Shaina Reads

Photo credit: thejbird / Foter / CC BY

When I came up with a list of questions to ask some fellow bloggers last Monday, one of them was, "What is the first book you can vividly remember reading?" This may or may not have been out of the selfish desire to answer this question myself, so I'm just going to pretend that one of you asked me.

Because you're curious, right? Right.

I've been reading since before I began kindergarten. My mother claims I was reading at the age of 2, but my grandma is convinced that I'd just memorized all the books I had at that point. Even that sounds like something more impressive than a two-year-old is capable of, but I digress.

Though I've been devouring books for close to two decades, my first clear reading memory is from the age of 10 or so. I'd recently picked up a mass-market paperback of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. All the cool kids at school were gearing up for the release of The Goblet of Fire (or was it Azkaban? it's a bit fuzzy now), and I finally caved and wanted to see what all the fuss was about because, apparently, I was a very discerning fifth-grader.

I remember sitting in my parents' bedroom as I read the opening lines, and I almost immediately closed the book in terror. There was a line about Dudley getting some kind of toy—possibly a remote control car—and running over the neighbor's dog with it. I was a delicate little thing (and, who am I kidding, still kind of am), and the thought of a boy wantonly injuring an animal was just too upsetting to bear. I had to put the book down, at least for a little while. Eventually, I realized that animal abuse wasn't J.K. Rowling's shtick, and I became fully enamored of the magical world of Harry Potter. It amazes me that I almost missed out on it due to those first icky feelings.

I'll never forget the satiny coating on the book and how it started to bunch up and peel after excessive handling (I found my copy on Google Images, and the wear is just like I remember it). The pages, too, quickly became stiff and crinkly after several bath tub reading sessions with Shaina, Destroyer of Books. I have no idea where the book is now—it probably got beaten up enough for a trip to the garbage can during one of our moves—and I'd probably find it pretty unappealing if I came across it, but it's firmly lodged in my mind as the prototype of my love for reading.

What's your earliest bookish memory?

Got a kiddo? Get him/her this book.

Yesterday I shared a few books I was probably too young to read. It only feels appropriate that today I'm writing about a book that was not at all written for my age group (though, I have to admit, being a twenty-something sometimes feels as confusing as being a teenager).

After an awesome buddy read of Ursula K. Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven with Julianne, I wanted to try out another of the feminist sci-fi writer's works. The Left Hand of Darkness has come recommended more than a few times, but I ended up checking out A Wizard of Earthsea, the first in Le Guin's young adult fantasy quartet about a young wizard named Ged. I gulped it down in under 24 hours, and my first thought upon finishing it was that my children will have this book on their shelves (or, more likely, the chips implanted in their brains).

I don't even want kids. At this point in my life (and maybe forever), I'd much prefer to read this to my cat. Even so, I couldn't shake the feeling of wanting to shove a copy of it into the hands of every 8- to 13-year-old I see (but not on my Kindle, do you know how grubby kids' hands are? I do; I work with them. Sorry to any children who read this blog).

Anyway, here's three reasons why AWoE rocks (watch out for spoilers!):

1. The moral is awesome. In a nutshell, this is a story of Ged discovering the extent of his own power, and how he can use it for all kinds of ends that aren't so cut and dry as "good" and "bad." There is no "war" against the "bad guys," no vanquishing of light over dark. In fact, the story ends with Ged confronting his own shadow (which he unknowingly released in a moment of pride) and accepting the darkest parts of himself. Corny, simplified? Maybe, but I would also say it's an altogether better message to take away than "good conquers all." What does that even mean? Almost nothing in life can be neatly split into a good and bad binary, least of all complex, contradictory human beings. Another point here is that the darker parts of ourselves don't magically disappear if we ignore them; if we really want to grow and change as people, we first have to figure out what kind of people we are in the first place. And this relates to my next point:

2. Self-acceptance wins the day here. In Earthsea, everyone has their "true name" (one they should keep to themselves and only share with those who will not exploit it) and their "use name" (the name they go by in daily life). This was a great metaphor for a few different ideas: recognizing that you mean different things to different people, that it's perfectly acceptable (even good!) to establish personal boundaries with others, and that you are the only one who can know yourself best. Sometimes I think that self-knowledge and personal growth get muddled in with romance/finding the "one person who really gets you" in YA. There wasn't a single drop of romance in this novel, and it really opened the door for Ged to, in Le Guin's words, "learn to be Ged." I want my hypothetical kids to do their best to know themselves before trying to know (and please) anyone else.

