I was thinking last night of some of my favorite books and how I loved summer so that I could read all the time. Partly because I was raised by a workaholic and a mom with multiple personalities who wore high heels every day as a stay-at-home-mom, I wasn't the most social kid and books were always my afternoon/weekend reprieve during school, where I was teased almost daily for being new, a redhead, taller than the rest of the class, not dressed in designer clothes every day, freckled and pale, etc. I had a hard time with the neighborhood girls--the snot across the street worked me and another girl against each other quite a bit, with one of the two of us being on the outs with her more than being in. She hated it when we finally got the nerve to gang up against her. I wish I could say that it felt good to gang up on her and the others that through the years I finally stood up to and gave them a taste of their own medicine, but the whole thing was just sad and stressful. I am trying to set things up for Bubba and Handsome to where they will never inflict nor feel the pain I ran away from and put my nose in books because books didn't say terrible things or throw my sleeping bag out a window for no reason after a sleepover. I hope the kids like books for the fun value, the learning value, the aspect of losing yourself in a good story, not for lack of good social skills and the ability to get their mom to understand just how upset they are and how close to suicide a ten-yr-old can be.

The books were a great experience in the midst of things going wrong in real life. There was the normal girl books like:

and:

But a couple really stand out as being something I read again and again, and got something new out of each time:

It really got to the heart of being a teenager on the outskirts of things and dealing with a sibling who is very ill, while also dealing with a move and new school. I remember the book and its words so potently that it runs as a movie in my mind, which is always the sign of a good book for me. I have a hard time reading business books because they don't come across as a full story, even though some of the points stick. I could read this book again and again, but don't have the book anymore--I passed it along to someone in one of my college classes because she said she had a hard time reading a book. I thought it'd be great for her because it's not written on a teenage level, but speaks to them. It can be enjoyed and related to by anyone, parents included. I hope to give this to Bubba when she's about ten.

I read this one in seventh grade, and did a book report on it:

Remember those book reports? The "Um"s repeatedly throughout the report, the fidgeting of everyone in the room when the speaker couldn't remember the book and is searching for anything to talk about, the kids that couldn't speak up and you were in the back of the class straining to hear a crappy report on a book you don't even want to know about, the checking the clock to see if your five minutes was up and you still had four minutes and thirty-four seconds to go and you stopped talking to figure that out....

My book report was one of the more notable ones of the semester. I ran longer than most and actually went past the bell, but hadn't gotten to the end yet. I was so empassioned about this book I actually had the attention of the kids in the class, and I didn't have to pick my nose or get tripped walking down the aisle to do it. A Wrinkle in Time is a great book, filled with science that makes sense and keeps things interesting. It's about siblings and a friend going to a different plane to get back a younger brother and a father, and it moved so well that it was hard to put it down for a potty break. It really speaks to the dreamer in you, the one that wants to find a time travel machine and search the stars for meaningful things, or just curious that we really are just us in three dimensions and if there's not something that binds us together more than tv and internet.

My all-time favorite though is:

I purposely chose it from a list of twenty or so for my senior year because I knew I would never read it unless there was a deadline. I finished it and enjoyed writing the paper on it, and got an A. Once or twice a year afterward I would read it again and just lovingly sit in bed with the tissues, as if I was learning about Melanie dying for the first time again. Since having Handsome, I haven't read it again, but probably will if I need to be on bedrest with this new belly bean. It's just so classic. I can't stand the movie though---fake accents, Rhett and Ashley are nothing like how I pictured them in my mind, actually most of the men aren't. They all seem so geeky in the movie, and so suave in the book. I have the same paperback copy of the book that I read 13 years ago, and although it's torn to shreds almost and Mower got me a hardcover copy for Christmas a few years back, I can't read the hardcover--the small print and size of the page is imprinted in my brain as part of the story from reading the paperback so many times.

Yeah, I'm a book geek. Yeah, I dream of being as renowned as Margaret Mitchell, as timeless as Judy Blume and Lois Lowry, as technical and yet interesting as Madeleine L'Engle, but for now, I am peejforprez, and this has been my summer book report.