The land alive with promise
Mar. 14th, 2019 06:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12Thirty Day Book Meme Day 14: An old favorite
I think I've talked about a lot of old favourites here already, but there are still a few I haven't mentioned. I read a lot, and always have done, after all.
When I was growing up, my sister and I went to the local public library almost every weekend. When we were very small, we went to the Saturday morning storytime events, and this was always followed by some time spent browsing the shelves and picking out books to read over the course of the week. As we grew older, we stopped going to the storytime stuff, but continued to go and borrow books nearly every week. I discovered a lot of my favourite books this way, and frequently borrowed the same books over and over again.
One such book was Katharine Briggs' An Encyclopedia of Fairies (I think the British edition was called A Dictionary of Fairies, but for whatever reason we had the US edition in our Australian library). It does pretty much what it says on the tin: collect together pretty much every piece of folklore and folktale about otherworldly beings, mainly from Britain and Ireland. I was obsessed with this book, and used to pore over it endlessly, tracing patterns and common themes in the stories, and noting every time one of them popped up in the fantasy novels I read. It was like a window into another world — not the Otherworld, but rather, a world where people felt it necessary to leave bread and clear water by the fireplace as a gift to household spirits, where ointments of clover leaves, or turning your clothes inside out would make you immune to fairy trickery, or where hanging a pair of iron scissors above a baby's bed would prevent it from being swapped out with a changeling. And the sense of stories and memories being written into the landscape was incredibly appealling, because that was how I thought of my own landscape, and my own folklore, no matter how suburban my location.
I loved this book so much, and must have read it at least a hundred times.
15. Favorite fictional father.
16. Can't believe more people haven't read.
17. Future classic.
18. Bought on a recommendation.
19. Still can't stop talking about it.
20. Favorite cover.
21. Summer read.
22. Out of print.
23. Made to read at school.
24. Hooked me into reading.
25. Never finished it.
26. Should have sold more copies.
27. Want to be one of the characters.
28. Bought at my fave independent bookshop.
29. The one I have reread most often.
30. Would save if my house burned down.
I think I've talked about a lot of old favourites here already, but there are still a few I haven't mentioned. I read a lot, and always have done, after all.
When I was growing up, my sister and I went to the local public library almost every weekend. When we were very small, we went to the Saturday morning storytime events, and this was always followed by some time spent browsing the shelves and picking out books to read over the course of the week. As we grew older, we stopped going to the storytime stuff, but continued to go and borrow books nearly every week. I discovered a lot of my favourite books this way, and frequently borrowed the same books over and over again.
One such book was Katharine Briggs' An Encyclopedia of Fairies (I think the British edition was called A Dictionary of Fairies, but for whatever reason we had the US edition in our Australian library). It does pretty much what it says on the tin: collect together pretty much every piece of folklore and folktale about otherworldly beings, mainly from Britain and Ireland. I was obsessed with this book, and used to pore over it endlessly, tracing patterns and common themes in the stories, and noting every time one of them popped up in the fantasy novels I read. It was like a window into another world — not the Otherworld, but rather, a world where people felt it necessary to leave bread and clear water by the fireplace as a gift to household spirits, where ointments of clover leaves, or turning your clothes inside out would make you immune to fairy trickery, or where hanging a pair of iron scissors above a baby's bed would prevent it from being swapped out with a changeling. And the sense of stories and memories being written into the landscape was incredibly appealling, because that was how I thought of my own landscape, and my own folklore, no matter how suburban my location.
I loved this book so much, and must have read it at least a hundred times.
15. Favorite fictional father.
16. Can't believe more people haven't read.
17. Future classic.
18. Bought on a recommendation.
19. Still can't stop talking about it.
20. Favorite cover.
21. Summer read.
22. Out of print.
23. Made to read at school.
24. Hooked me into reading.
25. Never finished it.
26. Should have sold more copies.
27. Want to be one of the characters.
28. Bought at my fave independent bookshop.
29. The one I have reread most often.
30. Would save if my house burned down.
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Date: 2019-03-14 09:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-15 07:22 am (UTC)