Childhood reading pleasures
Tue, Dec. 30th, 2003 11:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterI am now happily in the middle of re-reading Peter Pan, after a hasty and rather desperate library run last night. All the Crusie reading has me hankering after more romance novels.
I'm having a good deal of fun revisiting Peter Pan. In fact, it's not like my normal re-readings, which feel like visiting a comforting friend and finding you still have much in common to talk about. This feels like finding a friend that I had completely forgot even existed (I hope I don't do this with my RL friends!). And so it's absolutely wonderful trolling through the book and every so often thinking, oh yes! That's where I got that from! I love Barrie's narrative voice, even though now I can get a little irked with how smug he is at times. And I find my brain wandering off into why Wendy is immediately vaulted into the position of being mother instead of love interest, and the almost spookiness of her domestic dreamings. These are things I definitely did not consider when I read this as a kid.
***interrupted to add: I was bad again and got sucked into Borders, which is next door to the computer games store where the boy wanted to go. They had nothing I was looking for and nothing that looked all that interesting from a cursory glance, and then, in romance, bam! four or five Connie Brockways! I buckled and bought two. Up til now, I have only found one or two of her in public libraries, one or two of her in my bookstore, and one or two of her in new bookstores (the McClairen isle ones, which I'm not giantly fond of. So now I own My Dearest Enemy, for rereading because I love epistolary (sp) relationships, and A Dangerous Man.**
Anyhow, I love the early 1900s feel of Peter Pan. And small snippets keep coming back to me -- I can hear Mary Martin saying Peter's explanation of how fairies came to be, and the narrator from the play describing what the Mermaid Lagoon looks like. I love the description of how Neverlands are of the same family, and of how Mr. and Mrs. Darling decided to have Wendy. I miss all the digressions whenever I watch a remake of it.
I think a great deal of my childhood reading is around this turn of the century period, except, more often than not, I didn't even realize it. I had a tendency to read things at face value, and it actually took me a while to figure out that Anne of Green Gables was not during the 1980s. Actually, it even took me for a while to figure out that it was set in Canada. This should be fairly unsurprising, considering that I used to read all the unbowlderized versions of fairy tales as a kid and not even realize there was something weird about Sleeping Beauty waking up pregnant.
Neil Gaiman recced a book in his blog a while back on SF/F childhood reading and its influences and said it was scary how he followed the template. I need to hunt down this entry so I can find that book, because I want to compare and see.
Books that were probably formative for me as a kid:
- a biography of Helen Keller, which I read all the time in third grade.
- a kiddified version of the Iliad, which lead to:
- D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths, both of which I read obsessively from when I can remember reading. These were very early on, because I remember reading them in the Colorado Public Library.
- Fairy tales. Tons and tons of fairy tales. I don't even remember beginning to read fairy tales; they feel like something that have just always lived in my head. I would hunt down picture books of myths and legends and fairy tales from all sorts of cultures (like that Lon Po Po picture book, this one on an arrow to the sun, this one about the moon drowning which I really want to find again because I loved it). I think the last book I read in Colorado was a book of Egyptian myths that I never got to finish (grrr). I remember sitting in the corner of the living room of our empty house with a towering stack of books next to me. I was reading desperately because we had to return them the next day and move to Taiwan.
- EB White. I think Trumpet of the Swan was my first "grown up" book. I never really liked Stuart Little.
- A Little Princess
In Taiwan:
- I'm pretty sure I read Narnia in Taiwan. I remember my mom buying the first four for me and my sister, as well as the Anne books, in CO, but I never read them then. Same with the Secret Garden.
- I discovered the Anne books in sixth grade via Anne of the Island and read LM Montgomery books for the next two or three years.
- I read the Secret Garden after A Little Princess, after first giving up on it because of Martha's accent.
- Peter Pan, Little Women, and other classics that were available there.
- Also associated with these books are E. Nesbitt's Five Children and It, Half Magic (don't remember by who), various Robin Hood stories, King Arthur stories, and
- Gone With the Wind was seventh or eighth grade and it fueled a still dormant desire for Civil War romances. Unfortunately, nothing has really stood up because all the heroes and heroines are too morally upright to be Scarlett or Rhett.
