0 My Life in Books: Series Two: Day Eight

Awww, it's over!  This is the final day of what has been a really great week (and a bit) of interviews.  I'll do a proper round-up post tomorrow, but I will quickly thank everyone who agreed to participate - you've been brilliant.  And I hope everyone has enjoyed it as much as I have!  If I summon up enough energy, and find willing participants, it may appear later in the year...

Simon S (as he shall be known today to avoid confusion with me) is something of a double threat.  He writes the wonderfully enthusiastic and witty blog Savidge Reads, and is also the other half of podcast duo The Readers.  He was also the first blogger to put a roof over my head for a night...!

Eva describes herself as 'an amateur reader and full-time library aficionado', and blogs at A Striped Armchair, one of the most wide-ranging and thought-provoking blogs I know.  I wish she'd come over this side of the Atlantic, so I could say hello in person...

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.

Simon S: I did grow up in two very book loving households. As mother had me when she was 16 I spent my time between the hustle and bustle of Newcastle, where she was doing her degree, and with my grandparents in the Peak District and both my mother and Gran are voracious readers so I never wanted for books or people to read me bedtime stories. Though woe betide anyone who should try and skip a page or two of bedtime story thinking I wouldn’t spot it. 

I suppose I should go for a book like Roald Dahl’s Matilda or The Witches, both of which I adored, but I am going to say that The Adventures of the Witch Esmerelda and Marmalade the Cat were my favourite tales. My granddad wrote them and illustrated them by hand and sent me on a week, I dug them out the other week to read to his two youngest granddaughters (he sadly passed away a few years ago) and it was so lovely to see a new generation loving them too. Though they did keep asking why I was in the books and why I wasn’t a man in them.  [Simon T: you can read more about these lovely books here.]

Eva: My dad read a bit, but my mom was the big reader of our family.  I was read to every night before bed up until I was maybe 12 or 13.  As I got older, my mom and I would alternate reading the chapters.  Oh, and if I chose to spend my (very small) allowance on books, my mom would match my spending, effectively doubling my book budget (we also went to the library regularly).  So yes, my household definitely encouraged my book-love!

I had all kinds of favourite books when I was a child, but one of the lesser-known ones was The Children of Green Knowe by L.M. Boston.  A little boy in boarding school is sent to spend his holidays with his great aunt in this fabulous old house, Green Knowe.  Once he's there, his aunt tells him the most marvelous family stories & he soon discovers that the house holds a fair amount of magic.  She wrote several books about Green Knowe, but that first one has my heart; I still have my copy and reread it just a few years ago.  More famous titles I loved include The Giver, Anne of Green Gables, the Nancy Drew series, and the Chronicles of Narnia.

Qu.2) What was one of the first 'grown-up' books that you really enjoyed?  

Simon S: Without a doubt it would have to be Sherlock Holmes.  As an early teen I would be dragged, or maybe I should say taken away, on long walking holidays involving 10 miles a day treks through the Peaks or the Lake District. My great uncle Derrick gathered that mid morning and mid afternoon I would tire and so would have memorised, almost word for word, at least ten Sherlock short stories each ‘holiday’ and tell me two of them during those lulls. Interestingly these stories, along with others of Arthur Conan Doyle’s, are books that encouraged me to read again after a wilderness of reading in my late teens and early twenties. I still turn to them now when I have a reading funk too.

Eva: Hmmm...I read a lot of classics when I was younger that weren't necessarily children's books; I remember reading White Fang when I was 9, for instance. When I was 11, my mom and I read Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera together. We had just moved back to England, and I remember us laying on my bed with my new pink bedspread reading it together.  For my 12th birthday, my mom took me to see the musical in London: it was magical!

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

Simon S: It would have to be Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier because it was the book that made me want to go  and read anything and everything again and reminded me of the power of a great story told by a brilliant storyteller.  I picked it up because it had a ridiculous cover and looked a bit ‘spooky’, I was in no way prepared for the wonderful journey, which I know sounds a cliché but its true, which I went on for 400 pages which just seemed to rush by.  I loved the gothic elements and mystery, but mainly it was the prose. It set me off reading again after several years of not, I can’t think of a better direction a book could give.

Eva: Honestly, as much as I love reading and feel that I would be a very different person without books, I can't really point to a specific title that changed my life.  That being said, I remember discovering Salman Rushdie when I was 17 (I started with The Satanic Verses) and being blown away by the magical realist style & international setting.  It definitely opened my eyes to how incredible fiction outside of the white US/UK bubble could be.  Don't get
me wrong, I still read and adore lots of white authors, British,
American, and otherwise!

Qu.4) What's one of your favourite books that you've found in the last five years, and how has blogging or the reading of blogs changed your reading habits?

Simon S: I wanted to say Gillespie and I because it’s a modern neo-Victorian masterpiece which plays with your head and leaves you shocked, but that doesn’t have a link to blogging as I would have read that from loving Jane Harris’ debut novel.  Instead I am going to chose The Shuttle by Frances Hodgson Burnett.  I wouldn’t have heard of Persephone Books, and indeed this overlooked sensation novel, if it hadn’t been for several bloggers like you, Claire, Verity or Rachel.  I am so glad I did because it introduced me to a wonderful story that was long forgotten... and then onto others.

