It’s not my favourite favourite book, but it’s the one that feels the most personal, like I could never actually be Elizabeth Bennett, but I might already be Holden Caulfield.

I never read Catcher in school, but I read it at the right age: first the library copy with the orange-on-white cover art that I’ve never understood, and then my own second-hand copy with the iconic yellow text on front and back. When I didn’t want to give my name, I said I was Jane Gallagher; my novel that I bled into for five years began as a two-page monologue about Holden.

And now, my final essay of the year—perhaps of my entire academic career—will be on Catcher in the Rye, and I’m not sure how it’s going to go. I came to library school for a lot of reasons, but I’m not sure if the main one wasn’t that don’t want to write essays anymore. The older I get, it becomes increasingly difficult to write with only my head—to write formally, persuasively, but without feeling. My structure is failing me.

And I want it to fail. I’ve been writing some form of Thesis Statement-Three Points-Conclusion since high school, and I’m afraid of burying myself in convention. I know I just said it was difficult, but the truth is I could do it: banish all my “I”s and write with my head. But that’s my biggest writing fear: to lose my first-person voice. I’m scared of a time when I pick up Catcher and realize I couldn’t be Holden anymore.

The assignment is to write the social history of an influential book, and Catcher‘s seen enough ups and downs in fifty years to more than fit the bill. It gets a strong reaction, one way or another.

But it’s different than it used to be. Apparently, many teens today find Holden whiny, self-absorbed, and as phony as those he decries. And I get that, sort of. Growing up is accepting the world around you and making the most of your place in it. But Holden’s sixteen; and maybe we all have to accept the world at some point, but it’s a little sad, isn’t it? Don’t teenagers feel alienated anymore?

Maybe it’s an excapism thing. Today’s alienated teens have to marry vampires or save the world, and while a lot of good books can be read with escapist motives, I don’t think it’s healthy to read that way. I don’t want to imagine a world without beautiful losers. There’s no escape with Holden, and that may make him whiny, but it’s what makes him true.

Anyway, off we go.

Though not quite readers themselves, my parents are both the sort of people inclined to like the idea of a child with a book. As the first girl born into a large extended family, I was inundated at birth with all the basic toys and amusements, of which books held no more or less than their fair share. Based on later conversations, I don’t believe that either of my parents had closed conceptions of child-rearing at the time of my birth; both were open, ready, and willing to spend time with their firstborn in whatever manner I chose. It was my mother, a former physiotherapist, who I spent most of my earliest days with, and while her romantic notions of family life would have lead her to approve of reading to a baby, she would have equally approved playing with toys or dolls or any other activities an infant might enjoy. We had all the time in the world, and it was used quite variously until one interest seemed to surpass the rest and dominate our regular playtime. As it happened, that interest was books.

Countless photographs, baby books, and my mother’s copious notes trace my love of reading back to a time before I could possibly have been conscious of the words or their meanings. Perusing my mother’s comments, I was shocked that her first observation that I loved “books more than anything” was recorded before I was six months old. I said that my parents are not readers exactly; to clarify, my dad was a student, reading texts for necessity or information, but neither read for pleasure, and aside from a battered Chronicles of Narnia set and my mother’s old Shakespeare compendium from college (both of which I would discover later in life), the only books in the house were mine. Luckily, however, it doesn’t take an enthusiastic reader to be an enthusiastic parent. Having thus identified such a joy in their daughter’s life, both my parents saw to it that this interest was nurtured. Relatives loved to buy me books, and I was read to every night before bedtime (and most likely at multiple intervals during the day). My mother would point to each word on the page, emphasizing a connection between the printed book and the spoken story. When left to play on my own, I would “read” the books to myself, flipping the pages while talking along in the untranslatables of infancy.

Having emphasized so far the amount of attention I received as a child, due equally to my parents’ good natures and my then-status as an only child, you may be surprised to know that when I did learn to read, neither of my parents noticed! Though I never lacked for reading material, we were not so wealthy that every book in the house had not been read hundreds of times. Before I was three years old, it was common practice for me to read the bedtime book aloud to my mom or dad, reversing our former arrangement. Since by that time, I had memorized a large number of stories and songs, both parents assumed that I knew the books by heart as well. It wasn’t until a few months after my third birthday that my parents bought me a brand new book: Elephant on Skates. The book itself was fairly unremarkable; I belive it’s out of print now, and the only thing I remember about it is the first line: “Edmund was an elephant on skates.” They gave it to me to look at on the ride home, intending to read it that night; however, both were shocked when I immediately read the entire book by myself.

