Tag Archives: reading

You ever had a book fall from the heavens and drop in your lap and dang-near redefine the whole world around you?

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Ok. Maybe you’ve never experienced that.

But, what about those times when you lose count of the number of people who tell you to read a particular book (like, oh, say: Anne Lamott’s “Traveling Mercies.”)?Eventually you give up and give in and grab the book off the shelf and take it home, right? (Stopping by the cash register first, of course.)

This is exactly what I did with Anne Lamott’s “Traveling Mercies.” I entertained all those hecklers and started reading. And then, I found her–a soul-mate who talks to me with words on page. And I walked a bit taller after having chatted with her. Let it be known that I’m operating some serious self-control to only share 5 of her passages. I marked many more pages for you:

1) …music is about as physical as it gets; your essential rhythm is your heartbeat; your essential sound, the breath. We’re walking temples of noise, and when you add tender hearts to this mix, it somehow lets us meet in places we couldn’t get to any other way.

2) Silence is tough at first, like an infant is tough. I think it springs from the same place in the universe where space is made, and breath, and appreciation.

3) [on makeup] I wasn’t thinking that I looked awful and wanted to look like someone else; that is the point at which you can come dangerously close to female impersonation. I just remembered that sometimes you start with the outside and you get it right. You tend to your spirit through the body. It’s polishing the healthy young skin of that girl who was here just a moment ago, who still lives inside. It’s saying that sometimes maybe one looks a little pale and wan and wants to shine a little light on oneself. Then, when you’re in that honoring place, it’s almost like the makeup becomes a form of light, just as on those days when a little cloud cover makes you really notice the sun’s rays that come slanting through. Maybe the key is simply wry fondness for the thing you’re slapping this stuff onto, instead of a desire to disguise; so it’s not that you’re wearing a coat of paint, but a mantilla.

4) The review in the newspaper the next day was not very good. But by then I’d figured out the gift of failure, which is that it breaks through all that held breath and isometric tension about needing to look good: it’s the gift of feeling floppier.

5) God: I wish you could have some permanence, a guarantee or two, the unconditional love we all long for. “It would be such skin off your nose?” I demand of God. I never get an answer. But in the meantime I have learned that most of the time, all you have is the moment, and the imperfect love of people.

Any of these passages speak to you today?

The Book Dance.

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Drew and I have this silly ritual. And we’ve done this since, gosh, probably the first year or two of our marriage. He’s a reader. And I’m not. And he’s great at positively reinforcing things in my life. And when I decided (nearly in vain) to start reading more, he got this crazy idea that we’d dance, yes, dance, anytime either of us would finish a book. It’s a cheesy shoulder-shaking dance. Nothing special. You don’t even have to stand up for it. But it’s such fun and it’s a mini-celebration of an accomplishment that some might say is rather huge in my non-reading life.

[If I had one, I'd insert an inspirational quote from the person who coined the phrase "Celebrate Your Wins" here.]

We don’t do The Book Dance nearly as much for me as for him, because I might average oh say 4 books completed in a year. Maybe. But sometimes he’ll come out of his home office with a straight face and say “Ready?” I hardly ever know what this is in reference to until the grin cues the shoulders to start going.

This past weekend, we did The Book Dance four times. And none of those times were in celebration of ANY books that I’d finished. He completed four. FOUR. Well, to be even more precise, he finished three of those four books on Friday. The other he finished on Saturday.

Nerd.

So we danced, and laughed, and smiled, and celebrated. And it was fun. And it was in public and we didn’t care.

And it made me want to finish a book–a Particularly Good Book–a memoir, because we all know I luhuhhhvvv memoirs for some strange reason. And when I do finish it, I’ll blog about it–because it’s worthy of recommendation. And I just might try to catch The Book Dance on video so y’all can celebrate with me. But, until then:

What’s the last book you read? And is it a book you’d recommend to others of the memoir persuasion?