Twenty Years

One of the most awkward questions for a reader is "What is your favorite book?"

I don't mind it, but I always feel a bit deceptive answering it, because who can pick a favorite among a thousand? There are some books you hate, some you are indifferent to, some you love, some you admire, and some that change your life.

As an aside, I really hate it when people are all like, "My favorite book is the Book of Mormon." Okay. Um, while technically it is a book, it's really not. Books and scriptures are not the same thing. All you're really saying when you tell people that is your favorite book is that you're not much of a reader and you want to impress them with your spiritual superiority. It's obnoxious.

I usually just tell people my favorite is Jane Eyre, because it is one I've read a lot and both love and admire. But if I answered with the book I've read the most times, it would be The Blue Castle, by L.M. Montgomery. It's a bit embarrassing to tell people that, to tell the truth, because in spite of its thematic depth and archetypal genius, it's so sentimental (and the editing is frightful ... it's enough to give an editor a ghastly headache). However, I just looked at the jacket and saw where I had written my name and how old I was when I got it, and I realized that I have had it for twenty years. And I've read it at least once a year since I bought it with my babysitting money at the Bookstop (well, with the exception of the 18 months I was serving a mission).

There is something bitter about this, because I have realized there comes a time when you know a book so well it loses its magic. I don't have it memorized, quite, but I recognize all the lines by sight. I can recite almost all the dialogue to myself in reasonably good order. Reading it gives me less pleasure than making it into a movie in my mind (which I do with most books I like), so what's the point of reading it ever again?

It is the end of an era, I suppose. There's no other book like it in the world, so I don't have anything to go to now for the special kind of comfort it gave me for so many years. I'm a grown woman now, have been for quite some time, and I don't necessarily need syruppy fairy tales for comfort and reassurance, but it's a sad thing to outgrow something that has been so instrumental in forming my character.

I've lost something I will never get back.

My dad, who knows me well, once suggested I read a short story in his favorite science fiction journal. The protagonist is a writer, and he lives in a future in which people, in essence, back themselves up in case of accidental death. All their memories are stored in some sort of database, and if they die, their organs are replaced and they are brought back to life and their memories are re-booted. But this writer decides that he has written such a brilliant book that he wants to be able to experience it as a reader for the very first time. He deliberately neglects his routine back-ups, and when he finishes the book, he kills himself. When he is restored, he has lost three years of his life, and his girlfriend is furious with him. He doesn't understand what is going on and what he was thinking in putting all his affairs and relationships in jeopardy for, until he finds a copy of his book.

There are so many things I've wanted to be able to go back and experience again for the very first time. Not enough to do something as drastic as the writer in the sci-fi story, but still... particularly when faced with the loss of a much-loved book, wouldn't it be nice?