Life According to Steph: Some of the best friends I've never met

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Some of the best friends I've never met

I was an only child for six years, with a lot of aunts and uncles and hands on grandparents and parents. From what they tell me, it made me a bit of a tyrant and one of my frequent demands was that books be read to me again and again. Hum the hamster was an early favorite. Gamma hunted him down for me a few years back at an obscure book site. I can't remember a time when I couldn't read.

I always had friends from the neighborhood and school, but I wasn't a kid that needed to be entertained. I was frequently off living a very full and exciting life inside the pages of my books, which I read insatiably as soon as I was gifted with new ones or returned from a library trip with my mom or Gamma.

Ramona, Beezus, Peter Hatcher and his annoying little brother Fudge. Laura and Mary Ingalls. The Boxcar Children. Sheila Tubman. Claudia and Jamie and the mysterious Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

I remember agonizing over not being able to just read Christopher Pike's party series all day. Andrea and I discussed the fate of our older friends on the bus on the way to school every morning.

No one ever monitored my reading, so I was shocked and intrigued by the Dollangangers and Casteels in V.C. Andrews books early on. I breezed through The Babysitter's Club. I came of age with Margaret and some other Judy Blume girls, as well as the Wakefield twins. I remember reading countless Sweet Valley High books during the summer weeks I spent at the shore with my family.

In Mr. Epting's ninth grade english class we were reading silently and I cried my eyes out at the end of Great Expectations even though it seemed that Pip and Estella would end up together. The melancholy uncertainty got to me anyway.

The day I met Jane Eyre changed me forever. What a girl, that Jane. I could carry on through my teens and adulthood, but we'd be here for days and days.

Some days I can remember more things about characters in books and how I related to them than I can remember about myself. I've frequently spoken of book characters as if they're real people. There is nothing like a book where the character comes alive for you. Authors who excel at characterization rock.

Books have given me so much and opened up ideas and worlds to me I'd never be aware of otherwise. What are some of your favorite characters?

If you like book talk, consider linking up with Jana of Jana Says and me on Tuesday, November 11 to share your recent read (s).

<div align="center">
<a href="http://www.lifeaccordingtosteph.com/" title="Life According to Steph"><img src="http://i1290.photobucket.com/albums/b536/lifeaccordingtosteph1/bookbuttonlinkup_zps01365b43.jpg" alt="Life According to Steph" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

********************

Haikuesday

You mean more book talk?

Sorry not sorry, my friends.

Book nerds, represent.

********************