There are certain books and authors that are firmly associated with a moment in time for me. Gordon Korman and grade 5 book fairs and the Christmas pageant, reading all of the Little House and Anne books in grade six, Mercedes Lackey in junior high, Diana Wynne Jones and Lois McMaster Bujold in high school, the Lord of the Rings on the summer trip to Ontario, "The Queen of Attolia" in the clawfoot tub in my childhood home, balancing "Jonathan Strange and Mister Norrel" on the tiny desk in political theory waiting for the professor to arrive, reading "Watership Down" for the first time during law school finals, giving romance novels a shot working a temp job near the library.
John Hodgman's "Vacationland" at the foot of Mum's hospital bed.
The David Lynch biography sitting on the dock at Algonquin Park.
I read Maggie Stiefvater's Raven Cycle during the part of the pandemic where people were taking it seriously and my friend Sarri was furloughed and I would tell her about what I was reading when we walked dogs to distract us both from the sometimes overwhelming fear that plagued those months. So I associate Stiefvater with walks in the park and making a friend laugh, poking fun at the YA trappings but enthusing about character beats or evocative sentences or wild plot developments. "Greywaren" brought more of that - I've told Friend Sarri about each subsequent book, like someone relating the latest chapter of "Little Dorrit".
Stiefvater's also one of the authors who sometimes writes a line that captures a fragment of grief for me. Here it was that weird ugly grief of watching someone with a person or relationship in their life that you've lost, and needing to sit with your jealousy of their happiness, and the unfairness of it, even as you don't actually want other people to feel your hurt.
I think Stiefvater bites off more than she can chew with disparate narratives and imbalanced character arcs and there's a messy quality to her endings, a gasping final push over a finish line, but the journey's fun for all that.
No one ever did mention flat earth theory, though.
