Sacred reading

Sacred reading, that's a bit misleading on Good Friday and many's the year I've spent the day robed and choired and singing for several hours, but I'm in an lapsed Anglican organised religion phase right now, yet that doesn't mean you don't mark the day somehow.
Times have changed for sure. We were never allowed out to play on Good Friday and it was fish on the menu which was torture. I can't remember whether I was let off or spent an hour pushing it around my plate until it was cold, but then hot cross buns which more than made up for it, bearing in mind that currants were the other food I loathed as a child.
But all in all a strangely quiet day was had by all.
Bookhound recalls hot cross buns, and  thinks they probably went and caught their own fish, but there was no such sanction about not going out to play and he thinks it far more likely he wasn't allowed to stay in.
Currently top of my reading pile is Daphne by Justine Picardie, and anything that encroaches on Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier territory could be considered sacred reading. Oft repeated here, Rebecca was the first book I read that made me realise that I was reading as an adult rather than a child and appropriately I read it on a beach holiday at St Ives in Cornwall, when I was about fourteen or so.
Here's my original 5/- Penguin copy, vague whiff of the Ambre Solaire about it.

Is that grains of sand I can see trapped in the endpages? I've convinced myself it is...or perhaps dead ants?

This lead me to thinking about other books from that time, special reading that was opening new and exciting doors to a different bit of the library and setting me off on a lifetime's reading journey. Library not withstanding I was a book buyer even then and don't ask me how I managed that on 2/6d a week pocket money, but I still have some of those books and this moth-eaten pile has amassed a sentimental value far beyond its worth, I'd be sad to part with any of these.
I remember reading the first two in the Forsyte Chronicles and that was when we were all rooted to the TV series.
Nevil Shute was another favourite and I'd plump for A Town Like Alice as the definitive one for me. Remember those old Pan editions, 3/6d with the fabulous artwork covers? They really do speak of the moment.
But it was the Daphne du Maurier's that had my full and undivided attention.One after another, Jamaica Inn, Frenchman's Creek, My Cousin Rachel and I carried on down the years, The Glassblowers. House on the Strand, Don't Look Now and the rest but nothing matched that Rebecca moment.
Much more about Justine Picardie's book Daphne soon which I'm loving and will curl up with today because Good Friday remains a quiet day. The book is a compelling blend of fact and fiction, faction I suppose? A real blurring of traditional literary boundaries with biography, historical literary detail, reworked themes and explorations and an innovative extraction of elements from Rebecca which intertwine with Daphne's life and that of a student researching her life long after her death. Mix in Daphne du Maurier's The Infernal World of Branwell Bronte and an associated Bronte theme and the end result is all an intoxicating patchwork for an enthusiast like me.
There are a lot of books I will be rushing to revisit once I've finished Daphne and by the way the cover is as gorgeous as it looks. Has the feel of a Gwen Raverat woodcut about it, slightly raised ink printing, subtle pale colour tones against that Eating Room Red shade straight off the Farrow & Ball paint chart.
Perfect colour on a book jacket, but the paint everyone buys for the name and then realises they don't actually want to eat in a room that colour after all, well that's what happened here.
Now I'm beginning to feel the colours speaking to me and it's really time I made a Daphne - Rebecca quilt, but I'm currently and supposedly on an inspiration embargo pending too many unfinished projects. All right, I'll just think about it, won't buy any fabric.
You know me by now, once I've had the idea it's a mere nano-second before I have Jinny Beyer's The Quilter's Album of Blocks and Borders off the shelf and just think of the traditional block names you could use?The Lady of the Lake, Storm at Sea, Double Wedding Ring and then I'd invent a few, Danvers Choice, Sinking Boat. Could I just cut out and piece one?
As for the books I must revisit, well finally I have to read Rebecca again. It's high-risk because Rebecca is enshrined and preserved in amber in my mind, dare I chip it out and have a look? Also Margaret Forster's biography of Daphne du Maurier which I read when it was first published but not since. But I'm also intrigued enough to pick up Trilby by George du Maurier, Daphne's grandfather and I'm sure plenty more will emerge.
Anyone else have sacred reading like this?
Is there a book enshrined in amber for you too?

