"Top Ten Tuesday" is an original feature/weekly meme created on the blog "The Broke and the Bookish". This feature was created because they are particularly fond of lists at "The Broke and the Bookish".
It is now hosted by Jana from That Artsy Reader Girl.
Since I am just as fond of them as they are, I jump at the chance to
share my lists with them! Have a look at their page, there are lots of
other bloggers who share their lists here.
This week's topic is Bookish Memories
(Share
stories of your reading life as a child, events you’ve gone to, books
that made an impression on you, noteworthy experiences with books,
authors you’ve met, etc. Reminisce with me!)
We had a somewhat similar topic last year in the Classics Club: The Classic Meme 2.0 - Classics we read as a child. But since this is about any kind of bookish memories, I didn't include all of those in here.
* * *
I
remember being able to read a little before I started school.
Letters always fascinated me. I belonged to one of the first students in
our state that were not taught reading letter by letter but with words.
My first sentence was "Da ist Heiner". (There is Heiner.)
Unfortunately, I couldn't find a picture of the books that introduced me
to my biggest adventure in life. It's been a while, I started school in
the sixties. (So, if anyone can ever tell me what the title of this
was, please let me know, I'll be eternally grateful.)
My first
memory of a book I owned was when I was seven. I had just had my
appendix removed and my parents brought me "Heidi". I still have that
copy today (with the cover from the picture).
Spyri, Johanna "Heidi" (GE: Heidis Lehr- und Wanderjahre + Heidi kann brauchen, was es gelernt hat) - 1880/81
Of course, we had to read a lot of books in school and I was happy about that. One of my favourites was "Pole Poppenspäler" (Paul the Puppeteer) but I also loved the following:
Droste-Hülshoff, Annette von "The Jew's Beech" (GE: Die Judenbuche) - 1842
Hauff, Wilhelm "The Heart of Stone (aka The Cold Heart or the Marble Heart) (GE: Das kalte Herz) - 1837
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim "Nathan the Wise" (GE: Nathan der Weise) - 1779
Storm, Theodor "Paul the Puppeteer" (GE: Pole Poppenspäler) - 1874
The
next memories are my school library and our little church library in
the village. I borrowed any book I could get but I especially remember
this one because it was one of the first "adult books" I read and I read
all the books by Mary Scott that I could get a hold of afterwards.
Scott, Mary "What Does It Matter" - 1966
And then I found Pearl S. Buck and with her my love for China and the whole wide world. This was my first one:
Buck, Pearl S. "Peony" - 1948
And
then there are the books I read with my children, all of them bringing
back wonderful memories. I only mention the series they loved so much,
not all the individual books, most of them can be seen on my list of children's books.
Berenstain, Stan and Jan "The Berenstain Bears" - 1962ff.
Bridwell, Norman "Clifford" - 1963-2015
Brown, Marc "Arthur's Nose" - 1976
Carle, Eric "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" - 1969
Civardi, Anne; Cartwright, Stephen "Things People Do" - 1986
Davis, Lee "P.B. Bear" - 1990s
Deary, Terry "Horrible Histories" - 1993ff.
Handford, Martin "Where's Wally?" (aka Where's Waldo) - 1987
Hargreaves, Roger "Mr. Men" - 1971ff.
Pope Osborne, Mary "Magic Tree House" Series - 1992ff.
Rowling, J.K. "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" - 1997
Scarry, Richard "What Do People Do All Day" - 1968 et al.
A B C
But
where would we be without the alphabet? We coulnd't read anything if it
wasn't there. And I've always been very interested in that.
I
learned several types of spelling/writing. First, it was the Sütterlin
script, a German alphabet developed from the old German Kurrent, also
known as cursive or German script. It was easier to write with the new
pointed nibs than the old style. Sütterlin was taught in German schools
from 1915 to 1941, so when my parents went there. Because it was still
very current when I went to school in the sixties, my mother taught me
how to read and write it. My parents always said it was weird how Hitler
had always insisted on everything being "German" yet he had forbidden
the German script and introduced the Latin one in Germany. Yes, he was
an idiot and didn't even follow his own ideas properly.
The next alphabet I learned was Bulgarian. I went there for an Esperanto congress
in 1978 and I have always tried to learn a little about a language,
wherever I go. I usually can say Hello and Goodbye, Please and Thank
You. At least. And read the letters. Well, I haven't been to East Asia.
Anyway, Bulgaria uses the Cyrillic alphabet, actually, it was the first
country who did this. And since there are only a few letters that differ
from the Russian alphabet, I can read that, as well. Doesn't mean I
understand it, I read it just the way as I would read Finnish or
Hungarian, I recognize the letters but not the words.
Then there
was Hebrew and Arabic which I dipped into during our participation in an
Esperanto congress in Israel in 1986. I can still recognize the letters
and read a few words.
And, last but not least, I learned some of
the letters in school, not in a language class but I am sure you all
did learn the same letters as I did. I'm talking about the Greek
alphabet. While we use alpha and omega also in church, we do use at
least the first four or five letters in mathematics to define angles.
And then there are the letters you hear in US high school and college
movies. Their fraternities and sororities usually have three letters to
choose from: Delta-Kappa-Nu, Lambda-Sigma-Phi … whatever. I went to
Greece with my son's year group in 2005 and, as with all the other
spellings, I went and extended my knowledge of their alphabet before
going and therefore could practise it while there.
Word cloud made with WordItOut
I have put
together the title of my blog and the word "bookblog" in those
alphabets. Unfortunately, most pages don't recognize the Sütterlin
script, so here is another picture with their alphabet.
