Survey
First fictional character who made you swoon?
First fictional character you were SURE you'd meet someday and become friends with?
First book you cried over?
First book you stayed up all night to read?
Book you give most often as a gift?
(See post below; the Pevensies; The Last Battle; The Giver; The Maggie B. And no, the Narnia theme was not intentional.)
First fictional character you were SURE you'd meet someday and become friends with?
First book you cried over?
First book you stayed up all night to read?
Book you give most often as a gift?
(See post below; the Pevensies; The Last Battle; The Giver; The Maggie B. And no, the Narnia theme was not intentional.)
posted by Jess at 11:24 PM
6 Comments:
Robin Hood (the Disney fox) was the first, then Gilbert Blythe.
Betty Bear's Birthday, also Peter Pan, because Captain Hook scared the bejebus out of me.
God, I don't know. I was one of those kids with a flashlight. I started early. I pretended to be sick so I could stay home and finish The Stand when I was in middle school. Does that count?
Last Days of Summer, by Steve Klueger or The Secret Garden.
First fictional character who made you swoon?--The exact chronology escapes me at this point, but I remember being quite taken with Josie (of Pussycats fame). Dear God, that leopard skin suit and those legs. And I remember a specific image of Gwen Stacy as drawn by John Romita in a SpiderMan comic--she was wearing cut-offs and boots, and the fact that I knew she would die, I think, CREATED the rescuer in me that strove to save tragic girls for the bulk of my single life.
First fictional character you were SURE you'd meet someday and become friends with?--Ernie (Bert's lover), who my mom said I was just like. I was sure I would move in with he and Bert (I wasn't aware of their 'arrangement' at the time).
First book you cried over?--I was going to say that the first time I cried at a novel was the car wreck scene in "The World According to Garp," but I think it was actually the end of "Charlotte's Web," which I read at 8 or 9. Heartbreaking. And I remember the violent ending of "North Dallas Forty" (not filmed for the Nick Nolte film) really slayed me, and that would've been sophomore year, high school.
First book you stayed up all night to read? Misery by Stephen King. I'm not a rabid King fan, but he really nailed the tension and menace in this story. I knew if I went to sleep I'd just dream of Annie Wilkes, so I stayed up until 5am to finish it and slept during the day(ah, I miss being 22).
Book you give most often as a gift? I've probably given Alice Sebold's "The Lovely Bones" the most, just by happenstance (it plays well with the depressed, the grieving, the spiritual, and the middle-of-the-roaders). I had amassed a huge collection of first-edition Kerouac books (most of his later stuff was straight-to-paperback, but the covers were cool and pulpy) and then when I reached my current non-materialist stage, gave each of them away to all the starry-eyed young romantics in my life; after all, I don't see myself re-reading "Big Sur" or "Dharma Bums" again, ever. I've also nearly forced friends to read "Watchmen" by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons over the years, so I'm personally responsible for that thing still being in print.
* I'm embarrassed to admit it, but Christopher Dollanganger, from Flowers in the Attic. I was *way* too young when I read these books, but OH how I loved him.
* Harriet the Spy
* Bridge to Terabithia
* The Outsiders
* Naked - David Sedaris
1. Peter Pan
2. The Little Princess
3. Charlotte's Web
4. Alice in Wonderland
5. To Kill a Mockingbird
...and there you have it.
First fictional character who made you swoon?
Nicholas Nickleby
First fictional character you were SURE you'd meet someday and become friends with?
Mary Lennox
First book you cried over?
Bridge to Terabithia
First book you stayed up all night to read?
Pride and Prejudice
Book you give most often as a gift?
Stones from the River
1. Umm... Almanzo? Aragorn?
2. Laura Wilder, Jo March, Rose from 'Eight Cousins,' and Anne Shirley of course.
3. The Hobbit. Dad tried to read it outloud to me when I was four, and I was convinced that the dwarves were going to eat the hobbit, and I started crying and wouldn't let him keep reading, evening though he kept assuring me that "there are bad guy! but they aren't the dwarves, the dwarves are fine!" But crying not out of fright? I'm not sure.
4. Probably a L.M. Montgomery or a Louisa May Alcott.
5. Calvino's "Invisible Cities" Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are"
and an extra:
books i'm teaching in my Intro Poetry Workshop in the Spring:
William Blake: Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Robert Creeley: Selected Poems
Lisa Jarnot: Black Dog Songs
Ted Berrigan: The Sonnets
Rachel Moritz: The Winchester Monologues
Inger Christensen: Alphabet
Frank O'Hara: Lunch Poems
Italo Calvino: Invisible Cities
Anne Carson: Autobiography of Red
C.D. Wright: Cooling Time, An American Poetry Vigil
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: Dictee
Richard Brautigan: Trout Fishing in America, The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster, In Watermelon Sugar
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