Larocque and Roll

Now I’m all nostalgic July 6, 2007

The other day I wrote about it being summer (officially) now, and since then I started reflecting on all the memorable books I’d read (or tried to read) during summers past. Part of me wants to go back and reread a lot of them, and another part of me knows that I’ll never be able to recapture whatever it was that made it so memorable. And yet another part of me (I am large and I contain multitudes) bitch slaps the second part and tells it to stop being such a negative, whiny twerp.

The summer I was 8, I hid in the family camper and read Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain Chronicles. From that point on, I was hopelessly hooked on the whole Fantasy genre.

The summer I was 12, I broke my leg and spent the better part of July and August in a cast. I’d been reading The Hobbit at the time, and the worst part of the hospital stay was not having anything to read while I was there. Because I didn’t have anything else to do, I read the whole Lord of the Rings series, and loved it. I started The Simarilion, and was getting bored when the cast finally came off.

I can’t remember how old I was the summer I read The Thornbirds (probably not old enough) and then moved on to other Collen McCullough books. I know I was on vacation at my grandparent’s in New Brunswick, and that I wasn’t really old enough to understand what was going on. I just remember that they were incredibly detailed and full of historical details.

Also while I was in NB one summer, I’d picked up The Handmaid’s Tale at a bookstore in Halifax (we started in Nova Scotia, and made our way north.) I know I was 16 at the time, and was intrigued by the book. For a long time, it was the only Margaret Atwood book I liked until I read Wilderness Tips, which is a collection of short stories about the great outdoors.

Then there were the summers between the end of high school and the start of grad school where I found new authors that I grew to love - Elizabeth Peters, Laurie R. King, Dorothy R. Sayers, Spider Robinson, Diane Mott Davidson, Piers Anthony (who I now despise because he is a dirty old man), Laurence Sanders.

There have been a couple of summers where I tried to get past the first book of Stephen R. Donaldson’s [1] Lord Foul’s Bane series. I tried three times, and couldn’t - the protagonist is so bitter and unlikeable (and a whiny bitch to boot) that I don’t even try anymore.

The summer between first and second year of library school, I had three separate memorable reading experiences. The first came on the last day of class, when I’d handed in my last assignment and had no exams left; a friend had loaned me the first three Harry Potter books (Harry Potter was just starting to get big then, but we hadn’t noticed) and I ran home from the library to start reading them. I had a migraine, and I intended to read until it got too bad, but I stopped noticing after the first 100 pages. Finally, at midnight, I finished the second book [2], put it down, and said, “wow.”

The second incident came a few weeks later. The same friend who loaned me the Harry Potter books suggested I might want to try Guy Gavriel Kay, specifically the Fionavar Tapestry. It’s three books, and they form the mythical/historical/semi-religious basis for a lot of his other books. I had never been so emotionally moved by a book until that point - there was one point during the story where I had to stop reading, put the book down, and walk away because I was so upset.[3] So, thanks Stuart - you got two thumbs way up for your recommendations that summer!

The third incident came later in the summer, at the Spring Garden branch of the library. Browsing through the new arrivals, a page was shelving books and asked if I was looking for something. I wasn’t really - I read all the Kay’s the library had and was waiting for others to arrive from other branches. He handed me a book and said, “Here - try this guy. He writes comic books, but this is a really good novel.” Since that day, I’ve wished a million blessings on that kid’s head because I don’t know how I would have found Neil Gaiman otherwise. Neverwhere was the first book I’d ever read from cover to cover two times in a row, and I can’t wait until the movie for Stardust comes out.

The last few summers haven’t seen anything really memorable, maybe because the summer doesn’t have the same meaning as it used to - a break between school years. Whatever I’m doing in the summer, I’ll still be doing it in the fall, the winter and next spring, so there’s not an urgency to get a lot of reading in while I can, before I have to start reading for classes again. I haven’t really taken any vacation time during the summer, and I’m not planning to in the foreseeable future [4]. This just means that there isn’t a chunk of time I get to sit around and do nothing but read. Which is what I plan on doing this weekend, because it’s going to rain anyways.

On that note, here’s what I read in June:

~ Fiona Patton, The Granite Shield and The Stone Prince (both 6). Nothing special, but lots of detail.
~ Anthony Bidulka, Flight of Aquavit (6). A nice, easy read - predictable, yet palatable.
~ Christopher Moore, A Dirty Job (8). For book club; even though I read it this past October, it was still pretty funny.
~ Adriana Trigiani, Rococo (4). I can’t tell you what posessed me to read this, let alone finish it. It wasn’t offensively bad or terribly written, it just didn’t interest me.
~ Mark Haddon, A Spot of Bother (9). Loved this book! The family all meant well, and just had trouble expressing it.
~ Brad Smtih, Big Man Coming Down the Road (8.5). I liked the fact I recognized a lot of the geography, and a specific incident alluded to in the story. Oh, and it’s a great modern western - y’all should read it!

[1] It seems like a lot of the authors I like have the middle initial R. I wonder if there’s a reason…
[2] Have I ever mentioned I read fast? Like, 100 pages an hour on average, remembering most of what I read. And yes, I’m bragging.
[3] And no, I won’t tell you why. Go read the book yourself!
[4] I know - gasp! People keep asking my why, and I just tell them it’s because it’s hot, I don’t have air conditioning, so I’d rather be inside where it is. Plus, I’d rather take time off in the fall, when everyone is back from their summer vacations.