- I found Tolkien in sixth grade, having partly grown out of reading fairy tales and myths. It wasn't that I was sick of them. It was just that they were so short, and I had read so many of the variants at that point. Same with myths. Finding Tolkien was a godsend, because it meant that someone grownup wrote giant, fat books about fairy-tale-like things and it opened my eyes to fantasy, though of course, I didn't realize it was a genre at that time. Then I hunted in the school library and came across Terry Brooks. Then Piers Anthony, all with Caroline, my reading buddy (and buddy in many other things, but she was someone I could count on to "get" my thing with books). Then I found other people read this stuff. Then I found the SF/F section of the bookstore, as opposed to just sitting and reading picture books and YA. Then I went to summer camp with Caroline, and one girl in our hall had parents who read SF/F and brought us bags of books to read. This is when I found Ender's Game, Daughter of the Empire, Phillip Jose Farmer (veeeery confusing for a seventh grade kid), and Fire Sea from the Weis/Hickman Labyrinth books. And Pern. And one Darkover book, which I never took to. I also found Emma Bull around here. I think the only people I've kept from this period are Bull and Card.
- Mercedes Lackey probably around eighth or ninth grade. I was so obsessed with Vanyel, but I never liked Pern as much as Caroline.
- Susan Cooper and Madeleine L'Engle around eighth grade. I dropped Silver in the Tree in the bathtub because I was reading in there. I think this is also when I sicced Terry Brooks onto other people. I'm pretty sure this is also when I read David Eddings.
- Lloyd Alexander didn't come until tenth grade, when someone bought the books.
- Robin McKinley sometime around ninth grade
- I didn't find a lot of the authors I read now until junior and senior year high school: Neil Gaiman, Phillip Pullman, George R. R. Martin, Robin Hobb, Anne Bishop, GGK, Terri Windling/Endicott. Many of these were thanks to Cyrus and Laura. I blew a ton of my parents money buying whatever Sandmans I could find in the improving Taiwan bookstores and then finding the rest on Amazon.
- I also read my first romance sneakily in seventh grade, completely embarrassed and horrified that someone would find out. All the girls in my class were huddled over the book and reading out snippets, and I didn't dare do that, so I borrowed it later. I used to only read romances in bookstores. I'd sit there for three or four hours while my mom went shopping. It was always annoying because I'd want to pick good ones, or I'd waste my hours! Going to an English bookstore was a big thing then, because they were only in Taipei, an hour away from where we lived.
- I discovered fan fiction and thus, X-Files and media fandom in tenth grade. I started watching Gundam Wing and kickstarted anime interest and fascination with Japan in general in eleventh grade.
- I didn't read Diana Wynne Jones, Harry Potter, Garth Nix, Jane Yolen, Donna Jo Napoli, etc. until college, when I (finally) had access to bookstores and public libraries.
I'm having a good deal of fun revisiting Peter Pan. In fact, it's not like my normal re-readings, which feel like visiting a comforting friend and finding you still have much in common to talk about. This feels like finding a friend that I had completely forgot even existed (I hope I don't do this with my RL friends!). And so it's absolutely wonderful trolling through the book and every so often thinking, oh yes! That's where I got that from! I love Barrie's narrative voice, even though now I can get a little irked with how smug he is at times. And I find my brain wandering off into why Wendy is immediately vaulted into the position of being mother instead of love interest, and the almost spookiness of her domestic dreamings. These are things I definitely did not consider when I read this as a kid.
***interrupted to add: I was bad again and got sucked into Borders, which is next door to the computer games store where the boy wanted to go. They had nothing I was looking for and nothing that looked all that interesting from a cursory glance, and then, in romance, bam! four or five Connie Brockways! I buckled and bought two. Up til now, I have only found one or two of her in public libraries, one or two of her in my bookstore, and one or two of her in new bookstores (the McClairen isle ones, which I'm not giantly fond of. So now I own My Dearest Enemy, for rereading because I love epistolary (sp) relationships, and A Dangerous Man.**
Anyhow, I love the early 1900s feel of Peter Pan. And small snippets keep coming back to me -- I can hear Mary Martin saying Peter's explanation of how fairies came to be, and the narrator from the play describing what the Mermaid Lagoon looks like. I love the description of how Neverlands are of the same family, and of how Mr. and Mrs. Darling decided to have Wendy. I miss all the digressions whenever I watch a remake of it.
