Thursday, February 19, 2009

books

I was a reader and lover of books from the beginning. I'm told I impressed people by "reading" books when I was four, but in fact had just memorized them, having heard them so many times.

My favorite thing to do after school, all during my elementary school years, was to sit at the dining room table reading my current book, (and I always had a current book, mostly fiction) while eating buttered popcorn. I would pop 4 batches of popcorn and store it in a big Tupperware container. Each day I would take out a bowlful and pour melted butter on it (or re-butter it, if it already had butter on it from a previous day. I loved re-buttered popcorn.) My mother didn't like me to do that--she thought I should be outside playing after school. But this is what I really wanted to do, what I looked forward to.

What books do I remember? I loved the Maud Hart Lovelace books, the Betsy/Tacy series. I liked Henry Huggins. In fact, I liked all of Beverly Cleary's books. I liked Nancy Drew. One book that made a strong impression on me was about a girl who found a Star of David and started wearing it, not knowing what it was. Other kids assumed she was Jewish, and to fit in, she pretended to be. The book's lesson was basically "Oh what a tangled web we weave..." I wish I could find out what the name of that one was.

My father read us C.S. Lewis's Narnia series at bedtime. Those are some of my all-time favorites. In my teens, I enjoyed sharing the Edgar Rice Burroughs books about Mars and other planets with Dad. I liked books with adventure, fantasy and imagination. About the only kind of books I didn't like were horse books. I remember a lot of girls went through a phase where they read tons of horse books. I never got that. Now if the horses had been talking, magical flying horses, that would have been different.

When I slept overnight at Margie Swanson's house, I made sure to keep a book by the bedside. She always slept hours longer than I did, so I just laid in bed happily reading till she woke up.

We went to library regularly, and those were always happily anticipated outings. Ah, the excitement of discovering new books to lose myself in!

1 comment:

  1. Hi Deb!

    These entries are so fun to read! I think I should encourage my parents to do something similar.

    So many of my childhood memories revolve around the books I read. I honestly think of my life in the context of which book or series I was reading at the time.

    Henry Higgins and Ramona Quimby were summertime books during the period of time when Sara Robinson came over to play all the time.

    Goosebumps marks the time period in which Devin and I first became good friends.

    Narnia was post-Goosebumps and pre-Junior High.

    Isn't this just bizarre??

    Thanks for making me think about these memories again!

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