Book Meme, Day 1
Jun. 3rd, 2018 05:45 pmFrom ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
maidenjedi:
1. Favorite book from childhood.
I didn't have a single one of those, and also it depends from which part of my childhood, even if you discount all the years from 13 onwards as being teenage or adolescent or what not. Yours truly was an avid reader from the time she could read, and I did have books I loved before that - one called Geschichten aus dem Alten Haus, for example, which was for pre-school kids and which my mother read to me. (Loosely connected fairy tales with a framing narration.) When I was nine or thereabouts, I discovered historical romance novels (not historical novels per se, I had read some before) and shocked my grandmother by starting to read the Angelique series by Anne Golon which granddad had on his shelves. More about Angelique (the title character and the series and why I remain fond to this day) here; the first and the fifth of those novels were my favourites.
And then there's Watership Down, which I read when I was twelve and adored and never stopped loving, either. By that time, I had read (and watched) a lot of stories featuring animals, of course. But not like this one. Those rabbits had their own mythology, they were all different from each other, relationships did not develop like I thought they would and this was good (I'm thinking of Bigwig and Hazel here, whom kid me thought were set up as rivals early on, but no), and at twelve I was aware enough of the past to recognize that Efrafra was a totalitarian state, without feeling condescended to or lectured at. Also, the thing about the wires in the earlier warren, and the silent agreement among the rabbits there - the horror of it really got to me. I kept rereading the book, and discovered something new every time.
( The other days )
maidenjedi: 1. Favorite book from childhood.
I didn't have a single one of those, and also it depends from which part of my childhood, even if you discount all the years from 13 onwards as being teenage or adolescent or what not. Yours truly was an avid reader from the time she could read, and I did have books I loved before that - one called Geschichten aus dem Alten Haus, for example, which was for pre-school kids and which my mother read to me. (Loosely connected fairy tales with a framing narration.) When I was nine or thereabouts, I discovered historical romance novels (not historical novels per se, I had read some before) and shocked my grandmother by starting to read the Angelique series by Anne Golon which granddad had on his shelves. More about Angelique (the title character and the series and why I remain fond to this day) here; the first and the fifth of those novels were my favourites.
And then there's Watership Down, which I read when I was twelve and adored and never stopped loving, either. By that time, I had read (and watched) a lot of stories featuring animals, of course. But not like this one. Those rabbits had their own mythology, they were all different from each other, relationships did not develop like I thought they would and this was good (I'm thinking of Bigwig and Hazel here, whom kid me thought were set up as rivals early on, but no), and at twelve I was aware enough of the past to recognize that Efrafra was a totalitarian state, without feeling condescended to or lectured at. Also, the thing about the wires in the earlier warren, and the silent agreement among the rabbits there - the horror of it really got to me. I kept rereading the book, and discovered something new every time.
( The other days )
