1. Your childhood favourite
Enid Blyton’s Faraway Tree books and her boarding school stories, and the Biggles books by Capt W.E. Johns. I still have all my old copies – boxes of them – and reread them from time to time because I love them so much!
2. Your current favourite
Most of my favourites have been favourites for years, like The Magicians of Caprona, by Diana Wynne Jones, and Faro’s Daughter by Georgette Heyer, and A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold, and Welcome to Temptation by Jennifer Crusie.
3. Your top five authors
Georgette Heyer (Regency and Georgian novels)
Lois McMaster Bujold (Vorkosigan series)
Jennifer Crusie
Diana Wynne Jones (Chrestomanci books)
My father, Maurice Gee
4. Book(s) you’re reading now
I’m rereading a number of Georgette Heyer’s regencies. Also have just started A Short History Of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.
5. Book(s) you’ve pretended to read
I can’t think of one. I used to read every book I started, even if I didn’t like it; now I stop reading if a book doesn’t grab me.
6. Book(s) you’ve bought for the cover
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
7. Book you’re a champion for
Welcome To Temptation by Jennifer Crusie. I keep telling my friends to read it, but not everyone gets the humour and loves it as much as I do.
8. Book that changed your life
The Naughtiest Girl In The School, by Enid Blyton. I was given this at age 7. Until then reading had been a chore, but once I read this book I was hooked and became a voracious reader!
9. Book you most want to read again for the first time
A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold and Welcome To Temptation by Jennifer Crusie. Both are fabulous – clever and funny and just plain brilliant.
10. Book you turn to for comfort
Anything by my favourite authors.
11. Favourite line from a book
I absolutely love the final lines of The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer:
‘Charles!’ uttered Sophy, shocked. ‘You cannot love me!’
Mr Rivenhall pulled the door to behind them, and in a very rough fashion jerked her into his arms, and kissed her. ‘I don’t: I dislike you excessively!’
(If you haven’t read The Grand Sophy, read it – it’s fabulous fun!)
Oh boy, that cover of The Naughtiest Girl In The School took me right back to when I was seven years old. Fabulous, fabulous book! Thanks for snooping on my bookshelf, Dolly -- it was fun to think about my favourites again! (And now I must go on a re-reading binge ... yet again!)
ReplyDeleteEmily