memoir: literacy of my history

I remember very clearly the book shelf that sat in the corner of my fifth grade classroom . It was shorter than me , much shorter than the bookshelves in my parents ' house , and about four feet long . It probably held fewer than a hundred books , and was only rarely used . When we had reading and writing projects it was available for us , though there was also a school library with a much wider selection , or if we somehow earned leisure time in the classroom it was available then , too - though I have no recollection

, now , of how one would come to have such a luxury

One of my friends picked up a book called The Lords of Discipline from that shelf , which I believed was about sadomasochism in a prep school or military setting , and I did not read it after him . I also recall being continuously puzzled by a book titled Biloxi Blues What is a Biloxi ' I wondered , and why would it make one blue Pondering this mystery led me to question whether I even knew what the meaning of blues ' was in this context . I had assumed , originally something like the discontent of the musical genre , but without any real support for that - the cover had a mischievous young man , apparently enjoying Huck Finn like escapades - perhaps it had a more literal chromatic meaning . I never found out about that either

The book I picked from the shelf , for a purpose that was fully eclipsed by the impact...