I'll share my stories if you share yours. What books have you read, tried to read, loved, or hated? Lay it on me.
To get us started ...
The first book I ever remember reading and being completely engrossed in was none other than the Babysitter's Club Super Special #8: Boy-Crazy Stacey written by none other than Ann M. Martin. Thank you Ann. I checked that book out from the Edward D. Neill Elementary School library as many times as I possibly could, reading and re-reading Stacey's and Mary Anne's summer at the Jersey Shore as nannies. (Somehow they never met anyone named Snookie or The Situation)
I know it wasn't Tolstoy or even Hemingway, but I'll tell you what - Ms. Martin sure makes an ice cream at the Howard Johnson's seem like the world's greatest idea to a 4th-grader. That's just solid writing, plain and simple.
More importantly, though, it showed me the magical worlds created in my mind through reading. And for those of you who know me well, you know my mind does some magically creative things. (Which is why I can't watch scary movies - Michelle can vouch for me on that as she had to be in the same room with me when I saw Disturbia. I think I had to stay over at her house that night.)
So, that's my book. The buck is officially passed to you.
The first book I found myself totally consumed by was Welcome to the Dead House by R.L. Stine...here is a recap of the story:
ReplyDeleteAmanda Benson, and her younger brother Josh, are moving with their parents to a new neighborhood called Dark Falls. Amanda and Josh are very upset about having to move. Perhaps this is because the move happens rather suddenly. Only a week before, their father received a letter from a lawyer informing him that he had inherited a huge old house from a great uncle named Charles. Nobody in the Benson family can remember this particular relative, but that doesn't stop Mr. and Mrs. Benson from feeling elated about the unexpected news. Mr. Benson had been looking for a way to quit his boring office job and pursue his true love, writing, for a long time, and the inheritance provides just the opportunity. The couple does not hesitate to pack up all their belongings and make the necessary arrangements to relocate.
When the family takes their first trip to Dark Falls to meet with the real estate agent, Compton Dawes, and view their new home, only the two children and their dog, Petey, immediately sense that something is not quite right. Despite the fact that it is the middle of July, the entire neighborhood seems covered in an artificial darkness created by massive, overhanging tree limbs. The house itself, which obviously was not constructed any time in the recent past. It is an enormous, dark, antique structure. While Josh proceeds to whine in protest over the latest development in his life, Amanda watches with amazement as a boy appears suddenly in the doorway of her new room and disappears suddenly.
Amanda feels much better after seeing her room. She goes outside to tell Josh about it, but he is gone. She finds him a little while later in the cemetery...being chased by someone. Amanda keeps seeing other kids in her home and hearing strange sounds. And, the friends she makes all seem a little different. It is later revealed that the children are all dead, having been murdered when they lived in that house. Once a year, they must have the blood from a freshly killed person to sustain their "living dead" existence. One of the undead children, Ray, attacks Amanda in the cemetery, but Josh saves her at the last moment when he shines his light on Ray’s face which causes him to melt and become a pile of bones. Amanda and Josh run home but when they arrive they are attacked by the dead children who explain that there is no dead great uncle and that the letter sent to their parents was a trick to bring the Benson family to Dark Falls. The dead children say, as they move forward to kill Amanda and Josh. Suddenly Mr. Dawes, the real estate agent, appears at the door and the dead children vanish. He tells them that he has already saved their parents from the dead people and that he will take them to join their parents.
While on their way with Mr. Dawes to the cemetery, Josh tells Amanda to look at one of the gravestones where she reads the name of Mr. Dawes. They realize that Mr. Dawes is one of the dead people. When they confront him with the truth, Mr. Dawes explains that long ago the whole town was intoxicated with a yellow gas from its plastics factory and that every one died but later Dark Falls became the town of living dead. Josh succeeds in killing the already dead Mr. Dawes with a blow of his flashlight on Mr. Dawes' forehead and then the two children rush to save their parents. Their mom and dad are imprisoned in an amphitheater shielded by a huge tree and located at the end of the cemetery. The dead people are all there waiting to kill them and drink their blood. Amanda and Josh move the tree that shields the amphitheater which makes the bright sunlight pour into the amphitheater. The dead people melt as soon as the sunlight catches them. Amanda and Josh save their parents and as the family is leaving the dead house they meet on the driveway a new family coming to move to the house, and the surprise is that Mr. Dawes is there to meet the newcomers.
Needless to say, its an instant classic, this was my first really dive into reading and I was hooked...I went on to read other Goosebumps classics such as "Stay Out of the Basement," "Monster Blood," "Say Cheese and Die," "The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb," and "Let's Get Invisible." All of these books scared the pants off me, but it got me into reading.
ReplyDeleteDid you ever read Tuck everlasting? I don't remember the entire plot, but it is about a family who lives in a forest and drinks out of the fountain of youth.....anyway, it has been 20 some years since I read this book and everytime I drive by a tree farm or a tree line where the trees are planted exactly straight in a perfect line row after row, I think about this book. The funny thing is that I don't even know if the forest in book described had straight trees, I kind of doubt it. I love that book....This has actually motivated me to read that again:)
ReplyDeleteI will say that I read every babysitter club books religiously and my mother has apparently kept them ALL and will give them to me some day. Thanks mom.
There has to be a word limit on comments....and Jon, I think you exceeded it. While goosebumps were certainly a part of my childhood, the first book that I have actual memory of having a measurable impact on me was Catcher In the Rye. I was fifteen. While I've gained more from reading it again since then, that was the first book that sat me down and made me think about more than a twist or a turn or a ghost in a graveyard. I know there are books out there I probably read and enjoyed as an adolescent but I can't remember anything specifically having a major impact until Salinger's CITR.
ReplyDeleteI think that's a book you have to specifically read when you are 15, though. I read it too and was immeasurably impacted. I wonder, though, whether or not it would have the same or a similar influence on me if I read it for the first time now. It's such a "coming of age" book (lame as that sounds) because it's all about pushing boundaries and being a little bit of an ass just because you realize you can. Out from the arm of authority. That kind of thing. Thinking for one's self. Terribly important but most influential in the teenage years perhaps.
ReplyDeleteAmazing book though, no doubt.
Another book came to me, what about Superfudge by Judy Blum....I don't know when I first read it, but I do know I loved it...
ReplyDeleteGoosebumps were hy-uuuuge for me when I was a kid too; I think I owned the first 35 or so, they are classics. Half my allowance when I was a kid went to the book club thing, remember those catalogs you'd get on Fridays in elementary school?
ReplyDeleteThe first book that really hit me was probably The Godfather. I read it once a year, every year, and I'll probably be dead before I get sick of it.