Hi, @samsmith1971! Nice to participate again in your contests. Here are my answers:
- I especially remember a moment that marked me as a reader. I was not so young, I was about ten years old. I was reading The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain. Towards the end of the book there is the following passage:
"And you are going away, and will not come back any more?"
"Yes," he said. "We have comraded long together, and it has been pleasant--pleasant for both; but I must go now, and we shall not see each other any more."
"In this life, Satan, but in another? We shall meet in another, surely?"
Then, all tranquilly and soberly, he made the strange answer, "There is no other."
Today this fragment is not particularly interesting to me. But I remember that at that moment I closed the book, dejected. And I was several days without being able to open it again. I think at that moment I learned that books can not only amuse you, teach you about a subject, make you pass the time, but they can also throw you into an abyss, hit you, disrupt your life forever. Then reading was no longer the same, there is a risk in reading, and from that moment on I knew it. - To answer this question I will go further back in time, to what I consider my childhood readings. I remember storybooks, such as those of the Brothers Grimm. I also remember Claude Voilier's Famous Five series. And a book by María Elena Walsh, The English Devil. María Elena Walsh, without a doubt, was my great childhood influence, especially with her songs, authentic works of surrealism for children.
- A difficult answer, sorry to everyone I'm leaving out (although I don't think they care). Three books come to mind. One, James Joyce's Ulysses. I read it every summer, when I was young and had plenty of time. Yes, I know, it's weird to read Ulysses every year. I guess I was weird back then, but now I'm perfectly normal.... The second book is Alcools, by Apollinaire, especially the poem "Zone", which I recited by heart in Spanish and French (I eventually forgot it). The third book is Eliot's The Waste Land, which opened my poetic world, then very French, to other kinds of poetry.
- I am going to invite three friends: @gislandpoetic, @josemalavem and @jesuspsoto.
[I translated this comment with Deepl.]