Anonymous asked: Where do we submit our stories?
You can share your stories using our submission form here, or by emailing them to us at thebookstheygaveme@gmail.com. Click the “contribute” link above for more details.
Anonymous asked: When will you be mailing out the books for people who have been included ?
Hello- all the US books have gone out. I’ll be mailing the international ones next week. If your story was featured in the book and you do not live in the US, please confirm your name and mailing address with me so I can be sure I’m sending to the right place!
Thank you!
Vonnegut.
In high school, when everyone else planned for college and attended parties (got wasted), I worked. I worked so that I could take some of the burden off my on-and-off again employed father. I woke up at six to go to school and I’d be back home by eight-thirty, with scarcely enough time each night to eat, do homework, and sleep. I planned on going full-time at my job, because dreams, as far as I was concerned, were for those with means.
And then I took a creative writing class. I’d always loved writing, but considered it a hobby which hadn’t evolved passed scribbling silly stories in notebooks and, on a rare occasion, slamming the keys of my family’s old word processor. The teacher for that class was a man named Mort Castle. I knew as I entered that first day this man was anything but ordinary. He didn’t present a syllabus or have us do the stupid icebreaker games that every other class did. He stood up at the front, with a smile and a gleam in his wizened eyes, and when he started talking about writing- about how much he loved it and why we do it and why it was so important- I felt something swell in my chest. We got our first assignment that night.
I ran home, pulled out an old notebook, and wrote- and I kept writing as I walked to work despite the horns blaring, and I kept writing at work despite the customers complaining, and I wrote until midnight when, pen in hand, I passed out. In that night I went through three drafts of a short story, two pages long when typed. It was nothing really. But it was everything.
I was the first to class, the first with my hand in the air to present. I read it with voice trembling, stopping and starting, trying to choke back the acid climbing up my throat. I looked up when I was done and saw, to my dismay, blank stares. Then Castle patted me on the back and asked the class what they thought. One by one hands shot up, each person wanting to tell me a different part about the story they liked, and, because I’m that kind of guy, I teared up.
Castle took me aside afterward- he hadn’t commented. Of course I was already cocky, my first piece and they all loved it. Soon I’d be making millions somehow.
“Patrick, that was good, but I want you to rewrite in first person.”
Huh?
My brain skipped a beat.
And another.
Rewrite, my god, was it so bad?
He handed me a book, told me to read it, and said when I was done I ought to revisit the story. It was an old book, a thin paperback with amber pages, the blue-and-white cover unremarkable, saying nothing about the book inside, save that the title was Slaughter-House Five and the author’s name was Kurt Vonnegut. I nursed my pride at lunch, and during Spanish I opened the fragile thing and read the first page. Which led to the second. Which led to people honking and customers complaining and me getting very little sleep as I read the book in one night.
I’d read many books before, but none so voraciously. Castle planted the seed of a dream and now books were more than an escape- their ink and paper, their words and ideas, has become the ground from which my dream may grow.
Matheson.
I met a man by complete and utter fluke at a ukulele bar (neither of us play). We decided upon a short fling (we were both moving away for work in December). It was a great decision - we had the most amazing two months of adventures and laughter and joy (that neither of us expected). On our last night together, we cracked some champagne to toast to our odd pseudo-relationship and he gave me a book. I Am Legend. It belonged to his dad and is faded and yellowed and well-read by both of them. These few months (which were supposed to be inconsequential) have surpassed anything I could have expected. I am so lucky. (Goodbye, my dear).
Hergé.
Growing up, my brother and I were never close. He was always the baby, both of the family and of his classmates, and we had little in common. Even now, after we have started developing a relationship of sorts, we still have a hard time getting each other. So, when my brother announced that he already knew what he was going to get me for Christmas this year, I shrugged off the comment, assuming that I would be getting another iTunes gift card, the gift he had been giving me for the past couple of years.
Christmas morning arrived, and I was surprised to find a large, lumpy package with my name scrawled across it in his handwriting. When I opened it, I found three Tintin books— books that he had always loved, and I had, until recently, rarely thought about. Despite never having read any of the brave reporter’s adventures, he and his sidekick held the key to certain fond memories, and as my brother explained why he chose the specific books he gave me, I realised that he understood their significance in my life. I reached over to give him a hug, and, instead of squirming away like he usually does, he let me.
Anonymous asked: What's your favorite entry from the book?
I can’t answer this question. Each one is precious, because I respect the feelings behind it. Collectively, all the stories, the ones in the book and the ones on the blog, form a bigger picture about who we are, who humans are. The things we love, the people we love. The irritations, the joys.
One of my favorite tumblrs is Underground New York Public Library, because one of the first things I noticed when I moved here was that people here read. I remember, in Chicago, I once saw a woman on the Rock Island line to Joliet reading a Martin Amis novel and was nearly knocked speechless because she was reading anything smarter than a copy of Us Weekly. That just didn’t happen there. I had friends who openly laughed in my face upon seeing a copy of Anna Karenina on my coffee table. They laughed at me. it was like high school all over again.
But upon arriving here, I immediately noticed guys on late-night trains, clearly getting off closing shifts as prep-cooks or busboys who were reading Proust on the train. Proust, folks. Or Kafka. The level of public discourse is higher here; you can hear people with frankly common accents offering really insightful, well-thought-out opinions on current events every night on NY1 at 7 pm on the call-in show. For whatever reasons, that simply is not done where I lived before. Smart somehow isn’t polite in the suburbs from which I came. Here, it’s a point of pride.
What all this has taught me is that we all have more potential than we think. Ambitions, lives are sparked by simple things. We find the right book, whether someone gives it to us or we find it on our own, and our imaginations sieze the chance and run wild. Our souls are free. Ideas let that happen.
Sharing books helps this to happen. We live our lives half in public, half in private. Others see us reading, and we share books with others. There is more than one way to give a book, and to privilege any of these ways of sharing over another would be wrong. I’m truly honored to collect these stories, and my only ambition in this project is to inspire others to share more freely. Read. Be seen reading. Push beloved books on others. That is all.
