Stuck-in-a-book has challenged us to an alphabet meme and, having nothing better to do (cough) I took him up on his challenge… thank you Siab, for sending me the letter I !!!! So, here are my offerings:
Favourite book… ‘The Invisible Man’ by H G Wells 
(Absolutely loved the black & white film – but perhaps that’s cheating!)
Favourite author… Washington Irving – in this hot weather the idea of sleeping and sleeping and sleeping is really appealing… 
and wouldn’t you just love to be on a stamp?
Favourite song… living in Somerset it has to be ‘I am a cider drinker’ by the Wurzels 😉 
Favourite film… ‘I capture the castle’ 
… for the opening words, if nothing else!
Favourite object… easy – give me an ‘inch’ – and I’ll take a mile! Imperial measurements – lovely, lyrical, practical and part of my childhood – hence the image of the back of a school exercise book:
And now, dear reader, pop your wish to join in, in the comments and Iwill select you a letter (and put it in ‘reply’) so that you can play this game on your own blog – a fun way to wile away an hour on a hot summer afternoon.
Anne's space 
Lovely selection, well done!
Thank you, Simon. It was really fun – after the initial ‘Arrgghhh!’ in response to your selection of the impossible letter ‘I’ 🙂
I like the look of this blog post. I’m inspired to get involved so please give me a lovely letter 🙂
OK Lindylit – here you are – take H and have fun!
OV wishes to place his response here – not having his own blog – so here is his ‘essay’ 😉
Book
C S Lewis offers us two options amongst his fiction. In the Narnia series there is The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” and in his less famous Science Fiction series there is “Voyage to Venus”. The fomer was the 3rd written and the 5th chronologically in the series. “Stuck in a book” was just three years old when he watched its 4 episodes on television. The two youngest members of the Pevensie family, return to Narnia (first visited in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe), through the agency of a painting of a boat. They travel with an odious cousin with the wonderful name of Eustace Scrubb. They travel across various Islands in the company of the wonderful Talking Mouse Reepicheep who is seeking Aslan’s land. At the end Reepicheep sails off in a coracle (and is assumed to reach Aslan’s Land) and Edmund, Eustace, and Lucy find a Lamb, who transforms into Aslan and tells them that Edmund and Lucy will not return to Narnia – that they should learn to know him by another name in their own world (as Lewis explicitly stated, Aslan is how Jesus manifests Himself in Narnia). He then sends the children home.
author
Virgil – I have to confess that for a brief period in the 1960’s I studied some Latin (aged 11 to 14). Apart from an ability to decline and conjugate some nouns and verbs little remains of, by my calculation, 180 hours of education; but along the way we did translate part of Book IV of the Aeneid and I came across Dido 40 years before most people heard her singing White Flag. Aeneid Book IV runs like this. Impressed by Aeneas’s exploits and sympathetic to his suffering, Dido, a Phoenician princess who fled her home and founded Carthage after her brother murdered her husband, falls in love with Aeneas. They live together as lovers for a period, until the gods remind Aeneas of his duty to found a new city. He determines to set sail once again. Dido is devastated by his departure, and kills herself by ordering a huge pyre to be built with Aeneas’s castaway possessions, climbing upon it, and stabbing herself with the sword Aeneas leaves behind.
I recall reading about her “funeral pyre” and having no idea what a pyre was.
Virgil also recalls Virgil Grissom – the 2nd American astronaut, and Virgil Tracy – the bravest Thunderbirds Pilot.
song
“stuck in a book”’s brother and I went to the Colston Hall in Bristol a few years ago to see
Don McLean. I had seen him as a student nearly 40 years earlier at the Albert Hall in London. Apart from “American Pie” his most famous song was probably “Vincent”(sometimes called “Starry, starry Night”) – a tribute to Vincent van Gogh. McLean wrote “Vincent,” in the Autumn of 1970, while he was working in Massachusetts. The inspiration came to him one morning while he was sitting on a veranda looking at a book about Vincent Van Gogh. As he studied a print of Van Gogh’s painting “Starry Night,” he realized that a song could be written about the artist through the painting.
“The more I thought about it, the more interesting and challenging the idea became. I put down the book and picked up my guitar, which was never far away, and started fiddling around, trying to get a handle on this idea, while the print of “Starry Night” stared up at me. Looking at the picture, I realized that the essence of the artist’s life is his art. And so, I let the painting write the song for me. Everyone is familiar with that painting.”
film
Vera Drake is possibly the only film beginning with V that I have seen. Vera Drake is a portrait of a selfless woman who is totally dedicated to her loving working class family. Her days are filled with time spent doting on them even as she also is devoted to caring for her sick neighbour and elderly mother. Vera has a secret side, though. Unbeknownst to family and friends, she visits women and helps them to induce miscarriages for their unwanted pregnancies, a practice that is illegal in 1950s England. While Vera believes she is simply helping women in need of assistance, the dichotomy of her idyllic home life and her illegal activities make for a fascinating study. When her crime is discovered by the authorities, Vera’s world quickly falls apart, deeply affecting both her and her family. (summary from “Movie Insider”). It stars Imelda Staunton.
Object
“she looks armless” – the Venus de Milo
Lovely, Dad! (I didn’t realise – or had forgotten – that you actually got around to seeing Vera Drake.) Further proof that you should have your own blog!
I’ll play!
Good man! Your letter is ‘E’ Have fun with it 🙂
Done: http://www.colinjthomas.co.uk
I say — you are a clever family! Loved the answers.
I don’t know about that – but we did find it lots of fun!
I just realised that I didn’t comment on Colin’s selection – there being no comment facility on his blog – so here it is, on mine. Brilliant selection Colin, with excellent explanations and chinks of your unique sense of humour! Thanks for playing. (and have another go at George Eliot – you may do better with a different novel… but I don’t recommend ‘Middlemarch’ for beginners!)