Eva: The book blogosphere has definitely changed my reading habits; I now read far more women than men, which wasn't always the case.  I used to participate in all kinds of reading challenges set up by book bloggers, which introduced me to a ton of different genres and geographic areas and more that I'd never thought about before (can you believe I didn't even know of the books-about-books nonfiction topic before bloggers started mentioning various titles?).  In fact, one such challenge inspired me to take a hard look at how whitewashed my reading was and to begin searching out more authors of colour.  And of course, there are so many authors and books that I hadn't heard of pre-book blogging that are now firm favourites.  My book horizons have been broadened immeasurably, at the same time that my previously-existing loves (i.e.: classics, mysteries, fantasy, international fiction) have been reinforced.

I've been blogging for over five years, so forcing me to choose a favourite seems cruel! But I'm going to focus on the 'one of' part of the phrase and go with Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. It's her debut novel and centers around a young Nigerian girl who has an abusive father. Adichie is an incredible storyteller, and this book has stuck with me over the years since I've read it. In fact, just writing about it is making me want to reread it!  Fortunately, I have a copy on my shelves due to the kindness of a book blogger who sent me her 'spare.' :)

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

Simon S: I don’t believe in books being guilty pleasures, just pleasures.  So... One that will surprise people... Hmmmm!  I guess M.C Beaton and Tess Gerritsen have surprised people so they are out.  Oh, I have a secret passion for Batman graphic novels, it’s my only remaining geek out since childhood.  I wanted to be Bruce Wayne for years or one of the villains on occasional and I do like turning to these now and again, does that suffice?  I don’t think many people would know that, I keep it under wraps like a secret identity.

Eva: Let's see...my newfound love for the Hamish Macbeth series is a bit lighter than my normal fare.  Oh, and I adore Melissa Marr's Wicked Lovely!  I can't say I really have any guilty pleasures though; in fact, I'm far more likely to feel guilty when I don't care for a book that everyone else in the blogosphere loves. :)

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

Eva, on Simon S's choices: This reader must have had a bookish childhood, with a handmade book from a grandfather! From the title, it sounds like an adventure/plot-focused book, which might have influenced the later interest in Batman and Sherlock Holmes (both crime fighters, if in different manners!). The person must be a bit of an anglophile too, with several British authors on the list. And I'm guessing the person has a taste for old-fashioned stories: most of the books are classics.  And even the Batman books, while not perhaps what one would traditionally call a classic, do have the "good end happily, the bad end unhappily" approach to fiction. I suspect I would find more than a few books I'd wish to borrow on their shelves! :)

I actually have a suspicion as to who my partner is: Simon S. I know he's a huge fan of du Maurier & Sherlock Holmes, and although you told me not to guess the gender, I can't help thinking of a boy reading those Batman books!

Simon S, on Eva's choices: I felt a slight philistine when I first saw these books as I had only heard of three of them and only read Salman Rushdie and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who I think are great authors so this person clearly has good taste and likes the literary reads with a worldwide feel.  Even though it’s a diverse list, I would also say they like quite dark and gothic books, so really their taste isn’t far off mine... I want to find out what their top ten books are as I have a feeling I might like all the ones I haven’t yet encountered.

Detail: My Life in Books: Series Two: Day Eight

0 My Life in Books: Series Two: Day Seven

It is the end of the week - but, fear not, it is still not the end of My Life in Books!  Tomorrow is the final day - for now, taking the spot usually reserved for Song for a Sunday, I hand over to two bloggers, both of whom (incidentally) were introduced to me by Simon Savidge...

Polly writes at Novel Insights, and 'loves books with stylish covers and what’s inside them too.'  I love the way she recently announced her engagement!

Gav, who blogs at Gav Reads, couldn't have a much more different reading taste from me if he tried - such is the charm of the blogosphere!  I came across Gav through the excellent podcast he co-presents, The Readers.

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.

Polly: I did indeed grow up in a book-loving household.  Many a weekend was spent in the lovely old Waterstones in Newcastle with it's 'W' monogrammed stained-glass windows, leafing through the childrens books there in the basement.  I'm sad to say that it's now moved and been replaced by an H&M!  It's hard to pick a favourite childhood book. My thought immediately turn to classics such as Winnie The Pooh and The Chronicles of Narnia and of course I loved fairy tales.  I had a copy of Terry Jones' Fairy Tales which was much loved and the stories repeatedly re-read.  I loved it for it's fabulous illustrations as much as the original and charming stories - full of magic and with a moral.  I was always able to persuade my Mum to read 'just one more story' at bed time by choosing one of the tales 'The Three Raindrops' which was always a good bet because it was just a paragraph long.

Gav: My dad definitely isn't a reader, he doesn't like reading instruction manuals.  My mum though definitely is.  I didn't really grow up in a house of books.  Though my mum used to but me the odd book.  I recall a copy of Wind in the Willows that stayed in a drawer in the living room for years and years. And I never could get on with it.

I think if I had to choose one book from childhood it would have to be The Twits by Roald Dahl though really it could be any Dahl novel from Matilda, The Witches, BFG, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  I think The Twits is probably the least fanciful but most grotesque of his novels especially the part of about food in beards.  But Dahl in general is an amazing children's writer.  He just gets what childhood is and how adults seem to children.  Plus he gets how easy it is a child's imagination can run wild.  Oh I forgot the illustrations by Quentin Blake! Absolutely perfect.

Qu.2) What was one of the first 'grown-up' books that you really enjoyed?  

Polly: Hmmm... struggling to remember now!  When I was about 10 and 11 I read alot of cross-over books that had an older edge but still had an element of magic (Watership Down, The Hobbit).  I think the first really 'grown-up' books that I read were around the time that I was in school.  I remember reading Animal Farm and not quite getting all of the references but enjoying it.  I got really involved in William Golding's The Lord of the Flies which I thought was superb at the time - I studied it for my GCSEs.  I think as a result of this, for a long time I was mainly interested in 'modern classics' and particularly those with a darker edge.  It's not until recent years that I've started to explore books set pre-1900.

