Books

Oh so many books to choose from!  Day 8 of the challenge, discuss a book I love and one that I didn't.  There are so, so many books I have loved.  If you asked me my favorite, I would tell you it's "To Kill A Mockingbird".  But everyone loves that and it does not need any discussion from me.  Nor does anything by Tolkein, "The Catcher in the Rye", the works of Dr. Seuss, or the "Outlander" series.

Today, the book I will say I love is "Illusions" by Richard Bach.  It is not a particularly deep story in the literary sense, but when I read it in college, it changed me.  It changed how I thought about myself, others, the world, life in general.  I had read "Jonathan Livingston Seagull"  several years before and I got it.  I thought I understood, but "Illusions" spoke to me in a way no other story had and even better, my friends related to it.  This book made me feel real and important and worthwhile. It told me, in a way no one or nothing else could, that I was going to be okay.  I was going to have bad things happen to me and good things happen to me, but those things were lessons on the journey. Things that happened to me aren't me.  They are just things.  That happen.  Shit happens.  And the journey goes on.  And it's amazing.

There are very few books I haven't loved, but the one that first comes to mind is "Eat, Pray, Love".  Probably one of the worst books ever, maybe because it was autobiographical.  First the use of metaphors was so excessive, it actually distracted me from the content.  Second, during the vast majority of the time I was reading this book, all I could think of was how self-centered the author was.  We all have crappy things happen to us and frankly, the author's divorce does not really rank high up there, at least not the way she described it.  Her journey of self-realization may have been enlightening for her, but did nothing for me.  Maybe it did for other people, it was a best selling book, afterall, so what do I know?