Like you, I am a reader. (Surprise) And I have read THOUSANDS of books. For fun, for work, for school, for review purposes. And it's nigh-impossible for me to pick favorites. Even just asking me "what's good?" or "what have you read lately?" sends me into a brain-freeze as I try to sort through the over-abundance of data I have in that regard.
But I can always, ALWAYS, claim one book as one of my all-time, never-fail, read-until-it-falls-apart, open-at-any-page-for-comfort, love and love again, favorites. That book is Tam Lin.
Tam Lin was one of the first books to teach me about the beauty of language, the subtlety of magic, the versatility of fairy tales and legends, the joy of magical realism/urban fantasy, the complexities of characters, the idealized mystique of college, and the sheer joy of words. Oh, there were lots of other books which had some or even all of those elements, but Tam Lin exemplified all of those attributes and more, conjuring up a vivid, beautiful, strange, hazy sort of magic existence that I yearned for during my own college years. (And there were a few odd parallels between things mentioned in that book and my own college existence, for Theatre does that sort of thing, it overlaps and creeps into odd corners.)
To this day, I still try to reread Tam Lin every year or so. I agree. This is a book that needs to be read.
(For those curious, two others of the All-Time Top Five are Emma Bull's War for the Oaks, and Simon Green's Blue Moon Rising, for very different yet valid reasons. And some day, I may even decide what the last two members of that list are.)
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2013-10-04 06:34 pm (UTC)But I can always, ALWAYS, claim one book as one of my all-time, never-fail, read-until-it-falls-apart, open-at-any-page-for-comfort, love and love again, favorites. That book is Tam Lin.
Tam Lin was one of the first books to teach me about the beauty of language, the subtlety of magic, the versatility of fairy tales and legends, the joy of magical realism/urban fantasy, the complexities of characters, the idealized mystique of college, and the sheer joy of words. Oh, there were lots of other books which had some or even all of those elements, but Tam Lin exemplified all of those attributes and more, conjuring up a vivid, beautiful, strange, hazy sort of magic existence that I yearned for during my own college years. (And there were a few odd parallels between things mentioned in that book and my own college existence, for Theatre does that sort of thing, it overlaps and creeps into odd corners.)
To this day, I still try to reread Tam Lin every year or so. I agree. This is a book that needs to be read.
(For those curious, two others of the All-Time Top Five are Emma Bull's War for the Oaks, and Simon Green's Blue Moon Rising, for very different yet valid reasons. And some day, I may even decide what the last two members of that list are.)