Gav: Now that's really grey I didn't get bookie until I was 16 and I delved into science fiction and fantasy mostly, which to most people isn't really grown-up reading.  And I really can't recall what I was really reading.  I can see snapshots.  But if we're looking for challenging language, you could say it was Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien.  I'd read The Hobbit but that is definitely more a child's book as it's simpler in lots of ways. But Lord of the Rings stretching over a trilogy

I'll let you into a confession though: I've never read the very ending of the book. 

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

Polly: As mentioned above, the experience of really studying modern classics such as Orwell and Golding and then Muriel Spark influenced me in the sense that I tended to look out for modern classics. Additionally a local secondhand bookshop near my Sixth Form College which sold Penguin Classics for a pound each led to me becoming a little obsessed with those lovely orange covers.

Gav: Ha well that's got to be Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett.  I've already said that I didn't read a lot.  I tried to read but found it hard to find an author that really connected with me.  Well this book started a passion for reading that's lasted the last 17 years.  It helped I think that he had a lot of books out so I could read them all to satisfy some internal hunger.  That I've just kept feeding 

Qu.4) What's one of your favourite books that you've found in the last five years, and how has blogging or the reading of blogs changed your reading habits?

Polly: I've read alot more classic novels since blogging and reading recommendations - for example I fell in love with Wilkie Collins and really enjoyed reading Persephone Classics such as The Shuttle by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I think it's broadened my reading horizons by making me braver about reading more widely or books that I thought would be boring before!

Gav: One??  You're kidding right!  But if you insist it's going to be The Draining Lake by Arnaldur Indridsaon.  It was the first book of cold crime I'd read and it took me in to the whole area of cold crime and then crime in translation in general. And that's one of the thing that I love about blogging is that there are bloggers who stick to one niche.  They do it very well but they never seem to grow or change as readers.  And I do like to see my pushing the edges of my reading flipping from one literary obsession to the other.  And The Draining Lake was a great doorway for me.

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

Polly: I'm pretty open about the books I read so there may not be any surprises!  My favourite page-turners are usually by crime authors such as Sophie Hannah, Val McDermid and Tess Gerritsen but I think these are excellent so I don't feel any measure of guilt about reading them.  I also LOVE Daphne du Maurier who has been written off as trashy romance by certain foolish (in my humble opinion!) people in the past.  She's definitely one of my favourite authors and her novels are wonderfully atmospheric and beautifully described.

Gav: I'm pretty honest about my reading.  I don't really think of anything as a guilty pleasure as I don't see anything to feel guilty about.  I guess that I love Bridget Jones' Diary might cause a moment for pause...

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

Gav, on Polly's choices: Fairy Tales: A book of fairy tales written by one of the Monty Python crew? What could be a more wonderful treat for a child or an adult for that matter. What a lucky reader there were. I'm highly jealous.  I'd say this reader has a great imagination.
The Lord of the Flies: You know I've never fancied reading this book. I shy away from books that reinforce that we are only one stage removed from other animals.  I'm not sure if this book does show humanity in a good light at some points but I must admit to not wanting to go into those dark places first.  The person that loves this book is much braver than me.  Though it might be they were forced to read it in school and just happened to fall in love with it.
Muriel Spark: I always think of Muriel Spark's work as fun and intelligent.  I could be very wrong.  I know she's best known by me as the author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie but again I've not read her and not sure she'd be my cut of tea.  But I think this shows a bit of refinement in a reader.  I wonder what affect Spark had on them as a person as well as a reader?
The Shuttle: I'm going to stick my neck out and say this book is somewhat obscure?  With all the Britishness of the other choices I can't see this person as an American so it does make me curious about why this was an important book in their life.
Daphne du Maurier: Daphers has been mentioned a lot to me this last year.  I honestly didn't know how diverse a writer she was.  Rebecca is such a favourite by so many people.  Jamaica Inn and My Cousin Rachel come up frequently.  It say this shows again a reader that likes the darker side of humanity.  Though we seem to have lost that childhood pleasure in reading we started off with in Terry Jones' Fairy Tales.

Polly, on Gav's choices: I think that this person is a child at heart with a wicked sense of humour judging by their love of The Twits, and the fantasy books make me think they read to escape from the real world. Judging by the crime novel they have a bit of a dark edge but the Bridget Jones's Diary choice suggests day to day are approachable and down to earth. The overall mix suggests someone warm-hearted who has a good sense of humour and doesn't take themselves too seriously.

If I had to place bets I would say this person's name starts with the letter S... But I might be wrong!
[Simon: who could you have been thinking of, Polly?]

Detail: My Life in Books: Series Two: Day Seven

0 My Life in Books: Series Two: Day Six

Happy weekend, everyone - but there is no rest for the, er, bloggers.  Still six more bloggers waiting to tell you their lives in books!  Hasn't it been fun, so far?

Claire writes (sometimes!) at Paperback Reader, and I think (although I have not thought too long and hard about it) might be the blogger I've met the most often.  And it is always a joy and a pleasure!

Nymeth writes Things Mean A Lot, a title derived from a Red House Painters song, and started blogging a week or two before I did.  She gave me the option of using her real name (Ana) or her blogging name (Nymeth) and I thought I'd go for the one with which I was most familiar - but she'll answer to either!

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.

