Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

This week’s prompt is books that you had very strong emotions about. (Any emotion! Did a book make you super happy or sad? Angry? Terrified? Surprised?)

I am starting out strong on this one with Stone Fox by John Reynolds Gardiner. I did not read this as a kid but I did pick it up and read it one day while working. I used to work in an elementary school library so I would read here and there, obviously. This book though. This book. I will NEVER read it again! It was emotionally devastating. I got to the end and just was sobbing sitting there at my desk in the quiet library, all by myself. I hate this book, and I will never read it again. If you have read it you know.

The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating hit me in the feels in a much different way. I was in a deep state of grief over the loss of my aunt, whom was like a second mother to me in many ways. We were very close and I was struggling. This book did not erase that sadness, but it did lift me up and give me hope. It is beautifully written and is still one of my favorite books.

The Call of the Wild and Free is a book the deeply resonated within me, and spoke to my heart. Homeschool is not the perfect choice for every family, but it is the perfect choice for mine. This book put into words all I had been feeling.

I had to take the wayback machine for this one. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. I read this in high school and afterwards, I gave up meat and became a vegetarian for about 30 years. I still struggle with my decision to eat meat now, but it became a convenience thing during the pandemic. My son is a total carnivore, and for a long time was failure to thrive no matter what we fed him (for five years) and my husband can’t eat carbs for medical reasons. It is just not financially easy for me to eat a different meal.

I could not make this list without including All Creatures Great and Small. My mom gave me the series when I was just a young girl, probably around ten years of age, and I devoured them. They did make me feel so many emotions – joy, but yes, also sadness. Confusion, because I didn’t understand what some of the book was talking about, because well, I was ten. However, this is another book that affected me profoundly in my life, encouraging my love of animals and all life. I even named our little homeschool after James Herriot.

Meadowland by John Lewis-Stempel is one of the first nonfiction nature books that I ever read as an adult and it started me down a rabbit hole that has lasted for years. It affected me very much, it was so calming and full of hope like The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, but in a different way. It’s like that quote from Jurassic Park, “Nature finds a way” – such a powerful quote from an unexpected source. I feel like this book inspired a whole new direction in my life.

Wow when I started this post I didn’t realize how much nonfiction would be on it! Another nature nonfiction book, The Nature Fix opened my eyes to how nature heals, and I used what I learned from it to open Wyatt’s world and my own. I was always a nature-lover, a hiker, sort of outdoorsy sort (except in humidity and heat) but this showed me just how important that time outside really is for our brains.

I know that this series is considered problematic now, but I still love Little House. I read the books every year, since I was kid. I have read them even more than I have read Watership Down, which is a LOT. When I was little the idea of living so wild and free was fascinating, and it taught me a bit about a different way of life. I loved that Laura was not a perfectly behaved little girl, because I wasn’t a perfectly behaved little girl either. I tended towards heroines like Ramona, like Emily from Emily’s Runaway Imagination, and Anne from Anne of Green Gables, who tended to find themselves in predicaments, much like I did. Today, I think these old stories can still be useful as teachable moments, and can be read alongside books like Children of the Longhouse, The Birchbark House series, and Prairie Lotus which have a different perspective.

I loved this book so much! I read my copy until it fell apart and I actually just replaced it with a new copy a few months ago. I read these in high school and it sparked a love for New Orleans that has never abated. I have visited many times, the last time a week and a half before Katrina, which was a weird time to be there! I of course had my picture taken in front of Rice’s home while I was there. It also inspired me to look into my one family history and genealogy, which wasn’t as supernatural as those of the Mayfairs (or at all lol) but I did love talking to my grandparents about their lives, memories, parents and grandparents. My grandfather was born in England, and my grandma was the first of her siblings to be born in America, the rest of her family was born in Scotland, her older sisters and brothers.

And finally, of course, Watership Down.

I really can’t put into words why I love this book quite so much. I just do. There is just something about this book that is comforting and hopeful despite that hardships. Maybe that is it. Maybe it is that they endure and are resilient and rely on each other to get through their lives, as a community. They go through these hard things and keep a levity to their lives as well, a hope for a better life, which they ultimately do get. They are clever and brave and strong, and have moments of fear, even Bigwig, but get through it and live their dream.

And there you have it. I wasn’t planning on getting so serious with this, but it happened. There are so many other books that I could list but if we are talking which books made me feel the strongest emotions, they would be the books that shaped me or affected my life in some way. So that is where I went!