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My Life in Books: Series Three: Day Six

Laura blogs at Laura's Musings, and has been the brainchild between the year-long celebration of Elizabeth Taylor throughout 2012.  Thanks, Laura!

Jodie is better known to most of us as Geranium Cat, and was (I believe) one of the first bloggers I met in person.  Lovely!

Qu. 1.) Did you grow up in a book-loving household, and did your parents read to you? Pick a favourite book from your childhood, and tell me about it.

Laura: My mother was an avid reader and always had something on the go. To this day I can picture her curled up in her "reading chair." She made sure I learned to read before starting school, and took me to the library on a regular basis. I outgrew the library's juvenile fiction before I was old enough to receive an adult library card, but was given one with a special designation that allowed me to check out all but the most "mature" books.

When I was very young I received several books by Joan Walsh Anglund as gifts, and I adored them. They are small books that fit well in a child's hand, with very sweet illustrations and titles like Love is a Special Way of Feeling and A Friend is Someone who Likes You. Their central message was all about being loved and caring for others. I remember having them read to me, and then reading them on my own. They were a regular source of comfort, and even now their covers bring back warm feelings.

Jodie: Yes and yes. I adored books and was encouraged and read to by everyone around me. One grandfather read Winnie-the-Pooh and Christmas Carol to us “with voices” and Granny was wonderful both at reading Alice and at making up stories. My favourite book from my early childhood was Barbara Sleigh’s Carbonel, about a girl who buys a witch’s cat and has to free him from a spell. It’s the first book I can remember reading to myself, because everyone else was too busy that day. I’m sure learning to read wasn’t quite that straightforward, but it’s a book I still love.

Qu. 2.) What was one of the first 'grown-up' books that you really enjoyed? What was going on in your life at this point?

Laura: I read Jane Eyre one summer, I think I was about 12. At that point, this was the longest book I'd ever read. I entered a local bookstore's summer reading competition, so who knows why I chose such a long book! I remember taking it with me to summer camp, partly because I was enjoying it, but more than anything I wanted to win the competition! I didn't win, but I did well enough to earn a small gift certificate. And Jane Eyre definitely sparked my interest in classics and made me more willing to approach books others might consider difficult.

Jodie: As soon as I was old enough to go to the library alone I was sent every week (not that I needed encouragement) to choose books for my father to read on the theatre switchboard when there were no lighting changes and, inevitably, I read them too. So I grew up on a diet of crime and science fiction – H.P. Lovecraft, James Blish, John Creasey, Robert van Gulik…I definitely shouldn’t have been reading van Gulik’s The Haunted Monastery at whatever age I was then (probably about 12), I was distinctly shocked by it, but I’ve got it on my bookshelf now, so I think it should get the “first grown-up book” category. Choosing those books certainly shaped my own reading habits though, because I had to be discerning; I couldn’t simply take 4 books off the shelf and hope that they’d do.

Qu. 3.) Pick a favourite book that you read in early adulthood - especially if it's one which helped set you off in a certain direction in life.

Laura: In the mid-1990s, I joined a book group with a lot of fantastic women, all older than me and great role models. One of them introduced me to The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley, a retelling of the Arthurian legend from a female perspective. At that time, I was just becoming aware of the way history, myth, and legend can differ based on who's telling the story. Mists sent me off on a period of reading alternative points of view and learning about the often unsung role of women in history.

Jodie: I think that has to be The Once and Future King by T.H. White, because after I read it I became quite obsessed by myths and legends, something which has never changed. Following the trail started by White led to so much other literature, from his contemporaries like Sylvia Townsend Warner to his sources, such as Malory and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I love multi-layered fiction, and I think White was my first experience of it. Um, the only thing that’s wrong with this answer is that I read it when I was 12, but it really is the well from which all my interests spring.

Qu. 4.) What's one of your favourite books that you've found in the last year or two, and how has blogging changed your reading habits?

