…what I read..in high school

Have you ever listened to, read or watched something so much that you have internalized it, and its become a part of your very being?

That is another way to describe what “Reading out” a book is

in highschool I discovered fantasy as a genre

The first “fantasy” book I read was Robin McKinley “A Hero and the Crown” very quickly it and all the McKinley books I could find Beauty, Deerskin and the Blue Sword) became my go to books.

As well as the Tamora Pierce quartets (High School involved reading Alanna and then awaiting as Daine slowly came out) Tamora Pierce Heroines Mouse Mat

And there was Patricia C. Wrede’s Enchanted Forest series which I discovered in the school library in 6th grade. This series maybe, perhaps, if I had to say, my favorite books ever (although I hate t  o pic  k because I love so many)

I never did read fantasy to escape. I always read it theologically. I read it to affirm the goodness of humanity and the human irrepressible & irrational endurance. I read it to see the abundance and presence of hope no matter how hard things get. I read it because I wanted to see people suffer challenges & loss and to know that it is all worth it, to see good triumph over evil. To me the happy-ever-after is guaranteed, but the work that is done to get there is what is truly important.

Unknown's avatar

Author: katyandtheword

Pastor Katy has enjoyed ministry at New Covenant since 2010, where the church has solidified its community focus. She now works at Capital CFO plus as the Non Profit Director. All opinions expressed on this blog are her own and do not reflect those of Capital CFO plus. Prior to that she studied both Theology and Christian Formation at Princeton Theological Seminary. She also served as an Assistant Chaplain at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital and as the Christian Educational Coordinator at Bethany Presbyterian at Bloomfield, NJ. She is an writer and is published in Enfleshed, Sermonsuite, Presbyterian's today and Outlook. She writes prayers, liturgy, poems and public theology and is pursuing her doctorate in ministry in Creative Write and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. She enjoys working within and connecting to the community, is known to laugh a lot during service, and tells as many stories as possible. Pastor Katy loves reading Science Fiction and Fantasy, theater, arts and crafts, music, playing with children and sunshine, and continues to try to be as (w)holistically Christian as possible. "Publisher after publisher turned down A Wrinkle in Time," L'Engle wrote, "because it deals overtly with the problem of evil, and it was too difficult for children, and was it a children's or an adult's book, anyhow?" The next year it won the prestigious John Newbery Medal. Tolkien states in the foreword to The Lord of the Rings that he disliked allegories and that the story was not one.[66] Instead he preferred what he termed "applicability", the freedom of the reader to interpret the work in the light of his or her own life and times.

Leave a comment