Literary Timeline

I had to create a Reading Timeline for my Writing Publication class. That would be what this is:
Writing and reading were always a natural part of my life. As a child, my mother read to me every night. We started with children’s books: including Farmer Duck, the Amelia Bedelia series, and Dr. Seuss books. She also made up a series of stories that she later typed up. Dr. Seuss is, of course, always a lesson in rhyme and word choice, while Farmer Duck created well-developed characters, especially for a children’s book. Amelia Bedelia, a book majorly about the consequences of misunderstanding figures of speech, brought to life meanings and usages of figurative language.
Eventually we moved on to more mature books. We read Little Women, The Secret Garden, and Anne of Green Gables. I’d take turns reading these books aloud with her, and I soon began reading on my own.
As a second grader I took out a Dr. Seuss book every week for the entire year. I’d memorized them as a child, and my favorites included Yertle the Turtle and The Butter Battle Book. The next year I started a habit that I wouldn’t soon drop. I just read the books my friends gave me, and we started writing stories together.
When I did pick books for myself, I almost always chose historical fiction, such as A Voyage from Poland during World War II or Laura Ingalls Wilder books. They allow you to enjoy characters while exploring a different time and place. They’re success relied on creating a believable setting. The events of such books often have more of an impact of history or more dramatic consequences than those of modern day books.
I also read The Sweet Valley Twins series. I was fixated on them for years and wrote many short stories inspired by them. These short stories were the only voluntary writing that I ever really completed. I had dreams of being an author all throughout my childhood and I started many pieces, but these were my only real accomplishments.
The Outsiders was the first book I loved as a teenager, and one of the only books I read that focused on male characters. It also sparked my only real interest in poetry, because I loved the Robert Frost poem in it.
When I started high school, I began letting my cousin choose all of my books. She liked darker Young Adult popular fiction books like Crank by Ellen Hopkins and the Twilight Series. She also convinced me to read the Harry Potter Series. Ellen Hopkins helped me realize that creativity and meaning extend to the form of one’s writing, and Harry Potter taught me about the idea of continuity in a story. It gave me the idea that a story exists in the words written in the page and the implied ideas and actions that aren’t explicitly written out. I think a good story is one that the author knows all of the details of, but only shares the certain perspective he or she wants to reveal.
I left high school only really loving Jane Eyre and Exodus by Leon Uris. Exodus taught me that all really spectacular books don’t always have happy endings. Some are open-ended and unpleasant.
After high school, I suddenly decided to become an English major and felt that I needed to catch up on all of the classic writing that I was never really exposed to. I slowly but surely finished Pride and Prejudice. This was another story in which I felt that the author knew her story inside and out and knew what truths to reveal and what to hide. I was very affected by her ability to create complex characters and make me hate them, and then completely change my mind about them. The rest of my really pathetic classics kick left me pretty burnt out on Jane Austen and a little hostile toward The Great Gatsby and Catcher and the Rye (which I never even came close to finishing).
Then, a friend of mine convinced me to read a bunch of books that were all the same. I learned that there are a lot of books about successful career women in New York who just want to find the right guy. I also learned that I hate these books. See Meg Cabot and Emily Griffin. This lead me to sort of panic about the difference between intertextuality and complete unoriginality. I find it very hard to write because I want to write something fresh and interesting, but the human experience can only be so varied.
Recently, I took an Irish Literature course which taught me a lot about owning a language and how language helps or restricts a person’s self-expression. The Picture of Dorian Gray helped me let go of the idea that a book needs a quick and steady plot. This book was more about ideas and life philosophy. The characters and the events of their lives were secondary.
Finally, I was truly inspired by David Sedaris’s Me Talk Pretty One Day and “What I Learned”. He does a wonderful job of making real life feel strange and fascinating.
Articles, blogs, and blog posts that I have enjoyed include:
-“Thirteen Observations made by Lemony Snicket while watching Occupy Wall Street from a Discreet Distance”
-HighKicksandHighHopes by Keltie Colleen
This blog is not especially well-written and says the same thing in every post, yet I still enjoyed reading it. I think I just admired her honesty and her ability to say the exact same thing in many many different ways.
-“Sell the Girls” by Maureen Johnson
-Thebeautydepartment.com
-And occasionally the New York Times, mostly their section about Amazon Inc.