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15 Books - Part 1
Oct. 27th, 2010 01:45 pmI've often said that I never bothered to remember the titles and authors of books I liked until I started buying books for myself in college ... after all, if you're simply working your way from one end of the library to the other, it'll all get read eventually. So I tend to freeze up when I contemplate one of those memes along the lines of "15 books that have most influenced your life" because I'm horrible at remembering specifics and I've read a very large number of books in my lifetime. But it occurred to me to try my own personal variant: starting from the very beginning, what are the first 15 books I encountered that made enough impact on me that I can still identify them clearly?
It'll probably take a couple of posts to get through this (especially since I only have 5 minutes left on my lunch hour at this point).
1. Dr. Seuss "If I Ran the Circus"
I could already read when I started kindergarten, so I started working my way though the shelf of the class's picture books during "free play" time. I really really wanted to read "If I Ran the Circus" because I hadn't read it yet and it looked interesting, but there was this boy who would always grab it and hog it throughout free play time so no one else could read it. I thought this was particularly egregious since he couldn't even read yet. (I suspect I did eventually get a chance at the book -- a school year is a very long time to successfully hog a book. But what sticks in my memory was the time when I was thwarted.)
2. Somewhere on my computer I have a note saved with the title and author of the next book, which someone on rasfc provided when I described the plot. I read this book, I think, in 2nd grade. The protagonist was a girl from another planet or something along that line and she had a "necklace made of stars" that was an artifact connecting her with her origins. (I was always a sucker for alien protagonists gone astray in the "real" world.) I was in the middle of reading this book on the day that it was "parents visiting day" for my class, so my mother got to witness me completely ignoring my "reading group" get called up to the front of class to do our assignment -- and even ignore my own name get called specifically. I was that engrossed in the book. Fortunately, both teacher and mother considered this amusing.
3. Alexander Key "The Forgotten Door" -- I read this in 4th grade, I believe. At my grade school, normally you stayed in the same classroom with the same people all the time, but occasionally there would be special lessons with students drawn from multiple classes and you'd end up sitting at someone else's desk in someone else's classroom for those. During one of these, I cam across a copy of "The Forgotten Door" in the desk I was borrowing and started reading it, hidden in my lap, while the lesson was going on. Yeah, another story about an "alien" kid gone astray in the real world. Totally hooked. Every day while the special lessons were going on, I'd make sure I sat at that desk so I could read some more. (I have no idea what the topic of the lessons was. I'm sure I got an A.) But it was clear that I wasn't going to be able to finish the story before the series ended, so I went to the drastic step of WRITING DOWN THE AUTHOR AND TITLE so I could locate the book and finish it. I believe I even went so far as to buy a copy.
(to be continued)
It'll probably take a couple of posts to get through this (especially since I only have 5 minutes left on my lunch hour at this point).
1. Dr. Seuss "If I Ran the Circus"
I could already read when I started kindergarten, so I started working my way though the shelf of the class's picture books during "free play" time. I really really wanted to read "If I Ran the Circus" because I hadn't read it yet and it looked interesting, but there was this boy who would always grab it and hog it throughout free play time so no one else could read it. I thought this was particularly egregious since he couldn't even read yet. (I suspect I did eventually get a chance at the book -- a school year is a very long time to successfully hog a book. But what sticks in my memory was the time when I was thwarted.)
2. Somewhere on my computer I have a note saved with the title and author of the next book, which someone on rasfc provided when I described the plot. I read this book, I think, in 2nd grade. The protagonist was a girl from another planet or something along that line and she had a "necklace made of stars" that was an artifact connecting her with her origins. (I was always a sucker for alien protagonists gone astray in the "real" world.) I was in the middle of reading this book on the day that it was "parents visiting day" for my class, so my mother got to witness me completely ignoring my "reading group" get called up to the front of class to do our assignment -- and even ignore my own name get called specifically. I was that engrossed in the book. Fortunately, both teacher and mother considered this amusing.
3. Alexander Key "The Forgotten Door" -- I read this in 4th grade, I believe. At my grade school, normally you stayed in the same classroom with the same people all the time, but occasionally there would be special lessons with students drawn from multiple classes and you'd end up sitting at someone else's desk in someone else's classroom for those. During one of these, I cam across a copy of "The Forgotten Door" in the desk I was borrowing and started reading it, hidden in my lap, while the lesson was going on. Yeah, another story about an "alien" kid gone astray in the real world. Totally hooked. Every day while the special lessons were going on, I'd make sure I sat at that desk so I could read some more. (I have no idea what the topic of the lessons was. I'm sure I got an A.) But it was clear that I wasn't going to be able to finish the story before the series ended, so I went to the drastic step of WRITING DOWN THE AUTHOR AND TITLE so I could locate the book and finish it. I believe I even went so far as to buy a copy.
(to be continued)
