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Sedalia Public Library
Ah. The basement of the Sedalia Public Library. What wonderful memories! The glorious smell of books and card catalogs and book shelves at my height! I could reach any book I wanted. My favorite times were spent looking from book to book and sitting down in comfy chairs to read. -
Dr. Seuss
Who didn't start to love reading with Dr. Seuss??? It's too hard to pick one favorite, but the original Cat in the Hat was the first book I read all the way through all by myself. -
Peanuts
That Charlie Brown never could catch a break. I always hoped he'd get a love letter from the red-haired, freckled girl, or successfully kick that darn football. Reading Peanuts was my Sunday ritual. It just wasn't Sunday if I didn't get my Peanuts fix. -
Ramona Quimby
Who was Ramona? She was me! When I first met Ramona Quimby, I was certain that Beverly Cleary was writing about me and did my very best to take on the persona of Ramona and have all kinds of adventures. Such happy times! -
Freckle Juice
With a shock of red hair and a blanket of freckles, I thought for sure this book would be the answer to all of my melanin problems. While it didn't fix my freckles, it did make me laugh. -
Little House on the Prairie
What little girl of the late '70s/early '80s didn't want to be Laura Ingalls Wilder? Between the TV show and the book series, I lived on Little House for years. -
Tom Sawyer
Anyone who saw the Saturday Morning Special made-for-TV movie of this book knew the story, but nothing could compare to reading the actual tale. How exciting that a story set in Missouri could be so famous! We even took a trip to Hannibal so that I could see where Mark Twain was referring. -
Pride and Prejudice
Not quite as ready for this book as I thought, I loved the idea of reading it. I managed to understand most of it, but I didn't really "get" it until I re-read it a few years later. -
Romeo and Juliet
First Shakespeare! I was in love with literature and felt so grown up to be reading Shakespeare. I think I was the only one in my class who didn't hate it. -
Julius Caesar
Such an interesting bit of history. And with Romeo and Juliet under my belt, not horribly difficult to understand and enjoy. How exciting twelve years later to get to teach it. -
Flowers in the Attic
Curiosity got the best of me. While not the greatest piece of literature out there, everyone was reading it so I just had to know why. -
Poems by Emily Dickinson
She was an incredibly fascinating person to me in high school. Her poetry really spoke to me during my "poetry phase". -
War and Peace
This was a major undertaking at age 16, but I was determined to read and understand it. I sobbed and sobbed at the end. -
Beowulf
With this, I was officially in love with British lit. -
Classical Greek!
While I definitely couldn't read it, in the fall of 1990 (my first year of college), it was my goal. I never could quite read ancient Greek texts, but I can tell the captain that the ship is in Byzantium or tell an interested onlooker if I happen to see a corpse. -
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
One of my all-time favorites, I re-read it almost every summer. How I love this book! -
We the Living
Chosen during the same library trip as The Unbearable Lightness of Being, this has been a favorite ever since. I wanted to name my daughter after the main character, but apparently my husband thought he should have a say in her name. Hmpf. Men. -
Heart of Darkness
Wow. Talk about a book that makes you feel inadequate as a reader. Chock full of literary allusions, this was a tough read. I need to dig it out and read it again now that I have a little more life experience to back up the text. -
Don Quixote
I loved it so much that I attempted it in Spanish as well. This is a wonderful book. <sigh> I need to read it again. Maybe in Spanish! -
Castle of Otranto
While taking a break from such light reading as Samuel Johnson, I discovered Horace Walpole's classic novel. It was short, but an interesting read. -
The Waste Land
My first accomplished reading of T.S. Eliot's important work, this was an undertaking that helped me learn how to teach literature. -
All of the rest of Ayn Rand's works
On three months of bedrest while waiting for my oldest, I enjoyed the full Ayn Rand library in the last moment of free time I've had in nine years. -
Where the Wild Things Are
As if to come full circle, a favorite book as a child became a favorite book as a mom.
