Listful Mondays: Book Moments I'll Never Forget

So it ended up being a three week break instead of one. My apologies. I had two rounds of family visitors, one right after the other, and then apparently a week to recover. It was all wonderful and busy and now summer will really start for my family. I'm excited to be blogging again, though I feel like it's has been years instead of three weeks, and my google reader agrees. Now we shall just have to see how (let's hope it is a 'how' and not a 'if') blogging will fit into this whole no school thing.

I am trying to list memories of books that are associated with specific times or moments in my life, not just awesome things I remember out of books. No attempt to write them in chronological order will be made - that would be entirely too much work.


Book Moments I Will Never Forget:

1. Finishing the Anne of Green Gables series (with that glorious "yeth") and experiencing my first full blown case of P.A.B.D. (Post Amazing Book Depression). I just didn't know how to go on with my boring boring life.
2. Going book shopping with my aunt, who doesn't like small children and who had only recently graduated me to the realm of worthwhile humans due to my double digit age and the fact that we both liked fantasy books. I confessed to liking Anne McCaffrey but that I hadn't read too many because of the lacking local and school libraries. She shocked me by buying Dragonsinger, the next book in the series, for me. At home I immediately curled up in the armchair and read the whole thing.
3. Finishing Return of the King while nursing my second child. It was so heavy and dark that I had to repeatedly put it down for breathers, but since I had nowhere to go...I'd pick it back up.
4. My senior English class when my teacher suggested I might like Pride and Prejudice. I held the plain little book I knew nothing about, shrugged, and opened to that famous line. Thank you Mrs. Cornelius.
5. Attending the release party at Borders for the third Harry Potter with my baby girl (number one) dressed like Crookshanks. Then ever after having to buy the book on CD because neither my husband or I would relent and let the other read the new book first. We would drive aimlessly around town so we could listen to the book and the children would sleep.
6. Whilst trapped at my grandma's house with nothing but reruns on cable, I scoured her meager bookshelf for something to pass the time. All her books were pastel and vapidly titled. No fantasy. I finally settled on a pink monstrosity mostly because it mentioned the ocean, and I embarked on my first romance novel. I was shocked by the amount sex (or near sex, frankly) and was deliciously scandalized by what my grandmother read.
7. After trying unsuccessfully to read The Two Towers for what felt like months (and I suppose it could have been since I was probably 11ish) I gave up. How strange it felt. How like a failure. But at that moment I was honest and admitted it just wasn't making sense.
8. Meeting Tasslehoff Burrfoot and the gang in Dragons of Autumn Twilight. I remember the scene so clearly I could have read it yesterday instead of in grade school. I was euphoric because it was adult fantasy and I could read it. It meant no more boring kid books.
9. Trying to read The Book of Three on my brother's bed. (I've mentioned this one countless times.) I just wasn't ready for that one. I needed one more year.
10. Stuck in a KOA while my parents did laundry, I grabbed a sci-fi book off the "here you can read this" shelf because it was by Anne McCaffrey and I was desperate. Enter The Rowan. I took that copy home with me. It became one of my friends.
11. That moment in The Secret Garden when Collin walked and I knew I loved this book. It was also the moment when I acknowledged that my mother could pick out good books for me even though they weren't fantasy. I stopped fighting her suggestions. Mostly.
12. The day, the whole entire day, I spent curled on the couch in my garage bedroom reading Illusion by Paula Volsky. I was so drawn in and desperate to finish it that I never strayed from my room for fear of being "assigned" something to do.
13. Several things involving The Clan of the Cave Bear - remembering the title from what my 4th grade teacher was reading during our read-a-thon; being furious with my father for telling me I couldn't read it until I was 18, but telling my brother he could read it at 16, double standards suck; a friend in grade school scanning through the pages in the library because she hear there was "bad stuff" in it, and finally reading it, and loving it, on my own as an adult.
14. Loving The Westing Game because the girl was named Turtle.
15. Reading Out of the Dust by Karren Hesse is one breathless sitting, then reading it all over again out loud to my husband when he got home. Haunting. Glorious.
16. Holes inspired a twice-read-in-a-day episode too. Amazing plotting and pacing. I had to share it immediately.
17. Trying to read These is My Words on the treadmill and failing. I sat down, sweaty and exhausted, on the floor next to the treadmill and continued reading it...hoping to forget that breakfast and school and work would find me there.
18. Needing a "break from it all" and hiding in my library with no idea what to read. I grabbed My Fair Godmother by Janette Rallison for a re-read because I knew it would deliver what I wanted at that moment. And it did.
19. Picking up my older sister's abandoned, water damaged copy of Dragonsong by Anne McCaffrey and daring to open it. You see, my older brother had said her books weren't good, so I was rebelling. Within a few chapters I had decided to *gasp* disagree. A defining moment of independent decision making.
20. The Apprentice by Deborah Talmadge-Bickmore. This will be discussed in another post soon to come.

This has been much fun. I'm sure that I am forgetting many, but I have to let go at some point... I would be in raptures to read about any of your unforgettable moments!

{Next week: Books I ReRead}