4. I Capture the Castle
A few years ago I was settling down to watch a movie and saw a preview of the film, I Capture the Castle. The storyline looked familiar and after I looked it up I realized I read the book when I was younger. After I saw the movie I purchased a used copy of the book, which I have not reread yet. I did, however, find mention of reading it for the first time in my journal (which I transcribed and posted online):
April 4, 1973
WednesdayI (pronoun) am (verb) in the middle (preposition) of a very good book. It is called I Capture the Castle. It is a girl writing in her journal about growing up. They are a poor family (I know this is full of bad grammar) and make what they can of their lives. They live in the ruins of an old castle and life becomes quite interesting for them.
I have a great idea for a story! But I’m not telling about it ’til I write it.
April 11, 1973
WednesdayI am writing this in the bathtub. The bathtub is one of the most relaxing places I know and when I am relaxed I can write. Well, sometimes when I am relaxed I can write. I should write a lot but I am in an awkward position and am not able to relax too much.
If you’ve read the book you know that it starts out with the narrator writing in the kitchen sink, thus my experiment with writing in the bathtub.
“I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. That is, my feet are in it; the rest of me is on the draining board which I have padded with our dog’s blanket and the tea cosy. I can’t say I am really comfortable, and there is a depressing smell of carbolic soap, but this is the only part of the kitchen where there is any daylight left. And I have found that sitting in a place you have never sat before can be inspiring—”
I do know that I chose the book, I Capture the Castle because it was written by Dodie Smith — the author of 101 Dalmatians which I read before I saw the animated Disney version. Maybe I’ll reread the book sometime and come back to this post to discuss what the book was actually about — rather than my memories of reading it — but maybe I’ll just keep this the way it is. I do recommend the book though — I remember loving it.
3. Five Smooth Stones
You know how in some online profiles you can list your favorite this or that? When it gets to books, I often have trouble listing my favorites. I don’t want to sound uneducated, so I leave out anything by Stephen King (although I think he’s a damn good writer). I usually just list authors (Neil Gaiman, John Irving) and rarely list individual books. At the book fair one year, when we had the opportunity to list the book that most influenced us or something like that, Clare reminded me how much I liked In Cold Blood. She was right, I did like it, but it was not the book that influenced me most.
The serious (as opposed to fantasy) book that probably changed the way I saw the world was a book that, as far as I know, not a lot of people have ever heard of. I think my mom read it and suggested I read it (hmm, I guess she did read when I was at home). The book was Five Smooth Stones by Ann Fairbairn and was about an interracial couple in the 1960′s. It was the first time I’d read anything about race. The first time I read about the civil rights movement. The first time I read a book about interracial marriage.
I don’t remember a lot about the story. A white woman (whose name escapes me now) meets David, an African-American med student from New Orleans. They fall in love and marry. They are both involved, I believe, in the civil rights movement. Bad things happen. Lots of bad things — the book is very long.
One thing about the book I do remember is David’s father or grandfather. I must have pictured him or Ms Fairbairn must have described him so well, he became alive to me and whenever I think about him forget he was part of a book, and think I actually knew him.
After reading this book I spent several years being ashamed of being white. While that’s not necessarily a good way to live — being ashamed of the skin you’re wearing — it certainly changed the way I looked at race relations in the United States. It made me a lot more critical of my fellow white US citizens and made me look at my own prejudices and figure out ways to change.
So I suppose Five Smooth Stones was a sort of epiphany or at least a turning point in my life. I don’t know if I’ll ever re-read this book — I could, I have at least two copies of it — but it will stand as one of the most important books I’ve ever read.
2. Billy Brown the Babysitter
I remember the very first book I ever read. I remember the day I read it and I remember the feeling of surprise that I was reading.
The book was a “Wonder Book Easy Reader” and part of a series of “Billy Brown” books. I never read any of the other Billy Brown books, but did read Billy Brown the Babysitter over and over. It was written by Tamara Kitt and illustrated by Rosalind Welcher (who, according to Wikipedia, was one of the pioneer Studio Card artists).
My parents may have made mistakes in raising me — all parents do — but one thing they did right was encouraging reading and providing me with a lot of reading material. Neither of my parents were readers, at least as far as I could tell when I lived at home. My mom has since become an avid reader, but I do not remember her reading for pleasure when I was a child — although she did read self-help books when I was in my teens.
I don’t remember the storyline of Billy Brown the Babysitter, but it was probably about the misadventures of a couple of kids while looking after a baby — perhaps their younger sibling, if the cover is to be believed.
That book began for me a love-affair with the written word and while any easy reader book might have been the first book I read, it happened to be this one by Tamara Kitt.
Thanks Ms Kitt, where ever you are. You helped start my life-long passion for reading.
1. The Help
I considered starting with the first book I ever read, but decided to start with the most recent book I’ve read what with my old lady brain and all I might forget more recent things.
My neighborhood book group chose The Help by Kathryn Stockett over several less popular (based on the media’s best seller lists) books. For reasons I don’t recall or understand I was reluctant to read this book. Perhaps it was too high up on the best selling lists. Perhaps I equated it with the kinds of books written by Nicholas Sparks or Mitch Albom – saccharine-y pablum, fine for beach reading, but not what I really wanted to read and discuss with some of the smartest people I know.
Well, I was wrong about the saccharine part. And the pablum. The Help delves into a part of US history that many people would rather pretend never happened. The book is supposed to tell the story of being an African American maid in Mississippi in the early 1960′s. I say supposed to tell because it was written by a white woman who was waited on African American maids, probably in the 1970′s or later (Ms Stockett looks like she’s in her 30′s). Even the author wonders if she’s qualified to write about the subject:
I don’t presume to think that I know what it really felt like to be a black woman in Mississippi, especially the 1960′s. I don’t think it is something any white woman, on the other end of a black woman’s paycheck, could ever truly understand. But trying to understand is vital to our humanity.
– Katherine Stockett, The Help, In Her Own Words
I wish I’d read that before I read the book, because I kept looking at her photograph and thinking, how does she know what Minny is thinking? How does she know that Aibileen would do this or that? Did she interview African American women that were maids in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960′s?
That said, I found The Help to be a decent read. There were times I couldn’t put it down and it was always easy to pick up again. I was pulled into the lives of the characters — most of whom were well developed. The writing style was easy to read, although I was a little disturbed that the author chose to give the African American maids dialects, when the white women had none. I figured she did it so we could distinguish who was talking without having to look at the section title again. (The book is told from the points of view of 3 characters — Minny, a maid with a temper, several kids and an abusive drunk for a husband; Aibileen, an older maid who recently lost her only son in an accident; and Skeeter, a white college-educated daughter of a plantation owner and and wanna-be author.)
I’d recommend the book as long as you keep in mind you are reading a work of fiction.
