Book therapy

This book literally moved me to tears on at least a few occasions. Having lost someone as close and dear to me as the author did, I could relate all too well to the magnitude of all encompassing seesaw of emotions and existential questioning that follows. I enjoyed reading how Sankovitch transformed her pain with the healing salve of her most reliable of "saviors:" books. I can wholeheartedly identify with the healing power of books, which has always been my most comforting of friends during not only the best times of my life but also during painful times, lonely times, and times of challenging transitions. Sankovitch takes readers on a one year journey, reading one whole book for each day of the year. As she reads, she also reflects and finds connection that leads her to a place of gratitude, joy, and a sense of purpose.

With that said, I highly recommend this book to everyone (especially bibliophiles) and leave you with the following quotes that really spoke to me:

"For years, books had offered to me a window into how other people deal with life, its sorrows and joys and monotonies and frustrations. I would look there again for empathy, guidance, fellowship, and experience. Books would give me all that, and more."

"The world shifts, and lives change. Without warning or reason, someone who was healthy becomes sick and dies. An onslaught of sorrow, regret, anger, and fear buries those of us left behind. Hopelessness and helplessness follow. But then the world shifts again--rolling on as it does--and with it, lives change again. A new day comes, offering all kinds of possibilities. Even with the experience of pain and sorrow set deep within me and never to be forgotten, I recognize the potent offerings of my unknown future. I live in a weird world, shifting and unpredictable, but also bountiful and surprising. There is joy in acknowledging that both the weirdness and the world roll on but even more, there is resilience."

"Words are witness to life: they record what has happened, and they make it all real. Words create the stories that become history and become unforgettable. Even fiction portrays truth: good fiction IS truth. Stories about our lives remembered bring us backward while allowing us to move forward."

"The only balm to sorrow is memory; the only salve for the pain of losing someone to death is acknowledging the life that existed before."

"The purpose of great literature is to reveal what is hidden and to illuminate what is in darkness."

"Sharing a love of books and of one particular book is a good thing. But is is also a tricky maneuver, for both sides. The giver of the book is not exactly ripping open her soul for a free look, but when she hands over the book with the comment that it is one of her favorites, such an admission is very close to the baring of the soul. We are what we love to read, and when we admit to loving a book, we admit that the book represents some aspect of ourselves truly, whether it is that we are suckers for romance or pining for adventure or secretly fascinated by crime."

"In reading about experiences both light and dark, I would find the wisdom to get through my own dark times."

"Maybe that is what love is: the taming of desire into something solid and sustainable."

"We all face mysteries--'Why did that have to happen?'--that we will never be able to understand. But we can, and we do, find order somewhere, whether it be in our books, our friends, our family, or our faith. Order is defined by how we live our lives. Order is created by how we respond to what life dishes out to us. Order is found in accepting that not all questions can be answered."

"Writer-reader" and nerdy fantasies

If it was possible for me to read a book in utero, I certainly would have done so. It's the only stage of my life that I haven't been a bookworm, and that was only because I didn't have a choice. No matter what is or isn't going on in my life, books are one of the very few constants that remain. As bizarre as it may sound, books bring me the utmost comfort and stimulation....almost always more than people. How many people would say that? Like I said, bizarre...but true! I find things in books I cannot always find in family, friends, or lovers: Honesty. Grit. Inspiration. Diverse perspectives on "uncomfortable" subjects. Passion. One's true inner thoughts and feelings. Wisdom. Acceptance and understanding.

When I'm curious about something and want to learn as much as I can about it, I read. When I want to get a feeling for what an individual has gone through in life, I read. When I'm feeling disgusted or discouraged by the things I don't like about humanity and need to feel hopeful, I read. When I need an escape from reality, I read. When I need to feel grounded, I read. When I need to feel like someone (ie, a writer) understands me because he/she has gone through "it" too, I read. Yes, I read, read, READ!!!!

Considering my love for books, I suppose it was inevitable that my voracious appetite would morph into it's other half: writing. I started writing in a journal when I was a teenager. Nothing noteworthy or thought provoking, of course....but it got my pen in hand busy across the pages. It wasn't so much that I wrote something great, just that I was writing at all. I've read books about creative writing, writing non-fiction and fiction....and various books will tell you it's crucial to write every day, even if it's more worthy of going in the trashcan than in your notebook. I used to think that was a bunch of nonsense, however, I'm starting to believe there's truth in there. It's not a coincidence that the most writing I've done in my life thus far has been during the time I wrote in the aforementioned notebooks and while working at a bookstore (Can a bookstore be a muse?). Altogether, this constitutes...15 years of my life?! I need to discipline myself to get back into writing as much as I did back then. I miss it deeply. *Sigh*

Writing down the mundane on a regular basis exercises your writing muscles. You can "sculpt" yourself into being a better writer....one that focuses on details, one that writes by showing rather than merely spitting out an otherwise great story in a boring cookie cutter way. It has also been my experience that keeping journals/notebooks for several years allowed me the freedom to be totally honest with myself. I knew no one else would read what I wrote; there was something liberating in that. I could reveal things in writing that I wouldn't or couldn't speak aloud to any person.

