Mood:  a-ok

So, I've hinted before, but have I really told you the whole story about the Great Book list?  A year or so ago I got the remarkable and ordinary idea of keeping a list of all the books I read.  Only, this list would have all the books I've already read in it too.  I wasn't satisfied with the idea of just starting from where I was now because it wouldn't be fair to all those awesome books I could remember reading.  Then, I figured that I should attempt to track down all the books I could only remember whiffs of, because I couldn't possibly let them fall through the cracks.  

So I started with the easy stuff, the stuff that touched me deeply enough that I didn't have to verify title and author; and then I scoured public school reading lists to cover all those things that I read because they were assigned to me.  You see, I didn't start skimming and cliff's notes cheating until college, so I can actually say I read all that primary school stuff.  And then finally I was left with the whiffs:  a blue haired girl here, and a computer generated rock star there, a wizard on the cover and something about a wooden sword, some aliens, and the magical world of Florida. 

And then I lost the list.  I forgot about making back-ups and blindly relied on a web server out there somewhere.  This resulted in a minor breakdown and the ruining of my day as well as the promise that I was not going to do all that crap again.  My angry resolve lasted about two weeks when I started scratching my list together once more.

Eventually my list became complete sans one small puzzle piece--the young adult romance boom of the 80s.  My grandmother, for some reason, had no objections to mass consumption of nutritionless YA romance, but she wouldn't let me read sci-fi/fantasy while I stayed with her;  I mean, she gave me Riders of the Purple Sage to read in lieu of Dragonriders of Pern.  But that's another story.

The story for today is about the only book I ever read twice.  Being a person who remembers way too much of the books I read to revisit them very soon, I only have one of these on my list right now:  Her Majesty's Wizard by Christopher Stasheff.   That said, the Great Book list has brought up some titles that I want to try reading again now that more time has passed.  I just grabbed up a copy of The Scarlet Pimpernel at a swap recently and am looking forward to fattening my memories on it. 

Back to Her Majesty's Wizard, I can honestly not say why I could read this book, of all books, more than once in a two year time period.  I can only recall bits and pieces of the story now that impressed me:  the strange way the main character bridged the divide between reality (in a coffee shop, I think) and a completely fantasy world, making soldiers out of teeth, sexual tension, a dragon--that's it.  Before you ask why I'm writing about it if I can't remember much--it's 'cause it's the only book I ever read it twice!  Which means it is totally awesome, and once I get my hands on the book box in my Mom's storage unit where my copy is (of course I kept it) I'm going to read it a third time.