My Life in Books: Series Five: Day Six

Scott blogs at Furrowed Middlebrow

Anbolyn blogs at Gudrun's Tights

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.

Scott: Certainly no one else in my family was much of a book-lover, though adults did read to me. I learned to read rather early, and since no one around me felt that books mattered much, I was allowed to be wildly indiscriminate in my earliest reading. I loved books for the sake of books—cover images, typeface, the smell of new paper and ink—and not for their content (and sometimes I still do). The only book that stands out for me from early childhood is The Teeny Tiny Woman by Paul Galdone, which my oldest sister would read to me and over which we would become completely silly and giggly. Apparently I was already passionately concerned with the perils facing solitary spinsters!

Anbolyn: I was not raised in a book-loving household so I'm not sure how I came to love reading so much. My mom tells me that I taught myself to read before I went to school and I grew up yearning for knowledge and curious about the world, but I didn't read much in my leisure hours as a child. I much preferred to ride my bike or watch TV. The only reading I really did was at school and that's where I discovered a fascinating book about Egyptian mummies and death rituals. I remember being completely fascinated and checking the book out of the library during every class visit.

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?

Scott: My wildly indiscriminate reading included all sorts of inappropriate adult books—John Irving, Elmore Leonard, and even Jackie Collins among them (can you imagine a 12-year-old boy carrying Hollywood Wives around with him and no one batting an eyelash? it might explain all sorts of things about me!)—but since I rarely understood those, I doubt if I enjoyed them particularly. The first grown-up book I really enjoyed was surely an Agatha Christie—probably Sleeping Murder, which I still have in the battered, yellowed, late 70s paperback I must have acquired when I was 10 or 11.

Anbolyn: Gone With the Wind was my first grown-up book and I read it compulsively during my 7th grade year at school. I wasn't very happy in junior high school and didn't fit in with the rest of the girls very well and this is when I started to turn to books for escape. I immersed myself in Scarlett O'Hara's world and, though she may be a questionable role model for a teenage girl, I gained strength from her confidence and fighting spirit.

Qu. 3.) Pick a favourite book that you read in your 20s or early 30s - especially if it's one which helped set you off in a certain direction in life.

Scott: I was going to say Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, my favorite book for most of my 20s, and one I would re-read at least once a year. But although I still think Hemingway is brilliant on gender issues, he didn't set me off in any particular direction. I did not, for better or worse, become a bullfighter. So perhaps Iris Murdoch's The Black Prince is a better choice here. I read it in a British Women Writers course in college, and if it didn't immediately lead me into my current path, it must, along with the other books from that course, have laid the groundwork. Murdoch's novels create a universe all their own, and once you're in it, it has a way of leaking into your everyday life in strange and
wonderful ways.

Anbolyn: A book that made a great impression on me in my twenties was Tess of the D'urbervilles. I've never liked unrealistically happy endings and this satisfied my sense of literary honesty. Also, I hadn't read much British fiction up to this point but reading Hardy turned the tide. I began reading lots of Victorian fiction after Tess and eventually became a committed Anglophile.

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

Scott: One? Seriously? Well, I've already babbled about it endlessly on my blog, but I have to choose Tom Tiddler's Ground (aka Ask Me No Questions) by the unjustly forgotten Ursula Orange. A wonderful, smart, cozy, wartime village comedy that simply must be reprinted. It was books like that which brought me to blogging. I was obsessively exploring and listing British women writers most people hadn't heard of, and I wanted to share what I'd found. I didn't quite expect it to grow into the intimidating project it has become, but it's been amazing coming across so many kindred spirits. Blogging hasn't changed my habits all that much, apart from always thinking how I can best describe what I'm reading and which passages will make good quotes. Perhaps it's just made me more obsessive than ever.

Anbolyn: I read Angel by Elizabeth Taylor last year and it astonished me. I'd read Taylor before (At Mrs. Lippincote's) but wasn't quite persuaded by her writing. Angel made me a lifelong believer. It's flamboyant yet subtle, funny and sincere with a perfect ending and is now a great favorite of mine. I would probably never have heard of Elizabeth Taylor if it wasn't for blogs. When I started reading blogs back in 2007 or so I happened upon bloggers who were reading Persephone Books and Viragos and it opened up a whole new, exciting world to me. My reading tastes and interests were entirely transformed by the blogging world - thank goodness! I decided to start my own blog so that I'd have people to talk to about these new found passions as no one in my day-to-day life has been remotely interested in Persephone or Virago.

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

Scott: I don't really feel guilty about my pleasures (except perhaps the fact that I can polish off a dozen donuts in about a day and a half if I allow myself). Cozy mysteries, romances, girls' school stories—I'll cheerfully and guiltlessly admit to loving all of them. But it might be surprising to some that I spent 15 or 20 years obsessing over the most "highbrow," experimental Modernist literature—

Joyce, Woolf, Apollinaire, Eliot, Djuna Barnes, and so on—before discovering my inherent and irrevocable middlebrow-ness. I even have a post coming up in which I come clean about my undying love for the wacky, playful, unfathomable writings of Gertrude Stein.

Anbolyn: People are always surprised to learn that I love being scared and truly appreciate a good horror novel. Nothing gory, but the suspenseful, supernatural gut twisting kind that prevent you from getting a good night's sleep thrill me to pieces. The Winter People by Jennifer McMahon and I Remember You by Yrsa Sigurdardottir are two recent novels that scared me witless.

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

Anbolyn, on Scott's choices: First off, I'm not going to even try to determine this person's gender, age or nationality - too hard! This reader strikes me as being an inquisitive person, someone who likes a mystery, a bit of darkness to their stories and someone who likes a challenge. I think they must be intelligent and witty and that they enjoy examining the underside of life, peeking under the surface of polite society to see what human nature is really all about. I also see them as someone who finds joy in language, in how sentences, paragraphs and chapters are sewn together and they just might be a writer themselves. They don't follow trends or care about popular opinion - they are quite content with who they are and with what they like. I think they have a quiet confidence and a true love of literature.

