Tuesday, April 12, 2011

K is for Kaleidoscope

K is for a book I once read in my mid to late teens called Kaleidoscope by Danielle Steele. Some people smell or hear something and say wow, do you remember...... or at this time I was at such and such a place doing such and such a thing. For me its words. A specific word which caught my attention at a pecific time is sure to trigger a whole flood of memories at some point later. I remember not being too enthralled with the book because it was full of hurting people but I read it twice because I was looking for where she would have used the word Kaleidoscope so I could get its meaning through syntax. You see I did not trust the dictionary to help me understand the use a word, I still don't really.
I remember I used to read quite a bit of Danielle Steele back then, interchangeably with Mills and Boon and Barbara Cartland, Oh those days of: his breath grazed her chick as her pulse racing with tamed desire. The mounds on her breast straining against the sheer fabric moulded against her body and the flame coloured triangle ....shall I go on.....yiggghhhhh. I can't believe how I used to paw over those paperback and at the end wish there was more.  It was a welcomed relief to my mind I'm sure when I went into the horrors of Stephen King, the poignant tales of Catherine Cookson and genius plottings of John Grisham in my early twenties (I should just mention that I think John Grisham is terribly dashing).
In fact for some reason I seem to have gone of romance work that's too syrupy and I'm not surprised, not with the memories that haunt me from those books. I've rather gone back to my Nancy Drewish genre in adult version with good doses of fantasy and paranormal if those are mutually exclusive and the very odd love story (romance) when I come across a great writer.

What memories do you have of  books as you reached your life's milestones and how have your reading tastes changed.?
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4 comments:

  1. Hart JohnsonApril 13, 2011 at 7:59 AM

    It really is funny how much harder a book can hit you if it coincides with some life phase perfectly. I have several that are favorites that might not have been, had I read them at another time (The Drifters, read at high school graduation; The Mists of Avalon, read when I was starting grad school and thinking about feminism and social mandates). And I also liked romance as a teen and now find it ridiculous (I like it as a subplot, but people spending all their life energy in self sabotage only to be fullfilled by a man? yeahno...)

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  2. Wendy G. EwurumApril 13, 2011 at 8:55 AM

    The most perfect summary of my thoughts Hart: (I like it as a subplot, but people spending all their life energy in self sabotage only to be fullfilled by a man? yeahno...)

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  3. KendalApril 13, 2011 at 7:03 PM

    I love the idea of a brain being relieved to move from romance books to Stephen King--that made me smile.

    It's funny for me to think about the books that have meant the most to me over the years. A lot of them were required reading that I didn't expect to love as much as I did. "Of Mice and Men" was the first book that made me cry and the first book that made me feel like an adult reader. But my big one that I always go back to is "The Virgin Suicides" by Jeffrey Eugenides. It's always as good as I remember.

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  4. Wendy G. EwurumApril 13, 2011 at 9:39 PM

    I must must take not of The virgin Suicides, it off to my list thanks Kendal.

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