Jumping on the #Bookaday bandwagon
The last few days, I've kept seeing people on Twitter flash up this picture:
Since it doesn't seem to be trying to sell me anything I figured I may as well join in, and some of the categories beg a bit of discussion so I'll do it here where I can waffle more than 140 characters allows.
Favourite book from childhood ties in nicely with the YouGov poll of favourite children's books from the other day, which I would have blogged about earlier in the week if I'd had time. Maybe another day. Childhood covers a long period though, from Meg and Mog to Biggles Flies Again, via Little Women and The School at the Chalet (as with the poll of favourites, most of my reading material seems to have been from long before I was born). My favourite book aged 4 would be quite different from my favourite aged 11, and the ones I look back on with fondness now may not have been my favourites at the time. I still love (and quote regularly) both Winnie the Pooh and Paddington, but I'm going to choose a book called Dragon in Danger, by Rosemary Manning, which was from a series about a little girl who befriends an old (and as I recall, most polite) dragon. I suspect it had quite a profound effect on my later reading habits. (As an aside, I just searched for the author's surname online as I could only get as far as Rosemary unaided, then realised if I'd wheeled my desk chair 3 feet to the right I could have stuck my head out of the study to read the spine of the book on one of the hall bookcases. Modern life, eh?)
The one that's springing to mind as a bargain is Poverty: A Study of Town Life by Seebohm Rowntree, I can't even remember how much it was but certainly less than half an hour's pay at the shop I worked at around that time. Not the first (1901) edition, I think it's from 1909 but I was delighted with it then and I'm happy to own it now. It had a blue cover I think, too (that one's in the bookcase on the other leg of the L-shaped hall. It would require getting up and walking).
Who's my favourite author today? That's the question I'd need to answer before I could pick my least favourite book by them. I read reviews, I take notice of other people I know who like the author, so I tend not to bother with the books I don't think I'll take to, hence even my least favourite is one I'll probably have enjoyed. Maskerade by Terry Pratchett's a contender, though.
Most books in the world don't belong to me. The library book I'm halfway through (Red Planet Blues by Robert J Sawyer) for instance. There are some books in the house that were bought for OneMonkey, and some I've borrowed from my dad, but since both fall under the 'what's yours is mine' heading, I don't think that counts.
Now number 6 really perplexed me: The book you always give as a gift. As though there are books that simply everyone will enjoy. I can't think of any book that I've bought more than one person as a gift except possibly OneMonkey and The Nephew, and even then it might have been my sister that bought it for OneMonkey. Isn't part of the joy of giving and receiving books the personalisation behind it? I read this synopsis and thought of you. Or I read this book and knew you'd enjoy it so I'm passing it on. Maybe there are lots of people out there with whole swathes of friends and family with similar tastes in literature. Though if that's the case, why are they not sharing?
I'll get ahead a couple of days by being equally perplexed at number 7 (why wouldn't I know the contents of my bookshelves intimately? Good grief!), and confessing that there is one Terry Pratchett novel that got overlooked when OneMonkey and I amalgamated our books many years ago and removed the duplicates. Somehow we've never quite got round to ditching that second copy of Witches Abroad.
So there you go, a 'fascinating' (maybe if you squint) romp through a week and a bit of book-related wittering. I would love to know anyone else's responses, to all or a selected few of the prompts themselves, or indeed to my answers. But don't let it distract you from your reading time.