Scott, on Anbolyn's choices: It sounds like I have a lot in common with this reader, and he/she surely has a touch of a dark side that I could completely relate to—I remember being fascinated myself by ancient Greek religious cults and rituals when I was pretty young. That dark side also shows itself in the reader’s guilty pleasure (which I’d never heard of, but which sounds irresistible). Gone with the Wind is a quite ambitious first adult novel for sure, and shows a taste for grand scale, drama, and romance, and the choice of Thomas Hardy shows that taste remaining even as he/she explored slightly darker authors (I also had several years of loving Hardy in my 20s). And finally, oh, Elizabeth Taylor, what a great choice—I know how excited I was to discover her. Since we have so much in common, I can only conclude that this reader has, ahem, impeccable taste!

My Life in Books: Series Five: Day Five

Nicola blogs at Vintage Reads

Barb blogs at Leaves and Pages

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.

Nicola: Yes, my parents read to me and the local library was at the top of our road so books were always on hand. I loved Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers and St Clare’s boarding school books as a child. Malory Towers was my favourite, who wouldn’t want to go to a girls boarding school in beautiful Cornwall with a tidal swimming pool amidst the rocks? I still have a weakness for a good boarding school book.

Barb: I defintely grew up in a book-loving household. Both of my parents were keen readers, and my mother read to me when I was very young, though this stopped once I was able to read alone, from six years of age or so, so my memories of books read aloud to me are rather foggy.

A favourite I do remember very well, and which I was most pleased to share with my own children, was My Father's Dragon by Ruth Gannett. My young self found it completely hilarious, and I can still recite the contents of young Elmer Elevator's pack, prepared with all eventualities in mind as he heads off to Wild Island in search of a baby dragon: chewing gum, two dozen pink lollipops, rubber bands, rubber boots, a compass, a toothbrush, six magnifying glasses, a VERY sharp jackknife, a comb and a hairbrush, seven hair ribbons of different colors, an empty grain bag with a label saying "Cranberry", some clean clothes, and twenty-five peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The uses Elmer finds for these items are completely unexpected. The illustrations are absolutely perfect, as well, and I can close my eyes and see the map of Wild Island, and the completely non-threatening, rather rotund baby dragon whom Elmer eventually does locate. Brilliant!

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?

Nicola: I’m not sure that Louisa M Alcott’s Little Women and Good Wives could be described as ‘grown-up’ books but I think they got me thinking about serious themes. I was profoundly affected by the death of Beth in Good Wives because I hadn’t encountered death in books before. That’s not to say Good Wives is all doom and gloom there is a lot of fun with Meg’s first attempts at home-making and the birth of her twins, Amy’s artistic efforts and Jo’s blossoming writing career. If I’m honest Good Wives has always been my favourite of the two!

Barb: Oh, this one is hard. I read voraciously and "above my level" all through my childhood. One book which stands out as perhaps one of the most enjoyable "adult" books read in youth was The Long Ships by Frans Bengtsson. I was in Grade 4, so must have been about 9 or 10 years old, and I found this on my father's bookshelf in a very tattered, well-read paperback edition. (I still have it, though it is now in many pieces and completely unreadable.)

The Long Ships is a glorious Viking Saga, following young Red Orm on many adventures, from his teenage capture by a group of raiders to his becoming part of the crew and his ups and downs as he pursues various quests, including becoming a guard in a sultan's harem, and being converted to Christianity in order to woo a king's daughter. Very hearty fare, this book, and I loved every word.

At this point in my life I was going through quite a wonderful year, if truth be told. I had a school teacher whom I absolutely loved, Mr. Ford, who was young and enthusiastic and had us doing all sorts of ambitious projects, such as going out into the school hallway and pacing off the actual size of a blue whale. He was a huge Greenpeace supporter, when that wasn't necessarily a mainstream sort of thing to be, and he shared his passion for environmentalism with his class. We'd never had a teacher like him before, and it was, literally, life changing. So many things "clicked" that year.

I also went to California that year (we went almost every year through my childhood, to visit my mother's family, driving for three days from central British Columbia, through Washington and Oregon and halfway down California to Fresno) and it was an unusually memorable visit. Instead of giving me a bunch of assignments to work on while I was gone, as other teachers had done, Mr. Ford handed me a stack of books. "Your only job is to read these," he said. They were all books on
California, about the Gold Rush and the California Grizzly and such I remember sitting on my grandparent's front porch, reading away with the scent of roses wafting around me. My uncle's night-blooming cereus cactus flowered during that visit; we all stayed up late to watch it unfold in the moonlight, and send forth its amazing fragrance. Quails in the garden, oranges and lemons on the trees, walking my grandfather's happy beagle Bugs - my assigned job during the visit, which I utterly LOVED - I took him on some very long walks - no one knew, or even inquired where we were going as we headed out - a bissful state of affairs which I look back on with a sigh for how the world has chaged, rollerskating with my cousins (I was awful at it and fell down continuously and spent my holiday decorated in knees-and-elbows bandaids), a trip to see the immense Sequoia trees at King's Canyon - it was a wonderful trip, and stands out in my mind as one of my best experiences of that year.

Qu. 3.) Pick a favourite book that you read in your 20s or early 30s - especially if it's one which helped set you off in a certain direction in life.

Nicola: I discovered Anne Bronte’s Agnes Grey in my twenties. It’s a little gem of a novel about the plight of a governess in Victorian England and it ends with a romantic reconciliation on a sunny day on Scarborough beach! Anne loved Scarborough so much that she spend her final days there and is buried in the churchyard which overlooks the beach. I visited many years ago and her grave was covered with fresh red roses.

