I Heart Books
There's a “game” circulating around FaceBook called I Love (Heart) Books. The rules are simple, In your status list 10 books that have stayed with you in some way. Don't take more than a few minutes and don't think too hard. They don't have to be the "right books" or great works of literature, just the ones that have affected you in some way. If you know anything about me you probably know that I love books, and I also like to make lists of things, so this is right up my alley. I recently posted this list on my Facebook wall, these are the first ten books that came to my mind while I was thinking about the task (and also watching television). After posting the list I pondered why these were the first ten books to come to mind, what made them stand out above everything I have ever read? Below are the answers I came up with.
The Native American Curio Trade In New Mexico, Jonathan Batkin. The second half of this groundbreaking volume, the epitome of excellent research, focuses on Indian silversmiths who left the Pueblos and reservations to work in curio shops in Santa Fe and Albuquerque in the early part of the twentieth century. Batkin, director of the Wheelwright Museum in Santa Fe, found with the use of period city directories he could identify, and trace employment, for those individuals. This opened Pat’s and my eyes to other avenues of research and allowed us to tell the in-depth stories of many silversmiths in Reassessing Hallmarks of Native Southwest Jewelry: Artists, Traders, Guilds, and the Government.
The Hundred Secret Senses, Amy Tan. I read this novel shortly after publication in 1995, and though I don’t recall much specifically, I still have the memory of how much I loved it, and that it was exotic and moving and the prose was rich.
Animal Dreams, Barbara Kingsolver. Why this novel from Kingsolver stays with me, over all the other wonderful southwestern books she wrote, is hard for me to discern. I remember a scene that takes place at Kinishba Ruins—which is somewhere I have visited—and also the push-and-pull of family ties, what they mean to us and the stories we tell ourselves about them.
Navajo Spoons: Indian Artistry and the Souvenir Trade, 1880s-1940s, Cindra Kline. After reading this well-researched volume dedicated to one specific form of silver made by Navajo smiths, and then meeting the author, I realized that if she could publish a book, then so could I. Thus the seed of Hopi & Pueblo Tiles: An Illustrated History was planted.
A Match to the Heart: One Woman's Story of Being Struck By Lightning, Gretel Ehrlich. A remarkable recounting of Ehrlich’s experience of being struck, literally out of the blue, by lightning. Her retelling of the after-effects on her body are unforgettable.
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, Anne Lamott. This book helped free up my writing skills. It made me realize what I write cannot be a masterpiece from the moment it leaves my pen, or makes characters on the computer screen. This is where I learned to just sit my butt in a chair and write, “a shitty first draft”. Amen, sister!
Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell. Maybe because the movie is so memorable the book has stayed with me. But I remember thinking the book was better than the movie when I read it. Still, it's an everlasting piece of work, so evocative of one of the most mournful chapters in this nation's history.
The Man Made of Words: Essays, Stories, Passages, N. Scott Momaday. I gave this a starred review in Publishers Weekly when it was released in 1997 and this blurb from that review ended up on the back cover of the paper edition, "A preeminent voice in Native American literature . . . few authors write as gracefully or majestically as Momaday". I attained a better understanding of American Indian oral tradition and literature through the reading of this wonderful volume.
Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit, Leslie Marmon Silko. My take-away from this book was the relationship between “federally recognized” Indian tribes and the US government, how these nations were, and still are, regarded as sovereign nations living within the boundaries of the United States. And of how the average American citizen has little idea why they get “special” treatment, nor that what the federal government bestows in no way repays for their horrifying treatment during the years of Manifest Destiny and beyond.
The Death of Bernadette Lefthand, Ron Querry. The author stopped me in the aisle at the American Booksellers Association convention in Miami Beach in 1993 with a hearty, “Hey, there’s someone else from Tucson!” I talked to him about Tucson and his novel–which he signed a copy of to me–for quite a while. Of the many advance reading copies I toted home from that show this was the first book I read. I was impressed with Querry’s ability to write from a woman’s viewpoint and have read the novel more than once. Querry and his lovely wife Elaine became friends and I spent some quality time with her while Ron worked on his next novel.
Of course I could have listed so many other influential books I have read, Cat's Cradle, Cowboys Are My Weakness: Stories, She Who Remembers, or many of the mystery novels by Tony Hillerman. But those listed here really are the first ten that came to mind, so their influence on me must be strong, or at least emotional in some way.