Laura: In the recent past I've discovered two wonderful authors: Winifred Holtby and Molly Keane, who wrote two books that landed on my list of all-time favourites: South Riding and Good Behaviour. Both are Virago Modern Classics, which have had a profound impact on my reading habits (and my pocketbook)! When I started blogging in 2007, I read a lot more contemporary bestsellers, mixed with some classics but mostly ones typically taught in school. I discovered Virago Modern Classics through LibraryThing, and have been introduced to so many fine women writers I never would have discovered otherwise.

Jodie: The recent favourite is easy – Angela Thirkell’s August Folly, the first of her books that I read. I came to blogging almost through despair – that’s hardly too strong a word. Five years ago I had read everything that I could face on the library shelves, a nauseating cocktail of chicklit, inferior crime writing and poorly-written fantasy. I was utterly miserable but I decided that the Internet must be good for something by then and started looking for recommendations by people who liked the same sort of books as me and bombarding the library with requests for books – oh yes, and buying them. I no longer wait for a good book to come to me by chance, I actively pursue them, as far as I can afford to, and the proportion of newly published books I read has gone down considerably. I still read crime and fantasy, but I can be much more discerning, and I won’t finish a bad book just for the sake of having something to read.

Qu. 5.) Finally - a guilty pleasure, or a favourite that might surprise people!

Laura: This is difficult to answer because I don't usually read for escape, or for guilty pleasure. But since most of my reading tends to be "heavy" stuff, I do need a break occasionally. Then I find that mystery or crime novels, which I rarely read otherwise, can be just the ticket. Most recently I escaped into Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl and have enjoyed C.J. Sansom's Matthew Shardlake mysteries, set in the Tudor period.

Jodie: Well, not exactly guilty, but this one has not only spent the last year on my bedside table, but I regularly take it with me when I’m away from home. It is The Illustrated NFL Playbook, subtitled: “Pro football explained in diagrams, charts and definitions”…I should explain for those to whom the letters “NFL” mean absolutely nothing that this is American football, as mysterious to the uninitiated as cricket (which I loathe, along with virtually every other form of sport I can think of). All I can say in my defence is that it has proved a wonderfully safe topic to steer conversations towards on those occasions when my three large menfolk disagree (sometimes joined, I’ll admit, by me) on quantum computing, or whether pecorino is better than parmesan, or what to do about the Palestinian question. At such times all I have to say is, “Who do you think has the better defensive line, the 49ers or the Bears?” and they’ll be throwing statistics around for hours. The funny thing is, I’ve started to really enjoy it…

And... I've told you the other person's choices, anonymously. What do you think these choices say about their reader?

Jodie, on Laura's choices: There were two books I didn’t know at all. Googling Love is a Special Way of Feeling by Joan Walsh Anglund shows that it looks very sweet, and ideal for parents to read with their child sitting on their knee – a book for sharing. I’d guess that this is someone who grew up in surroundings where books were treasured. South Riding - Winifred Holtby and Good Behaviour - Molly Keane? Well, I suspect that this person’s bookshelves may have quite a few volumes with dark green spines and probably a collection of Persephones too? And that they probably like secondhand bookshops and would much rather read a book published last century than the latest bestseller. In The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley, I think I might detect a fellow lover of myths and legends? Definitely a romantic, at any rate, though, taken along with Jane Eyre, perhaps a romantic with a sense of restraint. Something these books have in common is the strength of their female characters: even quiet Jane refuses the safe option, while Sarah, Aroon and Morgaine struggle against the dictates of their worlds. Finally, Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn – this is the other book I don’t know, but I think all these choices tell me that this person is interested in how people and relationships work and in the role of woman in society, and is someone who looks for emotional integrity in their reading.