Comments

[Anne Brooke]

Rebecca is truly marvellous - and Du Maurier is such a glorious writer. I must admit to thinking Dickens and Mary Renault are pretty special too. Now there's a strange couple!

:))

A
xxx

[Dee Weaver]

Like you, Lynne, my early adult reading was Daphne Du Maurier, Charles Dickens, Nevil Shute, Anya Seton. I remember reading the entire Jalna series by Mazo De La Roche – they're all out of print now, apparently, so perhaps they weren’t all that good. However, just before Christmas I re-read Jamaica Inn and Rebecca, and was amazed all over again at what a wonderful writer DDM was.

Recently I discovered an old paperback copy of Anya Seton’s Devil Water, which was a firm favourite of mine – not least because it was set in my local area and I crossed the real Devil’s Water on my way to and from school every day. I'm now dithering about whether to read it again, just in case I'm remembering it through amber-coloured spectacles.

[Angela Young]

Ambre-Solaire-covered Jane Eyre (the smell is SO evocative, isn't it?) from a family holiday in Cornwall (about thirteen, I think) and reading Great Expectations bundled up in bed in the dorm with every bit of clothing on because it was so cold in Attic - the appropriately named dormitory (about twelve).

The Ambre-Soaired Jane Eyre has long been replaced with a newer, fairer copy, but the falling-to-pieces Great Expectations is still with me.

Both books stunned me with the revelation that adults wrote wonderful stories for adults. And a longing to join their ranks.

[Sally Z]

My mum was a Pamela Frankau devotee and they were the first 'adult' books I ever read. The odd thing is, though, I can't remember anything about the books themselves except I loved them all. And Monica Dickens. I have been collecting old editions of PF over the years but have not got round to re-reading them because I'm scared they ,might not live up to my memory. Does anyone else remember her?

And Daphne du Maurier was, of course, high on my list. I read one after the other and still have my yellowed Penguin editions from the 1960s. I love the way darkness is always there behind the romance. Rebecca was and remains utterly faultless. Jamaica Inn was compelling but my ultimate favourite was House on the Strand because I had never read anything like it before. It was certainly the first 'time-slip' novel I'd ever read and, for me anyway, remains the best.

Justine Picardie's Daphne is now in my Amazon shopping basket. Drat. That's two already this morning.

[m]

Don't be frightened of re-reading Rebecca, it's just as wonderful as you remember ... although I'd be scared to go back to Frenchman's Creek, I have a horrible feeling that I've got far too old and cynical to fall quite as desperately in love with that wonderful Frenchman as I did at 13.

But the truly wonderful book that I have never dared to go back to is Le Grand Meaulnes - which is bubble-wrapped in perfection in my memory. I have a feeling that I may have read it at exactly the right time in my life. I had almost plucked up courage to go back to it, when a 40-something friend read it (after I'd been pressing her) and came back with an unenthusiastic response ... What if I felt the same? It's not so much destroying the memory, it's the horrible realisation that something romantic has withered inside you ...
I suppose what I mean is that if I'm grey inside as well as out, I don't want to know!

[Jilly]

I remember reading all 9 volumes of the Forsyte Saga when it was on TV all those years ago. My parents bought me the boxed set as a Christmas present. I still have the books and they are well thumbed and all but falling apart. Happy days!

Rebecca still does it for me althought Frenchman's Creek doesn't.A Town like Alice was a favourite together, improbably, with A Pattern of Islands by Arthur Grimble.
I still love Le Grand Meaulnes,it conjures up not only its own mystery but a personal nostalgia for my teens when I enjoyed it so much that we went to Chapelle d'Angillon and Epineuil-le-Fleuriel in the Sologne in search of Alain-Fournier.
But the first grown up book I remember with