Cherished Childhood Books

I've always enjoyed reading, even if I wasn't the most 'well read' and can fondly remember being on the year above's level of 'The Magic Key', Biff and Chip books in school or nursery at around 4 years old. I remember library visits where I had my own little library card and could rifle through the children's box shelf thingys, then be pretty chuffed checking them out and getting to read them at home.There are also a small, but important group of stories that I will always cherish from my earlier reading days. Here are some of them...

Puppy Patrol by Jenny Dale (aka Linda Chapman)

Probably the most memorable to me is the Puppy Patrol series by Jenny Dale. If you hadn't guessed from the title, they were about dogs ahah. With around 40-50 books in the series, they kept me busy for a little while but were also rather entertaining adventures for children's books (if I remember rightly).A funny fact that I'll never forget is talking about them for some show and tell or report or something in first school, where the teacher thought I'd said 'Jelly Deel', instead of Jenny Dale. Everyone thought it rather hilarious! A bit random to stick in my memory considering I haven't a great one to begin with!Despite being short at less than 150 pages each, I would love to read through them again and, from memory, thoroughly recommend them for people who have animal loving kids - if you can get your hands on them!

Noddy by Enid Blyton

Man I loved Noddy! The show, the books, Noddy was awesome.

Room 13 & The Nightmare Stairs by Robert Swindells

Not a series, but a book with two stories in one - or so my copy was. Room 13 and The Nightmare Stairs were my first real introduction into the 'Horror' genre and I think it's safe to say Mr Swindells is to thank for capturing my heart for all things freaky, creepy and weird. He is of course, an award-winning author and doesn't need bigging up in the slightest anyway, but man I love these books!!Room 13 is also set in Whitby which is awesome as it's always cool to be able to picture the places described when you've been there before.

The Mermaid by Lucy Kincaid

This was one that I didn't realize was in my memories until I saw it at my parents. I now vividly remember flipping through the pages, completely taken in by the beautiful illustrations (by Lynne Willey) and sucked in by the magical mermaid story. This, as well as the Fairytale movie were my first glances as 'mythical' creatures and I do still believe in them both fyi :)

Beatrix Potter Tales

Of course, this was when I was a little littley and I can't personally remember my first introduction, but tell me the name of a person my age who didn't love Beatrix Potter books! It's lovely to still have the special set from my childhood, the artwork is always beautiful to appreciate no matter your age.  Unfortunately, I am yet to read the 'new' story, The Tale of Kitty in Boots, that was released last year. Have you read it?

The Harry Potter Series by J.K Rowling

'Duh' feels like a fitting statement to make here haha! I was late to the Harry Potter fandom, though still only 11 years old...so you could say I was right on time to get to Hogwarts. The first movie had come out in 2001 and for some reason, we were taken on a school trip to see it at the cinema. Before that, I hadn't heard anything about it...but after I'd see the movie I picked up the books and fell into the world head first, never to return.After I completed the series up to date I waited and pre-ordered the next 3. This was the first time I had ever become so in love with a world that 'wasn't real' and (besides The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe - which I had read to me, not read myself hence not being on the list) pretty much started my obsession with all things magical.

John Speirs' Margaret Wise Brown Treasury - 14 Classic Stories and Poems

Another similar to 'The Mermaid' in the fact that I only remembered it once I saw it again. As you can see it's a book of short stories and little poems, many about animals and nature. Looking back on it, you can see it was well loved as I've written my name and 'keep out' in the front cover as well as circled and 'highlighted' bits and pieces throughout haha.

Disney Wonderful World of Reading & Other Books

Lastly, what would this list be without Disney? Self-explanatory really. I've been watching, reading, playing, wearing, drawing, everything Disney since I was born.

I did, of course, read other things, but these are those that stick in my mind and mean a lot to me. Though probably with some missing. Did you read any of these as a child too? What was your favorite book to read back when you were young? Have you re-read it since? I plan to re-read some Robert Swindells and hopefully the Puppy Patrol books too! I've already re-read Harry Potter around 6+ times over the years but I will never get bored of reading them over and over haha!

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As I mentioned in the 'Disney Movies That Were Books First' post I put up at the end of November, I used to run a lifestyle blog for around 10 years. When looking back at that old blog I decided there were some posts that I enjoyed so much I didn't want to leave them in a black hole, unseen on the internet since unpublishing that website. So this post and a couple of others to come are from said blog with only a tiny updating.

Our Top TBR for 2020

When thinking about what posts we wanted to share in January, I thought it'd be fun for us to sit down in front of our bookcases and choose what we are most excited to read from our collection, in the following year. We have a good amount of books and although we have gotten a lot better at reading more and not just buying/collecting, we still have a good old load of TBRs. 

