Thursday 10 March 2011

Stuff that's tickled me recently... (4)

Ever since I was a kid, I've loved Enid Blyton books. I read basically all of them, some of them multiple times. So imagine my intrigue and excitement when I saw this article on an unknown Enid Blyon novel that that has been discovered! One more going on the TBR pile...

I found this through a fellow bookworm friend on Facebook. There are two posts, one about why it is better to date an illiterate girl and the other on why it is a good idea to date a girl who reads. I think we'll all be able to guess which post I agree with the most!! I do wonder what on earth happened to the author of the "Date an Illiterate Girl" post though. He sounds awfully upset at us bookish types...

Borders store in Auckland
Image credit here
Sadly it looks like the closure of Borders is going to strike a little closer to home than I'd hoped, with 38 stores closing in Australia. The word is at this stage that the Borders and Whitcoulls stores in little ol' New Zealand are safe, which is good but still. Not cool.

Finally, this was a fun article in honour of World Book night in the UK. The Guardian asks a bunch of fantastic authors which books they give as gifts and which ones they loved the best as presents. I think the coolest book I ever got was a recipe book in which each recipe was written in the style of a particular author, including Jane Austen. It was brilliant.

So what do you think happened to the person writing about not dating a bookish girl? Ideas, speculations and wild stories welcomed....

7 comments:

  1. I hardly ever had my nose out of an Enid Blyton book from the age of about six to ten. I loved the mysteries and adventures and school stories! As I have occasionally been told (by my husband, mainly) I have an overdeveloped sense of justice and fair play, I really do think Enid might have had something to do with that in formative years...

    As for that poor chap who doesn't like bookish women...why, you'd want to douse him in ginger beer and set Timmy the dog on him.

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  2. This is totally unrelated to your post, but three of us other female bloggers are meeting up on 3/17 (Thurs) for lunch and thought you might like to come! If you're up for it, drop me an e-mail at channamasala (at) gmail (dot) com!

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  3. I'm so bummed about Borders closing. I prefer indie book stores to chains (don't we all?) but in the small town I grew up in, it was all we had. I loved to hang out there. Now it's gone. Sigh.

    Sara
    http://smreine.com/

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  4. Deborah - Huh! I also have that same sense of overdeveloped sense of justice... I didn't think it came from Blyton books before but now you say that....! It makes sense that the stories and fictional worlds you immerse yourself in as a kid will be formative in some way. Great insight, thanks!

    I agree that setting Timmy on him is the only way. Not sure I'd waste my ginger beer on him though ;)

    Jenna - Sounds fantastic! Have emailed you...

    Sara - Sorry to hear you've suffered the loss of a Borders. I was listening to BOTN podcast a few nights ago and they were commenting that in some towns, the Borders is all they have. What's a town without a bookstore?!

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  5. Thanks for linking to Date a Girl Who Reads. I was pretty surprised when I found out it was written by a fellow Filipino. I can't help but reread it over and over. :)

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  6. I loved the article "Date an Illiterate Girl" and like you, wondered what happened to the author. Clearly he was burned by someone who read a lot.

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  7. Darlyn - Really? Cool, I wondered who wrote it and where. I absolutely love it and have read it several times too.

    Brenna - I'm pretty sure that he's been burned by at LEAST one bookworm.... probably more to have developed such an attitude!

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