Literary Nostalgia

[I'm reposting this from my Myspace page.]

Recently, my family visited DisneyWorld and I have to tell you, it was a blast. There is no place else in the world where everyone can be a kid again.

While visiting EPCOT, I had the strangest feeling. While I walking around the Spaceship: Earth ride [that is, the 'giant golfball' at the entrance to EPCOT], I was overcome by the memories and feelings I experienced when I went to EPCOT in 1984. I remembered the 14-year-old boy who thought the future was then, now, in the middle of EPCOT. And, strangely enough, I remembered the books I was reading while on that trip: the Star Trek Logs (can't remember which ones) and Arthur C. Clarke's 2010: Odyssey Two. The feeling was strong enough that, when I returned home, I thumbed through my old copies of the Star Trek Logs and 2010. Again, I was awash in the old feelings of 1984.

(Incidentally, wandering DisneyWorld while reading the first Harry Potter book has awoken in me all the cool, wonderous feelings I used to have reading SF. I remember, even in 1984, thinking that Clarke's books 2001 and 2010 were sooo far away. Well, we've past 2001 and 2010 is only 2.5 years away. So, with all the information at our fingertips, what's left in the world to create a sense of wonder? That's a topic for a different blog.)

This type of thing still occurs to me now that I'm an adult. I listen to a lot of audiobooks especially when I'm doing yardwork. I can be in certain parts of my yard and remember which books I was listening to: there's the Mystic River Tree (Dennis Lehane) or the Hell to Pay Hedges (George Pelecanos) or the LBJ Shrubs (Robert Caro's Master of the Senate).

Has that ever happened to y'all? What are the books and memories associated with them?