Last month I had the extreme pleasure of stumbling upon a book that took me on a journey to a new land with cyborgs, androids, royalty, the threat of an alien take over and the terror of a plague. It was a Cinderella story in a whole new wardrobe and it was called Cinder. When I finished the book and logged it into my Goodreads Reading Challenge I serendipitously found the author, Marissa Meyer there and wrote her a message thanking her for her wonderful novel. Due to my insatiable curiosity about such things, I also took that opportunity to ask Ms. Meyer about her first book love. What follows is her gracious response to my query.
It's nearly impossible for me to pinpoint my first true book love, as my childhood memories blur together with too many book loves to count. Was it Black Beauty, which my mother read to my brother and I as we curled beside her on the bed? Or The Giver, which changed the way I looked at the world, and taught me how magnificent it is that books have that power? Or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which I read over and over again while dreaming of the brilliance of a candied wonderland? Or was it Charlotte's Web? The Little House on the Prairie? My little book of fairy tales?
It's truly impossible to determine which came first, but after much deliberation, I will make an attempt to choose the Book Love that, more than any other, changed the course of my life. Because they made me want to become a writer.
The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkein.
The complete set was a birthday present from my Uncle, who knew my love of books and no doubt saw a dreamer-fantasy girl in the making. I couldn't have been older than 9 or 10, and it would take me a few months to pick up the books (intimidating in their bigness) and dive into them. My birthday is in February and I saved them until summer vacation.
I remember going on a camping trip in my grandparent's RV that summer, along with my brother and cousin. We were at a beautiful northwest campsite with grand fir trees and a clear blue lake and potential adventures down every trail... but all I wanted to do was curl up inside the RV and read. I wanted to be in Middle Earth, questing beside hobbits and elves and wizards. The magic of the One Ring entranced me almost as much as it did Bilbo and Frodo. I couldn't put them down.
After that, I would spend years dreaming up magical quests and fantasy worlds, imagining myself a princess or a sorcerer or a thief, filling my head with prophecies of greatness and dangerous missions.
Eventually, when I was a teenager, I would start to write those dreams down. And though my first attempted novels were little more than LotR spin-offs (really, we all have to start somewhere), eventually my imagination would begin reaching into other times and places. This overactive imagination finally resulted in my first novel, CINDER, which is futuristic science fiction, of all things.
But no matter where my muse takes me, the love I have for high fantasy has never waned, and my appreciation for Tolkein's masterpiece lingers to this day. I did re-read the books in college and loved them just as much, and of course attended the midnight releases of all three movies... in costume. You can bet I'll be doing the same when The Hobbit comes out this December.
The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings made me a life-long fan of magic and fantasy, a life-long dreamer, and a life-long book lover. They can also be credited, at least partly, with making me a life-long writer, and for that I will bestow upon them the title of my first true Book Love.
Tolkien strikes again! I wonder if he realized what an enormous legacy he left us all with his creation of Middle Earth. I would like to thank Marissa Meyer again for her wonderful answer to my question and I would like to invite you all to jump on the Lunar Chronicles bandwagon with me - if you haven't read Cinder: Book One in The Lunar Chronicles yet, then snap it up so we can anxiously await the arrival of book two!
Also, if you would like to share you're own story of book love, I think I speak for everyone who reads Rivera Runs Through It when I say, we'd love to read it, so e-mail me at BlogWithNV@gmail.com so we can make it happen!
