American Books.

I finished reading Tuck Everlasting a few nights ago. For the very first time. I am 38 years old.

Now, before you judge me too harshly let me say that I am from New Zealand and Tuck was not on a single booklist that I had ever seem until I came to the U.S of A.
And for some reason I thought for years after I saw it that it was a sports book, some kind of baseball or football fields-of-glory type book. And if there is a genre that I passionately avoid it is sports writing....sorry but I detest it. Also sports movies, sports on TV, sports shows...hell, sports fans even! No, that last one isn't true, I have some very close friends and relatives who are sports fans, and who knows, some of them might even read this blog....
I like sports though, I am kind of uncoordinated (read; very uncoordinated) clumsy, and noncompeditive (Oh, you look like you want the ball waaay more than I do, here, take it!), but still I have fun when I play. I don't win, but I have fun.

So I didn't read Tuck Everlasting until now.
And wow, that book is a master-piece! First I got hooked by the setting... the Woods and the spring to be exact. So cool and fragrant and green. That gurgle of clean, sweet water, right in the middle of summer. Then the characters. Imagine my suprise to discover that far from being a baseball-bat-weilding tweenager, the Tucks are a family (as opposed to an individual), full of quirks, faults and charm.
Then, best of all, the premise, they are undying. And this is a situation they refuse to exploit because that would be morally wrong.

Now I am wondering what else I have missed out on in the American Writers catagory. I am rethinking my don't-read-it-it's-cheesy stance on Anne of Greengables. And my bound-to-be-too-clever-by-half stance on F. Scott Fitzgerald.

A whole new world of writers has just opened up....and it's not like my reading pile was too short or any-thing. Sigh.