Laura, on Jodie's choices: I felt a bit anxious to begin with, because I'd never heard of Barbara Sleigh or Robert van Gulik. Thank you LibraryThing for filling me in! This reader strikes me as an anglophile whose lifelong reading has been shaped by a love of fantasy. I was excited to see The Once and Future King as their early adult read, since I was strongly affected by a woman's version of the same tale. The Angela Thirkell is really different from their earlier choices, which makes me think this person is open to new experiences at least in reading, and possibly in life as a whole. But I have to say, The Illustrated NFL Playbook had me scratching my head. I'm guessing this person has a great sense of humor, having thrown in a selection so different from the others. There has to be an interesting explanation, and I can't wait to read their what they have to say!

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My Life in Books: Series Three: Day Five

Lisa blogs at A Bloomsbury Life, and gives me daily life-envy.  But it's impossible for me to hate her, because she's so funny and sweet and has Persephone Books in her blog banner.

Jane is better known to most of us as Fleur Fisher, and her distinctive style and excellent taste make her a daily must-read.

Qu. 1.) Did you grow up in a book-loving household, and did your parents read to you? Pick a favourite book from your childhood, and tell me about it.

Lisa: One of my earliest memories is seeing my mother curled up with a book in a Saarinen Womb chair while my four younger siblings wreaked chaos around her. She had escaped to somewhere else completely and I remember wishing I could follow her! She was a voracious reader and read to me all the time. I had my Enid Blyton phase and my Jean Plaidy phase but it was The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles by Julie Edwards (i.e. Andrews) that clicked on a light bulb for me. The children in the book use “thinking caps” to take them to the fantasyland of the Whangdoodle. It struck me that our imaginations are the only super-powered vehicle we need to make our dreams come true. And that if we work toward something and think positively and don’t give up, there’s no limit to what we can achieve.

Jane: My parents were both readers, and there were always books in the house. Over the years they built up a collection of books that they wanted to keep, and borrowed many others from the library. My baby book records that my first walk was through the Morrab Gardens to the public library. 

I remember being given classics for birthdays and at Christmas, being encouraged to spend my pocket money on books rather than sweets, and regular library visits. Best of all though were the book than my mother had saved, hoping that she would have a daughter to share them with one day.

And the very best of those was Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. It was a lovely hardback edition, but we’ve read it so many times between us that it is coming to pieces. I wanted a sister, but she never arrived, and so a story of four sisters was quite irresistible. I loved that they were so different and yet they were such a close family. I loved their different stories, and I felt so many different emotions as I watched their lives unfold. It was all utterly real to me – it still is – and I wasn’t at all surprised when I discovered that the book was inspired by the author’s own family.

Qu. 2.) What was one of the first 'grown-up' books that you really enjoyed? What was going on in your life at this point?

Lisa: I read Atlas Shrugged when I was twelve partly to be precocious and partly because a friend of my parents had asked me, “Who is John Galt?” and of course I had to find out. A lot of Ayn Rand’s moral relativism went over my head but her strong-willed protagonists were potent role models for a shy middle-schooler whose life resembled The Diary of a Wimpy Kid. I think it was the first time I realized that I had a choice in life: I could follow the herd or I could follow my heart. And that if I chose the latter, I needed to stop worrying about what people thought of me and start making my own damn decisions.

Jane: I remember, in my first or second year in secondary school, an English exam with a comprehension test that used a passage from Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy. I loved his rich, descriptive prose and I picked up a copy of the book from the library not long after. I loved the language, I loved reading about country life, and I loved the story that Hardy span around Bathsheba Everdene and her three suitors.

After that I read my way though every book by Thomas Hardy I could find, and I looked closely at anything I came across that was dressed in the black garb of Penguin Classics. The Brontes came next, then Wilkie Collins, then George Eliot. And when I saw a book that looked very similar, but was dressed instead in green, I picked that one up too, and discovered Virago Modern Classics. But that’s another story.

Qu. 3.) Pick a favourite book that you read in early adulthood - especially if it's one which helped set you off in a certain direction in life.

