I attended a Christian school where "modern" YA was nonexistent. (After all, drugs, sex, smoking, alcohol, and 'bad' language could damage you for life if you happened to get exposed to within the covers of a book. Never mind what might be going on in real life among your peers or in your own home. Things that were gossiped about quite openly. Things done even on the school campus in the parking lot. But I digress.) So my books of choice were mostly of the historical fiction sort. Some were books I read from home--books that I owned--some came from the school library.
Gone With The Wind. Margaret Mitchell. Oh the tragedy and romance of Miss Scarlett. As a preteen and teen I couldn't get enough of it. I read this one dozens of times. (You might think that's an exaggeration. And okay, probably seven or eight times is closer to the truth. But I read this one A LOT.) Just so you know, I once read this saga in three days.
Eugenia Price. She had several historical fiction multi-book sagas. My favorite began with the deliciously thick Savannah. The series began in the days leading up to the War of 1812 and the series ended, I believe, after the Civil War. It was a multi-generational family saga.
L.M. Montgomery. I devoured anything and everything Montgomery during this time period. Anne. Loved her. Emily. Read her multiple times as well. The collections of short stories? Yes, got those too. The stand-alone novels like A Tangled Web and Blue Castle. Loved them all really.
I read a few (one or two) of my mom's Grace Livingston Hill books. I remember one called Marcia Schuyler where the heroine marries her sister's fiance after her sister jilts him at the altar. She loves him, but he doesn't love her. This is one of those standard romances that have the husband falling in love with the wife after the wedding. But I have since reread it and find them exceedingly sappy and much too much. (That being said, I know many people still enjoy these...and I don't want to step on any toes.)
Frank Peretti. He was a favorite. This Present Darkness. Piercing the Darkness. The Prophet. The Oath. Of course, his career has added a few more since high school graduation, but these are the ones I remember from back then.
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. I remember checking this one out of the library. At the time, the novelty of sneaking around, staying up late to read...was quite...well novel. It was new. It was exciting. And this was one I couldn't put down.
Christy by Catherine Marshall. Loved this one. Loved the Scottish doctor. Always have, always will. Even in print, the accent gets to me somehow :)
But by far some of my happiest happiest memories come from the Sunfire Romance books. Oh, how I loved these. I wouldn't part this collection for anything :)
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2 comments:
I, too, read Gone With the Wind countless times straight through as a teen! That isn't counting rereading individual sections again and again, either. I adored that book. It's great to hear of another fan and revisit memories of the story. East of Eden was another book I discovered, and at my Grandmother's house. I was fascinated.
Wow. That Sunfire romance zoom feature is all kinds of awesome. I gots to get me one of those.
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