In praise of Fidra Books
Nov. 13th, 2008 03:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustA month ago, over on the Fidra blog, Becky was procrastinating by running a 'First Lines' contest: submit your favourite literary first line for the chance to win a book. I wouldn't have known about this if ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fidrabooks hadn't mentioned it in her LJ, but when she did, I clicked through to have a look - because, well, best first line, always worth a look! And that still applies, they have gathered a fine collection, many of them not at all obvious.
One of my own favourites, however, was missing, so I wrote it in:
- and forgot all about it, until lunchtime today when the post brought a package from Fidra Books, who had managed to track me down, despite the fact that their message telling me I had won never reached me.
Better still, my prize was the very shiny new Fidra Books edition of Elinor Lyon's Dragon Castle, a book I have been trying to find for the last forty years; indeed, it was a post about this and other lost books of my childhood that first brought me into contact with Fidra - from time to time I check their web site, to see if they've published it yet, and yet somehow I managed to be looking the other way when they finally did. So it's the perfect prize for me to win.
It even has a good opening line:
fidrabooks hadn't mentioned it in her LJ, but when she did, I clicked through to have a look - because, well, best first line, always worth a look! And that still applies, they have gathered a fine collection, many of them not at all obvious.One of my own favourites, however, was missing, so I wrote it in:
'Take my camel, dear,' said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass.
(Rose Macaulay, The Towers of Trebizond)
- and forgot all about it, until lunchtime today when the post brought a package from Fidra Books, who had managed to track me down, despite the fact that their message telling me I had won never reached me.
Better still, my prize was the very shiny new Fidra Books edition of Elinor Lyon's Dragon Castle, a book I have been trying to find for the last forty years; indeed, it was a post about this and other lost books of my childhood that first brought me into contact with Fidra - from time to time I check their web site, to see if they've published it yet, and yet somehow I managed to be looking the other way when they finally did. So it's the perfect prize for me to win.
It even has a good opening line:
Every time the train stopped, Martin sprang to his feet and put his head out of the window, and called out to anyone who happened to be there,
'Is this Wales?'
