Let’s Talk Bookish About…reading For The Season You’re In.

Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly bookish meme originally created by Rukky @ Eternity Books and hosted by Aria @ Book Nook Bits and Dini @ DiniPandaReads, where every Friday, bloggers write discussion posts based on a weekly prompt.

When I initially saw this topic I took it a bit more literally. Literally the season of the year we are in. Which granted I don’t specifically do a whole lot. Though Hogfather and A Christmas Carol are solely reads for December. But this prompt goes a different route and that does require a bit more a think.

When I was younger and I had lesser responsibilities, this was when I just got back into reading in my twenties, I read a lot of young adult. That is not to say I didn’t read adult or middle grade at all. But a lot less than young adult. At this time I was not married, I did not have a child. We did own a home and I was working my very first job after graduating from my bachelor.

Reading young adult was easy. It was a way to hold on to my own young adulthood. I was just stepping into a bit more responsibility with this job and taking care of a house. It wasn’t the best period of my life with a burn-out and depression. Life was heavy and I think I didn’t need too heavy characters at that time.

I wonder if I would still love The Lunar Chronicles as much as I did back then. I know that over the years I’m certainly not as attached to it as I once was. I also don’t feel an urge to reread it.

At the moment of writing this I am 38. I’ve grown a lot in the last few years I think. I’m a mom to a great 9 year old boy who has special needs. After being a stay at home mom for a few years I’m back to working, something completely different to what I studied for. While I sometimes have to remind myself that I am actually an adult, hah, I am in a very different stage of my life. I do think you can see that in my reading. I read mostly adult books. And while I do use books to escape from reality, I do that with fantasy and sci-fi. I do that with my contact with all of you.

I do find myself more in characters that are moms, especially thinking of Orca in The Shadow of the Gods and Essun in The Fifth Season. But that bit is not nessecarily. Mostly I just like well rounded characters with adult relationships, and I mostly find them in adult fiction. That is not to say that I won’t read young adult at all. If something sounds interesting, I’m still going to pick it up.

As for specific books during periods of my life. I specifically remember The Magicians by Lev Grossman. I was at the start of my twenties, hiding away in my room with this book and a specific Robbie Williams song on repeat (not one that was released with a music clip). I remember that specifically. I devoured that book. I think it was the first book I read that had a magical academy that wasn’t Harry Potter and it was much more mature. I read it 6 or 7 years later again and I didn’t love it as much as then. I also tried reading the sequel then but I couldn’t get through the start.

Later on in life, during a hard period I read Paaz by Myrthe van der Meer, a Dutch author. She was admitted to a psychiatric ward during a bad depressive episode. That ward we call Paaz here. She wrote this as fiction, based on her own story and herself. I recognized so much of myself in her during reading this (more so when the author discoverd later that she was autistic). I think I needed to see and feel that I wasn’t alone. I’ve never been able to pick up the sequel though. I’m kind of scared of it.

When I was younger there was a specific book that I reread endlessly called The Suitcase Kid by Jacqueline Wilson. I have always wondered why that book specifically drew to me as my parents never were in a position of divorce. But around me kid’s parents were or they were scared their parents were going to divorce. I think maybe I wanted to try and understand this. And Wilson of course just wrote this really well of course.

Are there books you remember from specific periods of your life?