I’ve written before (back in September, maybe?) about Derek and Melinda from Colorado, the couple I met on the ferry from Lombok to Bali. We spent a long afternoon together on the three hour crossing – which took seven hours. I’ve been noticing that when you start a conversation with any fellow foreign traveller, a few topics always come up. Of course there are the “Where are you from? And where are you going?” questions and if you’ve been away from home for more than a month, “What food do you miss?” The talk I always love to have is “What good books have you read?” and it was no surprise when Derek and I started comparing books we’d been through on our travels. I’m not sure if long term travellers tend to be readers at home, or if they are just taking advantage of their free time on the road to indulge in books. My thought is that people who take the time to poke around distant corners of the world have an open and curious mind, something book lovers also have, so it’s no coincidence when you find both traits in one person. Fortunately, if someone is going to stuff a book or two, (with their relatively high weight to size ratio,) into a bag to drag around the world, they choose good ones more often than not. So there are some real gems lurking on the shelves of used bookstores and the exchange piles in hostels and guesthouses. Oh, there’s plenty of crappy straight-to-paperback books floating around, but I’ve been very pleasantly surprised at the variety and quality of lit I’ve been finding.
Since I’m such a bookworm, (semi-closeted,) and often find myself talking lit with all kinds of people, I know that sooner or later, we are going to trade reading recommendations. But there are so many books and so little time, how can you decide which ones are worth pursuing? To answer this dilemma, I’ve started to rate fellow readers to decide how seriously I will take their advice and try to find their “great read.” I admit it’s a very subjective process with all kinds of difficult to define values and seemingly unrelated whims involved. How do you know someone is a real reader or just a literary tourist? Education, background and the way they speak about books I already know might clue me in. I look for clues in the other choices they make in music, art, movies and food. Sorry, but I’m not going to try very hard to find a book recommended by a Britney Spears fan who would never try anything as “gross” as sushi. Not that I don’t want to, it’s just that there are so many others I’m burning to get to. Mostly, I try to divine by the passion in your voice and the glint in your eye while you describe how the author spoke right to you, whether I might be moved also by the read you’re recommending. Ultimately, I judge the endorsement by the reader, and I have to categorize somehow. Lowest is the “take no action unless I find it for pennies at a yard sale,” group. Some I might seek out at the library or try to borrow if I spy it on a shelf somewhere. (And yes, when I visit your house and seem to be idly browsing your bookshelf, I AM judging – sorry. Don’t you know you are what you read? Why else would you keep that complete Shakespeare from college? I did.) There are just a few people in my highest rated category – some who might love reading books as much as I do and probably have better taste and a more discerning eye, too. If they plug a book, I’m at Borders that day or Amazon.com that night ordering it.
Derek was in that category just two hours after I noticed the
Well, I should have put a lot of money on it. Skip forward a couple of months and I’m here in the Seychelles on a volunteer project, sitting around talking meaningful books with someone I’m starting to realize has pretty good taste in lit – Vicki, an Australian surfer and world trekker type who currently lives in Barcelona. Reaching deeply into the cargo pocket of my shorts, I drag out my battered little reminders notebook, now splayed by moisture damage and also singed by the subsequent attempt to dry it on a lamp (long story.) I flip back through the stained pages to the note I added on that ferry from
“Do you mean “Ishmael?’” is her surprised reply in an accent I wish I could somehow write, “I love that book. In fact I carry my copy when I travel! It’s right upstairs!”
“You’re shitting me, I’ve been dying to read it!” but it's true and 30 seconds later, her copy is in my hands. Two days later, I’d finished it for the second time and had to just stop and think about it for a while. I didn’t even feel like starting another book for several days. It was amazing. How I’ve never heard of this book, published back in 1993, until this summer astounds me.
It begins with a classified ad:
“Teacher seeks pupil.
Must have an earnest desire to
save the world. Apply in person.”
The first person narrator, a little jaded and upset at the thought of finding exactly what he’s always been searching for in such an unheralded place, answers it. He’s expecting a scam or a practical joke, or at least to find the address overrun by “… two hundred mooncalfs, softheads, boobies, ninnyhammers, noodleheads, gawkies and assorted oafs and thickwits…” but instead finds exactly what he is looking for from the teacher, an enormous full-grown gorilla named Ishmael. The rest I leave to you to discover.
I’ve read many great books, and they don’t have to be world-shaking to be great, some are just amazing stories with vivid characters, extraordinarily well-told. But there are some that touch me and mean more. These are the special books, ones I give copies of away to people I love and then buy myself another copy. What these authors shared with me is sometimes plain to see. “On The Road” revealed the nature of true friendship to me. “Catch-22” made it plain the world is senseless and not to be taken too seriously, that’s there’s always a catch (quite a catch,) and we can’t let ourselves be driven crazy by it. “Eat, Pray, Love” gave me a way to step outside my emotions yet still feel them, and comforted me that someone else shared my doubts and felt as lost and small as I did. “Zen, And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance” contains not just instructions on bike repair and a story of a man travelling with his son, but a blueprint to handle life on all different levels.
If “Zen” is about how to live in this world, “Ishmael” shows us a new way to look at it, and a way to change it, or at least live here in a different and better way. It’s a whole new kind of book for me, one that pushes me to take a step, make a difference, and try to change things. I really hope you get touched by Ishmael the way I did, and if not, at least like the story and tell someone about it. Who knows? It might put me in your top book-recommender category.
Thank you, Derek. And thank you, Vicki.
Yours,
Clement
