Blue Blanket Books Part 2

I am in the mood again for Blue  Blanket books.  I wrote about this last June.  If I could summon up the energy to work out how to do it I would the link to that post but I can't, although I can tell you it was sometime in June 2005.

When I was a child I went to a tiny primary school which was probably, even by the standards of those days, slightly unorthodox.  The school didn't have a library but when I was in P7 a small budget must have been procured from somewhere, because one day the teacher gave me the Puffin catalogue and told me to pick out 30 books.  She mustn't have been a big reader herself because otherwise why would she have allowed a 10 year-old child to buy the school library?  It made me ecstatically happy to be asked to do this and I was so generous I even deliberately picked one or two books I thought boys would like.

Among the things I chose were everything ever written by Laura Ingalls, The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge, Emil and the Detectives by Erich Kastner and Landslide! by Veronique Day.  The latter two were for the boys in my class but neither of them liked reading much and thought the books were too hard.  I didn't. I enjoyed them very much and would, I think,  happily read any one of these books again.

The world is, I think, divided into two groups, those who re-read novels and really weird people.

Sometimes though a book can let you down.  I was reminded of this when I saw someone this morning reading an Iris Murdoch novel.  Between the ages of 18 and 27 I read everything she wrote.  A couple of years ago I tried The Red and The Green again and found it turgid and tedious beyond belief.

One of the advantages of being older is that you don't need to read books any more just to impress other people.

During the last week I have read a book on bereavement and an Italian detective novel and found them both equally baffling.

I think this might be the first of a series of posts on reading.  My next one will be

Could you ever have sex with someone who enjoys science fiction?

 

Comments

[Nelly]

Oh my God Ganching! Are you TRYING to stir up a hornet's nest here? What is so terrible about Science Fiction?

The Little White Horse. I remember it well. Maria Merryweather & Miss Heliotrope. Or was that some other book I'm thinking of?

[longcat]

i was just thinking about books tonight, out with my sister felinity who is reading a suitable boy...

now that i cycle everywhere i hardly read... i've been in the middle of a fantastic michael ondaatji memoir for what seems like months now...

i remember that post back in june, must have been when i started reading you...

x

(don't know how to link in comments in typepad but here it is:
http://ganching.typepad.com/ganching/2005/06/blue_blanket_bo.html)

[longcat]

oh, that link has a bracket that it shouldn't... should be:

http://ganching.typepad.com/ganching/2005/06/blue_blanket_bo.html

[ganching]

longcat thanks for sorting out the link for me.

Nelly you are thinking of the right book - geraniums and a tin of iced biscuits left in the bedroom.

[anyresemblance]

i'm with you on the science fiction tho' I had a brief flirtation with ursula le guin in the late seventies i put that down to radical post feminist right-on-ness and a passing whimsy.

[Nelly]

Despite Miss Heliotrope (she was really a kindly soul)I wanted Maria Merryweather's life so much.

I adored John Wyndham & he was SF. I read a lot of SF as a teenager and 20something. Some of it was great but I disremember most.

[Space Captain X57v2]

Try Neverness, a fantastic SF book. I grew up on my mother's Asimov, Wyndham is fantastic. Ursula Le Guin. How very banal. I was never a just-SF reader, having gone through the children's section and a good portion of the adult section of Ballymena library by the time I was ten.

As for whether I have ever had sex with someone who likes sci-fi, yes, I have, several. Am I married to any of them? No, I am not. The one I chose has an aversion to sci-fi.

Emil and the Detectives rocked. IIRC.

Go on, try Neverness. It doesn't have space battles and sillyness, it is very philisophical, deep and just wonderful. I have reread it several times. Usually when I am skint and can't afford to buy new books.

I sense a post about books myself out of this.

(Second time round. Oh look, This blog does not allow HTML comments. I guess it must auto-href them.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0007124376

[David]

I´m hoping that Harry Potter is not going to ruin my son for life and I´m doing my best to steer him away from anything that involves fantasy or science fiction.
However, as a child I read all the Biggles books and pretty well any book of my sister´s especially the ones set in girls boarding schools. And i turned out alright. Just about.

[The Hitch]

Boys who read Sci-Fi come to terms with their earthly imperfections more quickly and more completely than boys who don't. Fact. Or did I read that in a C.M. Kornbluth short story?

[Manuel]

Is been proved anyway that the science fiction is the work of Satanists. Do not have sex with them unless you want to kiss someone who licks cats bottoms.

[jg]

Ganching, of course you can have sex with a person who like science fiction - I speak as one who has done this (Stingray counts, doesn't it?.

[Noo]

Oh man, I like science fiction. Well, I like old sci-fi, anyway. Wyndham, Wells, etc. Isn't it part of a healthy balanced reading diet?

IMHO, Fantasy is worse than sci-fi, but even some of them are ok - especially the ones written for younger readers.

[Manuel]

No, the fanstasy is much worse, because it can lead to children confusing not-real stories like Harry Potter and the Twin Peaks with genuine true fantasies such as the New Testament starring Jesus.

[ganching]

Wyndham and Wells are fine as long as you read them before you are 21.

Now isn't it interesting that you all jumped to the conclusion that I was expressing an opinion on the desirability in people who read science fiction.

There's definitely another post in this.

[Ally]

I have sex with myself all the time :).