Books -- or horses -- for courses.

[la_marquise]

If you were to ask me my favourite book, there is no doubt you'd get the immediate reply, The Three Musketeers. That is the book at the very heart of my best obsession, the core and key and very feel of what I most want out of reading, the other-place I aim to echo and reference and reflect and emulate when I write. It is my book of books, the book that somewhere in the most selfish corner of my mind I know was written just for me.
And yet, if you were to ask me that question in another way, you'd probably get a whole set of different answers. Because while T3M is my Ur-book, there are so many others that have woven themselves into me over my years.If you asked me for my desert island book, I might be forced to answer Twenty Years After, because while T3M is my core book, the core of the changing relationships between Athos, Porthos, Aramis and d'Artagnan -- which is, for me, the core of the whole series, the reason for reading and loving the books -- is found in 20YA, not T3M, and especially in the chapter 'La Place Royale'. All but one of my favourite scenes from the series are in 20YA, even though T3M is the better book. But it's 20YA I'd want on my island.
And then there are the books that set me on my various tangled footpaths. There's Lord of the Rings (of course), which built the shape of the genre I wanted to work in, and its deep deep scholarly roots, which pulled me down into the mangrove swamps of academe and mediaeval history. There's Peter Sawyer's Age of the Vikings, which set my standard for what analytical, exciting early mediaeval history should read like, and Frank Barlow, Edward the Confessor, which taught me thoroughness. There's J E Lloyd, A History of Wales from the Earliest Times to the Edwardian Conquest, which irritates and inspires me in equal parts, which set up the sacred cows of my field and informs every single out-of-line, against-trend, awkward, spikey and revisionist word of my academic writings. But the first book to teach me to love history and to love its sources was Eugenia Ginsberg, Into the Whirlwind, which my O' Level history teacher, Mr Roger Vandevelde, lent to me in 1977. Hello, Mr Vandevelde. You're still the best teacher I ever had, and even though I didn't do history A' Level, I turned into a historian anyway. If by chance you see this, do get in touch. I want to say 'Thank you' and send you some books.
I've written about Anne of Green Gables before, about how tightly I cleave to Anne Shirley and her imagination that gets out of control. She's the first role-model I ever had, the first of the many writing girls who populate children's books. I didn't relate as much to tomboy Jo March or self-leaning Emily Starr, but I loved Anne, and her close descendant Cassandra Mortmain, of Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle. They taught me it was okay to write, that books could be for and by spikey girls, misfit girls, girls of little account.
There are books that I loved and left, or books I've outgrown and and longer reread, but which remain and will remain on my shelves -- Anne McCaffrey's Dragonflight and Restoree, Andre Norton, Forerunner Foray, Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond books, Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre and Shirley, even, in some ways, Babel 17, Samuel R Delany. I still love the latter, but it no longer blows me away it as it did when I was 15, I see where the strains and the holes are, I see through the cleverness (though Delany remains one of the finest, the greatest, the shiniest of all).
And then there are the books I go back to just because. Tanith Lee, Drinking Sapphire Wine, which I can practically recite. Georgette Heyer, Cotillion and Friday's Child. Elizabeth Peters, Devil May Care, Robert Heinlein, Starman Jones, the book that introduced me to sf. Margery Allingham, The Fashion in Shrouds. Anne Bronte, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. These are all books of my years.
Which books are yours?

Comments

[aberwyn.livejournal.com]

The book of my childhood that fired my imagination was WIND IN THE WILLOWS. I still have a copy with the Shepard illustrations. I can see some on my inner screen even as I type.

I loved the Heinlein juveniles, though I noticed the lack of girls and women. Also THE BOY'S BOOK OF KING ARTHUR -- yes, notice the gender right in the title. Can't have girls wanting adventures. But I read it anyway, somewhat defiantly.

The adult book that absolutely blew me away, however, or I should say, the series of books, was Proust's RECHERCHE. Honestly. The interweaving of past and present, the time and place it's set, the intense details of consciousness, even the asthma, which is about the only thing I share with Marcel, and the weird fantasies of the two Albertine books -- it set my mind racing when I stumbled into his Paris almost by accident.

[aberwyn.livejournal.com]

I first read it when I was about 20, only understood maybe half. Have reread Proust many times since then and still find new things to ponder.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

The beauty of Proust's prose is just astonishing. I find that reading him is like reading silk. I still haven't red the whole of La Recherche, though: I must get back to it.

[duniazade.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, The Three Musketeers and Twenty Years After and most especially "La Place Royale!"

I think it's the first time I meet someone who shares my adoration for them.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Yay for musketeers! I know a couple of other fans, but we are a rare and scattered breed.

[miintikwa.livejournal.com]

The book that opened my eyes and heart first was "Watership Downs" by Richard Adams. I have three copies of it, and I'm not getting rid of any of them! (One of the original printing paperbacks with the compass rose on the cover, the copy my Mom got me for my 13th birthday and inscribed, and a copy I actually read. :D) It was magical in its breadth, width, and how the animals acted.

Other books that gripped me included Anne McCaffrey, Mercedes Lackey, and Jennifer Roberson. Roberson led me to Melanie Rawn, and the two of them led me to Kate Elliott. I devoured everything they'd written, and wanted more.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I remember Watership Down coming out here. I still have my paperback original -- it was first published as a children's book -- and I love it. It's a fine book.

[miintikwa.livejournal.com]

I can't separate it from the time that I first read it, so it is nearly magical for me! :)

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Oh, so many good books!

