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If you tend toward books (and if you don't at least somewhat, the odds of you being an LJ devotee to whatever degree are pretty slim), then it's a good bet that you've got a number of books that really resonated with you, often to the extent of informing your development as a person and your view of the world. These are not always classics of literature. Often they are, viewed objectively, really deeply awful books. That's not the point. The point is that they were the right (or wrong, nothing says they had to have a positive influence) thing for you to read at the right time, and they stayed with you in a meaningful way.
The number of these varies, but most people if queried can come up with three of them. One or more of them were likely encountered between the ages of 11 and 13, and may have been the first "grown up" book you read. Beyond that, I can't think of any set pattern, and even those may just be a coincidental cluster of data points. Nonetheless, I'm newly fascinated by this question and I wish to ask it here.
Help me out then, my friends. Name your top three core texts. If you wish to include age when encountered, positive or negative influence, general summary of the text, or type of influence it exerted on you, that would be likewise awesome. I wanna know about YOU! And books! Humor me. :)
The number of these varies, but most people if queried can come up with three of them. One or more of them were likely encountered between the ages of 11 and 13, and may have been the first "grown up" book you read. Beyond that, I can't think of any set pattern, and even those may just be a coincidental cluster of data points. Nonetheless, I'm newly fascinated by this question and I wish to ask it here.
Help me out then, my friends. Name your top three core texts. If you wish to include age when encountered, positive or negative influence, general summary of the text, or type of influence it exerted on you, that would be likewise awesome. I wanna know about YOU! And books! Humor me. :)
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Date: 2010-02-22 03:17 pm (UTC)From:2)Dragonsword - probably an objectively terrible book in retrospect, which I why I haven't re-read the series in about 16 years. It was the first book I read that dealt with really SERIOUS adult stuff. I picked it up at age 10 or so. The fantasy world had somehow sprung from the mind of a sad old professor, and was tailor-made to live up to his need to fight and evil empire. The problem was, the "enemy" actually were PEOPLE, and he wasn't able to realize that at first. Issues of rape, self-loathing, grey areas I didn't find in earlier fantasy I had read, a group of characters being forcibly gender-swapped (and dealing relatively realistically with the aftermath), women's rights, and a smattering of pacifism and anti-war politics. It was pretty deep stuff for me at that age.
3) Tam Lin by Pamela Dean. Read it right before I went to college, and it kind of ties to that period of life in my head. It's not a massively deep book, but it deals well with issues of trying to figure out where you're going that crop up at that age. It's comfort food, really.