Read em Once

Alright here it is, my second post today, all about the books which you love but only ever really read once instead of reading over and over and over until you can recite them word for word.

Something tells me this may be a painful post to write, i dunno why but it is simply a gut feeling so be warned, there may be real emotion in this thing somewhere.

Have you ever heard a song, looked at a painting, seen a movie, or read a book and it changed your life? Have you ever had one of those lovely moments where the entire universe in all its glory is explained to you? Or perhaps you have experienced the smaller version, where something in one of these pieces of art that offers a view of the world resonates within you and you find yourself suddenly understand yourself a little better.

An example of this i can offer is something that comes up often in the series entitled The Dresden Files which is authored by Jim Butcher. It follows a wizard named Harry Dresden (note the name!) as he has adventures in modern day society and, to quote the book, "Does what he can to hold a torch up to the darkness".

Interesting quote isn't it? This is the point where my ego screams that in a way this is what i am trying to do with this blog. Offer up my little nuggets of whatever wisdom i have had the chance to piece together in my relatively short life. It isn't anywhere near the most i could do, but it is what i am prepared to do now as i work towards being a better person.

Anywho away from that tangent. The thing with the Dresden Files is the one thing which gets pounded into the reader over and over is essentially that the choices you make shape the person you are. That is the main idea which spoke to me. So i read those books over and over, i tend to go through at least the first 3 books at some point during a year and remind myself of that.

But there are other books i have read, after all i always need to be reading something or i feel incomplete. I have read books from the library, read books from stores, borrowed books from friends. I have devoured them ever single chance i get. And in doing so i have learned from them.

But something else happens when i read (and i know it happens to at least most if not all of you too but this space is, as i said before, about me!), i get emotionally involved with what happens. I worry about the characters the same way i worry about people in my real life. I care about them the same way i do in real life.

Hell one of the things that bugged me the most about the Harry Potter books was that if Harry had been a real person after the 5th book i wouldn't have talked to him. Not cause of the stupid slander that rained down on his head but rather because of the fact that he was such a prick to the people who actually cared. It was the sudden shift that was the first thing that started fucking with my love of those books.

And yet again i find myself on a tangent! Back to the point dude! To use a better example just this past week i finished reading the book Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, and i gotta say it was brilliant. It works to display the way that freedoms can be removed in modern society because of the fear of terrorists, and shows of way to resit. It most importantly though showed that there really was no point in the defenses that were offered, instead there would need to be better thought out plans which were not being adopted.

Yes, i recommend this book to all of you to read, though there are a few people i know that i specifically have told that they should read it because i think it will appeal to them more than most others.

Despite how much i loved this book i will never buy it. Why? Because i buy books i will read again and again. This one i don't know if i will. It was brilliant and moving and appealed to so much of who i am. The problem was it also made me feel a kind of rage throughout most of it. An anger directed towards ignorance.

A different book which i also loved and bought is called Sacrament and was written by Clive Barker. A truly well written book that offers up a notion of a world that we think we understand but then realize all we currently see is the surface. It really was a wonderfully moving book that i own and maintains an important place on my bookshelf but i doubt i will ever read it more than perhaps 3 times in my lifetime.

Why? Simply that it was too moving, and though it taught me about myself it taught lessons that were painful enough i don't really want to relive them. It captured me the first time, i don't know if it could manage it the second time through and i don't want to try. I still recommend it to people but i find that i can't read it myself again.

This brings me to the point of this post. If you have ever talked to me or read anything that i have posted here before you know i hold both Harry Potter and Twilight in disdain because of the quaility of their writing, well this is me saying that i am going to try and maintain the "if you have nothing nice to say, then say nothing at all."

That is correct, i am going to try and stop insulting those books. You all have no idea how painful this will be for me. Still, they have become a source of negativity for me and so it is time to remove them and move on.

Besides, maybe someone else will read them and learn something that otherwise they wouldn't have, and who am i to stop that? I can't even drink in Vegas yet...

What are books that you have read and never will again? What lessons did they teach you?