After returning from university, my entire house has become
a mess, filled with my belongings strewn across pretty much every room. In
trying to reintroduce a vague sense of order into my life, I have been clearing
out my childhood bedroom. I’ve been brutal, chucking a lot of stuff and
discovering some absolute gems. Out of date nail polishes, an army of teddies
and a vast collection of notebooks filled with stories that have only slightly
been plagiarised from other books are just a few of the treasures I have found.
But let me tell you, above all, there has been nothing more satisfying than
organising my bookshelves.
It’s been years since I’ve given it a good overhaul and, if
I’m honest, I expected myself to be throwing out or donating a lot more books.
For some reason, I can’t bring myself to get rid of a lot of them. Just looking
at these books, especially the ones I read when I was a child or an early
teenager, gives me such a strong sense of time and place. In deciding to keep a
lot of the books, I have decided I will make an effort to read as many of them
as possible in a bit of a nostalgia tour of my favourite books.
So, without further ado, here is my new and improved
bookshelf!
These are the top two shelves where I decided to put all of my childhood favourites. On the left, we've got a few children's collections along with my treasured set of The Chronicles of Narnia which, I believe, my late grandfather gave me when I was A LOT younger. In the top right, this theme continues along with a more modern set of books I read as a child... Of course I mean the Harry Potter series. Any bookshelf cannot be complete without a trip to Hogwarts...
In the bottom left photo, I decided to lump my collection of what I refer to as 'classics' together. In my head, that means anything before the 1950s. Here you'll find a set of Jane Austen books as well as a stack of novels by a range of authors: Fitzgerald, the Brontës, Orwell, Shelley and lots more. I also fitted in the (very few) plays I have: Top Girls, Romeo & Juliet, A Streetcar Named Desire and a collection of Chekhov.
In the bottom right, I went with a coffee table book/cult classic kind of theme. The three large books are some of my favourites to flick through. Art Now, which I think I nicked from someone, and The Polaroid Book make for excellent lazy day perusal but I especially love Well Read Women by Samantha Hahn which features gorgeous portraits of a selection of famous literary heroines. I will ensure to write an entire blog post about that one in the future because it is truly a beautiful book.
The rest of the shelf consists of the books you always felt like you should read. Lolita, On the Road, Trainspotting, Breakfast at Tiffany's, I feel that the selection of books in this section have made a massive mark on our culture today as modern classics. I've not read all of them on this shelf but I'm making my way... slowly.
The next level of shelves include some far more modern novels. In the top left photo, which shows probably the emptiest section of my bookshelf, I have lumped together a few books which fall under the thriller/mystery genre (as well as a Spanish phrase book...). Here you can see the Millenium series by Stieg Larsson, which I actually started reading YEARS ago. I loved it but stopped reading around half way through the second book (The Girl Who Played With Fire) and, for some reason, have never picked them up again. I definitely need to rectify that. Alongside, I've got a few books by P.D James, though I've never actually read any of them! However, being a big Austen fan, I couldn't exactly resist buying Death Comes to Pemberley. There's also a few others in this section including two (borrowed) novels by William Boyd. I'm currently halfway through Restless and Boyd's writing style is fantastic, I highly recommend him. I am dying to read Any Human Heart after seeing a couple of episodes of it on Channel 4.
In the next box, you will find some of my absolute favourite books. The bottom row are brilliant reads and I tried really hard to colour co-ordinate them but ugh, whatever, too hard. On this shelf there are also some autobiographies and two writing manuals I bought over summer: Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, which I am very excited to read, and On Writing by Stephen King. I took the latter to Croatia with me and, despite feeling quite unenthusiastic about it, I loved the way King blended his memoir with tips for writers. I honestly feel like I learned a lot from it and it got me wanting to write again, so much so that I bought a new notebook at a supermarket in Dubrovnik so I could start jotting down ideas!
Okay, on the next level, we reach The Teen Years. In the bottom left photo you will find a shrine shelf to Meg Cabot, Queen of my teenage heart and writer of The Princess Diaries. Dreaming that I too could secretly be a Princess, I still absolutely adore this book series along with its top notch adaptation starring Anne Hathaway and Julie Andrews. I don't believe in being "too old" to read any type of book which is why I have no intention to throw any of these (or any in the following shelves) out in the future.