Lisa: Easy. David Copperfield. I read it sophomore year of college and for a long time afterwards, it was my favorite book. It’s all about the triumph of character over circumstance. Dickens tells us, “Look. Life is a struggle, but it’s important to suck it up and keep plugging along because unimaginable joy could be just around the corner. And if things go wrong, it helps if you try to find the funny.”

Jane: When I came home from university for Christmas one year my father told me that he’d bought my mother a book. The Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Penman: a big historical novel about Richard III and the end of the Wars of the Roses, painting a more sympathetic than usual picture of the last Plantagenet king of England. I wasn’t at all sure she’d like it. In those days my mother usually read romances and family sagas, historical novels, and I had no memory at all of her reading historical fiction.

When I came home next, for Easter, the bookmark was still just a few pages into the book. Just before I left my mother told me that she didn’t like it at all, but she thought that maybe I would. I started reading on the train back to London and I was smitten. It brought a period and characters I had known little about to life and it brought it home to me that history was rewritten by the winners, that there could be very different interpretations but on the same facts. I’d read a little historical fiction before then, but since then I’ve read a great deal more.

Qu. 4.) What's one of your favourite books that you've found in the last year or two, and how has blogging changed your reading habits?

Lisa: I read Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig a few years ago and its intensity still haunts me. I think of Zweig’s writing style as Sigmund Freud meets F. Scott Fitzgerald. It’s psycho glamour. In the novel, an innocent act sets off a chain of events which spiral to a horrifying conclusion. The tension is so palpable that it feels like it was written in one long breath. I’ve now read everything he’s ever written.

And yes, blogging has started to change the way I read. Blogs are the 21st century version of a 19th century literary salon. I love hopping from site to site and listening to a miscellany of different voices and perspectives – the mash-up can create some incredible connections. Lately, I’ve been doing the same thing with books. Right now, I’m alternating between Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks (dense, fascinating) and Hilary Mantel’s Bring Out the Bodies (a thrill ride). Reading both together feels like a richer experience.

Jane: There was a point in my life, a little over six years ago, when I had to store a lot of my books in boxes in the attic. I decided I needed to catalogue them, so I knew what I had and where it was, and after a bit of looking around I decided that LibraryThing was just what I needed. Not long after I’d started entering books an invitation to join the Virago Modern Classics Group landed. It was wonderful to find that there were so many people, in so many places, who still loved those green books, and those people led me to new books, new publishers, new places to find books. Blogging came a little while later, as I found some lovely blogs when I explored ‘similar libraries’ and found myself wanting to write a little, to fix the books I was reading in my mind.

All of that didn’t so much change my reading habits as make me realise that because there were so many books out there I had to be a little more selective than I’d been in the past. And that it was always worth picking up an unknown title by an unknown author if the book caught my eye, just in case it was a lost gem waiting to be revived by one of those lovely reprint houses.

And that brings me to Love in the Sun by Leo Walmsley. I picked it up, from the Cornish fiction bookcase in the Morrab Library, because I knew people with the same name. There didn’t seem to be a connection, but the dust jacket was beautiful and an enthusiastic introduction by Daphne Du Maurier (a friend and neighbour of the author) told me that I had to read it. I found one of those lost gems.

A man and a woman from the north-east were in love, but their situation was complicated, so they ran away to Cornwall. They leased an old army hut and struggled to live off the land, while he wrote a novel. Love in the Sun is fact rewritten as fiction, honestly, thoughtfully and beautifully written. It was out of print when I read it, but I was thrilled to hear from the Walmsley Society that they now have it back in print, in a very nice new paperback edition.

Qu. 5.) Finally - a guilty pleasure, or a favourite that might surprise people!

Lisa: I am starting to feel guilty that I might be too insistent that my friends read Beverley Nichols. His Merry Hall memoirs are so wickedly funny. Beverley writes like he’s Noel Coward lost in a P. G. Wodehouse novel and I want to live in every house he ever writes about. If I’m feeling clever-deficient, I read a few pages of him and my wit comes snapping back.

