Booking Through Thursday: books and my family...

[fajrdrako]

From Booking Through Thursday:

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 parents both read a lot, and loved books, so I had the example before me. They read to me when I was very young - I have many happy memories of being read to from favourite books at three or four or five. I particularly remember asking what 'education' meant, from the chapter of Winnie-the-Pooh where Eeyore learns to make an 'A'. This fascinated me. The whole mystique or reading and writing.

I had no siblings to influence my reading. Just parents.

After I learned to read, I was sick a lot, and my parents gave me books to keep me entertained on days when I was stuck in bed. I read the books they had kept from their own childhoods, like The Books of Knowledge and E. Nesbit. I never did read my mother's favourite book, Little Women. Still haven't read it, though thanks to her, I can quote many passages. Similarly, I didn't read what my father liked, which was science fiction. But I loved E. Nesbit, and they'd both read and loved her books. I remember enjoying The Five Little Peppers and How they Grew, and L.M. Montgomery - my mother was enthusiastic over Emily of New Moon, and so was I. And The Blue Castle - was any book ever so romantic? (And what was the one where the hero was blind?) An aunt gave me a new L.M. Montgomery for Christmas every year. Silver Pennies belonged to my Aunt, but I fell totally in love with it, and eventually it was given to me.

At 11 or 12 or 13 I read my way through my parents' bookshelves, except for my father's science and science fiction. So to some extent I read what they read. All the Reader's Digest condensed books, all my mother's 'how to write' books, Grace Livingston Hill, all the biographies, all the Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes, Dickens, Brontës, John Buchan, Ngaio Marsh, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Marjorie Allingham, and so on - yes, my mother liked mysteries. I found some one-off gems along the way, like Precious Bane by Mary Webb and Daddy Long-Legs by Jean Webster.

Occasionally, I read a book because my parents said I was too young for it - nothing made a book sound so intriguing! When I was eleven or so, my mother said she thought Oliver Twist was too dark for me. That set me off on a decade of reading and loving Dickens. I read Fanny Hill at 12 because I overheard my mother telling my father that my 15-year-old cousin was too young for it; ditto for a biography of Oscar Wilde a few years later. Occasionally I read something on my parents' recommendations: I read The Lord of the Rings because my father said he thought I'd like it, though he hadn't read it himself. I wonder if he'd have mentioned it, if he'd known how obsessive I'd then become about Tolkien and Anglo-Saxon literature.

I don't remember ever going to bookstores with my parents, though I must have done so - except once going to a wonderful old bookstore in Toronto with my mother because my mother had loved it long ago - but I don't recall its name. (Brentnall's?) I remember many trips to the library and a parent must have been with me sometimes, especially when I was very young, but my memories are of always going by myself.

I remember once... I was sick in bed and bored, and my parents said they'd get me a new book. I begged for a new E. Nesbit. My father came home with a book called The Island of Adventure by Enid Blyton. At first I was disappointed - it wasn't even fantasy - but there was nothing else to read, so I tried it, and fell in love with Jack and his parrot Kiki particularly, and adored the whole "Adventure" series.

I remember enjoying listening to my cousin read Finnegan's Wake aloud to her baby daughter at the cottage - I was probably fourteen. I remember reading Alistair Maclean's Ice Station Zebra and loving it - my cousin George had brought it to the cottage that same year. It wasn't just my immediate family who were book addicts. Must be genetic or something.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I still love L.M. Montgomery. Her books are so comforting.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

They're really delightful - and I find her characters vivid.

[auriaephiala.livejournal.com]

Britnell's in Toronto, right by the Metro Reference Library.

It was replaced by a Starbucks coffee shop sometime in the last decade. I think that says something.

(Ah, checking the web indicates they reopened: http://www.britnellbooks.com/ )

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Britnell's, yes, that was it. Delighted to hear it still exists! My mother would be pleased, too.

[coffeewimp.livejournal.com]

I often feel like it's genetic with my family, too! Isn't it wonderful?!

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Oh, it certainly is. I remember once having a boyfriend whose family never read, and he explained to me that his parents thought it was a waste of time to read fiction. I was puzzled, since they didn't consider it a waste of time to see a movie, or watch a TV show. You never know where people will draw a line, and sometimes it just makes no sense.

Yes - wonderful to be in a family of readers. I don't know how I'd hav coped if I'd been in a family that didn't enjoy and encourage reading.

[walkingowl.livejournal.com]

You say you have no siblings, and I know you have no brothers or sisters, but cousins (as your cottage memories demonstrate) can be just as close, as I know myself. Family is what we make of it....

Considering that you have told me that your father worked with Fred Hoyle during the war in Britain, doing radar, I am not really surprised that you say he enjoyed science fiction.

My own experiences of books & family mostly involved my fruitlessly trying not to have someone else in the house take a book off me when I'd set it down for a moment, to start reading it themselves and thus stick me in limbo till they got done. God knows why they did this over and over -- it was so horribly thoughtless of them -- but even now I don't take a book with me into the company of close relatives unless it's in a backpack or I can put my coat over it.

My mother, a teacher to her heart, read to me and my two sisters each night when we were small, and I don't even remember the books specifically, just the beauty of the telling. One of the last books my mother gave me was the autobiography of she who had written Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe, entitled I Shall Not Have Lived in Vain, and I still have it. My mother encouraged whatever current interest I was deeply into by finding the most amazing books on the topic... and I seem to have inherited her luck at finding oddball treasures, many of which have made excellent gifts.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Though I didn't see my cousins often, they were certainly good surrogate siblings. All the more so in that I didn't see enough of them to fight with. Truthfully, I thought they were the most wonderful people on earth. My aunt and uncle too.

