Booking Through Thursday

Who is your favorite female lead character? And why? (And yes, of course, you can name more than one . . . I always have trouble narrowing down these things to one name, why should I force you to?)

There is only one: Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bennet. She is feisty, funny, serious, sympathetic, won't-be-downtrodden, thinks intelligently and feels passionately. She is also stubborn, prejudiced, arch and (temporarily) short-sighted. Her recognition of her failings, particularly of her prejudices, is heartwarming and her confrontation with Lady Catherine de Bourgh should inspire anyone faced with a bully disguised as a member of the great-and-good. But the chief thing about Lizzie is that she's so human that men and women fall in love with her.

It's no wonder that Mr Bennet says, when she turns down the obsequious Mr Collins's offer for her hand in marriage (a marriage that would keep the Bennet house in the family):

'Well, Lizzie, from this day henceforth it seems you must be a stranger to one of your parents.' He looks at her while she nervously awaits his decision. He keeps her waiting ... then he says: 'Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins ... and I will never see you again if you do.'

Mr Bennet's deep love for his favourite daughter, and my favourite female lead character, lights up this scene.

Booking through Thursday

All other things (like price and storage space) being equal, given a choice in a perfect world, would you rather have paperbacks in your library? Or hardcovers? And why?

My father used to throw paperbacks away ... and I rescued them. I couldn't bear the idea of books being thrown away, but he came from a generation that thought paperbacks were rough replicas of their lofty hardback originals and didn't deserve a shelf life (on his shelves).

But I love paperbacks. They're lighter in your pocket (or bag, or suitcase) and they cost less to send to a friend. Often they have better covers so they look prettier on your shelves and their spines bend more easily ... paperbacks every time for me. (Even though it is lovely, as a writer, to see your work in hardback it really isn't necessary, or particularly green.) I think there'll be fewer and fewer hardbacks as paperback publishing becomes more and more sophisticated. There are some beautiful trade papebacks out there in the world, with front and back flaps and wonderful production values. Long live the paperback.

Booking Through Thursday

Today's questions are:

1 What fiction book (or books) would you nominate to be the best new book published in 2007? (Older books that you read for the first time in 2007 don’t
count.)
2 What non-fiction book (or books) would you nominate to be the best new book published in 2007? (Older books that you read for the first time in 2007 don’t count.)
3 And, do “best of” lists influence your reading?

Fiction
1 The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell
2 The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney
3 The Needle in the Blood by Sarah Bower

Non-fiction
The Gift by Lewis Hyde (I haven't quite finished it, but it just can't go wrong.)

The first two in fiction were published in paperback in 2007, as was The Gift. I hope that's not cheating! And on the copyright page of Sarah Bower's book, Snowbooks write: 'Proudly published in 2007', which is lovely, isn't it?

Am I influenced by 'best of' lists?
Yes, I think I am. Although I'm more influenced by blog reviews and friends saying, 'You just must read this.'

Booking Through Thursday, on Saturday ...

... This week’s question is suggested by Island Editions:

Do you have a favourite book, now out of print, that you would like to see become available again? (I have several…)

Mine is The Agony and the Ego (click on the title for secondhand amazon copies ...) which is an utterly wonderful book (Penguin PLEASE reprint). It is a series of essays by writers of fiction on how it is and what it is to write; on why they do it; where their inspiration comes from; on what they love and what they hate about writing ... and so so much more. And it isn't at all about ego, although it is a bit about agony ... .

Here is my rather hopeless photograph of the cover:

Booking Through Thursday, Oh Horror!

What with yesterday being Halloween, and all . . . do you read horror? Stories of things that go bump in the night and keep you from sleeping?

I thought about asking you whether you were participating in NaNoWriMo, but I asked that last year. Although . . . if you want to answer that one, too, please feel free to go ahead and do both, or either, your choice!

I had to watch Pulp Fiction through my fingers ... and I can't read horror fiction at all because, like almost all the fiction that I read, it lives on in my mind and I can't get away from it. (And, unlike almost all the fiction that I read, I long to get away from it!) Ambrose Bierce's An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (which you can download as an ebook for free HERE) is the closest I've ever got, and it's not horror in the Pulp Fiction blood-guns-and-guts sense.

