thoughtful"A girl I once caught reading Fahrenheit 451 over my shoulder on the subway confessed: "You know, I'm an English lit major, but I've never loved any books like the ones I loved when I was 12 years old." I fell slightly in love with her when she said that. It was so frank and uncool, and undeniably true."
I have found books that I love every year of my life. I am a person who reads, I've been a person who reads for almost my entire time on this planet, and I go through a lot of brand new books every month (often to the chagrin of my budget). And yet...
The books I go back to, the books that comfort me when I feel bad, the books that lift me up when I'm feeling down, are largely books I encountered between the ages of nine and twelve. I'll go up one level on that, since that was also the period of my life where Xanth and Dragonlance reigned supreme: they're the books that emotionally moved me between the ages of nine and twelve. Tailchaser's Song. The Last Unicorn. IT. The Stand. War for the Oaks. There are others -- oh, there are others -- and so many of them source back to that same stretch of time.
I'd argue that you can fall in love with the way an author uses language, as much as a specific use of language, and that it's also at its most powerful when it happens between those ages. Hence my total inability to get over my love for Stephen King (not that I really want to). Hence the comic geeks of the world and their insistence on viewing whichever death of Jean Grey happened during their 'imprint years' as the only real time she died. (Personally, I'll take any of her deaths, as long as she promises to stay dead.)
I'd be curious about how universal this is. But is strikes me as being something that's very true for a lot of us, and somehow manages to be practically invisible at the same time. Pretty cool.
November 27 2008, 17:02:37 UTC 8 years ago
November 28 2008, 15:58:19 UTC 8 years ago
I read very early - by 3rd grade I was reading on a college level, and somewhat its the books I read then - the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, all the Heinlein juveniles, the Stand, the Dragonsinger books, the Darkover series and the Witch World series, that are my comfort books.
Only, I can still find them. Sometimes something that strikes me as right in a book - the language, a character, a situation, and that book or author goes on my list.
Kelley Armstrong has joined the list, as has the Trickster series from Tamora Pierce, for example.