The Book Blog - Learning Resources at St. Johns River State College

Rereading A Clockwork Orange: How Time and Experience Changed My Perspective

04/28/2025

Dr. Brittnee Fisher

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The first time I read A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, I thought it was just okay. The language was confusing, the violence jarring, and the story, though unique, felt more like a disturbing thought experiment than something that resonated with me personally. I admired the style but didn’t connect with it. I was also deeply influenced by my love of the film adaptation, which shaped how I approached the book- and perhaps, unfairly, how I judged it.

Now, years later, I’ve decided to revisit the novel (because of this business), and to my surprise, I’m enjoying it immensely. It’s an entirely different experience this time around, and I’ve found myself thinking about why that is. What changed between then and now? The text hasn’t changed- but I have. And that’s the beauty of rereading: the book stays the same, but the reader doesn’t.

I’ve come to believe that my continual reading over the years has improved my literacy- not just my ability to decode and understand complex language, but my capacity to read between the lines, to appreciate subtlety, satire, and tone. Burgess’s invented language, Nadsat (there was no web guide my first time reading), once felt like an obstacle; now it feels like a brilliantly crafted layer that adds richness and depth to the narrative. I'm picking up on references and rhythms I missed before and no longer rushing to “get through” the story. I’m savoring it.

But it’s not just about literacy. I think A Clockwork Orange is one of those books that becomes more relevant- and more haunting- the older you get. When I first read it, I was closer in age to Alex and his droogs. The violence felt performative, surreal. Now, with more life behind me, I read the book through a different lens. I think about morality, free will, and the terrifying implications of state-imposed conformity. I see the tragedy of a young man shaped- and ultimately broken- by a system more interested in control than in rehabilitation.

The themes of choice and consequence hit harder now. I better understand the danger of a world that prioritizes obedience over understanding. And how essential it is to preserve one’s ability to choose, even if that means choosing wrong. The moral ambiguity that once made the book feel cold now feels complex and intentional. Younger me just didn’t get it. Burgess wasn’t glorifying violence- he was interrogating it, questioning the foundations of societal control.

It was also fascinating to see how our cultural context changes our reading. In today’s climate, where surveillance, algorithmic control, and polarized ideologies dominate our lives, A Clockwork Orange reads as eerily prophetic. It’s no longer just a dystopian fantasy- it’s a chilling reflection of our own reality, a warning about what happens when systems are designed to suppress rather than support the individual.

This reread has been a reminder that some books are meant to grow with us. What once felt alienating, and abrasive now feels bold and brave. And maybe the best thing about literature is that it waits for us- it holds its meaning quietly, ready to reveal more as we become ready to receive it.

If you haven’t read A Clockwork Orange since your younger years- or if you found it inaccessible the first time- consider giving it another shot. You might be surprised at what you find the second time around. I certainly was!

Here are a few of my favorite made-up words from the book!

Boomaboom- thunder
Clop- to knock
Eggiweg- egg
Gloopy- stupid
Guttiwuts- guts

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Book Rec: The Beauty of the End by Lauren Stienstra

04/21/2025

Kayla Cook

2 Comments

TW for discussions of murder, suicide, reproductive health, infertility, human trafficking, and eugenics.

For thousands of years, very possibly for as long as humans have existed, people have been worried about “the end.” In both religious and scientific circles, the idea that one day we won’t exist remains a hot topic of discussion; for some, the idea that our species’ existence is finite is a source of fear or existential dread, while for others, this comes as a comfort.

But what might happen if we knew the expiration date? How would that impact our lives and the way we live them? Would we do something to try to stop the end from happening, or would we welcome it?

Author Lauren Stienstra attempts to answer these questions in her debut novel, The Beauty of the End.

In Stienstra’s novel, humanity realizes its impending extinction in an unexpected way: the cicadas don’t emerge when they’re scheduled to. In fact, they don’t emerge at all, which prompts entomologists to start digging—literally—and they find that the previous generation of cicadas did not lay any eggs before they died. The entomologists then up all their fellow biologist buddies and begin investigating other extinct and endangered species, and ultimately discover something in every living thing’s DNA (don’t ask me what; I’m not a scientist, but Stienstra is, and this is science fiction, so I suspended disbelief and took her word for it) that can approximate about how many generations a species or individual has left in their genetic line.

