Almost anything and everything. I've read since I've made memories. I knew how to read before I went to kindergarten, which I found both a great advantage and a significant disadvantage. But books have always been my friends, sometimes more so than people.
My first book that I remember talked about nature and leaves and trees, and it had a very soothing fuzzy green cover. My hippie tree-hugger tendencies probably go back that far as well.
Dr. Seuss
I used to go to the Salt Lake Public Library with my mother, a huge white building (who knows how big it actually was?) and I would climb a flight of stairs to get up to the children's books. Dr. Seuss books were far and away my favorite - he was an early kindred spirit of mine. My all-time favorite was Bartholomew Cubbins and his 500 Hats. I don't know how young I was when I first read that one, but I'd wager pretty young.
E. B. White
Another kindred spirit was E. B. White. His books depicted a world both gentle and cruel - the real world - and went right along with my love for nature. My mother gave me his three classics - Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, and The Trumpet of the Swan - for Christmas when I was 8 or 9, and I devoured them all. My favorite one was The Trumpet of the Swan. I loved Sam and his calm, observant ways. The way he wrote in his journal inspired my own writing and pondering.
Recently I found myself at the library during a book sale, and discovered all three of these books again, about to be trashed. I adopted them and took them home - E.B. White books should never be without a loving home.
Tom Swift novels
I remember reading these back in the Quince Street house, when I was six or so. My mother loved yard sales, and most of what she bought and brought home were books - big boxes of them. She must have brought them home in one of those boxes.
I loved the picture on the back, of a young man looking out into space, and all the stories about riding in rockets and saving people and getting saved himself. Haven't read them since, but those stories laid a strong foundation for my later lifelong fascination with science and science fiction.
Encyclopedia Brown
I think I discovered the Encyclopedia Brown books in school. It fascinated me to see someone so young act so smart. But the mystery genre itself frustrated me mostly - I could never figure out who the wrongdoer was, and seeing how obvious the answer to the puzzle was in retrospect made me feel...well, dumb.
Harlequin novels
Yes, I blame my mother to some extent, but no one put a gun to my head to read the books. We both went through a thick phase of Harlequin romance consumption, and there were boxes upon boxes of them in our home. Some of them made quite an impact on me, and I can still remember parts of them and grew very familiar with the romance genre. I left it behind mostly when I married and (finally) moved out though.
Arthur Henry King
For this, I also have to blame (and thank) my mom. I found his book 'Abundance of the Heart' in her prodigious collection of yard-sale books when I was 14 years old. This book seemed to say the things I'd thought before I thought them, and I struggled to understand what he talked about - things in literature, history, in connection with my faith.
I re-read it over and over every few years, and I brought it with me into my own home. Today, the book is scribbled over and the cover's falling off, and I can see the history of how I gradually came to understand what he talked about. More than once, I longed to bring him back from the dead just for one day, to ask him the many questions I had about his work and philosophies. He is the father of my life of the mind.
And my oldest boy wants a copy now. :-)
J. R. R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis (and the Boy Who Lived)
Once my mother read 'The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe' to us out loud as teenagers. I think she meant to read his entire Narnia series to us, but we lost momentum after 'The Magician's Nephew'. I went on ahead to read the rest of the books (those two she read multiple times more). I loved their Christian imagery and fantasy elements mixed together.
'The Hobbit' and 'The Lord of the Rings' came after. We watched a lot of TV in our house growing up, and the Rankin Bass version of the Return of the King came on - I loved it, so I read the book. That was often my pattern - when I saw a show on TV I liked, I invariably found and read the book right after, and usually loved the book more.
Except with 'Star Wars' and 'Star Trek'. The books sucked.
AND except when 'Harry Potter' came along. There, I saw the first movie, then read the first book. Then I chewed my way through each book BEFORE the movie, and loved them equally in their own way.
No comments:
Post a Comment