Claire: My love for books and for reading was instilled in me from an early age, mainly by my mother and grandmother.  I loved being read to and I was one of those children who always knew (and objected!) whenever the reader skipped over a part or mixed up the words.  The two picture books that stand out in my memory are Mog's Christmas by Judith Kerr and Dogger by Shirley Hughes, both written by stalwart children's authors who have endured.  Mog's Christmas was the second outing in the famous series and concerns Mog the cat's unsettled reaction to Christmas; I'm a huge fan of Christmas and cats and I like to think that Mog's Christmas contributed to that. Oh, and I loved the book so much that my grandparents had to rename their kitten Mog!  She was as much a part of my childhood as the book was and died when I was fifteen years old. 

Dogger, like Mog's Christmas, wasn't exactly a happy story and I wonder if my love of sad stories that end happily says something about my reading preferences...  Dogger is the eponymous toy dog who is lost and found again; however, it is also a heartwarming tale of a sister who sacrifices her own toy for her little brother's happiness.  I loved, loved, loved it.

Nymeth: I did grow up in a book-loving household, though my parents never really had the habit of reading to me.  I confess I feel slightly envious when fellow book bloggers share their memories of being read anything from The Lord of the Rings to Dickens to Jane Eyre as bedtime stories!  But to give my parents the credit they deserve, they led by example: they were always plenty of books around the house, and I would always see them reading.  So from a very young age I learned to associate reading with something adults did for enjoyment, and I very much wanted to do it myself.

Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was a huge childhood favourite of mine.  I first discovered it through the Japanese animated series from the 1980s, which was on TV a lot when I was little.  I asked my parents for the book, and for many years I reread it every six months or so.  I had no idea Twain was one of the great American novelists then – I just loved his book for its sense of adventure and possibility and for Tom Sawyer’s endless mischief.  I would love to revisit it one of these days, along with the more critically acclaimed Huckleberry Finn.  I must have been 13 or 14 when I last read them, and have no idea what they’d look like to my adult eyes.

Qu.2) What was one of the first 'grown-up' books that you really enjoyed?  

Claire: I read a lot of older books before I was really supposed to.  I had access to libraries and voraciously read anything; I also remember devouring my grandmother's library books too, books by Catherine Cookson, Lena Kennedy and Barbara Taylor Bradford just because they were there.  However, I also encountered classic novels during my binge years and read The Catcher in the Rye at ten years old (way too young to understand it) and Jane Eyre at eleven (I adored it; I did not adore studying it my first year at University).  Either of those answer your question but I think it was really reading Rebecca when I was fourteen that was the first 'grown-up' book that shaped me as a reader and determined the type of books I sought out from that point onwards.  It remains a favourite.  My mum bought it for me on a holiday to Ireland to visit family and I cherished -and still do- that copy although it is battered and well read and re-read.  I was a bookish teenager who didn't fit in at school and was, at that stage, going through a particularly bad bout of being bullied; I had always escaped through fiction but Du Maurier  thoroughly immersed me in Manderley and its goings on that I didn't want to leave.  It took me until last year to read a second Du Maurier novel because I loved Rebecca so absolutely that I couldn't have anything taint those memories of being found - as opposed to lost - in literature... I need not have worried.

Nymeth: Probably one of George Orwell’s most famous novels, Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm.  I read them a few months apart, but I can’t really recall which one came first.  I also can’t remember what was going on in my life at this point, though funnily enough I have very vivid memories of lying in my bed in the afternoon and reading these novels.  I must have been in seventh or eight grade, and I remember feeling all clever and grown-up and proud of myself for understanding Orwell’s allegory in Animal Farm and grasping at least some of the political subtext that informs the dystopian world in Nineteen Eighty-Four.  I also felt very satisfied with myself for having picked up these novels on my own (I didn’t grow up in an English-speaking country, so we didn’t study them in school).

Of course, looking back now I see that the power of Orwell’s novels doesn’t exactly lie in their subtlety.  Laura Miller says in The Magician’s Book that these are great stories to “cut your critical teeth into”, and I can see what she means.  They’re pretty transparent but no less satisfying for it, and so they can easily make young readers feel confident that they can understand metaphors and allegories and tease out political themes in more complex literary works.

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

Claire: I couldn't discuss my life in books without mentioning Angela Carter as she has been a huge influence.  I read Nights at the Circus as a set text in my final year of university (so, my twenties and "early adulthood") and enjoyed it more than any other book I read while studying (and that's saying something as I first read Toni Morrison, Charles Dickens, Salman Rusdie and many more while at uni).  The richness of language, the literary allusion, the fervour of her storytelling and how she is unrelenting in her creativity and passion... yes, I was an immediate fan. 
A year later I had read her back catalogue and was writing my Master's thesis on aspects of her work.

Nymeth: I don’t often remember to list it among my favourites, but Aurora Leigh by Elizabeth Barrett Browning was important to me because it sparked my interest in the Victorians and, obliquely, in gender studies.  I’m not sure if I’d say it helped set me off in a new direction in life – I didn’t go on to study any of these things in grad school, for example, though I did consider it.  But the novel opened up a new world for me, and the readings that followed from that help shape my thinking to this day.

Qu.4) What's one of your favourite books that you've found in the last five years, and how has blogging or the reading of blogs changed your reading habits?

