It’s My Birthday, and I’ll Read If I Want To

It’s my birthday month! I will be tackling a reading project to celebrate. The New York Times is an American newspaper based in New York City, NY. It covers the usual variety of journalism such as healthcare, sports, politics, and food. It also has a section of the bestselling fiction and nonfiction books in the nation, ranked by genre and format. I came across Hawe’s List, a website that has been compiling each year’s best-selling hardcover nonfiction and fiction books (dating back to 1931). I thought, what better way to celebrate my birthday than to read books from the month and year I was born? Specifically, the week of December 1992 that I was born in.

From this list, I will be (attempting) to read 5 novels that interest me and review them accordingly. Ideally, I would like to read all of them, but there are 30 books on the list and only 1 of me. Plus, some are a part of a series, and I don’t plan on starting a project within a project! It’s going to be difficult narrowing down which books I’ll read because the majority of these do not interest me whatsoever. Here’s to new adventures!

These are the lists I will be using:

Emma

First, a confession. I didn’t read this one, so much as I listened to a dramatization created specifically for Audible (which is an awesome service, by the way – I love it). So there are probably chunks of text that I didn’t get to partake of, but knowing how long-winded Austen can be, I’m okay with that. 

Dune

I started reading this book several weeks ago as a parallel reading experiment. I’ll kick this off by saying that parallel reading is intellectually stimulating, but not necessarily the most useful for the enjoyment of either piece of literature in question. ^^;

Dune is already a classic, published in the mid-1960’s and establishing the space empire trope in all its fully developed and politically intriguing glory. Later works would take and run with that concept, but this is where it started, and OMIGOSH IT’S SO WELL DONE. 

Influential Books

I’ve written before about the great influence certain books have had on me, both presently and in the past. The Hobbit inspired my love of reading. The Harry Potter series brought me to a place of believing magic might be real, if not literally then in the important ways. Black Beauty taught me about how to treat animals and people with respect and compassion.

But today I want to talk about one that’s very near and dear to my heart, which I didn’t discover properly until I was in college. Since then, I’ve read it at least 5 times and each time I discover something new about myself and who I want to be.

Little Women.

Little Women is about the March family – Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, their mother (Marmie) and their next-door neighbor Laurie. The story started when the girls are young, and follows them into young adulthood as they learn about themselves, who they are, and what they value. Jo (Josephine) is ostensibly the author of the book as well as its main character.

Jo March is a wild, passionate, unrestrained young woman who wants desperately to be an author and experience great things and write stories that touch the hearts of her audience. She wants to be independent and strong, but she loves her family fiercely and refuses under any circumstances to give them up. She declines an offer of marriage from a boy she knows would never truly be happy with her, even though she loves him dearly, and accepts an offer from a man who has nothing to give her but love and fierce pride in who she’s become.

I want to be that woman. Bold and unafraid to chase her dreams, uncontainable and loving in a way no one can confine to a single person or a single feeling or a single family. I want to take up the mantle of the author and never put it down, even when I accept responsibilities for children or husband or home. I want to love with everything I am and can be and have. And maybe most of all, I want to remember that honesty and loyalty and generosity are never ever things to be ashamed of.

How many times have I read this book? I don’t know, but it’s one I don’t think I’ll ever be tired of. My heart is so full right now – full of this book, full of my hopes and dreams, full of feelings I can’t even begin to name – that I can’t even start to tell you what I’m thinking.

All I know is this: if there was a single fictional character I would want to be like, it would be Jo March, and I hope it’s for all the right reasons.

Another time, I might try to make a real attempt at reviewing the book as a book instead of as a life-changing narrative. Not now, though.

Happy Friday, all, and I hope you have an awesome weekend.

Unrelated, but important: the Catawampus base of operations is moving to a new website. I look forward to seeing you over there!

Exile

By request of the author (she’s a really nice gal, by the way, you ought to drop her a line through her website or social media) this week we’re taking a look at The Faarian Chronicles: Exile, by Karen Harris Tully.

When I first read the summary on the back of this book, I saw hints of the Space Empire trope first developed in Frank Herbert’s Dune and expanded on since then with Star Wars, Stargate, and Firefly (to name a few). The idea so charmed me that I also picked up a copy of Dune so I could do a little parallel reading, to see what carried over and what was changed for a more modern audience.