Book Cover Meme - Day 19

[elrhiarhodan]

Ganked with love and gratitude from sallymn:

"choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. 1 book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. no explanations, no reviews: just covers."

Comments

[elrhiarhodan]

I should note that this is an odd book for a NJG (nice Jewish girl). It's all about an older woman entering a convent. And her life in the convent. It was a best seller. It did not stimulate any urge for me to convert to Catholicism or enter a convent when I read it at 14 or so.

I've commented in earlier posts about my parent's magical wall of books, and the left side being mostly the Reader's Digest Condensed books from the 50s and 60s (and early 70s). Those were freely available for me to read. Of course, because they'd been stripped of all controversial content by the Editors.

Rumer Godden was a favorite author for the RD editors and I'm pretty sure I read four or five of her books first in the RDCB from the 50s. I'd been fascinated by India and the depredations of the British occupation (the fucking Raj) on the country since I'd read The Far Pavilions and Shadow of the Moon by M.M. Kaye. So, like many books I'd read in the RDCB format, I would seek out the complete version in my public library. I was always kind of shocked how much her books were edited - how much sex there was, how much violence, how much leftist politics (very much questioning the British presence in India, and then the damage Britain did with the pull-out).

This book came to me in an odd-ball way. Not via my public library, but through a used-book sale that was held in the long-closed Food Circus grocery store at the south end of the Mid-Island Mall. So many books. So many stinking books. You all know that smell, right? The scent of rotting books? It's both lovely and repellent.

Anyway, my eldest sister took me to the booksale when I was in 10th grade. I remember buying this book, and a copy of the complete works of Edgar Allen Poe with really great woodcut illustrations, and a copy of something really stinky that I had to toss after one day because it made my sneeze uncontrollably all night.

But In This House of Brede was a decent novel. I have good memories of it. I never bothered to track down the movie -- Diana Rigg starred in it. She seemed far too glamorous for the role.

[leonie_alastair]

It's an odd book - I have a falling apart paperback that has been reread almost to pieces and yet I couldn't articulate why I like it. It's a soap opera set in a convent. Also, you are correct to skip the movie, even the amazing Dame Diana can't save it.