Fruit, and book meme

[nineveh_uk]

The progression of fruit marks the turning of the year. Blood oranges mark that one day winter will have an end. True spring begins with asparagus.* Last week I purchased the first English Discovery apples (the best apple), and English plums. Driving to Cambridge on Friday afternoon, the sloes in the hedgerows were distressingly blue. Opening my bedroom curtains this morning I saw that the first leaves on the bird cherry trees have turned red. Only two, but still: the harvest is passed, the summer is ended, and soon I have a fortnight off work.

*I know, not a fruit.

In the meantime, have a meme about books. I can’t imagine that anyone wants to know my Drink of Choice while Reading (A: Depends on the circumstances in which I am reading, so now you know anyway), but there are more interesting questions.



A. Author You’ve Read The Most Books From
B. Best Sequel Ever
C. Currently Reading
D. Drink of Choice While Reading
E. E-Reader or Physical Books
F. Fictional Character You Would Have Dated In High School
G. Glad You Gave This Book A Chance
H. Hidden Gem Book
I. Important Moments of Your Reading Life
J. Just Finished
K. Kinds of Books You Won’t Read
L. Longest Book You’ve Read
M. Major Book Hangover Because Of
N. Number of Bookcases You Own
O. One Book That You Have Read Multiple Times
P. Preferred Place to Read
Q. Quote From A Book That Inspires You/Gives You Feels
R. Reading Regret
S. Series You Started and Need to Finish
T. Three Of Your All-Time Favourite Books
U. Unapologetic Fangirl For
W. Worst Bookish Habit
V. Very Excited For This Release More Than Any Other
X. Marks The Spot (Start On Your Bookshelf And Count to the 27th Book)
Y. Your Latest Book Purchase
Z. ZZZ-Snatcher (last book that kept you up WAY late)

Comments

[oursin]

I

[nineveh_uk]

Probably the key one is the second attempt at Swallows and Amazons, aged around 7/8 and when it 'stuck', whereas I didn't like the first time. And then I became a total S&A addict and was off not simply on enjoying reading and stories, but really, really, REALLY enjoying reading and the books that I was reading being vital parts of my mental life.

A few years later, at middle school, it would be the discovery of The Lord of the Rings, and more than a decade later than that, of Gaudy Night.

The next one is probably about due to strike.

[ironed_orchid]

O

[nineveh_uk]

OK, this is the point at which I give up and say, Gaudy Night, because really, Gaudy Night. I first read it in 2004 (must check my diary and see if I can find the exact date), and it got me from the start to the extent that for the only time ever I did not mind the 59 minute change for my train (you could see the one you had just missed pull out as you entered the station). And I have re-read it regularly since. It is brilliant. I have a spare copy of the same edition so that I will always have a nice one.

Oh, and Bored of the Rings. I read that about a million times when I was 12. Greater love hath no man than he will listen to his 12 year old daughter telling him all the jokes of Bored of the Rings when he hasn't even read LotR.

[castiron]

Q, please.

[nineveh_uk]

I've done an extensive Q on LJ here, which I now see doesn't actually quote much. I still can't find a pithy quote in Kristin Lavransdatter, which runs more to quotable paragraphs than sentences. And I really ought to be able to come up with something from Gaudy Night. Hmm, I think that I, rather than the books, may be the problem.

So I shall switch to film, Babette's Feast, which is from a short story, so it can count, and which I know all the subtitles to. And I know that "I was the chef at the Cafe Anglais" doesn't mean a lot outside the context of the story to people who don't know it, but within it it does, and for me it also represents all the films watched at home when I was growing up, and watching this one regularly because we all loved it, and because it is wonderful.

[azdak.livejournal.com]

Q, please! And feel free to mention any other books that have given you "feels"/inspiration, as well.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Well done! You have managed to pick probably the hardest question. But I shall endeavour to tackle it boldly.

[azdak.livejournal.com]

Boldly and honestly! You need have no secrets from us.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Yes, about that bank robbery last week...

But this is the hard one - and the interesting one (I am resolutely not answering Gaudy Night to everything because that would be too easy). And so this has ended up being rather long. I don't really go for "inspired" or "feels", at least not in those terms - because in other terms, and to my own themes, I do.

