My All Time Favourite Books - World Book Day

Its no secret that I am a huge book worm

and I have even got my husband reading more

Oisìn seems to have my love of reading too

I think reading is a wonderful thing 

So for world book day here is my top five favourite books

I read this when I around 13/14 

soon afterwards I discover Kate Bush and her song but that is a whole other story!

I had been learning about the classics in school, Dickens, Austen, and Charlotte Brontë

but nothing much about Emily

When I saw it in the library I liked the cover so decided to give it a read

Wow it was hard for a 13 year old to get into! I read it and didn't understand most of it

Until a few years later my brother was studying it for school exams. I came back to it with

older eyes I was still only 17 but I loved the style of reading, the dark eerier moors,

the obsessive romance that Emily Brontè creates.

First off the narrative is quite different told by a stranger to the Yorkshire Moors

as Nelly the housekeeper tells her tales of the overbearing family she worked for

Of course there is Heathcliff the broody, dark, unstable and unsocial man

who deep love for Cathy has consumed him. 

Its a romance that has been copied for books that came after

but it's the original that holds so much power

This is the book I come back to every Autumn 

to rediscover what secrets lie in Wuthering Heights

 

This is the book that brought me from a child reader into the world of adult books

This book reminds me of my Summer holiday off school sitting
in my parents back garden under a tree reading. I read this on school holidays and loved it!
The story of four sisters while there Father is off fighting in the America Civil war.
The four sisters Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy find ways to keep themselves busy and to help as there Mother doesn't have much money. The book follows the sisters from little women into wives.
I have watched the two movies my favourite is the one with Clare Daines as Beth my favourite character of the book. I have also read the sequels Little Men and Jo's Boys
but it was Little Women that brought me from childhood reading into young adult reading and
ensured that I would be reading all my adult life.

I love Dickens but this is the book I keep going back to

Such a frighting start to book

It tells the story of Pip an orphan and his journey to life and the strange characters he meets

Of  course one these characters is the strange, eccentric Miss Havisham who

lives in a huge mansion, which is crumbling around her. She is dressed in a wedding gown with a wedding feast on her dining table that has rotten away.

She is one of my favourite fictional characters ever!

 She is not very likable, she is cold and hard but I am still drawn to her

When I am unsure what to read I come back to this book

This is the only book on my list that is fairly recent it was publish it 1991

but I only read it last year after watching the new TV show

I have read this twice and have started reading the other books in the series

but I know it will be this book that I will come back to over and over again

It tells the story of time travelling Claire how on holiday with her husband after WW2

she is transported back to 18th century Scotland where she meets the Mackenzie clan

who take her in as a healer. She meets her husband ancienter Captain Black Jack Randall

who is a cruel, sadistic man she tries her best to stay out of his way but things start to get 

complicated for Claire when she begins to fall for the red haired Scottish Jamie Fraser

I adore this book and it love the style of writing

dark, twists and very eerier. It gets me from the first line

I love how the reader never knows the name of the second Mrs de Winter

she is just know as the second younger wife! 

There is parallels between both Brontë works Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre

but this story just caught my teenager mind

Unraveling secrets and stripping away layers

it is the style of writing and type of book I still enjoy reading now