Valjean, at last, we see each other plain

I was listening to Pandora today and a song from Les Miserables came on. (They must recently have gotten the rights, as Les Mis songs had to my knowledge never shown up before.) It catapulted me back to the first time I ever saw Les Mis -- I was in middle school at the time -- and it blew my mind and knocked me flat, in large part because it was the first real Broadway musical I'd ever seen, partially because it was first adaptation of a book I'd ever seen where they actually got the spirit of the book right. I can't even describe the effect seeing it had on me except by saying that I went out and bought not just the recording but the full symphonic recording -- and when I was that age the $30 that you had to shell out for the full recording was basically a real fortune, something like six months' worth of discretionary spending. (To compare, I don't think I bought any other CD that was more than $5 until I went to college.)

Now that I'm older, I can see the flaws. Many of the tunes are simplistic bordering on inane (no, I never did like "Castle on a Cloud" much). Much of the libretto is quite silly (especially Cosette's lines). I suspect if I saw it now I would think it was okay, but nothing special. I'm really glad I saw it as a kid, when it had the power to do that to me.

The only other things I can think of offhand that had this effect on me were reading The Dark is Rising and A Wrinkle in Time, both of which I got to at precisely the right time (fourth grade and, um, second grade? respectively) for them to turn my world upside down and explode it into color. (And no, LoTR didn't do that for me -- I grew into that one.) Oh, and Dead Poets Society, which I now recognize as a maudlin sentimental film, but which I saw when I had no idea about poetry (fifth grade, I think), and it had a profound and dizzying effect on me.

I'd love to hear the things that you found extraordinarily powerful at the time and that now you wouldn't quite be so impressed by...

Stuff I read that I'm not interested in dedicating a whole post to

...Yeah, I have a backlog of posts... these date back from first trimester, in fact. These are sorted by how much I enjoyed them (from most to least):

Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (Wilhelm) - I've been on a Wilhelm kick recently. This one started slow but I thought was a strong book, though the science is... um... a little suspect. (I get the impression Wilhelm is not, er, a hard scientist; about three books in a row now I have been rolling my eyes, the worst being in Smart House where she talks about the big million-dollar question in computing being melding digital and analog computing. Er? Granted I believe she wrote it in 1989, but, what?) It's about the end of the world, and clones, and individuality, and honestly rather a Gary Stu type whom I quite enjoyed. I recommend it highly if you can get by the iffy science and treat it as entertainment rather than as A Classic Of Yore (in which case you are sure to be disappointed).

Dreamsongs, vol. 1 - I enjoy George R.R. Martin a lot, though I can't say I actually like his stories, and I realized why after reading this. I don't know about now, but at least for the part of his life these stories cover, he was not exactly successful in love, and these stories reflect that -- maybe half of them weren't about disillusionment and dysfunctional relationships, but a whole lot of them were.

The Host (Meyer) - Oh, yeah. I read this quite a while ago at the behest of the Kid, but forgot to post. It was much, much better than Twilight. I actually enjoyed it, though as usual with Meyer's stuff there was some disturbing relationship/gender subtext.

Fairie Wars (Herbie Brennan) - not to be confused with Sarah Rees Brennan, of course! - I think this is a first book? Anyway, it's got a lot of energy, and there's a lot going on. As usual in fantasy, the "science" is cheesy and stupid, and I have to say the nomenclature of "Fairies of the Light/Fairies of the Night" made me laugh hilariously, but I liked it!

Purple Emperor (Herbie Brennan) - Sequel to Fairie Wars (and, I think, the second in a trilogy). Well. He certainly has the can't-catch-your-breath plot going full speed in this one as well. I'm a little less enamoured of this one, because I noticed more that the plot seemed to crowd out things like, oh, any kind of character development at all. Still, I did finish it.

The Emperor's Children, Claire Messaud - Mainstream. People interact in New York; hilarity ensues, or something. This was, well, better than I thought after reading the first twenty pages, and by the late middle I thought it was quite good. Then the end happened, and I was all, "That's it?" I guess it's pretty good, but being the mean evil person I am, I totally wanted more of the characters to get a satisfying comeuppance. Warning for preponderance of unlikeable characters. (I think I have yet to read a mainstream book set in New York with a preponderance of likeable characters.) Better, go read Edith Wharton instead; Messaud just wants to be Wharton.

Eon: Dragoneye Reborn, Alison Goodman- It's of note because the mythology involved is Chinese-oriented rather than Western-oriented, and I feel like I should support non-Western-based fantasy in general. However, the prose seemed a bit clunky to me (it wasn't horrible, just a little too much first-book-ish), and the ending was completely cheesy; I said aloud, "That's it? That's the answer?" Interesting enough that I'll probably pick up the sequel from the library, but probably not enough that I'll more than skim it. I read a couple of good reviews of it, though, so YMMV.