Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Can’t Believe I Read…When I Did

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. For the list of past topics and future schedule, click here.

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Books I Can’t Believe I Read…When I Did

I grew up with the Harry Potter books being published during my childhood and teen years. I was in 5th grade when my mom checked out the first book from the public library for herself. This was about a year or so into the craze, I think. She started reading it to my youngest brother, who was about 3 at the time. I think she had wanted to read it to all of us, but we all quickly gave her the what for. Personally, as I got older and learned how to read and was quite an accomplished reader, I don’t like being read to. I still don’t. If there is information in a presentation, I will read it on the screen or the notes and process for myself rather than listening to the presenter read it. None of us liked being read to and we all abandoned the books, to my mother’s disappointment. She did lament that we were missing out as she worked through the books. I think my middle brother eventually read them (but I’m not too sure). I didn’t read the first book until the month after I graduated college in January 2013. I read each book the series each of the following months and regretted all those years I missed out on the Harry Potter phenomenon.

Adversely, somewhere around the year after trying to get us all to read Harry Potter, I picked up one of my mom’s books. It was a BIG book, so I figured it had to be good. Who’d publish something that big if it wasn’t? I was 12 or 13 when I picked up and read two books that were the gateway books to romance: Wild Bells to the Wild Sky and Outlander. I can’t remember which one I read first, but at the time and all these years since I never believed my mother knew I was reading them. I’d hide them in the depths of my pillows (yes, depths; I had something like 10 pillows) or under my mattress.

I was only slightly late to the Twilight party. Honestly, I was dragged to it. In college I roomed with my best friend, and our friend was next door with a new girl who was agog over Twilight. She got them all on board and then they forced it on me. The first book was alright, but as the series went on the writing went way downhill. I was also dragged along to the movies, which I found worse than the books. In fact, some friends of a boyfriend at the time got midnight showing tickets to the third one and as soon as the lights went out I fell asleep. Proof I was just dragged along in the Twilight Saga.

My 4th grade class read The Hobbit as a class novel. I felt so advanced. It was like a secret from the whole school. Only my class was reading it, and only we knew! … And our school librarian, I’m sure. 🙂

I don’t recall a lot from the book, but I remember being so into the story at the time and feeling like our class was something really special.

I started reading Junie B. Jones books when I was in high school. When my youngest brother was learning to read, he wanted to read these books. Surprised at his pick, but not surprised because my mom helped him pick them out. The original idea was they would read together. I don’t know exactly how, maybe because I had to read with him one night, but he and my mom both wanted me to read to them. I suppose my level of sarcasm matched Junie B. Jones’ voice.

 

Which books are you surprised you read when you did?