Happy St George's day
Apr. 23rd, 2010 10:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livI'm not really interested in celebrating a saint's day (not being Christian), nor in celebrating Englishness (not being that sort of patriot), nor in dragon-slaying (as I generally find myself on the side of the dragon). However, I kind of like the idea of the Catalan version where people give eachother books.
So I propose a game: comment and recommend me a book, and I'll rec you something in return. If I don't know anything about you, I'll suggest something that I really like, and which I generally find isn't well known. And I'll keep going until I find something new to you, if necessary. You can give me a hint of the sort of books you prefer if you want to, but it's not required; it might be a more fun game if I have to guess based on my judgement of your character.
I have a comprehensive list of everything I've read in the last seven years, in case you find it hard to know where to start, but you obviously don't have to read through all that.
So I propose a game: comment and recommend me a book, and I'll rec you something in return. If I don't know anything about you, I'll suggest something that I really like, and which I generally find isn't well known. And I'll keep going until I find something new to you, if necessary. You can give me a hint of the sort of books you prefer if you want to, but it's not required; it might be a more fun game if I have to guess based on my judgement of your character.
I have a comprehensive list of everything I've read in the last seven years, in case you find it hard to know where to start, but you obviously don't have to read through all that.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-24 07:58 pm (UTC)I think you might like Rose Macauley's The towers of Trebizond. She's an interesting early twentieth century English feminist, with a really sly sense of humour. In some ways her stuff is a bit dated, but in other ways it gives you a real sense of period. It also has the absolute best opening line in all of literature:
(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-24 10:35 pm (UTC)No fun book-reading for me for a bit, but this'll have to go on my list for later in the year. Hell yes, I hope to be reading up a storm.
Is RMcC in a similar category to people like Sylvia Townsend Warner, then? Sounds v interesting from your description, at any rate.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-25 11:52 am (UTC)I don't know Sylvia Townsend Warner, but from what I can gather from Wiki, yeah, Macaulay is probably a similar sort of writer. Although Towers was written in the 50s, it's her last novel and the style and setting reflect a much earlier period. She's a relative (granddaughter? niece? something like that) of Thomas Macaulay, the great Victorian literary critic, so she was very much in touch with and responding to the 19th century dead white males canon, and dealing with WW1 and the collapse of that kind of Victorianism. In a lot of ways she reminds me of Virginia Woolf more than anyone else.
(I'm interested in her because she lived for most of her life in the house where my parents now live, but she's also a really cool and much underrated writer.)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-25 12:02 pm (UTC)