Book Lists

Hello Mixed-Up Filers!

Hope you’re all doing great! It’s been about two months since my last post and I can’t believe how much has happened since then. On this site for instance, we have had thirty-four different posts and added thirteen new members. I wish all of our newbies the very best of luck and hope they enjoy writing here as much as I do. Also, hope you all enjoyed the huge welcome-aboard gift-basket like the one they sent me when I joined. In all honesty, I’ve never seen anything so extravagant. Between the chocolates and roses and over $2500 in gift certificates to all of my favorite stores, I didn’t know where to turn first. But, I digress. Let me get back to the reason why I’m here and why they pay me the big bucks, and that’s for my posts.

As you all know, well, the three of you who read my posts anyway, I usually have trouble deciding what it is that I want to write about whenever my turn rolls around. I mean, those months sneak up on you pretty fast. Well, this time, I actually knew what I was going to write about and had it all planned out, but then something happened that changed all of my plans, when I saw in the news that R.A. Montgomery passed away this week. For those of you who don’t know R.A. Montgomery, he was one of the creators of the Choose Your Own Adventure series.

Now, for those of you who don’t know, or who lived under a rock for the 80’s and 90’s, Choose Your Own Adventure is an interactive series of books which allowed you to determine the path of each story by making choices about what you wanted the main character to do.  An example is:

If you want to fly over the volcano, turn to page 83

If you want to emergency land into the lake, turn to page 116

I would dog-ear so many pages, trying to retrace my steps to go back and try the alternate path, that my book collection was called the kennel. I loved the series and anxiously looked forward to each new one that came out. I would run in to the bookstore, scour the shelves and grab each new one and beg my parents to buy them for me. I devoured them. I loved the aspect that each book was in a different setting or even a different time, but still had the familiarity of a Choose Your Own Adventure book, because each book starred ME! That was the hook for me. They came out and said YOU are the star, making it easier for me to place myself in the shoes of the main character. I could be in outer space, back in time, fighting pirates or battling ninjas, each book had a different and exciting hook to offer. During the course of its run, the series expanded to 230 books, selling and sold a total of 250 million copies worldwide.

As I got older and moved around a lot, I lost some of them, but always had the fondness for the books. When I started to have kids of my own, I went out and got them all again and now have just about a complete collection. I went through them again, and the magic I felt as a kid, was still there. I am happy to say, my daughter now loves them just as much as I did. We also bought a Choose Your Own Adventure movie about the abominable snowman, where we could choose different paths for the characters on the DVD to take, which was a lot of fun.

His death hit me because of the role that series had in my childhood.  Like everybody, I had a few books that always stayed with me and can bring me back to that time. That whole Choose Your Own Adventure series will do it for me. I have other books that I will name as my favorites, but as a series, there was nothing better to me than Choose Your Own Adventure. Even now, I’ll occasionally pick one up and start reading again and love hearing my daughter read. I’m transported back immediately to how I felt in that bookstore when I would see a new copy on the shelf.  And as for the rest of you, if you haven’t ever read a Choose Your Own Adventure book, what are you waiting for?

R.I.P. R. A. Montgomery and thank you for so many fond memories through my childhood.

Now, you get to choose what you’d like to do!

If you would like to leave a comment, please scroll below.

If you’d like to leave without leaving a comment, then you have suffered a gruesome, horrifying fate and will have to start the story over.

Until next time!

Jonathan

So I was watching this video while working out at the gym the other day:

(Okay, I obviously wasn’t working out that hard, but hey, sometimes I just like to get on the elliptical and do some thinking between bursts of cardio…).

Anyway, watching all The Fault in Our Stars quotes stream by, I was reminded why I’ve always loved books so much. I mean, I’ve always been a sucker for a good story whatever the format, but books offer something more, something magical:

Words.

I know that seems sort of obvious. But all my fellow book lovers understand what I mean. There’s nothing quite like being immersed in a good book and coming across a turn of phrase so perfect it makes you stop in your tracks and catch your breath, just due to the sheer beauty of how the words come together. Sort of like taking a walk and being captivated by how the sunlight hits the leaves in the trees — a simple and fleeting reminder of how wonderful it is to think… To feel… To be alive and connected to the world.

When I was a tween and teen, I dog-eared countless books, marking words that spoke to me. Some quotes made it onto the covers of my notebooks or into the yearbooks of friends. Some just rattled around in my head, making me think. Maybe that’s why I’ve always been drawn to writing for this age group — words held such power for me back then, shaping me, helping me see things in new ways and understanding I wasn’t the only one who felt a certain way.

Of course, I still love words and continue to highlight phrases that speak to me — reading them over and over, rattling them around in my brain, making myself think. A couple of my recent favorites:

As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once. — John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

It’s as if someone vacuumed up the horizon while we were looking the other way. — Jandy Nelson, The Sky is Everywhere 

(Huh, looking back at those I clearly have a thing for books that reference the sky in the title somehow…)

So how about you? What are some of your favorite quotes (or quotable authors or books)? What makes you stop, catch your breath, and read something again? Tell me in the comments below!