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.

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!"

Yeah, Watership Down had been one of my favorite books for years before we ever read it in school, so I was thrilled when it turned up on the reading list, and then nobody else liked it. The teacher was fine, but we'd just read Catcher in the Rye, and I think people were suffering from whiplash.

It always boggles my mind when someone dislikes Watership Down. I t shouldn't , I worked with enough people that prefer realistic fiction, but I am still always amazed.

I never read Watership Down, either. And I think I only started A Wrinkle in Time (which I love now). This may be why I don't read a lot of fantasy or sci-fi.

Oh, no, it's stuff that I wanted to talk about because at the time, it was exciting to recognize literary devices All By Myself. Like, the El-Ahrairah stories paralleling the action, and what the epigraphs referred to, and so on.

An unhealthy fascination with Fiver?

Tch. It's all about Thlayli.

I'm beginning to think I was too young when I read...well, anything. We Have Always Lived in the Castle I read when I was 12, and that was one of those books that put me in a completely other headspace for days. Like I was convinced I'd poisoned my parents.

I was 11 maybe when I read Lord of the Rings, so no shiver at the Dernhelm reveal - I just was like, well duh it's Eowyn and duh she's going to kick his ass.

Back another year to 10, and Watership Down and I cried and cried and named my stuffed rabbit that I slept with Fiver and totally did NOT get the Christian metaphor.

Which was okay, because I didn't get it in Narnia either until I reread them in college. I'd picked them up after loving LOTR, randomly, seeing a cover with a dude with a sword on it, and was pretty "eh" about them. Loved them much more later.

And I was WAY too young for Lord of the Flies and Catch-22, but those did teach me to not go whining to my English teacher parents that I had nothing to read.

Although, when I read Amityville Horror later, I had a retroactive A-HA! about the pig and flies and stuff in LofF.

Back another year to 10, and Watership Down and I cried and cried and named my stuffed rabbit that I slept with Fiver and totally did NOT get the Christian metaphor.

There's a Christian metaphor?

Dear God, is there ALWAYS a Christian metaphor?