Some people remember their first book the way others remember their first lover. I have no such memories. I remember reading a lot as a kid, but I don’t remember the first book I ever read. There are books I still remember; I have that much. I remember The Ghost Next Door, the book about the owl with love in its eyes. The post I linked to is from 2011, and what I didn’t say in that post is how long I searched for the name of that book. How long I thought about writing that post before I even could because I didn’t want to write about a book without a title. This was back when owls were really popular (yesterday’s fox, or whatever animal we’re on now), so I had constant reminders of the plot. I searched the internet trying all sorts of keyword searches. I experienced a huge flood of excitement when I finally found a title and link to the book.
The other book I remember is one I can’t name. It was about a middle school girl who was having problems at home and feeling hopeless. I believe her parents were on the verge of divorce. Her brother stuffed orange seeds in his teddy bear for vitamin C. A new teacher arrives at school, possibly teaches drama, and inspires the students to talk about their feelings and pretty much goes around doing Things That Are Cool And Different. The parents didn’t like her, there was a PTA meeting to have her fired for, I don’t know, excessive awesomeness or something. I believe she was fired, and the moral was “haters gonna hate” because that’s how books ended in the 70s and 80s. I’m sure I’ve seen this book in the library at school. I need to scour the shelves and see if my name is still in the book.
Other than that, I don’t remember much, and that’s probably because I didn’t spend my formative years delving into the classics. According to certain lists, ahem, I wasn’t even delving into award winning books. I was a pedestrian child. I’m arguably a pedestrian adult, but that’s for another day.
I don’t remember the book that made me a reader, but I do remember the book that made me a passionate reader. I remember the book that showed me the difference between reading books and reading literature. I don’t mean literature with a capital L so that everyone knows you are so smart and so important and so not-so secretly crippled with self doubt. I’m talking about literature with a capital OMG, the kind that amazes you and haunts you and leaves you breathless. The kind of literature that takes your little snow globe of a life and shakes it until you don’t know up from down. The kind of literature that doesn’t come in trilogies or series because the author couldn’t possibly devote him/herself to a lifetime with these characters when there are so many more inside clawing their way out. That kind of literature.
Senior year, AP Literature, after years of being a “reader,” after years of staying up all night with a flashlight. That’s when I read One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garc�a M�rquez, and that’s when everything changed. I remember reading about the yellow butterflies and my mind splintering into a million pieces. I asked my mom about it and she just waved her hand and said “magical realism,” like…duh. Until then I had never heard of magical realism, but from that moment on, I was hooked. It was just the sort of insanity a twisted romantic like me can chew on for hours at a time.
Months later I was looking at the books in an airport newsstand, waiting for a flight to Mexico. There in the middle of a small table was a pile of books with a naked-ish lady on the front. More than that, though, was the author. I recognized him! My first author auto-buy. I read that book and felt even more of a rush than I did with One Hundred Years of Solitude. I came back to school and couldn’t stop talking about it–no one cared–until finally my teacher said he would make that book required reading next year. I envied those students.
I’m not one to reread books. I do reread favorite sections of books before I go to bed if I’m too tired to read something new. Love in the Time of Cholera is one of the few books I have reread. I read it again after I graduated college, and those 4 years of life experience, of love lost, gave the book more meaning and made it more important. Reading about Florentino Ariza’s decades long devotion to Fermina Daza reminded me of an ex-boyfriend, one I wrote off the summer before my senior year in high school in a fit of righteous rage. He was relentless in mending past hurts for years, no matter how many times I told him I would never forgive him. All through out college he would send me letters. Long letters apologizing for everything stupid he had done. He said he didn’t want to get back together–okay, he did–but he would be happy if we were just friends. I never answered his letters. Bumping into him when I would come home was a nightmare. I avoided going where I thought he might be, but still I heard of him through friends or friends of friends.
Months after I graduated college, free of yet another lousy boyfriend, I saw him. Or he called. Or maybe he sent yet another letter? All I know is that it was after I reread Love in the Time of Cholera so this time, almost 6 years later, I spoke to him and told him being friends didn’t sound like a bad idea. I told him all about college, and my lousy ex-boyfriend, and the me I had become in 6 years. I told him how much I loved reading and shared some of my favorite books. I bought him a copy of Love in the Time of Cholera. “Read it,” I said. “It’s my favorite book of all time and you remind me of Florentino.”
On April 17, 2014, it was the boy I swore in 1989 I would never speak to again who let me know via text that Gabriel Garc�a M�rquez had died. Still Florentino, after all these years.
The Cat Ate My Gymsuit by Paula Danziger. Thanks for remiding me, it was a favorie and I’d forgotten it. Off to find it at the library!
I feel crushed when a favorite author passes away like a part of me dies too. I have never read GGM but hope to and I even aspire to get my skills up agin to read it in Spanish. There is something wonderful about the way he wrote, I’m told. :)
I love this post, and your Love in the Time of Cholera story. We should all have such a great literature story.
I don’t have such a great story, but the book that really turned the literature key for me was To Kill a Mockingbird. Amazingly, I never read it in school. My mom brought it home for me the summer between 5th and 6th grade. Much of it went over my head in that first read, but I loved it like I’d loved no other book, probably because it was the first one that created such a full, rich world for me to get lost in. (And because I so identified with Scout and so loved her humor.) I read it pretty much once a year through high school, discovering more in it with each read. I discovered it all over again when I taught 9th grade English and re-read it from a teacher’s perspective. (Oh, the writer’s craft on display in that book!) Finally, I read it aloud to my own children when they were in 6th grade–and this time, reading it as a parent, it was Atticus who spoke to me. So many scenes I barely got through without crying. After all these years and many readings, I still get scalp tingles when Atticus leaves the courtroom and the Reverend sitting in the balcony with Scout says, “Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father’s passin’.”