Claire: The Group by Mary McCarthy is a favourite from the last five years but there have been several... that one wasn't one I found through blogging although it was an early read in my blogging career and one I am glad I have been able to share with fellow bloggers.
Blogging and reading of blogs has been an enriching experience but it also changed the way I read.  The wealth of recommendations, challenges (especially literary prize list reading) and books for review was a lovely by-product of blogging but it was also overwhelming... I found it important to return to my roots as a reader and read more on a whim rather than have hype or deadline dictate my reading.  I am enjoying my reading again (reading is never fun when it becomes a chore) and every so often allow myself to be led by the enthusiasm of another blogger into my next book read or purchase.  I have always been an eclectic reader but think I have become more discerning of my own preferences since I returned to making my own reading choices again.

Nymeth:  Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers, which I might never have picked up if not for book bloggers, and which I’d certainly have read out of order if not for bloggers – I was rescued from that horrific fate at the very last minute!  I know this might sound clichéd, but blogging has done a lot to expand my horizons over the past few years.  The more time I spend in the virtual company of other bookish folks, the more my interests widen.  And this is something for which I’m incredibly grateful.

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

Claire: Nobody can survive - or be sustained - on a diet of one type of book alone... I tend towards rich, hearty literature and that's just not healthy so sometimes I have to indulge in some low-calorie popcorn reading too!  I love some easy reading fantasy series reading, whether it be on the epic scale of George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series or Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire (Sookie Stackhouse) series, things that I can snack on between meals but that sate me for a while.

Nymeth: I hate to be a spoilsport, but I don’t really believe in the concept of guilty pleasures :P  I think people have come to expect my blog to be an amalgamation of interests that don’t often go together, so I’m not sure what would be surprising.  I guess there’s The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa.  I was obsessed with it in my teens and memorised entire passages.  It’s one of those books that helped make me who I am, but because all of this happened pre-blogging people are unaware that I’ve even read it.

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

Nymeth, on Claire's choices: These choices immediately made me think of one blogger in particular: Claire from Paperback Reader. I think all of those are books I’ve seen her mention fondly at one point or another – the three middle ones in particular are such Claire novels. But regardless of who my mystery partner is, I would guess that they are: 

• A cat lover since childhood, as evidenced by Mog’s Christmas
• A fan of feminist fiction
• Someone interested in novels that successfully combine elements of several genres (Angela Carter is brilliant at this, as well as just brilliant in general)
• Someone with very diverse reading taste
• Someone who values both good writing AND good storytelling.

See, all of this fits Claire perfectly. The more I think about it, the more I become convinced that I’m right ;)    [Simon: haha! well done you!]

Claire, on Nymeth's choices: Simon, you had to go and challenge me not to try and guess gender because now I have to!  My gut instinct is that my co-participant is male, although I feel bad that it's based on gender-specified stereotypes (illogically as I read Tom Sawyer and Ninety Eighty-Four as a young reader too...)  I like their choices and they intrigue me - especially the Pessoa as a guilty pleasure/surprise although I suspect that the surprise is that it is Modernist.  I think my co-participant is from the UK and has had an extended education in English literature, with a great love for Victorian literature.  
[Simon: oooops!]

Detail: My Life in Books: Series Two: Day Six

0 My Life in Books: Series Two: Day Five

End of the working week - but certainly not the end of My Life in Books!  We're keeping going right through til Monday, and there are some really brilliant bloggers still to come - including, of course, today's pair.  Do keep commenting about the books you've read, or now want to read!

Sakura describes herself as 'a reading, writing, half Japanese, half Sri Lankan, culturally mixed Londoner', and blogs at Chasing Bawa.  I found out on one of my favourite discussion-generating posts, 'What's in a Name?', that the name came from her family's habit, when in Sri Lanka of 'looking for, having tea and staying in beautiful houses and hotels designed by the architect Geoffrey Bawa.'

Danielle writes A Work in Progress, and has been blogging for an amazing seven years. She also has the longest blog-link list of anyone I know, and the lovelist profile image.

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.

Sakura: I grew up in a house filled with books, both my parents read a lot and my father wrote.  Although we never received pocket money, we were allowed to buy as many books as we wanted.  I don't recall my parents reading to me though and my first memories are of me flicking through my mother's book on Botticelli from her art school days.

One of my favourite childhood books is Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield, about three orphaned girls taken in by an eccentric explorer and his niece who dicover the meaning of life, love and family through ballet.  I was quite tomboyish as a child and always wanted to learn ballet.  There was something so romantic about it and I would enviously watch as my neighbourhood friend went to her ballet lessons.  However, the book itself dealt with a lot of adult themes such as the loss of family, financial worries, the sacrifices involved in the pursuit of dreams and how values change as you grow up.

Danielle: I do come from a family of readers, though I seem to have surpassed the rest of my family in terms of having a serious book addiction.  I read far more books throughout the year and I seem to acquire them faster than anyone else in my family.  Although I don’t recall being read to (I must have been read to as a very small child), my mom always took my sisters and I to the library, which is probably where my lifelong love of libraries began.  My mom also worked in an elementary school library and would occasionally take me with her to work, which was always a special treat.  She would often bring home books to share and I still have vivid memories of some of them. 

One of my very favorite books as a child is one I owned, however.  I would spend hours poring over Richard Scarry’s What Do People Do All Day?  Although there is text, it was the illustrations that set my imagination in motion.  Inside the pages of this book is a city teeming with life.  Each building depicted is a cutaway so you can see inside and imagine all the different people and the jobs they do and the places they go.  The book is so colorful and with so many small details it every time I would look at it there was something new to see in the pictures. 

Qu.2) What was one of the first 'grown-up' books that you really enjoyed?  

