World Book Day: Five Books I Love

I'm writing from my sick bed (I know, get out the violins!) but I couldn't resist posting for World Book Day. The one advantage of this enforced time at home is a renewed a appreciation of some of the lovely things I am blessed to have. So here, in celebration of the wonderful thing that is the book, are five of my favs that have made my life infinitely richer.

How much poorer would life be without rich fictional worlds to escape to? Every time I read about Mama Ramotswe I want to go back to Africa.

 

 

Books have hugely enriched my spiritual life and this ragged old copy of Margaret Silf's Landmarks speaks for itself as to how influential it has been for me (and my husband who has used it over and over again in his classes at school!).

 



 

And what about a beautiful old book? These Handy Shakespeares from 1892 are still my pride and joy since I picked them up working in a second hand bookshop.

In recent years I've gotten more and more into reading history. This book kicked all that off. Not only is it beautiful (and another find from that second hand bookshop) but is also based on where I grew up, in Windsor rather than the Castle that is! I'm not secretly royalty!!

 

 

My cookbook collection is growing to epic proportions but I just can't resist it when you can pick one up in a charity for the price of a magazine. My eclectic cookbook collection has taught me to cook everything from Spanish to French to Indian to Greek and I LOVE it.

 

 

 

And lastly, because I couldn't resist one more, what about all those childhood stories? They remind me of sunny days and, as Lewis Carroll writes in the back of this edition of Alice, of -

 

'that delicious dreamy feeling when one first wakes on a summer morning, with the twitter of birds in the air, and the fresh breeze coming in at the window when, lying lazily with eyes half shut, one sees as in a dream green boughs waving or waters rippling in a golden light'.

 

 

Happy World Book Day!