This is a post about books. I went to Amazon.com to check on their daily kindle deal, and the same as it has been the past few times I've gone, the book didn't appeal to me. But today I asked, why does it not seem like a book you would read?
It is called Brain Rules, and it is written by a doctor who is a molecular biologist who studies the brain. Why wouldn't that interest me? So, I decided that regardless of the topic, I am going to download the Kindle deal of the day, and read them. This one cost $1.49 and well. It would have to be pretty bad not to be worth that amount!
I don't know what my favorite genre is, not really. When I first started to read, you would get those things from school where you could order all of these books, and I would check ALL of them! They all seemed so fascinating! Since they were relatively cheap, my mother always said yes. To ALL of them! I would read with delicious delight the descriptions of the books, and I would add up the cost, get money from my mother, cut out the small order form, and then take it to school the next day. And then I would wait. Oh, those things took so long to come in! I used to drive the teacher nuts, is the book order coming in today?
When I was old enough to ride my bike to town, Tracy McDonald and I would walk into the young adult room at the library, and I swear, I would swoon! Such a sacred place. I can still picture the row of Happy Hollister books, in the bookshelf to the far left corner. Oh. There was nothing as exciting as that day the librarian led me to them. Tracy, who was older than me, had already read them, and had gone on and on about how much I would like them. Oh, and how! The only sad thing was that I went through them so quickly. And they were an old series, with a dead author. It was quite disappointing. I remember asking the librarian if there would be any more. And she shook her head. I am sorry, but no. But then I went on to Trixie Belden and Nancy Drew. And then when I was in sixth grade, I read a naughty book. I have always been a voracious reader, and one Sunday afternoon I was bored and in the downstairs TV room. There were bookshelves filled with "old people's" books, that I'd never really examined. I indiscriminately pulled one from the shelf and started to read. Soon, I had closed the door to the room, because I didn't want anyone to see me reading it. Then, when the babysitter started sleeping with the father, I hid behind the green chair! My greatest fear is that my mother or father would take THE BOOK AWAY FROM ME. And thus grew a new passion ... reading smut in the living room behind the green chair. Ahhhhh. But alas, my mother didn't have a lot of smut, just a small collection. So then, I started to read the classics, which my father had these old versions of, and we were told not to touch them. (I figured they had to have some serious stuff in there if I wasn't to go near them.) Well, let's face it, Mrs. Haversham rotting in her wedding dress was creepy. Not my great expectations of sex in a closet or whatever the hell I was reading. But interesting.
That led to a very early interest in romances. Danielle Steele, Kathleen Woodiweiis, anything that had a picture of a big strapping man with his muscles popping out of his shirt and the poor woman clasped in his big strong grasp. Bodice rippers is what my friend called them. We read those through high school, but let me tell you, I read them way earlier than I should have! We didn't have google back then, but I figured out what a blow job was through wily research. "DOES ANYONE HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT A BLOW JOB IS?" I asked anyone around. Anyone. Finally Barb, the older sister of a friend, filled me in. I of course, did not believe her. First of all, did she not hear me, I said BLOW job. There was no blowing in her description, none at all. We discussed this enough to make her doubt her own knowledge! HAHAHAHA. Finally, she went out and asked her mother. She came back to the bedroom to report that she did have it right, and she was now grounded for the weekend.
Sorry, Barb. My life would have been ever so much easier with google!
Books can certainly have an impact on your life! I remember reading The Yearling. I was in junior high, and I know this because I was home alone with my brother and sister, theoretically babysitting them. But I was really in my bed, all cozied up, with my book. I was being interrupted, so I pulled out the trundle bed and had them curl up near me. My brother had our cat Chippy in bed with him. I had reached the part where the deer needs to be shot, and I was sobbing and sobbing and sobbing. At that moment, the cat started to dry heave and my brother tossed him at me. Just in time for it to expel a skull of a chipmunk all over my chest. You can't make this stuff up you know, it wouldn't make sense!
My parents came rushing upstairs and into the bedroom where I was still sobbing over both the deer and the trauma of having a skull first on me, and then in my bed.
And then there was Eric. By Doris Lund. This is not a very long book, but it just so happened to be the ONLY book I brought with me on a spontaneous trip to Newfoundland. That is how my parents traveled. They would keep it all a secret and then wake us up in the middle of the night and tell us we were going somewhere. I innocently grabbed the ONE book that I happened to be reading, and off we went. To the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. I of course, finished the book in no time, but not without sobbing and sobbing and sobbing. You see, Eric had leukemia and he died. And he died about 14 times for me, because it was the ONLY book I had so I just kept re-reading it. And re-living the traumatic end! Every person in that car remembers that book!
Right now I am reading on my iPad a novel, and a book about weather shamanism. And when I am in the car, I am listening to a Lisa Gardner detective/murder/mystery type series. Sometimes it is confusing to remember what is going on, but I have always had multiple books going. That trip taught me to keep any number of books in the car in the event of such a thing ever happening, and whenever I was in the car, I would read those books, while still reading another book before bed.
I have a tendency to devour an author and then criticize him or her after ten or so books. I will accuse then of being formulaic and repetitive, and I will wonder why I liked the earlier books so much! I know this is not fair, to the authors anyway, but I can't help myself. I am currently doing this with Lisa Gardner. I just downloaded a third book by her today. Even when I said to myself I should break it up with another author. Oh well.
What started this was the Kindle deal of the day. Apparently, this is how my brain works! I'll let you know if I am right!
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