I asked The Sharkly Assistant if she'd read the book and when she confessed, in a terrified whisper, that she had NOT, I quickly ordered two copies.
When the books arrived I pounced at once, opened and started to read.
Whoa, this is a lot different than I remember.
Wait...I don't remember this at all.
Um...this ISN'T the same book.
I've not only never read A WRINKLE IN TIME, I read another book entirely and thought it was A WRINKLE IN TIME.
Now....what the hell did I read?
39 comments:
Ha, that's funny. There are books from my childhood I'm afraid to re-read just because I'm afraid I won't like them as much as I remember, but this is different.
Is that a challenge, by the way? What details do you remember from the book you *thought* was 'A Wrinkle In Time'?
Might you instead have read "The Tesseract" by Alex Garland?
That is hilarious! Also, enjoy. I DID read A WRINKLE IN TIME- repeatedly- and loved it every time. As well as the subsequent three (yes, three. She wrote a fourth novel featuring the twins years after A SWIFTLY TILTING PLANET).
If you like it, keep reading. A SWIFTLY TILTING PLANET was my favorite. Not only of the series, but among my most beloved childhood books.
Also, for the record, I wanted to be just like Meg's mom. Cooking on a bunsen burner and holding two PhDs. In retrospect, that is another thing to love about those books. A mother who is a brilliant scientist was pretty groundbreaking for the era.
Did you read one of the other books in the series? MANY WATERS is my favorite; the poor shattered remains of that book still sit on my parent's bookshelf (I was sort of afraid to move it to put it on my own shelf...) Same author, some of the same characters, same brilliant writing.
That's so funny! I loved that book and have been meaning to re-read it. I'll have to go dust it off.
Madeline L'Engle was my first foray into fantasy apart from fairy tales, and part of the reason I write what I do.
If there is another by her you've read, I'm sure we'd be happy to help you discover it, but most of them are worth re-reading in an effort to re-discover your lost love. More fun that way.
I haven't read A WRINKLE IN TIME since Middle School. I checked it out of the library at my librarian's recommendation. She always suggested the best stuff.
I'm curious -- what was the plot of the book that you remembered as A WRINKLE IN TIME. *puts on detective hat*
It must be years of working in the kids department at B&N...but I'm with Ali and wanna know what the plot was, what the cover looked like (because, regardless of the mysterious 'book with a blue cover' I once found Palahniuk's Haunted just from a customer saying "ghostly" so it can be done!), and if you remember the MC's name/description at all. We CAN find this thing!
You make me feel better. I was the only one in my book club who hadn't read this. I've bought it, too.
And several of the other book club folks hadn't read The Yearling or Old Yeller. Deprived souls.
It will be fun to hear what you did read.
Oh you silly! You are probably confusing it (so many people do) with "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind"!
That, or "Wacky Whoopee in Wasilla." Easy to get those three mixed up.
So, dish--what were plot points/characters/details of what you DID read? We are all dying to know!
Okay, with an audience of devoted librarians and booksluts, I'm sure we can hunt that book down!
Phantom Tollbooth?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phantom_Tollbooth
I read A Wrinkle in Time in Grade 5. And started on the sequel...A Wind in the Door (?). And then my uncle bought me the brand new hardback (I NEVER had hardbacks!) of A Swiftly Tilting Planet, but I could never get through the second book to reach it! I don't think I ever did finish or read STP. The thought of owning such a beautiful hardcover and not being able to read it haunted me for years! It's funny, but I think the only other hard backbook I ever owned was Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume because it was on sale. Funny the things you remember! Hardbacks belonged to the library in my brain...you had to be rich to OWN one! I put WIT on hold at the library...there are 6 copies, and 8 holds. Now that's a classic!
Oh, I meant to say, after reading A Wrinkle in Time, you should read Rebecca Stead's WHEN YOU REACH ME.
"It was a dark and stormy night." - Hey, we know Snoopy read it! (And ONE person in history made this opening work.)
I always got a WiT vibe from Piers Anthony's Mode series (I think it starts with Virtual Mode), but I'm not sure.
Hey, if that offer of finding a book you read as a kid is open to anyone, I read a book in fourth or fifth grade (would have been an upper elementary book at least in '87 0r '88, though it could have been pubbed a lot earlier), about a house built literally over a river, and a young boy went there only to find the place crawling with homicidal little clockwork automatons. I would have sworn it had River and House in the title, but I may be wrong. any ideas?
Amethyst
hahaha!
I heart that book. (The real one.)
I know I read that book twice, and yet when my daughter is listening to it as an audiobook, I remember none of it.
OTOH, I read A Swiftly Tilting Planet about 400 times. Go figure.
If you tell us more about the book you thought was A Wrinkle In Time, we might be able to identify it for you.
Love Madeleine L'Engle-- my favorite is definitely A Swiftly Tilting Planet (Gaudior rules!). Wondering what it was you read, Janet-- but hope you like Wrinkle!