Barb: Another tough one. Looking back, let's see... nothing exactly Life Changing, but I remember discovering Elizabeth Goudge in my mid-twenties, and being very much attracted to her philosophy, all about the "rightness" of creating a home and the importance of treating daily tasks with care and the importance of appreciating the ever-present good things in life, even while going through suffering and emotional turmoil. I was already married, and living in Alberta, and my husband and I were both going to college as struggling adult students; we dreamed of someday having our own house and farm, while living in a tiny basement apartment and counting our pennies, trying to stretch our meager funds and looking with apprehension at the mounting balances of our student loans. I read Elizabeth Goudge's Pilgrim's Inn at that time, and found it comforting and encouraging; the feeling of that book and its "message" that life is worthwhile and the little things do matter has stayed with me all of my life.

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

Nicola: I started studying for my English degree when my twins were six and didn’t finish it until they were around thirteen! I didn’t want to continue studying when I finished because I prefer to read for pleasure. One can only spend so long scouring Wuthering Heights for Marxist/Feminist/Freudian themes! I started the blog because I just wanted a place to talk about my literary tastes - American contemporary literary fiction, Victorian novels and of course, Jane Austen - and be part of a blogging community. The first blogs that inspired me were Yarnstorm (Jane Brocket mainly writes about baking, crafting, knitting and quilting, but she is is very good on books!), Cornflower, Becca and Bella and Random Jottings. If not for book bloggers I woud never have discovered Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead for which I am profoundly grateful!

Barb: In the last year or two, let's see...this is *really* tough. New to me quite recently are Elizabeth von Arnim, Elizabeth Cambridge, Rose Macaulay and O. Douglas, all of whom I find myself "collecting" and reading with supreme pleasure. If I have to identify one book from the last year or two which was a true favourite, I'd have to say...oh gosh!...The Innocents by Margery Sharp. I've admired Margery Sharp for a long time, and this was one of the last of her books I'd yet to read, and I found it deeply moving, and very funny, too, in its dry and clever way.

I came to blogging through reading, of course. Reading other people's blogs, and appreciating them so much that I felt an ever-stronger urge to join the conversation and share my own books with other questers. Blogging has changed my reading habits only in that I now stop occasionally and mentally note things I'd like to highlight or share in my posts. There is a bit of a crunch trying to decide how much time to dedicate to writing about the books; it inevitably cuts into my precious reading time, but to date I find that it has been worth it - the activities enhance each other. And my family is extremely supportive of the blogging enterprise, which is crucial to my continuation of the project. It has sparked some marvelous conversations among us.

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

Nicola: Jilly Cooper’s ‘girl’ books Imogen, Harriet, Octavia, Bella, Emily and Prudence which were published in the seventies and my sister and I read avidly. Imogen was my favourite because she worked in a library!

Barb: D.E. Stevenson is my guilty pleasure. Oh, and Mary Stewart. And I do have a sci-fi habit, carried over from teenagerdom. If I have to pick a representative "guilty pleasure" book, I think that I'll go to the sci-fi shelf. The Door Into Summer, by Robert Heinlein. Still love it, though I cringe a bit more each time I read it, too. Heinlein was terribly sexist, and his views on women haven't aged very well at all. But I forgive him all for his championship of the cat in this story, and the fact that the 'door into summer' describes so well our own endless function as servants to our own beloved cats and their omnipresent need to be on the other side of whatever passage point is currently closed.

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

Barb, on Nicola's choices: Heading out on a limb here. I'm going to say female. From England, or a British-influenced background. I think my reader has a fondness for books which espouse a strong moral code, and which celebrate family life. The list shows a natural progression of reading tastes, and says to me that my reader is thoughtful and perhaps rather serious-minded in regards to her (his?) choices - a reader of deliberately chosen "worthwhile" books, perhaps? (Or perhaps I am assuming too much!) But I predict that as well as a strong moral compass my secret reader has a lovely sense of humour, as evidenced by the Jilly Cooper choice!

Nicola on Barb's choices: [Added in after post publication] Interesting choices. The only author I'm familiar with from Barb's choices is Elizabeth Goudge and I've been meaning to read more of her novels for years. Thank you Barb, for inspiring me to read her again!

My Life in Books: Series Five: Day Four

Belle blogs at Belle, Book, and Candle

Tony blogs at Tony's Reading List

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.

Belle: I have written on Belle, Book, and Candle about my very few experiences with reading during childhood. I know that there were books at my grandparents' house and I had a great-aunt who had an extensive library (I now have several books from both of those households), but my parents weren't readers except for the newspaper (Dad) and magazines (Mom).

My second grade teacher sent a note home to my parents that I needed to read more 'for pleasure'. Basically there are two books I remember reading before I went to high school: Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink about a young girl growing up on the American frontier in the 1860s and a small paperback biography of the Chinese leader Sun Yat-sen that I read in third grade. How I came to pick that one I will never understand. Pitiful, I know.

Tony: I’d have to say that my home wasn’t really a bookish one, and most of the books I read as a child came from my local library. There wasn’t much selection at that point – it was a case of taking what happened to be on the shelves. I do remember taking a few books out over and over again, though. One was a collection of stories showing childrens’ life abroad (I distinctly remember stories from Brittany and Lappland), and when I was older there was a book set in East Berlin about a girl who was a high-jumper. It really is amazing what sticks in your brain…

As for a favourite book, I probably couldn’t settle on just one title, but it would definitely have to be something by Enid Blyton. At one point, there was a mysterious box of books in our kitchen (whose they were and why they were there was never adequately explained), and I sneaked them out and read them whenever I could. I enjoyed The Famous Five, The Secret Seven and the school books set at St. Clare’s and Malory Towers (in fact, one of my pet theories about the success of Harry Potter is that it has nothing to do with magic – people were simply reminded of reading books about boarding schools as a kid…).

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?

