A Fan's Playground

Over the course of yesterday and today, I listened to the audiobook of King Of The Wind, by Marguerite Henry.* I acquired it ages ago, in the flush of my Man From UNCLE fannishness, because it is read by David McCallum. That was -- gosh, more than a year and a half ago, I think. But I never got around to listening to it until now.

I JUST finished it. And.

Reader, I cried. TWICE. Once when the queen was presenting the Plate and Agba remembered his promise to Sham and knew he had fulfilled it, and once when the explanation for the blank gravemarker is given. OH AGBA AND SHAM. THEIRLOVEISSOTRUE. ♥♥♥

I haven't read that book in probably close to 8 years, and it was fascinating to see the ways in which my perspective has changed. I still think it an unutterably fantastic book, and adore it deeply. But now I notice things like the fact that there's a character who stutters, and is portrayed rather as if the stutter is an aspect of his less than pleasant personality. Um. Problem.

But overall, it was every bit as heartwarming as I remember, though also a lot SHORTER than I remember. What's fascinating, though, is to see which bits my memory dwelt on but the book didn't, and which bits the book dwelt on but my memory didn't. There's this one bit that's dismissed with in only one line in the book, but is one of the bits that I can picture SO CLEARLY in my head that I was sure it must have been at least a page. I've never really had that experience before, because usually the books I really like I reread often enough that I never get the chance to develop these erroneous beliefs.

(Also, oh dear, I am obviously out of practice at reading books about the wildly passionately close love between a child and an animal. There were one or two moments when I couldn't help sporfling a bit over stuff fandom has trained me to see....)

ETA: I forgot to mention. David McCallum? An EXCELLENT audiobook reader. His voice is just so great. *happy sigh*



*I'm pretty sure I read every single book Marguerite Henry ever wrote, most of them at least 3 times, and the ones I OWNED? A truly astounding number of times. To have called me "horse-mad" would have been an understatement.