Book Meme

by C. Margery Kempe & Kit Marlowe

JOIN in the book meme and tell us about your reading habits:

1. One Book That Changed Your Life:

Beowulf: After taking in Woody Allen’s advice in Annie Hall without really thinking about it (“Don’t take any class where they make you read Beowulf!”) I finally read it in the Chickering dual language version in Stephen Mitchell’s class at Harvard. With the added influence of Njal’s Saga, my life changed forever. I discovered the Middle Ages wasn’t miladies in pointy hats, but cool and magical stories with mordant humour. Everything in my life changed from being a medievalist: languages, stories, mythologies, and most importantly, it put paid to the idea that there was any such thing as ‘originality’ — just individual story tellers and very old stories.

2. One Book You Have to Read More Than Once:
Alice in Wonderland: if there is one book that defines my life, it is Alice. The absurdity, the humour, the wild imagination. Yes.

3. One Book You’d Want on a Desert Island:
Riverside Shakespeare: There is so much there, I can’t imagine quite getting to the end of it ever, without wanting to begin again.

4. Two Books That Made You Laugh:
Lucky Jim and Jane and Prudence: Amis’ book is another that really has defined my life, even though I first read it before I became an academic and a medievalist — somehow it was fated I guess. There is just so much in the book that captures the most frustrating things about academia and my own love/hate relationship with it. I remember reading Pym’s book when I was working at the Harvard School of Public Health. I was in the student lounge and laughing out loud. Time to re-read it!

5. One Book That Made You Cry:
Anything by Charles de Lint, eh? We’ll say Moonheart, if you need a title, but oh any!

6. One Book You Wish You’d Written:
Pride and Prejudice? Anything by Austen — or Gaskell, or George Eliot. Sigh.

7. One Book You Wish Was NEVER Written:
Um, every celebrity’s ghosted “Look at ME!” book.

8. Two Books You Are Currently Reading:
Skeem Life by Gary Robertson and The Pillowbook of Eleanor Bron. Gary’s book tells about his life growing up in the housing schemes Dundeee with humour (despite the sometimes rather horrifying happenings!) in pure Dundee language. Bron’s book is a sort of journal that recorded her observations as she was appearing in things like Beyond the Fringe with my hero Peter Cook and Help! with the Beatles and she’s so sharply observant and mordantly funny that I wish we could be good friends and have tea every day just so I could enjoy her stories. At least Gary’s on Twitter!

9. One Book You’ve Been Meaning to Read:
Tristram Shandy : I will get to it!

If you love books, consider yourself tagged. Link your post in the comments below. Huzzah!