Humans, it turns out, have only about four generations left before the species dies out. Some individuals or families may have more or fewer generations left. While four is the average, some people may naturally score a five or even a six on their genetic report, while others can score three, two, one, or even zero. With each generation, that number goes down, and fewer people are born, which leads to some interesting changes to the society which emerges in this universe.

Women are encouraged to have babies later (in their 40s or 50s if possible), or, if they can’t wait, to have a lot of babies, preferably with multiple fathers so as to “diversify the gene pool.” If you are a young woman who doesn’t want to have children but still wants to help, you have the option to become a “Mendel,” a doctor who specializes in genetics and reproduction, named for Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics. People who score higher in their generational genetic testing are preferred, both as Mendels and as sexual partners, especially since it seems that reproducing individuals with lower scores tend to have greater likelihood of passing their scores on to their offspring (for instance, if you are a 2, and you have a child with a 5, despite your partner’s high score, your children will almost certainly score a 1, meaning they can have children, but their children will not be able to have children). People unlucky enough to score zero become known as “naughts” and are inevitably looked down upon for their inability to reproduce naturally.

People are desperate to find a way to stop the “Limit” as that four-generation expiration date comes to be known, and from that desperation come great atrocities. Human trafficking runs rampant. Women are kidnapped and sold. Men rent their wives out to be used like breeding stock. The government gives scientists almost complete autonomy to experiment as they wish, which leads to the discovery that, sometimes, people with disabilities or terrible genetic illnesses can produce children who score as high as 12, which, in turn, leads to more of the aforementioned atrocities, now specifically targeting people with these diagnoses. Families fall apart. People kill their partners and children. Mass suicides abound.

If you think that all sounds pretty awful, I would agree with you!

And so, it seems, would the narrator of this story, Dr. Charlie Tannehill, a young woman who agreed to become a Mendel not out of a desire to help stop the Limit, but to continue to live a life as close to the one she believes she would have had if the Limit had never been discovered. Goods have become so expensive, and the social expectation for women to reproduce is stronger than ever, so she sees becoming a Mendel as a way to both continue to afford food and the ability to live as a single woman, and to not have to reproduce. Because the Mendelia, the organization that trains Mendels, takes your ovaries when you join in lieu of tuition.

Over time, however, as she witnesses the horrors endured by her patients at the hands of her colleagues, and the way her sister and brother-in-law's lives are destroyed by their and the Mendelia’s ambition, she begins to fight back against what society has become.

This book was pretty heavy in terms of content, but I thought it was a fascinating thought experiment and I enjoyed the speculative aspect of it because it seemed like something that could potentially happen. The last couple of chapters really lost me, but I think that had more to do with my personal preferences than anything to do with the way it was written. I would definitely recommend this one to any fan of speculative science fiction.

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A Short Book That Shattered Me: I Who Have Never Known Men

04/15/2025

Victoria Slaughter

2 Comments

Every now and then, I stumble across a book that completely blindsides me—in the best, most haunting way. I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman was exactly that kind of surprise.

I was just looking for a short audiobook to keep me company while cleaning the house one weekend. That’s it. Something under eight hours, something I could half-focus on while folding laundry or doing dishes. The cover caught my eye first, then the title. I didn’t even bother reading the description before I hit play. A few minutes in, though, I was hooked—and not long after, I found myself sitting on the kitchen floor, back against a cabinet, completely floored by the story unfolding in my ears.

Here’s the official description from Libby:

Deep underground, forty women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only a vague recollection of their lives before. As the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl—the fortieth prisoner—sits alone and outcast in the corner. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground.

It sounds dystopian, and it is—but it’s also something more: sparse, poetic, philosophical, and deeply introspective. At just around six hours long (or 184 pages in print), it’s not a lengthy read. But trust me when I say: this book holds power. A quiet, aching kind of power that lingers long after you’ve finished the last sentence.

