A Meme

I have just been tagged by a. for the following meme about books.

4 childhood books

I read so many books when I was young; in fact I was a voracious reader. By the time I was 10 I had read all the books in the children’s part of the Central Library in Edinburgh. It is quite difficult to remember titles out of that vast number, but these are ones that jumped into my mind.

Emil and the Detectives: a 1929 novel for children written by the German writer Erich Kästner. This is the first book that occurred to me. and is about an 8 year old boy on his way to Berlin who loses his money and joins up with the detectives trying to get it back.
The Adventures of Brer Rabbit and Friends. Joel Chandler Harris collected together these stories from folk tales of people of African-American descent.
Brer (brother) Rabbit is a cunning rabbit who always manages to outwit the others such as Brer Fox. I really loved these stories, but cannot remember at what age I read them , but pretty young I think; in fact they might even have been read to me, but I don’t think so as I was a very early reader.
The Arthur Ransome Swallows and Amazon books of stories of children in the Lake District of England; the books were aimed at an older readership than the Enid Blyton ones, and I remember a lot of sailing on (I think) Lake Coniston. I always enjoyed their adventures, whereas I was never much impressed with Enid Blyton’s books and read the latter only when I was ill as they did not require much concentration.
Winnie the Pooh, and the follow up books – The House at Pooh Corner, When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six. by A.A. Milne, illustrated by E.H. Shepherd. This is a collection of delightful poems about a bear called Winnie the Pooh. I keep catching a glimpse of memory of a book called Strawberries and Cream which I thought might also be Winnie the Pooh, but it is not mentioned on Amazon and I could not find it on a Google search. If anyone knows of this book and can tell me about it I would be delighted to hear. Again these are books I read when very young.

4 authors I will read again and again

Anthony Price who wrote a series of spy fiction featuring David Audley principally with a Russian adversary. Not only were the books very readable, but the characters and the stories developed over time. I also learned snippets of things that were included along the way, such as warships, motte and bailey sites, Catharism and so on.
Iain M. Banks who writes science fiction books. He also writes novels under the name Iain Banks, but it is the science fiction ones I am choosing here, because he created the Culture series. I have already re-read them more than once, (and also re-read his novels in a rather more piecemeal way). The Culture ones have an excellent internal consistency and a good progression from one book to the next. Of the novels, The Bridge has a particular resonance as the bridge is the famous Forth Bridge, and the bulk of the story is about what is going through a man’s mind as he lies in a coma following an accident just approaching the bridge. He therefore has a fantasy about the bridge being a place in which he works and meets other people, only occasionally visualising this patient lying on a bed with a heart monitor beeping away.
Christopher Brookmyre who writes books full of blood and guts and so much humour. His character Jack Parlabane is my favourite character, but there have been others equally well drawn .
Ian Rankin for his Rebus novels. Now that Rebus has retired from the police, I am going to go back to the beginning as it is fascinating to watch the character develop and also to watch the author’s writing develop.


4 authors I will never read again

Dan Brown I thought The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown was a pretty awful book with so many inconsistencies and can’t understand why it (and the even more awful film) was so successful. At least the book was readable if you applied suspension of disbelief. I am ashamed to say I watched the film but it was only to see Roslin Chapel and The Louvre. I then bought Angels and Demons to take on a short holiday, but gave up on it and chucked it into a waste paper bin largely unread.
Quintin Jardine who writes about an Edinburgh-based policeman. I find his writing to be unbelievable, and intensely boring.
Carl Hiaasen I am sorry to put him under this category as I used to watch out eagerly for his next book, but now I find that each one is just the same as the last. He rants about corruption in Florida politics, about Disney, and about the destruction to the Everglades.
Kathy Reichs whose forensic pathologist books I sought after for a while. I now find they have become increasingly formulaic.

the first 4 books on my to be read list

Giorgio Bassani’s The Garden of the Finzi-Continis. This is one of those classic books made into a film that I have always meant to read.
Di Lampedusa’s The Leopard. This is another classic book set in Sicily which is lurking in my bookshelves. I have now found out that there is a DVD of the film of the book, and I might try that too.
Jo Nesbo’s The Redbreast. This author was recommended to me by a. because she knows of my interest in crime novels from other countries, and this is my first Norwegian one.
Seeking Whom He May Devour by Fred Vargas. This author was also recommended by a. I very much enjoyed the first one - can’t wait to read this, her second one.

the 4 books I would take to a desert island

Tolstoy’s:La Guerre et la Paix (War and Peace) I first read this book when I was on a school exchange to Paris at the age of 16. Because I had a lot of time on my hands, this book kept me well occupied. The interesting thing for me was that the original was written in russian and french because the aristocrats in Russia spoke french, so in the french translation, the parts that were in french in the original were put in italics in the translation. I reckon that re-reading now after 50 years would keep me out of mischief on my desert island.
For the same reason, I would take Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables in French – if only I could find a copy that wasn’t issued simplified for French schoolchildren.
Now, I know this is a cop-out, but I would have to take the Bible in the King James version. I have always meant to read this through (but the road to hell is paved with good intentions!
A good poetry compendium. We had A Poet’s Quair edited by Rintoul and Skinner when I was at school, and I was lucky enough to find one second hand on Amazon, that obviously dated back to the seller’s schooldays.

The last lines of one of my favourite books

From The Bridge by Iain Banks

I sigh.

I really do sigh; I feel the resistance of the tucked-in bedclothes as my chest rises higher than normal. The tube which enters me through one nostril slides across the fabric over my shoulder., then slips back as I relax and breathe out. I sighed!

I’m so surprised I open my eyes. The left lid trembles, gummed up, then clears. Within seconds, though it all looks a bit shaky and bright for a while, everything settles down.

Andrea is sitting less than a metre away, her legs drawn under the small seat. One hand rests on her thigh, the other is holding a small Styrofoam cup to her mouth, which is open, those lips parted. I can see her teeth. She is staring at me. I blink. So does she. I waggle my toes and – glancing down to the bottom of the bed – see the white jacket move up and down as I do so.

I flex my hands; damn rough blankets they have here. I am hungry.

Andrea puts the cup down, leans forward a little, as though she does not believe what she is seeing; she looks from one of my eyes to the other, apparently checking for signs of sense in both (not an unreasonable precaution I’ll admit). I clear my throat.

Andrea’s whole body relaxes. I once watched a chiffon scarf drop from her fingers, and I do not recall that it flowed more gracefully. Her face loses a whole layer of worry, just like that; I – I have remembered my name – am almost embarrassed. She nods slowly.

“Welcome back”, she says, smiling

“oh yeah?”

I shall tag D. and A. who read my blog, but to whom I don't link.
Would the shrink and Mousie care to join in too?