Ten books...

sartorias just reposted an older post, which was a list of the ten books that influenced you the most. I read it this morning and naturally was tossing books around while showering (yes, metaphorically! Books in the bath are heaven, but even I'm not hard-core enough to try to read in the shower). Of course her list is far more interesting than mine, both because of her becoming a writer (and starting at such an amazingly early age) and because she seems to have that clear memory for childhood reading (not the books themselves - but also the whens and experience of reading) that I so admire in Francis Spufford. I have neither, but it's still fun to think about influential books, so here's a not-very-definitive list of my own, and I hope other people may read the link and be inspired to join in with their own...

( ten books )

Classics of (children's) literature

Saw this call for guest bloggers to review their favourites (thanks to Liz of A Chair, A Fireplace & a Tea Cozy [ET-fix this link]) and it sounded like a fun idea. (Oh - check out the cover for Rosemary Sutcliff's The Mark of the Horse Lord Liz has linked to there!)

Okay, confession time: I never cared for Little Women as I was supposed to. Anyway, that out of the way, I was always much more partial to An Old-Fashioned Girl, which had a bit less of the moralizing and sentimentality of LW and more of the humour, as well as lacking any kind of taming of the heroine. Which is kind of interesting, considering the first section was serialized in 1869, just a year after Little Women, and bang smack in the middle of the period of some of the most heavily moralizing British children's books. (It appears to have been published in the complete form in 1870.)

Guess who just spent the afternoon up to her eyeballs in one of those? Yes, and reading online at that. Charlotte Yonge's Countess Kate, which is a fairly heavy bit of correct-the-girl fiction. (Here - I'll share!) Fascinating to read now, as you can almost see the author struggling herself against the dreadful moralizing she has her narrator come out with, but not much fun for a child reader, I'd have thought. Poor Kate is taken away from her nice warm family in the country and plonked down on two maiden great-aunts in London, not allowed any friends or even to play ever and only has a very dull walk with her governess every day. When it all gets to her so even her health is damaged the doctor says she needs more exercise and what do they do? Increase the length of the dull walk and make her play battledore for half an hour every day (an hour if it's too wet for her walk) with her grieving and miserable governess - a game at which she's no good and self-consciousness makes her even more awkward and miserable trying to play, and send her off to some calisthenics classes too (her 'deportment' - i.e. every move - is already criticized virtually every minute by her aunt/governess/calisthenics teacher) and you're cringing in sympathy and then the bloody narrator comes along and says in effect 'You may be feeling sorry for Kate but you SHOULDN'T. If only she would accept this LOVING treatment from her poor AUNT in a spirit of OBEDIENCE, then it would be good for her and IMPROVE her nature, which is very bad.' Honestly! There's an interesting point in our course materials about Yonge having been brought up herself by Edgeworthian methods and possibly her anger about this is what threatens to pop up and overwhelm the moralizing with normal kid sympathy.

So, An Old-Fashioned Girl most likely for the end-of-module essay and Undine (Penni Russon) next here. (I liked it a lot, Michele and Emma!) Now reading Shannon Hale's River Secrets and to keep the watery theme going, should move on to Tide Knot after that. Unless that's just over-doing it.