Nostalgia

[LadyLuck]

Do you have a book or story that brings back fond memories? What do you feel the need to share with others because of your own fond memories?

For me, the first story that comes to mind in The Wind in the Willows. This was my first real foray into what could be viewed as a classic, and I felt the need to share it with my own children as they've grown older.

[TheChilly]

Not sure... though "Midnight Rain" by Holly Lisle was one I enjoyed breezing through in junior high.

[CarpeNixta]

The Golden Age from Jose Marti

[Helga]

I feel nostalgic about a few poems like Wordsworth's lucy poems and a few sonnets by Shakespeare.

[skib]

Where the Wild Things Are! I haven't read it since i was a wee(er) lad, but the mere thought of it brings back some of the earliest memories I have.

[LadyLuck]

Where the Wild Things Are! I haven't read it since i was a wee(er) lad, but the mere thought of it brings back some of the earliest memories I have.

Just be careful if you go to by a copy. They have new ones that are based on the movie, and they suck majorly. I grabbed one to read, and was shocked because I hadn't opened it :)

[prendrelemick]

Nostalgia my favorite! I have a pair of rose tinted glasses attached firmly to my face (it's an age thing)

The first book I ever owned, that was just mine and not shared with my many brothers and sisters, was Winnie the Pooh. By the time I was seven I knew every word by heart. The tone and attitude within its pages, the gentle silly humour, the warmth and companionship found in the Hundred Acre Wood, I think shaped me during those formative years.

But then again nostalgia is a powerful distorting lens.

[JuniperWoolf]

It's Anne of Green Gables and Clan of the Cave Bear for me.

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

A book my father had in his home office library; Famous Fighters of the Second World War by William Green. I recall wandering into his office many times pulling the book from the shelf, studying the characteristics, variants, etc., of the more notable fighter planes used in the war. It is now part of my library.

As for novels and poetry, there are two that I have mentioned in the past;
Toilers of the Sea by Victor Hugo and The Deserted Village and Other Poems by Oliver Goldsmith.
Toilers of the Sea is the first novel I recall reading. My avatar is photo of the frontispiece from my Grandfather's book

Both books were discovered in my Grandfather's WW I footlocker when I was around 11 or 12 years old.

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[english_rose]

The entire Oz series is very nostalgic for me. I ready every last one of those books, multiple times, before the age of 12. At work the other day, I picked up a few from the series, and still remembered the order of events before I got to them, and the pictures.

[Dark Muse]

I think for me it might be The Black Stallion series by Walter Farley. I was always a fanatic about reading stories which revolved around horses, and I think The Black Stallion was one of the best. The first book I read like 2 or 3 times. I still haven't got around to reading the entire series and it is something I would like to revisit some day. Thinking back upon those books is quite nostalgic for me.

[Buh4Bee]

The Black Stallion is fantastic! What about A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett? Or Little Women by Louisa May Alcott? Where the Wild Things Are is HUGE! The Man in the Moon by ??? All these books bring back memories of my childhood bedroom- the house has been sold and I can't go back. Sob.

[cafolini]

People love to relive. Nostalgia is a poweful force, extremely attractive. The first book I completed was Mark Twain's The adventures of Tom Sawyer. I used to dream of being like him. It was the type of adventure I loved the most. When I read the full Twain, many years later, I realized why. Tom Sawyer had all the childish elements of the mature man.

There were many other circumstances that stayed with me and called me to dream and relive. However, when it comes to going back to childhood places, I've discovered that most of the stuff did not measure up to the nostalgia that built my expectations before revisiting.

"Life is not the one we lived. It is the one we remember and how we remember it in order to tell it." ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez
So perhaps life is indeed nostalgia, illusion and desillusion in many ways? Going home might not be simply going home. Depending on the time lapsed before revisiting, home might turn out to be a foreign land. Such is the effect of knowledge and the keener observation of maturity over remembrance.

[prendrelemick]

Life is not the one we lived. It is the one we remember and how we remember it in order to tell it." ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Exactly.

[JuniperWoolf]

Life is not the one we lived. It is the one we remember and how we remember it in order to tell it." ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Exactly.

Well that's good, memories of events are always much better than the events themselves. Nostalgia makes everything much softer.

[First thoughts]

I agree with Marquez. Nostalgia's generally pretty arbitrary, but that doesn't mean whe shouldn't enjoy or look for it.

Some books bring me back fond memories; Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, Willard Price and Roald Dahl come quickly to mine. Others seem to be able to inspire nostalgia quite apart from your own memories; sometimes a well crafted story can leave you empathizing with the protagonist and sharing their nostalgia. Brideshead Revisited is perhaps one of the best examples of this, though I suppose War and Peace and again Harry Potter are other examples. In fact I think this ability to provoke nostalgia is JK Rowling's chief secret of success.

Dreaming can also inspire similar feelings to nostalgia, as such Lennie and George's dream in Of Mice and Men almost falls into the same category.

As Peter Doherty once said, "We're nostalgic for a time and place which never existed, and we love it"

[PoeticPassions]

I always say that I am chronically nostalgic. I often think that nostalgia is somewhat crippling, at least for me in my life, as it has been taken to an extreme.

As for some of the books that produce great nostalgia-- Tuck Everlasting, The GIver, An American Tragedy ... I am not sure what was the first novel I ever read. I started reading on my own at around 5 or 6 years of age, and I suppose some of the first, longer books I read were not til later... I do remember, fondly, reading almost every book in the Goosebumps series, as they were exciting and simple enough (since I had come to the US without any knowledge of English, and I learned the language a lot through TV and reading).