Writing and reading go hand in hand for me, two sides of the same coin. Writing allows me to speak, to give, to let go. With reading, I can listen; I can be a voyeur. Writing is giving; reading is receiving.

This brings me to "nerdy fantasies." I wonder if anyone else out there is like me in this regard. When I read a book that consumes me with intense delight, I have a tendency to become a little borderline weird fantasizing about the author....and I don't mean sexually. It doesn't matter if it's a male or female author. I have a sudden and strong urge. It goes something like this inside my head (what my favorite authors would hear if I could speak to them directly): "Am I related to you?! I thought I was the only one that felt that way. Why can't I know people in my life like you that think about the same crazy and weird shit as I do?! You're hilarious/smart/bold/creative. You have balls to be totally honest! Your writing shows a likeable quirky side; I wonder if that's a side of myself I could as easily convey? Can we be friends?! Maybe if I were to write in your midst, it could be this weird osmosis kind of thing that just being in your presence would trigger some amazing writing material from within me! I really wish we were best friends. Really. You're my hero. I love you. Is that creepy that I love you? I guess I don't really know you, but I feel like I do because of your writing..."

This is usually followed by my fantasizing about having lunch with the writer, picking his/her brain with my own selfish agenda...either for entertainment or knowledge. At the same time, in my fantasy the writer wants to know just as much about me as I want to know about him or her. I fantasize about what the writer does in his or her everyday life. Is this person as fun and interesting as the writing indicates? Nice or arrogant? Just as passionate and inspiring in other ways as in what he/she writes? Would I like this person as much if I did really know him/her? Is the fantasy better than the reality? What if the reality is better?!

Screw celebrities. They're so boring and overrated. I can't help but roll my eyes when a celeb stubbing their toe or planning their wedding makes headline news. Who cares? Not me. Sure, they can be attractive to look at on the big screen...but writers are the ones with true grit, true substance. Writers are the only "famous" people I truly yearn to meet and know.

I want to write my own book someday...and I secretly hope there's a "writer-reader" (a term I just now coined: an individual that has a passion for both writing and reading)) of my future book out there who will be having the same nerdy fantasies about me.

What is it with me and books?!

How is it that I can't remember what happened last week, yet I can remember where I was, what I was thinking, or what I felt when I have read one of hundreds of books that my eyes have crossed over the years? I was just thinking about this as I was going through my "Visual Bookshelf" on Facebook (that I have also connected to the bottom of my blog page here) a few hours ago. I have written a bit about this before in a past blog entry, but I am realizing more and more how many of my life memories (some seemingly insignificant, yet significant enough in its mundaneness) are attached to books I have read.

It seems to be a playful joke amongst my friends....if you need a book recommendation, go to Katie because surely there is a great chance she has already read what you are searching for or might be interested in reading. I take it as a compliment of sorts, especially considering there are very few people I know that read as many books (especially on diverse subjects, fiction and non-fiction alike) as I do. I'm not being arrogant when I say this; it's basic fact. I get excited when a friend asks me if I have read such and such a book or what I recommend. It also makes me miss the working-at-a-bookstore days now and then.

Just as specific songs carry meaning (whether intentional or unconsciously) for people, this is incredibly true for me with books....perhaps even more so for me than music. I love music, don't get me wrong, but it is books I resonate with most. You know those silly, fun 'get to know you' questions you find in conversational games that ask something like "What objects would most reflect who you are as a person?" Well, for me....it's absolutely every single book I have read and will read. Why? Because on some level, it reveals part of who I am.....whether something I'm curious to learn, something that resonates with my values and beliefs at the core, a thought or emotion a book brings out in me, my secret/hidden curiosities and desires, even memories of a person, place, or thing attached to a specific book. Perhaps this is why I have an unquenchable desire to continue searching for various books, to add to my bookshelf of memories in the making. A book can be just as much of a snapshot into my life as a photograph.

I remember devouring Augusten Burrough's "Dry" in the span of one day in my studio apartment in Chicago, sometimes being so engrossed that I brought it into the kitchen, hunched over the counter reading it as I prepared a meal or boiling hot water for tea on the stove. I remember sitting at a table in a busy Michigan Avenue Starbuck's one cold and dreary afternoon reading another Burrough's book, "Magical Thinking." I remember reading "Self Made Man" in the intake room on a slow, quiet morning at PDS, most likely because my office was too cold from the air blowing underneath the unventilated Emergency exit door.

