#3 Books - My Three Books

So the lovely Emily from A mummy too has inspired me to have a think about my favourite books. I have said in previous posts that books have played a massive part in my life. As a child, I always had my head in a book. Being an only child, it seemed that there was no better way than whiling away the hours in whatever imaginary world I was reading about at the time. I was a massive Enid Blyton fan and by the time I had finished primary school, I had read all of her books. In my early teenage years, I was reading a wide range of classic books. Anything from Lord of the Rings to Pride and Prejudice.  During my university years, I was reading French novels: classics and modern and then adulthood saw a move towards "chick lit" with an occasional autobiography thrown in for good measure.

These days, I don't read as often as I would like. I have resisted the temptation of the Kindle. For me I like to read a proper book and you can pick books up quite cheaply these days. Family life has become more demanding and so reading my books is not a priority at the moment. However, I have always read to my children from a very early age and we have hundreds of books of different types in the house. I am very proud that my three older children all love reading and are all excelling in school, which I definitely think is partly due to a positive attitude to reading at home. In my opinion reading to your children is one of the great gifts you can give a child.

The challenge is to share the three books you love most from your time as a child, adult and parent. Choosing each of these books has been really difficult for me as I could have chosen several for each.

Childhood
It had to be Enid Blyton.  Whatever has been said about Enid Blyton and her books in recent years, her ability to capture the imagination of her readers was undeniable.  I wanted to be her and probably still have my Enid Blyton inspired hand written books on very similar themes to hers, lurking at the bottom of a cupboard somewhere.  The best book?  The Magic Faraway Tree.  I recently read this book with my son and he loved it too.  Joe, Beth and Frannie move to a new house on the edge of an enchanted forest, they soon discover The Magic Faraway Tree and with their brilliantly named new friends: Moonface, Saucepan Man and Silky the Fairy, they go on magical adventures in the different lands that appear at the top of the tree.  It is a beautiful story and in my opinion, it is completely timeless.  My son enjoyed it as much as I did and has since read a number of other Enid Blyton books.

Adulthood
This, I'm afraid is rather predictable, but I'm not going to apologise for it as it is a brilliant book.  Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.  It is a book that I have read several times and I will probably read it again several more times.  It is like an old friend.  I read it as a teenager the first time, but it probably wasn't until I was an adult that I fully appreciated the story and what it said about the lives of women at that time.  'It is a fact universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife.'  Possibly one of the most famous of opening lines and the premise for this tale of a family with five daughters and their mother's desperate pursuit of a suitable match for each of them.  The heroine; Elizabeth Bennett, is one of my favourite heroines, she is strong-willed, determined and stubborn.  Her love for Mr Darcy slowly grows from an initial hatred as she realises that she wrongly misjudged his character, and whilst this relationship gently develops, in the background we see the trials and tribulations of her sisters and their romances.

Parenthood
A slightly less predictable choice this time.  I have been a fan of Babette Cole books for many years.  She has taken some interesting subjects and made them into hilarious and interesting books for children.  Dr. Dog is a book that I used to read to my eldest son many years ago and it used to make him hoot with laughter.  Dr. Dog is the personal physician to the Gumboyle family, a family who seem to suffer from a number of medical problems from dizziness and tummy problems to nits and tickly tonsils.  Luckily Dr. Dog is on hand to give excellent advice such as: "Never scratch your bum and suck your thumb!"  Which is definitely great advice in my opinion.  If you have never read this or any of the other Babette Cole books, then you most definitely should.

So those are three books that I love and would recommend, what three books would you choose?

If you fancy finding out what other people would choose, pop on over to A mummy too and have a look and if you want to join in, you can link up too.