I’m in the middle of Among Others and absolutely loving it. I’ll try to do a proper review later on, but I just wanted to say that this novel deserves all of the applause that it has received.
In an odd way, it makes me nostalgic, although not for a place but for the kid that I used to be. I wasn’t British, am not crippled, attended public school but not in the English sense (which we call private schools in the States), but aside from that I was Mor. I was fiercely independent, difficult and shy, most people bored me and I loved books better than people. I treasured the same books that she reads, from Dhalgren by Samuel L. Delany to the Pern novels, Aszimov and so on. I loved -and still love- the public library as a place of magic and endless possibility, totally unmitigated by the fact that it continually let me down by not having enough books to feed my constant hunger.
Periodically I’ll remember a book or author that I loved as a child or teen, and think that I really must start collecting all of those old novels so I can re-read them. It’s a strange feeling to suddenly remember Darkover, for instance, for the first time in decades. How could I forget Darkover? All of these books were important to me, they formed the person that I am today, and I’ve lost them all along the way.
I need my old friends again.