Top Ten Tuesday (#14): Bookish Memories

Top Ten Tuesday is a regular feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish and this week we're taking a trip down memory lane. I don't have any "I met my all-time favorite author & now were BFFs" kind of stories, so I'm going all nostalgic on you guys today. I hope you have some warm and fuzzy bookish memories too :)

(Update: I cannot believe I forgot about #9, so I just had to squeeze it in after the fact. When I first started writing this, I didn't think I could come up with 10, but apparently I was wrong!)

Image from Amazon.

1. Reading A Story a Day 'Til Christmas with my parents and brother as a kid. This wasn't a long standing tradition since we were probably only both at "let's read bedtime stories together" ages for a few years, but it's still a very happy memory. (Note to self: I really need to look for this book the next time I visit my parents. I actually think we had two different volumes. I hope we didn't get rid of them...)

2. Reading by nightlight because I didn't want to get caught staying up past my bedtime. Yup, I was one of those kids. Forget all the other sneaky things I could have gotten myself into, I just desperately wanted to read one more chapter. OK, maybe two.

3. The Scholastic Book Fair. Please tell me you had these at your school as a kid. I looked forward to them so much it was kind of ridiculous. This was obviously the beginning of my book buying obsession. Of course at the age of 10, I had quite limited funds (and room in my backpack), which was probably a good thing.

4. Speaking of Scholastic, I have to include the Scholastic Book Club flyers. Do you guys remember those?! In the days before this thing called the internet enabled you to click a few buttons and have books magically appear on your doorstep, this was pretty much a third grade bookworm's dream. I filled out a form, gave my teacher some money, and then I got the latest Baby Sitters Club book delivered to me at school. So. Awesome.

5. One thing I really miss now that I'm an adult is reading a book cover-to-cover. As a kid, I remember settling in with a Nancy Drew mystery on a weekend or a rainy summer day and just reading the whole thing straight through. And on a really good day, I'd read another!

6. In high school, I was always the first one up in the morning, so I would make myself something for breakfast and curl up on the playroom couch with my latest non-school-related book. I went to Catholic school and wore a uniform, so getting ready didn't take much time and I always thought I had time for a few more pages, even when I really didn't.

7. Now I know a lot of teenage girls like to go shopping at the mall and my best friend and I were no exception. What I'm not so sure about is if all the other teenage girls always made a stop at the bookstore. We were both readers, so we often swapped books and recommendations and it was always fun to browse the shelves. The day we realized the B. Dalton at our local mall was closing for good was a very sad day. How can a mall not have a bookstore?!

8. It was a little bittersweet, but I'll never forget lining up to buy Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at midnight with my husband (he was my boyfriend then -- can you see why I married him?), one of his friends, and my best friend. It's what all the cool kids were doing. Seriously. Well, my kind of cool kids anyway.

9. Speaking of the cool kids, you want to know what this cool kid did on her 21st birthday? She went to An Evening with Harry, Carrie & Garp with said husband and best friend. Judging by the crowd, the excitement, and the general atmosphere, you would have thought it was a rock concert, but it was actually a series of readings and Q&A sessions with JK Rowling, Stephen King, and John Irving at Radio City Music Hall. My husband bought us the tickets and took the two of us since our birthdays are only 2 days apart. Forget going to a bar and getting legally wasted, that was one of my best birthdays ever.

10. And all this Harry Potter talk brings me back to the day my little brother came home from school and was practically jumping out of his skin and begging me to read the first book. "Christine you have to read this book. It's sooo good. And it's not just for little kids. I swear you're gonna like it." He must have been 10 which means I would have been 14 and not all that likely to believe him, but luckily I did. Best. Book Recommendation. Ever.

Fast forward a few years to when my brother was 14 and Order of the Phoenix was published. He started it, but didn't like it as much as the earlier books, so he stopped after a few chapters and pretty much abandoned reading altogether. I was so mad because he got me started on the series and I wanted to talk to him about the ending so badly! Which leads me to my final bookish memory...

11. It's almost 10 years later and I never was able to convince my brother to read the rest of Harry Potter (or anything else, for that matter). Every year our family takes a beach vacation on the Jersey shore (not THAT Jersey Shore. Ew.) which is perfect for some relaxing summer reading, but nothing I tried ever worked. I'd ask him what books he wanted me to pack for him and he'd just make the "I know you're my sister and we're related, but you really are crazy" face at me. But recently he told me his latest job (which involves a lot of sitting around and monitoring a sign-in book) is so boring he might have to take up reading again. I was hopeful we'd talk about books again one day, but I wasn't holding my breath. Then I got a text from him: "Finished my 3rd book. The parents are reading frauds there are no books in the house." I couldn't help but smile and reminded him they go to this place called the library. It only happened yesterday, but I don't think it's something I'll forget anytime soon :)

1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up

1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up, by Julia Eccleshare
Source: Borrowed from the library
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
GoodReads

OK I know I'm already "grown-up" and anyone reading this blog probably is too, but hear me out before you skip over this post. I was looking for some inspiration for my Classics Club list, so I went to the library to borrow 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. While I was there, I spotted this children's version I didn't even know existed. I decided to check them both out, figuring it would also be fun to flip through and revisit my childhood a bit. Little did I know just how much of a gem it would turn out to be!

There are people all over the place blogging about the adult version and I was so eager to check it out. But as I started browsing through it, I just wasn't feeling most of the selections. To me, there seemed to be a bias toward certain authors whose books earned multiple spots at the expense of others I expected to see, but weren't listed at all. There were plenty of well-known, excellent books, but overall it wasn't what I was hoping for. I guess I wanted to be excited or inspired by (nearly) every book, and I just wasn't. I'd still be curious to see how many I read over time, but I have zero interest in actually trying to read them all.

But then I cracked open this kids' version and was delighted to find such a wide-ranging and truly fantastic selection. THIS is the book I'd really like to read may way through. Forget the grown-up list, they're letting the kids have all the fun! It's split up by age group, so anything in the 0-3, 3+, and 5+ categories I'm more likely to read with my (as yet non-existent) kids someday, but the 8+ and 12+ sections are filled with really great books that my "grown-up" self would love to read. I do think some of them are a little above the age range they're listed for, but if you're using this as a book guide for an actual child, use your best judgement of their maturity and reading level.

The other interesting thing I discovered was almost every book I was already considering for the Classics Club is listed in this volume! I was well aware several of them fell into the genre of "children's literature," but there are many others I wouldn't necessarily have categorized that way. No matter what your age, the books on this list will make you a more well-rounded reader. You'll find a lot of "typical" classics in addition to more "modern classics" that have already proven they themselves worthy, despite the fact they haven't been around for decades (or centuries). I'll be interested to see if this volume gets updated and reprinted over the years like the adult book has and what new titles might earn a spot in the future.

So, what to do with all this information? I'm going to post the list and keep track of what I've read, of course! (You can find it here, or on the tab up top.) I highly recommend getting your hands on the actual book though, since browsing through the list is way more fun when you can look at the book covers and have additional information at your fingertips. But be warned, there do seem to be spoilers in some of the reviews/blurbs -- they're not giving everything away, but the descriptions are pretty detailed. So if you don't want to know anything about a certain story beforehand, you may want to proceed with caution!

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Coming soon: my Classics Club sign-up post and list -- can you tell I like lists?!