Category: Memes

Simon T at Stuck in a book developed this meme. Other people have since done it, so I thought I’d do it too.  It’s a development of the ten random things about yourself type of meme.  Here’s how to do it…

1.) Go to your bookshelves…
2.) Close your eyes. If you’re feeling really committed, blindfold yourself.
3.) Select ten books at random. Use more than one bookcase, if you have them, or piles by the bed, or… basically, wherever you keep books.
4.) Use these books to tell us about yourself – where and when you got them, who got them for you, what the book says about you, etc. etc…..
5.) Have fun! Be imaginative. Doesn’t matter if you’ve read them or not – be creative. It might not seem easy to start off with, and the links might be a little tenuous, but I think this is a fun way to do this sort of meme.
6.) Feel free to cheat a bit, if you need to…

I read Annabel’s post at Gaskella and have copied her method of using a random number generator to pick books from my LibraryThing catalogue, because most of my books are still in boxes after moving house in December. Like Annabel, if I couldn’t think of anything to say about the books – I moved to the next one down the page.

1.Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I bought this about 18 months ago after reading Half of a Yellow Sun. I can’t believe I haven’t read it yet, because I thought Half of a Yellow Sun was such a great book, emotional without being sentimental and factual with being boring. These books are about Nigerian history from a personal viewpoint. I haven’t read much African literature apart from Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Wole Soyinka’s play Madmen and Specialists and Jack Mapanje’s poetry. I must make time this year to read Purple Hibiscus.

2. The next book the random generator threw up is Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, an all-time favourite of mine. My copy was either a birthday or Christmas present from my Great Aunty Sally when I was I don’t know how old. I’ve read it many times since then. It has the Tenniel illustrations and it may be the book that my love of words stems from. I remember learning and reciting the Jabberwocky as I enjoyed the sounds, without understanding exactly what it means:

3. Rococo to Revolution: Major Trends in Eighteenth Century Painting by Michael Levey

I bought this book several years ago when I was visiting an art gallery (I forget which one or when it was). I haven’t read it but have just looked at the paintings. I know very little about that period in art – maybe that was why I bought the book  to learn about it, or maybe I liked the paintings. When I’ve unpacked it I must look at this one to remind myself why I have it.

4. Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris

I bought this about three years ago in a 3 for 2 at Waterstones. It was the first book by Joanne Harris that I’ve read and I was bowled over by it. Set in a private school, it’s a novel of mystery and suspense, told from two characters’ point of view. There are plenty of twists and turns and although I began to guess the outcome before the end it was not disappointing. A study in obsession and revenge.

5. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

I’m glad the random number threw up this book because Jane Austen is one of my favourite authors, although this is not my favourite book by her – that is Pride and Prejudice. I’ve had this copy for many years. It’s one of a box set, along with Pride and Prejudice and Emma.

6. The Penguin Atlas of World History: Volume 2: From the French Revolution to the Present

I’ve had this book for years. I bought it in a secondhand bookshop because I love history and this is a nice compact book packed with information and lots of maps.

7. Jamie’s Kitchen by Jamie Oliver

I have unpacked some of my cookery books including this one. It’s a big book with beautiful full page colour photos. I have most of Jamie Oliver’s books and have watched all of his TV programmes. Jamie’s Kitchen was a Channel 4 series about the restaurant he set up to train 15 unemployed kids. The profits from the restaurant were used to send the kids on scholarships with the best chefs around the world. The book gives different cooking methods and lots of recipes. I don’t think I’ve actually cooked any of these recipes – my favourite book of Jamie’s is Jamie At Home – I’ve cooked quite a lot from that book.

8. The Hours of the Night by Sue Gee

I bought this book because I’d read and enjoyed Sue Gee’s Mysteries of Glass. I have read it but have very little memory of it. Even reading the reviews of it on  Amazon doesn’t really bring it back to me, apart from its setting on the Welsh Borders. I only gave it three stars in my LT catalogue,  I think Mysteries of Glass is much better.

9. Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake

This is book one in Peake’s Gormanghast trilogy.

I  first read this when I was a student many years ago. I knew nothing about it and had just picked it off the library shelves based on the title alone. I loved it. I suppose it’s a gothic novel, strange and wonderful, full of bizarre and grotesque characters, set in a the castle of Gormenghast, a place with its own rituals and traditions. I couldn’t wait to read on – fortunately the library had all three books and I read them avidly. Some years ago it was dramatised on TV and that is when I bought my own copies of the books.

10. Ripley Under Water by Patricia Highsmith

I bought this for 10p in a secondhand bookshop about two years ago. I haven’t read it yet. It’s number 5 in the Ripley crime fiction series and I thought I’d read the earlier novels first and I keep meaning to look out for the first one – The Talented Mr Ripley. I listened to a dramatisation of the first book last year on BBC Radio 4’s The Saturday Play and then missed the following episodes.

Those are my ten random books and I think they’re fairly representative of my books, fiction and nonfiction, both old and new.