“Feels”... On the level of sheer emotional/sentimental response, I am bizarrely unable to read How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix (http://www.bartleby.com/42/659.html) without getting emotional. I do not know why, though I like heroic last stands, I can only assume it is brilliantly manipulative. Reading aloud, I can feel my facial muscles starting to twitch by half-way through the first verse. Silently, my cheeks are going in verse 2 as Browning is enumerating the tackle. And either way I cannot get beyond So Joris broke silence with ‘Yet there is time!’ without my eyes getting tearful. Then it pulls back a bit (landscape is not that moving), but I am paralysed again by "We'll remember at Aix!" and if I'm reading aloud I actually have to stop here to recover. Basically, the whole thing can be summed up by a bizarre personal susceptibility to anything spoken by Joris, who leaps in to deliver more urgent blinking on his next line. If I were an actress, I would use this in scenes when I had to make myself cry.

Inspirationally, I am going to go for Mary Renault’s Fire from Heaven, which I read with its sequels in February half term in the upper sixth when, as with every single holiday that year, I had a stinking cold. It was an age to be receptive to canon slash, and it was certainly inspirational on that front, but actually the passage that really struck me wasn’t ‘Hephaistion stared out to the mountains of Chalkidike’ – I always think of it beginning with that, but when I look it up, that is only a sentence in a sea of UST. It’s not the powdery olive blossoms, either, which is always my second attempt to find it. Anyway, there was a paragraph of landscape description somewhere that not only made me think “Wow!” at the writing, though despite having applied to read English I think it was one of the first times I really consciously understood how seriously good writing was different, but made me think “Wow! If I could write something that good, it would be really satisfying,” and it really made me want to be able to do that. I suppose now I’ll have to read the whole thing to find it again.

[Cuts giant screed about Kristin Lavransdatter. I should give Undset her own post one day.]

Practically speaking, though, my main inspirational text is not in fact a book (much as I owe to Harry Potter and Harriet Vane for getting me into writing fanfic, which has been an excellent and enjoyable training ground), but a line from the film The Hour of the Pig, "Look to the boy!" spoken by the witch about to be hanged/burnt, and which being in my mind as I went upstairs to the lavatory half-way through, and by the time I came back down again (which I would like to stress was not longer than usual) I had my own story that I had to write, and it was probably the first time that my own story was really important to me, and in fact that one still is, though about neither boys nor pigs.

[azdak.livejournal.com]

Fire from Heaven! I adored that at a similar age, although unlike you I didn't make the leap from "I love this" to "The writing is really good".

It's funny how certain fictional situations strike the imagination with all the force of an iron bar, even when they're only half present in the original text. That may be the fastest-conceived story in the history of writing, though!

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

W?

I first read the title without the comma, which was slightly perplexing.

[white_hart]

I feel that the non-comma version would involve a lot of Jeanette Winterson, she seems to have a bit of a fruit thing going on.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

At key times of the year, oranges absolutely are the only fruit.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Definitely my inability when going to bed to make my way past a piece of paper without reading what's on it. Related to this, picking up a random book (often en route to bed) to look at a little bit of it, and ending up reading all of it, except in the wrong order.

(Ed. And tonight I have just done both with Three Go to the Chalet School)

Some would argue its my ability to spend larger than justified amounts of time writing fiction about other people's characters ;-)

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

Re. Ed, well I can think of worse Chalet books (in which Mary-Lou can do no wrong), and at least it's short.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I do like Three a lot. Mary-Lou is actually fun, because what makes you want to slap someone at 15 is quite engaging at 10. Especially as the 10 year old gets squashed a lot more andisn’t the trusted confidante of Joey, the Head, etc.

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

I still want to slap her at 10 but in Three, the powers that be *do* squish her. I like Verity's stubbornness too, and I like Clem, though she is not required to undergo Chalet brainwashing/processing.

[bookwormsarah.livejournal.com]

Am interested in G and R.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

G: Atonement, by Ian McEwan. I held off reading this for AGES because my father went on about it so much. Dad and I have a lot of overlapping taste in books, but honestly he raved about this so much (and liked McEwan in general) that it just annoyed me and I didn't read it out of pique. And then I did read it, on the train to Leeds, and it really was that well written*, and interesting, and unputdownable, and I admitted that I was wrong not only to myself, but to Dad.

R: Every post-apocalypic novel that's ever given me nightmare. I see the Guardian had another Brother in the Land survivor the other day.

*Except for the line about the firm caress of the bias fabric, but I've ranted about that before ;-)

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

We need to know all of them! :-)

Are you going to Oxonmoot, BTW? Or shall we meet up anyway?

