Do you remember when you first fell in love with reading? Can you pinpoint one particular book that began the love affair? I definitely remember riding the bus and reading my DICK AND JANE readers. There was a huge feeling of accomplishment to advance (I think this was the order) from the blue book to the pink one, then to yellow. But I think I fell in love with reading over time. Not sure if any single book truly signaled the beginning of my love infatuation with stories of all kinds.
Early favorites? Maude Hart Lovelace's BETSY, TACEY and TIBB stories. ISLAND OF THE BLUE DOLPHINS, GONE WITH THE WIND, THE SECRET GARDEN. ISLAND OF THE BLUE DOLPHINS made such a huge impact that my friends and I would play a game about the young woman who lived on the island. Long hours were spent in the woods playing "the Kiranna game." (Spelling not remembered.)
Anyway, with this on my mind, I thought it would be fun to create an Amazon list of some of my favorites throughout the course of my life. By no means is this all-encompassing, nor does it include any client books for obvious reasons. Just thought it would be fun. I need to create part two because with only 25 titles to include, the list isn't fully representational. I did try to be diverse, not including say, every book by Lisa Kleypas. I didn't even include any, actually, because I can't pinpoint a favorite.
So, without further ado, here's my list of some favorites. And let me know which book made YOU fall in love with books. I'd love to hear!
Deidre
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7 comments:
Great list, Deidre! Brought back loads of memories.
Wow! I didn't think anyone else but me had ever heard of the BETSY, TACEY, AND TIBB books!! Loved them, and I think I read every one. Loved IoBD also. Such a wonderful book. I'd add MISTY OF CHICOTEAGUE (sp?). I was in my horse phase back then. :-)
Shannon
Children today have such a rich assortment of books to take them into the land of reading. You mention Dick and Jane! "Run, Spot, run!" - how this book could inspire is beyond me. I won a book which I still have and has travelled with me to the four corners of the earth. I loved it.
THE LITTLE HOUSE. "Once there was a little house, way out in the country. It was a pretty little house and it was strong and well built."
(I was partial to the Bobbsey Twins - Volcano Land - how romantic it seemed to me to be in a land of firey mountains.)
I was quite a precoscious reader as a kid. I devoured books and put my nose deep into pages eating up the words with speed. But I can probably start by listing the books which went onto my shelf and have never not been there no matter where I have been in the world:
WINNIE THE POOH.
WIND IN THE WILLOWS.
SECRET GARDEN
LORD OF THE RINGS.
WATERSHIP DOWNS.
LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY. What a beautiful mind wrote this book...
(Mr. Hobbs)"I'll have no grasping tyrants sittin' 'round on my biscuit barrels!" .... "Perhaps they wouldn't be earls if they knew any better," said Cedric...
I keep remembering books. REBECCA.
"Last night I dreamt I went to Mandaley again..."
ANNA KARENINA.
Has anyone here read Jilly Cooper?
She wrote a series of romances with BELLA, IMOGENE, OCTAVIA etc. These are wonderful romances, full of off
beat humor. These are not the massive tomes of her current output. Just quintessential Cooperesque in her best form.
But I think that Scarlett O'Hara is the most indelible creature in my head. And frankly my dears, the strength of this novel comes from the last line of the book...
"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn!" Hot doggity dog, what a last line!
I'm probably going to go crazy with additional authors for the rest of the day and want to leave another whole list...
I loved ISLAND OF THE BLUE DOLPHINS, and BRIDGE TO TEREBITHIA which I read in the 5th grade. And the Little House books, the first series I ever tried to purchase with my allowance.
There was also a book my mother had to force me to stop checking out from the library but I can't remember it's name! It had a green cover, was pretty thick and was about Japanese turtles.
I also loved The Box Car Kids mystery series. Read those in 3rd grade.
Thanks for the trip down Memory Lane, Deidre!!!
I don't know what books first had me falling headlong in love with reading. My mother taught me when I was four, and those memories are very dim.
But I do remember some of the ones I read over and over and over. The Little House books, definitely. I remember being 5, maybe 6, and ignoring my mother calling me to dinner while I read the scene where Jack, their dog, is lost after the river crossing. I sobbed and sobbed, even though I'd read it four times and knew he'd be at the campfire soon. My father bought me the set when I was maybe 8 or 9, after my parents got divorced. I still have it.
Also, Black Beauty, all the Nancy Drew books, the Bobbsey Twins and Hardy Boys. The Beverly Cleary books and the Judy Blumes (anyone else die laughing when they saw Sawyer reading "Are You There, God, It's Me, Margaret" last week?)
I did love Island of the Blue Dolphins, but can't remember it now. Sweet Valley High and Robert Heinlien, as I got older. Yes, at the same time. :) Piers Anthony in junior high and high school, especially the Incarnations of Immortality. And Stephen King's The Stand, which was the only assigned book I ever really liked.
I've been reading for as long as I can remember (yep, was SO popular all through grammar school...), and there are about a thousand books I'd recommend to my friends... but there's one book I simply couldn't but to fall in love with the first time I read it, and that's Nicholas Evans' "The loop"... I bawled my eyes out! (Yep, that's a good thing) :)
One Fish, Two Fish by Dr. Seuss. I was four and apparently taught myself to read from this book(don't ask me how; probably from watching my two-years-older sister reading--but I do know my parents were quite surprised that I could read!)
I loved the LITTLE HOUSE books in elementary school. I identified completely with Laura Ingalls Wilder always having to wear pink while her older sister got to wear blue. I wanted to BE Laura Ingalls Wilder! In grade three, we had to make up little illustrated "novels" out of stapled paper and I called mine, "On the Shores of Mable Lake," in true LIW style (Mable Lake being the area where I spent my pre-school years). Grade 3 was also the year I wrote my first poem that started, "My father is a logger, He stirs his coffee with his thumb." My teacher loved it. The next line was, "He has a dog named Blackie," but I can't recall the fourth line. Too bad.
My father didn't actually stir his coffee with his thumb, of course, but I saw a cartoon in his logging trade magazine featuring a logger so tough that he stirred his coffee with his thumb--and thus my illustrious career was born!
Cindy
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