Belle: Once I got to high school, I must have discovered reading with a vengeance because I remember many nights staying up late to finish Rebecca, Nine Coaches Waiting, The Once and Future King, and the Nancy Drew mysteries. And I recall a marathon reading of Gone with the Wind when I was in ninth grade.

Some time around then, I also read 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff which I believe must have inspired me more than I could ever have known at the time. Since then, I have read the book numerous times, enjoyed repeated watchings of the movie (I always cry), and seen the stage play performed on my first trip to London. I can't imagine anyone who loves books not having read this one.

In eleventh grade, I read Travels With Charley by John Steinbeck. It was his true-life tale of traveling around America with his poodle Charley. It was the first non-fiction book I read that wasn't a textbook (except for that odd choice on Sun Yat-Sen). When I finished the book, I went downstairs and announced to my mother: “I want to be a writer.” I hadn't realized until then that people actually wrote about their own experiences. That book led me to a career writing for newspapers and magazines.

Tony: This may surprise a lot of people, but I was a very late starter with ‘serious’ literature, and I was pretty bored by English literature at school (on one memorable occasion, I was dragged out of English class by my teacher after he discovered that I’d made up all of my answers on a test about Far from the Madding Crowd – mainly because I hadn’t even opened it…). I distinctly remember buying Wuthering Heights at the start of my second year at university, one of the one-pound Penguin Popular Classics that were released at the time, and it’s a book which set me on the road to reading more classics.

While I’d read serious books for my studies, this was the first time I’d chosen to try it for fun, and it was an interesting experience. I was a little confused by the number of characters (especially the two Catherines…), and it was a bit of a slog. Still, even then, I realised that there was a lot more to it than I was used to finding in the books I’d been reading, and the first step on the road to where I am now was taken that day J

Qu. 3.) Pick a favourite book that you read in your 20s or early 30s - especially if it's one which helped set you off in a certain direction in life.

Belle: One that really sticks in my mind is A Book of One's Own: People and Their Diaries by Thomas Mallon. Like Travels With Charley, here was a book full of examples of people writing about their own lives and times. By then, I had started keeping journals of my own and so was interested to see how others – Dorothy Wordsworth, Samuel Pepys, Virginia Woolf, Henry David Thoreau – recorded their thoughts. Of course, I now have a cabinet stuffed with those black and white composition books full of my own experiences and reflections. A journal is such a wonderful place to practice writing.

Tony: I’m not sure that this book did anything more than make me read more by the same author, but reading Anthony Trollope’s The Warden, closely followed by Barchester Towers, is certainly an event that sticks out in my memory. I was living in Japan at the time, and getting hold of good English-language books was fairly difficult, so I was very happy to find a second-hand bookshop with lots of books in English a short train journey from where I was living.

From the moment I started reading the books, I knew that this was a writer I’d enjoy, one with a self-important, mocking style, an author who made books about churchmen’s squabbles seem fascinating. On the day I write this, I’m actually in the middle of another of Trollope’s novels, Lady Anna, which will be about the eighteenth of his books I’ve read, and I’ve also finished his Autobiography (and I have a biography on the shelves…). Not a life-changing decision, then, but certainly one that’s led to countless hours of reading enjoyment.

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

Belle: This is a Big Question, Simon! I began Belle, Book, and Candle on January 1, 2012. I had been reading other book blogs for a year or so and just decided I needed to start recording my own experiences with books. The name for the blog came to me in that early morning dream-like state that occurs once the alarm has rung and before I have actually gotten out of bed. Since beginning my blog, I have read hundreds of books, so picking a favorite would be difficult.

I will say that I have enjoyed reading children's and young adult books that I missed in my own childhood: Little Women, Harriet the Spy, Winnie the Pooh. And I recently found a vintage copy of The Pink Motel by Carol Ryrie Brink, she of Caddie Woodlawn fame, that was so delightful I was tempted to reread it immediately.

One that I loved, which totally surprised me, was So Big by Edna Ferber. I don't read as much fiction as some, but I got very involved in this story of a young woman's journey through life.

I have discovered so many wonderful authors in the past couple of years: Bill Bryson, Angela Thirkell, E.M. Delafield and Elizabeth Gaskell. And have taken to rereading, something I rarely did, some of my favorites: Beverley Nichols, James Thurber, E.B. White, and P.G. Wodehouse.

Tony: Surprisingly, perhaps, it was Facebook that pushed me in the direction of blogging! I was a member of a group that discussed classic literature, and taking part in discussions made me realise that I’d really slipped in my reading – people much younger than I was were far better read, and I felt very uncomfortable about it. Towards the end of 2008, I made the resolution that 2009 would be the year I started reading more widely (and simply more), and to achieve that aim, I set up the blog. The rest, as they say…

The biggest effect the blog has had on my reading (apart from making me read a lot more than I ever thought possible) has been my move into fiction in translation, and I’ve been lucky enough to read and review some wonderful works that I’d otherwise never have heard of. One of the more memorable finds of the past couple of years has been Icelandic writer Jón Kalman Stefánsson’s books Heaven and Hell and The Sorrow of Angels, two excellent novels (with a third out next year) set around the brutal Icelandic east coast. Another couple of more well-known names are Elena Ferrante and her Neapolitan Novels and, of course, Andrés Neuman, with a special mention for the excellent Traveller of the Century :)

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

Belle: I don't know if this would surprise anyone and I certainly don't feel guilty for reading them: Mysteries, especially British who-done-its and comic capers. I don't want any gore, thank you very much. I enjoy a good puzzle and if the tale is told with a soupçon of humor, all the better. Therefore I binge on Agatha Christie, Peter Lovesey, Martha Grimes, Donald Westlake, Alexander McCall Smith, Peter Mayle, and the mysteries of Georgette Heyer.

