Top Ten Tuesday: Books With Sensory Reading Memories

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

Guys, I am so excited about today's Top Ten Tuesday topic! One thing you need to know about me is that while I'm reading, it isn't just my eyes that are engaged in the reading process. Most of the time all of my senses are engaged in the reading process, so much so that I start associating sounds, smells, even seasons to certain stories, and that makes those stories stick to my head. I also remember when I read certain books, where I was... It's what makes them special, in a way.

So without further ado, here are

TOP TEN BOOKS WITH 

SENSORY READING MEMORIES

• Although I saw the first Harry Potter movie sometime in late autumn 2001, when one of my dearest friends brought me the VHS to see (that's how old I am, I know what VHSs are!) and I read the first book around the same time, I've always associated this series with Christmas and Winter. And this is something I've felt before the Christmas tradition with my aunt and uncle started of them getting me the newest HP book for Christmas each year. Another thing that I can't really explain is that I've always associated the smell of lit candles with this book. Not scented candles, mind you, the kind you lit when you go to church. I have no explanation for this really.
• Guilty Pleasures is a book that has a rather funny history behind it for me. I bought it in my first vacation in Italy and I then promptly got lost trying to get back home. I remember reading this book on the plane at the end of that vacation and it's one of my favorite plane reads ever.
• The entire Lord Of The Rings trilogy is special, not only because it introduced me to high fantasy, but because it was the first book (or three books, as it is) that I bought myself, with my own money. I saved up all of my lunch money and after a week or so, I had the money to buy it. I got it on my way to school and I started reading The Fellowship Of The Ring during class. It was a boring class, some random topic our class master chose at the time for our coordination class, which back home means either endless hours of talk about drug abuse, "don't have sex"-type sex ed OR extra hours trying to understand whatever subject the class master teaches. So boring. Two Towers was my fastest read at the time. I finished it in 3 days right after school ended and I was insanely proud of myself. My memory is a bit fuzzy about The Return Of The King. I know I read it in the summer, while I was at the beach with my mom and grandmother, but I'm not entirely sure if I read it fast or not. I do however know that I had an unfortunate even with it, where I forgot it in the car, in the sun, and the glue melted and now my book is falling apart. I had it bound, but I'm thinking of buying a second hand one so I can have a "pretty" copy of it.
• I've talked about this before but in case you don't already know, Dead Until Dark was one of the two books that were recommended to me by a university colleague when she heard I loved vampire books and darker books in general. This is before True Blood was even announced, think 2007. I read this during my first semester in psychology and it's one of my favorite books I read during that time.
• Funny story about Hotel Transylvania: It's my first ever professional-sounding published review. As with Dead Until Dark, this was recommended to me by that same uni colleague. Now to the review part. The publishing house that published it in Romania had this amazing idea in order to get reviews from readers: each reader would submit a review for the publishing house's blog and if that review met the criteria and was accepted and published, the reader would receive a 10% or 15% off (not sure which exactly) coupon for their next 3-book purchase from their website. Great deal right? And I say professional-sounding, because back then there was also another online bookshop that had a points system for each review you'd submit and you could get cheaper books (or even free books if you had enough points) and I used to review books there as well, but Hotel Transylvania really is the book that made me think "Hey, I could do this on my own website". 

• I read The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz when I was about 9 and I was on summer holiday with my grandma in Turkey. Strangely enough, that's the only thing I remember about the book. I know I was utterly confused, because I was expecting the same type of wonder I had watching the movie or listening to the theater play on my turntable, but I didn't for some reason.
• Pride and Prejudice was my first ever book I read in English. I was in middle school, probably in 6th grade. And the only reason I read it in English was because I couldn't for the life of me find the Romanian version in the bookshelf. And I just went ahead and read it in English. I actually, to my surprise, understood more than 50% of it, which now seems like nothing, but at the time it was a huge accomplishment for me.
• My introduction in the world of urban fantasy came, like with most readers raised in the 90s and early 2000s, by way of Anne Rice. I actually read The Vampire Armand first because I didn't know this wasn't the first book in the series - this is back when there was still dial-up internet in Romania, and it cost way too much to do a simple search back then. But my favorite book in the series is The Queen Of The Damned. As you can imagine, I saw the movie first and then read the book, because back then I wasn't as interested in reading as I am now, but the book was fantastic, and something different than what I was used to from Rice judging by the first vampire books I read by her. I read this book while on a student exchange program in another country, and I absolutely cherish those memories.
• Cardboard Castles (a very rough translation guys) was a book I heard about way back in 2007, when I was still in high school. The short version is that it was recommended to me by a few friends who absolutely adored it and they said I had to read it. So I did. I loved it.
• Can You Keep A Secret is the book that started me on the path of chick lit and actually that of the reader I am today. Each book that I read when I was in my last year of high school and my first year of university formed me in a way and pushed me to become the avid reader I am now, but this book was the first one that made me the kind of reader that wants to read more books from the same author. I used to just pick books off the bookshelf at random and read them, without caring for the author or genre. Can You Keep A Secret taught me to care about the author, the genre, even the publishing house.

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So there you have it guys, my long trip down memory lane. I didn't expect this post to turn out so long, but what can you do?

What about you? What are some books you hold so near and dear to your heart, you remember where you were, what you were doing, what you were eating even while reading it?