On the next shelf there are a few more YAs, mainly by Sarra Manning as it would seem, another
author I was especially enthusiastic about in my early teen years. She wrote Dylan, my first true book boyfriend (not counting Harry and Ron, obvs), in her Diary of a Crush series. The entire Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants series by Ann Brashares also makes an appearance. Any book about friendship and magic trousers are fine by me!
The next level of shelves include some far more modern novels. In the top left photo, which shows probably the emptiest section of my bookshelf, I have lumped together a few books which fall under the thriller/mystery genre (as well as a Spanish phrase book...). Here you can see the Millenium series by Stieg Larsson, which I actually started reading YEARS ago. I loved it but stopped reading around half way through the second book (The Girl Who Played With Fire) and, for some reason, have never picked them up again. I definitely need to rectify that. Alongside, I've got a few books by P.D James, though I've never actually read any of them! However, being a big Austen fan, I couldn't exactly resist buying Death Comes to Pemberley. There's also a few others in this section including two (borrowed) novels by William Boyd. I'm currently halfway through Restless and Boyd's writing style is fantastic, I highly recommend him. I am dying to read Any Human Heart after seeing a couple of episodes of it on Channel 4.
In the next box, you will find some of my absolute favourite books. The bottom row are brilliant reads and I tried really hard to colour co-ordinate them but ugh, whatever, too hard. On this shelf there are also some autobiographies and two writing manuals I bought over summer: Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, which I am very excited to read, and On Writing by Stephen King. I took the latter to Croatia with me and, despite feeling quite unenthusiastic about it, I loved the way King blended his memoir with tips for writers. I honestly feel like I learned a lot from it and it got me wanting to write again, so much so that I bought a new notebook at a supermarket in Dubrovnik so I could start jotting down ideas!
Okay, on the next level, we reach The Teen Years. In the bottom left photo you will find a shrine shelf to Meg Cabot, Queen of my teenage heart and writer of The Princess Diaries. Dreaming that I too could secretly be a Princess, I still absolutely adore this book series along with its top notch adaptation starring Anne Hathaway and Julie Andrews. I don't believe in being "too old" to read any type of book which is why I have no intention to throw any of these (or any in the following shelves) out in the future.
On the next shelf there are a few more YAs, mainly by Sarra Manning as it would seem, another
author I was especially enthusiastic about in my early teen years. She wrote Dylan, my first true book boyfriend (not counting Harry and Ron, obvs), in her Diary of a Crush series. The entire Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants series by Ann Brashares also makes an appearance. Any book about friendship and magic trousers are fine by me!
Now we're onto the final shelf! What an exhilarating journey this has been! Anyway, I'm slightly ashamed to admit it, but I did place my Twilight collection on the bottom shelf so people wouldn't immediately see it when walking into my room... I, like many a thirteen year old girl, adored Twilight when it first came out. A lot of my friends were reading it and they highly recommended it to me. I bought the first one and was hooked. It was romantic, exciting and there were VAMPIRES. What more could a girl want? But, I think, growing up and realising a lot of problems with the books has developed my general distaste for the franchise (but let's leave that discussion for another day). Next to it, I put a couple of my mum's books by Jill Mansell. I used to really enjoy those books because of Mansell's humour but did find them to be quite repetitive after a while. I'd often find myself reading a new one and feeling as though I'd read it before.
In the final section (as seen in the bottom left photo), there are a few more teen books. I'm really keen to read these again, especially Louise Rennison's Angus Thongs series which always had me giggling! I also found E. Lockhart's The Boyfriend List amongst my piles of books. I vaguely remember reading it a while ago though I can't remember it very well. But since Miss Lockhart wrote my FAVOURITE NOVEL OF 2014, We Were Liars, I will definitely be giving it a reread in the near future!
Anyway, that's all from my bookshelf. I counted them all and on this bookshelf there are 258 books. Of those I have read 170. I don't think that's too bad! Although, with all the books I'm yet to read and with the ones I intend to reread, I think I've got enough books to last a few weeks... Mind you, I've also got more books dotted around the house and over 500(!) on my Kindle too so maybe I'll be kept busy for much longer than that...
xo