Tony: This is a really difficult one for me because I’ve plunged so deeply into serious literature since starting the blog that I honestly can’t think of anything I’ve read in the past few years (that I’ve liked) that would qualify. Instead, I’ll offer up a visual offering, a German telenovela called Alisa – Folge deinem Herzen (Alisa – Follow your Heart), which I watched a couple of years back. It was an awful, kitschy German-language daily soap, one full of clichés and obviously evil and saintly characters, but it was great fun to watch (and good for my German, too!). Recently, I discovered a site called DramaFire, which has Korean and Japanese drama series with English subtitles, so I may try one of those in the near future too ;)

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

Tony, on Belle's choices: From the intriguing choices given (most of which are fairly new to me), I'm fairly certain that this is an American blogger, and while Simon advised against guessing the gender, I'm happy to stick my neck out and say that it's a woman (insert laughter here...). There's also an obvious focus on non-fiction in this selection, and that, along with the children's book choices, might indicate someone a little older than myself...

...so a twelve-year-old boy from Manchester it is, then ;)

Belle, on Ton'ys choices: I am guessing this person is from the UK as we have a dearth of Enid Blyton books here in America. (My library carries exactly three!) She/he likes adventure and is a romantic (although I never could fathom the attraction of the moody, mysterious Heathcliff) and has a mind for the classics. I had to investigate Heaven and Hell (Icelandic journey!) which sounds so very rough-and-tumble, not to mention cold and dark. (Perhaps I am dealing with Heathcliff's modern incarnation here?) I really would need to sit down with this person and get an understanding of what a telenovela is and how to find one. How very modern...

My Life in Books: Series Five: Day Three

Aarti blogs at Book Lust.

JoAnn blogs at Lakeside Musing.

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.

Aarti: My sister and I both read a lot growing up (my brother less so), so I would say that we did grow up in a book-loving household, though I don't remember my parents reading to us very much. My dad would tell us bedtime stories, but they were never book-based. They just came out of his head and he usually focused on science or Indian history. I have a very vivid recollection of him telling us how gravity was discovered.

I don't think I had a favorite book when I was very young, but as I got a little older, I fell completely in love with Anne of Green Gables. I loved how smart she was, and how she questioned everything, and I always wanted to go and visit Prince Edward Island (alas, I never did). She was such a hero to me.

JoAnn: Books have always been part of my life. I can remember both parents reading to me as a child and, as the oldest of six siblings, I have fond memories of reading to my younger brothers and sisters. Scholastic book order days were always the best. I’d run home from school with the new books I’d ordered and hide in my room for the rest of they day. My favorite book from childhood is probably Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh. There was something about Harriet and her notebook that struck a chord with me... and lead to a life-long fondness of stationery supplies.

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?

Aarti: I think I most remember books that I read in my freshman year English class in high school. We read To Kill a Mockingbird and All Quiet on the Western Front. They were both so brilliant. I loved To Kill a Mockingbird when I read it, but at that time, the 1960s felt so far in the past and quaint to me. I recently reread the book and realized just how revolutionary it must have been when it was published. And I don't think any book has brought war so vividly to life for me as All Quiet on the Western Front. I think that's when I started to understand nuances in history - that there isn't necessarily a "good" side or a "bad" side, but so many perspectives and motivations.

I don't think anything very special was going on in my life at that point - just that I was in my early teens, beginning to understand that adulthood isn't all that simple!

JoAnn: I was in high school when I finally figured out that books had a lot to say about life and how you might choose to live it. Ethan Allen Hawley's moral crisis in The Winter of Our Discontent, John Steinbeck's final novel, turned me into a Steinbeck devotee and cemented my love of classic literature.

Qu. 3.) Pick a favourite book that you read in your 20s or early 30s - especially if it's one which helped set you off in a certain direction in life.

Aarti: I read Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles and House of Niccolo series in my early 20s. A lot of the Latin language poetry and historical events went right over my head, but I LOVED those books (especially the House of Niccolo). I was also active in what is the now-defunct Yahoo Groups, so had so many people all around the world to talk about the books with, which was so wonderful and definitely a precursor to book blogging for me. I have always
loved historical fiction, and Dunnett's complex plots and twists and turns and massive casts of characters made me realize just how IMMERSED writers can become in a world. And just how passionate fans can be, too. It was really nice to see.

JoAnn: I didn’t read as much in my 20’s and early 30’s…mostly professional journals, then children’s books to my three daughters. When I did read, it was often sprawling family sagas. Favorites from this period include Steinbeck's East of Eden, novels by James Michener and Maeve Binchy, Beach Music by Pat Conroy, And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer, and The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher.

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

Aarti: Oh, gosh, that is tough to answer! I will answer the second question first. As I mentioned above, I was active on a lot of the forums and Yahoo Groups related to books when I was in college and my early 20s. From there, it was a fairly natural progression to blogging.

I don't really know how blogging has changed my reading habits as I started blogging quite young - in my early 20s. I suspect that my reading habits would change as I got older, anyway. But I do think my reading tastes have expanded considerably since I started blogging. I would say that the most powerful impact that blogging has had on me personally has been my quest to read more diversely.

As to my favorite book over the past year or two - probably Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I have a massive literary crush on Adichie. Not only because she's so smart and articulate, but because she's so good at bringing up important points in a humorous and non-confrontational way that really makes you think. She's the best. And Americanah's unapologetic love story, the commentary on racism in the UK and the US, the sexism that women face - it's all wrapped up in a truly engaging and witty writing style that I loved.

JoAnn: Favorite books from the past year or so include Stoner by John Williams, The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer, and, most recently, Florence Gordon by Brian Morton – all beautifully written character-driven novels.

Before blogging, I owned a classics reading group on Yahoo and followed a few book blogs...an innovative concept back then. I wanted to participate in the conversation and started Lakeside Musing in 2008.