-Beth M.
I don't know what you read, but those books are timeless. I read A WRINKLE IN TIME to my older son a few years ago, and he loved it and went on to read the whole series, and now I just finished reading it to my younger son. Except not really, because by the time I was halfway through he was too impatient to wait for me to finish, so he read the rest himself.
I wonder if you might be thinking of something by Andre Norton or Ursula K Le Guin? Together with Madeleine L'Engle, those three pretty much owned the field of highly imaginative SF/Fantasy kids books, all writing at about the same time. I'd totally recommend the first three of Le Guin's Earthsea stories. Andre Norton's Witchworld books were very popular, but I thought her kids' SF books were better.
Still, as an adult, these are my favorite books of all time. I actually got the box set this past Christmas. ;)
maybe it was A Handful of Time, by Kit Pearson? It's about a girl who finds a stopwatch in an old family cottage and goes back in time to when her mom was her age. For some reason, until now I've always thought it was what everyone was talking about when they mentioned a wrinkle in time
I usually do that with films.
Gosh, Janet, that's kind of heartbreaking. I read this book many times as a child and would never forget it. But reading it as an adult it DID feel like another book and I didn't like it as much. Still LOVE A Swiftly Tilting Planet though.
I remember LOVING that book when I was younger! Reading this post makes me feel the need to buy it. In fact, I think I will!
P.S. I was browsing DeviantArt and found this adorable shark - had to share because I thought you'd love it too! It's a pet shark named Chomper :)
http://pashiro.deviantart.com/art/Land-Shark-SP-285356577?q=boost%3Apopular%20meta%3Aall%20max_age%3A8h&qo=50
One of my all time favorites. So, the question is...do you like it?
I've done that. Just recently I bought a copy of Catch-21, all excited about catching up with Yossarian and the boys...boy was I disappointed when I started reading and learned that it was a guide on playing blackjack and not the classic satire. hehehe
Amethyst,
Can you remember anything else about it? What the cover looked like? If the clocks had a name? I looked yesterday, but to no avail. I'll keep trying, though, because I'm curious.
Dear Ms Reid
"A Rankling Thyme"?
(There's just something about Herb Thyme that pisses people off, as he strives for the courage to be wild and aromatic).
Nah, that probably wasn't it...
d
Thanks for the laugh:) It's nice to know I'm not the only one who does things like that. I also liked Many Waters. I can't hear about Noah's Ark without flashing on that book.
My brother always had a problem putting the correct record (plastic thingies, nevermind) in the right jacket. When I listened to them, I inevitably got the name wrong. I thought that Muddy Waters was a saxophone player and loved the guitar work of Coltrane. Ah to be 10 again.
Ali,
Very little. Mostly i just remember it being the first "dark" book I'd read. It had a really sinister feel. All of the things I remember are really foggy and subject to serious wrongness, but here goes:
The boy was around ten, and he may have just moved to the area, or been visiting relatives (I almost want to say he was visiting relatives, but not with his parents). Near where he lived, there was a river or stream, and there was a house built OVER the river. I remember that, because I wondered what the owner did about all the damp, and if the house ever molded. It may have been built of glass. An old man lived there, the creepy, crotchety old kind. Evil. I want to say he seemed harmless at first, so the boy kept visiting him, or at least came back after the first time, to see the man and his automatons (also the first time I saw the word "automaton", and I argued with myself how to pronounce it properly). Then, after a few visits, the man shut the boy up in the house and sicced the automatons on the boy, like some sort of sick experiment. I think it must have been historical, and I think it might very well have been published two or three decades before, if not longer.
And while I doubt it helps, I borrowed the book from the Marshfield, MO Elementary School library (upper-elementary, if they separated it--can't recall).
Thanks for looking!
Amethyst
I felt that same why when I re-read this book as an older adult. I didn't like it nearly as much as I did when I read it at age 10.
Edward Eager wrote a few books featuring children having magical and time traveling adventures. "Half Magic" was the first and best, and "A Thyme Garden" a so-so sequel featuring only time traveling adventures. Maybe that was the book /series you were thinking of?
Ohh, I have a book sorta like that, where I remember the details but not the title. Drives me nuts!!
Oh, also, the Austin Family books are WELL worth a read. (That's the series with A Ring of Endless Light in it, but the whole series is gorgeous.)
A WRINKLE IN TIME is still one of my favorites. I have like three versions of it, different covers, all dog-eared with cracked spines. Loved MANY WATERS, too, and THE ARM OF THE STARFISH, which featured Meg and Calvin as adults. Goooood books :)
Amethyst,
Perhaps you are thinking of Roscoe's Leap by Gillian Cross?
Reagan,
Whoa, ROSCOE'S LEAP might actually be the right book. I didn't remember about the guillotine, but it sounds really familiar, now.
Thanks!
Post a Comment