Book meme

I've got a Christmas blog nearly written, and since University term is finally over, I have another idea brewing. So, apologies readers and followers, I may be a little prolific over the festive period! However, it would be nice to get to know you and your reading interests, so please do copy and paste this and fill it in in the comments section!


What’s the first book you remember really loving?

I think it was probably the Tale of Tom Kitten by Beatrix Potter. We got a cat when my sisters were very small (and the youngest was born when I was three), and I named him Samuel Whiskers after Beatrix Potter's rat in the Tale of Samuel Whiskers, which also featured Tom.




Name three authors who feature strongly in your reading history...
At the moment I'm very much on a Neil Gaiman trip. I've just finished Neverwhere and The Ananci Boys, and am about to start a collection of his short stories, Fragile Things. I think The Graveyard Book is absolutely wonderful. I probably read Jane Eyre annually, since I first read it aged 10, and I get something different from it every time I read it. My points of sympathy have changed over the 30 years from the child Jane, to the schoolgirl Jane, to Jane in love with Mr Rochester, to (at present) Blanche Ingram, without dowry and surely panicking about being left on the shelf. My MA dissertation was about the woman artist in mid Victorian fiction by women, and Jane's art was an inspiration. Diana Wynne Jones is an author I discovered all by myself in the library when I was (I think) 9 or 10. I read Charmed Life and fell head over heels with Chrestomanci, in his fancy dressing gown, and his defeat of the horrible Gwendolen.

What’s the very next book you’re going to pick off your TBR pile?
Kipling's Jungle Books. I haven't read them before; my dad read me the Just So stories, Puck of Pook's Hill and Rewards and Fairies, and I read Kim a few years ago, but I don't remember reading the Jungle Books. I know that the Mowgli section is quite a small part, and that they were an inspiration for Gaiman's Graveyard Book. Also a pile of literary criticism and a growing list to read in the British Library!


What’s the very next book you’re thinking of buying/borrowing?
One of Marcus Sedgwick's, possibly the Book of Dead Days.

What’s the last book you read? What did you think?
Well, you'll have to wait for my special Christmas post to find out!