I think a great deal of my childhood reading is around this turn of the century period, except, more often than not, I didn't even realize it. I had a tendency to read things at face value, and it actually took me a while to figure out that Anne of Green Gables was not during the 1980s. Actually, it even took me for a while to figure out that it was set in Canada. This should be fairly unsurprising, considering that I used to read all the unbowlderized versions of fairy tales as a kid and not even realize there was something weird about Sleeping Beauty waking up pregnant.
Neil Gaiman recced a book in his blog a while back on SF/F childhood reading and its influences and said it was scary how he followed the template. I need to hunt down this entry so I can find that book, because I want to compare and see.
Books that were probably formative for me as a kid:
- a biography of Helen Keller, which I read all the time in third grade.
- a kiddified version of the Iliad, which lead to:
- D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths, both of which I read obsessively from when I can remember reading. These were very early on, because I remember reading them in the Colorado Public Library.
- Fairy tales. Tons and tons of fairy tales. I don't even remember beginning to read fairy tales; they feel like something that have just always lived in my head. I would hunt down picture books of myths and legends and fairy tales from all sorts of cultures (like that Lon Po Po picture book, this one on an arrow to the sun, this one about the moon drowning which I really want to find again because I loved it). I think the last book I read in Colorado was a book of Egyptian myths that I never got to finish (grrr). I remember sitting in the corner of the living room of our empty house with a towering stack of books next to me. I was reading desperately because we had to return them the next day and move to Taiwan.
- EB White. I think Trumpet of the Swan was my first "grown up" book. I never really liked Stuart Little.
- A Little Princess
In Taiwan:
- I'm pretty sure I read Narnia in Taiwan. I remember my mom buying the first four for me and my sister, as well as the Anne books, in CO, but I never read them then. Same with the Secret Garden.
- I discovered the Anne books in sixth grade via Anne of the Island and read LM Montgomery books for the next two or three years.
- I read the Secret Garden after A Little Princess, after first giving up on it because of Martha's accent.
- Peter Pan, Little Women, and other classics that were available there.
- Also associated with these books are E. Nesbitt's Five Children and It, Half Magic (don't remember by who), various Robin Hood stories, King Arthur stories, and
- Gone With the Wind was seventh or eighth grade and it fueled a still dormant desire for Civil War romances. Unfortunately, nothing has really stood up because all the heroes and heroines are too morally upright to be Scarlett or Rhett.
- I found Tolkien in sixth grade, having partly grown out of reading fairy tales and myths. It wasn't that I was sick of them. It was just that they were so short, and I had read so many of the variants at that point. Same with myths. Finding Tolkien was a godsend, because it meant that someone grownup wrote giant, fat books about fairy-tale-like things and it opened my eyes to fantasy, though of course, I didn't realize it was a genre at that time. Then I hunted in the school library and came across Terry Brooks. Then Piers Anthony, all with Caroline, my reading buddy (and buddy in many other things, but she was someone I could count on to "get" my thing with books). Then I found other people read this stuff. Then I found the SF/F section of the bookstore, as opposed to just sitting and reading picture books and YA. Then I went to summer camp with Caroline, and one girl in our hall had parents who read SF/F and brought us bags of books to read. This is when I found Ender's Game, Daughter of the Empire, Phillip Jose Farmer (veeeery confusing for a seventh grade kid), and Fire Sea from the Weis/Hickman Labyrinth books. And Pern. And one Darkover book, which I never took to. I also found Emma Bull around here. I think the only people I've kept from this period are Bull and Card.
- Mercedes Lackey probably around eighth or ninth grade. I was so obsessed with Vanyel, but I never liked Pern as much as Caroline.
- Susan Cooper and Madeleine L'Engle around eighth grade. I dropped Silver in the Tree in the bathtub because I was reading in there. I think this is also when I sicced Terry Brooks onto other people. I'm pretty sure this is also when I read David Eddings.
