When I was a child, in that time before memory, I carried around a battered checkerboard copy of Mother Goose tales. It was more illustration than text, but I knew there was something there in those unfamiliar symbols. A code I needed to break. At my maternal grandmother's, there was a complete set of New Wonder World Encyclopedias, which were differently arranged than other sets, into volumes by subject matter. My favorite one to peruse contained poetry and songs for children. I don't remember the particulars--only the illustrations and the feel of the glossy pages and the cover with its luxe engraved surface. I was obsessed with these long before I could read them, but used to pull them out to play "school" at her house, which was something I only knew about from tv/movies and that I would one day go. Later, they were ours, and I kept them on a small set of bookshelves in my room, (they may in fact be in my dad's garage even still.) I later inherited a set of alphabetical World Book's from my other grandmother, but their charm was more in retrieval of information than the tactile joys of the other. I did however enjoy the accompanying free two shelf bookcase they came with well into college, when my own book collection outgrew it.
The Wonder Worlds were similar in material feel to the Peter Rabbit books I've often mentioned--my first library obsession I could actually read myself--in their little matching display case at Loves Park Elementary. Textured covers, smooth gloss pages. They had a smell only those pages provide, different from the matte paper of most other books, but also different--thicker, more luxurious--than magazines. These were the first books I tested my newly developing reading skills on, checking out a different pair each week. While we had a small collection of Little Golden's at home--given as gifts and procured from garage sales--I much preferred Peter Rabbits. Later, they were replaced by Children's Illustrated classics in their little boxed set--the pink War of the Worlds I kept reading over and over.
Once I was reading, I was off and onto other things. More books from the library, from the Scholastic Book Fair magicalness. By the time I was in 5th grade, my love of reading was paying off in school, and while I lagged behind (and always would) in math, I was a voracious reader who took my library visits very seriously. There were literal fights over whatever novel the teacher had just finished reading (The Phantom Tollbooth was a particular favorite..) Stacks of Ramona Quimby and Judy Blume. Roald Dahl and Shel Silverstein I checked out Little Women in the 6th grade, since it seemed to be the mountain few had successfully climbed, but had to return it the next week unfinished by directive of a bitchy librarian. (I know enough of the plotline, I'm pretty sure I have never finished it to this day...lol) Later in my 20's, it was some sort of amazingness that I found myself in the position of being the school librarian, and myself, navigating conflicts over Harry Potter and RL Stine (I was much more generous.)
Of course, what I checked out from the library and what I was reading at home weren''t always the same type of book. Occasionally I would stumble upon a book about ghosts or a haunted house written for children and devour it, but at I had discovered adult horror novels around age 10, mostly courtesy of an aunt who passed them off to me secondhand. The first night in our new house, I had purloined my dad's copy of The Amityville Horror from a box, which I recognized from the movie. (not wise, but luckily we had a newly constructed /non-haunted home variety.) By the time I hot junior high, it was a mix of horror and teen romances, sometimes all at once, the marriage of which manifested in things like VC Andrews and Christopher Pike procured at the Waldenbooks at the mall.
By then, my reading had broadened to non-fiction about weird things--urban legends and alien abductions. I came across a copy of The Bell Jar when I was seventeen and was unimpressed. (just two years later, I would have said it was my favorite book.) I inherited a set of 70's Harlequin romances from a cousin and spent an entire summer reading at least one, sometimes two a day. By the time I arrived at college I had writerly inclinations, so devoted myself to Shakespeare and Faulkner and Jane Austen, all of which seemed rather tame compared to earlier reading materials, but enjoyable. I think my love of the Brontes came from that gothic, horror loving reader I had been (and actually continued to be, much of my college summer reading was still trashy horror and the entirety of Stephen King.) The love of books in general sent me seeking things that were "literary" and still horror--Poe, Hawthorne, Henry James, Frankenstein. Or more contemporary authors with a similar bent (thus my love of Toni Morrison.) While I've read many books and many types of literature, I was always seeking the darker things--both in classics (Daphne DuMaurier, Shrley Jackson) and contemporaries (Jeffery Eugenides and Donna Tartt).
All of these influences are pretty obvious if you look at my work as a writer, but so much of my development was not fancy highbrow "literature" and so much popular horror novels and that which would be considered "trashy" by many. I've been thinking about this a lot as we get closer to our Bad Art focus topic this semester. Though I would also argue that some of it is very good--the Stephen King if not the VC Andrews, but still both formed me as a writer and story-maker.
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