Today I tried to come up with an author's name and it just didn't rise to the surface. That isn't too surprising, not at my age. I look at my co-workers, people I work with every day, and can't come up with their names although they are wearing name tags. But I did sort of remember one of the author's books, which I confused with his name (because they are both singular - you know, like "Cher") and because there is the interweb-thingie I can key what I know in and come up with the bit I don't know. Love the interwebs.
It is frustrating though, for someone who can't remember the names of the pseudepigraphic Pauline letters from one moment to the next (let's see, there's the pestorals and the ones that start with T ... but what about Effusions, Collations, and Fellations?) despite having heard/read about them time after time, to suddenly remember a book from 1979 and some of its content despite not having read it. And suddenly I remember that I was on page 263/4 of Nabokov's Ada before I gave up (planning to resume later because I kept track of the page ... which is often how I keep track of where I stopped reading when a bookmark isn't handy: I just remember look at the page number and remember it) at about that same time. Mind you, I don't remember what I've read. In order to cope with the book discussion group I lead I have to make a note of each character in the book because I just can't remember names (see above co-workers).
This has put me in mind of what I have read over the years. I go through fads, but cheezy mysteries and non-fiction tend to resurface.
Grade school: the Alfred Hitchcock collections, Nancy Drew, and Roald Dahl. I was once handed some realistic fiction by a school librarian when I looked hesitant and regarded her with suspicion ever after. Why would she think I would enjoy a book about a girl whose father was a janitor and who was feeling ostracized by her peers? Later one handed me James and the Giant Peach and all was well again - but I have been careful since becoming a children's librarian about what I recommend to kids and how I express it. "Well, I liked it," I might say or "I hear it's popular." I will never suggest that they would like a book.
Grade school and what was then called Junior High: A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett, a gift from my sister who knew a little martyr when she saw one. My sister was the The Secret Garden type: pushy and devious ... but in a good way. I read this book about once a month and cried and cried and spilled Chicken with Stars soup on it. It's engraved on my heart. Wish I could remember that little girl's name though. Nowadays I read some of the stuff written for "teens" and I just can't take the pain and the angst. I guess we like it at that age.
High school: Mysteries. I started with Agatha Christie and never stopped. Preferred the British and the more gentle, but occasionally branched out into the more gruesome. And fell in love with P. G. Wodehouse and his unique turn of phrase. Also, I spent high school summers immersing myself in themes such as Epic Poetry and Greek Drama. This affectation continued in college. It's an affectation because I didn't take any courses in them, just read them to be able to say I had and shut down conversations with "Well, you know what Aeschylus says ..." Oh, and I also read a lot of John Barth and Anthony Burgess.
College: More cheezy mysteries to offset the reading I had to do ... in three different languages. Oh, yeah - I forgot English. Four different languages.
Grad school: I don't recall reading anything for pleasure during that time. I was too busy drinking. Oh, wait - I seem to remember reading popular books about physics - that must have been during the summers. And I got back into the medieval and ancient.
The South Carolina Years: I worked at a public library and had all the material there to read: More mysteries (especially the Brother Cadfael ones by Ellis Peters), more Wodehouse, lots of non-fiction. These were also the Shogun years. It took me six days to read it and I've picked up used copies of it ever since to give away. Also read an account of the historic Anjin-san Clavell based the book on. Amazing.
The New York Years: Mysteries ... and portable Greek philosophers, branching into ancient history.
The Boston years: Mysteries and I discovered that Charles Dickens was actually a fabulous writer if you weren't being forced to read him for school. I was tricked into this by seeing that he'd written a book with "mystery" right in the title! Before long, I was staying up until 4 am to finish Bleak House. This caused me to read Jane Austen as well. Well, dang! And Harvard Square has the best bookshops. I finally got the David Steinberg joke about the Ludwig Wittgenstein book with the red cover because I was back in the philosophy section again ... revisiting my idea about yet another play about the Athenian legal system. And I became obsessed with The Iliad. It made me mad, but I loved it. And I was reading some Aristophanes one day at lunch downtown when it made Diet Pepsi* come out my nose and I wondered if it could possibly be that funny in Greek. And that's when I started signing up for the Ancient Greek course in adult education - again and again until it got enough suckers to make it worth a teacher's while.
The Back to SC Years: I moved back here with a Ryder truck full of books in ... several languages (none of which I had learned properly) and immediately got a library card and started reading mysteries again. Although in a book group, I find it really hard to read serious or realistic fiction. I love satire (Christopher Buckley does a great job coming up with ideas for books, but I don't think he knows how to end them properly) and historical mysteries - but I love popular non-fiction. I just love learning, even if I don't remember things properly. But I am assembling a world view from what I have read.
My reviews: http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1711341
My books: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/marfita/yourlibrary
*I come from a Coca-Cola family, but if I was forced to drink a diet beverage (and I never do anymore), I preferred Diet Pepsi. Actually, I had a Pepsi Light (now apparently called Pepsi Twist) once and became instantly addicted. I went out the same day and bought a six-pack, drank it, and suddenly realized I could Never Have It Again.
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