Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. Each week we’re given a new prompt for a top ten list of all things bookish. This week is top ten books with sensory reading memories. These are the books that are linked to very specific memories for you: where you were, what time of year it was, who you were with, what you were eating, what you were feeling, what you were seeing, etc.
I’m actually really excited for this topic because books almost always leave me with sensory memories; usually just a feeling or really vivid memory but it happens to me a lot. It’s one of the main reasons why I reread books so often.
I’m going to try not to list all the same books as Amanda but there will probably still be a couple. With that being said, here are my top ten for this week:
1. The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis – I had a huge book that included all seven of the Narnia books in one. I remember carrying it around with me in sixth grade and having to leave it on top of my desk because it wouldn’t fit in the little cubby underneath. I’d have not only students but teachers asking me why I was reading such a big book.
2. Inheritance by Christopher Paolini – It felt like I waited forever for the last book in this series to come out and when it did I’d just started my first semester of college so it took awhile for me to get it. Every time I think of this book, it feels like I’m back in my sister’s apartment, crying over the bittersweet ending while my sister and her boyfriend stared at me in confusion.
3. Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer – This is going to be a long one: It was Amanda’s birthday and we’d had a giant, all-night party so I was exhausted that day. Amanda and another friend of ours received their pre-ordered books that day but mine was late and I was devastated. Luckily my family rented cottages for summer vacations and the girl staying there had already finished her copy and was nice enough to lend it to me. Like Amanda, I fell asleep reading it and woke up to my sister reading it several chapters ahead of me. I stayed in touch with that girl for several years.
4. Redwall by Brian Jacques – This series is the one that gives me the most sensory memories. Picking out the first one from the school library in 4th grade, telling my brother I was reading it and him being so excited because they were his favorite books as a child, always being so hungry because the descriptions of the giant feasts were amazing, the stuffed animal my brother made me to look like one of the more ridiculous characters, etc. I could go on forever about these books.
5. Nights in Rodanthe by Nicholas Sparks – This was my first Sparks novel and before this I’d had no idea how devastating a book could be. Right up until the very end it seems happy then BOOM. I cried myself to sleep for days. I remember climbing out on my roof and just crying at like 4 in the morning and refusing to read the last few pages.
6. The Witches by Roald Dahl – Now technically numbers 6 and 7 were not books I read but books that were read to me but I still think they count. This one my third grade teacher read out loud to our class and it’s what got me started on Dahl’s books. I can still feel myself sitting in those tiny desks, listening to his voice bring the book alive.
7. Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls – This one was read by my fifth grade teacher. He’d read many books to us that year but when it was time for this one he announced that it was kind of sad and that when we got to that part he was going to have to stop for the day and that he was going to cry. And he did. We all did. Just a class of ten year olds and their teacher crying over a book.
8. 10 Things I Love About You by Julia Quinn – All of Quinn’s books are funny but this one the most. I remember laying on a beach towel next to Amanda at the pond near my house. I wouldn’t stop laughing and trying to read parts out loud to her while she tried to read her own book. It got so bad she actually got mad at me.
9. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling – I remember reading this on a hot summer night. We didn’t have AC so all my windows were open and the crickets were insane. I remember pacing around my room crying in the middle of the night for pretty much the last third of the book.
10. Eragon by Christopher Paolini – I know, I know. I’m repeating authors but I have so many memories for this one. The ten thousand times I read it, being absolutely disgusted by the movie, reading it out loud with my mom every night (keep in mind I was not a child when we did this). Everything about this book gives me happy memories.
Well that’s my top ten this week. I’d love to hear your own answers.
-Antonia
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