Jane: I don’t really believe in guilty pleasures. Books can offer so many different things, and I think the trick is picking the book that offers what your head and heart need at any given moment. And if sometimes that’s great literature and sometimes its chick lit, so be it. I’m not sure what might be surprising either, because I can see a thread that runs through pretty much everything I read.

But maybe this is the time to confess that I sometimes read to Briar (my border terrier) from The Dastardly Book for Dogs by Rex and Sparky. Santa Claus left it for her a few years ago and she has learned a great deal from it. How to pick a pill out of peanut butter; what to do during a thunderstorm; building a bed out of your owner’s laundry; the formal rules of fetch; making toys out of household items ...

And... I've told you the other person's choices, anonymously. What do you think these choices say about their reader?

Jane, on Lisa's choices:My initial reaction was that I have no idea, and that I don’t think we’ve ever crossed paths.
Then I thought a little more and I decided:
1) This is someone who is very purposeful, and not afraid of hard work.
2) This is someone who lives in a city or a big town, not in the country or by the sea.
3) This is probably a cat person rather than a dog person.
but it wouldn't surprise me at all of I'm wrong on all counts.

Lisa, on Jane's choices: How fun! Let me put my Miss Marple hat on…and away we go. First of all, Little Women suggests someone who understands the struggle between family devotion and the desire to be independent and live your own life. With Love in the Sun, I'm envisioning someone who is passionate about adventure and life’s simple pleasures. Including The Sunne in Splendor with its empathetic perspective of Richard III makes me think this person doesn’t rush to judgment and has faith in the power of redemption. He/she also possesses a great sense of humor about the absurdities of modern life (The Dastardly Book for Dogs) and has a deep and haunting empathy for the vagaries of human nature (Far From the Madding Crowd).

So to recap: This person is fair-minded, optimistic and always gung-ho for adventure, has a keen sense of the absurd, a deep passion for domesticity and family and looks on life's tribulations as being exciting opportunities for personal growth. Who says the perfect person doesn't exist?!

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My Life in Books: Series Three: Day Four

Stu is otherwise known as Winston's Dad, and knows more about literature in translation than anyone I know.  His blog is a fantastic resource for the literature of so many countries.

Florence blogs at Miss Darcy's Library, and I am grateful to her for getting me finally to read some Rosamond Lehmann, after she led a Reading Week devoted to this author earlier in 2012.

Qu. 1.) Did you grow up in a book-loving household, and did your parents read to you? Pick a favourite book from your childhood, and tell me about it.

Stu: I did very much grow up in a bookish house. My earliest memories are of my dad reading on the chair, in the car waiting for my mum, and his hour long visits to toilet at home with his book reading! That said our tastes in books are very different - my dad is an escapist reader, thrillers westerns and spy novels. He also reads maybe double the number of books I do.  My grandparents were also very bookish - my gran was a crime fan so holidays were spent reading but also looking through her collection of old paperbacks with their slightly creepy sixties and fifties covers.  Her favourite writer was Agatha Christie.  My other gran was an English teacher and headmistress so her shelves open my eyes to classics and although I don't read as many as I should these days, I discovered names like Saki and Dickens in her shelves. Also she maybe inspired one of my favourite childhood books, which is The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien, as she had a old version of The Lord of the Rings that I found very enticing as a kid with its cover and Runic writing - so I was given The Hobbit when I was about ten as The Lord of the Rings was maybe too had for me at that age. I fell in love with the idea of far away places and adventures in them.

Florence: I grew up in a diplomatic household, and every two to three years we’d up stakes and move to another country. It was difficult keeping up transatlantic friendships, and I learnt early on to rely on books rather than people for comfort and companionship. It helped that wherever we lived, there were always books all around us. Every night after dinner my siblings and I gathered on my parents’ bed for story-hour, and my mother read aloud from all the great classics. When we grew too old for children’s books she swapped them for Jane Austen, Margaret Mitchell, or Tanizaki. It was only when I finished high-school and moved to Paris that the tradition finally – sadly – came to an end.

