could leave a horrible marriage, she could too. I talked to her after class, only to discover that, the prior weekend, she had left her drug-dealing hubby and moved out on her own. Her mother wasn’t speaking to her, angry because of what she had done, but she felt free…freer than she had felt in a very long time.
So, what books have made waves in your own life? How have you been changed?
More to the point, how will you be changed by the books you haven’t yet read? What change in yourself might a book address?
I don’t know.
I have frequently used books and movies to escape. When I was in my own unhappy marriage, they were my assurance that good men did exist and one could find them.
Perhaps they influenced me. Whether they did or not, though, they inspire my writing. And always, always, they gave me comfort, even when I was at my ebbs.
I’m not sure, however, that’s what you’re asking.
I loved your essay … of course, I would, though
This is the sort of thing that I am interested in - both the concrete examples that you offer, and the more subtle, but still very valid, examples that Stephanie suggests…
books can give us choices, ideas, motivation, etc… of course they are important forms of entertainment as well - but their impact, I think, goes far beyond simple entertainment, whether the reader is aware or not.