Since then, I’ve discovered many wonderful books and authors. enjoy virtual friendships with other book bloggers, own infinitely more books, and my love of reading has grown even more. My approach to the “what to read next” question has changed dramatically, too. Before blogging I would often wander around the bookstore or library waiting for something to strike my fancy. Now the sheer number of choices can sometimes leave me paralyzed with indecision.

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

Aarti: I think most people who know my reading habits know that Georgette Heyer is my guilty pleasure. I had access to almost all of her books in college, and I ate them all up. I still go to her when I am in a reading rut. Granted, now the racism and classism are a bit more jarring and harder to ignore, but she still makes me smile and laugh out loud and believe in happily ever after. Also, she makes me want to visit every single country home in England :-)

JoAnn: This is a hard one! I suppose my guilty pleasure is literary beach reads. I don't read any romance and very little of what might be classified as women's fiction, but I do love a good family story set near a body of water. If it involves an old summer home and coastal New England, all the better.

Recent favorites include A Hundred Summers by Beatriz Williams, The Vacationers by Emma Straub, The Three Weissmanns of Westport by Cathleen Schine, and Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan.

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

JoAnn on Aarti's choices: A fabulous list of books! This is someone whose blog I should be reading, if I am not already doing so. I admire the variety and diversity of interests reflected in these choices. From a childhood favorite of my own, a WWI classic novel, and a sprawling saga to current literary fiction and the fun and comfort of Georgette Heyer, I feel this fellow book lover and I could chat for hours. The only question is whether to brew a pot of coffee or get out the teakettle.

Aarti on JoAnn's choices: Wow, this is difficult as I haven't read any of the books besides Harriet the Spy (which was SO good, but perhaps not indicative of a person's reading habits and personality in the present day!). I shall base this off GoodReads book summaries and my hazy knowledge of the books/authors :-)

Stoner has popped up a lot on blogosphere over the past few years, and most everyone has very positive things to say about it, so I would guess that the blogger keeps a pulse on book blogosphere and gets many recommendations from the people s/he follows and trusts. (Even if, like me, it takes him/her a long while to get around to reading those books.)

All of the books chosen seem to focus on relationships - family relationships in particular - and decision points that have impact not only on the protagonist's life, but also the lives of others. I think this blogger cares a lot about people and is deeply interested in stories that focus on how our actions impact the people in our lives.

My Life in Books: Series Five: Day Two

Scott blogs at Me and My Big Mouth.

Catherine blogs at Juxtabook.

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.

Scott: My dad was the big reader in our house. He left school quite young to become an apprentice in the print trade and was certainly not academically inclined as a youth—I think driving down to Southend on his moped to beat up some Mods was a more regular pastime—but by the time I came along he had started to build a library. I can remember the purple spines of the Kings & Queens series edited by Antonia Fraser, he had most of them. Lots of books on Egyptology as well. Not much in the way of novels but there was definitely a bit of science fiction. And the Doc Savage books, a popular series of adventure stories from the 1930s that were reissued in the 1960s which much have been when he started collecting them.

My favourite book as a child was The Satanic Mill by Otfried Preussler. My dad woke me up one night to show me a box of books he had liberated from outside a local charity shop (he assures me he dropped a fiver through the letter box) and I was drawn to the spooky cover. I think I started reading it the next day and it was definitely the first book that moved me, that made me realise the power of storytelling. It captivated me, moved me and scared the shit out of me. I would have been about ten or eleven at the time.

Thirty years later and I was able to republish the book in the UK under its original title of Krabat. One of my proudest moments.

Catherine: My home was very much a reading household as my parents were both teachers. My parents both read to my younger sister and me. I particularly remember Mum reading us The Canterville Ghost and Dad used to read things like The Jumblies by Edward Lear. I loved my books as a child (when not reading I used to play libraries) and it is so hard to pick a favourite but one that stands out is Her Benny by Silas K. Hocking. It is a sort of Dickens-lite, set in Liverpool, and it is very melodramatic and a terrible sob story but I loved it. The copy I read had been a prize from Sunday School for my maternal grandmother. She had sobbed her way through the book, and then my mother had, and finally it was my turn. I'm wondering whether to try my daughter with it now. Fortunately Blue Coat Press in Liverpool have brought our a new edition as my grandmother's copy won't bear many more re-readings. I think my interest in older books, and books' physicality, stems from that volume.

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?

Scott: I left home at 17 and didn’t have a great deal of money for books so if I did buy anything I was sure to read it from cover to cover and make the most of it. I borrowed a fair bit from the college library as well. Around this time I would have been making my way through the novels of Milan Kundera, and I know that Life is Elsewhere blew me away. It has a dream within a dream within a dream sequence that knocks the socks off anything in Inception. Metroland by Julian Barnes made me laugh a lot. The non-SF novels of Philip K Dick made an impact in my late teens as well.

Catherine: When I was 13 my mother suggested I read Frederica by Georgette Heyer. I loved it! I have since read all her regency romances two or three times each and never tire of them. They're so warm and witty. I think reading Heyer's faux nineteenth century idiom tuned my brain into the language for later readings of Dickens and Austen – Heyer was perfect for getting your eye in with nineteenth century fiction. At the time my parents had moved jobs and I had to move school. In all the upheaval the constancy of a Georgette Heyer novel was a great thing to have.

Qu. 3.) Pick a favourite book that you read in your 20s or early 30s - especially if it's one which helped set you off in a certain direction in life.

Scott: Ahh, my 20s was when I discovered Haruki Murakami. This was back in the days when his books were actually quite hard to track down. I had to get hold of translations intended for students in Japan. A Wild Sheep Chase was the one that got me started. The books of his I read in the early 1990s undoubtedly shaped the adult me, for better or worse.