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I meant to reply about Oxonmoot to say (a) I don't know - I may well book a day, but things have been a bit up in the air and I haven't been in a mood to commit, but (b) I am definitely in Oxford that weekend, and would very much like to meet up one way or the other.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Maybe G&Ds in Little Clarendon Street?

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Always a good spot!

[joyeuce]

H, please!

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Under Plum Lake (http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/products/lionel+davidson/under+plum+lake/8859411/), by Lionel Davidson. Allegedly a children's book, I didn't read it until my early 20s. It is utterly one of a kind, evocative, illusionary, devastating sad, and with a hallucinogenic quality that suggests the author had a good time in the 1960s. It's about a boy called Barry who is narrating retrospectively the adventures he had on holiday in the same place the previous summer when he was saved from drowning by a boy from an incredible undersea world who took him on amazing adventures after which - and this is the sad bit - every day life can never be the same again. It's completely bizarre and deserves to be far better known.

[joyeuce]

I have loved Under Plum Lake since I was about 11! Puffin published an anthology of extracts chosen by Kaye Webb, called I think I Like This Story, and it contained part of the skiing bit, ending with "So he knew. He knew what could happen." My school encouraged us all to read the anthology and bought all the books in it for the library, and I read most of them; this was also how I discovered Joan Aiken. I spent hours in the playground pretending my friends and I were in Egon. But that ending has always knocked me for six. Oh Barry. Oh Dido. I used to think the ending in an ellipsis meant that Dido had come for him, but now I'm not so sure.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

My sister found UPL in the school library, and when she acquired a second-hand copy, persuaded me to read it. My interpretation is that the ellipsis doesn’t mean that Dido has or hasn’t come for Barry, because Barry is still en route to whatever is going to happen, but that what matters is Barry’s intention, that he knows his ‘death or Egon’ scenario has a very real chance of meaning death and picks it anyway.

[littlered2.livejournal.com]

I love it when figs appear in shops and Cox and Russet apples start showing up more often. Hurrah for autumn!

I, please.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

There is much to be said for Cox and a good fresh Russet, but Discovery beats them all!

I is on dreamwidth (http://nineveh-uk.dreamwidth.org/146404.html?thread=486116#cmt486116), but I will add another - my first Terry Pratchett, Mort, which I loved. Re-reading since, it doesn't stand up to Pterry's later work, but it and its later companions brought me huge pleasure in my teenage years, when I had grown out of children's books, but was (largely*) resistent to adult classics.

*I was resistent to adult classics that were marketed as amazing romance. Like Wuthering Heights... I loved Vanity Fair.

[marginaliana]

Ooh, G?

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

G above is Atonement (http://nineveh-uk.livejournal.com/320764.html?thread=4784892#t4784892), but for very reasons, I'll also give Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, which is not great literature, but I read because it was popular among fellow students in 2000 and GOF was going to come out, and I just got enormous fun out of the books and out of the fandom for years afterwards, and still do.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

T, please!

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I feel that inevitably this sort of quiz gets a bit repetitous, because one is bound to quote favourites for lots of the same questions. So I'm going to go for favourite books of childhood, all of which I loved and all of which can be credited with making me into a person who read more books, and all of which I recall vividly today and can quote: The Maggie B (http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Maggie-B-Irene-Haas/dp/0689500211), Mrs Plug the Plumber (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mrs-Plug-Plumber-Happy-Families/dp/0140312382/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1408137163&sr=1-1&keywords=Mrs+Plug+the+Plumber), and this edition of The Twelve Dancing Princesses (http://cizgilimasallar.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/erroll-le-cain-twelve-dancing.html)

Oh, and Gaudy Night :-)

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

Thank you! If it had been 'one favourite' I don't think I'd have chosen it, but 'three out of a group of favourites' sounded like it could be made interesting, and indeed it was. I haven't read any of those! I think I'd struggle to pick favourites from that type of book - I can't think offhand of many illustrated children's books from my childhood at all, even though I must have had some. I must have been a very word-oriented reader, I suppose.

[(Anonymous)]

All the ones I wanted are asked for already, so M please?

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've had a hangover because of any book! But there are certainly some that I have unwisely read late and felt rotten because of. Recently, Cotillion, which is unputdownable in its silliness and kept me up until 2am. More seriously, a friend keeps all the Anne McCaffreys of his youth in the guest bedroom, including the ones that I didn't buy because they were getting rubbish, and whenever I stay I am inevitably dark-eyed and exhausted the next day, because I can't help reading them late into the night. Often after a certain amount of drinking.