Dana - BWAH! to that third book white font. How silly.

Oh, I know - the third book is indeed mader than a barrel of monkeys on acid in that respect - I don't think that abandoning the fairytale logic and trying to turn it into 'proper' scifi was a good call. But I don't mind, really - because I read The Dark Angel 20 years ago, and only read A Gathering of Gargoyles and The Pearl of the Soul of the World this year - so they do feel like crackfic to me. Like something added on, that's interesting but doesn't really mesh with the original. (PotC:DMC and PotC:AWE, otoh, do a terrific job of expanding the original standalone movie into something much bigger, imho, without losing the charm or strength of the original along the way. ymmv.)

14 was a mix of Analog magazine, RAH, Various Other Sci-Fi Authors (I think that was my year spent in Riverworld. Cough.), and...

Oh yes.

My year of Thomas Hardy. Whom I adored with all the adoration of my little black-clad, black-haired, 14 year old soul.

Mixed into all of this were whatever romances I could get on the cheap at Value Village and the other thrift stores, having discovered a year earlier that, wow! I could get, like 10 books for a buck! (I'd get a pile of 20 or 30 and be done in a day or two, due to being antisocial and reading fast.)

I *may* have started on my Regency Collection at that point. All I've really kept from it are my Baloghs. Though I loaned some out and can't remember where I loaned 'em out to, which makes me sad, because I think they were the classic ones that I might still like re-reading.

Though I loaned some out and can't remember where I loaned 'em out to, which makes me sad, because I think they were the classic ones that I might still like re-reading.

t runs down to basement bookshelf where books belonging to others are segregated.

Uh, that would be me. I have six of them. Next few days are kinda crazy, but I can get them back to you next week.

Everybody else in my class read an abridged version that was included in our textbook, but I went out and bought the full version

So did I! I'm afraid I was kind of a dick about it.

My BFF started on Dunnett at about that age, Consuela. I have always suspected she compares every man to her true love, Francis Crawford of Lymond, and finds him wanting.

At some point between 12 and 16 I spent an entire summer reading my way through all of Christie that the library had

When I was in junior high, my mom signed us all up for an Agatha-Christie-Book-of-the-Month Club (black leather covers), until we got the whole set. It was very cool to go from the Nancy Drew club to Agatha Christie!

Who-dun-its were my transition from kids' books to grown-ups' books. I was big on Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen (right about the time of the Jim Hutton TV series), and Erle Stanley Gardner (in other words, Perry Mason).

My brother had the complete Sherlock Holmes which I read in junior high--loved those! Actually, I think I'm going to have to pick them up at the bookstore this weekend (we have bargain classics on sale right now).

I forgot that I read Erle Stanley Gardiner and Ellery Queen, and also old copies of Ellery Queen's mystery Magazine. This was probably also about the time when I read the book Lucy, by Donald Johanson, about discovering the australopithicus skeleton. It also had a lot of soap opera worth antics between Louis, Richard and Mary Leakey. Fourteen was probably one of my biggest reading years, since it was the last summer before I worked, I had no friends who drove, and the library was down the street-- pretty much my whole day was spent reading and I read fast.

This was probably also about the time when I read the book Lucy, by Donald Johanson, about discovering the australopithicus skeleton.

I read that book in early high school, too!! I was already a Johanson fan from reading his National Geographic article about Lucy, the First Family and the knee joint back in 1977 or so (it was the first Nat Geo article I ever read instead of just looking at the pictures), and reading that book solidified my paleoarchaeology geekdom.

(Remember Jon Kalb from that book? He was the cohort of Johanson's who screwed him over when he was trying to navigate the bureaucracy of Idi Amin. Well, I met him at a book convention when he was signing copies of his own book. I was tempted to ask him for his side of the story, but decided not to broach the subject.)