Catherine: If I'm allowed non-fiction, that's easy: A Beginner's Guide to Secondhand Bookdealing by Stuart Baldwin. I read about Stuart Baldwin in Sesame, the newspaper of the Open University. He'd taken something like 28 years to graduate because he kept getting ideas for businesses and taking time off to build these businesses up. One was Fossil Books and he'd written his guide based on this experience. At the time I was struggling to get the books I required for my MA here in the Yorkshire Dales, and I thought other must be having the same problem. Within a year I was dealing, within two I'd quit teaching to sell books full time. You don't get more direction changing than that!

For fiction, it would be The British Museum Is Falling Down by David Lodge. When I was teaching in my twenties I used to mark GCSE Eng Lit and a colleague and I used to share a lift to meetings in Manchester. He recommended Lodge – funny and a great antidote to the mental wear and tear of teaching he said. He was right.

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

Scott: I started blogging when I joined The Friday Project and it was a platform to sound off about the book trade and try to get some publicity for the stuff we were publishing. It has evolved over the years into something far more personal, thoughts on the books I read and music and the like. The fact that I get sent lots of books to review because of the blog means I don’t really buy books in the way a ‘normal’ person would, so it has changed my reading habits quite a bit. The books come to me rather than the other way round. It still makes for lots of wonderful chance discoveries and, if anything, means I read more widely.

And I suppose my favourite books of recent years are all things that have plopped through my letter box. We, The Drowned by Carsten Jensen is a Danish epic set in a small fishing village and has been loved by everyone I have recommended it to, so do check it out if you get a chance and thank me later. The Last Banquet by Jonathan Grimwood was a sumptuous joy from beginning to end. And The Lost Books of the Odyssey by Zachary Mason. All masterpieces, if you ask me. Which you did.

Catherine: A stand out series for me in the last year or so has been Harry Bingham's Fiona Griffiths series. Very quirky female detective, very page turning, very intelligent. I don't think blogging (writing my blog) has changed my reading habits. Buying and selling books means that what passes through my hands is my greatest source of reading material and that of course hasn't changed. I do buy more books for myself as a result of other people's blogs. I buy more books for my personal shelves than I ever did when my recommendations came just from the broadsheets. A blog review from you or Harriet or Annabel or Karen means so much more that anything in the LRB. I know what you all like, and I know where our tastes cross, and so your recommendations are all the more pertinent. If bloggers can make a bookseller buy more books then they're getting something right!

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

Scott: I have grown to dislike the term guilty pleasure as I think it is indicative of the sort of snobbery that is still all too common in the book world. I have seen plenty of interviews in which ‘literary’ authors are asked that question and they nearly always answer with a piece of genre fiction—crime, science fiction, fantasy—or perhaps a children’s book. If they feel guilty about reading Ian Rankin or Harry Harrison or Roald Dahl then they need a jolly good slap if you ask me. A great book is a great book no matter what the genre or subject matter.

Having said that, I know you didn’t mean it in that way, and I too enjoy it when people surprise me with their book choices.

I am a big fan of Miss Read. She wrote dozens of books set in and around small English villages and her Village School novels, the early ones in particular, are wonderful slices of social commentary. Her Thrush Green series gets a bit twee as it goes on but she created such a warm cast of characters with real depth to them that I can forgive her that. Comfort reading, rather than a guilty pleasure.

Catherine: My biggest guilty pleasure is probably football books – fact and fiction. I particularly like a good football fiction book though they are few and far between. The Damned United and How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the F.A. Cup are the obvious standouts. In non-fiction I'm very taken with the writing of David Conn though my favourite non-fiction is The Promised Land: A Northern Love Story by Anthony Clavane which parallels the history of Leeds the city, Leeds the football club, and the Jewish community in Leeds and is a fascinating study that anyone who enjoys social history would get something out of, I'm sure.

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

Catherine, on Scott's choices: This is an impressive group of novels. I'm not ashamed to admit that though I know some of the authors I haven't actually read any of these and I'm having to go on online reviews.

The reader is obviously someone of great taste (they're all very well reviewed) and is not afraid of a challenge with the number of works in translation there. I very much like the sound of The Satanic Mill, a children's fantasy, and have added that to one of my own wish lists. Like some of the other highbrow works on this list, like the Murakami and the Jenson, it seems exciting. The reader obviously likes to be entertained as well as challenged! Dear old Miss Read (never read any but I've certainly sold a lot) seems very cosy by comparison showing that though this reader likes to go off on adventures he or she likes to come home too.

I've no idea if this person is male or female but I am guessing he or she is not British because of the large number of non-English works, though the Miss Read did make me question that at the end. I hope I'm not wronging my compatriots but apart from RobAroundBooks and Stu Allen such dedication to translated works, to the exclusion of all but Miss Read, doesn't seem to me to a very British trait (I say that as a bookseller)!

Scott on Catherine's choices: Clearly they are a football-loving, secondhand bookselling individual with a penchant for Cornish writers sporting large beards and curling up with a Regency romance. And as there are probably only three such people on the planet they had better not murder anyone or they’ll be pretty easy to track down, I reckon. I am hugely intrigued to find out who it is.

My Life in Books: Series Five: Day One

Jenny blogs at Reading the End

Eric blogs at Lonesome Reader

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.

Jenny: Yes, I did! My mother started reading the Chronicles of Narnia to me and my sister when I was three, and she read a ton of books to us over the years. A favorite book from childhood was Emily of New Moon (et seq. -- is it cheating to say more than one book if it's three in a series?). I wanted to write myself, so I loved reading about all the stories and poems Emily wrote over the years. One of my favorite bits was in the third book, when she's finally published a book and she and her relatives are reading through all her contradictory reviews.

Eric: For a period of my childhood, my mother was a school librarian and we always had a fair amount of books around the house. My father is more of a reader of history. I remember a lot of bedtime story books that centered around famous world leaders, but we’d also read my preferred fantasy novels together.

