Ten books that touched me
I was tagged over on Tumblr to do this. Feel free to ignore me tagging you if you’re not in the mood :)
I tag
woldy, marbletables,
kabal42, inglevine, sophie_french, sunclouds33, drarryxlover, gillo, kikimay, and ceciliaj. Also TEN IS NOT ENOUGH, haha, particularly when I am using this to get book recommendations :)
Rules: In a text post, list ten books that have stayed with you in some way. Don’t take but a few minutes, and don’t think too hard - they don’t have to be the “right” or “great” works, just the ones that have touched you. Tag ten friends, including me, so I’ll see your list. Make sure you let your friends know you’ve tagged them!
A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I read this repeatedly as a child and I’m sure I will again :) I’ve said this before here but I very rarely identify with characters -- Anne Shirley and Elsa from Frozen are the only others that come to mind -- but I did with Sara, because of how much she loves reading. It’s just. The loveliest story. Sara and Becky comforting each other in the dark with stories, and then this seemingly magical surprise: secret food and warmth and care appearing in their attic.
Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones. This book was the one that really turned me on to fantasy as a genre I specifically liked, as opposed to reading pretty much all genres equally. It’s also completely brilliant.
The Wind Singer by William Nicholson. This has a vividly imagined and lovely family, loads of fantastic moments with some utterly terrifying ones, such a sense of fun and colour. If I could choose a book I love to have written, it would be this one, because it’s exactly the kind of rollicking fantasy yarn I’d like to write. The colourless cruel meritocracy of the nasty home city is also a slightly unusual form of dystopia, which is nice. The rest of the trilogy has some great moments but this one is my favourite.
The Outsiders by S E Hinton. This book isn’t famous in the UK and I was rather startled to find out that it was in the US. But I loved it to pieces -- as with Charmed Life, intriguing sibling dynamics and class issues will always suck me in -- and got it out of the school library again and again and again.
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. I’ve read Wuthering Heights five times for different school or university projects and I’ve actually got more out of it every time. Victorian Gothic is a favourite genre of mine and this book is stuffed with awesome things -- liminal spaces and monstrous Others and ferocious women and class issues and perspective games and weird fucked-up families.
Even Cowgirls Get The Blues by Tom Robinson. This is such a weird book, haha, and so very much a product of its time. But it’s still the only novel I’ve read with a bisexual protagonist who wasn’t self-consciously hedonistic, and it’s incredibly fun. I picked it up off my parents’ bookshelves when I was sixteen or so and I didn’t know anything about it and then WHOA BISEXUALITY. Well, I think my reaction was more WHOA GIRL/GIRL SEXING but. Yes. And this very turned-up-to-eleven treatment of feminism (and gay men’s relationship with it) and disability and ‘normal’ anatomy and conservation and I think probably something to do with Americana but I’m bad at picking up on that side of things.
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. I’ve mentioned this before as a beloved book I read again and again. I love multiple-perspective novels, and sibling and family dynamics, and there are moments and passages from this book that I could still quote. Plus there’s something very satisfying about these four daughters and their mother telling the story, with their obnoxiously loud father not being given a voice.
Poison by Chris Wooding. Haha, these memes, even if this is only a small selection of the books that have touched me, they do tend to throw up themes. This one also has an important sibling relationship -- it’s about an older sister whose younger sister is stolen by the fairies, who goes on a quest to rescue her. It’s also full of vivid characters and memorable moments, and the sort of self-congratulatory Writer As Creator thing that I actually really love in fantasy novels.
Anastasia At Your Service by Lois Lowry. I love the Anastasia books to tiny bitty pieces even if I haven’t read any of them in a few years. They are fabulous, and this one is my favourite. It has Anastasia behaving rather badly in this very sympathetic way, and she makes friends with this BRILLIANT girl named Daphne, and there’s a v scary moment with her little brother, and. I just love it. So much charm.
Transformation by Carol Berg. I read this book once years ago and never managed to track down its sequels -- maybe I will with Christmas money in a few months -- but its prose and characters are so utterly absorbing that I still remember the experience of being sucked into it. And its characters are precisely suited to dragging me in - an ageing slave who is desperate not to care about anyone and so cunning in surviving his lifestyle and remembers his destroyed civilisation, and the brash young prince of the empire that destroyed it (his name is Aleksander, for maximum brash young warrior prince points) who learns to be less of a dickhead. I think if I read it now I’m in fandom it would strike me as super-slashy; the hurt/comfort element is obvious, and the shifting power dynamics, and they also basically get soulbounded. Plus my favourite bit would read entertainly differently in that light:
ALEKSANDER: Bring me Seyonne! I need magic!
SEYONNE: Um. Not really able to do magic. I used to fight demons with my Warden stuff and now you want me to -- what exactly?
ALEKSANDER: I. Er. There was this girl. And I. Problems. Er.
SEYONNE: *DED OF LOL ON THE INSIDE* Ah. No doubt you have been CURSED, OMG! You should sleep more and drink less. And also I will do a MYSTICAL SPELL to save you.
Two days later:
ALEKSANDER: I could get it up last night! Truly you are a master magician!
SEYONNE: Heh.