Horrible that people took your books from you!

Oddball treasures are the best kinds. Especially when they are books.

[janne-d.livejournal.com]

Daddy Long-Legs! I love that book. And the sequel, though I've totally forgotten the name of it, drat.

My parents both read. Dad likes factual and science fiction mostly I think, Mum seems to read pretty much any fiction except sf and fantasy (she thinks they are nonsense escapism). Dad used to read me my bedtime stories - I believe he started with The Jungle Book round about age 4 or 5, and I mean the full Kipling version. I can clearly remember being taken to see the Disney film and going "that's not what happens" in outrage.

I read Lady Chatterly's Lover at about 12, mainly because my mum said I couldn't when I saw it on the shelves - I think you did better with Fanny Hill because Lady Chatterly's Lover was very boring. I never have got the hang of Lawrence's prose, though I like some of his poems.

Marjorie Allingham is cool (I love Campion), but no Dorothy L. Sayers? And I can't believe you've never read Little Women. All 4 of that series make me teary-eyed at some point or another - they're perfect wallowing books.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

The sequel to Daddy Long-Legs is called Dear Enemy.

Sounds as if your parents' reading tastes are like mine were! I don't remember when I first encountered The Jungle Book - I found it on my own, but I think it was one of the things in my parents' bookshelves.

I was probably 16 or 17 when I read Lady Chatterly's Lover. I liked the idea of the plot but after years of reading about Shelley, it was annoyingly conservative - and sexist too. Lady Chatterly isn't as boring as Women in Love, though. I love Lawrence's poem The Snake.

No, no Dorothy L. Sayers. I kept reading about her - she did tend to crop up in those "How To Write a Mystery Novel" books my mother had, alongside Agatha Christie - but I don't think my parents owned any of the Sayers books and I never actually got around to reading them till long after my school days.

No, I've never read Little Women. It seems amazing that I haven't, doesn't it? "Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents," said Jo... I'm a great admirer of Louis May Alcott, too.

[janne-d.livejournal.com]

The sequel to Daddy Long-Legs is called Dear Enemy

Gah, of course it is.

Funnily enough, I read Daddy Long-Legs before Little Women - but they are inextricably linked for me by the bit in one of the letters where Judy writes about being the only girl at college who hasn't read it and hence doesn't know about the significance of pickled limes. Because of course I didn't know about the pickled limes either. I may have read Little Women off the back of that, I can't remember now. All that series were all old hardback books that my mum had kept from being young though and she dug them out of the loft for me.

[(Anonymous)]

I loved reading through your answer. Probably because I'm a HUGE LMM fan myself. I used Blue Castle to name my photography business as well. I heartily concur that that is one romantic book! My answer is here:

http://readingtoknow.blogspot.com/2007/08/booking-through-thursday_23.html

--Carrie

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I used Blue Castle to name my photography business as well.

What a wonderful name. I heartily approve!

I'm glad you enjoyed my comments - I certainly enjoyed yours, and commented on your blog.

Oliver Twist

[lauradi7.livejournal.com]

I guess there is a big age difference between 11 & 13, but we were required to read it in 8th grade.

Re: Oliver Twist

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Yes - I don't know why my mother was trying to discourage me from reading it. She possibly guessed I'd read it anyway. I went right on to A Tale of Two Cities, and liked it even more. And The Star... How could I help being hooked? Though I suppose it was Charlotte Brontë who really addicted me to early Victorian novels. I forget now when Oliver Twist was published, but it couldn't have been much later (or earler).

[lmondegreen.livejournal.com]

I think the LM Montgomery one with the blind hero is Kilmeny of the Orchard, one of her lesser-known books.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Maybe that was it - I don't remember much about it, except how much I enjoyed it.

[literaryfeline.livejournal.com]

What a thoughtful and inspiring response!

I read many of my mother's childhood favorites too--and some of my grandmother's as well. The Bobsey Twins and The Chronicles of Narnia are the two series I remember most of all.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

What a thoughtful and inspiring response!

What a nice thing to say! Thank you.

The Bobsey Twins were fun. I didn't like Narnia - for some reason, I only like C.S.Lewis' writing for adults. As a kid, I found his books unplesantly creepy.

[filkferengi]

There's a group of siblings who go to cons together, since their spouses aren't too fannish. One of the sisters is named Phronsie & claims I'm the only fan they've ever met who knows where it's from. Now I can tell her there's another one. ;)

Great reading list! Mine was similar, although I'm just getting to Ngaio Marsh & Patricia Wentworth. You should so seek the Sayers; _Whose Body_ is the first one. Or, you might want to check out the collection of short stories first, to sample her prose [I found it at the library sale for .50].

When I was a kid, I'd read to my mom as she got dinner ready after work, spelling out words I didn't know [I won the school spelling bee in 7th grade, so we did something right]. I spent summers with my grandmother, who lived equidistant between two libraries, so I had cards at both. They were small and full of old, smelly, long OOP books. Hence the Nesbit, Hodgson Burnett, the more obscure Johanna Spyri, Jean Webster, et-delightful-cetera.

Thanks for bringing back some lovely memories!

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

One of the sisters is named Phronsie & claims I'm the only fan they've ever met who knows where it's from. Now I can tell her there's another one. ;)

There is indeed! "Sophronia" is a great name and has always stuck with me. If I ran into a Phronsie I'd know exactly where it was from!

Hodgson Burnett - yes, I got to her late, probably indirectly via school - I think one of the other classes in my school read one of her books, and I made it a point to always read what the other classes were studying. Johanna Spyri is one of the exceptions - a butt I read because I had to, we studied it, and I liked it. Especially the illustrations.