Friday 10 December 2010

Books etc.


Here is the top of my favourite bookcase, the one I call my ‘Haunted Bookcase’ for obvious reasons. The shelves are freighted, two deep, with the Ghostly and Gothic, more piles of books spill on to the floor and I despair of ever reading through my entire collection. And there, on the top, sits my raven, Edgar, between the Grim Reaper bookends and presiding over such personal treasures as my Professor Snape figure and my Weeping Angel.
Over on a far more scholarly blog than this one, a cyber-friend (who, considering what a genial person he seems to be, mysteriously blogs under the soubriquet ‘The Argumentative Old Git’) has produced a list of one hundred essential books, all neatly categorised. It’s the kind of list I envy, being the somewhat slapdash, disorderly person I am. Years ago, when I’d just come out of uni, I might have attempted a similar list, but now, I’m just too shambolic. And I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that I’m never going to finish the Decameron and Orlando Furioso, both of which I started (and was enjoying) as a Fresher. So, I’ve decided to start producing a different type of list, based on my bookcases and on which seven books I’d save for each if, for some ghastly reason, I was told I couldn’t keep them all.
So, starting with this bookcase and in no particular order:--
1. Harry Potter. No—I’m not ashamed of loving Harry Potter. I love the way the story arc develops in the sequence of the books, I love the way the themes deepen and darken, and I love Professor Snape. (Why on earth didn’t Lily see that out of James and Severus, Severus was the far more interesting man, Heathcliff to James’s Linton?) So if I can only have one Harry Potter, I’m taking ‘The Half Blood Prince’.
2. All three of Richard Dalby’s Virago anthologies of Ghost Stories.
3. The Complete Ghost Stories of M.R.James---Monty was the Master.
4. John Harwood: The Ghost Writer---a wonderful, creepy novel.
5. Dracula-Bram Stoker. The book no respectable member of the Dracula Society can be without. Have re-read about five times now.
6. Lots of anthologies of vampire stories here; if I can only have one, I’ll take the Penguin Book of Vampire Stories.
7. And finally (I’m going to cheat!) I’ll have the complete Brenda and Effie novels of Paul Magrs (the sequence begins with Never the Bride)—they are an absolute treat.
That’s it for now….