Growing up, books were my friends. I treasured each and everyone I received as a Christmas or birthday gift. I still feel that way about books and will always recommend them as the perfect gift. With a really good book, the gift keeps on giving in our reflections about what we have read, our decisions to reread and our recommendations of it to others.
After my daughter-in-law asked me to name my five favorite books, my husband asked me why I had not named the Bible. He questioned that omission because religion was my college major. I told him that the Bible is The Book, composed by many authors, inspired by God, not a book by one author using his/her God given talents. The Bible stands in a category of its own.
As a child, I attended Sunday school and Church regularly. My junior and senior years, I studied the Old and New Testaments as textbooks at my church for high school credit issued by The Dallas Independent School System. We spent one year studying the Old Testament; one, the New.
I read through the entire Bible, Revised Standard Version, as assignments during my freshman year at Southern Methodist University. While we studied specific Biblical stories, history, culture, times in class, professors assigned so many chapters in the Bible each day so that we would read the entire Old Testament fall semester and the entire New Testament, in the spring. True it was challenging, but with class instruction, homework took on a whole new meaning.
A number of years later after my grandmother, at age 75, moved into an apartment to live alone for the first time in her life, she decided to read her Bible, The Living Bible translation, page by page, day by day. She completed her self imposed challenge in a little over a year. But, she was disappointed. “I don’t understand the Bible any better than I did before I started.”
She didn’t have any commentaries to assist her; and at the time, she lived in Dallas, TX; I, Jesup, GA. We corresponded by postal mail. If we had still lived in the same city, I would have discussed her readings with her.
Because of differences in language, multiple translations, history, culture and the times, reading the Bible straight through is not an easy task for any one. But, turning to specific scripture for inspiration, insight, help, comfort, even instruction still proved invaluable to my grandmother to the end of her days as it does for countless other Christians.
While I have added her well worn Bible to my collection of various translations, she never recommended that anyone read The Bible like one would read a book. Her experience proved a valuable lesson to me. We all need assistance in utilizing The Bible to its fullest extent. Ask me about my “favorite” verses, those which direct my conscience, actions, prayers. I can name them. Ask all Christians, they, too, have their favorites, the lines that speak to them. As to translations, I still prefer, to quote most times from The King James Version, because of the beauty of its language; but for study, I turn more often these days to The Message.
As I’ve contemplated the questions asked me about my original choices, ( Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, Maeve Binchy’s The Lilac Bus, John Knowles A Separate Peace, Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree, Brother Lawrence The Practice of the Presence of God, Randy Pausch’s The Last Lecture - turned out to be six, not five) I have been reminded of so many more “favorite” books. My sister-in-law reminded me of Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees and my daughter, Rosamunde Pilcher’s The Shell Seekers. A letter to the editor, pointed out the acclaimed John Adams by David McCullough.
How could I possibly forget Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, which I’ve always claimed would be “The Great American Novel” if it had been written in novel format instead of as a script for stage performance? I studied the play in college, but it was in teaching it during my first year in the classroom that these lines grabbed my attention. EMILY: "Does anyone ever realize life while they live it...every, every minute?" STAGE MANAGER: "No. Saints and poets maybe...they do some.
As my students, even with one atop a ladder he had brought to class, read those lines aloud, I knew I would never be a saint nor a poet, but I could pay attention to the events, ideas, conversations around me most of the time. That realization has made a difference in my life. Also along the same lines, I realized that in reading a selection multiple times, we can often see anew.
I also add to my ever growing list of favorites, A Touch of Wonder by Georgia author Arthur Gordon. This Savannah native, who frequently wrote about life on the East Coast, worked for years with Guideposts. His essays in this little volume not only touched me, but also I used several in teaching specific skills with my classes.
Finally, I must name I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou. Prior to the addition of this text to my ninth grade honors curriculum, a number of students each year questioned some of the events in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Because both books are set during the Jim Crow era, Angelou’s nonfictional memoir gives credence to Lee’s fiction. This memoir, both on the state’s list of recommended books and on several lists of suggested books to read prior to entering college, proved the ideal transition between The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank and To Kill a Mockingbird.
Also, this text was my only experience in dealing directly with people who wanted to ban a book. I am still grateful to the many who stood with me to support the selection of this classic for my classroom.
I cannot discuss this topic without recalling my chance encounter with the book’s author, Maya Angelou, the year I retired from the classroom. As we were seated in a Mexican Restaurant in San Antonio, TX, my husband asked me if the person at the next table was who he thought she was? When she spoke in Spanish to the waiter, I knew he was right. There was an unmistakeable resonance to her voice. Upon leaving, she, with an impressive black cane topped with a silver bird’s head handle, stopped at our table and chatted with us like we were old friends. I told her that I had read all of her books and had taught I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. She nodded and ended with, “Have a good day.” She didn’t stop at any other table. After she was gone, all of the other patrons began to ask who she was.
Whenever we pick up a book to read, we never know where it will take us, what we will learn, how it will change our views or whom we will meet.
British author Angela Carter adds, “Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms.”
2017
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