Thursday, October 5, 2017

The 1968 club - 30 October to 5 November, 2017




I love the blog Stuck in a Book, and I recommend you put it on your regularly checked blog list.

They often list reading challenges, though I am always hopeless at such things.

Still, I have decided to do this year's 1968 Club - a pledge to read a book published in the year 1968, and to blog about it between the 30th of October and the 5th of November.

I was going to do Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep?, but I was worried that that might just be a little TOO trendy at the moment, with the new TV series and all. Anyway, I went downstairs to my fiction shelves and, while looking for Dick (yeah, they aren't in any kind of order), I stumbled upon one of my favourite childhood books: I Own the Racecourse! by Patricia Wrightson.



This is an Australian children's classic, and used to be a huge book, though it seems to have been forgotten. I recommend it to everyone, and even sent a copy of it to the wonderful author Vanessa Berry, who told me she loved it and read the whole thing in a day.

So, I will read it and see how it has dated. Patricia Wrightson is a fascinating writer, and I have been thinking about doing a talk on her for some time.



Maybe this will inspire me?

Oh, and one of my firm beliefs about creativity is that reading old books inspires you to be more creative. Even better is re-reading old books, especially books that meant something to you a long, long time ago.

What book would you select from your childhood reading to re-read today? What year was it published in?