Les Mis
On Saturday I told some people my story of why I have never read Les Misérables.
My parents gave me the book for Christmas when I was nine. I tried to start reading it. I decided it was too long and boring. I went to read something else.
Given that I basically will read any words placed in front of my eyes and am almost entirely incapable of deliberately stopping reading what I start, and this tendency was even more pronounced when I was a kid, in order to read the book now I would have to overcome the fact that it is labeled in my brain as the most boring book ever, SEARED INTO MY MEMORY as pretty much the only time in my entire life that I ever put a book down for being too long and boring.
I have two other childhood memories of not finishing a book. I have this vague idea that I was reading The Once And Future King and then at some point dropped it down a hill and lost my place and never bothered to find that again (this is a very odd memory and I'm not entirely sure it's true; the book-dropping is clear in my head but I can neither confirm nor deny whether the book was ever finished being read for real). The other concerns The Silmarillion, which I read once at about age nine and then tried to read again a year or two later. The second time around I decided the book was so boring that I had no idea how I'd managed to make it through the first time.
You can tell from the fact that these three memories have stuck with me all my life exactly how RARE it was for me to stop reading something when I was a kid. And that is why I think I will never be able to overcome the negative conditioning and have anything to do with Les Mis.
The consensus response of the group was, "but WHY would your parents give that book TO A NINE YEAR OLD KID?" *shrug* Don't ask me, ask them.
This entry was originally posted at http://ciaan.dreamwidth.org/71595.html. Please comment here or there.
comments there.
My parents gave me the book for Christmas when I was nine. I tried to start reading it. I decided it was too long and boring. I went to read something else.
Given that I basically will read any words placed in front of my eyes and am almost entirely incapable of deliberately stopping reading what I start, and this tendency was even more pronounced when I was a kid, in order to read the book now I would have to overcome the fact that it is labeled in my brain as the most boring book ever, SEARED INTO MY MEMORY as pretty much the only time in my entire life that I ever put a book down for being too long and boring.
I have two other childhood memories of not finishing a book. I have this vague idea that I was reading The Once And Future King and then at some point dropped it down a hill and lost my place and never bothered to find that again (this is a very odd memory and I'm not entirely sure it's true; the book-dropping is clear in my head but I can neither confirm nor deny whether the book was ever finished being read for real). The other concerns The Silmarillion, which I read once at about age nine and then tried to read again a year or two later. The second time around I decided the book was so boring that I had no idea how I'd managed to make it through the first time.
You can tell from the fact that these three memories have stuck with me all my life exactly how RARE it was for me to stop reading something when I was a kid. And that is why I think I will never be able to overcome the negative conditioning and have anything to do with Les Mis.
The consensus response of the group was, "but WHY would your parents give that book TO A NINE YEAR OLD KID?" *shrug* Don't ask me, ask them.
This entry was originally posted at http://ciaan.dreamwidth.org/71595.html. Please comment here or there.
comments there.