Bookish Nostalgia

{Via}

My childhood was filled with books.  I spent huge swaths of time reading, poring over favorite books, creating my own characters, and my own stories.  I read, and I read, and I read.  I have an entire bookshelf in my room that is devoted to books that I don't really read anymore, but have so many memories attached to them, that I couldn't possibly give them away.

The Penderwicks.
Warriors.
Hannah West.
The Tortall books, by Tamora pierce.
Harry Potter.

These books shaped my childhood.  In fact, they still shape my life, and I do still read some of the books in that list.  I spent four years reading and rereading the Warriors series (Erin Hunter), and creating my own clans, my own characters, and making up stories.  From about second grade up, I've constantly had a book in my possession, being carted around from here to there.

I spent years running through my friend's backyard, pretending to be Ginny Weasley, while she was first Hermione Granger, and then Tonks, from Harry Potter.  A few years later, and our obsession had shifted to the Warriors series, where we came up with a set of four clans, and all the cats (who we bothered to integrate into our story) in them.  We had our main characters we played, and we came up with a prophecy.

I pretended I was the fifth Penderwick sister, or occasionally Batty, or Skye.  I played this game with myself, as none of my friends had read these books, until this year, when I made one of them read The Penderwicks.    I pretended I was Hannah West, a teenage sleuth solving crimes in Seattle, another game I played alone.   Another series I adored was the Percy Jackson series, by Rick Riordan.  I spent hours pretending I went to Camp Half-Blood, that I was Annabeth, or Thalia.  I distinctly remember running around my backyard, using a short wooden dagger my sister made at pirate camp to fend off imagined enemies.

Later on, my obsessions shifted once again, this time to Tamora Pierce's Totall series.  I would pretend I was Alanna, or Daine.  It took me a while to like Kel as much as I liked the other two, but I do like her now, though I rarely pretended I was her.  This is one of my more recent obsessions.

I still have all these stories.  All these books I adored as a child, that swept me up in fangirling over them for years.  I remember distinct moments from playing each of them.  Do you have any distinct memories from books like these, that you adored as a child, and have read seemingly a hundred times each?  Did you ever pretend you were a certain character, be it one from the book, or one you made up?

The Dandy Lioness