I have been tagged by Gwenda (who was tagged by Toni, who was tagged by Pooks...). So here is the fun book meme that is making the rounds - fifteen things about books. My tags are at the end.
1. I do not remember the first book I read, but I do recall the ones we owned and I had from the earliest age. I still have Little Toot on the Thames and for the longest time I was desperate to find Ursli's Bell, a book I remembered as about a goatherder in Europe somewhere. I was working at an open house for the museum last year (donating my time for a house tour) when I saw the book on the shelf. Turns out it is by Selina Chonz, a Swiss author and the house's owners were German and their kids loved the book also. Long story short, my host had his sister (still in Germany) buy the English translation and ship it here and now I finally have A Bell for Ursli again. My Mom and I have no idea how we got it in the first place, but now it's back and I'm thrilled.
2. We did not have much money growing up so we were mostly library kids. I do remember going to Waldenbooks with my parents a couple of times (so I was young - they divorced when I was 8) and buying two books. The first was a collection of Raggedy Ann stories and the second was Uncle Wiggly's Tales. I still have Uncle Wiggly - no idea where Ann went. Even in the beginning I was getting more bang for my buck though - opting for collections and not single stories.
3. We went to the Eau Gallie Public Library once a week with my father. Both my parents are/were avid readers, but my Daddy was amazing. He pretty much always checked out the new 7 Day books and my brother and I had a half an hour or so to browse and make our choices. My father never asked us what we were getting, never suggested it was too old or too different. We had total freedom in the library, and thus, total bliss.
4. When my brother was in the Marine Corps he wrote to me about John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee books. Since we grew up in FL I don't know how we had missed them although my parents were northern people so they went more for northern settings in their books. Pat told me I had to read those books and I inhaled them - we both did. I mailed him paperbacks around the world, wherever he was stationed and when he was home on leave we went to Ft Lauderdale and the Bahia Mar Marina where Slip F-18 is left permanently open for "The Busted Flush". It was like going to church.
5. I read the Bobbsy Twins, Boxcar Children, Trixie Belden and Nancy Drew in elementary school. One year everyone gave me Nancy Drew mysteries for Christmas - almost 20 books in all with no duplicates! But my favorite mystery series was The Three Investigators. I always wanted a hideout in a junkyard - I thought that was too cool.
6. Th earliest book to change my life was A Wrinkle in Time. That's the first book I remember reading that had a powerful impact - that took me beyond the printed page and made me think. I still reread it every year and it never fails to impress me.
7. I spent a summer with my Aunt and Uncle and younger cousins when I was 12 years old and as we toured the major national parks (Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, etc.) I spent my time reading Victoria Holt romances in the car. I remember them pulling a book out of my hands and telling me to enjoy the nature outside my window. When my aunt complained to my Mom about this later she laughed - the same thing happened to her when she was kid and traveling with my grandparents. We get nature just fine, but trapped in a car - give us a book!
8. I worked for two years in Fairbanks, AK at Gulliver's Books - the furthest north independent bookstore. We sold new and used and got great employee discounts. That is where I picked up a ton of amazing used books including a big coffee table copy of Requiem - pictures from Vietnam photographers who were killed in action. The inscription reads "To Dad, Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday." This book was traded in the day after Christmas, brand new, and I picked it up for a song. (But I've always felt bad for the poor kids who bought it.)
9. The first book I wrote was when I was 12 or 13 and it was a gothic romance right out of bodice ripper world. I still have no idea how I thought I could write a convincing sex scene, but I guess I felt confident from reading all of my Mom's paperbacks. This book, thankfully, was long ago destroyed. In tossing it in the trash, I know that I made the world a better place.
10. When my father found out he had cancer he decided to read some of the great books he had missed. He bought a copy of The Canterbury Tales and took it with him everyday to the beach instead of the latest Spenser for Hire mystery. After he died one of the things that my brother and I actually enjoyed was going through his books. I have the Chaucer with me, along with some baseball books and a collection of stories about hockey I bought him years ago. He's been gone six years now and my brother and I still see books all the time that we know he would love. I'm reviewing one right now for Booklist that is perfect for my Daddy. When I read these books and can not call him to talk about them, it is like I lose him all over again. And I hate that, I really really hate that.
11. It took me almost three years to figure out how to write my book about Alaska flying. I wrote a 150 page thesis when I was in graduate school and wanted to write a book based on it, but I was able to be academic and clinical in the thesis. The need to make the flying stories real in a book meant I had to have characters and all of my friends were deathly afraid of any sort of nonfiction telling of our lives up there. When I read Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried in 2002, I finally realized how to write the book - as fiction but all the flying stories would still be true. My book Flying Cold is the result of what I learned from Things They Carried. I have two copies of O'Brien's book and always keep it close.
12. I am always reading three books at the same time - one adult book for review, one young adult book for review and one book from my "To Be Read Pile". The pile had about 130 books in it at the beginning of 2005, most of them had been in storage and forgotten about for over 2 years. Now I'm down to about 30 and I can't wait to be through it!
13. The hardest book I've ever read was T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom. There are just a ton of names and locations that I'm unfamiliar with and it is hard to keep track of them all. It is also one of the most important books I've read however, and I wish that the Western politicians and generals who make war in the Middle East were required to read this book.
14. My first Ray Bradbury book was probably Something Wicked this way Comes, although I can't be sure. It's a toss-up as to which of his styles I prefer - essay, novel, short story. One of my all time favorite books is by him, Death is a Lonely Business. Ray learned by visiting the library and reading books - school didn't do much for him. I feel like we have a lot in common that way, although it took me awhile to figure it out.
15. My first comic book was probably an Archie Digest - my brother and I were allowed to buy one and share it, every two weeks when we went grocery shopping. I now have a couple of thousand comics and buy about 30 or so a month. Batman is my favorite character, but I'm a fan of a lot of indy comics as well. I am proof that reading comics will not prevent you from reading anything else and right now there is a Batman snowglobe serving as a bookend on my shelf of books about modern war. He's eye-to-eye with a book about the massacre at Srebrenica. It seems the right place for the Dark Knight to be.
Okay - the list resumes tomorrow. Now I tag Eliza, Cecil and Bob....Cheers!
