As I grew up, I went through phases of obsession that I think are pretty common for young readers– I wanted to read everything about the Titanic, I wanted to read about the Dust Bowl or early settlers or Western Expansion, and then everything about the Salem Witch Trials.  I went through a phase of only reading diary books (Dear America books were the absolute best because they could combine my history obsessions with the diary format I loved), and across the board, I mostly stuck to books about girls who I could relate to.

As I grew, my reading tastes changed and expanded, though I still find myself going through phases of what I like and what I’ll cast aside.  Some months it’s fantasy, other’s its historical or modern or romantic and swoony. There is one category/genre/whatever-you-want-to-call-it that I’ve never grown out of though, and that is the tale of the runaway.

I think that my obsession with this story line began with the Boxcar Children.  (It still sort of bugs me that they only lived in the Boxcar for the first book–the rest of the time they were all hunky dory in Grandpa’s house, but whatever.) I loved the idea of “roughing it” (possibly this spoke to my love of the Little House on the Prairie series, particularly Little House in the Big Woods), and of being a kid who could live on their own.

I feel like I should write a short disclaimer that I never had any *need* to run away. I had, as evidenced in earlier blog posts, a pretty happy childhood. But this did nothing to squash my dreams of taking it on the road by myself, perhaps with a trusty pup by my side to protect me from any bad guys.

That being said, after the first Boxcar Children book, I moved on to other novels that told tales of kids on their own, whether they were traveling across America or surviving on the streets of a city. I found tales of gypsy caravans and streetwise con artists equally engaging, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t admit that many of my imaginary games involved me packing up some kind of hobo bag and hiding out in the woods for an hour or two at a time.

So what books helped fuel my runaway spirit? “The Girl Who Ran Away” (it is literally about a girl who runs away) was an early love–a book from my mother’s childhood that she passed down to me, this is one I wish I could relocate. She lived in a chicken house! Behind her Aunt’s house! I think this tale spoke to me because it was about a girl who lived a perfectly acceptable life but was caught up in the romantic side of being a vagabond.

Then there was the Dicey series, starting with Homecoming by Cynthia Voigt. This book, oh man. Traveling town to town, picnicing in parks and doing odd jobs at grocery stores for a few extra bucks?  Sign. Me. Up.  This was a sadder version of runaways, a set of young siblings abandoned by their mother, but sad circumstances aside, this adventure was right up my alley.

Then there are the classics, Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell and Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George.  While neither girl is an actual “runaway”, they survive off the land and make friends with wild animals, creating tools out of whatever they have, creating some semblance of safety in the wilderness.  I still revisit these short, beautiful books whenever the wanderlust of running away strikes me as an adult. They offer the quick fix I need when I’m hankering to pack up a hobo bag and hit the back roads out of town.

This nostalgia is brought to you by my current read, Friday Never Leaving by Vikki Wakefield. When I was perusing my TBR bookshelves the other day, this one jumped out at me–the story of a girl who has spent her life running from town to town with her mother. When her mom succumbs to an aggressive cancer, she finds herself on the streets alone, and ends up joining a gang of street kids in order to continue to survive. So far, I like it–and it stirred up all those old runaway feelings, which inspired me to write this all down.

What about you? Do you have a particular genre or literary theme you find yourself drawn to? Did you go through those phases of historical obsession as a kid? Have you read anything recently that might fit into my runaway genre? Let me know!

I have always been a reader, and I’m fairly nondiscriminatory when it comes to what I read (though as a young girl, I mostly refused to read anything unless it was about a girl of the same age as myself–thankfully I grew out of that). If it’s good, if it captures my attention, I’ll read it till the end. If it’s boring, poorly written, or if I’m simply not in the mood for it, I won’t hesitate before casting it aside. This has made the completion of “big books” a difficulty for me.

I’ve never been a reader of the classics. I trudged through Jane Austen in college for a class, and while I want to say “Oh gosh, she’s just the best,” it’s just not in me to lie to you guys about it. In that same vein, books that come in at more than 500 pages are just plain intimidating. If you’re a reader, I know you have a TBR (To Be Read) stack that’s probably a mile long. Mine is no exception–in fact, working at the library makes me feel like the whole damn building is my TBR pile. There are SO many books out there you guys, thousands that I want to read and haven’t had a chance to, and every week new books are coming out that get added to that list.  Big Books, Classic Books–they take time, a luxury I do not currently have.

So. While I remain happily reading from a variety of genres, I have to admit that the bigger the book is, the less likely I am to pick it up. 1- I have doubts about it being able to keep my attention for all of its pages and 2- In the time it will take me to read one 800 page book, I could read THREE other normal sized books.  And, as an obsessive GoodReads Book Challenge participant, it’s about the numbers.

And now, as I write this all down, I realize just how absurd that sounds. Who cares how many books I read in a year? Who cares if I’m not a speed reader or if I’m into the classics?  All that matters is that I love reading words on pages that tell stories to entertain, enlighten, and educate me about the world around me (whether they are fantastical or true).

So what inspired this post is the fact that I am currently reading a Big Book.  Recommended to me by one of our library clerks, I picked up “Natchez Burning” by Greg Iles. I’ve never read his books (apparently there are quite a few)–I hadn’t even heard of him before. But the clerk was raving about how incredible the writing was–and so I grabbed it off the shelf.

Weighing in at almost 800 pages, I had some severe doubts. Even after I made it 60 pages in, I wondered how I would fare. As someone who bores easily, knowing I still had 720 pages to go was a little too daunting. But, as I write this, I’m currently bookmarked at 410 pages, and the book is all I think about. It’s that good. I’m trying to suppress the anxiety at having been reading the same book for well over a week, and that I will continue to be reading the same book for the next week or two as well.  And I’m trying to force myself to get work done instead of hiding under my desk with the gargantuan novel open in my lap. I even walked with it the other day (giving myself quite the arm workout as I traveled the road for 2.5 miles).

And so I am trying to convert. I’m going to try to be less obsessed with my GoodReads Book count (because really, who am I competing with? Myself? I know that it’s Monica’s favorite kind of competition–apologies for those who don’t get the F.R.I.E.N.D.S. reference–but for me, I need to go back to remembering that reading is a joy, not a race). I’m not going to let Big Books scare me. Hell, maybe I’ll even give Anna Karenina another shot–I made it 200 pages in and got frustrated, but perhaps this summer will be my Summer of Big Books. I’ll keep you apprised of my progress. Maybe if I slip in a short, sweet YA novel between the big ones, it’ll help keep me focused.

What about you, Dear Readers? Do you like Big Books and you cannot lie? Or are you intimidated by page counts? Do you have a favorite Big Book I should add to that ever growing TBR of mine? Let me know!