Sunday, February 17, 2008

Reading Through the Decades (My Birthday Edition)

February 17, 2008


At 2:
Raggedy Ann and Andy and nursery rhymes


"Children are made readers on the laps of their parents."
— Emilie Buchwald

"You may have tangible wealth untold.
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be –
I had a mother who read to me."
— Strickland Gillilan



At 12:
Nancy Drew, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Judy Blume, and the Happy Hollisters


She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain. --Louisa May Alcott

A book reads the better which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we know the topography of its blots, and dog's ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins. ~Charles Lamb, Last Essays of Elia, 1833

The stories of childhood leave an indelible impression, and their author always has a niche in the temple of memory from which the image is never cast out to be thrown on the rubbish heap of things that are outgrown and outlived. ~Howard Pyle




At 22:
Vietnam, Vonnegut, and Vast Volumes of Literature and History (AKA, my senior year of college)



A good book should leave you... slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it. ~William Styron

A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul. ~Franz Kafka




At 32:
Motherhood and Graduate School


I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves. ~Anna Quindlen,

Far more seemly were it for thee to have thy study full of books, than thy purse full of money. ~John Lyly




At 42:
Books by Day for Them, Books by Night for Me


The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,
And all the sweet serenity of books.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. ~Mark Twain




And some profound advice for the next decade:

Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it. ~P.J. O'Rourke



The Sunday Salon.com

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