What I am Reading

Cindy Harrison loves books. As a review for a National Publication, she read about 20 books per month, and still finds time to teach at her local community college."I am also deeply loyal to writers whose work changed my life in significant ways, even if I have not read them in ages. Plus, all kinds of books have marked meaningful moments in my life." Visit her at Cynthiaharrison.com or email herCindy@CynthiaHarrison

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N ot an ounce of doubt...I became a writer because I love to read. I admire stories and their tellers so much I wanted to be on more intimate terms with that world. Writing gets me a little bit closer to the core of what language does, but it takes a lot more mental energy than reading. Reading, if the story's good, is like vacation. And I've had a particularly good run of reading luck this past week or so.

Fat Girl by Judith Moore broke my heart. Childhood is such a hell for so many of us. Maybe I love these memoirs of unhappy childhoods so much because there's weird comfort in knowing that lots of kids didn't get the love they needed. I didn't have such a freakish existence compared to Judith who had body issues to deal with on top of everything else. I loved the language in this one, too. As a young girl, Judith wanted to be invisible. As a writer, her words get right in your face.

And then Jonathan Franzen's new memoir, The Discomfort Zone, was totally different except that it also recalled the anguish of childhood--liberally tinted with Franzen's special brand of humor. I keep thinking fondly about his funny music story--which I will not tell as well as he did. He loved the Moody Blue and his folks didn't allow him to listen to such trash on their stereo, but he did anyway, when they weren't home. And of course they caught him and threw a fit over the depravity of rock and roll. Then he gave a snippet of lyric: "Isn't life strange? A turn of the page....It makes me want to cry." Sure, now they're just silly words, but at 15, both Franzen and I thought the Moody Blues full of profound wisdom. And that innocence is both hilarious and touching.

And you know who else is funny? Margaret Atwood. Her new book of stories Moral Disorder kept making me laugh--she's got the sly humor, like a winking cynic in the corner nodding knowingly about nutty human behavior. The stories share the same characters, a couple very much like Atwood and her husband. They start early in the female protag's life and continue through 30 years or so. Another trip back to the past; the young couple rents a farm out in the country and does the hippie thing but without any of the sloth. I ripped through these stories like they were a bag of chips. And then I took out a biography of Atwood I've had for years and checked facts. Lots of great details exactly matched her real life. Fascinating as any memoir.

It's really rare that I get three books in a row that please me as much as these did. And good books do something more than merely give pleasure--they fill the well, they make me remember what it is I'm trying to do with my own stories. Be funny, tell the truth, make language new. Stuff like that.

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