[30 days of books] needs salt

[ironymaiden]

3. Your favourite book aged 9 ½, or 13 ¾, whichever you remember best.

13¾: Stranger In a Strange Land.

of all things, i chose it from a list of genre books available from the school library in order to do a book report for English class. up to this point i had been voraciously reading science fiction on my own (most of that aimed at adults and generally more complex - Dune, everything Larry Niven ever, Asimov) but for some reason Heinlein hadn't entered the picture.

so many new-to-me ideas. between Stranger in a Strange Land and the previous year's reading of The Mists of Avalon my mind was officially blown.


30 questions

Comments

[sinthrex.livejournal.com]

I really wish I got the Stranger thing. It was such a major impact for so many people I know and yet for me it was just another Heinlein and one I didn't really care for.

Hrm. Maybe I need to pull it down and re-read it some time.

[ironymaiden]

i don't know that a reread would change your opinion. it's dated, it's polemical, and if you have the long version it's even more full of Jubal rambling.

i am fond of the book now, but i don't return to it - it did its work on a sheltered kid in a pretty isolated community. at the time i needed to encounter something that questioned the status quo, and something sex-positive.

[sinthrex.livejournal.com]

You make a good point.

Your mention of Menolly got me thinking about my experience with the original Dragonriders series. I was in love with Lessa and wanted to be Jaxom...and then as a late teen I came to the conclusion that almost all of her male characters were douchebags and Lessa was the first character that "Petra'd" on me. I didn't see it for what it was at the time though.

I keep thinking about doing a second paring of the books, because I don't think I'm ever going to re-read some of the things I re-read a dozen times as a teen.

[miss-swamp.livejournal.com]

One of my most memorable reading experiences ever was reading The Mists of Avalon at 16 during a family trip around Britain. It made the setting that much stronger. Much better than reading Gone With The Wind in Brussels the year before.