Road Trip Wednesday is a "Blog Carnival," where YA Highway's contributors and followers post a weekly writing- or reading-related question and answer it on their blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody's unique take on the topic.
This week's topic: What books were you obsessed with as a kid?
Just realized I might get some really weird keyword hits with this post title! Oh well. It's appropriate because I was mostly obsessed with fantasy books: Lloyd Alexander, Susan Cooper, Ursula K. Le Guin, Robin McKinley, Jane Yolen, and Patricia McKillip.
In fact, our school library rarely had copies of those on the shelf, because my friends and I checked them out in a perpetual rotation. We even used them to leave notes for each other, because odds were pretty low that someone outside our circle of friends would get to check them out. (No, I don't mean we wrote in the books--sacrilege!--we left notes tucked into the pages.)
I also read quite a few nonfiction books. Yes, I did read the encyclopedias for fun. That was probably my start of a love for researching, just for the pure joy of stumbling onto interesting facts. I had my own library of horse books and dog books (though I had neither animal of my own) and to this day I remember 97% of dog breeds by sight.
At about 10 or 11, I discovered my mom's romances (mostly historicals, some trashy). And then she caught me reading a Johanna Lindsay (A Pirate's Love!) right when the characters were in the midst of a love scene. She locked them up, and I had to smuggle them from the library thereafter.
Wow, I have to say that composing this post helped me trace all the influences from what I read as a child that have crept into my writing today, as well as my current tastes in books. Thanks, YA Highway, for the jaunt down memory lane!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
"We even used them to leave notes for each other"
That is so awesome. You were like early Nerdfighters!
I think I would have died of embarrassment if my mom caught me reading a romance novel. Ha ha.
And you read the encyclopedia for fun? You must be amazing at Trivial Pursuit.
Cool! My daughter and her friends are all like that with the Warrior series - the library does not have enough copies to keep them all happy!
Lloyd Alexander!? I've never met anyone else who's heard of him :-) The Black Cauldron was such an amazing book. Sigh.
Kate--we would have been utterly mortified if one of those notes ended up in the wrong hands, however.
Tracey--I was more ticked off, because it took me awhile to track that title down again. I wanted to know how it ended, and truthfully was more into the story at that age than the love scenes. Not that I wasn't taking notes. ;)
Alison--Don't you just feel great when your kids are into books, despite how many other choices there are?
Lara--In fact, I just gave my niece copies of his Vesper Holly books. She already got The Cat Who Wished to be a Man, but she hasn't gotten into the Black Cauldron books. I wonder if she saw the movie, and it put her off?
Really cool to hear how it has all influenced your writing!
I never read the encyclopedia, but I used to read the dictionary in college while I blow-dried my hair every day.
Good times!
I used to read V.C Andrews ALL the time. If my mom only knew what was in those books!
Post a Comment