Category: Booking through Thursday

Booking through Thursday

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

Indoctrination

Using a suggestion from Erin today:Indoctrination

When growing up did your family share your love of books? If so, did one person get you into reading? And, do you have any family-oriented memories with books and reading? (Family trips to bookstore, reading the same book as a sibling or parent, etc.)

My love of books is down entirely to my parents. My Dad read to me every night and made up stories for me as well. Both my parents encouraged me to read and Dad made me a bookcase which I still have today. It was always a treat to go to the bookshop and choose a book and books have always been the presents I would choose if my aunties asked what I wanted for Christmas. My mother was always reading as well. I’d come home from school to find her reading and I’d pick up a book too.

She used to take me to the branch library, first when I was very small, on a little seat on the back of her bike and later on we went every Saturday on the bus to the bigger library in the town nearby. There was also a travelling library that came round the road where we lived and we borrowed books from that too. I suppose that it was inevitable that I became a librarian – that was my Dad’s suggestion and it was ideal for me, surrounded by books at home and at work.

Booking Through Thursday

Published on by Margaret15 Comments

It’s Booking through Thursday time again.

Monogamy

One book at a time? Or more than one? If more, are they different types/genres? Or similar?
(We’™re talking recreational reading, here’”books for work or school don’™t really count since they’™re not optional.)

Definitely more than one book at a time. I like to have a few going at the same time, although recently I did try reading just one book – Harry Potter. I thought when I finished it I would carry on reading only one book, but there are so many books I want to read that I just had to start others as well. I also like to mix up the genres and read some non-fiction as well as fiction. At the moment the non-fiction is biography.

Currently I’m reading four – see on the left. Lewis Carroll is breakfast time reading, then The House at Riverton whilst I have coffee (and a bit longer too) and at night, as it’s really a good book – I could drop the others for a while maybe to finish this. The other two I fit in now and then – the Michael Palin Diaires goes nicely in short doses. I’ve only just started Remainder – in preparation for finishing The House at Riverton.

It helps to have more than one on the go at once, because sometimes I hit a time when nothing fits the bill and even though I’ve lots of books waiting to be read, I can’t find just the right one.

Best moustache-twirling

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

Booking Through Thursday

Well, after last week’s record-breaking number of responses (92 last time I checked – an all-time BTT record), I was tempted to use this week’s question to ask what you all thought about Harry Potter 7 – but since a decent proportion of you weren”t going to be reading it at all, that seemed unfair. So instead . . .

Who’s the worst fictional villain you can think of? As in, the one you hate the most, find the most evil, are happiest to see defeated? Not the cardboard, two-dimensional variety, but the most deliciously-written, most entertaining, best villain? Not necessarily the most ‘evil,’ so much as the best-conceived on the part of the author – oh, you know what I mean!

This is a difficult one to answer – there are so many candidates. A currently topical one is Voldemort. Then there are Dracula (Bram Stoker), Mr Hyde (Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde), Richard the Third (Shakespeare), Sauron (Lord of the Rings), Hannibal Lecter (Silence of the Lambs) and Jack Torrance (The Shining).

Of these I think the most evil, the one I’d be happiest to see defeated it would have to be Hannibal Lecter, with Jack Torrance running a close second – or even a dead heat. I haven’t actually read Silence of the Lambs, but Anthony Hopkins was at his most chilling as Hannibal. I have read The Shining and found Jack to be a scary, evil character but that was nothing to Jack Nicholson’s performance in the film – even though I knew the story it really shocked me.

The most deliciously-written, most entertaining, best villain is probably Richard the Third – I think this is because of the RSC performance I saw at Stratford with Henry Goodman as Richard. He was the most believable hunchback and brought Shakespeare’s words to life.

Not necessarily the most ‘evil, so much as the best-conceived on the part of the author is again Richard the Third. Richard is a fascinating character and opinion is divided on whether he did really kill his nephews. Two books on this subject are The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey, a novel in which Grant, a policeman in hospital exercises his mind in reviewing the evidence; and The Princes in the Tower by Alison Weir in which she studied the contemporary accounts as well as modern works and eventually concluded that Richard did murder the two princes.

Booking through Thursday Just Wild About Harry

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

Booking Through Thursday’s questions this week are:

Okay, love him or loathe him, you’™d have to live under a rock not to know that J.K. Rowling’™s final Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, comes out on Saturday’¦ Are you going to read it?
If so, right away? Or just, you know, eventually, when you get around to it? Are you attending any of the midnight parties?
If you’™re not going to read it, why not?
And, for the record’¦ what do you think? Will Harry survive the series? What are you most looking forward to?

I will read it, but not yet. I’ve read all the other books – when they came out in paperback for the first four books and then borrowed the others. I got a bit fed up with the Quidditch matches and the repetition. I quite enjoyed the films (I’ve seen two), but no, I’m not going to any midnight parties or queuing up to buy the book – I’m not that wild about Harry.

I hope Harry survives – but you never know.

Booking through Thursday

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

Since school is out for the summer (in most places, at least), here’s a school-themed question for the week:
Do you have any old school books? Did you keep yours from college? Old textbooks from garage sales? Old workbooks from classes gone by?
How about your old notes, exams, papers? Do you save them? Or have they long since gone to the great Locker-in-the-sky?

Oh, yes I do have some old school books, library school and university books. I haven’t kept them all, but I do have my school books from A Level History and English (I didn’t keep the French), some old, and I mean old, text books and even some from O Levels. I also have my school report book and some copies of the annual school magazine; you got mentioned if you played in the school teams (lacrosse for me) and the exam results are listed.

This week we’ve been trying to de-clutter and I decided to look through my university papers and throw them out, but I just couldn’t do it. So, they’re still here, although when I’ll actually look at them again, let alone read them, I just don’t know.

Booking through Thursday

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

Booking Through Thursday

Do you cheat and peek ahead at the end of your books? Or do you resolutely read in sequence, as the author intended?
And, if you don’t peek, do you ever feel tempted?

I’m always tempted to look at the end of books and sometimes I do if the book is getting boring to see if it picks up. If the book is one that I can’t put down then I try to resist looking ahead – not always successfully though and then I wish I hadn’t!