(no subject)

filkferengi quoted ldwheeler's excellent post on "Books that Permeate" http://ldwheeler.livejournal.com/142541.html and added her list. Her list had three that are on my own list - Tolkien, Alcott, and Burnett (but a different Burnett). I think part of what makes these images permeate our lives is the youth at which we read them. We find some of these images again in new forms, and recognize and welcome them, but those vanguard images from our youth always, always remain in the forefront of our brains.

Louisa May Alcott--Little Women. I read this every few years. I've read everything published by Alcott (and that's a big claim) but this still holds my heart and soul.

Frances Hodgson Burnett--Sara Crewe (later rewritten as The Little Princess). I read this at eight or nine in a 19th century edition of my mother's. The images of the attic, the bakery shop, the cold and wet, the magic transformation are still with me.

Tolkien--The Lord of the Rings. ldwheeler says "If I have to explain, you probably won't understand. If you understand, then I don't have to explain." And that's the best explanation there is. I think you had to have read Tolkien at the right time in your life, and at the right time in the history of fantasy. I read him my junior year of high school in 1966. I was 14. There was NOTHING, absolutely nothing, that I had ever read that was like this. I gulped it, I ate it, I lived it, I dreamed it with total obsessiveness and with total lack of any critical faculty. I pity the people who come to Tolkien today after "growng up" on the hundreds of heroic fantasy novels that overflow juvenile, YA, and adult bookshelves. I pity those who see the movie first. They can never experience the true wonder of the original.

Edgar Rice Burroughs--Tarzan of the Apes and A Princess of Mars. What I learned from Tarzan and John Carter was to say "I still live!" in the face of darkness, depression, pain, or panic. These books do not stand up as well to re-reading, but at ten and eleven they were perfect.

C.S. Lewis--Surprised by Joy. My first experience with another being's personal and individual struggle for Christian understanding. He dared to say so many things I felt but could not externalize. He dared to doubt and still believe. I re-read this regularly and there are always new insights.

Happy Birthday, Janet!

And a very happy birthday to jltraut !!

"Does this get me out of sending a birthday card?" she wondered plaintively.