The Books They Gave Me

Morton.

Another new town. We had been moving since we got married, and on our 5th house or so, with two little ones in tow. But this was to be the final move, and I was excited. But lonely. So the school yard where my five year old was starting school was to be the venue where I would have to try and branch out and actually meet people, as much for my children’s sake as my own.

Meeting a mum of my little boy’s friend, we chit chatted every morning, and found we both had a love of literature and she often shared books. I don’t own many books myself, so when she offered to let me borrow a book she had really enjoyed, I jumped at the chance. You see, I did my MA in Literature, I studied English to Degree level. It sort of killed my love of reading. So I find it hard now to select a story, suspicious and judging every title. I tend to stick to biographies now because they are real life. No work of fiction really made me ‘feel’ anymore.

And so, I was handed Kate Morton’s The Distant Hours and I fell hard. I wrapped myself up that book and didn’t come out until I was done. Did people actually write like this? After all, I had wanted to write, but how could I replicate anything close to this? How could anyone? Her talent just jumped off the page for me… I was enthralled, impressed, in love with literature again.

I read it over a weekend and Monday morning I returned the book, smile wide over my face, thanking this mum. Because it reminded me of something - of the purpose of literature and fiction, something I had stopped believing in. Stories unite us. they bring us in from the cold, they give us a conversation. They teach us that what we live day to day doesn’t have to be all that we experience. That standing in the rain, waiting for our kids, we have somewhere exciting, deep and rich to be later that’s just for us, a moment for ourselves once we are done being available to everyone else.

And I thanked her for reminding me of that.

Maguire.

My mother and I have never been close.  Growing up I was extremely introverted and her short temper caused her to push me harder and harder to be the daughter she wished I was.  I spent most of my time reading, cut off from everything else in my life.  The more I did, the more angry she became, and the more angry she became, the more I shut myself off.  It was a vicious cycle that lasted until I ran away from her.  Once a year though I think she would take the time to examine our relationship.  When I got older every year from Christmas she would buy me one book.  While the gesture seemed like a peace offering and an attempt at understanding me, to me it only affirmed how little we knew one another.  I never read any of the books she gave me.  They were also books below my reading level, a random volume from a series I had never heard of or just a symbol of something she wished I could be.  

After I moved out she attempted it again.  I opened Wicked Christmas morning sitting around the tree with my younger brother.  I felt like crying, but I couldn’t decide if it was from relief or disappointment.  For the first time ever she managed to offer a little piece of me, and not what she thought I was.  I didn’t have the heart to tell her I already owned the book, or that I preferred the alternate cover.  I faked surprise and excitement at the gift  and told her I was looking forward to reading it, but inside I knew we were too late in understanding one another.  She never gave me another book after that.

The Books They Gave Me.

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Rowling.

She’s given me so many books that I can’t even begin to count them.  She gave me my first book, and a multitude of books after that.  

She read them to me, and when I was old enough to read them by myself, she helped me read the words I did not know.  

But there was one book my mom gave me that changed my life.  Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, by J.K. Rowling.  

She brought it home from the bookstore for me when I was eight years old.  I’m sure she expected it to be just like all the other books I read back then.  I would read it over the course of a few days or weeks, and it would go on my bookshelf, nice and neat and tidy, but I probably wouldn’t talk about it again.  

My mom didn’t know it would become as much a part of me as the blood in my veins.  

I read the book in days, and it was all I could talk about.  I took it to the dinner table with me.  I splashed spaghetti sauce on the pages, because I couldn’t put it down long enough to finish my dinner.  My mom, being the smart woman she is, went back to the bookstore a few days later to get the next one in the series.  

I devoured it just as quickly.  She brought home the third, and I flew through it.  

I had to wait awhile for the fourth to be released, so what did I do with my time?

I re-read the three I had.  I couldn’t put them down; they almost never spent more than a few weeks on my shelf at a time.  The story was so much more than just a story, and soon it became part of my life.  It shaped who I am.  It taught me about life and prepared me for what was to come.  

My mom brought home a book for me, but she gave me something to love.    

She’s given me so many books since then.  And others have given me books too.  I’m a reader, and books are my perfect gift.  But no one…no one…has given me a book like that since I was 8 years old.  

And I don’t think anyone ever will. 

Buchan.

My father and I had a complicated relationship when I was little (although I guess that can be said of all fathers & sons).  He was an outdoorsman, a carpenter and craftsman and engineer, while I was always wrapped up in worlds of my own imagination - music, books, games, etc.  It’s not to say that we didn’t like the same things - he loved words and I always enjoyed being outside - but I think he had trouble understanding how it was that I’d rather sit and read a book than create something or go for a hike.  

One time, on a family trip, I had finished all of the books I’d brought with me and desperately wanted some new Star Wars book.  He told me that he’d buy it for me so long as I also read a book of his choosing.  Fearing the worst, I begrudgingly accepted this bribe and he revealed the Star Wars book (already purchased) and John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps.  I was on a train when he gave it to me and I devoured it, although I don’t think I understood much of it.  Mostly, I just wanted to get to the Star Wars book.  But that moment of train-bound adventure stuck with me, faintly but firmly.