girlboymusic asked: So sometimes I watch You've Got Mail, and at one point the Meg Ryan character says something like, "The books you read as a child become a part of you in a way no other books ever will." Do you agree?
hm, i would say, i’m not old enough to answer this question, because you can’t really know what books will become a part of you until a few years out, right? there are a few books i would say had a hand in shaping me in some way — animorphs as a series (ESPECIALLY #23), the his dark materials trilogy, harriet the spy, weirdly a lesser-known louisa may alcott book called an old-fashioned girl that really instilled in me the virtue of telling your mom everything all the time — and i would guess that if that kind of influence is what you’re talking about, then maybe not, at least with fiction. i’m ~old and set in my ways~ and i suspect the things that will shape me from here on out will be exclusive to the real world.
but if you’re talking part of me like, i feel like they injected themselves into my veins and held me fascinated and enamored on a level that went somehow above admiration of their quality, then i think that still happens to me. tender is the night, to take a recently revisited example, i first read it i think technically still a teenager or else just barely not, but i mean, we’ve talked about that, internet. lily bart from the house of mirth, i will never be able to shake her (again, technically i read that senior year of high school, which is kind of still a child… but also kind of not, and again, it’s hard to tell what will stick with me in that way). charles baxter’s the feast of love, i adore that beyond measure. again, this isn’t really a list of favorite books exactly — that’s much longer — but i don’t feel that personally about sound and the fury, for example, or huck finn or grapes of wrath, even though they all rocked my world. i don’t really know what the factors are in that somewhat fuzzy distinction, and again, time may prove me wrong, the way it has about certain songs i went from being mostly uninterested in to being obsessed with months or years after i’d heard them for the first time. sometimes also aspects of books will do that to me if not the whole thing — all of mrs. dalloway is great, don’t get me wrong, and i loved reading it, but pretty much all i remember is rezia, because Feelings.
i will also add, i do not read poetry nearly as often as i should, but i get this really intense personal reaction to poems i wind up obsessed with also (and songs but i mean doesn’t that go without saying????)
