Jonna Carter: Me ‘n Huck

Know that my mother is rolling over in her grave at this moment over the wildly improper grammar in a title penned by her progeny. I’m grinning at the thought, as I’m certain there’s life in the old gal yet! I wonder if she’d be able to stomach a reading of Mark Twain’s definitive masterpiece, written in the colorful colloquial voice of a barely-schooled backwoods adolescent boy in the pre-Civil War south. And truly, the genius is in the language, to be savored and best read aloud.

Bill Marvel’s column this week awakened the dormant English literature major in me as he depicted the volumes lining every corner of his home, a collection carefully curated over the course of a lifetime. I, too, once harbored such a collection. I had books from childhood and adolescence, from college and graduate school, and those I’d bought or been given during the ensuing 30da years. Over the course of seven moves from the west coast to New England I carted with me all my books, knowing that unpacking and introducing them to unfamiliar rooms and shelves would transform a new-to-me house into my home.