Reading: William Sleator

Moving: 20' elliptical, 5' treadmill, some weights.

Listening: Talking Heads

10 March 2000: Freshling 'brary

I wish I knew what books I brought to UConn with me freshling year. I was never as dedicated as SSP, who brought along a tall narrow bookcase providing about nine shelf-feet (it also served to obscure the view of his bed from the door), but I know I brought some--maybe a foot and a half worth. My roommate, also born on 25 May 1968 but otherwise my polar opposite, read from my collection. She said all my books had one evil male character and was prepared to deduce my entire personality the two or three books she read. One character was Broud (The Clan of the Cave Bear), but who were the others? Of the books I know were my favorites then, I can think of Woundwort (Watership Down) and Robert E. Lee Ewell (To Kill a Mockingbird). I doubt she read Watership Down, actually, and I don't remember specifically if she read To Kill a Mockingbird. She read The Fountainhead or at least Anthem.

What else did I have? My eyes rove over my favorites, the top shelf of the Caernarvon Castle bookcase.

I hadn't read any Jane Austen yet. I might, because of The Great Gilly Hopkins--no, it wasn't Gilly; Gilly was an only child. What book has two girls, not one, going into foster care, and the elder sister, the protagonist, finds Jane Eyre and an arithmetic book (all the problems completed) on the shelf, and rereads Jane Eyre remembering how her mother used to act it out? Not The Pinballs, which is Betsy Byars and three unrelated kids in a foster home. Anyway, I might, because of that book, already have read Jane Eyre. (I stack the Brontës under Jane Austen on that shelf only for reasons of space and because they were clumped together in a UConn class, not because I like any of the world's first Motown group ("The Brontë sisters!") as well as Jane Austen.)

Watership Down and Clan of the Cave Bear, certainly. I read the former in eighth grade and the latter in tenth. Not Possession, 1991. I doubt I owned Alice in Wonderland; the Tenniel-illustrated edition I have I bought from the Coventry Bookshop much later in school. Mandy was a childhood favorite but probably I didn't own it yet, and besides I bet I was trying to strike a grown-up chord--plus it doesn't have a bad guy in it. Not One Hundred Years of Solitude or Their Eyes Were Watching God (1989 and 1990) or A Prayer for Owen Meany (1992). I didn't own Harold and the Purple Crayon yet and if I didn't bring Mandy I didn't bring The Phantom Tollbooth either. To Kill a Mockingbird, absolutely. A Wrinkle in Time, very likely. No A.A. Milne. Not Jacob Have I Loved--I bought that later--probably 1989, like everything else. I remember reading it by Mirror Lake with NCS present--so before 1989. Catcher in the Rye, of course--but where's the mean male character there? Not The Changeling, because tragically, I didn't know about it until 1992. I don't think I owned Jackaroo yet and I know I hadn't read Temple of My Familiar yet (1991).

So what did I have?

• Watership Down
• The Clan of the Cave Bear
• A Wrinkle in Time
• The Bell Jar
• Anthem, The Fountainhead, and Atlas Shrugged
• The Catcher in the Rye

Of course! The high school standards--Jack and Big Brother would have fit RMD's pattern:

• The Lord of the Flies
• 1984

No single black-or-white bad guy, but I would have had this anyway:

• A Clockwork Orange

Oh! I watched a TV miniseries in ninth grade then fell in love with the book. But the bad guy in that is Cathy, not a man:

• East of Eden

I was thoroughly over V.C. Andrews and Stephen King by then and knew to deny ever reading such tripe. Besides, if I had Flowers in the Attic, then I bet Demaris would have borrowed that and not The Bell Jar. Plus its bad guy is an old woman.

By then I had read and probably owned

• Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Phoebe gave me as a graduation present

• An ultra-abridged paperback American Heritage Dictionary

Another reference I relied upon more than that dictionary was

• Edith Hamilton's Mythology

Maybe, to fit in with my intellectual pose, another high school assignment,

• The Scarlet Letter

I know there can't have been much, because the fact is that I didn't own many books until after junior year when I held my first well-paying job, such that I had money left even after paying tuition, fees, and room & board and budgeting for books. Working thrice a week at Phoebe throughout high school, I hardly suffered for lack of books, but I had that access only at the library, not at home. That seems to me now such a starvation ration of books.

But I still want to know what I brought to Shippee 432B, that lavender-painted room with daybeds and a roommate who wanted me to have my chart done. (I said we should use hers, since we shared the same birthday. She didn't buy it.)