T is for “Tommyknockers & Terabithia”

Welcome to the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. Every day in April (except Sundays), I’ll be sharing a short bookish memory with you.

In my last Blogging from A to Z challenge post, I talked about how I was a reluctant reader until I discovered that some books don’t suck. Conveniently for this challenge, two of those non-sucky books start with T.

As an elementary school student, my parents and teachers forced me to read every day, and by the time I got to fifth grade, I was bored with children’s books. I wanted to read an adult book. So, I snuck one out of my parents’ dresser drawer. The book turned out to be Stephen King’s The Tommyknockers. I managed to read the majority of it before my parents discovered I had it and took it away. This book got me hooked on horror. After my Tommyknockers experience, I wanted to read more scary books.

The Tommyknockers – Stephen King

Something was happening in Bobbi Anderson's idyllic small town of Haven, Maine. Something that gave every man, woman, and child in town powers far beyond ordinary mortals. Something that turned the town into a death trap for all outsiders. Something that came from a metal object, buried for millennia, that Bobbi accidentally stumbled across. 

It wasn't that Bobbi and the other good folks of Haven had sold their souls to reap the rewards of the most deadly evil this side of hell. It was more like a diabolical takeover . . . an invasion of body and soul—and mind.

The second book that helped turn me into a bookworm was Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson. This one was a Christmas gift from my parents. It was more age-appropriate than my stolen Stephen King book. Terabithia had everything I didn’t know I wanted in a novel. It has a rural setting, a little bit of magic, and some serious topics. Even as a kid, I hated reading fluff. I read this book so many times that I had parts of it memorized.

Bridge to Terabithia – Katherine Paterson

Jess Aarons' greatest ambition is to be the fastest runner in his grade. He's been practicing all summer and can't wait to see his classmates' faces when he beats them all. But on the first day of school, a new girl boldly crosses over to the boys' side and outruns everyone. 

That's not a very promising beginning for a friendship, but Jess and Leslie Burke become inseparable. Together they create Terabithia, a magical kingdom in the woods where the two of them reign as king and queen, and their imaginations set the only limits.

It’s slightly strange that I connected with both of these books. They don’t have much in common. But, if I hadn’t read them, I probably wouldn’t be running a book blog right now. These were the stories that helped me realize that books could be entertaining.

What’s the first book that you remember loving?

The Sunday Post #94

The Sunday Post is hosted by The Caffeinated Book Reviewer. It’s a chance to recap the past week, talk about next week, and share news. It’s Monday, What Are You Reading? is hosted by Book Date. I get to tell you what I’ve read recently.

Blogging From A To Z

Things around here are a little different this month. I’m participating in the Blogging from A to Z challenge. Every day in April (except Sundays), I’m going to write a short post about how books and book blogging have impacted my life. Brace yourself. Posts are coming.

Dewey’s 24 Hour Read-a-thon

Dewey’s 24 Hour Read-a-Thon starts on April 29! This is my first time participating. I’m going to be posting my updates on Twitter, so follow me there if you want to see them.

On The Blog Last Week

• N is for “Number Generator”
• O is for“ Ones I Read Over And Over”
• P is for “Plague”
• Q is for “Quitting”
• R is for “Read All The Things!”
• S is for “Special Ed.”

Coming Up On The Blog

I won’t be posting a Sunday Post next Sunday. Here’s what’s coming up in the next two weeks:

• T is for “Tommyknockers & Terabithia”
• U is for “Uncertainty”
• V is for “Vacation”
• W is for “What Happened to Lani Garver”
• X is for “Xenophobia (and Books to Combat It)”
• Y is for “You’ll Rot Your Brain”
• Z is for “Zzzzz (Books That Kept Me Up Past Bedtime)”
• Review of American Housewife: Stories by Helen Ellis
• Covers I Love
• Review of The Sound of Gravel: A Memoir by Ruth Wariner
• April Wrap-Up
• Massive Spring Book Haul (Part 1)

In My Reading Life

Last week, I finished Smoke by Dan Vyleta and Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Then I read Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War by Steve Sheinkin. Right now, I’m reading A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories by Lucia Berlin and Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters.

In The Rest Of My Life

Five things that made me happy last week:

1. Easter with my family.
2. So much chocolate.
3. My cousin discovered that we’re distantly related to the actress Courteney Cox. I wish I’d inherited her acting talent. Or her looks. Or her ability to make money.
4. The sunflowers I’m growing in the basement are getting big. I had to put them in new pots.
5. Stanley Cup playoffs. I was a rabid hockey fan as a child/teen, but I gave it up several years ago to make more time for reading. Lately, I’ve been blogging like a machine, so I’ve been listening to games while I type.

Take care of yourselves and be kind to each other! See you around the blogosphere!

S is for “Special Ed.”

Welcome to the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. Every day in April (except Sundays), I’ll be sharing a short bookish memory with you.

I was definitely not born a bookworm. When I was a kid, I did everything in my power not to read.

As a child, I was . . . um . . . special. School was not my thing. In school, I was so anxious that I twitched uncontrollably or so depressed that my teachers would have had better luck teaching a bowl of lime Jell-O how to read. I was a profoundly slow learner who couldn’t handle unpredictability or changes to my routine. I hated crowds and couldn’t focus in the classroom. I was also a control freak with zero social skills. Basically, little-me was a hot mess in a fancy dress.

