Totally girly, but I remember reading Forever in bed at night in fourth grade, all sneaky and self-satisfied, and wondering what "Love and Other Indoor Sports" meant, when one of the guys signed a letter to Katherine that way. And then passing it around during school one morning, until our very male and very panicky teacher took it away from us.

I also remember the summer I was seventeen staying up one night reading Peter Straub's Floating Dragon until I was terrified. I was at the beach with friends, in an unfamiliar house and an unfamiliar bed, and for the first time I slept with the light on all night.

I tried three times to get into that book, since it's one of my mom's favorites. I just couldn't.

The worst part was that a friend gave it to me for my birthday because she loved it, and she left little notes throughout the book for me. The notes were the best part and the main reason I kept reading.

And then the book perished in the Great Postal Service Disaster of 2003. I wouldn't have minded losing the book if it hadn't been a birthday present.

Everyone knows that you're supposed to put scary books in the freezer.

That reminds me of the time Joey put Little Women in the freezer.

Yes, that was the joke.

also vaguely remembering being somewhere where I couldn't really read it - maybe my sister's softball game? and being frustrated that I couldn't give my book 100% of my attention

Hee! I remember being in 4th grade and attending my brother's freshman football game one Saturday morning and being really pissed off because my mom wouldn't let me read my book during the game. Since I was forced to "watch your brother play!", I learned the rules of football out of sheer boredom--it's the only sport I truly love as a result.

Watership Down was an 8th-grade Language Arts class requirement that I enjoyed after getting past page 58. I remember that page number because it took me six full days to get to page 59--it was like there was a mountain range on page 58 that I had to scale to move past it. Once I did, I finished the rest of the book in a day or two. Later that year, my cousin, who was a senior in high school, called me out of the blue. Her mom knew from my mom that I had read WD, and Laurie had to read it for her English class. Of course, it was the night before the test, and she hadn't read it, so I spent the next 45 minutes giving her a detailed summary of the book. She ended up getting an A- on her test, and thanked me profusely!

My copy of Watership Down was a gift from a friend of my aunt's when I was around that age. I think we'd talked about books, and she bought me a copy. I should pull it off my shelf and see exactly what she wrote on the inside cover -- something about hoping I'd like it, I think.

Yes, that was the joke.

*headTARDIS*

Watership Down was an 8th-grade Language Arts class requirement that I enjoyed after getting past page 58. I remember that page number because it took me six full days to get to page 59--it was like there was a mountain range on page 58 that I had to scale to move past it. Once I did, I finished the rest of the book in a day or two.

It was ninth grade English for me, and I was always way ahead of whatever the required reading was. My shining moment was coming in one day and randomly chatting with some classmates and deciding to memorize the names of all the bunnies, just for kicks.

Which turned out to be the bonus question on the quiz.

Most revelatory reading moment--the moment when Dernhelm rips off "his" helmet and cries, "I am no man! You face a woman!" and the Witch King hesitates . . . see, I didn't get that it was Eowyn. I had no clue until that very moment. I was young, and I trusted authors completely. I remember sitting bolt upright from where I was laying and reading, staring at the page as the hair on my arms stood upright.

The biggest physical reaction I ever had to a book was reading The World According to Garp when I was in high school. The bell rang and I was reading it in the hallway as I walked to my next class and I got to "I mith him" and I got light headed and almost passed out.

Shirley Jackson Reading Memory: Finding a cool used paperback copy of We Have Always Lived In The Castle when JZ and I were honeymooning in New Orleans, and reading it on the balcony of our B&B while drinking gin and tonics.

I think I read Watership Down in 5th grade for some reason. I just loved it. But then we read it for 8th grade English and had an awful teacher, and so everyone hated it because of her, and thought I was crazy when I kept saying, "No, it's good, I swear!" and plus she never wanted to talk about the parts I was interested in.

Er. Not that I'm bitter.

plus she never wanted to talk about the parts I was interested in.

You can talk about them now. So what was it? An unhealthy fascination with Fiver?

I've never read Watership Down. I wonder if I'd appreciated it now.