We Will Only Just Remember How It Feels
On good books and what they leave behind.
My third and final leg of book tour begins tonight. Because The Frozen River published on December 5th, I knew the initial tour would be split in two: the first half before Christmas, and the second in January. However, because the response to Martha’s story has been so extraordinary, Doubleday is sending me on what they are referring to as a victory lap. Which means that I’ll get to visit eight new cities! If you’re anywhere near, I’d love to meet you.
Meanwhile, I’ve been reading more lately. (Such a gift after a years-long reading drought!) And I’ve been thinking about the lyrics to Rob Thomas’ 2012 song, “Little Wonders,” from the Meet the Robinson’s soundtrack (more on that later). I’ve been thinking about the way that a good book makes us feel. Because that’s all that we will remember in the end.
“…in the end we will only just remember how it feels…”
– Rob Thomas, Little Wonders
There is a bookshelf in my office. I refer to it as my “keeper shelf” and were you to visit me, you would find a motley assortment of novels. I keep my Harry Potter collection beside The Chronicles of Narnia. They’re not so different after all, full of magic and wonder and whimsy. I have Diana Gabaldon and L.M. Montgomery and Neil Gaiman. Kate DiCamillo. Marilyn Robinson. Leif Enger. Somehow The Book Thief and The Glass Castle ended up beside the collected works of P.G. Wodehouse (bought, I might add, at a rambling bookstore in Texas once owned by Larry McMurtry). A dusty and tattered edition of The Princess and the Goblin is held together by a rubber band and sits between 11/22/62 and Murder on the Orient Express. It’s the copy my mother read to me as a child and I’d sooner give birth to a hippo than part with it. The Thirteenth Tale. Water for Elephants. The Night Circus. Where the Red Fern Grows. The Kite Runner. The Hunger Games. Peace Like a River. The Help. The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry. The Westing Game. Watership Down. I own almost every novel written by Dick Francis and George MacDonald.
*sigh*
This collection of stories evokes something in me that I find difficult to express. It’s not uncommon for me to pass my bookshelf, run my fingers along the spines, and close my eyes. I summon the emotions I felt the first time I read them. Sometimes I even pull one from its spot. Smell the pages. Read a passage. I did this recently with The Time Traveler’s Wife:
“The curve of her shoulders, the stiffness in her posture say here is someone who is very tired, and I am very tired, myself. I shift my weight from one foot to the other and the floor creaks; the woman turns and sees me and her face is remade into joy; I am suddenly amazed; this is Clare, Clare old! And she is coming to me, so slowly, and I take her into my arms.”
Many years later, I don’t remember much of the plot, but I do remember how I wept my way through the last 50 pages. Audrey Niffenegger broke my heart and then patched it together with that last scene. My devotion for this novel is irrational.
For me, redemption is synonymous with The Kite Runner. I was quiet when I finished Khaled Hosseini’s stunning debut. I sat, book laid open in my lap, and felt something akin to worship—not for the author, but for the pure joy of seeing that kite lift into the air, and for what it meant:
“It was only a smile, nothing more. It didn’t make everything all right. It didn’t make anything all right. Only a smile. A tiny thing. A leaf in the woods, shaking in the wake of a startled bird’s flight. But I’ll take it. With open arms. Because when spring comes, it melts snow one flake at a time, and maybe I just witnessed the first flake melting.”
Every book on that shelf moved me. Sometimes to laughter. Sometimes to tears. I have felt rage and empathy and grief. I’ve even fallen in love a time or two. Yet I’d be hard pressed to synopsize any of my favorite novels. Character and Plot and Setting and Theme slip away with time. But I can pull any book from that shelf, dust off the cover, smell the pages, flip to a favorite passage and tell you exactly how it made me feel. And really, that’s all that matters in the end.
Copyright Ariel Lawhon, 2024. All rights reserved.
Our bookshelves are twins in many, many ways… sigh. How I felt reading your list.
I wish you a fabulous victory lap and many, many more good reads.