Taking a Break

I write ghost stories so I read ghost stories. A lot of them. I also watch a lot of reality paranormal shows. Sort of stokes the fire. But there are times even I need a break from ghosts and ghouls and poltergeists and shadow people. And so what I do, book-wise, is make a mad dash for the books I loved as a kid that had absolutely nothing to do with ghosts.

There is a list of books I sought out through hard-to-find book services back in the days before the Internet, and my book finders were skilled enough to locate quite a few of my childhood memories. One of them obtained an almost-first edition of Kipling’s Stalky & Co, one of my all-time faves. It’s a used book and intriguingly and “fondly” inscribed to the original recipient, by “Cornelia,” who wrote in beautiful script using a fountain pen.

Other found books include (and I don’t expect anyone reading this to know ANY of them!) the entire Melendy Family series by Elizabeth Enright. That includes The Saturdays, The Four-Story Mistake, And Then There were Five, and A Spider Web for Two.

I managed to get hold of the Brendan O’ Nolan and family trilogy by Mary Wallace that included A Reason for Gladness, Peter and the Rock, and Brendan. Speaking of Mary Wallace, Baby Island, anyone???

I still have a soft spot for Armstrong Sperry’s Call It Courage, Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink and even The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare. There was also an author named Hilda van Stockum who wrote amazing WWII books like The Winged Watchman, set in the Netherlands, or The Mitchells: Five for Victory, set in the US.

I no longer have any of the Beany Malone books, Class Ring by Rosamond du Jardin, or Stars in Her Eyes by Betty Cavanna (anyone remember Seventeenth Summer by the same author?). But there are times I can read some of those pages in my mind: I read the books so frequently that there are passages burned into my memory banks. I miss those books!

The thing that amazes me is that I can go to these stories and get exactly the same feeling, even as an adult, that I got when I first read them in childhood. That’s not true of everything: there have been old movies I have remembered fondly that have not stood up to the test of time, as they say. There are TV shows, and yes, even some books, that don’t resonate with me the way they did once upon a time. But these classics, listed above, still do. In fact, the book Brendan, has the passage I have written about before, that brings me to tears every single time I read it, whether I pick it up after a several-year interval, or read it back-to-back three times in one sitting. It’s the one thing I’ve read where I find myself asking, over and over, “How did she do that?” How did Ms. Wallace write something that can consistently grab my heart regardless of how many times I’ve read and analyzed it? Would that I could be that gifted myself!

These old books, the books that were the foundation of me as a writer, and probably me as a person, as well, are a haven for me. There’s that famous t-shirt/coffee mug/poster that says “So many books, so little time.” I know I will never finish reading everything I’d like to read before it’s time to put down the bookmark for good. And since I know that, I find it comforting to return to books I’ve read over and over, even when I could be exploring a new story instead. I figure, there will be time for new books until there isn’t. But the old ones? The old friends? My first teachers and mentors? How could I not make time for those?