Fifteen things about me and books
Dec. 12th, 2005 08:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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greythistle
1. I'm not sure I could read before I went to school. Probably not, as it was only then that my rather severe myopia was diagnosed.
2. By my second year at school I had read all the books in the infants section of the school library but they wouldn't let me take any from the juniors section because "Then there wouldn't be anything to read for me later". Ironically I changed schools at the end of that year. (I could add many Pythonish comments about the state of primary education in Yorkshire in the early 1960s but the young people of today just wouldn't believe me).
3. By the age of ten, and by now living in Hertfordshire, I had taught myself the Dewey Decimal System and recatalogued the school library out of sheer boredom.
4. By this stage I was reading four or five books per week and was a frequent visitor to the town library. I read a lot of science fiction and historical stuff like the Hornblower books. I remember absolutely not "getting" the Swallows and Amazons books. Just too alien a social milieu I expect.
5. At prep school (I won a scholarship to the local prep/public school at eleven) I remember reading Auden one lunchtime and the choleric, Fascist classics teacher chucking the book in the bin because it was "communist propaganda".
6. By contrast, my housemaster and classics teacher in the senior school was a gentlemanly veteran of the Italian campaign who had a neat way of getting boys to read books. He would talk about them wistfully and then suggest we would enjoy them more when we were a bit older. He turned me onto Robert Graves and Mary Renault.
7. I was still a regular at the local library and at one point dated a girl who worked there part time. I remember going in late one Saturday afternoon having played three rugby games in the previous five days and her asking me, very concerned, whether I'd been in a car accident.
8. It was also at school that I got introduced to livres d'artiste. Walter Strachan, the leading English language authority on the subject and lifelong friend of Nancy Cunard, was a former master at the school. Although retired he still taught Italian and Art History to any sixthformers who were interested.
9. By Fifth Form I was solidly into reading fairly serious 20th century literature. I think I read all of Solzhenitsyn and Sholokhov, most of Gide, much Camus and Sartre as well as English writers such as Orwell, Bennett and lesser figures like Vansittart and others. I know I chose Sartre's The Age of Reason when I won the fifth form history prize.
10. When I went up to Durham I naturally took as many books as I could manage. My next door neighbour in college was a rather nice girl (Christine Whittemore, now married to a doctor in Pennsylvania) who was reading English Language and Medieval Literature. Knowing I was a mathematician she was rather surprised by my books and came out with the classic line "Oh so you read books!".
11. What spare time I had for reading at university was largely spent in furthering my political education. I read large amounts of Marx, Engels and Lenin as well as more recent figures ranging from EP Thompson to Gramsci and Carrillo.
12. Over the years the balance of my reading has shifted more and more away from fiction to non-fiction, principally history. I've still managed to fit in a good representation of modern litfic authors though. I particularly like Peter Ackroyd, Lindsay Clarke and Alan Massie. I'm not above reading trashy novels on planes though and as I spent so much time flying in the 80s and 90s I read a lot of Anne Rice, James Clavell and, best of all, Tom Sharpe.
13. When I moved to Canada I did a crash reading course in CanLit (English and French) and Canadian history, which is unfortunately rather dull. The lit bit though introduced me to excellent writers like Michael Ondaatje and Timothy Findley.
14. A few years ago, when I was making decent money, I awoke my dormant interest in livres d'artiste and now have a modest but pleasing collection.
15. My always dreadful eyesight isn't getting any better as I get older and I now find reading poorly printed paperbacks difficult especially in less than ideal light conditions. I probably read a higher proportion of hard covers now than ever before. I'm also much more inclined than I used to be to listen to audio versions.
greythistle1. I'm not sure I could read before I went to school. Probably not, as it was only then that my rather severe myopia was diagnosed.
2. By my second year at school I had read all the books in the infants section of the school library but they wouldn't let me take any from the juniors section because "Then there wouldn't be anything to read for me later". Ironically I changed schools at the end of that year. (I could add many Pythonish comments about the state of primary education in Yorkshire in the early 1960s but the young people of today just wouldn't believe me).
3. By the age of ten, and by now living in Hertfordshire, I had taught myself the Dewey Decimal System and recatalogued the school library out of sheer boredom.
4. By this stage I was reading four or five books per week and was a frequent visitor to the town library. I read a lot of science fiction and historical stuff like the Hornblower books. I remember absolutely not "getting" the Swallows and Amazons books. Just too alien a social milieu I expect.
5. At prep school (I won a scholarship to the local prep/public school at eleven) I remember reading Auden one lunchtime and the choleric, Fascist classics teacher chucking the book in the bin because it was "communist propaganda".
6. By contrast, my housemaster and classics teacher in the senior school was a gentlemanly veteran of the Italian campaign who had a neat way of getting boys to read books. He would talk about them wistfully and then suggest we would enjoy them more when we were a bit older. He turned me onto Robert Graves and Mary Renault.
7. I was still a regular at the local library and at one point dated a girl who worked there part time. I remember going in late one Saturday afternoon having played three rugby games in the previous five days and her asking me, very concerned, whether I'd been in a car accident.
8. It was also at school that I got introduced to livres d'artiste. Walter Strachan, the leading English language authority on the subject and lifelong friend of Nancy Cunard, was a former master at the school. Although retired he still taught Italian and Art History to any sixthformers who were interested.
9. By Fifth Form I was solidly into reading fairly serious 20th century literature. I think I read all of Solzhenitsyn and Sholokhov, most of Gide, much Camus and Sartre as well as English writers such as Orwell, Bennett and lesser figures like Vansittart and others. I know I chose Sartre's The Age of Reason when I won the fifth form history prize.
10. When I went up to Durham I naturally took as many books as I could manage. My next door neighbour in college was a rather nice girl (Christine Whittemore, now married to a doctor in Pennsylvania) who was reading English Language and Medieval Literature. Knowing I was a mathematician she was rather surprised by my books and came out with the classic line "Oh so you read books!".
11. What spare time I had for reading at university was largely spent in furthering my political education. I read large amounts of Marx, Engels and Lenin as well as more recent figures ranging from EP Thompson to Gramsci and Carrillo.
12. Over the years the balance of my reading has shifted more and more away from fiction to non-fiction, principally history. I've still managed to fit in a good representation of modern litfic authors though. I particularly like Peter Ackroyd, Lindsay Clarke and Alan Massie. I'm not above reading trashy novels on planes though and as I spent so much time flying in the 80s and 90s I read a lot of Anne Rice, James Clavell and, best of all, Tom Sharpe.
13. When I moved to Canada I did a crash reading course in CanLit (English and French) and Canadian history, which is unfortunately rather dull. The lit bit though introduced me to excellent writers like Michael Ondaatje and Timothy Findley.
14. A few years ago, when I was making decent money, I awoke my dormant interest in livres d'artiste and now have a modest but pleasing collection.
15. My always dreadful eyesight isn't getting any better as I get older and I now find reading poorly printed paperbacks difficult especially in less than ideal light conditions. I probably read a higher proportion of hard covers now than ever before. I'm also much more inclined than I used to be to listen to audio versions.
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no subject
Date: 2005-12-12 01:28 pm (UTC)Also, I enjoyed this post very much. Thank you for sharing.
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Date: 2005-12-12 01:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-12 01:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-12 10:19 pm (UTC)However, after having to look over the side of the boat numerous times to write the boat's name down on competition entry forms to get the spelling correct, he made the wise decision to name his next boat, simply, the Indy II.