![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
I haven't had the energy to update recently due to RL stresses. My grandmother has just been diagnosed with multiple organ Stage III cancer and had surgery yesterday. The prognosis is grim. She's my last remaining grandparent and it will be very strange to have her go, although I'd rather have her go sooner than later if it will avoid unbearable pain.
Since I've heard the news, all sorts of memories have been running through my mind. Granny inadvertently influenced my life in some major ways that I doubt she knows. When I was little and would go to visit her there were always stacks of romance novels scattered around. Being a reader from way back, I would always manage to snag a couple and read them while visiting trying to avoid letting my mother see what I was reading in case she thought it wasn't "appropriate" reading material for me. As we all know, romance novels are always set against the backdrop of some major upheaval and crisis just to up the drama level that little bit more. Wars, rumors of wars, and the like. I ate it up with a spoon and my love of history was firmly established and continued to grow. While in high school, I was surprised to find how many random historical facts I'd absorbed reading Granny's bodice rippers. As I went into my Junior history seminar at Yale on the origins on the Pacific War and looked around at all the male faces surrounding me, I thought to myself that I was probably the only person in the room who'd ended up there because they'd read their grandmother's romance novels in their formative years.
Things won't be the same without her.
Since I've heard the news, all sorts of memories have been running through my mind. Granny inadvertently influenced my life in some major ways that I doubt she knows. When I was little and would go to visit her there were always stacks of romance novels scattered around. Being a reader from way back, I would always manage to snag a couple and read them while visiting trying to avoid letting my mother see what I was reading in case she thought it wasn't "appropriate" reading material for me. As we all know, romance novels are always set against the backdrop of some major upheaval and crisis just to up the drama level that little bit more. Wars, rumors of wars, and the like. I ate it up with a spoon and my love of history was firmly established and continued to grow. While in high school, I was surprised to find how many random historical facts I'd absorbed reading Granny's bodice rippers. As I went into my Junior history seminar at Yale on the origins on the Pacific War and looked around at all the male faces surrounding me, I thought to myself that I was probably the only person in the room who'd ended up there because they'd read their grandmother's romance novels in their formative years.
Things won't be the same without her.
no subject
As for the romance novels, they are EXACTLY the reason I got interested in history too. :) Something else we have in common. I would read about a new period in a romance novel, then go investigate further in more serious books.
no subject
Thanks for the thoughts and prayers as well. I know that they help.