B is for Book

I have decided to copy a few of my pals and start a separate book blog.

I have been an avid reader since the age of five. I was a huge Enid Blyton fan and loved Julian, Dick, Anne, George - and Timmy the dog!! I wanted to go to Malory Towers or St Clare's and play tricks on Mamzelle, have midnight feasts, be friends with Darrell and Sally and teach Gwendoline Mary Lacey a lesson! I wanted to go up The Faraway Tree with Jo, Fanny and Bessie and be friends with Saucepan Man, Moonface and Silky. I graduated onto Little Women, Heidi, What Katy Did, Little House, Anne of Green Gables, The Secret Garden and A Little Princess - I wanted to be a March sister, go to school with Katy and Clover and share a room with Rose Red and pass gifts in "the" drawer, ride the wagon with Laura and Mary, be friends with Anne and Diana, help Mary, Colin and Dickon plant the garden and help Sara find her father. The next "big" discovery was Elinor M Brent Dyer's "Chalet School Series" which I remember starting to read when I was ten - how I wanted to pack up right there and then and go to school in the Austrian Tyrol!! It's not that I didn't have "real" friends - I've always been lucky in that respect ... but some of the characters in books are just as real to me. The opening lines of Little Women are better than any medicine when I am down..... I admit that I can recite the first few paragraphs from memory - the same with The Secret Garden!!

I can remember going to town with Dad was I was tiny - walking both ways usually - to visit the city library and spend my pocket money on ... books. I vividly remember going into Boots and buying "The Second Book of Naughty Children" by Enid Blyton for 35p. I was about six. Isn't it strange the things one remembers? I used to be a bit of a pain for my teachers as if we started reading a class book which I really enjoyed I would buy it over the weekend and read it by the Monday! I remember doing that with "Smith" by Leon Garfield and "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" by C S Lewis.

Other books that I reread time and time again were "The Swish of the Curtain" by Pamela Brown, Astrid Lindgren's Pippi and Bullerby books, Enid Blyton's "Mr Galliano's Circus", Carrie's War by Nina Bawden, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", "Charlotte Sometimes" by Penelope Farmer, "The Ghosts" by Antonia Barber, "Diddakoi" by Rumer Godden and a number of old Sunday School books such as "Christie's Old Organ"and " A Peep Behind the Scenes" - real tear jerkers from the early 1900's.

I switched to "adult books" shortly after starting secondary school and quickly devoured "Pride and Prejudice" and "Jane Eyre" - it took me a few more years to attempt "Wuthering Heights" but I clearly remember sobbing my little heart out when I did. I quickly became interested in the writers themselves and over the years have read most new publications on most of my favourite writers.

In my late teens and twenties I read a lot of chick lit - I especially enjoyed books set in London when I was living there - I think it was Freya North who set a few books in Hamptead/Belsize Park and mentioned some of my weekend cafe haunts. I still read "quality" stuff too and would reread all The Anne Books, Brontes, Austen, Brideshead Revisited and ...The Chalet School once every few years.

Over the last few years while living in Canada the local library has become a haven for me - it's helped so much! It's three minutes walk away and has the most amazing website that one can reserve books, dvds and cds on. All items are free to borrow and they have all the latest publications. I do still buy books, they will always be my one vice, but due to the speed at which I read and the fact that I have so little room and money(not to mention that I will be on the move again soon)the library has been my lifeline!

Now I read the same hotch potch of classics, biographies, modern quality fiction, young adult fiction, travel writing and anything else that catches my eye on blogs or in newspaper reviews.

So I guess that is it - my first review will be coming up later today. I have two more chapters to go!