If I had to pick one book from my childhood (oh how hard it is to choose!), it would probably be E. Nesbit’s The Enchanted Castle. I was very keen on tales of magic and adventure, and I read and enjoyed a great many of them, but only The Enchanted Castle had statues that came alive in the moonlight, and an invitation to dine with the Greek gods on an island in the middle of a lake!

Qu. 2.) What was one of the first 'grown-up' books that you really enjoyed? What was going on in your life at this point?

Stu: I always say my first truly grown up book... well I have mentioned The Hound of the Baskervilles in a post on my own blog, but maybe I'll mention another book I read around same time (that would be about fourteen or fifteen) that maybe gives a clue to my later reading tastes, and that is The Plague by Albert Camus.  A dark book about how people react when a plague breaks out and I, in a way, associate with this as my parents had got divorced in my early teens and my mum remarried and I gained a brother and sister and a step father who I didn't and still don't get on with. So a book about people struggling with life maybe rung home as my teens years weren't the happiest for me, in reflection, as I never felt at home in my late teens so writers like Camus then the beat writers gave me a outlet on my life. Damn that sounds depressing but it has affected the rest of my life.  There were of course good times but as a growing teen I felt alone at times and angry at the world.

Florence: I was twelve when I first read Jane Eyre. I tried Pride and Prejudice first and found Austen so dry that I gave up at the end of the first page, vowing never to open the book again (luckily, I have gone back on that vow multiple times since then!). We were living in Cape Town at the time, and I vividly recall the sunshine pouring into my bedroom and the way I leaned over and put P&P back on the shelf, with a small but decided plunk. For some peculiar reason, that is the image that has stayed with me, rather than the drum-roll moment when I first opened Jane Eyre. And there should have been a drum-roll! For I fell utterly, irremediably, head over heels in love with Jane and Rochester. It was the first time I met a heroine who was neither a princess nor the most beautiful girl in all the kingdom – and yet, poor, obscure, and plain as Jane was, she was wonderful! So full of fire, and so unquenchable... She and Rochester are still my favourite literary couple.

Qu. 3.) Pick a favourite book that you read in early adulthood - especially if it's one which helped set you off in a certain direction in life.

Stu: Well, early adulthood saw me leave Cheshire where I grew up and move to Northumberland where my dad and step mum had relocated.  Still angry, I ended up eventually living in Germany with a German girl. At this point my angry young man part of my life had come to its end really, and I asked my dad as he came over to Germany to visit to bring some books over from the wonderful Barter Books.  So my dad, the escapist reader, brought half a dozen books, a couple of which were books in translation by German writers as I was in Germany. One of these was The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse - a coming of age novel about games of intelligence and maybe living outside the world just for intellect.  Now, how to bring this into my own life... well, as many of you may know or may not I support people with learning disablities and have done since I returned to England nearly twenty years ago. I do this job because I love to see the people I support achieve things and have found my personality is suited to this job: I'm very patient and a great reader of people's emotions and a good listener, so I know how to help the people I support. Anyway I'm sure there is a link between Hesse and my job!

Florence: As a teenager I was very fond of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Emily trilogy, which I always preferred to the Anne of Green Gables series. Emily was so much more mysterious than Anne, and I loved New Moon and the aunts. In fact, though I couldn’t have put it in so many words then, the Emily books – and especially the last one, Emily’s Quest – appealed to me because it combined everything that is most important to me: a quaint old house, a large and eccentric family, and writing. That’s always what bugged me the most about Anne Shirley: she was a failed writer. And she accepted that. Whereas Emily never gave up. She was going to be writer whether people liked it or not! I wanted to be like her – and I still do..

Qu. 4.) What's one of your favourite books that you've found in the last year or two, and how has blogging changed your reading habits?

