My Favourite Books - Part One

This post was prompted by reading a post over at Veg Plotting last week which you can see here. A group of bloggers and tweeters had been discussing one of those Amazon book lists via Twitter and came up with the idea of producing a blog post listing favourite books. It was agreed to limit the lists to twenty books each. My favourite twenty books? What a question! I thought and thought some more about this, coming to the conclusion that it had to be not only books that made a lasting impact on me but also be books that I could not possibly part with. I was an avid reader as a child and all the way through my teens and twenties before slowing down for some years. I think that the amount of reading and computer use that work involved sadly dampened my enthusiasm for reading for pleasure. My book consumption rate slowed down for some time but has picked up dramatically since I left work over five years ago. Now I'm rarely without a book on the go, although not surprisingly, I get through more books in the winter months than in the summer, when of course I would rather be outdoors.

I'm going to post this list in two parts starting with those books that cast their magic over me as a child, teenager and a young adult.

1) 'Brer Rabbit Again' - Enid Blyton - now I have to confess that this may not have been my all time favourite Enid Blyton book but I just had to include this author. The author's work has come in for criticism in later years but I am convinced that Enid Blyton's writing sparked off my lifelong love of reading. This book is the only one that I still have in my possession possibly because it's a hardback. It relates the adventures of a rather mischievous rabbit. I'm still not sure why nearly all the other animals in this are also all called 'Brer' whether they be fox, bear, wolf or rabbit!

2) 'What Katy Did' - Susan Coolidge - this book was given to me by a dear family friend when I was nine. I spent the best part of six months in hospital at this time and then another three months or so recuperating at home, before I was able to go back to school and normal life. I can vividly remember reading about what Katy did and if you read it too you will remember that a twelve year old Katy met with an accident, which left her confined to bed for some considerable time. So I felt that I had something in common with Katy and loved this book and its sequels too. The book had just the one illustration which you can see above. The colouring was my art work. I think and hope that it was a one off. No way to treat a book!

3) 'Miscellany One' & 'Miscellany Two' - Dylan Thomas - an inscription inside these books reminds me that these books were my first ever school prize. We had previously studied 'Under Milk Wood' at school listening to Richard Burton's incomparable recording, which influenced my choice of prize. The miscellanies include poems, stories and broadcasts by this Welsh wordsmith. Some of the poems especially 'Poem in October' and 'Fern Hill' are still amongst my favourite poems and the boyhood reflection of 'Memories Of Christmas' usually gets an annual seasonal outing. I know that this selection is two books but I thought that it would be legitimate.

4) 'Selected Poems' - TS Eliot - this was one of our set texts for 'A' level English Literature and was my first introduction to this poet. I can still quote fragments of some of these poems more than 40 years later. Above you can see a page from my copy of this book. We were told by our teacher that we would be able to keep this book at the end of the course and he encouraged us to write notes in pencil as we worked our way through this book. I had never written in the main body of any book, before or since so such scribbles seemed deliciously wicked. It is such a strange sensation looking back on my notes written as a 17/18 year old but I'm so glad that I kept this book and so grateful that I had two brilliant teachers to take me through the course. Again a book that I pull out of my bookshelf several times a year to revisit some favourite poems.

5) 'The Chambers Dictionary' - I left home for university with my very first dictionary which was a gift from my parents. Before that I had always shared a dictionary with my brothers and sister so it was rather special to have my own. Somewhere along the years this copy was replaced with a more up to date edition when I got to the age of 40, again a gift from my parents. It will be possibly soon be time for a new edition to catch up with many of the new words that have been introduced into the English Language since. My Chambers has seen me through many years of reading, writing, playing Scrabble and tackling crosswords and is absolutely indispensable.

6) 'The Lord Of The Rings' - JRR Tolkein - this stays in my mind as I first read this as a student. Finally I was able to read late into the night without any nagging reminders from my mother to turn the light off and get some sleep. I burned the midnight oil and then some more in the reading of this and remember the sheer excitement of the sense of freedom this bought with it.

7) 'The Prophet' - Kahil Gibran - another memento of student days which has remained on my bookshelf ever since. Why this book by poet, philosopher and artist Kahil Gibran is so well loved is described far better than I can here.

8) 'The Mersey Sound' - Adrian Henri, Roger McGough and Brian Patten - I bought this book after attending a poetry recital by this trio of poets in my first year as a student. This was poetry of my age and time with references to the here and now - so far removed from Byron, Keats,Tennyson et al. It was a complete contrast to any poetry I had come across before. Little did I know that it was to become the best selling poetry anthology of all time and that I was to go on to live and work just outside Liverpool.

9) 'Running To Paradise' - Poems by WB Yeats - another student purchase bought about by my acquaintance of this Irish poet through A level English Literature. This collection of poems includes some poems that bewildered me and some that entranced and still do. The latter category include 'The Song of Wandering Aengus, 'The Lake Isle of Inisfree' and 'He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven' which goes as follows :

"Had I the heaven's embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half -light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet :

But I, being poor, have only my dreams ;

I have spread my dreams under your feet ;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."

10) 'Once Upon A Time' - The Fairy Tale World of Arthur Rackham' - introduced by Margery Darell - student days were well behind me, when I bought this book back in the days when I regularly bought books from a book club. It contains some classic fairy tales, 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' as well as 'Aesops Fables'. I think that the main attraction though was the inclusion of Charles Dickens's 'A Christmas Carol' which I reread every festive season. That and the exquisite black and white as well as colour illustrations by Arthur Rackham.

Numbers 3, 9 and 10 are out of print but second hand copies can still be found.

So that's the first half of my top twenty which I've thoroughly enjoyed compiling. I think that I will need a breather though before selecting the second batch so will return with that in a few days. You will be able to see what other bloggers have chosen over at Veg Plotting. Make sure that you have pen and paper in hand when you visit!