Image via WikipediaWednesday is by far working it's way toward becoming my favorite day of the week, and it's all thanks to the wonderful people at YA Highway for the delightful prompts they provide. Thanks y'all!
This week the prompt is: What books were you obsessed with as a kid?
Geez. What books weren't I obsessed with is a better question.
Well, the first books that come to mind is the Harry Potter series. I became hooked in the 2nd grade and since that time I have enjoyed myself immensely in my submersion into the wizarding world. To be completely honest, I still think my Hogwarts letter got lost in the mail. It has to be difficult for an owl to fly across the Atlantic, right? Right. Just agree with me.
Harry Potter wasn't my only love though, in my wee childhood days. I remember distinctly loving the Boxcar Children and Nancy Drew. I was big into mysteries. Still am, in a way. But other than those few collections, I was a very eclectic reader back then.
Seriously, I had some major AR points and I always won the prizes in school for reading. I'd read just about anything that I could get my hands on. I read Beowulf for the first time in the 6th grade just for the heck of it. I'd heard some seniors talking about how they had to read it and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.
Turns out I rather liked it, although verse has never been my literary love. Same for Canterbury Tales. Very neat stuff.
Anyway, it's hard to choose just one collection or type of books that I loved to read when I was younger. I suppose the same could be said for my tastes today.
Sometimes I am jealous that my kids get to experience HP for the first time as actual kids - I was early 20s when I read them the first time.
ReplyDeleteI'm piggybacking Kate. It must've been SO AWESOME to experience those at, like, eight. I got to read them mid-20s.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm piggybacking too - I would have loved to experience that world...um...30 years ago. My equivalent of Star Wars fan-dom.
ReplyDeleteI missed the first three days of AP English my senior year of high school and missed all of Beowulf - consequently did not care for it - but I looooove some Canterbury Tales.
I'm with Kate (well, minus the kids part) – HP came out for me much later, past my ability to really "obsess" over books in the way that might inspire, mm, baking mole-inspired honey cakes, perhaps (coughREDWALLcough). So, while I am jealous of everyone who gets to really have a childhood with Harry Potter, I don't begrudge my own obsessions, I guess.
ReplyDeleteAnd kudos to you for reading Beowulf so early! I got the Seamus Heaney copy for Christmas in junior high, by which point I was well into my language-obsession phase, so I got too distracted trying to decipher the Old English to ever get through it. And then my brother stole my copy.
Haha, it was fun growing up with Harry Potter! By the time it all equaled out, I was roughly the same age as Harry, Ron, and Hermione during their respective years at Hogwarts. It was wonderful how so-on-the-same-page I was with them and what they were going through and feeling. It opened up a whole new dimension to the books. Thanks for all of the comments! Y'all rock!
ReplyDeleteOMG Canterbury Tales? AWESOME choice ----love those! Boxcar children was great too...
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