A Wrinkle in Time (Time Quintet, #1)
I read this book a very long time ago, so long ago that I don't even remember when or where, and I usually remember exactly those kinds of details. The only things that I remembered from my first go round were these: the name Charles Wallace on a dark and stormy night, a man with red eyes, and a sense of something terrifying that was too big for me to understand. Since that (unknown) date, I've had this book in the back of my mind as this large, mythical thing, and I never knew why.
It's a horrible shame that I missed the right window to read this as a kid. I was too young the first time, too old the second. Don't get me wrong. I loved it, read it in about two hours. But I'd lost that sense of horror and wonder that was the only thing left from my first read, that sense you get as a kid that the universe is a vast and wonderful place and that you'll never understand it, that things can just appear fully formed out of nowhere, and they're perfect and right, and that's they way it will always and should always be.
Man, I wish I was a kid again, just to get that back without even trying.