Learning to read at such a young age was not so advantageous as it could have been. Aside from my parents and grandparents, people persisted in giving me “age-appropriate” books. So, while I was immersed in Ramona, and The Boxcar Children, others gave me picture books with the objects in them labelled. Early classrooms lacked any books I found interesting, and on more than one occasion, teachers barred me from reading the books I wanted, because they were assumed to be out of my league.

Additionally, my parents’ lack of reading material became a more noticeable hindrance as I grew older. Though I discovered and devoured their Chronicles of Narnia set at a young age, I had nowhere to turn for guidance in what to read. My parents remembered sporadic classics from their own childhoods: Mom gave me Charlotte’s Web, while Dad found his old copy of The Hobbit. However, despite these efforts, series fiction dominated most of my childhood. I raced from Ramona to Nancy Drew to Enid Blyton, and all the way through Gordon Korman and Paula Danziger. These are some very fine series, many of which I have reread as an adult and still enjoyed very much. However, when I tried to continue into popular young adult series like Sweet Valley High and The Babysitter’s Club, my reading stalled. In elementary school, I had been able to find books that were funny and adventurous and fantastical and true, but entering Junior High, it was hard to find books that weren’t vapid, repetitive depictions of early teen life. I needed something more, but nobody knew what to tell me.

For one reason only, I’ll always remember Christmas when I was twelve. That year, I received a book from my Grandma, bigger and thicker with smaller words than I’d ever seen before. It was Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, and I loved it immediately. Since Elephant on Skates, I had read and reread many books, but none of them affected my life the way Jane Eyre did. Reading Jane Eyre was like learning to read a second time over, because it opened up the world of literature in a way I hadn’t thought existed. Not only were the characters interesting and thought-provoking, but I’d never read anything with such mature poetic language before. My mother read it too, and together we started to read through the classics. From Jane Eyre we went on to Great Expectations (which we didn’t like), Wuthering Heights (I liked it, she didn’t), Les Miserables (we both liked it, but I was bored by the war and skimmed those sections) and our beloved Jane Austen. Both at two and at twelve, encouraging me to read essentially meant sharing in the experience, whether by reading to me, providing me with materials, or giving me someone to talk to about my favourite subject–books.

Once Jane Eyre opened the door for me, it never closed again. Finding one book meant going down a rabbit hole of books by the same author, similar books, books influenced by and from that book. By the time high school came, I knew a bit about what the literary world had to offer, and I was actively seeking out more of it. Nowadays, I choose books almost instinctually; I have constant queues of books or authors I’ve read about or heard about. Occasionally, I’ll read something that I’ve been drawn to for no reason that I can pinpoint. I’m not interested in specific genres or forms, so long as it contains interesting ideas cleverly expressed. I generally know, if not by the cover blurb, within the first few pages if a text has anything to say that I would enjoy hearing. If you asked me why I read, I wouldn’t know the answer. I know that it’s not because it’s fun, though it is; and it’s not because I’m learning, though I am. I believe five-month-old Amy, who loved her books more than anything, might have had her reasons, deep down in some intangible place.

But of course, she wouldn’t have been able to tell you.

1. I talk at the theatre and I don’t see anything wrong with that. I only talk about the movie at hand, and I don’t want to miss it either, so I won’t interrupt dialogue, but I don’t see what the point is of watching something, if you don’t get to say anything about it.

2. I don’t agree with you about anything. I don’t expect you to agree with me either, so I’m not pushy or argumentative, but if you’re in any state of expecting to be agreed with, you probably don’t want to be around me. I’m used to being disagreed with, and I won’t think bad of you, unless your views are exceptionally stupid, in which case, it’s me that probably won’t be friends with you.

3. I’m pretty awkward , which, I know, right, we’re all awkward, but I’m including this item, because in the past I haven’t been the most familiar with what you might think are the most common of social conventions, and so I might not respond the way you would expect to regular everyday occurances, and I just want to assure you that I don’t mean any harm or offense.

4. I might correct your grammar but not always, and I’m not terribly picky, and really I’m more likely to correct something if it actually matters, like if you use a word incorrectly or something like that. If you make spelling/grammar/punctuation mistakes in your Facebook status, it will bother me, but I (usually) won’t say anything.

5. Sometimes I will know more about stuff than you , and I know that the reverse is true as well and I’m okay with that, but what I’m saying is that very occasionally, there will be something that you really actually care about that I will know more about than you will. Your favourite book/movie/tv show, for instance. I’m pretty quick to back off from points that I’m fuzzy on or need to check my sources, but if you challenge me on something that I know, then I’m not going to back down, even if it’s something I’ve got no business knowing anything about. I’d like to apologize for this in advance.

6. When I say “it’s fine”, it really is fine and that’s worth mentioning for two reasons. First of all, it means that I also assume when you say “it’s fine” that it is indeed fine, and if you get mad at me for something after the fact, I’m going to be confused. Secondly, what that means is that if something is not fine, I will tell you quite loudly and precisely why and how it is not fine. What I’m saying is that, if you prefer to shove things under the rug to avoid a fight, I’m not who you’re looking for.

