Stuff happens. I was in the middle of asking my colleagues at LJ/School Library Journal about the book they’d rescue from a fire (after the loved ones, human and otherwise, and the strongbox full of cash and bonds, of course) when news of Harper Lee’s death broke. So below we have some Lee tributes, a few “rescue” stories, and the usual plain old “What We’re Reading” write-ups. RIP Harper Lee, and thank you.
Mahnaz Dar, Assistant Managing Editor, LJS
I’ve got a lot of absolute favorite books out there. But the book I can’t live without? Probably Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep (Random). I still have the copy I bought (faded, dog-eared, and rumpled from more than a few bath-time readings) when I was a college junior. More than a decade later, I still love this book. When I first read it, I remember being a little bemused: from the marketing, I was expecting a jolly romp through boarding school with a plucky young heroine. What I got was a cynical outsider perspective. Prep soon turned into my The Catcher in the Rye; it’s the book I return to, over and over. At this point, I can’t really reread it cover to cover, because I just know it too well (it would almost be like returning to an old journal), but I do enjoy reading snippets. Sittenfeld is brutally honest and always brilliant, and her novels are definitely fire-worthy!
Liz French, Senior Editor, LJ Reviews
My rescue book is practically not worth grabbing, except for the emotional value. It’s a very dog-eared and crumbling (acid-free paper wasn’t in vogue when this one was published—more like acid-full) edition of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. I’m not even sure where it came from, could be a grandparent or a garage sale. But it is precious to me, and not just because I engraved the cover with my initials in a very childish scrawl. I loved the book and of course identified with Jo March the most (but did not, do not, understand her romantic choices). If I had the original paperback of To Kill a Mockingbird that my father gave me when I was 12, that would also be on the rescue list. Alas, it’s long gone, but the memory of him handing me my first serious “adult book” that long-ago summer in Wisconsin lives on.
Guy L. Gonzalez, WWR emeritus
I’m two-thirds through Jon Ronson’s Them: Adventures with Extremists (Picador), a humorously disturbing look at a diverse group of people with one common bond: belief in a shadowy cabal that secretly runs the entire world. From the Ku Klux Klan and Islamic fundamentalists to “extraterrestrial, shape-shifting giant lizards,” Ronson’s entertaining search for the truth is enlightening and a bit unnerving, especially in the current light of Donald Trump being taken seriously as a political candidate. There’s no way these extremists could be right and yet….
While To Kill a Mockingbird ranks as one of my all-time favorites (RIP, Ms. Lee), I don’t own an irreplaceable copy of it, so my must-rescue book would be my first edition copy of Matt Ruff’s Fool on the Hill (Atlantic Monthly) which I found at Autumn Leaves Used Books while visiting Ithaca a few years back, where the story takes place. I also own a heavily used paperback copy that’s signed by Ruff, which I’d grab, too.
Rebecca Miller, Editorial Director, LJS
In a long, anticipatory run-up to a family trip to my husband Stephen’s ancestral Australia this year, I recently mined his bookshelf for David Malouf—whose The Great World (1990) was fodder for our earliest conversations about literature, the universalities we share, and how lives get built. At the heart of the common understanding that emerged is something Stephen declared with that book in his hand: “All stories are love stories.” Years later, Malouf’s Ransom (2009) held me to a single sitting. So now, I’m going back in time and into the heart of his earliest writing via a solid but tinged paperback edition of An Imaginary Life (George Braziller).
I’d describe the sensation as meditative, but maybe that’s unavoidable given the losses that February brought. My affection for Harper Lee, which led to our naming our daughter after her, stems from the invaluable gift reading To Kill a Mockingbird was for me as a teen. It was with me all the time over a full 17 readings—and those were the ones I counted—offering me escape, confrontation, a peer at my side in viewing the chaos of adults, and insight into kindness. I read Go Set a Watchman with interest, and while I found it unsatisfying in its narrative arc, I welcomed it as a record of Lee’s work, including the glimpse of the complexity in Scout’s world revealed by her adult point of view.
If I still had the dog-eared paperback of Mockingbird that was my constant companion for so long, I might choose it above all other books as my rescue book, but it would be near impossible to leave behind my copy of the Fireside Book of Folk Songs, edited by Margaret Bradford Boni and illustrated by Alice and Martin Provensen (S. & S.) After growing up with the family copy on the piano, my twin, Deb, and I set out to find good used copies for our own homes, and mine is a most precious relic that helps keep the joy alive.
Meredith Schwartz, Executive Editor, LJ
I actually have a book that I inadvertently saved from someone else’s house fire. My friend Deidre loaned me her very favorite, out-of-print book, Chimera by John Barth. Then we fell out of touch before I could return it. I was wracked with guilt—only to find her years later and learn that she’d lost all her other books in a fire, so it was a good thing I had it after all.
As for what I would grab: probably not a book. My favorites are happily still in print, and I’m not emotionally attached to the particular editions I’ve got. I’m more likely to grab the towel I have signed by Douglas Adams (of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy fame). Otherwise maybe my disintegrating copy of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland with illustrations by Salvador Dalí (Walker).
Henrietta Verma, WWR emerita
If there were a fire, after my family members (including the cat) were out, I’d grab my U.S. citizenship certificate because I’d rather die than go through that red tape again.
If there were still time, I’d take my mother’s Dairy Book of Home Cookery, a 1977 publication by the Milk Marketing Board of England and Wales. It’s a bit battered but very precious to me as it includes recipes for some of my childhood meals and has Mum’s handwriting on some of the pages. It’s adorably old-fashioned and unashamedly pro-dairy. The book opens with notes on various products, such as the one for cream (see photos) that notes that “there is a great variety of creams available to the housewife” and another for butter that calls it an “energy food.”
It’s also packed with cooking brochures and recipes on pieces of scrap paper, such as this one my Mum wrote out for rum syrup:
1/3 pint (200 ml) water
6 oz. sugar
7 tbsp. dark rum
Dissolve [the sugar in the water] slowly and simmer for 5 mins. Then add rum.