And while I'm excavating my past as a reader, here's my attempt at recalling and listing the books which left a deep impression when I read them in primary school (no doubt I'll miss many, but anyway...):
- The Green Wind by Thurley Fowler. This just might have been the first 'proper' book that I really loved and treasured. Looking back, it's easy to see why I was drawn to the central character, Jennifer - a sarcastic, prickly, but sympathetically-rendered 11yo type with aspirations of being a writer who feels herself to be different from everyone else - but at the time, all I knew was that the book spoke to me. Years later, I was pleasantly surprised when I learnt that Penny, one of my best friends from uni, had felt similarly about the book at the corresponding time in her life - indeed, being female and approximately red-haired, and having grown up in the country, she's much more of a Jennifer type than I.
- Master of the Grove by Victor Kelleher. Might well have been the book which first opened my eyes to the wonder that literature can bring.
- Space Demons by Gillian Rubenstein. This one just caught my imagination and wouldn't let go. I dreamt about it - and its sequel, Skymaze, too.
- Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell. Pulled my mum's tatty old copy from the book shelf one woozy summer day and lost the next few weeks to its reading, completely wrapped up in its drowsy charms; have re-read several times since (most recently a couple of years back - I wrote about it on open diary at the time), finding it to be almost a completely different and new book each time.
- To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I'm not 100% sure, but I think that this was the book which first planted the thought that I might want to be a lawyer. It really stirred me up when I read it, even though I'm sure that I didn't grasp half of what was going on. For some reason it came up in a scholarship interview I went to in grade 6 (for year 7 onwards) at Melbourne Grammar, and I remember the headmaster asking what I thought about capital punishment...heavens know what I answered!
- Small Gods by Terry Pratchett. The first Pratchett book I read and, for better or for worse (I'm much inclined to think 'better'), the beginning of a very long and deep engagement indeed.
I suspect there were at least one or two others, but those are the ones which spring to mind right now.