There’s this misconception that short books can’t hit as hard as epics. But I Who Have Never Known Men proves otherwise. It’s a book that made me pause, reflect, and want to start it all over again the moment it ended.

It made me think about womanhood—what it means to be a woman when you’ve been completely removed from societal expectations of gender, love, and relationships. It made me reflect on the importance of community, and also the quiet strength in being alone. It’s about survival and curiosity, about being brave enough to explore the unknown even when everything feels uncertain.

It doesn’t offer every answer. In fact, it leaves you with quite a few questions. And honestly? I’m okay with that. Sometimes a book doesn’t need to tie everything up neatly to leave a lasting impact.

So if you’re looking for something short but profound—something that will haunt you in the quiet moments and make you look at the world just a little differently—give I Who Have Never Known Men a chance. Just maybe don’t try to multitask while you’re reading it. You might end up sitting on your kitchen floor, heart cracked open, wondering how a book so small could hold so much.

You can listen through SJR State Library's Libby!

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Jeff VanderMeer and Weird Science Fiction

04/07/2025

Dr. Brittnee Fisher

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This week, we welcome another great blog post from History Professor and Library Super User Matt Giddings!

Jeff VanderMeer and Weird Science Fiction

“There’s a fungus among us, and it’s going to kill me.”

Jeff VanderMeer is a science fiction writer who lives and works in Tallahassee, Florida, a setting that has inspired his most well-known work (The Southern Reach series). However, today, I’d like to discuss some of his less well-known works – the Ambergris series. These books are, well, weird. Really, all of VanderMeer’s writing is, but I’d argue that these books are perhaps the weirdest.

The Ambergris series begins with a lengthy collection of short stories titled “City of Saints and Madmen” – the title refers to Ambergris, the city in which the majority of the stories are set and which is named for “the most secret and valued part of the whale.” Frankly, this set of stories defies easy description – one early edition of it had a short story on the inside of the dust jacket written in code (mercifully decoded and printed in the book in later editions). Ambergris is a moldy, dank, crumbling metropolis inhabited by humans who have, at some point in the past, driven the aboriginal inhabitants of the city underground. In this case, quite literally so, as these mysterious beings are called “Gray Caps” and seem to be fungus people. The Gray Caps lurk in the background throughout the stories, which mostly revolve around art criticism, madness, and an annual festival involving the reproductive habits of river squids.

VanderMeer followed this collection up with a novel, “Shriek: An Afterword.” Randomly, I grabbed this off the shelf last week (or perhaps a gust of dank crypt air, laden with spores, wafted from a crepuscular corner of the library and impelled me to select this particular tome- who can say?) and took a trip back up the river Moth to Ambergris. “Shriek” is a much more straightforwardly presented text, in this case the memoir of a famous Ambergrisian art critic named Janice Shriek (a character readers of “City of Saints and Madmen” will have encountered). Janice writes about the strange and strained relationship she has with her brother Duncan, who has become fascinated with the Gray Caps and the alleged atrocities they have committed against the residents of Ambergris.

What makes “Shriek” an interesting read to me is the text and the subtext. Janice recounts her brother's activities, sometimes quoting his diaries or letters but at other times recounting her suppositions about his life and works. Duncan, who is far from dead, annotates the work with his own commentary, providing a real view of his activities. Well, what he thinks is real. So, “Shriek” is a memoir by an unreliable narrator, with commentary by another unreliable narrator about subjects for which reliable narration may be impossible.

Or, to put it bluntly, it’s exactly the kind of work VanderMeer would write.

I’m a big fan of this whole series, and I like “Shriek” more than I thought I would. It’s connected to the central mystery of the series – those odd, unsettling, and potentially malevolent Gray Caps – which is the thing that I wished “City of Saints and Madmen” had spent more time explaining. There is a sequel, “Finch”, which is apparently a noir-ish murder mystery which I already have and will probably read next.

