School Days Books

Since I finally bought myself a bookcase and unpacked a few boxes of my old books I'd forgotten all about, I've rediscovered my love for reading. The time the buss takes me to get to and from work is the perfect opportunity to read and distracts me from the stinky bald headed man that always seems to want to sit next to me even though there's plenty of empty seats. Don’t you hate that?

I’m much more of a book reader than a movie watcher, just ask my parents who would try to force me to watch a movie with them and I’d sit there with such a sour face that they’d finally let me go back into my room to read my book. My brother on the other hand is an absolute movie freak buff and has quite possibly watched every movie ever released at least 3 times over. He use to get me interesting presents like a DVD set of alien movies. Every sister wishes for alien movies for her 20th birthday, right? Wrong! Now I get much more suitable gifts like bottles of cocktail mix, a vast improvement there bro cheers!

I remember the one book I'd read over and over and over in Primary School was Charlotte's Web by E B White. The cover was so worn and the pages were aged and yellow. A classic story about friendship. It was also the one and only time I've ever cried over a spider!

When I was 11 my grade 6 teacher read aloud to our class a book called My Place by Sally Morgan. Surprisingly, this is one of the few books I can recall being read to us, it must've really made an impression on me. Some 18 years later I unpacked this book from one of my boxes and read it again. I realise now my teacher was trying to introduce some Aboriginal awareness into the school and it was probably quite a controversial read back in the 90s. The book is written in Sally's eyes as a kid, then growing into a woman and has a family of her own and trying to figure out what her Aboriginal history is all about. I think this book should be a mandatory read in Australian schools today.

Then came High School and we had to read The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. I thought it was utterly ridiculous that my School was making me read a fishing book with the main character being a crabby old man. In my teenage angst I had no idea what this old time book could possibly have of benefit to my English learning. I found it sad and deflating because what he set out to do, catch a fish, he didn't quite accomplish because it got eaten before he got back to shore. I know now what a legend this book is and maybe I need to borrow it from the library and see what I think of it with an adult mind.

And what did I choose to read in High School, well everything by the king of horror Stephen King, also known as Richard Bachman. I cannot watch a horror movie or stay home alone without being scared of the boggie man, but give me a Stephen King novel and I can read its grotesque storyline front to back in the middle of the night without being scared to sleep at night. I read every one of his books in my school library twice: Carrie, The Regulators, Cujo, Rose Madder, The TommyKnockers, The Shining, Needful Things, Misery, Insomnia, IT, Dreamcatcher and probably some others I can't quite recall. My favourite was The Dark Half and I wrote an essay about in English and got an A+. Then my brother started buying me the Green Mile series and I just couldn't get into it, the books didn't have the same chilling style. I wasn't engaged or intrigued and lost interest, funny that isn't it how your tastes change.

Are there any books you remember from your school days that you've rediscovered lately?

[Images via Here, Charlotte's Web, My Place, The Old Man and the Sea, Stephen King]