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?

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.

That's another good topic that we've sort of touched on. Books that fuck with your head. For me it was reading Hell of A Woman by Jim Thompson. Nothing like being in the head of a pure sociopath for a couple hours to completely skew your world.

Dear God, is there ALWAYS a Christian metaphor?

Sometimes there's a Vishnu metaphor. You just have to look for it.

Dear God, is there ALWAYS a Christian metaphor?

LOVE the meta.

Sometimes there's a Vishnu metaphor. You just have to look for it.

Which is tough in English/American Lit. But would be a great mental exercise.

Books that screwed with my head:

Life Size, by Jenefer Schute--novel told in first person by the narrator, a young woman hospitalized for anorexia. Really got me into the head space of a condition that I can never fully understand.

The Family Tree by Sheri S. Tepper--I was (mostly) enjoying it (her environmentalist screeds were getting on my nerves a bit, though), until The Moment when everything is revealed. I realized I'd been completely mistaken about assuming some rather big assumptions and my mind was blown!

Sheri Tepper's book Sideshow really fucked with my mind. It starts off with conjoined twins, whose parents put one thorugh a sex change operation so they could have a boy and a girl. They join the circus and at some point the sci fi element of the book kicks in. Honestly, I couldn't get past the squickiness of the conjoined twins and I'm pretty sure there's some incestious action going on.

I don't think I finished it.