Road Trip Wednesday: Remembering Reading

Road Trip Wednesday is a "Blog Carnival," where YA Highway's contributors post a weekly writing- or reading-related question and answer it on our own blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody's unique take on the topic. This Week's Topic:

What's your favorite reading memory?

I have a lot of great reading memories, actually. I mean, there's a reason I've learned to love to read so much. But a few do stand out in the crowd: Finishing the Anne of Green Gables series, and then immediately starting it again from book one. That first historical romance I found stashed under my sixth grade desk and read with wide eyes (ew, that sounds so pervy, haha). Discovering that poetry could, in just a few stanzas, demand an intense emotional reaction from me. Hating, detesting, abhorring MOBY DICK - and trying to convince my lit professor of the underlying themes of sexuality and repression in the novel (my arguments were AWESOME. But he wasn't so sure. He was old school, what did he know?). Swooning over the beauty of Marchetta's Jellicoe Road. Reading the novels that inspired my favorite films and deciding which version of the story was superior.

But easily my favorite reading memory happened in the fourth grade. I recall with clarity the total smart-a$$ I was back then (yeah, nothing's changed). I remember joining the gifted program and still feeling ahead of the game. So while my friends were reading Sweet Valley High and Babysitter's Club, I marched into my grade school library and told the librarian I needed a real challenge. She steered me to the stacks and pulled out Louisa May Alcott's LITTLE WOMEN. My reaction looked something like this ----->

(except, you know, I was a girl, not The Rock).

Here I was, this complete tomboy who played tackle football sans pads on a concrete road and beat up boys, expecting something more action oriented, more intelletual, and this librarian gives me a book about . . . GIRLS??? And not just girls. SISTERS!!!!!! I didn't even have any sisters (brothers aplenty, though). This was so not going to work out.

But I dutifully took the book home and read. And read and read. And I finished the novel in a couple days (actually, probably a couple nights, since I was one of those kids who hid under her blanket after lights out with a flashlight). And I loved it! I mean, I was so Jo*, so how could I not? And Christian Ba-- *ahem* I mean, Laurie? Sa-woon! It definitely was an eye-opening experience. My first hefty work of literature and even a little admittance that stuff about girls was . . . okay. Cliche as it sounds, LITTLE WOMEN opened the door to a world of great novels and helped shape the reader - and writer - I am today.

What's your favorite reading memory? Head over to YA Highway to join in on this week's RTW.


*Aren't we all?