Memorable Reads

I will get to the memorable read in a few, but first a quick lesson in Australian geography. A range of mountains (which, by international standards, are more akin to large hills) runs the eastern length of our country, separating the heavily populated coast from the significantly less populated interior. One of the first challenges for early European adventurers was traversing that range. From where I live (the interior) we have to cross The Great Divide to get to the beach.

(Mini lesson over.)

Crossing the mountains on Sunday, we drove past a guesthouse where mt dh and I spent a romantic weekend many years ago. We reminisced about that weekend and the convolutions that got us there. I'd booked the accommodation, booked the babysitting sister-in-law, and then Wheel of Fortune rang with an invitation for a return appearance. They were doing a Champion of Champions week. Would I be interested?

Long story short, I arranged to fly to Adelaide (South Australia) for the taping and back to Sydney from where I would catch a train to the Blue Mountains guesthouse. My dh would drive up from the other side and there we would meet. Kinda like a clandestine rendezvous. Cool and romantic.

It all worked out as planned and there I was at Sydney Central, waiting for my train. I browsed for a book to read on the several-hour journey and I picked up my very first Silhouette Desire. Title: Private Reasons. Author: Justine Davis. Why this book: I love me a romance which is also a horse story. This one featured a free-spirited heroine who ran stables and she was training this fabulous black stallion. Quite the picture she made for our hero, a starchy accountant single-father, battling to understand his rebellious (horse-loving) teenage daughter.

This book made such an impression on me. I loved the characters, the sensuality, the storyline, and I gulped it down cover-to-cover on that train trip to the mountains. I hadn't yet started writing but when I did this book, on some subconscious level, influenced the kind of books I would write. I love writing opposites-attract stories. I love giving animals/pets a secondary role. And I did write my own starchy single-dad financier and my own free-spirited heroine.

A lot of books are brilliant, wonderful, cover-to-cover, can't-put-down indulgences, but this one made such a mark I can still remember the whole story of HOW I came to read it as well as the read itself. How about you? Do you have one such memorable read, where you remember where you were and how you came to choose that book?

Labels: Australian life, holidays, reading, Silhouette Desire