And as for writing a 50,000-word novel in a month, the idea gives me as many nightmares as a horror story would if I read one. But if anyone else wants to have a go, go HERE. The National Novel Writing Month (no, I didn't know either ...) begins today.

And so, back to writing a few hundred a words a day ... .

Booking Through Thursday

Here's today's:

COMFORT FOOD
Okay . . . picture this (really) worst-case scenario: It’s cold and raining, your boyfriend/girlfriend has just dumped you, you’ve just been fired, the pile of unpaid bills is sky-high, your beloved pet has recently died, and you think you’re coming down with a cold. All you want to do (other than hiding under the covers) is to curl up with a good book, something warm and comforting that will make you feel better.

What do you read?
(Any bets on how quickly somebody says the Bible or some other religious text? A good choice, to be sure, but to be honest, I was thinking more along the lines of fiction…. Unless I laid it on a little strong in the string of catastrophes? Maybe I should have just stuck to catching a cold on a rainy day….)

It's simple.

Two books occured to me immediately: ALICE's ADVENTURES in WONDERLAND because not a word is wasted, you wouldn't want to stop even to look out of the window, let alone to feel sorry for yourself. It's funny, surreal, delightful, diverting, would remind me of my father reading to me and spirit me away from all my troubles.

The other book is AFTER YOU'D GONE, Maggie O'Farrell's first novel - which, in part, wouldn't cheer me up, but it is funny at times - and at times I laughed and cried at the same time. It's such an all-enveloping book that I would have to forget what was happening to me, even if it was, at least partly, because I found myself submerged in another's difficulties and sadnesses.

Although isn't that what so often helps? I'm not the only one? My troubles aren't half as bad as hers? Will she make it? (You see I've forgotten about myself already.) By the way, this edition is a bound proof ... which I absolutely can't remember how I got.

Booking through Thursday ... on Friday

Just caught up with Booking Through Thursday (thank you Simon at Stuck in a Book)... where a weekly bookish question is posed. Here's this week's question:

When growing up did your family share your love of books? If so, did one person get you into reading? And, do you have any family-oriented memories with books and reading? (Family trips to bookstore, reading the same book as a sibling or parent, etc.)

It comes with the heading INDOCTRINATION, although I don't think of what happened to me as indoctrination, more as wonderful memories. My father read me Alice's Adventures in Wonderland when I was about four or five. I remember the green cloth cover (yup, still green, faded now in a strip where the sun's got to it, with a red half-moon at the top and Tenniel's illustration of Alice shaking hands with the mock turtle, 1954 Macmillan edition ... obviously I've still got it, I've just checked those details) and I can still recite (decades later):

You are old father William, the young man said,
And your hair it has turned very white.
And yet you continually stand on your head,
Do you think at your age that is right?

I blame Father William for the yoga I took up, and still take up ... and although I'm sure the verse is not word-perfect (I haven't checked) it's pretty close, and that's after fifty+ years ... . My father - and his name was William - also read me Through the Looking Glass (extra details: Alice and the red and black queens in the half-moon, 1956 edition) when I was about five or six and I can remember the room (white-pillared gas fire, him in an armchair, me on the floor, or sitting on his knee, Tenniel's illustrations, his voice, smell-of-book heaven).

These readings alone are responsible for my love of books, my belief in the power of fiction sometimes to solve problems that real life can't, and the fact that I write fiction now. (And the fact that I believe that absolutely anything can be the subject for a work of fiction.) They're also responsible for my love of oral storytelling.

My parents also subscribed to World Books (do they still exist?) which meant that an exciting parcel arrived - how often? - every two weeks? - with a novel inside it which, once read, was proudly added to the bookshelves. Lark Rise to Candleford was a favourite title of mine, for its poetry. I can't remember the subject matter of Flora what-was-her-name's novel, but I know I read it all those years ago. Thompson! That's what she was called.

Years later, when yearning to write but not daring to take time off work, my father lent me some money so that I could. When I took him a cheque to pay him back, he said, 'Thank you, but I don't want it, darling. Think of me as your first publisher.'

I still do.

PS: Edited to include: after reading the replies to this week's BTT, I want to add that the day our local librarian said to my mother that I'd read everything in the children's section, so I'd have to move on to the books in the adult section (aged 9) is still one of the proudest days of my life!