Friday 1 November 2013

My Life in Books!

A selection of some my old childhood books -
can you guess which is my favourite?
I'm always fascinated by other people's reading habits (when I'm in someone else's house I always look at the bookshelves) and I've really enjoyed the occasional My Life in Books series Simon T runs over on his blog Stuck in a Book. So I was thrilled when he invited me to take part in in the latest installment,  and you can read it here. I knew two participants were being featured each day this week (14 of us in all) and I knew we had to try and guess something about our unknown partner, but I hadn't looked at my emails today (I went Oxfamming, then met up with some old friends), so it was a lovely surprise when I went online and found myself on Simon's blog - and it was even more of a surprise when I found my mysterious fellow book lover was Simon himself! 

I felt quite honoured to be sharing the limelight with him, because he's one of my blogging heroes and he's been responsible for many of my book buys over the last couple of years - I tend to find that I like many of the books he recommends (but I disagree with him over Orwell, and nothing, but nothing, will induce me to re-read Nineteen Eight-Four, or Animal Farm, or any of his other novels).

The link above takes you to today's My Life in Books, but the series began on Monday, and continues until Sunday, and you can access the previous three series and have a nose at people's favourite reads. You can find out about their best-loved childhood book, their first adult book, how their reading has changed - and their 'guilty' reading secret (if they have one!). It really is a lovely insight in to the way books can help shape lives, and how much they can mean to people. And it's interesting to see how popular certain authors and titles seem to be. So, if you haven't already visited Stuck in a Book, please hop over and take a look.
My first book - coloured in by me, when I was very young...

10 comments:

  1. What a very lovely post! I was honoured to share Friday with you :) Thanks so much for participating - and I wonder if I can wear you down with Orwell! Well, maybe one of his non-dystopian novels??

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    1. Well, I'm open to persuasion I suppose - what about Homage to Catalonia perhaps? That might be interesting. I could read it alongside Laurie Lee and Hemingway and see how I get on...

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  2. It was such a good match-up post too - though I do think that Simon *cheated* by not putting Miss Hargreaves in as well! ;-)

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    1. If he'd mentioned Miss Hargreaves I would have spotted him immediately! I know that out of all the blogs I look at I am most likely to enjoy the books he mentions, but I hadn't realised how similar our tastes are, which is surprising really, considering the difference in ages, and the fact that he has done a PhD while I never even went to uni!

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  3. Oh, my copy of When We Were Very Young looks exactly like that too!

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    1. That makes me happy to know someone else coloured in their books! Books are meant to be enjoyed, and if that means colouring the pictures, drawing in them writing comments and so on - as well as reading, obviously - then I have no objections!

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  4. I will go and check the link you gave. I guess the book you like the most is the one that is in bad shape. When I was little I liked the collection of “Bécassine” or books written by Mme de Sévigné. Before our last trip we went to the Atlanta University Women book fair – they had 75,000 books for sale – so tempting! I did get a few (wrote a post on them on Oct.20 showing the books.) I was pleased to find some French books as it is not easy to find them in the Atlanta area.

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    1. Thank you for visiting.I think I treasure the AA Milne book so much because of its associations, and the memories it brings. A new edition would simply not be the same! I don't know Becassine or Madame de Sevigne but I shall look them up. I am always ashamed of myself for not knowing more about foreign writers, and am planning to get to know some of them next year - it's my personal challenge for 2014.

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  5. Hi Christine, Simon's post was a great way to get to know you better with your books. I too enjoyed reading all the posts he put up. I laughed at your coloured in first book. I have one like that too plus it has a couple pages scribbled on from my younger sister at the time. Happy reading.

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    1. Thank you! I guess we were lucky, because our parents never told us off for drawing or writing in books - my brother even built things with them! But torn pages and anything which made a book unreadable were definitely not allowed.

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