Friday Post with Angela Carter

It's the Friday before France, which means everything today is slightly paling in comparison to what I'm expecting from tomorrow! I love roadtrips! Well, tonight's Germany vs France game should be exciting, especially since if Germany doesn't win I'll have to hold back my tears of resentment when we do get to France. But let's move on to books and memes. Book Blogger Hop is hosted by Billy over at Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer. This week's question was submitted by RAnn from This That and the Other Thing and is:

Do you cull your list often or do people stay on it once they get on?

I'm assuming that by the people on this list you mean followers or blogs I follow? I'd never cut followers off. If you decide this blog is somehow what you want to read then I'm eternally grateful and will never say a word against you (unless you're very wrong, in which case I'll respectfully tell you so). Do I trim the list of blogs I follow? Not really. Sometimes I unfollow a blog when I don't enjoy any of the posts, but that doesn't really happen, so I guess the answer is actually no as well.

Follow Friday is hosted by Alison Can Read and Parajunkee. This week's question is:

What are some of your favourite picture books - either current ones or ones from your childhood?

I'm going to go with childhood picture books, because I don't really read a lot of picture books anymore. Comics don't count, do they? As a kid I absolutely loved picture books, even if the words were my favourite part about them. Some of my favourites were The Gruffalo, which I seriously made people (i.e. my poor dad) read to me over and over again. I just loved the mouse, it was so spunky. I also really liked Where the Wild Things Are, which I actually preferred over its drawings. They are absolutely stunning and I actually would read it now. I'm kind of struggling to come up with more because I switched to being read "proper" books pretty quickly. Although, how could I forget The Very Hungry Caterpillar! My future child will have to suffer through having to see this a lot, because I absolutely love it.

  

Book Beginnings is hosted by Gilion over at Rose City Reader and Friday 56 is hosted by Freda from Freda's Voice. This week I'm using a collection of short stories by Angela Carter, Burning Your Boats, which is really more of a greatest hits kind of collection, spanning across all of her previous collections. I have developed a new love for Angela Carter, so I'm taking this one on holiday with me to sink in to!

BB:

'All artists, they say, are a little mad. This madness is, to a certain extent, a self-created myth designed to keep the generality away from the phenomenally close-knit creative community. Yet, in the world of the artists, the consciously eccentric are always respectful and admiring of those who have the courage to be genuinely a little mad.' p.1

I love this opening! It is for the short story The Man Who Loved a Double Bass, which is absolutely heart-breaking.

F56:

'Sometimes the lights of the midnight riders scrawl brilliant hieroglyphs across the panes, especially on moonless nights, when I am alone in a landscape of extraordinary darkness, and I am a little frightened when I see their headlamps and hear their rasping engines for then they seem the spawn of the negated light and to have driven straight out of the sea, which is just as mysterious as the night, even, and also its perfect image, for the sea is an inversion of the known and occupies half, or more, of the world, just as night does; whilst different peoples also live in the countries of the night.' p.56

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that is all one sentence. Some people don't like how loquacious Carter's prose is, but I love how she plays with language and keeps going and going. It reminds me of me sometimes.

Is Angela Carter your kind of author or not really? I can't wait to see Your BBH answers and what you've chosen for your other memes!