photo credit: TyMotion via photopin ccEach Sensational Saturday throughout the month of November I will be sharing some of my favorite books with you. I am hoping you will share a few of your favorite books as well and we can talk about our mutual love of literature of all kinds. Last week I shared why the Bible is my favorite book of all time. Over the course of the next few Sensational Saturdays, I will share the following books with you:
* The Collected Works of Langston Hughes by Langston Hughes
* Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
This week is all about The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum. I read The Bourne Identity for the first time when I was about 15 years old. I borrowed it from the local library and it was a big thick book. It was about 2 1/2 inches thick and hardback. Forget the Matt Damon movie, I am talking about the original book from way back. In sum it is the story about a spy, Jason Bourne, with retrograde amnesia who is trying to discover who he is and why so many people are trying to kill him. Unlike in the movie, the woman who was the heroine in the book was strong and smart and brave. She had a Ph.D. in economics!
In The Bourne Identity, we were in a time before cell phones and the internet and a lot of our modern conveniences. It was hard to be a spy and communicate with people on the sly in 1980 when this book was published. I cannot count the number of my teenage days I spent reading an re-reading this book. I imagined myself as a spy on the run. I plotted out how I would travel from London to France to Amsterdam, St. Petersburg and New York. When I was reading that book, it did not matter that I was a girl from West Philly who had never been farther than Atlantic City, New Jersey. I was a super secret spy on a mission to save myself and the world.
I admit it, I drank the Bourne Koolaid. In fact, I read all the books in the series, including those written by others after the death of Robert Ludlum. When I went into labor in 2003 with my son, guess what I used to keep track of the contractions? You won't guess, I will tell you. I used The Bourne Ultimatum, the third book in the Bourne series to write down when and how long each contraction lasted. I still have the book and smile when I look at my contractions record.
When I read the original Bourne again a few weeks ago, I still enjoyed the book. Even though I know the story so well, my heart still raced and I still raced through each page to see what would happen next. A good book, a really good book, stands the test of time and is a treat no matter how many times you read the pages. So, the question for you this Sensational Saturday is what book have you read more times than you can remember and still want to read again?
No comments:
Post a Comment