3. This book is chock full of people of color. Most of the citizens of Earthsea we meet in this book have dark complexions, and Le Guin challenges racist stereotypes by inverting them. For example, the Kargish men who raid Ged's village at the start of the story are explicitly described as having "white faces." Obviously, reversing the black vs. white dichotomy isn't doing a whole lot to destroy the "us vs. them" dichotomy itself, but it was still super refreshing, especially for a book published in 1968. I'm reminded of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's TED talk about "the danger of a single story." I think the younger we can introduce diverse narratives, the better.

If you haven't read A Wizard of Earthsea, take a few hours to do so. It's available for free through the Kindle Lending Library. I'm off to fan-girl over Ursula K. Le Guin and build a bookshelf for my cat. Fur babies need education, too.

This pug is how I felt this week. Courtesy of Unsplash/Matthew Wiebe.

My oh my, it's been a week. I'm about to hop on the caboose of the #truthtrain, so strap yourselves in.

I spent most of last week chugging toward the weekend, only to have it arrive and not be able to turn off my ever-buzzing brain enough to enjoy it. (Yay, GAD!) I didn't even have lofty plans: visiting a new coffee shop, baking some cookies, getting some reading done. And not one of those things happened (EDIT: lies, I did read A Wizard of Earthsea and will soon be posting about how much I loved it). Instead, I sat on the corner of my couch and fretted. My boyfriend was feeling a bit antsy himself, so we had trouble with our stress feeding into each other. Even the thing that calms us both down (getting some exercise) didn't work its usual magic.

I also did stuff like this:

That's not to say that doing that was bad; I'd been meaning to reflect on this question for a while, and lists help me settle my thoughts down into more manageable chunks. Unfortunately, this one just made me even more obsessive, and not in a way I could channel into productivity (researching programs, reading publications, etc.).

I finally started feeling calm on Saturday evening... only to have a moderate-to-severe allergy attack on Sunday afternoon. A faucet for a nose and hot, itchy skin aren't conducive to tranquility.

ANYWAY. It's a new week, and I'm going to treat it that way.

I was going to share the opening of In Cold Blood by Truman Capote with you all for Bibliophile by the Sea's First Chapter, First Paragraph Tuesday Intros, but it just deleted itself from my Kindle. *shakes fist at library lending periods*

Also, I'm not into today's Top Ten Tuesday topic, so I'm going to make up my own listicle. HA. Take THAT, Broke and Bookish.




I read The Valley of the Dolls at some point late in high school. I guess I wasn't necessarily *too* young to be reading it, but as someone who'd barely had a sip of alcohol before college, I couldn't exactly relate to their level of partying. This goes in the same category as Less Than Zero, which I read around the same time. I was just so ~edgy~, you guys.

I know I found my mom's copy of She's Come Undone while we still lived in my childhood home, so this was a pre-14 read... I was probably around the same age as the protagonist, Dolores, when we first meet her. I scarcely remember the story now, but I do know there was plenty of disordered eating, body hatred, and weird sex.

I took The Bell Jar with me to summer camp when I was thirteen, because nothing says summer fun like existential crises and suicidal tendencies in New York City, am I right? I'm pretty sure I read this one multiple times, but I still don't remember it. It's one of those books I sometimes think about re-reading, but honestly, I think I got the gist well enough the first few times.

Really, this one could be "any Chuck Palahniuk at all," but Haunted takes the cake. I think this one came around late high school as well, and it's another example of how alternative and out there I was as a teenager. I distinctly remember stealing one of the nastier plot points for my own short stories. Oops. "Guts" will forever haunt (hehe) my dreams (and those of some unwitting bookstore patrons). Why did I do this to myself?

What are some books you probably should have waited to read? Or, ahem, not read at all?

Happy Monday, book bloggers!

This weekend, I received not one but TWO tags from Rachelle of The Reading Wench to answer some questions. With that much enthusiasm, how could I say no?

My two questionnaires are after the jump, to avoid clogging up your feeds!