This was originally posted at http://lokifan.dreamwidth.org/302287.html. Comment wherever you like :)
I tag
woldy, marbletables,
kabal42, inglevine, sophie_french, sunclouds33, drarryxlover, gillo, kikimay, and ceciliaj. Also TEN IS NOT ENOUGH, haha, particularly when I am using this to get book recommendations :)
Rules: In a text post, list ten books that have stayed with you in some way. Don’t take but a few minutes, and don’t think too hard - they don’t have to be the “right” or “great” works, just the ones that have touched you. Tag ten friends, including me, so I’ll see your list. Make sure you let your friends know you’ve tagged them!
A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I read this repeatedly as a child and I’m sure I will again :) I’ve said this before here but I very rarely identify with characters -- Anne Shirley and Elsa from Frozen are the only others that come to mind -- but I did with Sara, because of how much she loves reading. It’s just. The loveliest story. Sara and Becky comforting each other in the dark with stories, and then this seemingly magical surprise: secret food and warmth and care appearing in their attic.
Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones. This book was the one that really turned me on to fantasy as a genre I specifically liked, as opposed to reading pretty much all genres equally. It’s also completely brilliant.
The Wind Singer by William Nicholson. This has a vividly imagined and lovely family, loads of fantastic moments with some utterly terrifying ones, such a sense of fun and colour. If I could choose a book I love to have written, it would be this one, because it’s exactly the kind of rollicking fantasy yarn I’d like to write. The colourless cruel meritocracy of the nasty home city is also a slightly unusual form of dystopia, which is nice. The rest of the trilogy has some great moments but this one is my favourite.
The Outsiders by S E Hinton. This book isn’t famous in the UK and I was rather startled to find out that it was in the US. But I loved it to pieces -- as with Charmed Life, intriguing sibling dynamics and class issues will always suck me in -- and got it out of the school library again and again and again.
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. I’ve read Wuthering Heights five times for different school or university projects and I’ve actually got more out of it every time. Victorian Gothic is a favourite genre of mine and this book is stuffed with awesome things -- liminal spaces and monstrous Others and ferocious women and class issues and perspective games and weird fucked-up families.
Even Cowgirls Get The Blues by Tom Robinson. This is such a weird book, haha, and so very much a product of its time. But it’s still the only novel I’ve read with a bisexual protagonist who wasn’t self-consciously hedonistic, and it’s incredibly fun. I picked it up off my parents’ bookshelves when I was sixteen or so and I didn’t know anything about it and then WHOA BISEXUALITY. Well, I think my reaction was more WHOA GIRL/GIRL SEXING but. Yes. And this very turned-up-to-eleven treatment of feminism (and gay men’s relationship with it) and disability and ‘normal’ anatomy and conservation and I think probably something to do with Americana but I’m bad at picking up on that side of things.
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. I’ve mentioned this before as a beloved book I read again and again. I love multiple-perspective novels, and sibling and family dynamics, and there are moments and passages from this book that I could still quote. Plus there’s something very satisfying about these four daughters and their mother telling the story, with their obnoxiously loud father not being given a voice.
Poison by Chris Wooding. Haha, these memes, even if this is only a small selection of the books that have touched me, they do tend to throw up themes. This one also has an important sibling relationship -- it’s about an older sister whose younger sister is stolen by the fairies, who goes on a quest to rescue her. It’s also full of vivid characters and memorable moments, and the sort of self-congratulatory Writer As Creator thing that I actually really love in fantasy novels.
Anastasia At Your Service by Lois Lowry. I love the Anastasia books to tiny bitty pieces even if I haven’t read any of them in a few years. They are fabulous, and this one is my favourite. It has Anastasia behaving rather badly in this very sympathetic way, and she makes friends with this BRILLIANT girl named Daphne, and there’s a v scary moment with her little brother, and. I just love it. So much charm.
Transformation by Carol Berg. I read this book once years ago and never managed to track down its sequels -- maybe I will with Christmas money in a few months -- but its prose and characters are so utterly absorbing that I still remember the experience of being sucked into it. And its characters are precisely suited to dragging me in - an ageing slave who is desperate not to care about anyone and so cunning in surviving his lifestyle and remembers his destroyed civilisation, and the brash young prince of the empire that destroyed it (his name is Aleksander, for maximum brash young warrior prince points) who learns to be less of a dickhead. I think if I read it now I’m in fandom it would strike me as super-slashy; the hurt/comfort element is obvious, and the shifting power dynamics, and they also basically get soulbounded. Plus my favourite bit would read entertainly differently in that light:
ALEKSANDER: Bring me Seyonne! I need magic!
SEYONNE: Um. Not really able to do magic. I used to fight demons with my Warden stuff and now you want me to -- what exactly?
ALEKSANDER: I. Er. There was this girl. And I. Problems. Er.
SEYONNE: *DED OF LOL ON THE INSIDE* Ah. No doubt you have been CURSED, OMG! You should sleep more and drink less. And also I will do a MYSTICAL SPELL to save you.
Two days later:
ALEKSANDER: I could get it up last night! Truly you are a master magician!
SEYONNE: Heh.
This was originally posted at http://lokifan.dreamwidth.org/302287.html. Comment wherever you like :)