So, the other day I was thinking about some of the books that I read growing up. I was a voracious reader, reading a book a day and often staying up late into the night so I could finish a book. (It was a miracle that I did as well as I did in school growing up if I’m honest.) I started thinking about some of the books that stood out to me as books that I truly loved throughout middle school and high school. I will fully admit that my memory is not the greatest and a lot of the time, I don’t retain a lot of information from the books that I read. That makes these couple of books/series truly special in that I actually remember them, synaptic pruning be damned!
So lets get into it!
The Redwall Series
Brian Jacques
When thinking about the books I loved reading the most in middle school, the Redwall series by Brian Jacques is the first set of books that comes to my mind. I read this series consistently through school and honestly, I don’t know that I ever actually finished it. (I think the last book was released in 2011 and I was very much not in middle school at that point)
This series might be responsible for my love of the Fantasy genre. You have this anthropomorphic critters that are living this fantastical life with heroes and villains and epic adventures to save the world they live in. Honestly, I have often thought that I should dive back into this world again as an adult. While the series is intended for children, there is something about the world that just calls you back. I hope that my own children (whenever I have them) will try to read these books and I hope they love them as much as I did.
The Series Today
There was news that Netflix had acquired the rights to create an animated movie and tv series based off the Redwall books. This announcement came back in 2021 and it seems like there has been no real news about it since.
The Woman in the Wall
Patrice Kindl
The cover of this book is burned into my memory. Before I can remember anything else about it, I remember this cover with a girl seemingly fading through a wallpaper covered wall. I read this book over and over again. It was one that I regularly checked out of the library and to be honest, I think at some point I just stopped bringing it back.
This book was one that gave me a love for romance, in a more innocent sense. This is a book about a girl who was so shy that she began living in the walls of her home. As she continued to live in the walls, people slowly forgot about her, as if she ceased to exist in the world at all. I quite often felt like I was this girl, invisible and shy to the point of non-existence. I loved reading about this girl who gradually is pulled from her literal walls and begins to experience life again, and finds a bit of love at the same time.
The Savage Damsel and the Dwarf
Gerald Morris
I’ll be honest here. I don’t think I ever read any of the other books in this series, and if I did, I don’t remember it. This book was another one that I neglected to return to the library after a while. I loved this story and the copy I kept was missing it’s dust jacket, so I just had a green hardcover with gold lettering. I had this book still well into my 20’s and would pick it up to read every so often when I needed a good pallet clense.
This book had a story where the damsel in distress was a bit tired of all her rescuers dying. Her castle having been taken over by an evil knight, she sets out with a kitchen hand and a dwarf. The characters were fantastic and the adventure was fun. This was another one where there is a little bit of innocent love sprinkled in and that story was just my favorite.
Honorable Mentions
There are so many other books that I read and that I’m sure many others remember reading as well so I just wanted to list out a few other honorable mentions.
- A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray
- His Dark Materials Series by Phillip Pulman
- Twilight Saga by Stephanie Meyer
- The Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini
- The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
- Harry Potter
That’s it friends! I am sure that there are so many others that I am missing but those were the ones that really stuck out. I wanted to focus mostly on ones that I don’t hear a lot about (or really anything when I think about the last two blurbs) and ones that came to my mind quite quickly. If I talked about all the books and series I loved growing up, we’d never get out of here.
I’d love to hear about books that you have read growing up and influenced who you are as a reader. What are those ones that live in your mind rent free and refuse to succumb to the biological necessity that is synaptic pruning? Comment below! I’d love to know.
Until next time!!
Reading with teafortiffany 
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