Concerning Books
Mar. 18th, 2007 06:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrasteI have a new desk with a new computer, and a new mouse. I mention this because the mouse has UST printed on it in big letters. This may be why I chose this desk in the first place ...
Anyway, I digress. Yesterday I killed a lot of time at work by converting the old MSWorks database listing every book I read between the ages of 14 and 22 into a text file. (I no longer have access to any software that will read the file as intended, but by opening it in Notepad and deleting the resulting gobbledegook, I've at least preserved the contents.) It makes for fascinating reading on it own account ...
- I'm surprised to find that I was over my Anne McCaffrey phase before I turned fourteen, because there's only one Pern book on the list. Also amazed that I'd read all of Cynthia Voight's Tillerman cycle by then, barring The Runner which my mother didn't let me have until that year. I was a precocious wee thing.
- My records are impressive but incomplete. There are at least half a dozen books I know I read during the relevant time period that aren't recorded. Most of these are Anne Rice - I read her novels furtively, mostly in the early mornings before the rest of the family was awake, because I knew my parents wouldn't approve. Apparently I was so paranoid I didn't put them in the database at the time. Memnoch the Devil appears in its proper place, because by then I'd moved away to university. And after that I stopped reading Anne Rice.
- Speaking of Anne Rice: gracious, I read a lot of awful books in my teens. Terry Brooks! David Eddings! R.A. Salvatore! Dragonlance! (No offense to anyone who loves the above series. I still have a huge crush on Raistlin Majere myself.) I refuse to lump Robert Jordan in with the rest of the bad fantasy. His books were not terrible last I checked, merely interminable.
- I also read many excellent books of many genres. Tim Winton, Tad Williams, Dianna Wynne Jones, and all the Terry Pratchett, Aiden Chambers and Barbara Hambly I could lay hands on.
- After The Lord of the Rings, Barbara Hambly's Windrose Chronicles are my most-reread books. There is a reason the Fourth Doctor is my favourite, clearly.
- Science fiction is definitely more of an adult passion for me than fantasy, probably because a lot of the sf I read early in my teens didn't click for me. (I never took to Andre Norton, for instance.) In the gap between Year 12 and uni I read Julian May's Saga of the Exiles, and after that I never looked back.
- I still have an intense aversion to the books I had to read for school and hated - chiefly The Chocolate War, Sons and Lovers and The Mayor of Casterbridge. And yet for some unknown reason I read Beyond the Chocolate War voluntarily. I've avoided D.H. Lawrence and Thomas Hardy like the plague, though.
- On the other hand, I still have nothing but warm feelings for Lord of the Flies, To Kill a Mockingbird and Cloudstreet. Score three for the English curriculum. I also appreciate the many books that various teachers recommended to me when they saw how much I loved reading - that's how I was introduced to Aiden Chambers, and how I became the only person in class to read the sequels to My Brother Jack.
- Most of my favourite books from school, though, were 'liberated' from the English storeroom rather than studied. There were stacks of class copies just sitting there gathering dust, because they were considered impossibly advanced for modern students. Because I was the principal's daughter I just took whatever I wanted. That's how I was introduced to 1984, The Great Gatsby and An Imaginary Life, among others.
- I never did get around to reading the last few Dorothy Sayers Whimsey books - the ones with Harriet Vane in them, that is. I think I was saving them up! Time to correct the oversight next time I go to the library.
- The best thing about not being a grad student any more (you know, other than not being quite literally insane from stress) is how much more fiction reading I get done. I read fewer novels during my undergrad years, but still respectable numbers. Sometime towards the end of 2002 I stopped keeping records, before starting up again in late 2005. Reconstructing from memory, I think I read no more than a couple of dozen books while between databases.
- Now that I have two new bookshelves installed in my flat and my collection is slowly but steadily migrating from my parents' place to mine, I need to do some serious rereading. Time to find out if the books that were awesome when I was fourteen are still awesome.
Anyway, I digress. Yesterday I killed a lot of time at work by converting the old MSWorks database listing every book I read between the ages of 14 and 22 into a text file. (I no longer have access to any software that will read the file as intended, but by opening it in Notepad and deleting the resulting gobbledegook, I've at least preserved the contents.) It makes for fascinating reading on it own account ...
- I'm surprised to find that I was over my Anne McCaffrey phase before I turned fourteen, because there's only one Pern book on the list. Also amazed that I'd read all of Cynthia Voight's Tillerman cycle by then, barring The Runner which my mother didn't let me have until that year. I was a precocious wee thing.
