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Oct. 14th, 2007 11:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elsajeniOkay, EVERYTHING IS OKAY and now it is time for a non-capslocky entry. Specifically, a meme-y non-capslocky entry. Book meme taken from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
amanuensis1.
Name...
* Three books that marked your childhood:
1. A Child's Book of Verse, which, although it sounds like one of the Robert Louis Stevenson ones, wasn't; it was just a compilation of classic poems. This book included "The Highwayman", which I still love forever and ever and ever.
2. The Lord of the Rings; I've posted about this before, when I wrote something about My First Fanfic, but to review, I read it when I was nine, and it stood the hairs on the back of my neck on end and lit my imagination on fire.
3. Any given Nancy Drew book. I was an early reader, and I started reading Nancy Drew in kindergarten or slightly before and didn't stop until... seventh grade, maybe?
* And your teenagehood:
1. The Outsiders, which I read for the first time for school in about the sixth grade and then read about a million more times. I gave away my copy, which I regret; that edition is out of print by now, and I can't find a new one that I like as much. My old one was just the right size and had the perfect cover art.
2. Elsewhere (and its sequel, Nevernever), by Will Shetterly. This was pretty much the first modern fantasy or urban fantasy I read; at this point, I had spent years reading high fantasy and not liking it, and being utterly unable to figure out why I didn't like it, and it took a couple more years still for me to work out that, really, the only high fantasy I ever liked was Tolkien, but reading this was my first hopeful clue that fantasy didn't have to disappoint me.
3. I'm not entirely sure that this is in the spirit of the meme -- it does say "books", not "novel-length stories only available in printed-out-from-the-computer form" -- but I'm going to list it anyway: Azaleas. For anyone who's not heard it referred to by name before: this is the proper title of Bad Teenaged Novel. It exists only in first-draft form; I hope to revise it sometime, but I feel like I still need to be further removed from it before I can manage that. I wrote the vast majority of it during two Novembers, when I was 16 and 17, and I finished it on January 10, 2004, shortly after I turned 18. Writing it was the most spectacular, miraculous, unbelievable experience that I have ever had.
* Your three favourite books (only 3, even if it's hard!):
1. Macbeth, and don't argue semantics with me, it's a book. My sixth-grade reading teacher had us read sections from it aloud, unabridged, un-fooled-around-with; that was one of the junior-high book experiences that made me interested in becoming a teacher (which I drifted away from and am now drifting back toward), because it was the first time a teacher had ever let us try something so complicated.
2. The Once and Future King, T.H. White. There is something in me that could not be more pleased with heroism and bravery and a little bit of foolhardiness and periodically being extremely wrongheaded and not being able to see it but then making up for it with the heroism and bravery and suchlike, and as such you will note that (returning to it as an adult, at least) my favorite character in Lord of the Rings was Boromir, and Gawaine, at least in this telling, lights that part of me up like a pinball machine. Most of the other characters I couldn't care less about, especially Lancelot (Jesus, shut up, Lancelot), but... Gawaine.
3. The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury. I don't actually know if I would like this if I read it again today -- the first and last time I read it was in the fifth grade. It was one of the "quiet reading" options my teacher had in one of those spinning wire book racks. I don't even remember the details. I just remember that it absolutely knocked me flat. It was so good that I was fucking astounded.
* Three books you could read again and again without growing weary of it:
1. Oh, can I reuse books? Macbeth goes nicely in this category.
2. Beowulf does, too. Both of them for the same reasons -- there's always something new in them.
3. Any Ray Bradbury short story anthology. I could happily memorize those things.
* Three books you've read recently or are reading now:
1. Podkayne of Mars, Heinlein, which I'm about a quarter of the way through. It's... well... Heinleiny, and a little bit more of a thankless chore than I was hoping.
2. Beowulf, Seamus Heaney translation, which I've barely started. I am reading this because I'm a dork. Also, I love this version because it's the bilingual edition, with the original on the left page and the translation on the right page, and I like the strange feeling of looking at the original and being able to pick up occasional words even though as a whole it seems to be written in Martian.
3. Jane Eyre, which I have started three or four times in the past year and a half, and finished zero times. I will defeat this book. I swear I will.
* Three books that you'll read soon:
1. Lolita, hopefully. I bought a copy quite some time ago with the intention of reading it right away, and I keep putting it off in favor of lighter reading, but I really do want to read it.
2. '48, by James Herbert. I read this book in the "library" on the cruise that my Girl Scout troop went on in high school, and loved it, and afterwards I could never find it again and briefly thought I must have dreamed it or something. Then finally I found it on Amazon. I'm terribly excited to see if it's as much fun as I remember.
3. Strange Piece of Paradise, which is a kind of unsettling-sounding non-fiction book: it's written by a woman who was very nearly killed by an axe-wielding psycho in the 1970s, and is all about going back and revisiting the places and people involved, and to some extent suggesting who the attacker may have been.
* And one very special book that you'd keep with you all the time:
This time it's really the book itself that matters, not the story (or one of the stories) within it: my great big complete Shakespeare. It's orange and ugly as sin and the printing is wee and the pages are thin and I love it to bits.
