{"id":9813,"date":"2019-05-05T22:25:41","date_gmt":"2019-05-05T22:25:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=9813"},"modified":"2019-05-05T22:25:41","modified_gmt":"2019-05-05T22:25:41","slug":"books-that-never-left-me-good-omens-by-neil-gaiman-and-terry-pratchett","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=9813","title":{"rendered":"Books That Never Left Me: GOOD OMENS by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear Reader,<\/p>\n

This is a preface to explain what I hope will be a semi-regularly recurring series of posts thanking authors for books that had an indelible effect on me while I was growing up\u2014either as a child or a teen. I eventually settled on \u201cBooks That Never Left Me\u201d after considering and rejecting subpar options such as \u201cBooks That Touched Me\u201d (ew, no), \u201cBooks That Grabbed Me\u201d (same), and \u201cBooks That Influenced Me\u201d (yawn).<\/p>\n

In most cases, these ARE books that have never left me\u2014they\u2019ve taken up residence in my heart, but there\u2019s also a good chance they\u2019ve continued to take up space on my bookshelves because I can\u2019t bear to part with them. Indeed, for many of these, they require periodic re-reading. Good Omens<\/em> is one of those books, and I recently gave it a re-read in honor of the upcoming TV series with David Tennant (SQUEEEEEEE). It was one of my favorites in my young adult and early adult years. So, I hereby inscribe my thanks to its esteemed creators. May the honorable Sir Pratchett continue to rest in peace and enjoy this brief missive, even if he is currently a resident of the great\u2026uh\u2026Ankh-Morpork in the sky.<\/p>\n

Yours,<\/p>\n

Sarah \u201cAquafortis\u201d Stevenson<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"
This is the cover of the old-ass version I had, which I’m pretty sure came from my mom’s Science Fiction Book Club catalog<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dear Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett,<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s jump right into it, shall we? Otherwise I\u2019ll have to start this letter with a tedious litany of obsequious and awe-filled blandishments. Let\u2019s just not and say we did. Or just sum them up with another SQUEEEEEEEEEE. That\u2019ll do.<\/p>\n

Anyway: I don\u2019t think you\u2019ll ever have any idea how formative Good Omens<\/em> was for me as a teenager. I first picked it up in high school\u2014I\u2019m pretty sure it was the first book by either of you I\u2019d ever read\u2014and I ended up somewhat obsessively re-reading it several more times over the succeeding years. It was comfort. It was a pick-me-up. It never failed to put a smile on my face, make me laugh out loud, or leave me with a sense of hopeful cynicism and\/or cynical hope. It had a profound effect on my sense of humor and deepened an already irreversible Anglophilia. And it fostered a whole new appreciation of riding in the car with my high school friend Matt F., blasting the Best of Queen.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d love to be able to say it made me want to become a writer, but how I became a writer is a complicated story for another time. (Or a simple one: I\u2019ve always enjoyed writing. Then at some point, but not right away, I decided to start doing it professionally. Hmm; I guess that wasn\u2019t so hard after all\u2026) I can <\/em>say that it\u2019s the type of book that immediately takes me back into the mindset of being a reader<\/em>, that gets me gleefully lost, that not only suspends my disbelief but flings it away, never to be seen again.<\/p>\n

So, thank you, from the bottom of my heart.<\/p>\n

Sarah<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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