My First love – book edition
We are all here for various reasons, maybe because we love writing and maybe because we have a screaming fangirl/ fanboy in our heads who demands a fandom fix. But one thing I think we all have in common no matter what, is that something made us fall in love with fiction. Maybe we’ve even fallen in love multiple times, and in different ways (because love grows guys, it needs to evolve or it will falter and die). This is why I came up with the idea to make a list of my first book loves and to share with you how they impacted me.
The Shamer’s Daugther – My first book love
Okay, I’ll admit I had been flirting with books for quite some time when I read this one, but flirting is not exactly falling in love, now is it? And who falls madly in love with the first book they ever pick up? Well, I certainly didn’t (also, I had the worst taste in books when I was young, so many cliché love stories! Mysterious, rich, dark and handsome men with terrible pasts and young innocent women who get tangled up in their lives and almost die before he heroically swoops in and saves her).
One summer I was visiting my grandpa (I was the only grandchild old enough to be allowed to do that on my own! Or, well, I was the only one who could entertain myself and didn’t need constant supervision, potato pothato). One day he took me to this charming little bookstore (okay, I don’t remember the bookstore that well, but Fredericia is a charming city with charming everything). He asked the saleswoman what she would suggest for a little girl like me, and she picked The Shamer’s Daughter off the bookshelf and explained about the dragons and the twelve-year-old protagonist. My grandpa bought me the first book of the series and I promised the sales lady I would come back and tell her what I thought of it (and she promised we could exchange it if it wasn’t my cup of tea). By dinner time that evening, I came out of my room and told my grandpa we had to go back to the store. That is one of my favorite memories I have of grandpa – the look of horror on his face as he thought he had bought me a book I didn’t like. But I assured him I loved the book and the next day we went back for the next three in the series. I stayed with him for a week, and let’s just say the books did not last that long.
A few years later we were to read a new book in class, and I almost laughed out loud as the teacher started handing out copies of The Shamer’s Daughter. It is now the most worn book in my collection (of those bought from new. Actually, it’s more worn than most second-hand books I have too).
In short, this is my version of “Harry Potter made me fall in love with books”.
Hamlet – My first Shakespeare love
I originally bought The Complete Works of William Shakespeare in the 9th grade (6 years after starting English lessons, and 4 years before having to study him in school) because I thought it would make me “cool”. Well, my first impression of Shakespeare was something along the lines of “Gee, this man really hates full stops!” I was reading it almost like a child sounding out the words. I would read a sentence (=paragraph!) and then go back and try to break it down to find out what it actually meant. But hey, I was “cool” (at least adults were impressed with me). I also tried watching movie adaptions of his plays, I think the first one was Sir Lawrence Oliver in Richard III – and I got about halfway through it, thought to myself “I think perhaps that guy in purple who keeps talking to the audience might be bad”, looked at the cover and realized I was only halfway through. I turned off the DVD player and didn’t pick up that DVD again till 6 or 7 years later.
What truly made me enjoy Shakespeare for the first time was watching David Tennant as Hamlet (second time was David Tennant as Benedick and Catherine Tate as Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing). Usually, nothing scares me on a screen, I watch horror movies without flinching and you can kill a thousand dogs and still not get a tear out of me. But David Tennant brought Hamlet to life in a way I had never seen before, and by the “To be or not to be” speech he had me hiding behind the cushions of my couch, rocking backwards and forwards trying to convince myself that the 2D image on the screen could not actually look into my soul and wring it. But, of course, he could. And he did. And so I fell in love with Shakespeare, leaving the idea of “cool” behind and instead striving to understand as much as I could about this amazing writer who had such control over my emotions when allowed the right medium.
Wuthering Heights – My first classical love
I don’t know what it is about me and thinking classical literature will make me “cool”. Maybe I just assume that books that have stood the test of time have something more to offer than whatever book is currently trendy but might not have all that much soul. Maybe I’m a snob. Maybe it’s just easier picking something to read if you know you “are supposed” to like it. Whatever the reason, it has resulted in a row of Wordsworth’s Classics on my shelve, only a few of them opened and even fewer finished.
One of the books I ripped through, however, was Wuthering Heights. The character names left me utterly confused about who was who (I drew up a chart and might also have googled it), and of all the characters in the book the only two I liked in the least was the old man and the housekeeper, neither of whose names I remember – and the story isn’t even about them. But the selfishness and passion of these characters, their strong wills or their patient love made me flip through those pages like it was a forbidden diary I had to finish reading before I got caught with it. Needless to say, this was enough to make me forever throw out the notion that the classics are dry and hard to get through (though some still are – I’m looking at you Dracula).
Cabin Pressure – My first audio love
It is possible, even likely or true, that I only started this one because a Cumberbitch on Tumblr made a comment about it being good. Comedy is not, never has been, and probably never will be, my cup of tea – unless it is brimming with talent all around. And I mean brimming! At this point, the only two comedies I can remember loving is this one and Much Ado About Nothing starring David Tennant and Catherine Tate.
This audio drama not only had me laughing all the way through, it had me in love with the characters, and it has me savoring every moment until I run out of episodes. I am like a squirrel hoarding acorns for the winter, showing (if I might say so myself) incredible self-restraint and not simply devouring the entire thing in one go.
Wexton School – My first Indie love
And now for the reason this whole post came to be. Isadora Felix’s Wexton School. I started this book a few hours ago, and I’m a quarter way through (my eyes got tired so I took a nap, dreaming of odd creatures and giant schools). This is the first Indie book I have read more than five pages of, and though I’ll admit the book is not perfect (mainly due to the language) I will also say it has been a long time since I have gone through pages so fast. It has been a long time since I have even remembered the names of characters, and for a book with so large a cast I am thoroughly impressed that I can tell almost all of them apart – I take my hat off for that feat Isadora, it takes quite the skill to make me remember names.
And that was the end of my list. What about you? Which books, plays, audio shows or whatever made you fall in love with the genre or medium? Leave a comment below or make your own post and link it, I would love to know.
