Booklogging: Dragonsong by Anne McCaffrey
I had an urge to reread this recently, so I checked it out from the library and OH MY GOD. I had forgotten 90% of the book, but it immediately took me back to where I was when I first read it
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See, when I tell people that I was a messed up kid, I don't think they really believe me? But I was a seriously messed up kidlet. There was a stretch of time, I don't remember how long but it was for at least several months, where I took every. single. Pern. book. to school with me every. single. day. I mean, they'd only published up to All the Weyrs, I think, and I didn't really care about most of them? But I needed them. They were my security blanket.
The Harper Hall books were up in my favorites, but the ones I really really really loved were Dragonflight and Dragon's Dawn. I read Dragonflight so many times it literally fell apart. I wanted to BE Lessa. The thing where she went from being victimized pretty severely to being The Woman Who Saved The World spoke to me so powerfully because I was so stuck in the victim role in my own life.
It's funny, but I stoped reading them long before I got into fandom - I stopped needing them/that world (and I graduated to Mercedes Lackey and Anita Blake, god help me.) I've never tried to reread any of them because oh god, they're awful about a lot of things, aren't they? I don't want to taint what they were to me by what they really are, you know? Because having that world I could Mary Sue myself into (I used to float in the pool for hours and tell myself the most outrageous Mary Sue stories about Pern where I was Lessa and F'lar's secret daughter who was on Earth for some reason, or where I woke up on Pern and their son fell in love with me or some other scenario where I was Someone Special) honestly did kind of save my sanity and my life.
It's funny. I sometimes wonder what books are doing that for girls these days. I mean, for so many of us in the twenties and thirties bracket it was dear old Anne and Misty Lackey. I honestly don't have any idea if there's a modern equivalent, or if that's why things like Twilight and the Hunger Games are as popular as they are. I think it's kind of an adolescent thing, but especially for marginalized kids, that they want to read Sparkle Princess stories that they can escape into.
Hmmmm. Apparently I still have a lot of Feelings about this subject and these books. I sometimes (often) think that if I ever do make it to post-grad work I don't want to do anything practical, I want to look at YA literature and adolescent girls because goddamn, I am so fucking fascinated by the entire subject.
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Usually I re-read childhood favorite so, so carefully because re-reading always changes them. I recently reread something I thought was AMAZING when I read it and now I'm like, "oh... that... wasn't as good as I remembered." But I just had a craving for a sparkle princess story and only this would satisfy.
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