My reading journey...

Since the release of Lucy Mangan's book earlier this year, Bookworm; A Memoir of Childhood Reading, (Which is still on my to-read list as I am keeping my fingers crossed for a paperback version) there has been a lot of talk amongst readers, and particularly the booksellers, about where our reading journey's started. What books do we remember reading as children? Which books do we still have copies of from when we were little? Which books really made us fall in love with reading?

A fellow bookseller recently wrote about her journey on her blog Of Life and Literature, which you can check out by following the link, and it got me thinking, and I mean really thinking about my own journey and the books I remember. So, here it is in black and white, and several colourful pictures!

I started this post by heading on up to my bookshelves to find the titles I had been thinking about and start snapping some photos. Along the way I discovered several other books that I hadn't thought about, but that I knew had to be included in this post, so bear with me! The first books I headed for were the ones that I knew I still had from when I was a child. There are only two of them, many of the others are replacements, but I never could bear to be parted from these two!

Both Walker books, The Elephant Tree by Penny Dale, and When I was Little by Marcia Williams have been on my bookshelf for longer than I can remember, and I have memories of reading them as a little girl. Daddy was known for reading the bedtime stories, but it is my mom I remember reading these with me! They even have my name in the front of them on the little space saying who they belong to...

But anyway, I think that my journey began where every 90's child's began; with Disney stories and a little rabbit named Peter! 

I always loved the Disney Princess stories, amongst the many others going, and have a small selection on the bookshelf at home now, though they are not my originals - they've been bought over the years when I've seen them. Simba however, has been with me nearly my whole life!! No guesses needed as to which is my favourite?! As for Peter Rabbit, I had the collection, and still do, though they too are replacements. I bought the box set not long ago to put on the shelf as I decided it was one of those things that every reader should have a copy of! Although never really going out of fashion, Peter Rabbit has recently made his comeback with the new film and children are falling in love with him all over again - talk about how to go down in history!!

I followed the normal pattern from there too I think, quickly devouring the fairy tales, working my way through the colour bands at school until I made my way to the free reading shelves, and the one I remember from then was The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. We did a whole topic on the story at school, where we designed our own gardens and made our own secret keys and wrote our own pieces about discovering a hidden paradise. I loved it, and have just discovered that I do not own a copy - something that will be rectified shortly! I also discovered Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine and Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt, both of which I saw as films and hunted down the books as soon as I found out they were adaptions! This was about the time that I fell down the rabbit hole with Alice too, and remains one of my all time favourites to this day. You can always tell your favourites - scan your bookshelf and look for the books that you have multiple copies of!

As I got older, reaching secondary school and becoming a teenager, I discovered Harry Potter like everyone else and fell in love with reading all over again! Didn't we all?! I loved Hermione from her first appearance, and found myself comparing my own attributes to hers. By the end of high school I hit a dry spell with reading, one which was broken by attending university, but the books I was reading were course specified, and not ones I particularly enjoyed. I was nineteen when I fell back into the love of reading, and I am not ashamed to say that it was a sparkly vampire and a hot werewolf that got me there. My sister and my mom had read Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, and lent me a copy to read - I devoured it! Along with the rest of the series; Breaking Dawn is still one of my records: cover to cover in just over twenty-four hours!

From there I went searching for books that intrigued me, and I have these ladies to thank for their stories! 

The Shiver, Linger, Forever trilogy by Maggie Stiefvater was the first I found, and I fell in love with Sam and Grace and the way Stiefvater writes! Lauren Kate's Fallen series was next and I fought alongside Luce and Daniel all the way, hoping and praying that they would get their happy ending! And last but not least, Patch stole my heart when I read Becca Fitzpatrick's Hush Hush series. To this day I still recommend these books to adults and youngsters alike looking for great stories to spur on their love of reading! 

From there, as they might say, the rest is history. I have been reading on average a book a fortnight ever since - this year, since starting work as a bookseller for Waterstones, I am averaging one a week, if not more, as I have them at my fingertips, and have recommendations and new titles in front of me every day! But to finish with, I wanted to leave you with this; a girl is never too old for a fairy tale, and I often find myself flicking through the pages of The Grimm Tales when I am feeling down. Fairy tales will live on for longer than any of us, because they teach us that anything is possible, that we can achieve anything we set our minds to, if we just believe in ourselves, and of course, they remind us that the world is full of magic!

Keep reading, the world is a better place with books!