;my life in books

This is not a tag. I think there is a tag going around, or was, that is similar? Maybe I imagined it, but this is not a tag.

Mostly because I fall behind on tags a lot, so I’m not going to pass this on to anyone to do it, but hey, if it gives anyone any blog post ideas? Have fun, because I certainly am!

Basically, today’s post is me, breaking down my life into sections, and associating books or series with those sections of my life. It’s definitely making me think really hard about what I used to read, and how much my taste has changed, or not, over the years.

So here we go!

• Early Childhood – Fairytales, The Hungry Caterpillar
  (Does anyone else remember The Hungry Caterpillar? I can’t find it anywhere and I dearly want to get a copy for my daughter…)
• Childhood/Kindergarten Years – Peter & Jane books, more fairytales!
  (I bought a collection of these sort of books for my daughter even though it will be some years before she can read them. Why yes, I do encourage her to become a bookworm.)
• Primary School Years – Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers, St. Clare’s series, Nancy Drew Notebooks, Sweet Valley series, Archie’s Digests and pretty much anything I could get my hands on…
  (Oh, these were the years where I could read up to four books a day, under my desk, at school. The years where I would borrow my friends’ books because I had finished my own already, and give them back at the end of the day completed. The years I read like I breathed – all the time. I miss it.)
• Secondary School Years – The Chalet School series, Chronicles Of Narnia, Harry Potter series, anything in the Star Wars universe, romance novels, anything my friends’ recommended…
  (On one memorable occasion, while reading and walking, my friend made a remark on how I always had my nose burrowed in a book. I closed my book to pay my friends’ attention because of that, and promptly tripped up some stairs. She was astonished, and I got to go back to reading as I walked. These were also the years where I was introduced to fanfiction. The downfall started here.)

• Junior College Years – Young Adult novels, fairytale retellings, Shakespeare plays, Literature texts, Dan Brown novels…
  (Reading for fun had slowed down by this time, even though I did have a couple of friends who enjoyed it as much as me and we were constantly exchanging books and opinions. But alas! School had to take priority.)
• Undergrad Years – Young Adult novels, Literature texts, university readings…
  (My love for YA really started to shine in this time. Almost anything in that genre, I would find and browse through. I was also reading and writing a lot of fanfiction…)
• Masters Year – Young Adult novels, romance novels, fanfiction…
  (I started reading more again at this time, because I had just gotten married and moved away. My husband was busy with school, I had less classes and more free time, so I found myself in the library a lot, and I FINALLY began to diversify my reading.)
• Mother Years – Young Adult novels, fairytale retellings, romance novels, fanfiction, baby books…
  (This is me now. Still reading YA, trying to write my own stories, reading a lot of fanfiction, trying to get back into reading Austen, and reading a lot of my daughter’s books to her when she has the patience to sit down. I’m enjoying it, but I definitely don’t go through four books a day. I’m lucky if I can go through four books a year.)

And there we have it! My life in books. I started off having fairytales read to me, and I still read retellings for myself, and the simpler versions to my daughter. Full circle! My taste still veers towards happy endings and families, and school stories, except now with a more diverse and rich universe.

If you had to jot down your life in books, how would it look?