Childhood:
wide variety-”The Little Princess”, “The Secret Garden”, “Boxcar Children”, “Hank
the Cowdog”, “Accidental Detectives”: I was drawn to book that were equal parts
imaginative, escapist and humorous
YA:
Jane Austen, “Redwall” series by Brian Jacques: Austen taught me that
relationships are the greatest adventure, but Jaques novels showed me that
having a sword wielding mouse as the hero is also pretty entertaining. Many
hours were spent belly-down, feet in the air on my twin bed, reading in the
dappled sunlight of my black floral bedroom.
College:
“Under the Volcano”- Malcom Lowrey; “Divine Comedy”- Dante; “The Cantebury
Tales”- Chaucer; “Wide Sargasso Sea”- Jean Rhys: I really explored a variety of
text in my undergraduate studies, deepening my love for books and solidifying
the notion that I wanted nothing more that to read and write and talk about
books for the rest of my life.
Graduate School:
pretty much everything “academic” was influential on my developing political
and social views, such as “Clarissa”- rape as narrative, Mary Shelley- proto-feminism
and the supernatural; Jane Austen and Film Theory- pure awesome; Dr. Jekyll and
Mr. Hyde- texts really can be read a multitude of ways; Joyce and Yeats- bah
modernism; the most influential non-academic book I read was Jessica Valenti’s “Full
Frontal Feminism”- a profane, honest examination of feminism 101 ideas, some of
which shook me in my boots and others of which made me cry in recognition.
Reading has been the thread weaving through my life. It’s a broad
blanket of genres and ‘importance’- I hope to continue to read, so that the
blanket overflows the wagon of my experience and flows into the road like a
river. (name that reference!)