{misc.} a liebster award

As I wrote last Thursday, I was lucky enough to be tagged for the 7x7 link award by Danielle (A Work in Progress) and for The Liebster Award by Helen (A Gallimaufry). Last week I answered the 7x7 link's tricky questions. Today is the the turn of The Liebster Award: "The Liebster Award is given to web-logs with fewer than 200 followers. You answer the seven questions posed by the person who gave you the award, and then devise a further seven which you give to seven people to whom you in turn award the Liebster."

It's a nice idea, isn't it, and a chance to get to know one's fellow bloggers a little better?

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Helen has set me these seven questions:

1. Describe your ideal home library/study: I live in a messy Victorian house with a messy family of messy book lovers. A bit like this:

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I often dream of living in an empty white box. Like this:

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(OK, it has a few books in it.) Or this?

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In an ideal world, I would have a room for all my books together: a proper library room. The shelves would stretch to the ceiling. There would be aisles and aisles and aisles. No book would suffer the indignity of being stored in a box in the shed. And, like Helen at A Gallimaufry, I would want a ladder in this room to z-o-o-m along the shelves.

Z-o-o-m...

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(Or maybe not.)  

To go with my library, I would require a dedicated room for reading and thinking: a comfortable chair with a colourful crochet cushion; excellent lighting, natural and artificial; wooden boards; white walls; a sprinkling of my favourite art works; a bar cart (gilt [oh the guilt!] with wheels); window boxes of white geraniums in our hot summer, pink cyclamen in autumn/winter, and yellow and white narcissi in spring. At frequent intervals I will be brought cups of Earl Grey tea and, I think, shortbread. Perhaps the occasional tarte au citron. A ginger cat will slumber peacefully on the floor (I'd rotate the ginger cats each day).

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2. With which literary character would you spend a week’s holiday in the location of your choice? Oooooh... 

Paris with Zazie? 

The Austrian Tyrol with Jo? 

Capri with Axel [disqualified as he's real?]? 

Portofino with Mrs Arbuthnot, Mrs Wilkins, Mrs Fisher and Lady Caroline Dester? 

Prince Edward Island with Anne? 

Melbourne with Phryne? 

Sydney with Rowly? 

Greece with Hermes? 

Rome with Daisy (and plenty of quinine)? 

London with Miss Pettigrew? 

New York with the girls of The Group & The Best of Everything?

(N.Y. might require more comfortable shoes)

3. Name two new authors whose work you think will last the test of time, and explain your choices. No, sorry, pass. I almost always read authors who have already stood the test of time. Or else I read books where it isn't important to me that they don't stand the test of time.

4. If you could live in a novel, which one would it be and why? One would have to choose carefully. I like having hot water and decent plumbing and reliable refrigeration and the right to vote and own property. I would prefer not to have to fend off vampires or zombies or Hounds of the Baskervilles. I like cities. Ideally I'd live in a really good hotel. The climate shouldn't be too hot. I'm going to need some help here....! 

At Bertram's Hotel? (But I might get murdered.) 

At Hotel du Lac? (But I might die of boredom.) 

Grand Hotel? (But an impoverished aristocrat might steal my baubles.)

 

5. Is there a literature from a particular time and place (medieval Chinese, nineteenth-century Russian for instance) which is a favourite of yours? The ancient (classical) world, which I studied at university, and on which I still do a bit of work.

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6. What book have you read in the last year or so which you feel so evangelical about you would press it on everyone you meet? Joanna and Ulysses, by May Sarton. It is a beautiful little book about escape, renewal, Greece, and the importance of having a dream. And it has a donkey in it!

7. If you had to memorise a novel or book of poetry to preserve it à la Fahrenheit 451, which would it be and why? Memorise?! Well that removes my desert island book from the list: the Oxford English Dictionary with all of the volumes shrunk into two and a big magnifying glass.

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How about Oedipus Rex by Sophocles (though I feel really bad about abandoning Shakespeare to the flames): an incredibly powerful and timeless story about fate and personal responsibility. I suspect we'll need to remind ourselves about personal responsibility should we find ourselves in a book-burning era.

Oedipus. He had cat problems:

Gustave Moreau 'Oedipus and the Sphinx' (1864). 

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Now I should pass the Liebster Award on to seven other people, but everyone seems to have done it now on the blogs I read. If you'd like to answer the questions, please do, and let me know how you go! Thank you Helen for tagging me - I really enjoyed doing this.

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If only!