The Memory Of Running

I finished a book. Called The Memory Of Running by Ron McLarty. It broke my heart...several times, in fact. Chapter 42 broke my heart the hardest. I've never had my heart broken by a book before. I've been moved, for good or bad, a few times before with books, but this was something else entirely. This was a wonderful book. I'd recommend it to anybody. But understand, many parts of it are very sad. I typically consider a book good or bad by the emotional response it gets out of me. Any book that gets a strong response from me--even if that response is a complete and utter hatred of that book--I consider a good book. If I laugh out loud or get so sad I want to kill myself, then the book was a success. The only books I consider bad are those that are blah. There's a lot of blah books out there. The Memory Of Running was not one of them.

I don't bottle up my emotions. But I don't exactly...what's the opposite of bottling your emotions?...well, whatever it is, I don't do that either. The thing is, I'm not 100% sure that I actually feel the emotions that I feel. I suppose it's more like...I don't know, I experience them, without any actual feeling. Maybe it's because I read a lot. The richest emotions I can remember having come from characters in books. So I feel these emotions...but they're on behalf of fictional characters. So I'm not really feeling them. It's almost like I'm observing them from others. I understand them, I recognize them, but I don't really feel them. There's a certain...detachment.

I love books. I love tv. And I love movies. But I think I love books more than the latter two. The problem is, I can't pick books. If you send me to a book store and tell me to get a book, I'm going to go to the sci-fi/fantasy section and pick something from there. Which makes sense, I do enjoy that genre. But I don't get the most out of that genre. I love novels I think more than any other type of book. I enjoy histories, biographies, and all the others, but I don't get INTO them like I do novels. I suppose it just has to have a narrative. I could get into a history better if it had a narrative to go along with it. Because I pick fantasy novels most of the time I can't pick books for myself. I enjoy the books I do pick (most of the time) but I don't usually get that much out of them. The Memory Of Running I didn't pick out. Someone gave it to me. The best books I've ever read were like that--books I found on an airplane, or on a bench somewhere. Or a book someone else just finished and handed to me. When I was a flight attendant I read more amazing books--because I'd find them on the plane all the time. And they were books I'd never pick out to read on my own. The True And Outstanding Adventures Of The Hunt Sisters. That's a book I found on a plane. I mean, just look at it--there's no way I'd walk by that in a bookstore and think "I HAVE TO READ THAT!" I mean seriously--it has a little girl in a pink princess dress on the cover! It made me cry. Well, not really, but inside I was crying. Great book. I had never read an epistolary novel before--certainly not a one-sided epistolary. It was lovely. And sad. But lovely. And I can guarantee you I'd never have walked into borders, seen it on the shelf and thought "I'm going to buy this and read it". Nope. But it was lying there, on a plane. Somebody forgot it, and I had just finished my other book, and wham!

When I was working as a flight attendant I got an idea. Do you remember The Yellow Bike Project? I don't know if it was very big or well known--in fact, it may have only existed in this small town. But I remember reading about it in the paper when I was very young. I remember it because I was an avid bicycler--back before I was old enough to drive a car. I used to bike everywhere, and I loved it so much I never thought I'd want a car. Anyway, The Yellow Bike Project was this guy--this philanthropist--who had a bunch of old bikes (or got a bunch of old bikes somehow) and he fixed them up, painted them all yellow, and then left them around town. I think they said on them something like "feel free to use me, but please leave me when you're done". The idea was, you could use this yellow bike, and because it was old and painted an ugly yellow color, you weren't likely to steal it. And you could just...go for a ride. And then when you were done, you leave it wherever, and someone else could take it. This old guy would drive around and check on the bikes, make sure they were in decent running condition. If something would break, he'd fix it. One time he said he had to bring one of the bikes back down from the top of a giant hill at the end of a road. He couldn't believe someone would ride it up that huge hill--and then not even have the satisfaction of going back down. Anyway, my reason for mentioning this is when I was a flight attendant I thought I'd like to start The Yellow Book Project. There were always so many books lying around in airports, on planes. We'd do our best to get the book to its rightful owner, but realistically, we rarely were able to. And since I got so much pleasure from reading these books, when I was done, I'd either give it to someone else to read or I'd intentionally leave it in a public place for some other lucky person to find and read. I thought, "what if I mobilize on this idea?" What indeed. I thought I could start up a website--wherein you could track the books, if you wanted to (kinda like Where's George). I thought I'd make simple printable yellow book-covers for the books I'd find, On the book I'd write that the book was donated to The Yellow Book Project, and please feel free to read this, then when you're done, please leave it in a public place. For added fun, you could look up the serial number on the yellow book jacket I'd made for it and you could see where the book had been. You could even add where you found the book, and where you left it once done (if so inclined). I figured I bet I could find a bunch of places that would donate old books to this cause. Friends of the Library has tons of classic books for just ten cents each. I could even make the jacket-covers available on the website--so you could print out your own, complete with serial and databasing and donate your own book by leaving it in a public place.

I never actually started that project. I really wish I had. But this is just one of dozens of ideas I've had over the years that I thought would be a good, fun thing to do--and never did. Well, I have a lot of free time right now...so why don't I do it now? Any thoughts?

Side note, it just occurred to me that Yellow Book is well known as a yellowpages type directory. So maybe The Yellow Book Project would be...well...misleading at best. Anybody have a better name in mind? The Neon Green Book Project?