For this week’s Sunday list we asked Entropy contributors: What book invokes nostalgia for you?
Jeremy Hight
The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury
It was the first book I read as a young teen that was immersive, was fiction and was conceptual. I was already a huge fan of his work but it opened up this whole new world of what was/is possible in prose and playing with form. I read it every few years again and salute it and his life.
Joseph Millazo
The Letter Left To Me by Joseph McElroy
Gabino Iglesias
Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder
Sara Finnerty Turgeon
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
One summer when I was 12 or 13 I spent a week staying up all night reading the series, sleeping late during the day, and I thought it was the best week of my life.
Anne-Marie Kinney
Any Vonnegut takes me back to my teenage years at my hometown library.
Laura Vena
October Country by Ray Bradbury
I read “The Lake” when I was 8 years old and was so overcome by the story, I decided that that was what I wanted to do, write.
Stephanie Tsank
The Shining by Stephen King
Which I read in class in high school during testing week (STAR or whatever); it scared me shitless and I loved it.
Andrea Lambert
Neuromancer by William Gibson
I read it first at CalArts & reread it again recently. Takes me back to that long hot North Hollywood summer after graduation when I devoured Gibson’s Idoru, Pattern Recognition & All Tomorrow’s parties while having my first Schizophrenic break & thinking intensely about cyborgs & the Internet.
Adrienne Walser
Bridge Over Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
My young fun sixth grade teacher, Miss Miller, read it to our class. That book is beautiful and sad, and my sixth grade year was intense and special.
Byron Campbell
The Eleventh Hour by Graeme Base
Like many people, I’m nostalgic for childhood, and my childhood had a lot of Graeme Base. The Eleventh Hour, with its decryption puzzles and layers of riddles, was formative for me. I also spent hours trying to catalogue every detail from every page of Animalia.
Lavinia Ludlow
Down and Out on Murder Mile by Tony O’Neill
Brings me back to my grittier darker days. He’s a phenomenal writer.
Nina Rota
The Kushiel series by Jacqueline Carey
Each time I read any of the first six books I’m carried to some fantasy place that is so familiar and luscious that I’m in a heaven I know and love.
