De Kellier-Smith's Salinger Period

Last night was another monthly meeting of the Crescent 9th Ward Neighborhood Book Club. And while the discussion was lively (my favorite peeps were all there to discuss a very literary novel, Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory, which I really did enjoy), I couldn't help but wish we were discussing Nine Stories again.

My beloved Nine Stories. The book I would take to a desert island (along with the Legally Blonde DVD and the Physician's Desk Reference hollowed out. Inside: waterproof matches, iodine tablets, beet seeds, protein bars, NASA blanket and, in case I get bored, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. No, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Question: did my shoes come off in the plane crash?). We were assigned to read one of them for the club in November, but after I finished it, I was hooked. I devoured them all as if they were a box of Godiva truffles. I hung around after the discussion, chatting away with the former BYU literature teacher we are blessed to have in our club. But that wasn't enough. I made my entire family read them so that we could have a Rose Family Book Club over the holidays.

And that's about all we talked about the whole time they were here. We ranked our favorites, discussed which character we most identified with and which we most admired. One night we got so deep into The Laughing Man, I walked away thinking it was about the most brilliant short story ever written (although I'm declaring For Esme, With Love and Squalor my absolute and sentimental favorite). My brother, serving a mission in Brazil, heard about this literary talk over the Christmas phone call and was horrified we'd abandoned the tradition of stuffing our faces and watching movies. For Christmas shopping, I bought every copy that Barnes and Noble had and gave them for gifts.

I was mildly obsessed with Salinger at that point. I proceeded to read Franny and Zooey, Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters, and The Catcher in the Rye. I tried really, really hard to read Seymour: An Introduction. Yet nothing was as good as my Stories.

Still, months later, I'm loving them. And I want to discuss them with anybody that will. I'm going to link them below in case I get any takers with this gushing post. But really, every household should own a hard copy of this book. You ought to go buy your own. That is, if I haven't already cleaned your local bookstore out of all their copies.

My Official Ranking:

1. For Esme, With Love and Squalor
2. The Laughing Man
3. Just Before the War with the Eskimos
4. De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period
5. Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut
6. Teddy
7. Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes
8. Down at the Dingy
9. A Perfect Day for Bananafish