the_deep_magic | Book Meme, part the first

So I've decided to use May to do the 30 Day Book Meme, which I copied from somebody-or-other back in February, but I wanted to have it all done (or mostly done) before I started... and then I got distracted... and now it's May. The one-a-day thing might not work, since a) I'm going out of town twice this month; and b) I'm already a day late. So you're going to get them in clumps, and you're going to like it. I promise to hide any major plot spoilers.

Day 1: Best book you read last year – Room, Emma Donoghue

Takes a premise that could have been at best morbid and at worst exploitative and makes something utterly unique with it. A kidnapped woman has been held captive in a bunker and sexually assaulted for years, and as a result, she has a five-year-old son. It’s told from the boy’s point of view – and as far as he knows, their one-room cell is the entire world. It’s absolutely fascinating, not overly disturbing given the subject matter, and actually has a satisfying ending. The author gets the five-year-old’s voice perfect, too.

Day 2: A book you've read more than three times – Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton

Haven’t reread it recently, but I must have read it at least a dozen times before I graduated high school, maybe even middle school. I am one of millions who went through the Dinosaur Phase thanks to this book (which I read before I saw the movie). Interestingly, my mom was very reluctant to let me see the movie and made sure to see it first and tell me when to close my eyes. Yet I was allowed to read the book with no prior vetting, and the book contains FAR more horrific scenes. Though I reread it, I actually taped an index card over the paragraph where Nedry is attacked by the dilophosaurus and (obscured for grossness) he feels his own intestines spill out because it freaked me out so badly.

I can actually remember exactly where I was when I first read it – my mom was driving me to school in our old station wagon on a rainy morning and we were just pulling into school when I got to that paragraph. I don’t remember anything else about that day, but I’m sure I walked around in an icky daze the whole time. But obviously that didn’t stop me from reading it again and again. I think at one point, I finished the last page and then just flipped right on back to the first page.

Consider yourself lucky -- I thought about doing the 100 Things meme on Books, And What I Think of Them, so you could have 70 more of these. ;o)