World Book Day
Mar. 4th, 2011 11:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ravenHere are some of my Thoughts On Books, you guys. I think books are great. I went years without reading fiction and then in 2009 I rediscovered the art of carrying a novel in my handbag, and now I think I must have been mad for not doing it for so long; so long without that fierce, entirely private joy that there is something special waiting just for me and all I need is a quite place to read. I love books. I think more people do than you think. I worked in a small independent bookshop for years and years and people used to come in and say, apologetically, I don't really read but have you got the latest Tom Clancy, or I don't really read but where's your true crime, and kids would say well I only really like Harry Potter. And I would say, we have those, this is a bookshop, welcome.
(One of my favourite customers was an elderly chap with a cane, always very well-dressed, who would come in and ask me to get volumes of Schiller in the original German. And I would call Penguin and HarperCollins and who knew who else and eventually I'd get them. And then he'd come in for them with his daughter and his daughter's daughter, who'd say things like, "Grandad, there's these books..." and his daughter would say, "Dad, don't you dare, you spoil her", and then she'd run outside to put money in the parking meter, and he and his granddaughter would share a significant look. And a little later he'd walk out of the shop proudly carrying his leather-bound volumes of German poetry and volumes one to four of Rainbow Magic Fairies.)
At school, for World Book Day I used to run the events. There was the book scavenger hunt, when I pinned the invitation to the ball at Netherfield Park to the noticeboard and hung the one ring off the bannister and put a bag of sherbet lemons on the head's door (and was hauled in by said head for unacceptable behaviour, but that is another story) and we ran votes on people's favourites. I used to read the library new accessions for sex and violence, and there are so many good books in the world.
Meme:
The book I am reading: The Wind's Twelve Quarters, a short story collection by Ursula Le Guin. I am about halfway through and I am really enjoying it. She's so good, Le Guin. So good. Listen to this:
But there was plenty of time. The summer evening would stay light; he could count on it. Lenient and sweet in their length are the twilights of a latitude halfway between equator and pole: no tropic monotonies, no arctic absolutes, but a winter of long shadows and a summer of long dusks: gradations and accommodations of brightness, attentuations of clarity, subtleties and leisures of the light.
Isn't that so lovely, so true? I love her: she can carry me home so easily in so few lines.
The book I am writing: Aha, I am never writing a book. I write fanfic. It's ridiculous how I don't write my own fiction at all. But, okay, here's a book I am not writing. I have in my mind not a story, but a setting: a bar, with mostly red lighting, in a city by the sea, in some future place. It's not a utopia and it's not a dystopia, it's somewhere between. It's in an ordinary suburban district with shops and houses and schools, and they're having parish board elections in this city, and for the first time, non-humans are running, and they're new and they have no campaign offices, so they're in this bar. I never write down the novels that live in my head!
The book I love most: I love so many books. Er, Three Men In A Boat, Jerome K. Jerome. But so many.
The last book I received as a gift: Shim sent me Cleaving, the second memoir by Julie Powell, because he knew I wanted to read it.
The last book I gave as a gift: I sentgavagai a copy of Red Plenty, which I haven't actually read myself (which is not like me - usually I make a point of only giving books that I liked!) but it is by Francis Spufford and she's a fan.
The nearest book on mydesk coffee table: The First Amendment: Cases, Comments, Questions. Sad but true. But almost as near: Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones, Aristotle's Nichomachaean Ethics, and, er, a deck of Rider-Waite tarot cards which have an ISBN which makes them a book for tax purposes. My bookcase is just at eye-level, so I can see about another fifty books. (I came to the US with six. Oh, dear.)
I am going to bed! I am so exciting.
