Observations from
my weekly wanderings, usually in Northern Virginia (NOVA).
I seldom watch
awards shows, but for reasons that I’ve long since forgotten, on 3 March 1993, I
watched the First-Ever ESPY Awards; I will always be glad I did.
I was privileged to
watch possibly the best speech I’ve ever heard. Jim Valvano was awarded the
first ever Arthur Ashe Award for Courage. Valvano was the legendary basketball
coach of the North Carolina State Wolfpack. He had retired from coaching three
years earlier and was dying of cancer. He was helped to the stage by his good
friend Dick Vitale, and then gave the following speech.
It’s eleven minutes; trust me,
you’ll be glad you watched it.
Coach Valvano died
less than two months later.
The reason for my
reference to this speech – NOVA this week, Part II.
In my quest to read
the greatest novels of all time – and blog about my experience, I’ve often
struggled to find the correct word to describe a book. The urge is to say “I
liked” or “disliked” it. These work in some instances, but not in others.
There are books filled
with injustice, inhumanity, violence, despair, death, destruction, and the
like, that I can’t really say I enjoyed.
And yet, I have
given some of these 5 Stars.
What does that mean?
if not that I liked it?
It means, I thought
it was a great book.
And then you should
ask, but what does THAT mean?
And to THAT – I
have an answer. And THAT is why I began this post with Coach Valvano’s speech.
Coach V or Jimmy V
as he was affectionately known, says that we should do three things every day:
Laugh, Think, and Cry. Coach V asserts that if we do these three things, we
will lead a full life.
I agree.
So I want a book to
make me THINK or FEEL. A great book will make me do both.
A fellow book
blogger recently pointed out the difference between book reviews and book
journaling. I’d not made the distinction before, but I realized I am more
interested in journaling than reviewing. My blog entries about the books I’ve
read are a journal of what the author made me think and feel.
In my opinion,
reviewing art is largely a futile effort to evaluate the skill of the artist.
If not futile, it is undeniably never definitive. (Which is very close to the
definition of futile.)
But when I journal
my thoughts and feelings of a written work – it is quite definitive. Someone
else may have very different thoughts and feelings about the same written work
– and by the way – isn’t that grand! But my thoughts and feelings are
indisputably my thoughts and feelings.
This is not to say,
unchangeable. I love to hear from others who felt or thought the same. But I
love to hear from those who felt or thought differently as well. They’ve
altered my perception on more than one occasion.
I must note however
the distinction between: I felt (or thought) differently, here’s why and No,
no, no…you have it all wrong. Here’s what you failed to comprehend. Semantics?
Since you asked…No.
In my day job, I’m
an intelligence analyst and I do a lot of writing. It is imperative that my
writing be as free from subjective interpretation as possible. This day job imperative
runs contrary to my book journaling pastime and caused me some exasperation in
the past. I want to classify things nicely and neatly, such as my book ratings:
5 Stars = LOVED IT!
4 ½ Stars = Loved
it
4 Stars = Liked it
a lot
3 ½ Stars = Liked
it
3 Stars =
Ambivalent
2 ½ Stars = Not a
fan
2 Stars = Disliked
it
1 ½ Stars = Hated
it
1 Star = Hated it a
lot
But this no longer
works. Actually, I was never quite happy with it, but I hadn’t put my finger on
precisely why. It isn’t about how much I liked a book. It’s about how powerful
a book was intellectually or emotionally. I’m keeping the 5 Star rating, but scrapping
the definitions. 5 Stars means simply the book is among the most intellectually
and emotionally powerful books I’ve read. 4 ½ Stars is just slightly less so,
and so on.
…the human word is like a cracked cauldron upon which
we beat out melodies fit for making bears dance when we are trying to move the
stars to pity. ~ Gustave Flaubert
No comments:
Post a Comment