#1980s publishers made all the Streatfeild books looks so fucking girly so I wouldn't touch them as a kid | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mabith · 3 months

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The fact that my mom thought if she recommended her childhood favorite books to me when I was a kid I'd purposefully avoid reading them (out of kid contrariness) hurts so much. She looked at this kid who was desperate for any scrap of her life and thought I wouldn't care. When I was fourteen and home from boarding school for the first break and found out she'd stopped putting honey in her tea I also immediately stopped doing it, because whatever she did was clearly the Right Way to live, but she didn't see it.

#when I was thirteen I asked her a 47 year old what music teenagers listened to #because I was so out of step with what my peers were doing #and knew that was part of why my friends had ditched me #I did read all her favorite books eventually but I could have read them at the 'right' age and we could have shared them then #1980s publishers made all the Streatfeild books looks so fucking girly so I wouldn't touch them as a kid #later on during car trips I'd read her chapters of Jean Webster's Patty books and it's such a joyful memory #they're so much fun and it was like sharing with her a bit of what Olney was like #and we could have had that when I was eight with Streatfeild

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