Sakura: The first grown-up book I read was probably Agatha Christie's Murder on the Links when I was nine.  I think I found the book in my Sri Lankan grandparents' house when I was visiting on holiday.  The book probably belonged to one of my aunts or uncles but I 'borrowed' it and it has remained one of my favourites - I still have it at home today.  We were living in Bangkok during the 1980s where I attended a British school and lived the expat life, mixing with children from a lot of different countries.  I remember spending an inordinate amount of time in Asia Bookstore near our flat going through all of Christie's mysteries I read and wanted to read.

Danielle: Not only did I always have easy access to books when I was young, but I was allowed to pick and choose as I liked.  I didn’t have a lot of guidance when it came to picking books and this was both good and bad.  It was good to be able to choose books based on whim and fancy - whatever simply sounded appealing I would read - but it also meant I missed whole swathes of literature that so many other young adults had pressed into their hands by more mature readers.  I wish I could say I had discovered Jane Eyre or Pride and Prejudice or even Agatha Christie when I was a young adult, but I was too busy exploring decidedly lower brow fiction.  It’s probably best not to admit to some of the books I read when I was just starting high school, but one I recall reading over a Christmas holiday and with great relish was a historical novel by Karleen Koen called Through a Glass Darkly.  I remember hiding out in my parent’s bedroom glued to my book while other festivities were going on.  Not a very refined choice of reading matter but it was a natural progression for me. 

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

Sakura: Simone de Beauvoir's memoirs, beginning with Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, are a favourite and influenced some of the choices I made and how I wanted to live.  I admired her strength and determination and her worship of scholarship and art.  She may not have been perfect and her memories may not have been altogether truthful but she dared to live life the way she wanted to and is the ultimate bohemian.

Danielle: After I graduated from college and had spent a little time traveling I remember reading Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.  This was a pivotal book in my life and marked a turning point where I put behind me more childish things, and certainly childish attitudes.  Maybe because this story chronicles a road trip, it made me feel like the entire world was open to me and anything was possible.   

Qu.4) What's one of your favourite books that you've found in the last five years, and how has blogging or the reading of blogs changed your reading habits?

Sakura: One of my favourite books from the last five years is Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson, the first in a ten volume fantasy series called The Malazan Book of the Fallen.  I've been a fan of fantasy and speculative fiction since I read the Narnia books as a child, but Erikson takes this genre to another level with his sophisticated plotting and prose.  It's truly epic, adult and beautifully realised and, in my opinion, a great work of literature.

My reading habits have changed considerably since I started reading blogs and writing one of my own.  I think part of it has to do with how easy it is to buy cheap books especially when you've just read an interesting review (whether it's glowing or snarky!) I find that I have a waiting list of books I need to read, making me wish sometimes that my choice of books could be more whimsical, as they once were.

Danielle: What a difficult question.  How can I choose only one when there have been so many wonderful discoveries in the last five years?  I’ll have to give the honor to Wilkie Collins, however, and one of my very favorite books by him, The Woman in White.  Gradually over time my reading choices have changed, and in some ways drastically so.  I didn’t study literature in college and my reading history has been shaky at best, so I often (even now on occasion) second guess my reading choices.  For many years I didn’t read any classic literature at all assuming I wasn’t a sophisticated enough reader to get what was going on or catch subtleties in the story.  About the time I started blogging in earnest I decided that I wanted to start reading more classics.  He’e been one of my favorite classic authors whose books I can read again and again. 

Blogging has definitely changed my reading habits.  I am a much more daring reader in some ways, but I am also a more discerning reader now.  And I have discovered so many authors and publishers who I think I would not have been exposed to had I not started blogging and interacting with other readers online.

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

Sakura: I'm a huge fan of historical mysteries since I first disovered Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael at school.  One of my favourites in the genre is the Amelia Peabody series by Elizabeth Peters set in early 20th century Egypt.  They are funny, thrilling, full of colourful characters and you learn a lot about Egyptology!

Danielle: Although I am now much more willing to try difficult books, I think I am also a pretty predictable reader in many ways.  One of my favorite guilty pleasures is reading books by Georgette Heyer.  Her books are pure escapism.  I know what I can expect from her work, and sometimes that’s a good thing.

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

Danielle, on Sakura's choices: I have a real affinity with this reader.  I love their choices, and while the books I was reading growing up varied, we have followed a similar reading path through life.  They seem to have had a more traditional experience book-wise growing up.  I've yet to read Noel Streatfeild (she's on my list however), but I know she is a beloved children's (and adult's too) author and many a child has had her books placed in their hands.  Agatha Christie is another author so many young adults read as their first 'grown up' author, and yet another author I have only discovered as an adult.  And then along comes Simone de Beauvoir.  Simone de Beauvoir seems like one of those pivotal authors where a reader moves from good, entertaining fiction to more sophisticated ideas and an exploration into and a curiosity of the broader world.  This is a reader who is equally at home reading intellectual fiction and nonfiction but is also content to pick up a book in other genres, and maybe has a taste for a little adventure with their mystery and science fiction book choices.  I like their eclectic taste and it mirrors my own (Amelia Peabody is a fictional character I've thought it would be fun to meet).  I think it's a given that this is someone who loves books and loves to get lost in a really good story.

Sakura, on Danielle's choices: I would say the chooser is someone who was very inquisitive from an early age because of Richard Scarry's book (and who doesn't want to know what other people do?) Their interest in history, mystery and romance was sparked quite early on, probably at school (or even boarding school?) and never left them. Their love for the genre is still strong even though their reading has progressed in a more literary direction. And they probably went through a soul searching phase in their late teens/early twenties (but didn't we all!) I'm familiar with all the choices except for Through a Glass Darkly and the choices in some ways parallel my own reading history although I chose to focus on different books. And Richard Scarry was one of my favourite authors as a child!

