Favourite Books...

The festive season draws near and I am in a list making mood.

My Top 5 grown up books in no particular order

1) Lord of the Rings Trilogy - JRR Tolkien
2) Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
3) The Time Travellers Wife - Audrey Niffeneger
4) A Room with a View - EM Forster
5) The Boy in Striped Pyjamas - John Boyne

My top 5 children's books in no particular order
1) The Wizard of Earthsea series- Ursula le Guin
2) Northern Lights (aka The Golden Compass) - Philip Pullman
3) The Outsiders - SE Hinton
4) The Moon in the Cloud - Rosemary Harris
5) The Dark is Rising - Susan Cooper
6) Little House on the Prairie - Laura Ingalls Wilder
7) The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling

My Top 5 picture books in no particular order

1) Dear Greenpeace - Simon James
2) Anything by Lauren Child
3) Olivia - Ian Falconer
4) The Chicken Thief - Beatrice Rodriguez
5) The Sneetches and other stories - Dr Seuss
6) The Lion in the Meadow - Margaret Mahy
7) Tulevai and the Sea - Joy Cowley

as you can see I have cheated. I have always been terribly undisciplined and I am not in a mood for rules right now. And lets face it, 5 (except for adult books) is not really enough. I know there are other books that should be on the lists and they have temporarily fallen out of my brain - maybe Bond's Paddington Bear books and Enid Blyton's Famous Five and some New Zealand saga set in and maybe titled Pencarrow, along with heaps of others. I really clocked up some serious book mileage with those books as a child. And comics - Little Lotta, Archie and Jughead, Superman, Casper and Wendy, Beano, Jackie, Mickey and Pluto, Scrooge McDuck. I spent hours reading all sorts of things when I was young. Folk who worry about the quality of what their children are reading shouldn't. How can you sort the good from the bad, what you like from what you don't like, if you don't read widely. Nothing is wasted with reading. Discovering that reading can be a source of enlightenment and pleasure should be the goal because of course if you enjoy it you will want to do more of it.