Bookish Deadly Sins

We do not do tags often, and when we do, it’s usually so late everybody’s forgotten about them 😉 but we did like this one, one explored by several friends of Re-E, and now we’re ready to post 🙂 Seven deadly sins, but for readers!

GREED
What is the most expensive book you own? Which is the least expensive?

 

Ola: Huh, the book that springs to mind most quickly is my Folio Society’s edition of The Once and Future King, because I paid for the pristine, mint condition book personally 😉 But I do have a few signed books, or rare first editions, that may be worth more. Never really considered it though, and besides, I left them all back in Poland, for now – with a promise I made to myself, that I will bring them home one day, wherever it will ultimately be.

Least expensive? Old used books bought on Amazon Marketplace. I’m not counting the gifts, because those that I received as a gift were definitely expensive, to the giver 🙂

Piotrek: Well…I paid £75 for a Folio Society Edition of Dune, but some of the XIX-century volumes I own might be actually more expensive, I’d have to have them evaluated. They are family heirlooms, so I’m not going to sell them anyway.

Clipboard01

Least expensive… I have dozens of volumes bought from Amazon Marketplace at £0.01 + postage and packing, great value for money, although recently the postage got more expensive, and less reliant – I blame notoriously unreliable Polish Post Office.

Continue reading “Bookish Deadly Sins”

T.H. White, The Once and Future King (1938-58)

Have you seen „The Sword in the Stone”? Nice Disney classic, „not much plot but great for little kids.” as an imdb reviewer noticed. I concur. It’s a nice watch, it’s deeper than most Disney movies even. But it’s just 10% of shiny stuff taken from the top of the novel that inspired it – the first part of “The Once and Future King” tetralogy by Terence Hanbury White.

le-roi-et-futur-fois

A tetralogy consist of “The Sword in the Stone”, “The Queen of Air and Darkness”, “The Ill-Made Kinght” and “The Candle in the Wind”. There is also “The Book of Merlyn”, published posthumously, book that I prefer to pretend do not exist. They tell the story of king Arthur, from childhood to (spoiler alert) hist death in battle with Mordred.

The book is not for kids. There is humour and songs, just as in animated version, but it’s also slow paced, written in very demanding language and very long. I wouldn’t recommend it as a first encounter with Arturian fantasy. Start with some basic one-volume version of the story, see a movie or two, follow up with “The Winter King” by Cornwell, if you like history novels with warlords and battles, or “The Mists of Avalon”, if you are into feminist deconstruction of history and literature. But White’s retelling of the legend is the pinnacle of Arthurian fantasy. Readers already familiar with the story can fully appreciate this particular interpretation. It’s more than a very good fantasy book. It’s genuine Literary Fiction 😉

Continue reading “T.H. White, The Once and Future King (1938-58)”