books I don’t have

This is something that I’ve been mulling over last week; some things are better written after they’ve had a bit of time to percolate. It made me a little sad that in the many tributes to Madeleine L’Engle, I keep seeing words like “Her books meant so much to me as a child.” They did to me too, of course: they still do. I think, as with all the best children’s books, any adult who doesn’t read them because of a stupid label is depriving him- or herself cruelly. Oh, it’s probable that A Swiftly Tilting Planet and A Ring of Endless Light, particularly, hit me so powerful because I read them at the exact right point in my life, but when I read them over now, they still hold up. I think that I think they’re better (er, I meta-think they’re better?) than Many Waters or An Acceptable Time not just because I first read the latter when I was a bit older but because the former really are better books.

And of course her books vary in quality – I’m not a big fan of her poetry, for instance – but some of her adult books, fiction and nonfiction, are something special too.

When I first heard of her deathlast week, after sniffling a little, reading some of the online tributes and then crying a bit more, I went to look on my shelves to see what of hers I had here. (Other than the books that would be directly useful for work, reference or travel, I brought only the books I couldn’t live without to Europe – a total of less than 200 of our circa 1500 books, and that includes the directly useful ones.) Then I checked my Readerware database to see how many of her books I actually own. I own 15 books by Madeleine L’Engle. The number in my apartment? Zero.

I know exactly why that is, too. There are a few books by L’Engle that I really don’t care if I don’t read for a few years, like Certain Women. There are a few books that may just be hiding – I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out I did bring the Crosswicks Journals, but those would be over with the nonfiction. Or I might have missed them in the packing. And then there are the ones like A Wrinkle in Time, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, and A Ring of Endless Light, which I deliberately didn’t bring, because I didn’t need to. Those are among the books I hardly ever reread these days, because I don’t have to. I’ve read them so often and absorbed them so deeply they’re part of me.

I can recite a fairly ridiculous amount from the books, I can spew out all sorts of useless data. I can recite quotations from Mrs Who in languages I don’t even speak, I know why there’s no period after the Mrs, I know the name of Rob Austin’s favorite stuffed animal and the baby dolphin Vicky met and of the Murray family’s two dogs. I can spell Echthroi. None of that’s important in the least. What does matter is that Vicky and Meg are part of who I am, along with Jo March and a very few others.