Follow Friday - Two Hundred and Fifty-Eight Is Six Cubed Plus Six Squared Plus Six

It's Friday again, and this means it's time for Follow Friday. There has been a slight change to the format, as now there are two Follow Friday hosts blogs and a single Follow Friday Featured Blogger each week. To join the fun and make now book blogger friends, just follow these simple rules:

1. Follow both of the Follow My Book Blog Friday Hosts (Parajunkee and Alison Can Read) and any one else you want to follow on the list.
2. Follow the Featured Blogger of the week - I Heart Reading.
3. Put your Blog name and URL in the Linky thing.
4. Grab the button up there and place it in a post, this post is for people to find a place to say hi in your comments.
5. Follow, follow, follow as many as you can, as many as you want, or just follow a few. The whole point is to make new friends and find new blogs. Also, don't just follow, comment and say hi. Another blogger might not know you are a new follower if you don't say "Hi".
6. If someone comments and says they are following you, be a dear and follow back. Spread the love . . . and the followers.
7. If you want to show the link list, just follow the link below the entries and copy and paste it within your post!
8. If you're new to the Follow Friday Hop, comment and let me know, so I can stop by and check out your blog!

And now for the Follow Friday Question: What is your most interesting bookish memory or experience?

One of my earliest bookish memories is reading The Hobbit for the first time. When I was about eight or nine, my father started reading the book to me as a bedtime story over the summer, one page at a time, perhaps inspired by the truncated version of the Rankin-Bass movie broadcast on television. We made it about a third of the way through the book before school started again and the reading sessions just kind of petered out roughly a third of the way through the story.

Cue to a year or two later. We had moved to Tanzania in the interim, and I picked up The Hobbit on an evening in the summer break between, my fourth and fifth grade years and started reading. I began some time just before my normal bed time, and didn't put the book down until I had finished it, just as the first rays of dawn began to appear over the horizon. I finished the Lord of the Rings over the next week. When the school year rolled around, I hunted through the library looking for fantasy novels to read. By spring break of the next school year I was reading the Silmarillion.

Although it isn't explicitly reading related, I have another memory from Tanzania that seems relevant. I was living in Tanzania because my father was working for the U.S. Embassy there, in the Consular office. In 1980, Muhammad Ali visited the country. I didn't know it at the time, but he was there to try to convince Tanzania to join the U.S.-led boycott of the 1980 Olympics. What I do remember was going with my father to meet him at the airport. There were hundred, or perhaps thousands of enthusiastic Tanzanians who also showed up to greet the boxing champion. They jumped over barricades, and met him in a cheering crowd as he emerged from the plane, sending up cries of "Ali!". What I remember was seeing this crowd and seeing their excitement and realizing he was their hero. His accomplishments made them proud. Made them feel like they counted. Because he was black. Because he was Muslim. Because he was one of them. I didn't have the words to describe it then, but it was at that moment that I understood that representation matters.

Previous Follow Friday: The Battle of Tyndarus Between Rome and Carthage Was Fought in 257 B.C.

Subsequent Follow Friday: The Second Syrian War Started in 259 B.C.

Follow Friday     Home