📚 I’ve been told that books light me up. Fiction and non-fiction. Ones that are new to me and ones that I’m rereading.

This year is the 50th anniversary of The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper.

I read this book every year – it’s part of my festive reading tradition.

What’s the book about?

The Dark Is Rising is aimed at kids aged 9 to 11. These days it’s referred to as a modern classic.

On midwinter's eve, the night before Will's eleventh birthday, there's an atmosphere of fear in his full house (he’s the seventh son of a seventh son) and the Buckinghamshire countryside.

In the first few pages, he’s told that “this night will be bad, and tomorrow will be beyond imagining.”

He’s about to discover that he is the last Old One, and as a guardian of the Light he must begin a quest to vanquish the evil of the Dark.

There’s magic, symbols, and adventure, and it incorporates British mythology like the Arthurian legends.

Susan Cooper and C.S. Lewis

The Dark Is Rising’s been important to me since I read it as a kid. So much so that I wrote my dissertation about it at university.

I wrote about good and evil in Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising sequence and C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia. Many late nights in the computer lab (showing my age here)!

I hadn’t realised then that Susan Cooper was actually taught by C.S. Lewis when she was at the University of Oxford herself.

I’m always delighted to see the connections ❣

The Natalie Haynes link

I recently watched a fascinating online video event: Susan Cooper in conversation with Natalie Haynes.

After about half an hour, they were also joined by Rob MacFarlane and Simon McBurney who had made a radio version of The Dark Is Rising (Complicité BBC radio adaptation).

I learned so much from this event.

A sense of place is critical throughout the sequence.

Susan Cooper had grown up in Buckinghamshire, spent years in Wales, and then moved to the USA when she got married.

Writing The Dark Is Rising helped with her homesickness.

Community

And it’s been such a pleasure to know that this book that’s meant so much to me has meant a lot to other people too.

How fabulous to know that this experience is shared!

The last few years I have participated in #TheDarkIsReading on Twitter (now X).

All around the world, we read the book together.

I’ll be starting the first chapter (Midwinter’s Eve) on Thursday 21st December.

What lights me up?

This book is part of my festive reading tradition, every year I discover something new, and I’ve become part of a worldwide community. This book gives me so much pleasure, and I expect it will continue to do so for many years to come. That lights me up 💡

#BooksLightMeUp

#Editing

#Proofreading

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📚 I’m Lisa. I’m an editor and proofreader, specialising in business books and fiction. I spent many years as a chartered accountant before retraining as an editor and proofreader. Now I get to embrace my degree in English lit! I’d love to connect with your book too.