Who First Made You Fall in Love With Literature?

The Today show on NBC has been featuring teaser clips of the film adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey this week. One of the clips that caught my eye is the fateful first meeting between Christian Grey and Anastasia Steel. 

 Ana, played by Dakota Johnson, opens the scene by telling Christian (Jamie Dornan),"Earlier you said that there are some people who know you well. Why do I get the feeling that that is not true?"

After a tense pause (and a dramatic locking of the eyes between the two, of course), the moment is interrupted by Christian's secretary announcing his next appointment.

"Cancel it, please. We're not finished here," Christian says, before turning the tables on Ana, and asking, "I would like to know more about you… you said you're an English major. Tell me, was it Charlotte Bronte, Jane Austen, or Thomas Hardy who first made you fall in love with literature?"

After Ana admits she's a Hardy fan (Christian had pegged her as an Austen girl), he offers her an internship… and the rest is BDSM history. You can watch the clip here: 

If Mr. Christian Grey were to pose that same question to me I wouldn't have chosen any of those authors. While I love Austen, Bronte, and Hardy,  I fell in love with the written word at a much younger age. In the third grade I picked up my first book by Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods and found myself transported to the world of Ms. Wilder's childhood. I loved and still love the imagery found in those pages like this: 

Aunt Docia's dress was a sprigged print, dark blue, with sprigs of red flowers and green leaves thick upon it. The basque was buttoned down the front with black buttons which looked so exactly like juicy big blackberries that Laura wanted to taste them. Aunt Ruby's dress was wine-colored calico, covered all over with a feathery pattern in a lighter wine color. It buttoned with gold-colored buttons, and every button had a little castle and a tree carved in it.

Aunt Docia's pretty white collar was fastened in front with a large round cameo pin, which had a lady's head on it. But Aunt Ruby pinned her collar with a red rose made of sealing wax. She had made it herself, on the head of a darning needle which had a broken eyes, so it couldn't be used as a needle anymore.

Today marks the 148th anniversary of the birth of Laura Ingalls Wilder, and I couldn't think of a better way to celebrate than to pull the copy of Little House in the Big Woods from the shelf in my living room and curl up with a cup of tea and a warm fire reliving the start of my love affair with literature.