« We have been 'improved'! | Main | Wheel of the Year... »
January 31, 2006
Great books...
It was my new year’s resolution to have three books on the go at any one time; a novel, a short story collection or anthology and a non-fiction of some sort. My God I think this is the first resolution in a long time that has taken me to the end of January, although admittedly I did pick an easy one, as it was something I was more or less doing anyway and simply wanted to make official. As a side note I have also started jotting down the name of books in the back of my diary as I complete them. This all started when I couldn’t remember if I had read certain books or not. Ah! You may laugh at my senility but have you read Oliver Twist or do you simply know the story inside out from various screen adaptations and so on? Difficult one isn’t it!
Although of course noting down books now will not help me remember if I read Oliver Twist many years ago but it might help me in my octogenarian years when I’m there in the old dear’s home (or as the current government would have it – on the factory line) trying to recall if I read Kate Mosse’s Labyrinth or not.
See how after two paragraphs I meander this post round to topic. I will be able to say, ‘Oh yes I read that book at the beginning of 2006 when I was a mere spring chicken,’ because, yes you have guessed it, Labyrinth is my novel choice at the present moment in time. The novel is great but I think I’m in love with the website even more. What with the computer still not working properly, I haven’t managed to explore fully but I can see lots about the inspirations behind the book and mega pages of helpful creative writing tips. But by far my favourite part of the site is Bookfriends, where you send in your favourite ten books and surf around finding who has similar tastes to you, all sorts of people have already done it so far, Tony Benn, Andrew Motion, A.L. Kennedy...
Me? Well I’m still working on mine. As there are so many I don’t want to leave out should I restrict myself to one book per author? Even so, my lists of favourite books usually end up rather narrow in scope, consisting of mainly women authors writing in the 19th and early 20th century and I find myself resisting the temptation to slip in an up to the minute book, just to show that I’m on the ball.
But no, this is a list of my favourite books and not a carefully constructed sample of everything I’ve ever read, so come back Mary Shelley and Emily Bronte all is forgiven.
Something tells me I’m fretting over this a little too much.
So tell me, what would be in your top ten?
Posted by purple elephant at January 31, 2006 09:54 PM