7. I won’t give you compliments–not unnecessary ones, anyway. I’m not going to say I like your earrings, just because I’ve noticed that you are wearing earrings and I think they’re okay. But if I do in fact like your earrings (or something else complimentary) I will tell you that, and I hope that means something.

8. I don’t like your baby names. Also: I don’t think that guy you like is cute.

9. If I give you a book, it means I like you. The more I like the book I am giving you, the more I like you or at least feel that I can entrust something I love to you and hope you will cherish it like I do. If I lend you one of my books, it means that not only do I like you, but I trust you to retain the pre-borrowed condition.

10. I probably won’t cry in front of you, and by the time I get around to talking about my emotional stuff, I’ll probably have it so hardened that it will seem like I don’t care about it. But I do care. I just don’t know how else to be.

I think that’s all my stuff. Or at least all that’s worth pre-screening.

I’ve waxed theoretical on the relative merits and failures of these movies before, and obviously the books are far superior, but it’s only just occurred to me how much the virtues of the film match up with the overall strengths of the medium itself. One of the things I liked most about the first film was the colors, especially on the battlefield at Beruna. And the book can’t tell me all of that. It can (and does, I think) say that Peter and Edmund wear red banners with golden lions, but it can’t show you how the colors are saturated or how it matches the green battlefield, and anyway, I wouldn’t listen in print, because it’s really no fun to read about scenery.

I missed the philosophy in the movies; it’s the best thing about the books, and it’s where Lewis is most at home. I found it especially lacking in the second film, which was why I liked it much better on my second viewing (when I wasn’t distracted anymore waiting for scenes that would never show up). However, and I may be going out on a limb here, the movies excel at character development, and I believe on some levels, they know the individual characters better than Lewis does. That may be a stretch, but the fact is that in the books, we only get to see the Pevensies when they’re either speaking or when Lewis goes inside their heads. And we get to know them very well, because Lewis does a lot with a little, but we don’t get to see, for example, what they like to do while lounging around Digory Kirk’s house, or the expressions on their faces while the others are talking.

Edmund is my favourite character, an opinion I feel may be shared by whoever wrote the movies (Lewis, if I had to guess, seems to favor Lucy). It took me a while to realize how much I liked Ed, because he’s basically a prick for most of the first book. And it’s the same for the movie, except…his behavior is qualified by that very first scene which isn’t even in the book, where he has to look out the window during the London Blitz and then afterwards rescue the picture of his father. And Peter yells, and you get to feel what it must be like to be a second son when your father’s gone and your brother is basically perfect, though frankly, not so smart. In the book, Edmund feels like a traitor; in the movie, he feels like a stupid kid that grows up definitively by his second-act redemption. Peter, on the other hand, though mostly together, still has some learning to do; and the movies know that, especially Prince Caspian, in a way that the book doesn’t.

I read a terrible review of Voyage of the Dawn Treader; I’m not terribly surprised, since it’s the most unfilmable of all the books. But I hope that at least the characters are still true; Edmund and Lucy are far more important to the Narnia oeuvre (as well as generally superior and more developed characters) than Peter and Susan, so it can be pleasant just to spend time with them, especially without the extraneous elements of the elder Pevensies. Frankly, I just hope it makes a boatload of money, because The Silver Chair is potentially the most filmmable of the books, and after that, I’d be very interested to see what Hollywood would do with The Last Battle, which has some potentially troubling elements, especially when you attempt to sieve all the excess Christianity out of it.

Another reason to hope for the later books, starting with The Silver Chair is the female characters that come out of them. While I can’t say that Lewis ever reaches a stage of complete egalitarianism, his later books display a far easier and more progressive mindset. I can’t help think that battles would be ugly affairs were Lucy or Susan to be involved. Susan, though handy with the bow, Lucy never stops being a child, and together they (d)evolve into the virgin-whore divide that seems to show up wherever there’s inherent (though I should say, not deliberate) misogyny.

Jill Pole, as a character, is an achievement for Lewis. His most nuanced girl (perhaps save Polly from The Magician’s Nephew), she’s virtuous but flawed; and not only that, but she’s Lewis’ only female that comes close to anything like kick ass. This last fact is especially apparent because of her pairing with Scrubb, who can’t help but remain a pudgy little twerp long after he deserves the title. I may be wrong about this, but I believe she gets to wear armor and carry a sword with the boys with barely a second thought. Aravis from The Horse and his Boy gets a similar treatment, but her book is the least interesting, so I can’t help but ignore it a little bit. Polly, as I mentioned, also carries a lot of nuance, but obvious gender roles don’t actually play a large role in her relationship with Digory, if my recollection is correct.

