403: forbidden

My current book is Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. I'm less than halfway through, but so far it's fantastic.

I want to talk about one of the exercises, which aims to shake out key bits of "how other people should change to make you feel valued". To do this, one is to quickly and without thinking much, complete the sentences:

* I wish other people were more ______.
* Why is it so hard for people to ______?
* For a change, I would love someone to treat me like ______.
* Maybe one of these days I'll find someone who will ______.
* In an ideal world with good people, other people would ______.

( Continued inside... )

Sherman Alexie, on Why the Best Kids' Books Are Written in Blood. I don't have words for how much it resonates with me.

ETA: After talking with zeightyfiv, I do have some words. I didn't learn most of my emotional skills from people who were actually present. I learned from the example of characters in books where terrible things happened, often to them. And it's an amazingly powerful experience to know that somewhere out there, another person Gets It.

List 15 books you've read that will always stick with you: list the first 15 you can recall in 15 minutes. Don't take too long to think about it. As an extra, I've included my approximate age of first reading.

In order of recollection:
* Alan Moore, Watchmen, Age: 22
* Moore & Lloyd, V for Vendetta, Age: 22
* JRR Tolkien, LOTR (trilogy, no Hobbit), ~12
* Shakespeare, Macbeth, 18
* Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide (series), 8-12 (not all were available at the same time)
* Ariley, Predictably Irrational, 23
* Zelazny, first Amber quintet, ~15
* Machiavelli, The Prince, ~16 (Can't remember which translation. The much longer companion volume on the Roman republic, Discourses on Livy, is in the stack of books I own but haven't had time to read.)
* Author Unknown, Job / Iyov depending on your translation scheme, ~10 (Only book of scripture that I'd bothered to read before my family started pushing Christianity on me, and the decade-long backlash against all religion that followed.)
* Nicholls, The Science in Science Fiction, ~17
* Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Kwok, Palmer & Ramsay translation, 20
* Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, 18
* Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five, 19
* Marx & Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 13 (Can't remember which translation. There's a particular lesson from this one - even the brightest among us can be incredibly naive about the way people work.)
* Bujold, Vorkosigan series, particularly Memory, ~17-22
* Extra, because 15 isn't enough: Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect, 22

---

"An Afternoon In The Stacks"

Closing the book, I find I have left my head
inside. It is dark in here, but the chapters open
their beautiful spaces and give a rustling sound,
words adjusting themselves to their meaning.
Long passages open at successive pages. An echo,
continuous from the title onward, hums
behind me. From in here, the world looms,
a jungle redeemed by these linked sentences
carved out when an author traveled and a reader
kept the way open. When this book ends
I will pull it inside-out like a sock
and throw it back in the library. But the rumor
of it will haunt all that follows in my life.
A candleflame in Tibet leans when I move.

- Mary Oliver (b. 1935)

Thanks go to taldragon for sending me this, ages ago.