I’m sure I will feel a similar sense of loss when Harper Lee is no longer with us. Doesn’t matter that she hasn’t written anything else. It’s just something about knowing that that kind of energy has passed from our world.
Magical realism – the perfect balance for a hopelessly rational romantic like me. I can’t believe in magic a la Harry Potter (as much as I loved those books), but I can and do believe in the possibility of something magical. In fact, that belief makes life richer and more full of potential for me. I am ready to re-read GGM, and I think Love in the Time of Cholera is the best place to start. One of my favorite books, Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith, has that same touch of the magical.
And you tell an AWESOME story! I actually got goosebumps when I read that he had texted you about GGM’s death.
The book that turned me was Lord of the Flies at age 13. What?! Books could have more meaning than just what was on the surface?! Wow. (I continued to be very pedestrian in my reading overall though).
I did read Love In The Time of Cholera later, in my early 20s? Blew. My. Mind. That book has stayed with me (and I’ve only read it once) over the years and I’ve recommended it so many times. GGM was a master and I’m sorry that the world will no longer be blessed with any new art from him.
so what I WAS reading (instead of Newbury Award winners! ahem) was this crap & I’m going to take you back in the Way Back Machine (it’s been driving me crazy all morning as I tried to remember the books):
http://sweetheartsromancebooks.com/eighties-teen-romance/the-zodiac-club.html
and Sweet Valley High. How I loved those insipid things. I remind myself each time my child chooses some ridiculous glittery fairy book, I should not judge. There is still time for her to read really good quality books, some of us are just slow starters.
Magical realism – I’ve never heard the term but it’s perfect and is exactly what most of my current favorite books are built around.
I’ve never read any of the books you mentioned but the way you described the Gabriel Garc�a M�rquez books made me want to immediately add them to my library queue. Not so much with The Ghost Next Door. Just reading the summary gave me the heebie jeebies. No thanks. I’m a complete weenie when it comes to paranormal type stuff.
I don’t remember a specific book being my first – I was “reading” before I could even read. My mother tells stories of my sister and I reading storybooks aloud with our jibber jabber wordless nonsense, and how all the adults would play along like they were hearing the best story ever. I have since watched my nieces and nephews do the same and I’ll admit it – I was enthralled by their story even though I couldn’t understand a word of it!
The book that stands out in my childhood memories was Small Paul and the Bully of Morgan Court. My older brother’s name is Paul, and he is small, so I think it was intended for him. However, he fared far more swimmingly in art of making friends than I did so that book practically lived under my pillow.
The books that made a memorable impression in my adolescence are a toss-up between Of Mice and Men, All Quiet on the Western Front, and A Brave New World. All were required reading during my first year in high school – which was also my first year in public school. Those books were the first books I read with the intention of finding meaning within the story. My daydreaming mind will still sometimes flit to imagery conjured up from those stories.
This is so beautiful. And tragic.
Love in the Time of Cholera. Just thinking of GGM, I don’t even need to say the name aloud, for the thought of his writing to send shivery tingles down my spin. Magical Realism is the teenage world that I lived in, and it would be so good to go visiting again. I really, really could use to go back there now, life has been too heavy of late, and there hasn’t been any time left for wonder.
There were two books, completely different, that impacted me greatly as a child, then as a teenager. My Friend the Monster (http://www.amazon.com/friend-monster-Clyde-Robert-Bulla/dp/0690040318). I knew where that book was in the library, my grubby fingers practically wiped the ink from the pages, as I greedily read it over and over (age 9).
The second book, Cat’s Eye (http://www.amazon.com/Cats-Eye-Margaret-Atwood/dp/0385491026). Margaret Atwood blew my late teenage mind. I was all alone, in a different country, it was one of the most difficult times in my life, as my beloved aunt had recently passed away (my first adult experience with death), life was not going how I had imagined it would. Reading that book, at that point was cathartic. I don’t know if it would have the same resonance now, but at that time it helped, it was like medicine for a lonely, friendless adolescent, who had just fallen off the cliff, transitioning to early from child to adult.
Bittersweet memories wrapped-up, bound and printed. Suddenly feeling very, very nostalgic. Thank you.
One hundred years of solitude took me a solid two months to get through. I loved it, but it was the first book with such strong imagery and detail that I could not possibly digest more than five or ten pages at a time. It’s so beautiful!
The Girl of the Limberlost is one of the first books I can remember that I re-read over and over and felt a huge connection to. I can’t remember many of the books I’ve read because I’m pretty much always reading and have always been that way, but that’s one I will forever love! It’s so old-fashioned
My amazing Literature! moment was (embarrassing!) “the true confessions of Charlotte Doyle”. I loved it so much, I remember thinking This is foreshadowing! And when she sees the broken chessmen for the first time. Forget about it. I was in love. I re-discovered it and read it as an adult and it was no good. Nothing like I remembered, not special, not amazingly written. But it made me come alive and it’s what finally broke me of my “baby Sitters club” safety net.
I have never read any Garcia Marquez books, but after reading your beautiful post about his work, and its meaning in your life, I feel motivated to read one of his books. I really enjoy reading your blog. Your writing conveys so much humor and warmth. Thanks for sharing it :)
Damn, this is a story. I love how you wrote this post.
The book that made me a reader? Cujo. I was five, almost six, and I stole it off of my grandmother’s nightstand and read the entire thing at her house without her knowing. I started discussing the book with her over breakfast one morning and she almost fell off her chair, they didn’t know I could read. Go big or go home, it has always been my motto.