Literary Reflections

So here is my list. I’m going to be leaping around in time, and I don’t plan on giving you any help guessing how old I was when I first enjoyed each book (though you may be able to guess). In no particular order:

Myst: The Book of Atrus
by Rand and Robyn Miller with David Wingrove

I had a long and (embarrassingly) passionate love affair with the Myst games. The fire would not be quenched. When it comes to video games, I’ve always been a firm supporter of strong stories, and Myst, though low-key, quiet, and decidedly without action, had story in droves – if you knew where to look for it.

One of the places to look for it was in a series of novels written by the game’s creators (with some help from a published author, David Wingrove). The first book, The Book of Atrus, details the history of one of the main characters from the Myst games – Atrus. We follow him from his life as a young boy in the vast New Mexican desert, down into an underground cavern, and finally into worlds as varied and amazing as you can imagine. Atrus, a member of the D’ni (pronounced “dunny,” like the Australian slang for toilet – an unfortunate coincidence) race, becomes a writer of Books. These books are not simple stories, and in fact don’t tell much of a story at all. At the same time, they tell the stories of worlds. Each book describes in intricate detail another world. The D’ni had the ability to “link” to worlds through these books. So they didn’t just read about the worlds they linked to – they could actually travel there, in the flesh.

Atrus’ story starts decades before the firs tMyst game, and ends at the very moment the opening cinematic of the game begins. It fills in an enormous amount of detail that the very sparsely populated game could not. Myst: The Book of Atrus helped define an era of my life. I’ve since moved on from my love of Myst, though I haven’t forgotten it. I still remember struggling with its puzzles and getting lost in its worlds. And the books it spawned helped me go deeper than I ever could have alone.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
by Alvin Schwartz, Illustrated by Stephen Gammell

It’s the illustrations.

Seriously. You might not remember any of the stories in this or either of the two other volumes in the set, but I promise you, if ever you laid hands on this book, one look at the illustrations will bring back the memories.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is something I think I would enjoy reading through even today. The stories are short, perfect for those of us without a lot of free time. And even if you don’t have time for one short, short story, you can at least take a glance at some of Stephen Gammell’s haunting illustrations. There is something about the man’s style… It’s haunting. It’s gross. It’s sometimes both. Cemetery soup? Does that mean anything to anyone?

I can’t say it changed my life. It’s just a book of short, scary (to a kid) stories. But when I sat down to think of books that I remember most throughout my life, this one stuck out. I know it was recently available in a collection with all three volumes. Give it a read, or – I’m a writer, I can’t believe I’m saying this – just look at the pictures.

Smoke and Mirrors
by Neil Gaiman

I’m a lover of short fiction. I read it, I write it, and I’m excited when I find an author who writes the sort of short fiction I love to read. Neil Gaiman is that sort of writer.

Smoke and Mirrors is his first widely published book of short stories, and there is a lot here to love. His stories cover the bases – realism to magical realism to anti-realism. I’d say there’s enough here for everyone, but that’s probably not true. Very few of Gaiman’s stories come without at least a hint, a twinge of the fantastic, and I know that’s not everyone’s thing. But Gaiman speaks a language in storytelling that I speak (though not nearly as eloquently as he), and I could get lost in his worlds in ways I can with few other authors.

From the story of a boy who decides to become a troll when his life spirals out of control, to the story of a girl who goes with her family on a trip to see the end of the world, to a short-short piece about a janitor who cleans up our dreams in the morning so our heads aren’t cluttered up with them, Smoke and Mirrors keeps the weirdness coming. A handful of stories are a little more naturalistic, such as Looking for the Girl, the story of a pornographic photographer who searches his whole life for a mysterious girl he saw many times in many magazines over the years, who seems not to age a day. The most realistic story in the bunch is The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories, a down-to-earth look at a writer trying to adapt his novel into a screenplay amidst the craziness of Hollywood. So, though the more casual, less fantastical reader might enjoy a couple of the stories, the whole book might not be the best choice. But I love how quickly Neil Gaiman can change hats, first telling us the story of a sad little boy who loves Michael Moorcock’s books, then veering off into the tale of, in Gaiman’s words, “the 80's, about London, and computers and the world of finance and the city, and black magic.” Definitely worlds worth exploring.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
by J.K. Rowling

Perhaps you look down on me for including a Harry Potter book in my Top 5. Well, I accept your barbed words with indifference! Phoenix marked a change of tone for the series. What was originally a delightful and charming and adventurous series for children that could also be enjoyed by adults suddenly became a heavy-hitter for all ages. Thematically, the series darkened and did not lighten until the end. J.K. Rowling took a beloved character and made him angry, resentful, bitter, angst-ridden and sad. I heard people complain that they didn't like Harry during this book, that he was too "whiny" or some such nonsense. But seriously, a child of his age having experienced all that he had experienced? I would be whiny, too. Probably more so. Harry's argument with Dumbledore at the end of the book -- throwing things, screaming, crying -- felt so real to me. It's moments like those I long for in fiction.

The government, too, became an enemy in Phoenix, a nice complicating addition to the plot. And what was best, the government -- even Professor Umbridge -- were not evil. They were people with good intentions who did bad things. I'll take that sort of complicated villain over the stereotyped evil baddie any day.

The Giver
by Lois Lowry

The Giver may be the first book for school that I read and actually enjoyed

The story of Jonas and his world -- an eerily perfect society where your job is determined for you and you are never in want for anything -- is a haunting and philosophical tale about freewill and individuality. Jonas is given the job of Receiver of Memory. He meets with the Giver, an old man who was the previous Receiver, and begins to receive all the memories of the past world. Through these memories, Jonas experiences things he has never experienced before --things that we take for granted.

It's riveting to me because it takes the premise of dystopian science fiction and broadens it to include magical realism. These are two genres that mesh happily here. Jonas' story continues over two further novels, at least indirectly -- Gathering Blue and Messenger, but The Giver stands out for me as a landmark in fiction.

As we move into this holiday season, take some time to reflect on books that have meant something to you.