Well loved

I was stumped for a blip today, but then PaulaJ's entry reminded me of LBB14 (Love Blippin' Books). The prompt for February is "A picture is worth a thousand words" and when I saw it on Livresse's blip I immediately thought of the book illustrators I loved as a child.

In my early teens I devoured historical novels about classical times and earlier, as well as retellings of Greek, Roman, and Norse myths. Then there was the fantasy side, represented by writers like Alan Garner, TH White, and Mervyn Peake. Due to a peripatetic life in my early 20s, plus moving to France and offloading hundreds of books in the process, I have few of the books I owned as a child, but some of my favourites have hung on through thick and thin.

I initially thought of blipping Peake, but on looking through the books I have, it struck me how many of my favourites were illustrated by Charles Keeping. My blip is of a double page spread from Warrior Scarlet by Rosemary Sutcliff -- he liked to surround words with pictures, or vice versa. The extra is a page from my more than slightly foxed copy of Alan Garner's Elidor, a book I reread multiple times. And I could have chosen the more than slightly scary illustrations from Leon Garfield and Edward Blishen's retellings of Greek myth.

Edit: Spots of Time has also blipped a Keeping image as part of LBB, from Kevin Crossley-Holland’s Beowulf. https://www.blipfoto.com/entry/3202761117818423281

Despite my choice of an indoor blip, it was sunny and warm today. We spent some time sitting on the square chatting to neighbours this afternoon. And S succeeded in his plumbing project: after two trips to Bricomarché for different sizes of washer for the kitchen tap, he made a third trip and returned with a complete new tap. Job done!

Now trapped in front of the fire with a cat on my lap -- pizza later!