There was "The Awakening," "Scarlet Letter", "Emotional Alchemy," and "The Art of Happiness," which I associate with the summer I was living in Kentucky....depressed, hopeless, and downtrodden with no job and no real "life" in sight after graduating college. I was living in an RV, waking up to cows "mooing" outside my bedroom window, working with deadbeats at Cracker Barrel where I was the only one single, educated, and childless. I was lonely and crying for hope, crying for change, crying for something better. Those books gave me something to grasp for and hold onto before I moved to Chicago, Illinois 5-6 months later.

Books that I associate with men who I was interested in and/or broke my heart.....a writer named Jobie I met online who captivated me with his literary intellect and passion, suggesting books like "Flowers for Algernon"( his favorite book), "Thirteenth Tale," and "Factotum" (which he could really identify with, a red flag that should have warned me after I read it and hated the misogynistic themes). Too bad his taste for books didn't parallel his true personality (well, except "Factotum" unfortunately). Around that same time, I met AJ, a cute and sweet Marine 7 years younger than myself. There was something about him that I fell for, something endearing. I read "On Killing" per his recommendation, and later gave him "Deep Survival," "Brothel Mustang Ranch and its Women," and a few John Douglass profiler books before he was deployed back to Iraq. Sealed with a metaphorical kiss, the books have stayed with him and I have not. It was as if I knew I wouldn't see him again or for very long thereafter, my books becoming the only memory of me to live on in spirit...in his possession. I think about him once in awhile and wonder if he still has my books. Even though we are no longer in touch (it was too painful for me to continue communicating with him at all), I hope he only thinks of me fondly when he sees those books, another lifetime ago.

"Siddhartha" my junior or senior year of high school was my first real introduction to what I would begin to resonate with more and more throughout my life: Buddhism. While everyone else in English class read some simplistic, inane book for a required book review assignment, that is the book I chose. I loved every deep page of it.

"A Million Little Pieces" brings me back to my practicum days at Rice in 2004, and reminds me of the day James Frey went on Oprah. My opinion of her character hasn't been the same since then (in regard to how she handled the controversy surrounding the truthfulness of parts of the book....don't even get me started on that!).

"Kite Runner" was read almost entirely on a flight back to Chicago, and I remember raving to my friends Eddie and Rajiv about how they absolutely must read it while we had sushi in a restaurant near their Edgewater apartment soon after I got back from my trip. "The Namesake" reminds me of Rajiv, how we both read it and how excited he was to have me see the movie with him (even though he had already seen it once on a day I was feeling ill and was unable to go originally).

"Heroin" gave me a little more confidence and knowledge after I started working at PDS. "Trauma and Recovery" did the same after I started working at SMH. "Trauma Stewardship" (thank God for my social worker friend Pat's recommendation on this one!) gave me hope, validation, and encouragement during a time I felt incredibly burnt out, somewhat crazy, and depressed working with so many trauma clients at my current job. "Sickened" was another class book review for an Adlerian family class in grad school...quite disturbing. "Toward a Psychology of Being" by Abraham Maslow....I associate with laying on the warm, green grass along the Belmont Harbor lakefront in my old Chicago neighborhood.

I remember sitting on a bench in one of the buildings of the UIC campus reading "Harmful to Minors" (a book my friend Melissa recommended I read) for a little while as I waited for my friend Sara to meet me for lunch at a nearby pizza place.

"The Bell Jar," "Freakanomics," "Tipping Point," and "Devil in the White City" just a few of the numerous books I "checked out" with the library loan while I was working at Borders. I remember reading DITWC on cold bus rides home from work, from Michigan Ave to Lakeshore Drive to Belmont....creeping myself out because my imagination was taking me to visualizing myself living during that time period in the SAME city amongst an unsuspecting sadistic serial killer who hated women. Yikes!

Books I've read that remind me of ex-coworkers and friends because they recommended the book(s) to me: "The Comfort of Strangers" (Nate), "Not Buying It" and "Set This House in Order" (Melissa), the Dexter series (Juan).

Or places...."Memories, Dreams, and Reflections" remind me of my late philosophical and spiritual Uncle Don, a book he urged me to read and which I did while we were both living in Reno, Nevada for a brief time. "Memoirs of a Geisha" bringing me back to standing across the street from Dominick's on Fullerton Ave, waiting for the #74 bus at 5:30am to take me to PDS on Elston....all bundled up in three layers of clothing because it was freezing ass cold. The excitement of reading "Of Human Bondage" at the same time my mom was reading it, just for fun and to discuss it together.....sitting at a table in the Fixx on Sheffield sipping a coffee and feverishly taking notes as I soaked in the character development of Philip Carey and his lifelong adventures.

As you can see, I could go on endlessly recounting my books, my memories, my loves. Can you understand now how I can say books are a window into my soul? And how anyone in my life who asks me about a book, tells me about a book, or wants to talk about a book instantly brings a nostalgic smile to my face? God, I love books.