(One of my favourite customers was an elderly chap with a cane, always very well-dressed, who would come in and ask me to get volumes of Schiller in the original German. And I would call Penguin and HarperCollins and who knew who else and eventually I'd get them. And then he'd come in for them with his daughter and his daughter's daughter, who'd say things like, "Grandad, there's these books..." and his daughter would say, "Dad, don't you dare, you spoil her", and then she'd run outside to put money in the parking meter, and he and his granddaughter would share a significant look. And a little later he'd walk out of the shop proudly carrying his leather-bound volumes of German poetry and volumes one to four of Rainbow Magic Fairies.)
At school, for World Book Day I used to run the events. There was the book scavenger hunt, when I pinned the invitation to the ball at Netherfield Park to the noticeboard and hung the one ring off the bannister and put a bag of sherbet lemons on the head's door (and was hauled in by said head for unacceptable behaviour, but that is another story) and we ran votes on people's favourites. I used to read the library new accessions for sex and violence, and there are so many good books in the world.
Meme:
The book I am reading: The Wind's Twelve Quarters, a short story collection by Ursula Le Guin. I am about halfway through and I am really enjoying it. She's so good, Le Guin. So good. Listen to this:
But there was plenty of time. The summer evening would stay light; he could count on it. Lenient and sweet in their length are the twilights of a latitude halfway between equator and pole: no tropic monotonies, no arctic absolutes, but a winter of long shadows and a summer of long dusks: gradations and accommodations of brightness, attentuations of clarity, subtleties and leisures of the light.
Isn't that so lovely, so true? I love her: she can carry me home so easily in so few lines.
The book I am writing: Aha, I am never writing a book. I write fanfic. It's ridiculous how I don't write my own fiction at all. But, okay, here's a book I am not writing. I have in my mind not a story, but a setting: a bar, with mostly red lighting, in a city by the sea, in some future place. It's not a utopia and it's not a dystopia, it's somewhere between. It's in an ordinary suburban district with shops and houses and schools, and they're having parish board elections in this city, and for the first time, non-humans are running, and they're new and they have no campaign offices, so they're in this bar. I never write down the novels that live in my head!
The book I love most: I love so many books. Er, Three Men In A Boat, Jerome K. Jerome. But so many.
The last book I received as a gift: Shim sent me Cleaving, the second memoir by Julie Powell, because he knew I wanted to read it.
The last book I gave as a gift: I sent
gavagai a copy of Red Plenty, which I haven't actually read myself (which is not like me - usually I make a point of only giving books that I liked!) but it is by Francis Spufford and she's a fan. The nearest book on my
I am going to bed! I am so exciting.
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no subject
on 2011-03-05 08:00 am (UTC)That was so sweet about the elderly gent and his two generations of descendents! When I worked at The Bookshop in Oxford, my favourite customer was a professor, I think he taught linguistics, we carried about four of his books, and he was just so ditzy, long fly-away white hair, scatterbrained as anything, brain the size of a planet but couldn't tie his shoelaces without help. He was always unfailingly polite, though, and could talk your ear off about a mind-boggling variety of topics. He always brightened my day!
I really ought to do this meme, too, but I'll have to wait until I get home! :D Oh, and BTW -- I would read the hell out of that story, if you ever decided to write it! It makes me think a little of Chaobell's Cheesecake and the Art of Political Warfare (http://needsmoar.chaobell.net/dingding/origfic/19-new-columbia/19-cheesecake-and-the-art-of-political-warfare), have you read it? It's one of my all-time favourite stories.
no subject
on 2011-03-09 04:48 am (UTC)no subject
on 2011-03-05 11:16 am (UTC)My bookcase is just at eye-level, so I can see about another fifty books. (I came to the US with six. Oh, dear.)
Oh, I know! I came to Scotland nearly 3 years ago with 10 books, and now I have well over 100. It would probably be more if I hadn't had to move residence every year...
no subject
on 2011-03-09 05:44 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2011-03-05 12:51 pm (UTC)The real point of this is that I'm stealing this meme. Also, I'm in love with your World Book Day scavenger hunt.
no subject
on 2011-03-09 05:45 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2011-03-09 08:05 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2011-03-05 10:21 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2011-03-09 05:45 pm (UTC)