Have you read any of VanderMeer’s work? Do you like fungus or weird stories or madness? Come find me at the book club (or on the St. Augustine or Palatka campuses) and share!

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Reading the Harry Potter Series Through for the First Time!

03/31/2025

Dr. Brittnee Fisher

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Special thanks to this week's blog contributor, Kylie Stanley. Kylie is both a student and part-time employee at SJR State. It has been exciting to watch her Harry induced emotional journey!

Growing up in the early 2010s, I always heard my peers talking about the Harry Potter series and movies. Everywhere I turned, it was “Harry Potter” this and “Harry Potter” that, but I had no interest in fantasy. I was a Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Dork Diaries, historical fiction kind of girl—the furthest genres from fantasy. I didn’t try to open my mind to Harry Potter until I was 20. When I started the series on Christmas Day in 2024, I really only started it because I had received a Kindle, and the first Harry Potter book was one of the very few popular books included with my Prime membership, so I gave it a try. The first book’s reading level is around that of a fourth grader, but even as a 20-year-old, Rowling has a way of making you feel like you are at King’s Cross with Harry. I finished the first book in a couple of days, not realizing that I would end the series loving every book while also becoming obsessed with almost anything Harry Potter-related.

As I moved on through the series, the phrase “the books grew with their audience” came to mind often. This statement, along with the fact that Voldemort doesn’t have a nose and Harry Potter slept under the stairs (all because of Jessie and Good Luck Charlie on Disney Channel), were the only things I knew about the Harry Potter series when I started. To say the books grew with their audience is extremely true. The series starts out with a couple of eleven-year-old witches and wizards beginning their school careers at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The first three books are more geared toward younger readers. The fourth through the seventh books are when the series begins to mature for older readers. During this time, readers start to encounter more violence, betrayal, and even death. Overall, I absolutely loved the series and would suggest it to anyone—even if they don’t like fantasy—to give it a try! Now, I’m off to watch the movies to see how they compare (even though we know the books are always better).

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My journey defeating my 1st ever months-long reading slump

03/24/2025

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Kelsey Rodgers has been an attendee of the Palatka campus Book Club since August 2022 and a regular guest-blogger on the Book Blog. She has also published several original poems and plans to pursue a degree in Creative Writing following her graduation from SJR State.

Life has increasingly become more tedious since my 22nd birthday last November. I have been in the process of finishing my last semesters here at SJR State, applying to university, and questioning what my life will look like after leaving my home for the first time. The overwhelming transition from this new stage of life has led to a massive reading slump, the likes of which I haven’t experienced since starting to find a love of reading back in 2022.

These past few months were also very influential on my mental health. The growing pains of adulthood seemed to highlight feelings of isolation and misunderstandings that usually float in the back of my mind. In my experience focusing on my education tends to help drown out these thoughts. However, this time focusing on my education path seemed to accelerate how often my anxieties flashed across my mind. So, words can’t express the relief of spring break offered.

During this break, some days were more relaxing than others. The days I spent locked and resting in my room helped. Unfortunately, the days soon after were full of college emails, studying, and planning papers. Exhaustion followed not too long afterwards again. I decided to take a nap, which was disturbed by the book I stopped reading (and never finished) last year falling on the floor. I still don’t know why I felt the need to read it again, but I did.

After one chapter, I couldn’t put it down.

Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth is about a movie production whose plot is inspired by a fictional queer feminist book written by the main character, Merritt Emmons. Merritt’s book is based on two schoolgirls named Flo and Clara who were found dead after starting a private club called The Plain Bad Heroines Society in 1902.

When reading, I was reminded of what it felt like to be understood. I found characters like Harper to have a similar complex relationship with her queerness and her parents like me. The character Merritt is a writer and talked about her writing slump after her successful 1st novel. She didn’t want to talk about her next idea her writing since “it wasn’t done yet.” Then shortly followed the quote that inspired me to write about my own reading slump: “If you’re determined to sail such ruinous waters you might as well boast about the voyage.” I finally felt the weight of my shoulders lift after hours of my nose within this book.

