I’m a lurker on social media. Or at least that has been my practice on Facebook for the last 15 years.
I recently joined Bluesky and am trying to be more interactive instead of sitting back and letting this just happen. In light of that, I decided to complete the #bookchallenge. Twenty days, twenty books that have stayed with you. No comments, just a cover. No comments? Really? Writers not saying anything? Out of respect for the originator of this challenge, I have refrained from commenting, but this is my blog, and I can comment here if I want. And I do.
I spent a lot of time thinking about the books I wanted to post. It took several hours to whittle down the list to twenty books. When I finished the list, I found that twenty wasn’t enough, so I have 21. Most of them were books I read as a child (my mother’s most frequent remark was to ask why I wasn’t playing outside) or, as a teen, reading into the wee hours of the morning by the streetlight streaming through my bedroom window.
Since I don’t want any spoilers of future posts for my Bluesky followers, I will only address the first three books I posted. The Secret Garden (Burnett), The Island of the Blue Dolphins (O’Dell), and The Black Stallion (Farley). All three books are from my childhood. I think Burnett’s The Secret Garden was on the bookshelf in my parents’ dining room. Fortunately, they were members of the Book of the Month Club in the 50s and 60s, so there were always books in the house. The Dolphin and Stallion books were from the school library. I was obsessed with the Stallion. I lost count of how many times I checked it out.
I have shared these books with my daughter and now my granddaughter. Ironically, I didn’t know that The Black Stallion was part of a series until I found the entire collection at a garage sale when my daughter was about 10. I read all of them, but still enjoyed rereading The Black Stallion the most. I think she read most of the collection.
I randomly found an illustrated copy of The Secret Garden at a dusty used book store a couple of blocks from my apartment. It was sitting on the counter (along with hundreds of other books) next to the cash register, and I bought the copy without hesitation. I gifted it to my granddaughter for her third birthday. Lucy isn’t ready to delve into the world of Mary Lennox just yet, but when the time comes, her copy of the book will be there, on her overloaded bookshelf.
I recently reread The Island of the Blue Dolphin. It still stimulated my imagination as it had when I was young. I know that island, what it looks like, what it smells like, where the danger is and I imagined myself as the young girl stranded on the shore. Thank goodness I found a Kindle copy, as the dusty used book store is now closed.
That is a post for another day.