Also, has the font in the Update Journal form changed? I think it has, and I don't like it.
amanuensis1.Name...
* Three books that marked your childhood:
1. A Child's Book of Verse, which, although it sounds like one of the Robert Louis Stevenson ones, wasn't; it was just a compilation of classic poems. This book included "The Highwayman", which I still love forever and ever and ever.
2. The Lord of the Rings; I've posted about this before, when I wrote something about My First Fanfic, but to review, I read it when I was nine, and it stood the hairs on the back of my neck on end and lit my imagination on fire.
3. Any given Nancy Drew book. I was an early reader, and I started reading Nancy Drew in kindergarten or slightly before and didn't stop until... seventh grade, maybe?
* And your teenagehood:
1. The Outsiders, which I read for the first time for school in about the sixth grade and then read about a million more times. I gave away my copy, which I regret; that edition is out of print by now, and I can't find a new one that I like as much. My old one was just the right size and had the perfect cover art.
2. Elsewhere (and its sequel, Nevernever), by Will Shetterly. This was pretty much the first modern fantasy or urban fantasy I read; at this point, I had spent years reading high fantasy and not liking it, and being utterly unable to figure out why I didn't like it, and it took a couple more years still for me to work out that, really, the only high fantasy I ever liked was Tolkien, but reading this was my first hopeful clue that fantasy didn't have to disappoint me.
3. I'm not entirely sure that this is in the spirit of the meme -- it does say "books", not "novel-length stories only available in printed-out-from-the-computer form" -- but I'm going to list it anyway: Azaleas. For anyone who's not heard it referred to by name before: this is the proper title of Bad Teenaged Novel. It exists only in first-draft form; I hope to revise it sometime, but I feel like I still need to be further removed from it before I can manage that. I wrote the vast majority of it during two Novembers, when I was 16 and 17, and I finished it on January 10, 2004, shortly after I turned 18. Writing it was the most spectacular, miraculous, unbelievable experience that I have ever had.
* Your three favourite books (only 3, even if it's hard!):
1. Macbeth, and don't argue semantics with me, it's a book. My sixth-grade reading teacher had us read sections from it aloud, unabridged, un-fooled-around-with; that was one of the junior-high book experiences that made me interested in becoming a teacher (which I drifted away from and am now drifting back toward), because it was the first time a teacher had ever let us try something so complicated.
2. The Once and Future King, T.H. White. There is something in me that could not be more pleased with heroism and bravery and a little bit of foolhardiness and periodically being extremely wrongheaded and not being able to see it but then making up for it with the heroism and bravery and suchlike, and as such you will note that (returning to it as an adult, at least) my favorite character in Lord of the Rings was Boromir, and Gawaine, at least in this telling, lights that part of me up like a pinball machine. Most of the other characters I couldn't care less about, especially Lancelot (Jesus, shut up, Lancelot), but... Gawaine.
3. The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury. I don't actually know if I would like this if I read it again today -- the first and last time I read it was in the fifth grade. It was one of the "quiet reading" options my teacher had in one of those spinning wire book racks. I don't even remember the details. I just remember that it absolutely knocked me flat. It was so good that I was fucking astounded.
* Three books you could read again and again without growing weary of it:
1. Oh, can I reuse books? Macbeth goes nicely in this category.
2. Beowulf does, too. Both of them for the same reasons -- there's always something new in them.
3. Any Ray Bradbury short story anthology. I could happily memorize those things.
* Three books you've read recently or are reading now:
1. Podkayne of Mars, Heinlein, which I'm about a quarter of the way through. It's... well... Heinleiny, and a little bit more of a thankless chore than I was hoping.
2. Beowulf, Seamus Heaney translation, which I've barely started. I am reading this because I'm a dork. Also, I love this version because it's the bilingual edition, with the original on the left page and the translation on the right page, and I like the strange feeling of looking at the original and being able to pick up occasional words even though as a whole it seems to be written in Martian.
3. Jane Eyre, which I have started three or four times in the past year and a half, and finished zero times. I will defeat this book. I swear I will.
* Three books that you'll read soon:
1. Lolita, hopefully. I bought a copy quite some time ago with the intention of reading it right away, and I keep putting it off in favor of lighter reading, but I really do want to read it.
2. '48, by James Herbert. I read this book in the "library" on the cruise that my Girl Scout troop went on in high school, and loved it, and afterwards I could never find it again and briefly thought I must have dreamed it or something. Then finally I found it on Amazon. I'm terribly excited to see if it's as much fun as I remember.
3. Strange Piece of Paradise, which is a kind of unsettling-sounding non-fiction book: it's written by a woman who was very nearly killed by an axe-wielding psycho in the 1970s, and is all about going back and revisiting the places and people involved, and to some extent suggesting who the attacker may have been.
* And one very special book that you'd keep with you all the time:
This time it's really the book itself that matters, not the story (or one of the stories) within it: my great big complete Shakespeare. It's orange and ugly as sin and the printing is wee and the pages are thin and I love it to bits.
Also, has the font in the Update Journal form changed? I think it has, and I don't like it.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-15 12:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-15 03:25 pm (UTC)