Throughout my journey reading the novel, I’m reminded how important representation within literature is. Reading provides such a personal look into characters’ minds. These personal perspectives help readers feel a sense of connection in a way other mediums can not.

I am still too early within the novel to make a full flushed out review. However, it is safe to say I’m enjoying the ride it is taking me on. I’m grateful to have such a great book to get me out of my first ever dreaded reading slump!

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Make Reading Right for You!

03/12/2025

Dr. Brittnee Fisher

3 Comments

This week, we welcome a new contributor to the Book Blog. Victoria Morris is a friendly face at the Palatka Campus Library. Learn more about her thoughts on making reading right for you!

When I was asked to contribute to the Book Blog, my immediate reaction was a resounding "no." I thought, "I'm not a writer, so why should I write a post?" But the truth is, I didn’t have to be a writer to give it a go. And now, you’re getting the chance to read my very first blog post. I hope you too will embrace new opportunities with an open heart.

My relationship with reading was a lot like the card scene in Easy A. In the scene, Olive receives a musical card. At first, she hates the song and quickly shuts the card. But over time, she finds herself going back to it, and eventually, the song grows on her. Similarly, I’d pick up a book, but after reading a few pages, it would end up forgotten on a shelf. That all changed two years ago, and now reading has become one of my favorite hobbies.

For a long time, I struggled with reading for enjoyment because I kept choosing books that didn’t truly interest me. I didn’t realize this until I discovered a genre that genuinely caught my attention. If you’re trying to become a reader, that’s my first piece of advice: find what you love. Don’t be afraid to step outside your comfort zone. Even the most experienced readers have books they didn’t finish (DNF).

My second recommendation for new readers is to explore the various formats and tools available to you. Along with physical books, digital and audiobooks provide endless options for customization to suit your preferences. I used to criticize myself for being a slow reader because I struggled to visualize descriptions. But then I discovered a whole world of talented artists creating fan art, and it became an amazing resource. It took some time to accept that using tools to enhance my understanding wasn’t a cheat, and once I did, I started truly enjoying the stories.

Here are a few of Victoria's recommended titles:

The Guest List

Fourth Wing

Legends & Lattes

The Serpent and the Wings of Night

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A Women's History of the Beatles

03/03/2025

Kayla Cook

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In her 2021 book A Women’s History of the Beatles, senior lecturer in sociology and “youth culture expert” at Griffith University in Southeast Queensland, Australia, Dr. Christine Feldman-Barrett delves into Beatles history from a new angle: the experiences of women. Rather than focusing on the Fab Four themselves, Barrett looks primarily at fan experiences, starting with the women who knew the Beatles when they got their start playing in dive bars and music clubs in the Merseyside music scene in Liverpool, and wrapping it up today with women like herself who have made Beatle-fandom into an academic career.

Throughout this book, Barrett confronts the sexism faced by fans of the Beatles, from “Beatlemania”—the hip, new female hysteria of the mid ‘60s?—to the later period when the Beatles started to be viewed as a “serious” band and male fans started to edge the “fangirls” out of the fandom spaces they created and make them feel unwelcome in the new male-dominated ones. She also talks at length about the sexism faced by the Beatles’ partners, like Maureen Starkey, who was physically attacked and stalked, and eventually forced to become a recluse in order to survive being “Ringo’s girl,” and Yoko Ono, who has for decades been demonized for breaking up the Beatles, something she neither did nor had any reason to do as she didn't know anything about the Beatles prior to meeting John Lennon because she was too old to have been a participant in Beatlemania. (Yoko was and is, in fact, a victim of a rather disturbing and unique cocktail of sexism and racism at the hands of both male and female Beatles fans which seems to have come about as a result of both the timing of her arrival in Lennon's life and the fact that Lennon was one of the two more prominent members of the band. Notably, George Harrison's second wife, Olivia Arias-Harrison, who is Mexican-American and arrived on the scene in the late '70s, has never faced the wrath of Beatles fans as Yoko has.)

