Today’s guest post comes from Charise Hansen. Chariese has been trying to adjust for the past four years to the arctic climate in Minnesota, and is still failing miserably. She is also the mother to 5 children, the latest of which came from China; he is quickly becoming the world’s most spoiled little boy with all the attention from his teenage siblings. She is currently in the last academic semester of her 2-yr master’s program in occupational therapy, and cannot wait to dive into the list of books she has accumulated over the last two years as she has labored diligently over her textbooks and computer. In her spare time, (when she used to have some), Charise likes to read (of course!) play volleyball, walk the dog (when it’s not 20 below), go out to dinner with her husband, and bake yummy treats that always end up at the neighbor’s to keep her from eating them all.
I remember it like it happened yesterday. I was 5 months into my first pregnancy, a semi-newlywed and carrying a full load of classes, among them English literature. This particular semester I was enjoying my discovery of a somewhat obscure authoress by the name of…….wait for it…….Jane Austen. Yes, this was 22 years ago, at that time Jane Austen for the most part was relegated to the realm of English lit classes, high school honors classes and dedicated Anglophiles. I had spent the better part of a Saturday afternoon on the living room floor reading Pride and Prejudice – perhaps you’ve heard of it. I hadn’t. And this from an English major. Really. The moment that is so cemented in my memory was when Mr. Darcy told Elizabeth that he loved her and wanted to marry her. If someone would have told me that the sky was orange and that black was white I would have been more likely to believe it. After picking my chin up off the floor and re-reading the words to make sure that I understood correctly what had been said, I had to put the book down, just to recover from the shock.
It took me a full half hour to think through this new development and to work it into my way of looking at the characters. Mr. Darcy love Elizabeth? Preposterous! He was (let’s face it) a total jerk! I paged back in the book looking for evidence of this folly. Any hints or foreshadowing had been ignored or dismissed outright, I had been too busy looking forward to the imperious Mr. Darcy somehow being squished like a bug further on in the book, possibly by the dashing Wickham. I was amazed and slightly embarrassed at how far off the mark I was. Discovering this author and her brilliance and wit remains one of my most cherished blessings. A little coda to that story is that many years later when the Colin Firth version of Pride and Prejudice was airing for the first time on A&E, I had charged my husband on pain of death to record the show because I couldn’t be home. (This was in the days of recording on tapes in a VCR, I know, ancient). He forgot, and was so scared for me to get home that he cleaned and vacuumed the whole house long before I got home. A quick desperate phone call to his mom eased his pain by telling him that she had recorded it as well. He definitely dodged a bullet that night. And possible divorce proceedings. The baby that I was gestating at the time I first became acquainted with Jane Austen, yeah, her middle name is Jane. I love telling her that she was named after Jane Austen BEFORE Jane was cool. Talk about your cutting edge. I think over the years it has added a little cachet to my overall un-coolness with my little Jane Austen namesake.
My life in large part has been shaped by reading. A lonely and difficult childhood was tempered by the likes of Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Great Brain books, Nancy Drew, and anything else the kindly school librarians that I befriended would send my way. They recognized a scared and shy little girl who needed a kind word, acceptance, and a safe haven; and they provided that along with the books that they would set aside for me. Books became my escape for those years; I could watch people have adventures, solve problems, and overcome difficulties while I observed silently, escaping from my own world as often as possible.
As I grew older I achieved a balance and began making real-life friends to depend upon to replace my steadfast friends in print who had served me so well. My literary friends were never far from me though, and as I made my way through high school and college, I learned to avoid the library if I wanted to get any studying done, as I literally couldn’t help myself from getting books off the shelf as I walked through the aisles, just running my fingers along the spines as I walked by would give me comfort.
I watch my five children now, and the role that reading has in their lives. Seeing them curled upon the couch with a current favorite, or listening to my toddler recite his favorite picture books from memory while we look at the pictures ranks right up there for me as some of my most tender mercies. My high school age son became so wrapped up in reading Gone with the Wind after I pushed it into his reluctant hands that he had to find a book jacket that disguised it so that no one would know what it was when he took it to school in order to continue reading. The gift of reading for me, helped to alleviate a harsh childhood, and as an adult, it has given me some of my greatest pleasures. There is nothing like discovering a gifted author who can convey some universal truth wrapped up in a compelling story.
I would like to know what books have changed the lives of people – and the scriptures don’t count here, that’s way too easy. What books have changed your life, have had an impact on you, or have you just absolutely loved? How has reading changed your life?
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