The Reading List of My Life

Let's ignore the fact that I haven't posted in months, shall we? I'm in Italy.

I watched this video by Zefrank on Youtube not two seconds ago. He basically gives a rundown of all the books that meant something to him in his life. Just the ones that stood out. I felt an immediate calling to make some kind of written reading list of my own, partly so that I can remember all the good books I've read in my life, but mostly because I don't understand the message of most of Zefrank's videos and I was happy I seemed to get this one.

I've always assumed that I love to read now because my mother read so much to me when I was a child. I have stacks of picture books at home, each with a loving message from my mother written on the inside cover in her first-grade-teacher print. My favorites were Dr. Seuss and one book about a girl who's dolls come to life in her closet, the name of which I can't remember for the life of me. There was a little blonde doll in a pink and white dress that was to me the prettiest.

At some point I reached the age where I could read on my own. I don't remember when this happened although I assume it was around first grade. I've been able to read for as far back as my memory goes. I read the entire Magic Treehouse series crouched in the back of my mother's classroom while she graded tests and rearranged desks. I read Junie B. Jones, Little House on the Prairie, Amelia Bedelia, and the American Girl Doll books and the Boxcar Children--Oh the Boxcar Children! For the longest time I was convinced that the greatest joy in life would be to live alone in an abandoned boxcar with my siblings. I conveniently forgot the fact that my brothers and I could never get along.

Then I grew up a little bit and evolved into longer chapter books. I tackled the Chronicles of Narnia much to young to appreciate The Magician's Nephew (which is much better now that I've read it again, though still not my favorite). The rest of elementary school is a bit of a blur for me. I spent a lot of time in the library--so much so that she often gave me stuffed animals as presents. But for all the time I spent reading I remember very few of my elementary school books. One of my all time favorites was My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George followed closely by Harriet The Spy, both of which inspired me to do things my parents disapproved of. Namely running away to live in a hollowed tree and spying on my neighbors. Then there was Bridge to Terebithia and The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, which I still reread every year. I remember Fever by Laurie Halse Anderson, and that is mainly because I never returned it.  I stole it from the librarian who was so kind to me.

In fifth grade came THE BOOK for me. The book to end all books. It was The Land by Mildred D. Taylor. It touched me in a way I couldn't describe, making me cry with every reread. It got to the point where I had been rereading The Land over and over again for months. I forced myself to put it down and pick up the companion piece, Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry, but I found it lacking. To this day I have not read The Land again, because I know I'd never be able to put it down.

Middle school came with so many books. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Inkheart, Eragon, Disappearance by Jude Watson, the Stravaganza series by Mary Hoffman. A Great and Terrible Beauty and sequels by Libba Bray. One of my favorites was the Amulet of Samarkand and it's sequels by Jonathan Stroud; the smart-mouthed demon Bartimeous tickled my funny bone almost to extinction. Then in eighth grade came the whopper: Harry Potter. After that there was an ever-present stack of Harry Potter books next to my seat at the dining room table so that I could read whenever I was hungry (except for dinner because that was family time). That is why there are spaghetti sauce stains all over my copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

In high school I read a lot, and it probably won't surprise you to know I didn't have many friends. I read everything I could by James Fenimore Cooper, Jane Austen, Pat Conroy, and Bill Bryson. I adored Nathaniel Philbricks' In the Heart of the Sea, which was the first nonfiction book that every touched my soul followed shortly after by Cicero by Anthony Everett. My heart still lies with fiction but these two books were miracles. I read simple books like The Nanny Diaries and absurdly presumptuous books like Atlas Shrugged. There were the books I read for school that I enjoyed like On Writing by Stephen King, Life of Pi, Candide, All Quiet on the Western Front, and Frankenstein. Then there were those I hated like Shakespeare's Julius Caesar which I read four times and Mrs. Dalloway, the atrocious Wuthering Heights and The House on Mango Street.

For pleasure I read Dan Brown, Philippa Gregory, Jodi Picoult and other authors that I adored at the time that I cringe at now. Although I still enjoy Dan Brown. I read On, Off by Colleen McCullough and for some reason I trudged through Moby Dick. Senior year I developed and obsession with Agatha Christie--Poirot, not Ms. Marple--and bought every single one of her mysteries I could get my hands on. Then came college.

I didn't have as much time to read in college. I would like to say it's because I got a social life, but really it's because I got a laptop and discovered the joys of Netflix. Still I've read some. In class I've read Wordsworth and Frost and Coleridge but they might as well be in French because poetry means diddly squat to me. The stand outs that I've read on my own are Laura Lippman's Hardly Knew Her which gave me permission to write creepy short stores if that's what I wanted to do. Hannah Tinti's The Good Thief motivated me to read again. A motivation I lost shortly after when I tried to read Dear American Airlines. But then I discovered Neil Gaiman and fell in love all over again. I read Neverwhere first and was entranced. Then came The Graveyard Book and American Gods and then Anansi Boys. These were followed by The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series and the ache when I found out there were supposed to be ten books before the author died. I've read Beloved by Toni Morrison and The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. I've poured over Dante's Vita Nuova with disdain and his Divine Comedy with awe.

And right now? What am I reading? I just finished Shadowland by Peter Straub which had great reviews on Goodreads but wound up not impressing me nearly as much as Dreamcatcher by Stephen King did which I read right before. My first piece of fiction by King and it talked about aliens coming out of people's asses. Go figure. And now I am about to start Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas.

What are you reading? What have you read? What do you hope to read?