At the same time, Barrett celebrates the empowerment female fans of the Beatles felt compared to fans of other popular British Invasion bands of the ‘60s. While the Rolling Stones were writing about “stupid girls” and girls who Mick Jagger could hold “under [his] thumb,” and The Who seemed to ignore the very existence of girls when it wasn’t funny (Pete Townshend has said before that The Who have always been more of a “blokes’ band” ...I wonder why, Pete?), the Beatles sang songs that fans viewed as being “pro-girl.” This, in combination with the fact that the Beatles themselves often responded personally to fan queries and praise sent in to the Beatles Monthly Book, a fan magazine published from 1962 to 1970, made young women who listened to the Beatles feel that they were appreciated, welcome, and safer with the Beatles than their rougher counterparts. In turn, this also led female fans to form large and often inclusive fan clubs across the globe, in which a great many women found friends they’re still in touch with today.

Feldman’s book has been an invaluable source for me in my ongoing research into the life and times of Maureen Starkey, Ringo Starr’s first wife, who bridged the gap between fan and partner, and whose relationship with Starr spanned from the Beatles’ early days in Liverpool to several years after the band’s dissolution in 1975. Her life provides a fascinating case study into both working class Northern English women in the mid-20th century and, even more so, the impact of fame on the friends and family of celebrities.

This book is available to read online as an EBSCO eBook through SJR State's Library (linked here).

Happy Women's History Month!

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Can a Reader Ever Have Too Many Books? (A Look at My TBR)

02/19/2025

Victoria Slaughter

3 Comments

As a reader (and a librarian), you’d think I’d have my bookish life together—neatly organized shelves, a perfectly curated TBR, maybe even a color-coded reading plan. But let’s be honest, my TBR (To Be Read) list is pure, unhinged chaos. No matter how many books I read, the list refuses to shrink. In fact, it only grows at an alarming rate. At this point, it feels less like a list and more like a hydra—finish one book, and three more take its place.

There’s something both thrilling and mildly terrifying about an ever-growing TBR. On the one hand, I love knowing I’ll never run out of amazing books to read. On the other, my shelves (both physical and digital) are starting to resemble a small-scale library, and my Kindle is judging me.

My Biggest TBR Weaknesses

📚 ARCs (Advanced Reader Copies) – I love getting early access to books. But let’s be real, my digital TBR pile is now a structural hazard.

📚 Impulse Bookstore Purchases – Walk into a bookstore just to browse? Never.

📚 Book Club Recommendations – One great recommendation leads to another and another and another…..

What’s Actually on My TBR Right Now?

Currently, my TBR is a mix of books I’ve been meaning to read forever, buzzy new releases, and books I added on a whim but don’t quite remember why. Here are a few titles near the top of my never-ending list:

📖 The Listeners by Maggie Stiefvater | June 3, 2025 – I have loved this author since the early 2000s when she wrote the Shiver trilogy about werewolves (it was never just a phase). This will be her first book that is not YA. Knowing Stiefvater’s writing, it’ll be weird, magical, and I’m SO pumped.

📖 The Secret History by Donna Tartt | September 16, 1992 – The dark academia Bible. People praise this book to the heavens, and yet, I can’t seem to get past the 100-page mark. At some point in my life, I will persevere and read all 559 pages of this novel that has left such a powerful impact on so many. (It’s me. Hi. I’m the problem. It’s me.)

📖 Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann | August 1, 2005 – I found this while mindlessly scrolling Goodreads Giveaways and only clicked on it because of the cute cover and fun title. Then I saw the description: a herd of sheep solving their shepherd’s murder? Sign me up. Cozy mystery meets farm animals? Yes, please. Now, I just have to wait my turn in the reserve line at the library. Because of course this fun titled mystery book would also happen to being turned into a movie here soon.

TBR Management: Do We Even Try?

I’d love to say I have a plan when it comes to tackling my TBR, but let’s be honest—I mostly just read whatever I’m in the mood for. Honestly? I wouldn’t have it any other way. Having too many books to read is the best kind of problem.