Honestly, what Hollywood needs to do is take a lesson from Twilight and crank the movies out fast and furiously, so no one has time to forget about them. At that rate, they might actually get around to making The Magician’s Nephew, which also has great film potential. Plus, they would actually be justified in bringing Tilda Swinton back, which they seem to be doing every time anyway, long after her character has become irrelevant to the Narnia saga. I’d bet my firstborn that if they ever do make The Silver Chair, she shows up again as the Green Lady. And that would actually make more sense than whatever they’ve done to work her into VotDT.

I’ve been reading Paper Towns, which isn’t a great book, but it seems to be playing with that jarring gap, where you think you’re playing one game, but as you start to realize it’s something else, everything inside it starts to shift. I haven’t finished the book yet, so I don’t have the final word on it, but the distinction is even more pronounced because I’m not sure that the writer had a very good handle on the kind of story he was trying to tell. At least, it seems so far that the impression I am getting is not that which the author would like to give me…

Margo Roth Spiegelman is a hyper-manic pixie dream girl, and Q is a John Cusack character waiting to happen, but you know what: manic pixie dream girls are assholes. And John Cusack characters need a kick in the ass. And maybe I’ll get to the end and realize that was what John Green was going for, but we’ll see…

One of the book’s many snake’s hands is a psychological test, rendered no less interesting by the fact that it may or may not be valid. I could tell you about it, but it would be more fun to actually do it, don’t you think?

I thought so.

Okay, this is primarily a visualization exercise, and it works best if you have a really clear picture or description in your head. Let’s go:

You are on a path, heading towards a house. Focus on the path, see it clearly; what is it like? Its shape, composition? Is it surrounded by anything, is there anything on it? Is it clean, dirty, straight, winding?
Make sure you also know what the house looks like as well; picture it in as much detail as you can.

Now that you’re at the house, you fish in your pocket and find a key. Focus on the key; what does it look like? What does it open?
Finally, somewhere in the house there is a cup. Where is the cup? What kind of cup is it? What does it look like? What is it made of?

So, here’s the interpretation; first, the path: it represents your past history. Mine was a cobblestone path; it was windy but clean. The house it lead up to was a cute little stone cottage, small and sturdy. It had a little chimney on the left side, and it was the kind of house that might have looked candy-coated if seen from a far-off distance. There was no mention of what the house represents, but I would guess that it’s how you see your life.

The key supposedly represents knowledge. This is partly what made me think it was a fake test, because in my mind, the key obviously opened the front door of the house, and the one person I asked thought the same (Interestingly, our keys actually looked very similar too–old-fashioned ornate keys; mine was bronze and slightly tarnished with mystery, while hers was gold.). However the book characters imagined other uses for the keys: basement entrances, china cabinets, so who knows?

The cup is love. For the book charcters, the cup was a regular mug (cracked) and a fragile teacup (locked inside the china cabinet). Mine was a mug (fairly standard but well-made; in fact I’m almost certain it was my old favourite mug that I got for my birthday one year. It was slightly larger than normal and it had a unique shape.), and it was sitting on a wooden round table in the center room of the house. One of the characters made a comment about the water in the cup, which confused me because the cup obviously contained hot chocolate…or was it apple cider?

Collision the Second: I have been watching The Wire lately. “Where you at?” for on-duty officers requires an extra bit of specificity and continual awareness. It keeps you in check, it could keep you alive, and it keeps everyone on the same page. Knowing “where you at” not just for your own self but for all the others you count on and who count on you, defining your location and surroundings outside of relative terms: is important.

I am terrible with directions. I only know which way the sun rises and sets because of the Beauty and the Beast song. But now I would like a compass. Preferably an old one, pocket-watch style, like the watch that holds the Doctor’s timelord soul when he becomes human. (Except of course that it would be a compass and not a watch.) I don’t drive, and I’m not police, so there’s not a whole lot of call for anyone to ask me where I’m at; but I’d like to know the answer, I think.

I’ve been using HTML for years. It started with just marking up my blogs (when I had to always look up my tags, copying and pasting exactly), but this year especially I’ve been churning it out on a whim. I’m pretty adept with technology, mostly because my superpower/autistic tendency is working out patterns and systems. If you gave me some random source code, I could do any one of a hundred things to it without blinking.

But. This is what I realized (and what the book really helped with):

When it comes to web design, I have been a foreigner observing the natives. I knew their customs and their patterns well enough to figure out the right context in which to say a certain thing and the exact reaction any of my words would generate.
But. On the basest, most fundamental level: I had absolutely no freaking clue what I was saying.

This is pretty much the exact opposite of how I am at real life.