I'm supposed to be writing a review of my first three Orange Prize reads today. It is on my To Do List and everything. But having sat down I find that I can't concentrate - it is an absolutely beautiful day outside and the sun is shining directly on my garden bench. It seems wrong to sit inside and type. Very wrong.
Instead then, a lovely little meme that I stole from Niall at Torque Control (and which he stole from various other peoples). The idea is to list the books that most shaped your reading life as a child and young adult year by year, or by spans of years if your memory is as rubbish as mine. I like this idea, if only because it shows how unexpected our reading autobiographies are. I would not, for example, have put Niall down as a childhood devotee of Little House on the Prairie but lo! he was. So, here goes:
Ages 6-8
Matilda by Roald Dahl - I actually remember when and where I read this. It was my first 'confident reader' book at school when, aged 7, I graduated from the set reading series onto the little shelves of books in the corner of the classroom. Loved it, still love it.
The Worst Witch Series by Jill Murphy - I got a set of these books for Christmas one year and read them endlessly. I seem to remember my favourite was A Bad Spell for the Worst Witch.
Ages 8-10
The Mallory Towers Series by Enid Blyton - I read other Blyton books but these stories set in a seaside boarding school were my favourites. I think they instilled in me a romantic view of education that never quite left me despite all those grinding years of poor state schooling.
The Amulet Stories by Edith Nesbit - Any Nesbit actually, apart from maybe the Railway Children (which I like more as an adult). Wakefield library had half a dozen 1950s hardbacks of her collected children's novels: The Treasureseekers, The Wouldbegoods, The Children and It, The Phoenix and the Carpet, The Story of the Amulet, The Enchanted Castle... I think I must have taken them out dozens of times.
The Dark is Rising Series by Susan Cooper - I think I would have read this towards the end of this period, maybe even when I was 11. These dark novels about English folklore and myth probably led me on to read Fantasy in my early teens.
Age 10-12
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen - The 1995 BBC adaptation first screened around the time I turned 12. My mum and I would watch it together on the 'upstairs TV' and I read the book not long after. I think this was the first time I read a book and got so giddy at the end that I couldn't catch my breath.
Washington Square by Henry James - I think, although I'm not sure, that I read this before I read P&P. It was leant to me by a very enthusiastic, very young English teacher in my first year of secondary school and I stayed up all night reading it. I knew then that it was far too difficult for me to really appreciate but I loved it nevertheless. I believe this was also my first Penguin Classic.
The Plantagenet Saga by Jean Plaidy (a.k.a. Eleanor Hibbert) - At the same time that I was starting to read the classics I was also reading Jean Plaidy by the cartload, sneaking into the Romance section of the village library to dart off with 6 more. It was the Plantagenet series, and particularly those starring Eleanor of Aquitaine, that set me on the path towards a degree in Medieval History. I often think I'd like to read them again, but I'm scared to, in case I'm disappointed.
Age 12-14
The Outlander Series by Diana Gabaldon - It was during this period of my early teens that my reading life went mad; I would go to the library and just pick things entirely at random. And so I have to include Diana Gabaldon's time-travel romances as a formative reading experience. These were the first books that I bought for myself from the adult section of a bookshop. They were the first books I read with explicit sex scenes in them. And when I got the internet a couple of years later they were the first books I reviewed online. I still hold that they are highly superior examples of their genre. Also, the sex is good.
The Fionavar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay - Again, I stumbled upon these at the library, my first adult Fantasy books, and a very good place to start with the genre I think. Of course I went on to ruin it all by reading lots of formulaic dross - David Eddings was a favourite, and Katherine Kerr - but I have Guy to thank for my continued penchant for High Fantasy.
Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson - I vividly remember reading this in the bath and deciding that I might quite like adult literary fiction after all.
Age 14-16
Bizarrely this is a bit of dead time in my reading memory and nothing specific stands out, probably because I read almost nothing but Fantasy series and old historical fiction from the 1950s and 1960s (because my little library lacked most things but not historical fiction from the 1950s and 1960s). Oh, and Terry Pratchett, lots of Terry Pratchett.
Age 16-18
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood and The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter - I pair these two together because I read them back-to-back when I was 16 and they've stuck in my head as somehow related. Around this time I was really beginning to think about feminism, and what it meant to be a woman writing.
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson - I can't now remember who recommended this book to me now but it certainly resonated with my 17 year old self.
Does anyone else see a pattern here? Women, women, women. I wonder whether this is just a function of my memory, or whether I really did read more books by and about women all through my childhood. I'd love to hear fellow bloggers reading autobiographies, so feel free to make the meme your own.
~~Victoria~~
Recent Comments