A-hey-hey.

[mrissa]

Yesterday I reread Buddy Holly Is Alive and Well on Ganymede. The lesson of that book the first time around was something about books and their covers -- I had avoided reading it when it came out, when I was a teenager and the library had a gajillion copies in the unorganized paperback section, because the combination of title and cover made me go, "Ew, no thanks." I still suspect that the combination of title and cover put off the people who would enjoy it and encouraged the people who wouldn't. On the other hand, it really was a book called Buddy Holly Is Alive and Well on Ganymede; that was a right title for it, and I can't think of another. So I don't know what.

On the reread, I had the idiosyncracies of my recall highlighted. What scene stuck with me from that book? There's a bit where the main character and his mother are up on the roof with a tornado coming, and they go down into the bathroom and crouch in the bathtub with their mattress over them, singing "Every Day" as loud as they can while the tornado goes on outside. I remembered that scene down to which Buddy Holly song it was. But I feel no compunctions about saying what happened in it, because it is not even remotely crucial to the plot. It totals probably less than a page; it occurs less than a third of the way into the book. And yet there it is, wedged permanently in my head as really, really important.

It could be the tornado (for those of you who haven't been around here long enough to hear it: my college was hit by a tornado during spring break of my junior year). I don't think it was, though. I think that was just my scene, the one that hit all the right spots for me. The one I would want to hang onto later. You never know which one that's going to be in a book, which one is going to make the reader go, "Oh, and I loved that bit where...." Strange, persnickety things, readers.

Comments

[scott-lynch.livejournal.com]

I picked that book up as a teenager specifically because of its title. ;)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

And did you like it?

[scott-lynch.livejournal.com]

Yes I did, in an only-half-getting-the-joke sort of way. I had to re-read it in my twenties before I could actually claim to understand it... I just didn't know enough about much, if anything, referenced in the book when i was younger.

[(Anonymous)]

Weird about the tornado thing. I remember as a kid on vaca w/ the grans, that my uncles used to play frisbee outside when the warnings were up (my gran herself used to sit on the porch and rock, and crochet, and watch them.) I think I used to dance on the lawns with the winds (I was little and had a lot of imagination. It was fun.)

Now later, when the parentals had us moved to Cincy a bunch came through one day, and I remember my bogglement and sort of annoyance that Mom had us all scrambled down the basement with flashlights and radio and rations, and well you get the picture.

All in all, that second might be safer; but, the first experience was better.

whoops.

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

Meee. You probably guessed that, though.

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

It's weird what makes you want to read to skip a book. I finally had to quite reading the blurbs on Barbara Hambly novels because I'd always think, "This doesn't sound like anything I'd like." Though when Jordin talked me into reading a couple I very much liked indeed and have read almost all now. But the blurbs still sound awful.

MKK

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I kind of figured that a lot of the people who would pick it up wouldn't get many of the references, but I'm glad it worked anyway.

I've had "Every Day" in my head for 36 hours straight now. Sigh.

Re: whoops.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Before the tornado, Gusties were in the first category for the most part, if they paid any attention to the storm at all. After the tornado, we knew better and got our non-immortal little butts down to the basement posthaste.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

There is more than one author whose blurbs I no longer read. In some cases they aren't even that bad -- they're just no longer necessary.

Re: whoops.

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

*nod* I think there was something there beyond knowledge though about experience and approach to things. See Gran was a woman who had been in one.

If I talk to Dad today I'll ask, in part to check the RL factor. There's a lot of stories, some a little altered in the telling, and occasionally an Ur-granmother effect too.

For me it was the ice storm. Well, lots of other things too but weatherwise.

[handworn.livejournal.com]

I loved Buddy Holly. Especially the recurring motif of whanging on things with a wrench to make them work. :-)