Literary Loves

I was following a really great discussion on the YALSA listserv around Valentine’s Day where the topic was “Who Was Your First Literary Love?”  It got me thinking about all the fantastic children’s and young adults writers whose books like Ramona Quimby, Age 8 and Charlotte’s Web made in my life as a young reader.  There were great authors I knew and loved that many people shouted out, and there were also many I have yet to discover.  Yet, what held me off from writing about this discussion was thinking about all the wonderful books and authors I’ve read as an adult in college, graduate school and throughout my own choosing from bookstore and library adventures.

Stack of Books Found on Flickr

Studying to become a librarian, being an English major in undergrad and actually enjoying most of my English classes in high school, I have had many first literary loves and they all hold special places in my list of great novels.  Books like Catcher in the Rye, The Awakening, Old Man and the Sea, and Invisible Man are novels that truly made me stop, think, and never want to put it down.  It’s hard for me to pick one!

Then, I was listening to a favorite podcast during one of my typical hour long drives called Book Lust moderated by Nancy Pearl, master librarian.  She was interviewing Charles Johnson, author of the National Book Award winning book, Middle Passage.  During the interview, she asked what he was reading and did he have any favorite books.  His paraphrased reply was that he found books most rewarding when they impacted him in a way that made him think about the world and people around him.

This had me thinking about why I can’t really choose only one literary love.

I am almost always impacted in some way by the books I read.  Some stories haunt me with the choices and decisions made by the characters.  Some books cause me to question my life and what I’ve done throughout.  Others intrigue me and impact me in a way to want to do research to find out more about a particular topic.

So now I ask, as a ‘grown-up’ reader, what or who is your literary love? Did you discover new tastes as an adult or do you find those similar patterns you enjoyed as a child carry over in your adult reading?