- My records are impressive but incomplete. There are at least half a dozen books I know I read during the relevant time period that aren't recorded. Most of these are Anne Rice - I read her novels furtively, mostly in the early mornings before the rest of the family was awake, because I knew my parents wouldn't approve. Apparently I was so paranoid I didn't put them in the database at the time. Memnoch the Devil appears in its proper place, because by then I'd moved away to university. And after that I stopped reading Anne Rice.
- Speaking of Anne Rice: gracious, I read a lot of awful books in my teens. Terry Brooks! David Eddings! R.A. Salvatore! Dragonlance! (No offense to anyone who loves the above series. I still have a huge crush on Raistlin Majere myself.) I refuse to lump Robert Jordan in with the rest of the bad fantasy. His books were not terrible last I checked, merely interminable.
- I also read many excellent books of many genres. Tim Winton, Tad Williams, Dianna Wynne Jones, and all the Terry Pratchett, Aiden Chambers and Barbara Hambly I could lay hands on.
- After The Lord of the Rings, Barbara Hambly's Windrose Chronicles are my most-reread books. There is a reason the Fourth Doctor is my favourite, clearly.
- Science fiction is definitely more of an adult passion for me than fantasy, probably because a lot of the sf I read early in my teens didn't click for me. (I never took to Andre Norton, for instance.) In the gap between Year 12 and uni I read Julian May's Saga of the Exiles, and after that I never looked back.
- I still have an intense aversion to the books I had to read for school and hated - chiefly The Chocolate War, Sons and Lovers and The Mayor of Casterbridge. And yet for some unknown reason I read Beyond the Chocolate War voluntarily. I've avoided D.H. Lawrence and Thomas Hardy like the plague, though.
- On the other hand, I still have nothing but warm feelings for Lord of the Flies, To Kill a Mockingbird and Cloudstreet. Score three for the English curriculum. I also appreciate the many books that various teachers recommended to me when they saw how much I loved reading - that's how I was introduced to Aiden Chambers, and how I became the only person in class to read the sequels to My Brother Jack.
- Most of my favourite books from school, though, were 'liberated' from the English storeroom rather than studied. There were stacks of class copies just sitting there gathering dust, because they were considered impossibly advanced for modern students. Because I was the principal's daughter I just took whatever I wanted. That's how I was introduced to 1984, The Great Gatsby and An Imaginary Life, among others.
- I never did get around to reading the last few Dorothy Sayers Whimsey books - the ones with Harriet Vane in them, that is. I think I was saving them up! Time to correct the oversight next time I go to the library.
- The best thing about not being a grad student any more (you know, other than not being quite literally insane from stress) is how much more fiction reading I get done. I read fewer novels during my undergrad years, but still respectable numbers. Sometime towards the end of 2002 I stopped keeping records, before starting up again in late 2005. Reconstructing from memory, I think I read no more than a couple of dozen books while between databases.
- Now that I have two new bookshelves installed in my flat and my collection is slowly but steadily migrating from my parents' place to mine, I need to do some serious rereading. Time to find out if the books that were awesome when I was fourteen are still awesome.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-18 07:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-18 07:42 am (UTC)I never managed to finish Sons and Lovers, though. I thought the prose was kind of pretty until I got to about a third of the way through and felt like I'd read an interminable number of words and nothing at all had happened.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-18 02:56 pm (UTC)Ha! I read all of those too - except Anne Rice, I've never liked vampires and only read the first one. I think I still have all of the Belgariad, because I rarely throw books away and, well. I have a nostalgic fondness for it still, but Terry Brooks! so, so, awful, and every book exactly the same. And R.A. Salvatore and his angst ridden Dark Elf! How I loved that poor, tormented Dark Elf.
- After The Lord of the Rings, Barbara Hambly's Windrose Chronicles are my most-reread books. There is a reason the Fourth Doctor is my favourite, clearly.
I just finished the third Windrose book yesterday! fantastic, especially the first. But I've found Barbara Hambly in general kind of hit and miss -- do you have any other favourites of hers?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-18 04:34 pm (UTC)It's only fair to say that a lot of the set books I thoroughly enjoyed. Ones that come to mind are Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and
It's only fair to say that a lot of the set books I thoroughly enjoyed. Ones that come to mind are Jane Austen's <i>Pride and Prejudice</i> and <i?Northanger Abbey</i>, and RD Blackmore's <i>Lorna Doone</i>.
Completely unrelated…
Date: 2007-03-21 06:23 am (UTC)Thanks for the Yami sound track. Could you send me (or post for the world to see) the list of songs and the reasons behind them, please. I have made my own assumptions but would like to know what you were thinking.
Thanking you