Here are 10 books, 5 from us each, of which are at the top of our TBR for 2020! (Funnily enough only one features in our January TBR lists haha)

Mrs' Top 5

Dracul

The Land of Never-endings

A Map of Days

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

The Ill Made Mute

Mr's Top 5

Norse Mythology

Six of Crows

Empire of the Saviours

The Left Hand of God

Shadow and Bone

Hopefully we'll see some of these on our first quarterly reading update of the year at the start of April. You'd think with a monthly TBR of 3 books and 12 months in the year we should be able to tick off all of the above...though that's never how it usually happens eh?

Our TBR Jar!

Do you have an ever growing stack or overflowing shelving unit of unread books? We do. Sometimes it's like when you sit staring at Netflix, scrolling through the hundreds of choices but just can't pick anything so you watch the same thing you've seen multiple times...but with books. So to help us choose one of our 3 TBR's each month we created this little jar.

Now in no way am I claiming inventor status for this - of course I know many before me have done similar or perhaps the same thing, but as we loved how it turned out I thought it'd be nice to include the how, what, why's of our TBR Jar!

(Oh, also, I say TBR like I assume everyone knows what that means. Many bookish pals will but for those who don't it means 'To Be Read'!)

Starting off with the basis for this project we needed a jar and luckily enough we have a mini hoard as anything we buy in one, the jar gets washed out and reused! ( Click here and have a peek at the behind the scenes of the 'upcycling'!) The lids all get painted black so that they look more uniform in the cupboard despite their differing sizes and the only extra we did for this jar was to add a chalkboard paint 'label' and some glitter paint!

As for how it actually works, it's simple. I originally cut some strips of coloured paper on my guillotine, added the names of all of our current books to them, folded them and put them in the jar. For new books coming in we have extra paper strips in the little candle holder thingy and can just grab one and write the books name on it before it gets put on the shelves.
At the end of December when choosing our January TBR we both picked from the jar and then it went on our lists!

We have allowed a 3 rule re-pick in the event of picking out a book we have already read (all books are in there unless we have both read them already, so no Potter or Rings) or just generally don't really fancy. It's be really fun so far and I hope to continue it into the following years. Fingers crossed we read enough so that adding new books doesn't cause an overflow...!

Mrs' Goodreads Year in Books 2019

On my old blog I'd wrap up everything I read and everything I watched (I watched a heck of a lot of movies!) at the end of each year. We have done quarterly summaries of what we've been reading here but I also wanted to do an overall yearly 'what I read' to not only keep a track but also to spur myself on for the reading year ahead.
I thought the best way to show this easily was just to share my Goodreads Year in Books! I really like the little breakdown they give you so as short and sweet as this post will be, here it is...

27 books isn't bad. Definitely nothing to be snuffed as that's over double the months in a year, but it's certainly less than I'd have liked to of read and compared to the 43 I read two years before. Still, we didn't actually start properly getting in the reading swing until after we moved house at the end of June. So... according to my finish dates on Goodreads, only 7 of the 27 were read in the first 6 months of 2019 meaning the remaining 20 were read in the last 6 months.
If I can do 20 in 6 months for 2020 and hit 40 overall for the year I'll be very happy indeed!
Look out for Mr H's year in books post coming soon!

Our Top 10 Reads of 2019

We ended up taking an unplanned, unintentional break at the end of December and although this and other posts have been in various stages of completion, I ended up just un-scheduling them all and reorganizing the whole of January's planned posts. This was meant to be published on the 30th so only a week later isn't going to make too much difference. This is 10 of our top favourite books we read during 2019, well 5 from each of us otherwise we'd be here a while. They are all (as far as I'm aware) 5 star rated on our Goodreads accounts too! Here they are.

Mrs H's Top 5

The Ghost of Marlow House by Bobbi Holmes

This was just a random free ebook I found on Play Books and surprise, surprise turned out to be a 5* rating... and that is a great example of why I very rarely listen to awards, best sellers and what everyone else is reading. It was fun, well paced and just generally an interesting story.

The Ravenmaster: My Life with the Ravens at the Tower of London by Christopher Skaife

I've followed Christopher Skaife on social media for a few years and as soon as he announced he was publishing a book it was on my wish list. I have no excuse as to why it took me until this year to get around to it but I'm glad I chose to get the audiobook as Christopher narrated it himself. Everything I wanted and more.

The Twisted Tree by Rachel Burge

I was going to say this was my top book of the year, maybe it is, but looking back at this list it makes it a lot tighter. Yeah, I'll let it take the number one spot. To read a better summary of my thoughts on this you could always click this link and check out the 'What I Read This Quarter' post!

