Behold! The Bestie Edition of my ongoing project. This childhood friend introduced me to the works of Tamora Pierce, and can be relied upon to join me for tea and Harry Potter-related chat, and to bring me baked goods. Here goes–
Favourite book(s)?
That’s like asking ‘What’s your favourite child?’ It’s a hard thing to pinpoint. I’ll go with the Harry Potter series.
…Why?
They were pivotal in my childhood. I hated reading before I started the first one (but we found out this was because my eyes struggled with tracking and I needed glasses). They were also the books that we took for ‘reading time’ when we went away to the beach on holidays. I remember the first two were read aloud together as a family. As we got older, this fizzled out and we read them on our own. They somehow seemed to be the only books (other than a battered copy of The Magic Faraway Tree) that we had up there – so naturally I read them over and over again to the point I could almost recite them.
Favourite author?
At the moment I would have to say Jasper Fforde. He’s written the Thursday Next and the Nursery Rhyme Detective series. His writing style is inter-textual fantasy that has a lot of quirky humour. He’s also written a novel called Shades of Grey (it was published well and truly before that other book with the similar title – in fact Fforde tells a story how some bookstore workers sold his book rather than the faux BDSM one during the craze as they liked his better). He’s probably one of the only authors I would pre-order a book from without waiting for a review to see if it’s any good. Jessica Townsend only has one, Nevermoor, but it was that good, I’ll read the sequel and turn up to any public appearance she makes (not that I am a crazy stalker person).
What are you currently reading?
I’ve got several books on the go in different areas of my life. For night-time/weekend reading I’ve got Song of the Qwarkbeast by Jasper Fforde: I read half of it in one sitting and I’ll probably finish it in the next day or so. On my lunch-break I’m going through Code of Silence by Colin Dillon, which is the story of the first Aboriginal police officer in Queensland, who played a big role in giving evidence to the Fitzgerald Inquiry on police corruption. I’ve also got Curtis Stone’s Relaxed Cooking, which I’ve been meaning to work through as a way of broadening my culinary repertoire. It’s a balance of picking recipes that aren’t too difficult and that I can do easily and have all the stuff on hand, and then having the people to share it with.
A bookish memory.
Lining up for the seventh Harry Potter book. It was certainly an experience, as there was the hype and people all dressed up in costume. I got my copy and then sat in the corner and read it while my sister went formal dress shopping. I read the whole book in 14 hours (with breaks to buy my own formal dress and have dinner with my godmother).
Bookish peeve?
I’m a librarian, so people who don’t return their books or decide that leaving them on the desk is ‘close enough’ can be frustrating. In terms of what my pet peeve is within a book: stereotypical twins that are used as plot devices. Also, weak female characters, and one-dimensional despot kings. I should probably add book-to-movie adaptions, too. I used to make sure I read the book before seeing a film but as they were almost never true to the book I’d get really frustrated. I’ve given up doing that so I can watch the film without it nagging me.
A book out of the ordinary?
Freakonomics. It was on the bookshelf at work and I picked it up out of curiosity. Its conversational style is helpful, because I don’t know anything about economics, and if you start getting too technical I’m going to put it down and pick up something that has dragons or awesome food in it.
The last book you bought?
I bought Jamie Oliver’s 5 Ingredients cookbook. It was okay, but not as good as it was hyped up to be.
Thank-you!
For a look at the shelves of some of my other contributors/victims, click here or here or here.
TALKING TALES 