I don’t believe I could survive very well without books. I always have at least two books going at once. Right now, I have a biography, a mystery and a supernatural storyline competing for my attention. I love it. I’m being courted by three completely different beaus. For what more could a girl ask?
When I consider the list of those books that have found me at just the right time in my life or have simply bowled me over when I read them, I find they are a diverse group. The list is incomplete since it only includes those three books I’ve thought of in the past fifteen minutes.
Watership Down, my all-time favorite book. I remember standing in a bookstore looking over the grouping of books on the paperback bestseller list and picking up a copy with brilliant reviews in huge letters front and back. I read the first few pages until I reached the point where the rabbits started speaking to one another, then I looked at the glowing reviews again and made sure I wasn’t in the children’s book section. I did not know authors were allowed to write that way for adults. I was sixteen years old and think it was in that moment that I knew I wanted to write.
Rebecca. There are very few books that create such a feeling of building suspense mingled with dreadful unease as the lead up to the costume ball when the second Mrs. de Winter starts down the stairs dressed as Caroline de Winter. I need to study this to find out how best to do it because, for me, Daphne du Maurier flat out nailed it.
The Debt to Pleasure. This is not a well known book, but I have never ever read anything that managed to make me laugh out loud at the beginning of a sentence then gasp in shock by the end. Brilliant, manipulative and the most unreliable narrator ever.
Not only did these three books court me, but they swept me off my feet. Only because I continue the search for another such beau am I willing to stand on my own again.