From first to sixth grade, I took classes for “Special” kids. For most of the day, I was in class with the “regular” kids, but before school and during lunch and recess, I had extra lessons. I was in “special” math, reading, and writing classes. I spent hours sitting in hallways, working one-on-one with a teacher’s aide. I’m surprised that I don’t have permanent nerve damage in my ass from doing so much of my schoolwork on hard floors. (I don’t know the current status of the aide’s ass. Maybe she got nerve damage from sitting with me? Would the school have to pay her medical bills? I need to Google these things.)

Anyway, being “special” isn’t great for a twitchy kid’s self-esteem. Adults were always trying to figure out what was wrong with me. Nobody knew why I was such a failure at life. I felt like there was enormous pressure on me to catch up to the other kids and stop being special. But, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t catch up. The self-loathing was intense. I was terrified of making mistakes because mistakes just reconfirmed my “special” status.

Then, there were the bullies. Kids look cute on the outside, but they can be vicious little demons. They called me “Special Ed,” “Ed,” “Retard,” and “Fucktard.” For anyone who hasn’t been initiated into an elementary school clique, Fucktard is a clever amalgamation of the words “Fucking retard.” The bullying got so bad that I started getting physically sick whenever the teacher’s aide walked into the classroom. I knew she was there for me, and I knew the other kids would give me crap for needing her help.

Since I didn’t get along with other kids, I was sent to special friendship classes. For Friendship Class, the school counselors rounded up all the “Eds” in school and put us in a windowless room roughly the size of a walk-in closet. Then, they had us make art. This often ended in disaster.

(Oh, I just reminded myself of a random tangent. Funny story about Friendship Class: Once upon a time in Friendship Class, one of my fellow Eds had a meltdown. He started flinging buckets of crayons around our classroom. Since I was an anxious Ed, I immediately lost interest in coloring my Friendship Turtle and panicked. One of the counselors said, “Don’t worry, that boy has ADHD.” I have no idea if she was talking to the other counselor or to me, but nobody bothered to explain what “ADHD” meant. For all I knew, it was a secret code word for We’re about to get stabbed to death with the sharp end of a broken crayon, but don’t panic, the school district will give our corpses proper Christian burials. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Friendship Class.)

Okay, back to books. How did I transform from an Ed who couldn’t read to a bookworm? Honestly, I’m not entirely sure. There was no magic Helen-Keller-type moment where someone shoved my hand under a water pump and everything suddenly made sense. Becoming a bookworm happened slowly. My parents and teachers were very persistent. They made me read Every. Single. Day. When I complained, fought, and feigned deadly illnesses, they still made me read.

During forced reading time in fifth grade, I accidentally stumbled across a few books that I didn’t hate. These books showed me that not all books suck. Once I knew my own reading tastes, I was able to hunt down more books that didn’t suck. I eventually discovered that I (gasp!) enjoyed reading. By the time I got to seventh grade, I was reading for fun every night. I was also put in normal classes in seventh grade. I was still weird, but I was no longer “special.”

So, if you have “Eds” in your life, don’t give up on them. I can’t tell you how my fellow Eds turned out, but this Ed read 108 books last year.

Are you a bookworm? Were you born that way, or did you develop your book love later in life?

  

R is for “Read All The Things!”

Welcome to the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. Every day in April (except Sundays), I’ll be sharing a short bookish memory with you.

I’ve been single handedly running this book blog since 2013. All 664 posts currently on the blog were written by me. The graphics and layout were painstakingly cobbled together by me. Every typo, broken link, ugly mess, and minor disaster is completely my fault. Trust me when I say that blogging is hard. It’s much harder than most people realize. You have to know a lot about the subject you’re blogging about, and you also have to know a lot about blogging itself. Today, I thought we’d take a look at some of the non-bookish things blogging has taught me.

What I've learned from blogging

1. Website design. I don’t know much about the workings of the Internet, and it’s not a subject that interests me, but when you run a blog, you have no choice. You have to learn something about designing a website. I didn’t like any of Blogger’s premade templates and wanted to design my own, but I had no idea how to do that. How do I get the buttons in my sidebar to work? How do I get my header in the right place? These were all problems that I needed to solve.

2. Making graphics. This is one of the things I hate most about blogging. I’m not good at making graphics and never will be. (Check the graphic at the top of this post for evidence of my ineptitude.) But, blog posts that include graphics get more traffic. If I wanted more people to see my posts, I needed to teach myself how to make graphics.

3. Social media. Are you on Twitter? Facebook? Instagram? Pinterest? Bloglovin’? Goodreads? When I first started blogging, I wasn’t on any of them. I still use far fewer social media sites than most bloggers, but I taught myself Twitter so I could connect with the book blogging community.

4. Making friends. Using social media and commenting on other people’s blogs was terrifying at first. What if I said the wrong thing? What if people hated me? What if nobody understood my weird sense of humor? Talking to strangers on the Internet is scary at first, but eventually those strangers become friends.

5. Persistence. Most blogs don’t get 10000 followers overnight. When you first start out, you’re going to spend a lot of time shouting into the void. I did. I sometimes still feel like I’m shouting into the void. If you want people to notice, you’ll just have to keep shouting until they do.

6. Good things happen slowly. Bad things happen all at once. It takes years to make friends and build an audience for your blog. Bloggers aren’t born knowing how to write great posts. In contrast, bad things can happen quickly. Websites crash. A comment you made is taken out of context and blows up on Twitter. When you’re a blogger, you just have to be patient and do the best you can.

7. The value of shutting up. I have a lot of opinions. I like to pretend that I’m the smartest person on Earth, but I’m definitely not. There are always people who know more than I do. Sometimes, I should shut up and listen to them instead of shouting my opinion across the Internet.

If you’re a blogger, what has blogging taught you?