Detail: My Life in Books: Series Two: Day Five

0 My Life in Books: Series Two: Day Four

And we're halfway!  Still plenty of wonderful people to come - and plenty of time for me to kick back with a cup of tea and enjoy a week off ;)  By the way, today has my favourite 'guilty pleasure' of the whole series!  I've taken the liberty of accompanying it with a cartoon from www.unshelved.com

Kim is an expat Australian living in London, and has been blogging about books since (gasp) 2001.  Reading Matters has had well over a million hits, and deservedly so.

Jenny is the other half (alongside Teresa, featured earlier this week) of US-based blog Shelf Love.  She's also the first of this week's bloggers that I've never met in person - I hope this will be rectified one day!

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.

Kim: My father was a primary school teacher and an avid reader himself, and while my mother didn’t read novels, she had a large collection of books about art and nature, so I definitely grew up in a book-loving household. My sister and I were read to as young children and later, as teenagers, we went on weekly visits to the local library, accompanied by Dad. (Funnily enough, long after we left home, my dad went to the library after a long absence and the librarian handed him a new card and two additional ones “for your daughters” — seems we had been remembered even though we hadn’t been for at least five years!)

One of my fondest childhood memories associated with books was staying in a holiday house on the beach during the off-season (read wet, cold and windy) accompanied by the boxed set of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia series, which Dad had borrowed from the library at his school (which was also my school, but that’s another story). Throughout the week we took it in turns to read the books in order — Voyage of the Dawn Treader still remains my favourite.

But if I was to pick a favourite book from my childhood I would have to say Robert C. O’Brien’s The Silver Crown, which I must have read at least two dozen times.  It’s an adventure story meets psychological thriller; it was my first introduction to the concept of a page-turner. In it, a girl called Ellen receives a mysterious silver crown for her tenth birthday.  When she puts it on and goes for a walk, little does she know the lengths that (bad) people will go to in order to steal the crown from her.  For most of the story she is on the run from men wearing black cloaks and along the way she meets other characters whom she’s never sure whether to trust or not.  It’s essentially a story about good versus evil, and I just remember loving the feeling of fear and suspense it evoked in me as I read it. 

Jenny: I grew up in a house where reading was as natural and as expected and as full of pleasure as eating.  My parents read to me when I was an infant on up through my teen years -- I can remember summer evenings when all five of us sat around listening to my father doing the Ent and Gollum voices in the Lord of the Rings books.  I must have been fourteen or fifteen then. I was a constant reader. All of us were.

When I was a child, I tended to read books over and over again.  I'd take big bags of books out of the library, bring them back the next week, and then check them out again immediately.  One favorite that I don't think I've ever heard anyone else mention was Sesyle Joslin's The Night They Stole the Alphabet.  It's about a little girl who wakes in the night to find that three shadowy robbers have stolen the alphabet from her bedroom wallpaper, and all her beloved books are missing their printing as well.  She takes off in pursuit, and her adventures lead her (with the help of some engaging friends) to a baby with a B in its bonnet, a reversed mermaid who warns her to mind her Ps and Qs, and a hospitable owl who invites her for a refreshing cup of T...
 

Qu.2) What was one of the first 'grown-up' books that you really enjoyed?  

Kim: Probably the first truly “adult” novel that I read was Virginia Andrew’s Flowers in the Attic, which was about four siblings locked in an attic who were being slowly poisoned by their grandmother.  During their confinement, the two elder siblings — a brother and sister — fall in love.  It was quite a risqué book for a 14-year-old to read.  I probably would never have come across it on my own; my best friend, who had taken it from her mother’s shelf, had loaned it to me.  It didn’t take long for the book’s raunchy reputation to spread like wildfire through my school and the paperback did the rounds of all my friends.  It was quite battered and forlorn looking when it was finally returned to its proper home!  I don’t think my friend’s mother minded though, because we ended up reading the follow-up that was published the next year.  I occasionally see Flowers in the Attic in bookshops and have a little titter to myself.  I’m actually tempted to read it again, if only to confirm that it was probably the trashiest novel I’ve ever read!

Jenny: My mother majored in 19th-century British literature when she was in college, so she had a tendency to give me grown-up books before I was really ready for them.  But I can clearly remember a summer's vacation to France when I was completely possessed by Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca.  I must have been eleven years old, and I sat in a chair in our little attic apartment in Strasbourg, with our friends' cat on my lap, and read that novel as if my life, and not the second Mrs. de Winter's, depended on it.  I probably read it three times that summer.  What a punch that book still packs, doesn't it?

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

Kim: I spent most of my early adulthood reading a lot of trashy thrillers, sappy romances and horror novels. By the time I was 20 I’d worked my way through Stephen King’s back catalogue and had just discovered Dean R. Koontz, Maeve Binchy and Leon Uris.  But then, for a reason I cannot remember, I picked up Patrick McCabe’s Booker shortlisted The Butcher Boy in a bookshop, bought it and took it home.  It was probably the first proper “literary” novel I’d ever read and I was knocked sideways by it.  For a start, the entire novel is written without punctuation, so you’re never sure where one sentence ends and another begins.  And the voice, that of a young troubled boy who commits a murder, is horribly disquieting.  Before long you realise he has become unhinged and is in desperate need of help — and love.  It’s a very dark and disturbing novel, but a compelling one.  It completely transformed the way I thought about fiction.  I was no longer satisfied reading middle-of-the-road “supermarket” novels; I wanted something meaty and confronting and challenging; I wanted books that explored moral dilemmas and showed the darker side of human nature.  As a result, I started reading a lot of dark literary stuff, including Ian Banks’ The Wasp Factory and the early works of John Banville (The Book of Evidence, Mefisto and The Revolutions Trilogy), to name but a few.  To this day, more than 20 years later, I still seek out that kind of dark fiction — and I look for that kind of subject matter in the non-fiction I read, too.

