It's possible he made out with the book.

I remember finishing Daniel Deronda in the evening after a day of rambling about the windy Mount Auburn Cemetary, looking for ancestors. (Also Bernard Malamud, and Isabella Stewart Gardner.) It was a lunar eclipse, and I was almost done with the novel, and even though it wasn't what I had wanted or expected it to be -- it suffers from its age terribly -- it was still a portrait of worthwhile subjectivities.

I also read a fair portion of Ivanhoe on a beach, hardly realizing till I started it that, in fact, Sir Walter Scott is perfect beach-reading!

Believe me, there are some I'd consider. I have a crush on David Simon because of the mid-section of "A Year On The Killing Streets".

Don't you have any accidental conflations?

I can't think of any with books. With some TV shows (and DVDs, videos, whatever), if I see a particular scene again I'll sometimes get a memory-flash of where I saw it the first time, and who else was there, and often portions of the conversation we were having. Or, the other way, if I'm doing something while watching TV, the next time I do that task I'll remember what I was watching. Which I discovered back when I'd do homework with the TV on.

I get the same memory-links with music occasionally, but not as much. I suspect I give books more of my attention, and music less, while something on TV comes in close enough to the 50% mark to get linked with whatever's going on around me.

I have a hazy, nostalgia-tinged memory of being about nine, sitting under a tree in our back yard in early autumn, while reading Something Wicked This Way Comes. After I finished it, I went into the house and announced to my parents that it was The Best Book Ever.

t biatch-slaps P-C, from two miles off, without warning

Why is Nutty's stuff always more romantic than mine?

Nevermind. I get to biatch-slaps P-C. My life is good.

Dune and instant cheese grits will always evoke each other in my head.

Why is Nutty's stuff always more romantic than mine?

Not that romantic. It was really blustery that day, and took us 2+ hours to find the stone we were looking for, though we'd parked within 100 yards of it. (It's a flat stone, in a crowded section.)

Dune and instant cheese grits will always evoke each other in my head.

Becuase of the water thing. I totally get that.

I remember reading the last book in The Fionavar Trilogy late at night, summer vacation, in high school. I was about 15. I've been a stay-up-late reader for a long time, so my parents didn't care, as long as I was quiet.

It was about 4 a.m., and I was drinking iced tea with plenty of lemon, listening to the Everly Brothers (I know, but my dad loves them, and I do too) and I read the part where Diarmuid fights the urgach, and at the end of it, I just burst into tears. I had an absolute sobbing meltdown, crying so hard I couldn't even see. I had to go outside and cry some more. I think I bawled for about 20 minutes.

It was the first time, I think, that an author had killed off a major character AND DIDN'T BRING THEM BACK. He was dead, dead, dead...and he HAD to be dead. I think all of my disdain for ass-pulls on everyone coming back from the dead, la la la, magic will make it all right comes from.

Damn, I cried HARD. Then dove back into the book, and cried some more at the end. Cried, cried, cried.