Saturday 5 May 2012

Booking Through Thursday on a Saturday

On Siblings and Reading Habits

This week’s Booking Through Thursday question was about siblings and reading habits:

Do you have siblings?
Do they like to read?

Do/did you have the same taste in books?
(the last question is my own addition)

As most of my regular readers know, I have one brother, six years younger than me. Going by my memories, in childhood I think I might have read more ‘books’ while he was more into comic books and non-fiction – like  the Guinness Book of World Records for example. (He always seemed to have a knack for remembering odd pieces of facts!) He was/is also more into science fiction than I was.

We do not read all the same books, but through the years there are some reading experiences that we have particularly enjoyed sharing. For one thing, we are both Anglophiles (loving all things British). For another, we both like listening to audio books, and prefer to read/listen to English books in English rather than in Swedish translation. We also both enjoy for example some of the same books in the fantasy genre, classic mysteries, and some historical novels.

One author that my brother introduced me to is Terry Pratchett; and as he has kept on collecting the audio books and feeding me with them, I think by now I have listened to all of them (and some even twice or more). I’ve never yet read one printed on paper though, which makes it a bit difficult to write proper reviews, go back and find quotes etc.

Between 1983 and 2011 there have been 39 Discworld novels published! Each book is a complete story, but there are also subseries within the series. The Wikipedia Discworld article gives a good introduction and some advice on reading order, if you’re not already familiar with the series and don’t know where to start.

The first one that my brother tempted me with was Guards! Guards! – the first in the City Watch subseries. It had dragons in it, so then I was hooked…

Guards-Guards-cover.jpg

6 comments:

  1. i have one brother, he does not read fiction at all, and collects books, he has hundreds probably thousands of books. i once asked him if he had read them all, he said no, i like to have them. he is not an avid reader, but likes the facts he finds in them. my mother read like i do my dad only read the bible

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  2. I used to read Ursula K. Le Guin about forty years ago, you would like her, I think she is the one who has the dragon novels. I don't know if I spelled her name right. To the day I still remember the baby dragon's name Menemoth, and that is saying something after so long. It interests me that you don't prefer reading/listening to books in your native language, why is that do you think?

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  3. Ginny, what I meant was that if a book was originally written in English, then - if I have the choice - I prefer reading it or listening to it in the original language, rather than in translation. But since I borrow many books and audio books from the library, sometimes I can only get the translation. (And that's usually okay too but I learn more if I read English books in English!) With books by Swedish authors, I do of course prefer to read/listen to those in Swedish.

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  4. I am one of 12 children so who reads and who doesn't and what they read is a study in itself. I find it interesting that my younger son reads the same fantasty novels that two of my brothers read (the oldest and youngest of the boys). The older son devours books in his field and books about sportsmen and little else as do two other brothers, my daughters read the same books as four of my siblings and myself. We used to joke when we were children that if it had print on it Dad would read it and that if it wasn't a knitting pattern Mum would have no use for it.

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  5. My brother is Scriptor. 'Nuff said.

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    Replies
    1. Haha. Yes, well, had you two been my only readers I probably wouldn't have bothered to ask...

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