Jenny: I'm not certain whether this is cheating, because these are books I have read many times, but the Eliots of Damerosehay trilogy by Elizabeth Goudge (The Bird in the Tree, Pilgrim's Inn, and The Heart of the Family) were very important to me during early adulthood struggles in particular.  In this trilogy, Goudge follows the Eliot family between the first World War and the second, and deals with the notions of what home means, what truth and integrity are when they are not centered only around the self, and how your own pain can be made into joyful sacrifice so something greater can be built.  She does all this with lightness and humor, and she has the tremendous gift of writing good people who are not boring.

Qu.4) What's one of your favourite books that you've found in the last five years, and how has blogging or the reading of blogs changed your reading habits?

Kim: I read up to 100 books a year, so a book has to be exceptional to stand out from the crowd. But one of the most affecting novels I’ve read in the past five years, and the one that I still think about years after having read it, is John McGahern’s The Barracks. This semi-autobiographical novel, first published in 1963, is about a young woman (based on McGahern’s mother) who marries a widower, who already has a large family. Just as she’s getting used to her new routine and becoming a stepmother for the first time, she discovers a lump in her breast — and decides not to tell a soul about it. It’s an incredibly moving and haunting story — and it’s by far the best depiction of a woman’s voice, as written by a man, that I have ever come across. It made me rush out to my nearest Waterstones and buy McGahern’s entire back catalogue in one hit. I’m yet to be disappointed by anything he has written.

In terms of how blogging has changed my reading habits, I would say it has made me a “better” reader, by which I mean I think more deeply about what I’ve read and I tend to analyse a book’s structure, its plot, how the characters are developed, what the prose is like and so on. I’m constantly thinking why does this book work — or not work. And I’m more inclined to be forgiving of a book, knowing that getting all these elements “right” is so very difficult. I’ve never studied English literature or any arts subjects, so, in many ways, blogging about books has been a little like educating myself about the world of fiction — it’s been a constant learning exercise.

Reading so many other book blogs has also exposed me to a greater variety of literature and, while I’ve always been willing to read outside of my comfort zone, I’m now more inclined to try different types of books on the basis of blogger recommendations.

Jenny: Just one?!? Simon, that's impossible. I've read so many magnificent books in the last five years -- okay, um, just one then:  HomebyMarilynneRobinsonLittleBigbyJohnCrowley-andPaleFirebyVladimirNabokov. (!!) Blogging has changed my reading habits a lot. I used to go to the library, look around me at the sea of books I couldn't remember, give up, and re-read an old favorite. Now that I have a real TBR list and a good way of remembering what I've read in the past, I read far, far more new things. I almost never re-read any longer. I get so many wonderful recommendations from other bloggers. And I never feel alone in what I've read or what I enjoy reading. 

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

Kim: I do like a good psychological thriller or suspense novel.  I don’t mind if the plot’s absurd or if it’s riddled with holes, as long as it’s a page-turner and keeps me guessing until the end I’m happy.  It’s only very recently that I have realised I’m trying to recapture what it was like to read The Silver Crown all those years ago!

I find these kinds of reads are perfect for when I’m on holiday and want to disengage the brain or when I need something to lift me out of a reading slump or just to cleanse the palate in between more “high-brow” reads. My favourite writer in this genre is Nicci French but I’ve also enjoyed novels by Helen Fitzgerald and James Siegel.  More recently I’ve discovered Patricia Highsmith and John Bowles.

Jenny: My reading habits are so eclectic that I doubt anything I said would surprise people (old issues of Popular Mechanics? Boxing Today? Waxing My Mustache: A Personal Memoir?  No, that last one would probably be interesting.) And I don't feel guilty about anything I read. Oh, here's a guilty pleasure: when I go to bookstores, I take the blaring political books with nasty titles (Liberals Are Ugly And Dress Funny; Republicans Hate Their Mothers) off the shelves, and shelve them in unexpected places where they are hard to find (travel, feminist theory.)  I ought not.  It's making life difficult for the bookstore clerks. But I do it.

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

Jenny, on Kim's choices: This person, from a young age, has never been turned off or unsettled by the dark side of human nature.  Not for them the "cozy" mystery or the comfort read!  Instead, they like to find out everything they can about what people really are and do in unusual and trying situations.  Even their guilty-pleasure reading is dark -- though it's ordered, so you know the bad guy will be caught.  Their taste in writing has changed a bit over the years (though I read Flowers in the Attic when I was a teenager, too!)  Since people in dark spots sometimes react very poorly (The Butcher Boy) and sometimes with dignity (The Barracks), it's a side that never loses its fascination, and one I'm interested in, too.

Kim, on Jenny's choices: This is such an interesting selection books of which I've only read one — Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier — and that was very recently.  With a little help from Amazon, I can see that many of these titles share similar themes — in each of the reviews the words "charming", "magical" and "poignant" keep appearing.  So I suspect that this is a reader who loves books that provide a little warm inner glow and they appreciate stories that are deeply imaginative, perhaps transport them to a world that looks like ours but is more magical, strange and romantic.  I think this reader also enjoys tales with a touch of suspense.

Detail: My Life in Books: Series Two: Day Four