How Pamela Dean changed (and also saved) my life.

[seanan_mcguire]

(I thought a lot about whether this needed a trigger warning, and decided that it was better to err on the side of caution. So...TW: very oblique and carefully worded mention of a suicide attempt.)

I don't think it's any secret that I am a voracious reader. I read constantly. My friend Michelle has commented on more than one occasion that she,

Comments

[seanan_mcguire]

I had to stay in the library to get my air. I didn't have a card. I lived on the coverless paperbacks from behind the bookstore, and the water-damaged hardcovers I got for a dime at the flea market.

[brightlotusmoon]

*nod* Books = survival. I barely had friends, I was too outside the norm, kids were freaked out by my cerebral palsy, and nobody realized I was on the autism spectrum, so my best friends were book characters. They got me through my very first bout of major depression between the ages of 9 and 11. They made me feel better when I started having experiences later realized as epilepsy and fibromyalgia flares. I re-read so much that kids made fun and mocked me. I was never without a fiction book but I was always teased for it

[bunsen_h]

I am somewhat boggled by the idea that someone would criticize you for reading neuro or medical books. If it's a subject that interests you... why not?

[faecat]

I have read it. (Quite possibly at your previous urging, though I don't recall for sure.) You're right, it is an amazing book.

[seanan_mcguire]

Yes!

[seanan_mcguire]

Your friend with the brownies gets a gold star from me.

[beable]

Tam Lin is how I discovered (and fell in love with) The Lady is Not For Burning, and also (along with The Secret Country trilogy) contributes to my occasionally talking in quotes, although I don't have the breadth of literary vocabulary to do it the way the characters in Tam Lin do. I read it enough to wear through one copy and need to replace it.

Molly is probably tied with Susan Voigt and Polly from Fire and Hemlock as being top of the list of my favourite fictional characters ever.

I also discovered (but only much later - around 2000 or 2001) the secret country trilogy books, which - even if they are somewhat YA and I was in my late 20s when I found them - were immediately recognizable as the books that I would have needed had I found them as a kid, and that still provided meaning, and interest, and comfort. I recognized very strongly in Laura the kind of kid I was, and several of the characters in that book are up on my list of favourite fictional characters ever.

[seanan_mcguire]

That's wonderful.

[thedragonweaver]

I discovered The Secret Country and its sequel in high school. I didn't know it was a trilogy until after I'd graduated from high school. Which works, but it makes the ending very odd and an unusual flavor.

[aedifica]

Laura and Ted's mother is the kind of mother I'd want to be if I ever have kids. You can see her in how they talk about her even though she's barely onstage herself.

[lyssabard]

Thank you. I am going to read this asap. (Because the best thing that ever happened to me, after years of waiting and having no money, was discovering that the whole of the Childe ballads were collected in paperback form when I was in grad school. I bought it because who needs to eat much when there is True Thomas and Tam Lin?)

And I am glad you're here, and always grateful to the magic of stories.

[seanan_mcguire]

I really hope you'll enjoy it!