One realistic book which made a huge impression was Stephen Manes’ Be a Perfect Person in Just Three Days! It’s about a bookish outcast boy who happens upon a self-help book with steps that promise to make him into a perfect person. However, it turns into a celebration of all our quirks and imperfections. This message didn’t quite get through. It surmises that perfect people do nothing but sit quietly in a room all day sipping weak tea. This seems to me like a near perfect state of being.

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?

Jenny:Jane Eyre was a gift for my ninth (I believe) birthday, and I loved it so much my heart hurt; it remains one of my all-time favorite 'grown-up books.' At the time I was miserable in school and feeling woefully misunderstood and wretched, so I identified with poor Jane right away and wanted to see life do right by her. I loved it when she inherited all the money and got to do whatever she wanted.

Eric: My parents recommended I read Shōgun by James Clavell when I was 12. It’s a fantastic epic adventure story with some fairly grown up themes, violence and explicit sexual content if I remember rightly. Like many adolescents at this point in life I was gangly, awkward and felt like a social outcast so loved sinking into this story of a foreigner’s immersion into an unfamiliar, beautiful culture.

Qu. 3.) Pick a favourite book that you read in your 20s or early 30s - especially if it's one which helped set you off in a certain direction in life.

Jenny: Can I go a bit earlier? I read a book called Greensleeves, by Eloise Jarvis McGraw, when I was seventeen or eighteen, which is about a socially anxious girl who leaves her regular life and goes to be a completely different sort of person in a completely different sort of life. So many things about this book hit me like a ton of bricks, but particularly the idea that although it is impossible to change who you are, it is always possible to change what you're doing. I can't count how many times I read this book in my late teens and early twenties.

Eric: During one of the seminars I took during my Masters degree which I began when I was 22, I was assigned the novel Mysteries of Winterthurn by Joyce Carol Oates. Setting aside all the clever post-modernist theory you can read into the book which self-consciously plays with the genre of “mystery and detection,” this novel is a fantastically imaginative, thrilling and absorbing read that totally floored me. While creating a brilliant story of intrigue with dynamic memorable characters, it also unpretentiously raises the kind of philosophical questions which felt most central to my life at that time. It converted me into a life-long fan of Oates’ writing and made me realize the full elasticity of narrative to reshape reality. This is a book and writer that has really changed my life.

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

Jenny: I came to blogging because I realized that if I read book blogs all the time, I'd never have the problem of having no ideas for what to read next. I've been blogging for most of my adult reading life, so it's hard to say how it's altered my reading habits -- I can't properly remember the baseline I'd be returning to if I stopped blogging! I think I'd probably read more nonfiction and more classics if I weren't blogging. And I think I'd be less attentive to the demographics of my reading. Because of other bloggers, I make a concerted effort to read more diversely, and that's brought a lot of awesome books into my life!

Most of my new favorites over the past year or two have been debut novels: Hanya Yanagihara's gorgeous, chilling The People in the Trees; Carol Rifka Brunt's Tell the Wolves I'm Home; and Laurent Binet's HHhH. Those were all books that surprised and entranced me and reminded me why I love to read in the first place.

Eric: Artful by Ali Smith is a brilliant example of a novel that shouldn’t work, but somehow it does in the hands of this genius writer. The majority of the content is a series of lectures Smith originally wrote to deliver at a university and then later reshaped into a novel building a story of an individual mourning the loss of a lover around them. It may seem like an intellectual exercise, but this book chimed emotionally with me to the extent that I found myself totally engrossed and frequently crying. I read this novel late in 2013 and went to see Smith reading from it. I could spend my life sat at this writer’s feet endlessly listening to her good-humored attitude towards life and wisdom about literature.

Feelings of isolation brought me to blogging and the community of book bloggers. I don’t necessarily read more now that I’m blogging, but I read more attentively and critically. Rather than putting a book down and thinking “I liked it” I really quiz myself about why I thought it was effective and what the author was really trying to say and do in their narrative.

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

Jenny: I'm going to go with the shmoopy historical novel Shadow of the Moon, by M. M. Kaye. It's about a British girl born in India who grows up in England and then gets to return as an adult, right in time for the Sepoy Rebellion. Lots of high drama.

Eric: I wouldn’t call this a guilty pleasure, but it’s a book I would certainly shy away from reading on public transport due to its size and the explicit nature of its drawings. The graphic novel Lost Girls written by Alan Moore with illustrations from his partner Melinda Gebbie imagines a fantastical meeting of three of literature’s most enduring young heroines: Alice in Wonderland, Dorothy Gale from Kansas and Wendy from Peter Pan. In their adulthoods, the girls meet in an Austrian hotel and have a series of frank sexual adventures and misadventures leading them on paths to self-discovery. The book plays with the original stories by reimagining them and delving into the deeper meaning of these girls’ awakening into adulthood. This book gave me some of the most intense dreams of my life; clearly some doors were opened. Some will consider the book perverse, but I think it’s truly radical and brilliant.

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

Eric, on Jenny's choices: This is a fascinating group of books and out of the bunch I’ve only read Jane Eyre. Looking up the themes and storylines of the novels I’d say this is a reader who is attracted to stories about savvy/feisty heroines, coming of age tales and universal stories that are found in other cultures – reading subjects very similar to what I’m interested in! I would guess it’s a reader who re-reads his/her favourite novels every few years – someone who is introverted, likes reading late at night and is excited by taking on book-reading challenges.

Jenny on Eric's choices: I'm going to be terrible at this bit because I haven't read any of those books. (Except -- I realized after some googling -- I did read Become a Perfect Person when I was small! I had forgotten about it completely until just now!) It seems like someone who reads widely and enthusiastically, and plunges with relish into reading challenges -- Shogun's massive, Lost Girls looks like a strange beast even for the wonderfully strange Alan Moore, and Ali Smith's one of those authors I'm too intimidated to do more than admire from a distance. S/he sounds like the kind of adventurous reader I always admire!