Books, books everywhere. Bookcases full of them, shelves stacked to capacity. Piles to read and keep, piles to read and pass on. Hardbacks, paperbacks, annuals, reference books, childrens’ books, biographies, atlases and maps. Always a book on the go in my house.
Kindles and E-books have a decent share in today’s market, but not in my life. There’s nothing more satisfying to me than having a cup of coffee in one hand and a book in the other: a real book with pages to turn, pictures, photos or maps to examine, cover art to wonder at. Plus they all look nice in my bookcases, in a scatty kind of way.
I can’t imagine life without second-hand bookshops, or finding a gem in the bottom of a mouldering box at a car boot sale spreckled with foxing and buckled with damp. Just needing me to rescue it and take it home.
So anyway, I realised that among the different sections of ‘Where there’s a Jill, there’s a way’, there’s nothing specifically related to books, reading and reviews. My Blyblog doesn’t count as it’s dedicated totally to my favourite author Enid Blyton and her work. Quite by accident I came by the following rather obvious notion – ‘include something to do with books, you Nuppit-Head*’. So Books-A-Daisy it is.
I don’t read too many new novels these days, though there is always a place for decent modern fiction (I have a copy of A Monster Calls, and am looking forward to reading that this year). I tend to veer in the direction of biogs and autobiogs if they’re of any interest to me (sorry Katie Price and Sharon Osbourne, no can do!!!), older and classic fiction, travelogue type stuff and reference books which I’m always dipping into.
So far this year I have finished Snakes and Ladders, one of Dirk Bogarde’s autobiographical works, The Valley of Adventure by Enid Blyton, The Valley of Fear (a fab old disintingrating paperback copy) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Lord Mountbatten’s eighty years in pictures, various Ladybird books, A 1970’s Childhood by Derek Tait which I shall be reviewing shortly, and the book I’m currently on with Nazi Princess – Hitler, Lord Rothermere and Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe by Jim Wilson, which is non-fiction. I try to keep it diverse and eclectic.
In between everything else, look out for up-coming posts about book reviews and life amongst books.
*A Nuppit-Head is what is sometimes referred to in my part of West Yorkshire as a silly person.
Where there's a Jill there's a way 