Books as building blocks of the psyche
Blame Cupcake_goth for this post. Her post on books as the building blocks of one’s taste in genre fiction percolated in my little brain and morphed into books as the building blocks of one’s psyche. Specifically, my psyche.
I read mostly antique fiction as a child. I devoured everything that Mark Twain and Louisa May Alcott wrote, which is probably not that unusual, but I also read the complete works of Edgar Allen Poe, Dracula, and much of Shakespeare before I was 10. There was one memorable night that I couldn’t sleep, my babysitter had left her English textbook in my room, and I ended up sitting up all night reading Macbeth. I think I was 8.
Modern fantasy, science fiction, and horror came much later. The first modern fantasy books I read were The Lord of the Rings trilogy, followed by Edgar Rice Burrows. I have always had a tendency towards discovering an author and obsessively seeking out every last scrap of their writing to ingest. I have also always been fascinated with antique books, their physical form as well as their content. One of my fond memories is of being allowed to sit and read in the University of Alaska’s rare book room. Nothing could be checked out, but I spent major blocks of time while staying in Fairbanks with my grandparents one summer ensconced in a leather wing backed chair reading first editions of Mark Twain, Robert Service, Jack London, Edgar Rice Burrows, the Brontes, and many others.
So, Dear Reader, what do you surmise of my character from the aforementioned reading? If you have guessed that I have an obsession with history, the Gothic, and the Sublime, in the original Romantic Era definition of the word, you’d be right. If you also would say I have a certain tendency toward flamboyance and even bombast, you’d also be right on the money.
I read mostly antique fiction as a child. I devoured everything that Mark Twain and Louisa May Alcott wrote, which is probably not that unusual, but I also read the complete works of Edgar Allen Poe, Dracula, and much of Shakespeare before I was 10. There was one memorable night that I couldn’t sleep, my babysitter had left her English textbook in my room, and I ended up sitting up all night reading Macbeth. I think I was 8.
Modern fantasy, science fiction, and horror came much later. The first modern fantasy books I read were The Lord of the Rings trilogy, followed by Edgar Rice Burrows. I have always had a tendency towards discovering an author and obsessively seeking out every last scrap of their writing to ingest. I have also always been fascinated with antique books, their physical form as well as their content. One of my fond memories is of being allowed to sit and read in the University of Alaska’s rare book room. Nothing could be checked out, but I spent major blocks of time while staying in Fairbanks with my grandparents one summer ensconced in a leather wing backed chair reading first editions of Mark Twain, Robert Service, Jack London, Edgar Rice Burrows, the Brontes, and many others.
So, Dear Reader, what do you surmise of my character from the aforementioned reading? If you have guessed that I have an obsession with history, the Gothic, and the Sublime, in the original Romantic Era definition of the word, you’d be right. If you also would say I have a certain tendency toward flamboyance and even bombast, you’d also be right on the money.