Stacy Nockowitz, Middle School Librarian (Photo/Whitney Dankworth’17)
This feature is the second in our “Faculty and Staff” column—new to our paper this year—and to which all staff, administrators, and faculty are welcome to contribute views of their choice.
I want to read all the time. I would rather read than eat. I would certainly rather read than talk. If there were any safe way to read while I drive, I would do it. I read from the passenger seat. I read in line, wherever I happen to be in line. I’ve been like this with books since I was a little girl, drifting on a sea of sentences, carried away by waves of words. When I was young, I would go into my closet at night with a book and read for hours after everyone else in the house had fallen asleep. It is what Susan Sontag called “a book-drunken life.”
I am most myself when I am reading. No, that’s not true. I am never myself when I am reading. I’m not anyone, and I’m not anywhere. I wouldn’t say it’s spiritual, but it certainly feels mystical. When I read I’m suspended above everywhere.
Book clubs are out of the question. I read to be alone with the story; it’s one of the great joys of reading. Why would I let another person intrude on that perfect solitude?
Another joy of books is that, if they do their job thoroughly, we don’t have to be here. A great read will not allow you to get comfortable in your armchair. You may say that you’re “settling in with a good book,” but the best books should make you decidedly unsettled, restive, and detached from your surroundings. This creates a troubling complication, though, when you don’t want to come back. Neil Gaiman said, “Once you’ve visited other worlds… you can never be entirely content with the world that you grew up in.” Finishing a terrific book is disorienting: you were elsewhere, and now you’re back here, and that’s puzzling and sometimes even disheartening. It’s a strange feeling, isn’t it? Wishing you could stay, wishing there was more, but knowing that there isn’t.
None of that will stop me from picking up another book, though. I have little choice, but it’s a very gratifying compulsion. A person who doesn’t read, according to C.S. Lewis, “may be full of goodness and good sense but he inhabits a tiny world. In it, we should be suffocated.” I would suffocate here if I didn’t read. Because elsewhere, that place, even though it is only in my mind, is lush and expansive, and being elsewhere when I read helps me to be happy here.
I like to think of reading as an act of courage, in a way, because we really don’t know what a story holds for us when we begin a book. We bravely enter a passageway, a portal, without sword or shield, gladly accepting the challenge that awaits us. Franz Kafka thought we should “read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.” I love this idea. Reading is not the time to be delicate with ourselves, to choose only what flatters us or offers a carpet of petals at our feet. “If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head,” Kafka goes on, “what are we reading it for?” A book should demand something of us, and in return for rising to its challenge, a book should provide for us, as well: pleasure and diversion, to be sure, but also intimacy and profound satisfaction.
Below is a list of my favorite books. These are not necessarily the best books I’ve ever read, though many of them would be on that list, too. These books have branded me. To each one, I gladly say, “I’m yours.”
1. Pride and Prejudice (1813) by Jane Austen – Sublime, every time.
2. The Phantom Tollbooth (1961) by Norton Juster- Utterly refined and completely uncivilized at the same time. Students still come back and thank me for forcing it on them.
3. The Secret History (1992) by Donna Tartt- Dark, disturbing, suspenseful. I suggest you read it in winter and just surrender to it for the day.
4. Rebecca (1938) by Daphne du Maurier- Thrills, chills, and twists. Can we call it Gothic if it was written in the 20th century? Mrs. Danvers is my favorite villainess of all time.
5. The Giver (1993) by Lois Lowry- Reveals more about humanity with every reading. I feel privileged to have taught this book for so many years.
6. A Wrinkle in Time (1962) by Madeline L’Engle- The most gripping read of my childhood. An “under-the-covers-with-a-flashlight” kind of book.
7. The Night Circus (2011) by Erin Morgenstern- A feast: opulent, romantic, and dripping with magic.
8. The Magicians (2009) and sequels by Lev Grossman- Harry Potter with filthy language and massive amounts of alcohol. A brilliant series.
9. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007) by JK Rowling- All that quiet time Harry and Hermione spend in the wilderness is the highlight of the whole series for me.
10. Deenie (1973) by Judy Blume- Judy Blume got me. And every other girl in the 1970s and 80s. Deenie was me: the girl with the back brace.
11. 11/22/63 (2011) by Stephen King- The past doesn’t want you to change it. And it’ll really fight you if you try. King’s On Writing is transcendent, as well.
12. The World According to Garp (1978) by John Irving- Broke my heart in the best possible way.
13. Snow Crash (1992) by Neal Stephenson- Gorgeous science fiction that has pretty much become science fact.
14. Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture (1991) by Douglas Coupland- Spoke to everything I was feeling as the world exited the Reagan/Bush years. A few years later, Coupland would write Microserfs, which could easily have been on this list, too.
15. Still Life With Woodpecker (1980) by Tom Robbins- This book made me laugh out loud on an exercise bike at the gym in the Bronx. Embarrassing but totally worth it. Such fun.