- Lloyd Alexander didn't come until tenth grade, when someone bought the books.
- Robin McKinley sometime around ninth grade
- I didn't find a lot of the authors I read now until junior and senior year high school: Neil Gaiman, Phillip Pullman, George R. R. Martin, Robin Hobb, Anne Bishop, GGK, Terri Windling/Endicott. Many of these were thanks to Cyrus and Laura. I blew a ton of my parents money buying whatever Sandmans I could find in the improving Taiwan bookstores and then finding the rest on Amazon.
- I also read my first romance sneakily in seventh grade, completely embarrassed and horrified that someone would find out. All the girls in my class were huddled over the book and reading out snippets, and I didn't dare do that, so I borrowed it later. I used to only read romances in bookstores. I'd sit there for three or four hours while my mom went shopping. It was always annoying because I'd want to pick good ones, or I'd waste my hours! Going to an English bookstore was a big thing then, because they were only in Taipei, an hour away from where we lived.
- I discovered fan fiction and thus, X-Files and media fandom in tenth grade. I started watching Gundam Wing and kickstarted anime interest and fascination with Japan in general in eleventh grade.
- I didn't read Diana Wynne Jones, Harry Potter, Garth Nix, Jane Yolen, Donna Jo Napoli, etc. until college, when I (finally) had access to bookstores and public libraries.
Tags:
(no subject)
Wed, Dec. 31st, 2003 01:19 pm (UTC)Thanks for posting about your turning point books. Am going to go off and post about my own, now!
(no subject)
Wed, Dec. 31st, 2003 04:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Thu, Jan. 1st, 2004 04:25 am (UTC)Anticipating reading your own -- I remember reading how Robin McKinley used to keep track of things via what book she read at the time, and while I can't really do that, I think it's a cool concept.
(no subject)
Thu, Jan. 1st, 2004 04:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
Thu, Jan. 1st, 2004 05:27 am (UTC)I admit that I still love Terry Brooks, though.
(no subject)
Thu, Jan. 1st, 2004 05:33 am (UTC)I still liked Brooks' older books -- the first seven Shannara ones, but I never liked Magic Kingdom, and his latter Shannara ones have started to get stylistically clunky, imho.
(no subject)
Thu, Jan. 1st, 2004 06:01 am (UTC)Eddings I never read when I was younger - someone gave them to me a few years ago. They're good fun, if awfull repetetive. The Misty Lackeys are just taking up space on my Shelf. Every so often I'll glance at one of the Last Herald Mage books or something, but I so rarely touch them. Even so, I'm kind of reluctant to get rid of them - they're remainders of my bubblegum pop fantasy days. The Piers Anthony books, though - one of these days I'm going to dump the whole lot off onto ebay or something. He's the only writer who I will not read on principle. Ew.
(no subject)
Thu, Jan. 1st, 2004 06:15 am (UTC)I sicced it on a friend too and we used to argue about who would get to use "Amberle" as a screenname back in eighth grade or so ;).
(no subject)
Thu, Jan. 1st, 2004 08:27 am (UTC)If there were any fantasy characters who I almost feel like I know, it's the Ohmsfords. I feel like I grew up with them.
(no subject)
Thu, Jan. 1st, 2004 09:05 am (UTC)I loved Amberle. And Ander. I always felt bad for him. And I was so in love with Allanon! I've always had a grudge against Wishsong because they killed him off. It was one of the big painful fictional deaths for me, like Gandalf in LotR (I immediately thumbed through RotK after Moria and caught his name and felt better though).
(no subject)
Thu, Jan. 1st, 2004 09:58 am (UTC)And, I read LotR for the first time when I was in Israel 3 years ago. I started right before I left home - my dad gave it to me. When I hit the part where Gandalf died, I called my father, furious, and demanded to know how he could do that to me, to let me walk into it unawares. I was convinced it wasn't the end - how could Gandalf really be dead? Say it aint so, I begged my dad. Solemnly, he told me "Gandalf the Grey is gone from Middle Earth."
I mourned Gandalf, beleiveing he was dead for good, all the way until he came back.