Any author
who visits schools will know that one of the perennial questions you are sure
to be asked (after ‘where do you get your ideas from’) is - what’s your
favourite book? I’ve given the same answer every time, it’s The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper.
To be fair
it’s a trick answer, because it allows me to pick five books in one. It’s
impossible for me to say which of the five books in the sequence is my
favourite. But at this time of year it’s especially great to reread - or read
for the first time - The Dark is Rising itself. It opens on
Midwinter’s Eve (20th December to you and me) and runs
chronologically through the Christmas period. Some love to read it day by day,
marking time with their own Christmas preparations. I tend to splurge – like a
box of Christmas After Eight mints,
once opened I find it very hard to stop.
The Dark is Rising wasn’t the first book in the series
I encountered. That was Over Sea and
Under Stone. A teacher called Mrs Crow read it to the class one year when I
was about 8. Something in the text resonated with me far more than all of the
other books that I must have read or had read to me at that time. I found the
rest of the books and painstakingly read them to myself over the following
years.
I have very
few books that I return to again and again, and the five in The Dark is Rising Sequence are the ones
that mean the most. It’s not sentimental
either, I genuinely love the stories and find something comforting and
surprising every time I return to them. If ever I see one of the books in a
charity shop or second hand book shop I have to buy it. I give it to children -
usually those who ask that question – when I go to author events, hopeful that
it might give them as much joy as it continues to give me.
They are
books I have numerous copies of. I have my ‘reading copy’ which I take with me
in all its battered glory. Then I have the hard back versions, which are the
same editions as the one Mrs Crow read to me all those years ago, and I have
the folio versions for ‘best’. It may sound weird, but these books have been
with me all my life, and I treasure them.
First I
treasure them for their quality. In a time where everything has to be new,
fresh and now, it’s a handy reminder for an author that a book of quality will
transcend all that. We should be aspiring to that and nothing else. Second, I
treasure them because they take me back to a time when my world was young and
full of potential.
But lastly,
and most importantly I treasure them because they were the first books I ever
truly loved. They were the first books that gave me a passion for writing and an
appreciation of the power of the written word.
So do
yourself a favour and read them if you haven’t read them, reread them if you
have, and if you don’t have a copy, next time you see me at an author event ask
for one, I usually have one on me somewhere!
