Five Books I Know Better Than I Know Myself:
-Heaven to Betsy (Maud Hart Lovelace)
-Ballet Shoes (Noel Streatfeild)
-Sue Barton, Student Nurse (Helen Dore Boylston)
-The Moon By Night (Madeleine L'Engle)
-Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
Five Books I Wish I Could Read Again For The First Time:
-The Cheerleader (Ruth Doan MacDougall)
-The Four-Story Mistake (Elizabeth Enright)
-The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins)
-The Diary of Anne Frank (Anne Frank)
-A Bright Star Falls (Lenora Mattingly Weber)
Five Books I Look Forward To Knowing Intimately:
-When You Reach Me (Rebecca Stead)
-Impossible (Nancy Werlin)
-A Solitary Blue (Cynthia Voigt)
-The Wheel on the School (Meindert DeJong)
-Nation (Terry Pratchett)
Boy, was that first list hard to narrow down. I could have replaced every title with something else, but I went with the first five that came to mind.
What books do you know better than you know yourself? What have you read recently that you knew right away was the beginning of a lifelong relationship?
8 comments:
My five:
Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh
Lizard Music, by Daniel Pinkwater
Ramona the Pest, by Beverly Cleary
Then There Were Five, by Elizabeth Enright
Lost in Place: Growing Up Absurd in Suburbia, by Mark Salzman
It's an accident that Then There Were Five is on my list instead of The Four-Story Mistake. I couldn't find a copy of The Four-Story Mistake between sixth grade and college or so; I like it better than Then There Were Five, but know it less well.
I'm waiting for Heaven to Betsy to come in for me at the library; it's my first pass through the Betsy Tacy books. :)
Five books I know better than myself: Harriet the Spy, Sense and Sensibility, Anne of Green Gables, Leaves of Grass, Secret Garden, and Gastronomical Me. Oh dear, that's way too many books!
I want to read Hunger Games and Truth About Forever for the first time again.
I look forward to knowing intimately: Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, Graceling, and Fire.
5 I know better than I know myself:
* All the Mowgli Stories by Rudyard Kipling
* A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
* The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
* My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell
* Jo's Boys by Louisa May Alcott
5 I wish I could read again for the first time:
* The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk
* Graceling by Kristin Cashore
* The Blue Place by Nicola Griffith
* My Most ExcellentYear by Steve Kluer
* How I Paid For College by Marc Acito
5 I look forward to knowing intimately:
* The Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages
* Many Stones by Carolyn Coman
* The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness
* Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
* The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley
I feel the same way about Rebecca. I think it's my fave book of all time. So beautiful!
I just realized that none of these books is Tam Lin! WTH?
Like I said, I could have replaced anything on the first list with something else. And while reading Tam Lin the first time again would be great (because it was so exciting, the first time), there's infinitely more pleasure in the rereading. (I just had to backspace to write "rereading", because what I wrote was "reliving", Freudian slip.)
5 books I know better than I know myself:
The Luckiest Girl by Beverly Cleary
The Road Home by Ellen Emerson White
The Keeping Days by Norma Johnston
Then There Were Five by Elizabeth Enright
Tam Lin by Pamela Dean
5 books I would like to read again for the first time:
I have never enjoyed reading any book for the first time as much as I enjoyed reading it for the fourth or fifth time. But with mysteries it might be great. Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey comes to mind.
5 books I look forward to knowing intimately:
The Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages is the one that comes to mind. Possibly White Sands, Red Menace also.
Laurie, four of your five were almost on my list too (like, seriously, wrote them down, but then ended up going with the first five I'd thought of)--and I almost put The Road Home on my looking-forward-to-knowing-intimately. (And The Green Glass Sea.)
Also, could not really decide what Norma Johnston I know best: The Keeping Days, Glory in the Flower, A Nice Girl Like You, or The Swallow's Song.
Have gotten so many good ideas from people's lists...
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