Can a reader ever have too many books? Eh. Am I going to stop buying/adding to my TBR anytime soon? Absolutely not.

What does your TBR look like? Do you have a system, or are you also just riding the chaos wave with me?

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Like It or Not, You Can’t Escape Your Own Story: Joel ben Izzy’s The Beggar King and the Secret of Happiness

02/10/2025

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This week, our blog post comes from Lisa Mahoney, an English Professor (and avid library user)!

Humans are natural-born storytellers. We move from home to work to social activities and back again all the while communicating with others via story: “Guess what happened on the way to work?” “Let me tell what so-and-so did today.” “A funny thing happened when I went…” We weave in and out of different situations using narrative to entertain, explain, persuade, and ultimately be seen. Stories are easy to understand. Stories foster empathy. Stories elucidate values and worldviews. In short, stories are powerful. My favorite is fiction. The best illuminate deep insights that have broader reach beyond just what happened. They speak about not just the main character but about all individuals.

While I’m not opposed to true stories, it’s not my go-to, and even when a memoir stirs up enormous buzz, and everyone I know recommends it, the engagement and motivation to actually finish the book lack purchase. I guess I just get a little bored, truth be told. My imagination isn’t sparked, my feelings aren’t triggered, my empathy teeters on the brink of apathy. One book changed all of this for me: The Beggar King and the Secret of Happiness by Joel ben Izzy. I first read it twenty-two years ago and have since re-read it close to a dozen times. I have gifted numerous copies and recommended it innumerable times. Before this book, I had a hard time with a lot of the Me-ness in memoir and, to use the old cliché, was a little over the navel-gazing. And maybe I have a hard time with newer titles because this little gem stands as the litmus test for them all. None so far have passed the test.

Izzy’s story is at its base about loss, finding meaning in that loss, and not fighting against what your own story is that needs to play out. Izzy is a professional storyteller hired to perform at schools, weddings, festivals, etc. At thirty-seven, in otherwise good health, Izzy was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. During the procedure, his vocal nerve was affected. What a bum deal: a storyteller who loses his voice. Not only was the loss a physical one but because it was tied so intricately to his vocation it was a complete loss of self. He embarks on a journey to get his voice back and inexplicably comes face to face with his old mentor-turned-curmudgeon Lenny.

Lenny leads him on a story-journey to truly see his situation and not fight it. He reminds him of the timeless ancient tales that he tells in his professional life, and the treat for readers is that each chapter is introduced with an aligning parable and its origin. The book’s prologue is “The Beggar King,” a classic from Jerusalem. Others like “The Lost Horse” from China and “Optimism and Pessimism” from the Czech Republic and “The Happy Man’s Shirt” from Italy (among so many others) preface each prong in Izzy’s own chronology of this life-altering event. Through his sometimes-harsh interactions with Lenny, Izzy is slowly brought into his reality of not having a voice. He works toward acceptance and forgiveness in search of happiness.

Ultimately, stories are the crux of life. At a pivotal point in the story, Lenny goads Izzy into telling stories again. Izzy resists because he can’t talk. Lenny says, “Telling stories is not about the words you say. When you have a story inside you, and an open heart, you become a conduit—the story flows through you. As for the words…they’re merely commentary.” Shortly after, what becomes the one true theme for me, Lenny tries to shake the self-pity out of Izzy by pushing him into the reality of his new life. He says, “You walked out of my door twenty years ago and set off to seek adventure. And now here you are, back again, in the middle of a grand adventure. What more do you want?” Izzy responds, “Out.” Lenny explains, “It doesn’t work that way. What would happen if a character tried to escape from a story you were telling?” explaining that they stay put or they’d ruin the story. They can’t leave; they are the story. And here Lenny lays the epiphany out for Izzy: “That’s your problem. For months now, you’ve been trying to scrape and claw your way out of your own story…. But that’s not the way it works. You’re in a story. I’m in a story. Everyone is inside a story, whether they like it or not.”

Like it or not, we’re all in our own stories. If you want a heartwarming, bittersweet, honest odyssey, read Joel ben Izzy’s story.

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