Stu: Oh I'm going to twist the rules here and pick a publisher, if I can Simon, I want pick Peirene Press. I have loved all the books in the last few years, and as you may know they publish books in translation that have been called movie books because they take a couple of hours to read. But the main thing I love about them is, yes, they are short, but every book they have published has felt so much more than its size and if it wasn't for Meike the publisher, they wouldn't reach us in English. So yes, they were the first publisher to send me a book for the blog but also the reason the blog is here to highlight books in translation.  I hope that is ok - if you need to push me I'll name Stones in a Landslide as my favourite book by them but it is like picking your favourite child.

Florence: It was my best friend who pushed me to start a blog: it amuses him when I get all worked up about a book and do my best to get him to buy my latest favourite. Because he lives far away in the States, opportunities for heated debates about books are not as frequent as we would like, so he suggested a blog as a way of getting around that... And I am very glad he did! Apart from the many lovely blogs that I’ve come to know, and the countless fascinating titles I have added to my TBR list, I would never have discovered A. S. Byatt or Mary Stewart if it weren’t for blogging, and they both (albeit in very different ways) make my life much happier!

Paradoxically, though, blogging has slowed me down: I have trouble starting a new book until I’ve reviewed the one I’ve just finished, and because I take forever to write up my reviews, I actually read less now than I did before. Moral of the story: be organized and don’t procrastinate!

Qu. 5.) Finally - a guilty pleasure, or a favourite that might surprise people!

Stu: Oh guilty pleasure - I think I may have mentioned this on the blog before but it is dog biographies, books like Marley and Me.  Damn, that is my credibility gone now there! No, the truth is the blog is named after my own dog Winston and I just enjoy a bit of escapism reading a story of a dog's life, although usually get upset at the end and I can't even watch the film Marley and Me without crying loads. I just love dogs - man's best friend and in my case they have often been my best friend over last twenty years, well til I met my darling wife

Florence: No surprises in store for anyone here! I think my tastes in books are a pretty accurate reflection of my personality. There isn’t much guilt involved either – I would perhaps refrain from mentioning my enjoyment of Georgette Heyer novels in certain academic circles, but all in all, I don’t think one ought to be made to feel guilty about reading, whatever one might choose to read. As a matter of fact (since the truth will out!) my guilty pleasure is watching American TV series, such as Friends and Gilmore Girls. Hmm. Please don’t hold it against me! 

And... I've told you the other person's choices, anonymously. What do you think these choices say about their reader?

Florence, on Stu's choices: This was a fascinating list of titles to analyse! Though judging a person by what they read as a child is not exactly foolproof, I think that in this case, the choice of The Hobbit is very telling: it points towards an imaginative and adventurous mind - a trait the other titles tend to confirm. For the adolescent reader's forays into French and German literature (Camus and Hermann Hesse), and the adult's appreciation of the Peirene Press's very diverse European publications, reveal an open, curious mind and a desire to explore beyond the confines of the English literary canon which seem in perfect accordance with the child's love of Bilbo Baggins's adventures through Mirkwood and the Misty Mountains. Lastly, I think my mystery reader probably has a soft spot for animals, a kind heart and a sense of humour, or they wouldn't like Marley and Me so much. Definitely someone I'd like to meet!

Stu, on Florence's choices: Well my partner guest I feel has a love for the old fashioned - Nesbit is a old fashioned children's writer from the golden age of kids' fiction. I feel this is reflected even more with the choice of Jane Eyre and the Emily series. The choices show me a reader that likes their classics but Byatt shows me they like modern fiction too but maybe with an orange tinge? I feel this reader is maybe a good few years younger than me as I watched Friends in my twenties and loved it as well but was maybe too old for Gilmore Girls. So I'm seeing a passionate classic fan that maybe loves strong female writers of the here and now, and maybe the occasional YA book.

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> El Bulli 2003-2004

Reviews El Bulli 2003-2004


Many readers are searching for lower price El Bulli 2003-2004 reviews before they order one. I think its a good idea to get a best deal. Firstly, Its better for you to see El Bulli 2003-2004 description, features and its details. You can directly see complete reviews and price

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