Before I'd had any children I always thought twins would be lovely, two sweet little babies for just a bit more effort than you've put into growing one. Then I had one baby and quickly thought again realising what hard work it must be to do everything for one baby and then have to do it all over again for another one at 3am.
But I love visiting newborn twins and take my hat off to anyone who has multiple-birthed and kept their sanity.I visited one family years ago who had two sets of twins within eighteen months of each other.
Vintage Twins sounds like a good name for a post on the Bobbseys (who I worshipped and adored) and in this case I suppose we are still talking older and younger siblings but books not children.Vintage have come up with a great idea and now I'm surprised it hasn't been done before, but perhaps you will all tell me it has and I've missed it.
Two companion reads, one modern, one not, both considered classics of their time, shrink-wrapped together as if in utero and the suggestion that a good non-identical but from-the-same mould read will be had. One that will also shrink the passage of time and suggest timeless themes and messages in the world of literature.
Out here in litblog land we probably do it all the time, because in that one-book-leads-to-another stream of reading consciousness way we all have, companion reading is often the order of the day here.
I'm intrigued by some of the twinnings.
Vintage Crime sees Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky nestling in with Ripley's Game by Patricia Highsmith
Vintage Fantasy, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland hunkering down with The Wind-up Bird Chronicle
Vintage Love is an interesting one, Middlemarch tucked up with Possession by A.S.Byatt. So with Middlemarch having emerged from the gnashing and wailing that was OU study as possibly one of my favourite books and my recent failure with Possession perhaps this may help me to view it a little differently?
Vintage Monsters and Vintage Lust, Satire, Sin and Youth all carry equally interesting pairings.
Vintage very kindly offered to send me a set of twins of my own and I've spent a week wondering whether I'd get fraternal or sororal, or one of each.
I'd already said the sorority of Middlemarch and Possession might be a waste, just surprise me.
So I was secretly delighted when I ended up with fraternals in the shape of Vintage Lies.
Here's Twin One, the eldest by 104 years
...and here's Twin Two
There's also a competition on the Man Booker website to come up with a Classic twin for Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children and win ten sets of twins which is enough to keep anyone awake at night.
If only I'd read it I might be able to think of something.
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