Since the shopping is done and I won’t be in full cookie baking mode until Sunday, tonight and tomorrow I will have some time to read. I’ve been busier than normal lately, or maybe this is the new normal, and haven’t had my usual time to read. I miss it. I start recalling favorite books when I’m not reading new ones and my favorite book of all time is Watership Down. I read it when I was about sixteen and I didn’t know before I read the book that adults wrote books aimed at other adults like this one. Talking rabbits with their own fables and myths. Every few years I reread the story of their exodus and adventures, crying every time I get to the part of Bigwig defending the run in the big battle when, for the first time, he acknowledges Hazel as his chief rabbit and, in doing so, wins the day.
There are a couple of books from my childhood that are especially dear to me besides the usual Nancy Drew mysteries and what girl didn’t covet that convertible of Nancy’s, Gone-Away Lake and Magic Elizabeth, but far and away my favorite childhood books were an English mystery series by Enid Blyton about the Famous Five. George, a girl who refused to be called Georgina, her dog, Timmy, and her cousins, Anne, Julian and Dick. Why and how my elementary school library in a rural town in Michigan ended up with what became my favorite book in the series, Five Run Away Together, about English children and their dog who traipse about having the best adventures ever without any adult supervision is a mystery in itself. I feel certain no grown-up realized the book was there. There was another book in the high school library that no adult had read called The Great Time Machine Hoax, too, but that’s a blog for another day. Thanks to Alibris.com and eBay, I’ve been able to gather together the rest of the Famous Five books. As for the copy of my original foray into the series, Five Run Away Together, I bet I owe a whopping fine to the elementary school library.
So, tonight and tomorrow I’m going to have time to read and maybe I’ll find another book that will hold a special place in my heart. I think this may be one of the best reasons I have for reading. There are high standards for admittance to that place in my heart, but the company is worth the try.
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All the books for Young Adults I read as a kid were authored by Poe and Heinlein. I take that back, I read 'The Hardy Boys and the Myatery of the Secret Staircase'. It seemed 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' and 'Starship Troopers' were more realistic to me than the Hardy Boys and their blank check dad. I did read 'Watership Down' when I was an adult and I loved the metaphors of struggle and police states and fighting to the death for things in which you believe. Maybe I should have read more Young Adult books when I was a kid.
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