Books in a Series that Raised Me

First, before I get into the book part, I want to thank all of my followers who are signed up on this blog and my friends who have told me they're reading it. I write with you in mind, hoping my stories will continue to get you in touch with your beliefs and feelings while supporting and inspiring you.

Also, welcome to a new follower, Mauro. We have never met, Mauro, but I already love you and bless you for what you are doing for two people that our mutual friend, Sharon, and I care very much about. And now you're in my heart, and on my Facebook page, Mauro! We'll stay in touch.

Today's Thinkless

I've coined a new term: thinkless. It sounds like it should be an adjective, but since I'm coining it, I'm declaring it to be a noun that refers to a phrase or saying loaded with equivocal words, and therefore, does not have a logical meaning. A thinkless is either taken out of context, or people believe they know what the equivocal words mean. A thinkless is often meant to be a life-guiding tool for the rest of us who would be unable to feel our happiness or make the next life decision without it. By the way, I write my own thinklesses, but I won't often recognize them.

Thinkless for Today: "When people ask us how long does it take for something to manifest, we say, as long as it takes you to release the resistance." --Abraham 

Really? So I guess humans should stop resisting tyranny if they want to manifest peace and democracy; and maybe it's better to do whatever it takes to shut down our immune system's resistance against disease so we can manifest health. -Really?  I won't go into the "Abraham" part except to say that--well--what "it " says is open to many interpretations, as are the words written in the Bible.

Books in a Series that Saved Me

These are the books that kept me off the streets, inside my house; in my own bed; in my own chair; on the floor; quietly, slowly reading every single word; talking to no one; minding my own business. If I was reading all of these books, and so many more, when did I have time to create so much of my own turbulent life drama? I can only imagine how much worse my life would have been if all these authors and stories hadn't been babysitting me! They may have saved my life, until now.

I'm writing about them from my aging memory that might not remember all the details correctly, but you can learn the details for yourself if you haven't already read these books, and feel free to write your own experiences with the books you've read in the comments below this post.

I read the first two series listed here during my few weed-smoking years beginning in the late 1960's when I was in my mid-twenties. That's when the cultural revolution unlocked my cage door and I, along with zillions of Dr. Spock-raised lab rats, went screaming out into a strange new wilderness with no rules! These stories didn't need any drug enhancement! 

 1. The Gor Series by John Norman

A friend who loved reading science fiction introduced me to these exciting combination philosophy, erotica, science fiction novels in 1972, five years after the first book, Tarnsman of Gor, was published. These are all stories of Tarl Cabot who was kidnapped from earth and transported to a planet called Gor, which can't be seen from earth because it is on the other side of the sun. On Gor, Cabot rides through the air on the back of a huge, unruly bird known as a tarn. In the first book, the woman (I think she's a princess) Cabot falls in love with on Gor is swiped off the top of a tower from some villain on a tarn, and Cabot spends the rest of the books running dangerous gauntlets and struggling with insane primitive tribespeople in his search for her. I kept reading each next book hoping he'd find her.

John Norman is the pseudonym of Dr. John Lange, a professor of philosophy and a classical scholar. He wrote 29 novels in that series. I read the first seven, one after the other, and then grabbed and read every new one as it came out, probably reading 10 of them over the years. 

In one of the novels, Tarl Cabot started disliking himself and, for me, lost his power and appeal. Also, Norman began writing long soapbox-style passages, expounding on his distorted philosophy about women's roles, sex, and violence. The author's voice took the place of the good stories, and I considered further reading to be a waste of my time. 

I look for the author's voice when I read fiction adventure stories, but when that voice becomes too invasive and so obviously misguided, the friendship ends.

2. Carlos Castaneda's Don Juan series

These books were another series of drug trips in themselves. Written in first person as the truth (Castaneda is said to have received his Ph.D. from UCLA with a dissertation that is word for word from his third book), most probably they are fiction. Yet a few of the teachings in them are still part of my way of life, embedded somewhere in my tangled mind. Author Carlos Castaneda begins the series with The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, (1968) in which he, a doctoral student at UCLA who is doing research for his dissertation, seeks out Don Juan Matus to learn about the plants used by the Yaqui Indians of the Sonoran Desert. The result is that Castaneda becomes Don Juan's student, learning to live as a warrior on the "path with the heart."

Castaneda's experiences with Don Juan, both terrifying and enlightening, take the reader on a journey into non-ordinary reality. Even though I wanted to, I never learned to "see" those tentacles protruding out of real humans, but I still secretly believe that not everyone walking around is a human, and I freely give myself permission to avoid people who don't resonate with me. I also learned that those within the circle of a problem cannot solve it as easily as someone coming in from the outside. I've practiced and proven that to be true in my life. When a path I'm on ceases to be fulfilling for me, I leave it, as Don Juan advised Castaneda to do.

I also learned that a warrior shouldn't have a predictable daily schedule, so that he or she cannot easily be found. I continue to live this warrior way, but admit that settling into a routine might have worked better for me. Now my body doesn't know when to sleep, when it's hungry or when it's thirsty. I've decided that at this age, with leukemia, it's too late to pay attention to those things. It's best to happily continue on as the stealthy, uncommitted, unpredictable warrior that I am.

We often don't remember what someone "tells" us, but we remember the delicious story with the nugget of truth embedded in it. The principles in this series stuck with me because of the non-ordinary way that Don Juan taught the lessons to Castaneda. 

I spent years grabbing the Castaneda books off the shelf as soon as they came out, but I stopped reading the next in the series sometime after Don Juan turned into an ant and disappeared forever through a crack in the floor. In the last book I half-read, Castaneda was in a desert cabin where women were dancing in a circle without their feet touching the floor. My drug years were over by then, and my husband Whitey had convinced me that a table was actually a table. 

3. James Herriot's Series

James Herriot, pseudonym for James Alfred Wight, wrote a series of five heartwarming books telling the stories of his practice as a rural veterinarian in the English countryside. His first book, All Creatures Great and Small was published in 1972. 

Herriot's stories, written in first person, are loving, funny and sad portrayals of the human and animal characters that he encountered. I believe that in the first book, he courts his wife, and in the end of that book, he marries her. If you ever wanted a model for writing an autobiography, these stories are the ultimate, highest standard of writing. I couldn't help but love him, and I always looked in the bookstores for each next book. 

The stories became a TV series, but I always want my own imagination to do the work, and I loved reading the books--All Creatures Great and Small; All Things Bright and Beautiful; All Things Wise and Wonderful; The Lord God Made Them All; Every Living Thing.

Wight died of cancer in 1995 at his home in Yorkshire.

More about James Herriot

In a future post I will tell you about one more series of well-written books that parachuted me into other dramatic times and places--"The Winning of America Series."