I grew up with Fantasy. Even before I read my first romance (thank you Louisville Public Library for not stifling the curiousity of a 12 year old when she first found the clench cover) I had fallen in love with Anne McCaffrey, Piers Anthony and Tolkein.
Anne McCaffrey had the most wonderful dragon stories, and opened a world to me I never knew existed. When I first laid eyes on "The White Dragon", I was a goner. I quickly searched out Dragonsong and Dragonsinger, and went looking for more tales of fantasy.
I'm not sure how I got from McCaffrey to Anthony, but when I read Piers Anthony's tales of Xanth they took my breath away. I spent many long hours happily lost in a very non-Mundane world.
Less than a year later I finally moved on to Tolkein. I thought myself more than a little in love with Frodo, and dreamed great dreams of going on his adventures. Before we had Orlando Bloom in pointy ears and tights, Frodo was my hero.
It was pretty soon after that I found those clench covers on the library racks. For a while, my love for fantasy was forgotten, and I moved on to more romantic reading. Through middle school and most of high school, I was very happy with my romance novels and "required" literature reading.
Then one day at Books-A-Million during my junior year of high school, I came across this :
I still remember standing there in the bookstore reading the first two chapters. Buying it, then racing home and staying up until late into the night reading about Tanis and Sturm, Caramon and Raistlin. It was love from first sight, and the Dragonlance Chronicles became some of my favorite reads as I left high school and went to college.
I’ve read a lot of good fantasy, and more than a little great fantasy, in the years since. But these 4 series have been some of my most passionate book loves for many years now. Even today I can reread them and be amazed by the stories these authors could weave, the worlds they could bring to vibrant, captivating life
Every book we love should leave a bit of itself behind after you close the cover. So it isn’t surprising that I’ve written my first fantasy. And if you’ve read my previous Samhain release, you won’t be shocked to find that my fantasy world is a bit more sensual – ok, much much more sensual – than the worlds of the authors I read as a preteen and teen.
Do you still reread the books that you loved when all books were new to you? And how did they shape the books you love today?
Look for Flawed, by Ember Case, coming June 30th from Samhain Publishing
2 comments:
I do still reread my favorite books from when I was growing up. The one that tops the list is L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables series. There was just something about Anne and the way she related to people that really drew me in. I think it was that she felt like an outsider so much, even after she had great friends and had been accepted by the community.
I'm not sure how it shaped the books I love today. Perhaps it's that a lot of the books I love have unique heroes that sometimes see themselves as outsiders, but I have tons of books I love that don't have that premise. lol
I remember the Xanth series, I absolutely adored it! I first discovered it when I was too young to read them myself, so my mom "read" them to me. (It was in fact chapter updates of what was going on, but I was three, it was all the same)
Reading the books for the first time myself was like visiting old friends and discovering new ones at once.
As much as I loved Xanth, it's Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality series that I read time and again. The Seventh Son series by Orson Scott Card is another one from childhood that I return to as well. And the Mayfair Witches Saga by Anne Rice is a default every few years (but I haven't read the Vampire Chronicles since high school).
But for the most part I reread the books I love from today. When the new Weather Wardens, Anita Blake, Merry Gentry, and Hollows books come out, I read the new one, then go back and reread the entire series (or in the case of Anita Blake, the last six or so). I rediscover all the little things I'd forgotten and draw closer to those literary friends I've missed waiting for the new release. :)
The Stand by Stephen King was the first book I bought with my own money at the tender age of nine and there's been a copy on my shelf ever since. I reread it whenever I need to be reminded of why I wanted to become a writer. So those early books indeed shape a lot :)
~X
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