Avisannschild at She Reads and Reads blog tagged me for this meme. This took me back to my bookshelves looking at the books I’ve owned for years. It’s inevitably made  me want to read these books again and others too that I haven’t mentioned.

The book that’s been on your shelves the longest:

My parents gave me Bible Stories for Children: a First Book by Muriel J Chalmers for my sixth birthday (aeons ago). They bought me the Second and Third books for my seventh and eighth birthdays.

A book that reminds you of something specific in your life (a person, a place, a time, etc.):

Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes because it reminds me of holidays in Tuscany. In this book she describes how she bought and renovated an abandoned villa. It’s full of the pleasures of living in Tuscany – the sun, the food, the wine and the local people. It makes me want to do the same! Bella Tuscany is the follow up book with more details about the restoration of the villa and its garden, plus recipes. Two of my favourite books.

A book you acquired in some interesting way (gift, serendipity in a used bookstore, prize, etc.):

Of Chameleons and Gods by Jack Mapanje, a book of poems. Mapanje was born in Kadango Village, in southern Malawi. He became the Head of English at the University of Malawi and worked as a research student in linguistics at University College London. This book was published in 1981 and on its second reprint it was banned in Malawi and he was arrested without trial and imprisoned for four years. He was released in 1991 following intense pressure from fellow writers and activists. I heard him speak whilst I was at an Open University Summer School at York University in 1993. Our tutor invited him to speak to the group I was in at a seminar the next day and we were all bowled over by his experiences. He signed my copy for me.

A book that’s been with you to the most places:

When I go abroad on holiday I take books that I haven’t read before and sometimes leave them for others to read and lighten my luggage coming back. So I never take a book to different holiday destinations. We moved to this house 15 years ago so all the books I had before then have been with me everywhere I lived. My husband says that’s far too many books and if/when we move again we’ll need a separate van just for the books. He’s exaggerating! .

The most recent addition to your shelves:

Two books arrived together in the post this week – The Madonna of the Almonds by Marina Fiorato and Tangled Roots by Sue Guiney, both review copies, which I’m looking forward to reading. Tangled Roots should have come from LibraryThing as part of the Early Reviewers Programme, but it didn’t arrive, so Sue kindly had a copy sent to me. I’ve looked at it briefly – it’s about a scientist John and his mother Grace. Their two stories intertwine involving various emotional issues between them.

The Madonna of the Almonds is from the publisher, Beautiful Books. This is to be published in May. It’s the fictionalised story of the artist Bernadino Luini, who was a protégé of Leonardo da Vinci. A young widow, Simonetta meets him and becomes his muse. She is trying to save her home in Lombardy and stumbles upon a new drink made by infusing almonds into alcohol – the origins of Amaretto. How did the publishers know I love Amaretto and Amoretti biscuits as well as Italy?

A bonus book that you want to talk about that doesn’t fit into the other questions:

I love maps. The Map Book by Peter Barber is the book for map lovers. From the introduction;

This book is a celebration of the map in its myriad forms over time. It attempts to penetrate beneath th esometimes glossy, sometimes plain surface to look at why they came into being, who their creators were, what purposes they were intended to serve and what their relationship was to the society in which they were created and whose values they inevitably represented.

It is just wonderful.  It includes maps from all over the world, arranged in date order – maps of oceans and continents, countries, towns and countryside from 1500 BC fossilized prayers to the image derived from satellite data of Mount St Helena just after the volcanic activity of March 2005.  Here are some images:

 This woven tapestry map  is based on Christopher Saxton’s county map and was one of four comissioned by Ralph Sheldon showing the land he owned. It measures approximately 4 metres high and 6 metres wide.

 A Road Map from John Ogilby’s atlas Britannia 1675 shows roads in strip form on a scale of 1 inch to a mile. This section is the road from London to Bristol.

 A detailed map published within weeks of the great fire in London of 1748 showing the houses that were destroyed. the purpose of the plan was to launch an appeal for the survivors. Individual occupants and occupations are identified and places such as coffee houses, insurance offices and booksellers.

This map was published for the Standard Oil Company of California. It doesn’t show physical features, the roads appear to cross flat and featureless plains, but there are views of major natural features and monuments numbered and linked to the map for tourists to find routes to places of interest.

The Rules – see below are to tag other people, but I always find this impossible and anyway I know some people have already done this meme. So if you haven’t and would like to do it please consider yourself tagged.

1. Tag 3-5 people, so the fun keeps going!
2. Leave a comment at the original post at A Striped Armchair, so that Eva can collect everyone’s answers.
3. If you leave a comment and link back to Eva as the meme’s creator, she will enter you in a book giveaway contest! She has a whole shelf devoted to giveaway books that you’ll be able to choose from, or a bookmooch point if you prefer.
4. Remember that this is all about enjoying books as physical objects, so feel free to describe the exact book you’re talking about, down to that warping from being dropped in the bath water…
5. Make the meme more fun with visuals! Covers of the specific edition you’re talking about, photos of your bookshelves, etc.