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Well, Roger Lancelyn Green's Mystery at Mycene and The Luck of Troy which inspired my love of Greek history and myth in general and Odysseus (my Ur hero) in particular, Ivan Southall's Simon Black series which (perhaps unfortunately) instilled a love of snappy backchat and fast action that persists to this day, Monica Edwards's Romney Marsh books because I want to have adventures like those kids and own a white Anglo-Arab like Tamzin and the Telzey Amberdon stories of James H. Schmitz because, hell, I wanted to be a high function telepath beating on the bad guys.

Yeah, I'm shallow.

Then, of course, there was The Selfish Gene which instilled a love of evolutionary biology and great non-fiction writing.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

There is nothing shallow about loving Lancelyn Greene (for me it was the Egyptian myths) and Monica Edwards! Or Schmitz. Indeed, the latter is one of the marquis' favourite authors.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Comic books and television also had long-lasting and perhaps unfortunate effects...

Edit: The Marquis has good taste. Why do you think Quillan is called Quillan? (And why his sisters were Telzey, Trigger and Gem?)

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

But of course!

[zaan.livejournal.com]

Kipling "Jungle Book". I adored it and still do. The whole concept of the wolves, and Bagheera, and Barloo teaching the Laws to the cubs.. The language, the whole ethos of the jungle came alive for me.
Then there was Enid Blyton's Adventure series, and The Famous Five with George in them, with whom I so emoted! I was always ending up one of the boys, even when I didn't want to be! Her "Faraway Tree" introduced me to fantasy, though.

Next came the real biographies and autobiographies of WW2 heroes - men who weren't necessarily traditional heroes, just people being brave in awful circumstances. I started reading those when I was 12, asking my Grandad who had fought in 2 wars for stories about them, and getting them to a degree.

Along with them were the real history books - "Everyday life" series for Ancient Egypt, Rome and Greece and as many of the legends and myths of Greece and Rome as I could get my hands on.

Those are the early books that shaped my tastes, my love of heroes, people fighting against odds, and exotic settings.

My first SF book is in storage with all my stuff up in Sacramento sadly, so I cannot tell you title or author. I can tell you the author wrote my school English text books though and when I came across an SF novel where he had a spaceship in his garden shed, and his grandkids found it and flew it off to distant planets to have adventures, I was irrevocably caught by the SF bug!

I also got bitten by Edgar Allen Poe's "Tales of Mystery and Imagination", and many of the original Gothic writers - "Lair of the White Worm" and similar. On particular favorite is "Dwellers in the Mirage" by A. Merrit. If you can find it, read it. And Rider Haggard's "She" and "The Return of She" was awesome. I also grew up reading my Dad's old annuals from when he was a kid at my Scots Grandmother's house, and they were the Boy's Own Adventure omnibuses full of derring do and adventure of the Alan Quartermain type. "Lost World" was another favorite one. The trend, if there is one, is again the hero adventurer in a strange land.

Since then, there have been many but the vast majority seem to have been by women writers, particularly those with my own publisher, DAW Books. Also the Vorkosigan series my Lois McMasters Bujold, Pern books by Ann McCaffrey, Diadem Series by Jo Clayton, CJ Cherry's Hani series, and some of the space warfare/navy ones by Swann and others.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

There are a lot there I remember fondly too, though I never related to George -- I'm an Anne. I came to Poe late, sadly -- my first Gothic was Sheridan LeFanu, Carmilla, which would make my list, come to thing of it. And I love Bujold. Oh, and Lisanne Norman. Have you read her? :-)

[zaan.livejournal.com]

Hmm... name seems familiar. ;p I have another great fav too - Sperring, Kari Sperring.. Have you read her? A truly magical writer. :)

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Is this him? http://www.facebook.com/people/Roger-Vandevelde/1012967043

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

It might be: he looks about the right age, I think. Thank you.

[the-faery-queen.livejournal.com]

chldren of the dust. i went tho a big post apocolptic thing as a kid and i loved that one, showing the lives of three kids thro a neclear explosition. one thro the blast, one in a bunker as the world changed, and then her son in the world that followed. it was sad and moving.

also, shadow on the skin,
alice in wonderland
legend
and swordspoint

bit of a mix! but they all have a bit of sadness running thro them, even alice in its way

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Children of the Dust scared me witless! But yes, Swordspoint: that's a wonderful book. And my mother tells me that Alice was my favourite thing to have read to me when I was 3 and 4, so it's probably a influence to this day. As you say, all sad in their way.

[the-faery-queen.livejournal.com]

i still read and love alice :)
children of the dust was scarey, but sad. mostly i remember the dog! being left out in the blast, and i would tink abnout how i would bring my cats in with me, no matter what! and then i'd think about the where the wind blows, or whatever that cartoon was called, also about neclear blast. and i'd think, na, i rather get blown up! :)

swordspoint is a new fav for me. it may or may not stay that way (as robin hobb and george rr martin were fav authors of mine a decade or whatever ago and aren't now) but i think books you read as a child are more likely to stay wtih you and remain a fav, because of what they reind you of.

[ms-cataclysm.livejournal.com]

For me the test of a good book is whether it gets better on re-reading it.

I would add Marge Piercy's "Body of glass" to the list - I love the way she mixes cyberpunk with the golem of Prague.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I blush to admit it, but I've never read that one. I found Woman on the Edge of Time so alarming I rather stopped reading her.

[ms-cataclysm.livejournal.com]

I've never been able to get into that one either - "Gone to soldiers" and "Braided lives" are excellent but some of her other stuff fails to move me.

I'm also going to drag some poetry into it . Philip Larkin - "No road"

http://www.bryantmcgill.com/World_Poetry/~P/Philip_Larkin/Philip_Larkin_No_Road.html

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Ah, poetry. The single most influential poem for me is Eliot's Four Quartets, which sits in my head and shapes lines. And I love Herrick and Browning and Anne Sexton, too.