Books! Or, how I became a bibliophile/book-addict at an early age
Part of me just died.
My childhood is now priced in the £100s and collectable. If I'd known the things I'd loved and remembered, ten, eleven, twelve years later, would be gone completely by now, I'd never have had the almighty clear-outs I did.
I grew up reading, reading voraciously. I read Noel Streatfield - Curtain Up, The Painted Garden, Thursday's Child, Meet the Maitlands, as well as Lorna Hill's entire 'At the Wells' ballet school series, except for ONE, I think it was a 'Royal Role' or something. 'Principal Role'. Out of twelve books, I ordered them into our local library and devoured them. I used to own Ella at the Wells, Jane at the Wells, and Veronica at the Wells. I wish I still did. I read Antonia Fraiser's 'Autumn Term' amongst others, I read Pamela Brown's 'The Swish of the Curtain' and longed for the other books. I read 'the Wolves of Willoughby Chase' and 'Listen to the Nightingale' by Joan Aiken and Rumer Godden respectively.
They were books I read again and again, their voices, old friends. Lorna Hill - I have every book memorised. Handsome, arrogant Sebastian, who is the archetype of young, careless men who are beautiful and know they are, and incredibly talented, with shy, meek little Ella who was beautiful at dancing, Veronica who was down-to-earth, yet 'the Veronica Weston'. They were books from the eighties, I think - but I adored them. I wanted all of them.
I read the Chalet School, and other boarding school books, but I was a child who went to the Arts Educational for Saturday classes, and wanted to be a ballerina (despite not taking ballet) more than anything. I haven't danced ballet for more than eighteen months consecutively; I took it up properly when I was sixteen, seventeen, and danced for about eighteen months; by that point, too old and too overweight to try properly. I still know every piece of terminolgy, read every piece of children's fiction on the market with a ballet theme, and can talk about pointe-work as if I have done it myself, because I loved those books so much.
These books were not something to store up and keep in airtight cabinets - my books were everywhere. I had a floor to ceiling cupboard, with deep shelves, filled with books, two sets of shelves elsewhere, also stacked, books upon books - periodically, my mother would take a bin-bag and 'go through' my books, 'cull' them, because I would forever be collecting them. My books were beloved; well thumbed through; I'd read them in the bath, on the loo, while walking - I still cannot take a journey of longer than twenty minutes without a book to hand; I read while walking still, a habit I learnt when I was about six. I am addicted; my university room is not big, and the shelves, I dare say, are meant to contain food, and clothes, and school-books. Instead, Meg Cabot jostles for room with Jilly Cooper, clashing with Austen, Arthur Golden, etc. But my children's books aren't all there.
I mourn the new idea of children's books, the same light, substanceless stuff as 'chick-lit' which is like eating a chocolate bar; hits the spot but is gone sooner than you think. You could re-read the classics, over and over again, set them down and come back to them. And they weren't classics! They were new, and vibrant, and stocked in Waterstones, like everything else.
I wish I could write. I wish I could write like that, of boarding schools and hockey matches, and ballet, as I used to love, because I think the kids of tomorrow are missing the substance and solidarity of the books we grew up on.
And I'm going to go cry now, because the sequel to 'the Swish of the Curtain' by Pamela Brown - let alone, that that is £15.00 on amazon, when the copy I read in 1998 was £6.99 if that - is £50.00 on amazon, and the Antonia Forest sequels are all that, each. I want to be ten again, damnit, and not struggling to be intelligent, and to read the right stuff, but to be allowed to read children's books again!
My childhood is now priced in the £100s and collectable. If I'd known the things I'd loved and remembered, ten, eleven, twelve years later, would be gone completely by now, I'd never have had the almighty clear-outs I did.
I grew up reading, reading voraciously. I read Noel Streatfield - Curtain Up, The Painted Garden, Thursday's Child, Meet the Maitlands, as well as Lorna Hill's entire 'At the Wells' ballet school series, except for ONE, I think it was a 'Royal Role' or something. 'Principal Role'. Out of twelve books, I ordered them into our local library and devoured them. I used to own Ella at the Wells, Jane at the Wells, and Veronica at the Wells. I wish I still did. I read Antonia Fraiser's 'Autumn Term' amongst others, I read Pamela Brown's 'The Swish of the Curtain' and longed for the other books. I read 'the Wolves of Willoughby Chase' and 'Listen to the Nightingale' by Joan Aiken and Rumer Godden respectively.
They were books I read again and again, their voices, old friends. Lorna Hill - I have every book memorised. Handsome, arrogant Sebastian, who is the archetype of young, careless men who are beautiful and know they are, and incredibly talented, with shy, meek little Ella who was beautiful at dancing, Veronica who was down-to-earth, yet 'the Veronica Weston'. They were books from the eighties, I think - but I adored them. I wanted all of them.
I read the Chalet School, and other boarding school books, but I was a child who went to the Arts Educational for Saturday classes, and wanted to be a ballerina (despite not taking ballet) more than anything. I haven't danced ballet for more than eighteen months consecutively; I took it up properly when I was sixteen, seventeen, and danced for about eighteen months; by that point, too old and too overweight to try properly. I still know every piece of terminolgy, read every piece of children's fiction on the market with a ballet theme, and can talk about pointe-work as if I have done it myself, because I loved those books so much.
These books were not something to store up and keep in airtight cabinets - my books were everywhere. I had a floor to ceiling cupboard, with deep shelves, filled with books, two sets of shelves elsewhere, also stacked, books upon books - periodically, my mother would take a bin-bag and 'go through' my books, 'cull' them, because I would forever be collecting them. My books were beloved; well thumbed through; I'd read them in the bath, on the loo, while walking - I still cannot take a journey of longer than twenty minutes without a book to hand; I read while walking still, a habit I learnt when I was about six. I am addicted; my university room is not big, and the shelves, I dare say, are meant to contain food, and clothes, and school-books. Instead, Meg Cabot jostles for room with Jilly Cooper, clashing with Austen, Arthur Golden, etc. But my children's books aren't all there.
I mourn the new idea of children's books, the same light, substanceless stuff as 'chick-lit' which is like eating a chocolate bar; hits the spot but is gone sooner than you think. You could re-read the classics, over and over again, set them down and come back to them. And they weren't classics! They were new, and vibrant, and stocked in Waterstones, like everything else.
I wish I could write. I wish I could write like that, of boarding schools and hockey matches, and ballet, as I used to love, because I think the kids of tomorrow are missing the substance and solidarity of the books we grew up on.
And I'm going to go cry now, because the sequel to 'the Swish of the Curtain' by Pamela Brown - let alone, that that is £15.00 on amazon, when the copy I read in 1998 was £6.99 if that - is £50.00 on amazon, and the Antonia Forest sequels are all that, each. I want to be ten again, damnit, and not struggling to be intelligent, and to read the right stuff, but to be allowed to read children's books again!