Looking at other people's bookshelves is fascinating!
Do share a favourite book, or a book you would like to read one day.
Looking at other people's bookshelves is fascinating!
Do share a favourite book, or a book you would like to read one day.
Yes I started with Blyton. My favourites were the Adventure series with Kiki the parrot, the Five Find-Outers and Dog, the school series with Mallory Towers and so on.
From Blyton. I went on to Christie after reading Cat Among the Pigeons. All those school mistresses being murdered! Needless to say murder didn't figure much in Mallory Towers. I also started getting interested in science fiction, reading Asimov's, then Silverberg, but the one novel that spoke to me most powerfully was John Wyndham's The Chrysalids.
A degree in literature meant reading became more of a chore than a pleasure, but Dino Buzzati brought on delightfully spooky shivers with two short stories, one about where a train travellers sees everyone is fleeing towards the South but the narrator never finds out why, and Settle Piani (Seven Floors), a hospital story with a difference.
The TV series made me interested in the Frost in May quartet about a young woman's struggle with her Catholic faith and the abuse she experienced through it and it is still a regret I missed the last televised edition of that. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance intrigued me too, 'spoke' to me, as that was about one man's search for understanding.
The Next big Thing became vampires, after discovering Barbara Hambly's Those who Hunt the Night. She has since the early 90's written several more with James Asher the spy, his doctor wife and their problematic relationship with vampire Don Simon Ysidro. I enjoyed Anne Rice, but later on do think she lost the plot a little.
I have gothics both older and modern, mentioned Patrick MC Graph's Asylum elsewhere I think. Nowadays I get to review quite a lot, as I get plenty of free stuff read - there are tantalising opportunities to get paid occasionally too, but so far early bird and all that.
I'm interested in mythology, psychology and how these impact the larger body politic, so I have most of Campbell's books, Frazer, something by an Anne Baring on the deleopment of the Divine Feminine, Riane Eisler. I have books on Jung and the Gnostics. I used to dabble in astrology and still have some books on that, but I grew to dislike intensely the theosophical underpinnings it was based on, or has been, and the way it is used to diminish and categorise others.
A few art books I have.
And a whole bookcase of the tools of the trade, that language, English. My own linguistic skills pushed into the background, but it has put food on the table for over 20 years now.
Yes I started with Blyton. My favourites were the Adventure series with Kiki the parrot, the Five Find-Outers and Dog, the school series with Mallory Towers and so on.
From Blyton. I went on to Christie after reading Cat Among the Pigeons. All those school mistresses being murdered! Needless to say murder didn't figure much in Mallory Towers. I also started getting interested in science fiction, reading Asimov's, then Silverberg, but the one novel that spoke to me most powerfully was John Wyndham's The Chrysalids.
A degree in literature meant reading became more of a chore than a pleasure, but Dino Buzzati brought on delightfully spooky shivers with two short stories, one about where a train travellers sees everyone is fleeing towards the South but the narrator never finds out why, and Settle Piani (Seven Floors), a hospital story with a difference.
The TV series made me interested in the Frost in May quartet about a young woman's struggle with her Catholic faith and the abuse she experienced through it and it is still a regret I missed the last televised edition of that. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance intrigued me too, 'spoke' to me, as that was about one man's search for understanding.
The Next big Thing became vampires, after discovering Barbara Hambly's Those who Hunt the Night. She has since the early 90's written several more with James Asher the spy, his doctor wife and their problematic relationship with vampire Don Simon Ysidro. I enjoyed Anne Rice, but later on do think she lost the plot a little.
I have gothics both older and modern, mentioned Patrick MC Graph's Asylum elsewhere I think. Nowadays I get to review quite a lot, as I get plenty of free stuff read - there are tantalising opportunities to get paid occasionally too, but so far early bird and all that.
I'm interested in mythology, psychology and how these impact the larger body politic, so I have most of Campbell's books, Frazer, something by an Anne Baring on the deleopment of the Divine Feminine, Riane Eisler. I have books on Jung and the Gnostics. I used to dabble in astrology and still have some books on that, but I grew to dislike intensely the theosophical underpinnings it was based on, or has been, and the way it is used to diminish and categorise others.
A few art books I have.
And a whole bookcase of the tools of the trade, that language, English. My own linguistic skills pushed into the background, but it has put food on the table for over 20 years now.
