I am very superstitious, and believe in signs, nature, energy waves, fairness. I am a bit batty, love the double-entendre of that. So, because I am all of these things, I wanted my first post about ‘my reads’ to be about something/someone that made a difference for me, and this was Stephen King. Allow me to explain.
When I was young, will not go into details when that was, muahahaha, I used to read quite a lot. I always prided myself that my first entire book that I read was Oliver Twist when I was about 9 I think, and it felt like this huge accomplishment as it was a huge book for me then. I digress (I usually do), batty remember?
Then being young passed, I became an old teenager, dark and not able to deal with myself. Books got forgotten. I was busy to survive my teenage and young adult years.
Then, the dust settled, life became bearable and then nice, and books came back, with a vengeance, like wanting to make up for all those years of vagrancy. The first book that I read then was The Bazaar of Bad Dreams by Mr. Stephen King, and so it started.
This book reminded me of how much I had loved previously his books. Happily he wrote so many that there are loads to choose from, and that I did. I continued to read some others (I will not give all of them up now as I need material for other posts, no?).
After a while I remembered how much I used to love other books too, and I started to crave other types of books. I discovered Maeve Binchy and became obsessed (I have quite a delightful capacity for obsession) so read a few of hers and gathered all of them.
And on and on it went. In Ireland we have the chance of finding great books in charity shops for really good prices, so that is where most of my books come from. Others, that I just must have like now, I will buy new, but that is mainly the exception not the rule.
I will tell you more next time. Let me know if you have a book that made a difference for you, one way or the other.
well, let's start in some of order:
1. if you are into books that had an influence on people, you can follow here "the books that made us" run by m.e. rothwell where substack writers talk about books that had an influence. i think you can send your entry if you want to be featured next year.
2. every time there's a discussion in the above "group", i remind everybody that all of us (especially me) love fairytales. at some stage in our lives we all came in contact with fairytales and we all love them.
3. i think the first book that made me go "wow" and blow my mind what a man can write in 60 odd pages was "the secret of dr. honigberger" by mircea eliade