What Your Reading Says About You

Some time ago, I attended a writers’ conference where a literary agent spoke about how writers discover their core story—the things they care most about, that fire their passion, and that they want, ultimately, to communicate to others.

The agent* told her listeners to go back to the earliest book they could remember, the one they begged their parents to read aloud…over and over again. Then, to question what it was about that book they so liked. She used her own example of loving Robin Hood and laughingly wondered if her role now, as an agent, was to speak up for poor starving authors before the “big, bad” publishers of the world. She also had her listeners answer several questions about books they’d read: Which book do we wish we could read again…for the first time? Which book created a world we wished we could live in? What about the book that’s on my nightstand right now? Which book am I an evangelist for?

I decided to do this. I made a lists of all the books I’ve loved over the years and began looking for the common denominator.  Sadly, I don’t remember my parents reading anything to me. As soon as I could read for myself, though, it was all the horse stories the school library held. But it wasn’t a horse story that made the biggest impact on Dawn as a child. It was a dog story…but not really. Kinda like Moby Dick was a story about a whale! For me it was Jack London’s The Call of the Wild. Only on the surface is this a story about a dog. When I discovered that book, my eyes were opened to a world so completely outside of myself that I would never be the same. Coldness and cruelty, savagery and survival, darkness and death. And at the end, a larger-than-life story emerges—a story that becomes a legend that haunts the native tribes of the far north in the book (and a 12-year-old girl in Vancouver, Washington) for generations.

The Call of the Wild was just the first. There were all the horse books—Black Beauty and The Black Stallion series, then Little Women and Alcott’s other lovely girl tales. (I cried when Beth died, and I cried when Ginger, in Black Beauty died. but, my theory is, if it’s not worth crying over, what’s the point of reading it??) Later it would be Narnia and Middle Earth, A Wrinkle in Time and Harry Potter, Ender’s Game and The Hunger Games. And so many others.

So what has my reading taught me about me? That I’m always looking for that ‘something more’ out there–sacrifice, nobility, and redemption. If there isn’t actually magic in a story, I want the hint of it—that larger-than-life something that stays in my heart long after I put the book down. A good number of the books that make my list are supposedly for children or teens. All of them have amazing, memorable characters, and most all of them exist in a world I’ve never experienced.

So, to be a creative writer, all I needed to do was create an incredible story world peopled by characters of strength and valor, who defeat evil against great odds, and save the world. That’s all…

In The Lost Stones of Argonia, that’s exactly what I tried to do, even though I wasn’t necessarily aware of it at the time. Only you—the reader—can determine whether I accomplished that goal or not.

What about you? What books do YOU love? What books changed your life? In what way? Tell us about them–we really want to know!

*This person was agent Natasha Kern.