This week’s Booking Through Thursday asks:
Are there any particular worlds in books where you’d like to live?
Or where you certainly would NOT want to live?
What about authors? If you were a character, who would you trust to write your life?
The sound of the sea is always calling me, and so I’m drawn to tales that take place near the water, particularly those southeastern shore cottages that Anne Rivers Siddons writes about so well, or the low country tales of Dorothea Benton Frank. I picture myself waking early, walking the sandy beach as the sun rises, wearing a pair of those gauzy linen pants rolled up mid-calf and armed against the slight chill off the Atlantic by a soft sweater thrown over my shoulder.
As a child, I was a great fan of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s stories, and often imagined living on the prairie with only clothespin dolls to play with. However, I’m quite sure I would not have been happy in those times…I’m just too much of a city girl at heart. And as much as I love the tales of 18th century Europe, I’m much better suited to life in the 21st!
Who could I trust to write my life? Who writes about American women better than Anne Tyler? I love the way she imbues even the most ordinary of characters with a quirky spark. I’d love to read her version of my life story!
That quirky spark might be a good thing.
How interesting to contemplate these things! I certainly gravitate to the sea as well. And to Britain — almost any book set in Britain grabs me from the start — bio or mystery or novel!
Very lyrical response
The seaside sounds so romantic.
When I was little my sisters and I were fascinated by the Laura Ingalls Wilder book where they live in a dugout (I forget the title). We even started digging a hole in our backyard thinking to make our own dugout, but of course that was a failure! I’m not sure I’d want to live in that world, either.
Lauren Ingalls Wilder was nice, but I gravitated to Chronicles of Narnia.
Oooh I’m with you on the seashore locations. I have a particularly romantic yearning for Cape Cod. But I also like books set in New York and Provence as well. As to whom I’d like to write my life, well, I’ll say it quietly, but I’d quite like it to be me. Particularly since Anne Tyler will be doing yours
I love Charles Dickens and I am intrigued with the time and place he writes about, but I sure wouldn’t want to live in one of his books!!
It is funny how water draws people. I live near a big lake and can’t imagine living anywhere else – unless it was next to an ocean.
I’m with litlove, I will write the story. There is something of us in everything we write…..
I would probably be too embarrassed to let people know that it was a true story, though.
I too love the sea. I live so far away from it. A life around the ocean..what a thought!
Here is my BTT post