![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The Christmas of Inappropriate Books
So! I realized that a couple posts ago I referenced the Christmas of Inappropriate Books and then never explained.
I come from a family of booknerds, at least on my father's side, and my mother did everything in her power to foster that. She read to me in the womb. I teethed on books. I got books instead of toys when we went places. I am the only person I know who got targeted "how to read out loud correctly" lessons from my father (second grade! super useful, though).
Anyway, Christmas, fourth grade. My dad a) doesn't re-read books, and b) no longer regards scifi/fantasy as legit genres for adults. I supermegaheart scifi/fantasy and have begun sneaking into the adult section of the public library because I'm running out of YA sf/f not entirely focused on dudes.
After all the other presents are opened, my dad and uncle drag in ten or twelve large plastic totes and tell me they are all BOOKS FOR ME from when my dad was a kid/teenager. I leap upon them like they are everything I never knew I wanted, BECAUSE THEY ARE, and am lost in a new book haze for a good chunk of time. While I'm distracted, the adults are also looking through the books, because nostalgia, IDK. To this day, I have no idea which book my dad was looking at, but it apparently reminded him pretty hard that 70s scifi, not so appropriate for eight year olds, even ones reading at a high school level. SUDDENLY, THE BOOKS WERE MOSTLY TAKEN AWAY.
Thus began my six-year campaign of sneaking MY NEW BOOKS out of the garage and back. Because you do not give a booknerd books and then tell she can have all of them only when she's some nebulous "older". Podkayne of Mars and Friday and Spaceling were TOTALLY WORTH the subterfuge. Stranger in a Strange Land and John Varley's Titan...MAYBE I HAVE SOME REGRETS.
I come from a family of booknerds, at least on my father's side, and my mother did everything in her power to foster that. She read to me in the womb. I teethed on books. I got books instead of toys when we went places. I am the only person I know who got targeted "how to read out loud correctly" lessons from my father (second grade! super useful, though).
Anyway, Christmas, fourth grade. My dad a) doesn't re-read books, and b) no longer regards scifi/fantasy as legit genres for adults. I supermegaheart scifi/fantasy and have begun sneaking into the adult section of the public library because I'm running out of YA sf/f not entirely focused on dudes.
After all the other presents are opened, my dad and uncle drag in ten or twelve large plastic totes and tell me they are all BOOKS FOR ME from when my dad was a kid/teenager. I leap upon them like they are everything I never knew I wanted, BECAUSE THEY ARE, and am lost in a new book haze for a good chunk of time. While I'm distracted, the adults are also looking through the books, because nostalgia, IDK. To this day, I have no idea which book my dad was looking at, but it apparently reminded him pretty hard that 70s scifi, not so appropriate for eight year olds, even ones reading at a high school level. SUDDENLY, THE BOOKS WERE MOSTLY TAKEN AWAY.
Thus began my six-year campaign of sneaking MY NEW BOOKS out of the garage and back. Because you do not give a booknerd books and then tell she can have all of them only when she's some nebulous "older". Podkayne of Mars and Friday and Spaceling were TOTALLY WORTH the subterfuge. Stranger in a Strange Land and John Varley's Titan...MAYBE I HAVE SOME REGRETS.