The Doomspell by Cliff McNish

A book and author I'd never heard of made it into my all five star, top five of 2019. When someone is travelling to somewhere other than where we live, I'm into it. Narnia, Oz, and now Ithrea.

Switching Well by Peni R Griffin

Writing these makes me feel like a broken record or completely empty of all literary skills because I either can't express what I'm trying to say or don't know what to say. But this is another of those 'random' books that was unexpected to make this list. It was in the recommended section on Goodreads because of other things I'd read and here we are, it ended up a good recommendation.

Mr H's Top 5

The Name on the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

This was the first book I read this year, I was in a major reading slump it took it a very long time to get through maybe like 3 months!!! A lot of people don’t like the protagonist Kvothe in this series, I love how all the generic fantasy stereotypes are embraced by this book and executed very well! For a first book in a series the story progressed well and leaves you dying to read more.

The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss

As previously said Patrick Rothfuss leaves you wanting to read more... well I did and he did not disappoint, I loved this book and I neeeed the finale of this trilogy to come out. I feel like a lot happened in this book which it did this book was packed full of character development and travel and adventure. With that being said I’m struggling to see how Patrick Rothfuss will come to a conclusion with the King Killer Chronicles in just one more addition but if anyone can do it I’m sure he can.

Beorn the Proud by Madeleine A. Pollard

I got this book for my birthday in 2019 from Mrs H! So it’s special to me and a beautiful book, it makes it even better than I over this read a great adventure story and I thought the character arcs was awesome. I love vikings and all things Norse mythology and it was great to read a truly fiction book based in the Viking era.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K Rowling

Well what can I say... I wish I had a S.P.E.W. Badge to me Hermione's house elf movement really made this book for me even more than the triwizard tournament. I think this was my favourite instalment in the series so far it was action packed with the triwizard tournament and this book started to bring in the darker side of Harry Potter which is where things start to get a lot more exciting and I’m so excited to read more the only reason I haven’t is because the next book is huge!! But I will get around to it.

Tales of the Peculiar by Ransom Riggs

Well this is a truly great read I love Ransom Riggs writing, and these short story’s are awesome massively entertaining I loved the story of the pigeons and St Paul’s Cathedral. Currently reading the the books in the Perculiardom and the way these tales relate to the series is so cool.

December Book Haul

We finally succeeded at something you guys! Not buying a stupid amount of books! In September we bought 13 books, in October that shot through the roof to 37 (sickening, and not in the good sense), then in November it dropped to 23...which was still ridiculous considering we'd set a limit of buying only 3 books for each other meaning 6 total, so thankfully and actually relatively shockingly Decembers haul total has come in at under 10 books!
I'm not saying buying books is bad, on the contrary. If you're going to buy anything, books is the best thing for it to be. Plus over 90% of what we do buy is from charity shops. However, we need to get a grip, start some savings properly and oh yeah, we have a honeymoon to think about this year!
More on that another day maybe. As for now, here is our little December book haul!

The Last Four Things by Paul Hoffman
Paperback - 16 Feb 2012

The Firework Makers's Daughter by Philip Pullman

Paperback - 4 Nov 2004

The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert

Paperback - 8 Feb 2018

Our Tragic Universe by Scarlett Thomas
Paperback - 7 Apr 2011

Treasured Tales by Beatrix Potter
Hardback - 25 Mar 1999

Heidi by Johanna Spyri
Paperback - 18 Sep 2002

Greyfriars Bobby by Eleanor Atkinson
Paperback - 26 May 1994

The Bear and the Nightingale by Kathrine Arden
Paperback - 5 Oct 2017

Some cool little purchases in there huh? We don't know right this second what our limit or goal for book buying in the following months is but like I said earlier, a 37 book haul is a joke when we aren't exactly well off and have other things to prioritize. Still, we'll hopefully keep up the monthly posts and until the next one you can click this link to look back at the previous posts in this series.

January TBR Lists

Would you believe I'm writing this post on the 7th on December? Well I am! haha but by the time this goes up it's a new year and that means a re-fresh of the Goodreads goal! We'll have a post all about that itself soon, but for now we're going to stick to the 'to be read'.
Just like last year we're going to have a list of 3 books per month each and choose one of those for each other. However the new thing this year is our TBR jar (another post that will also be coming soon will explain it further) so that is helping us to choose books we may be otherwise procrastinate on picking up. Here is what we have to read this month!

Mr Hallow

Alice in Wonderland Book of the Film by Tui Sutherland (TBR Jar Pick)

Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C S Lewis

Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman (Mrs H's Pick)

Mrs Hallow

Frankenstein by Mary Shelly (TBR Jar Pick)

Poor Unfortunate Soul by Serena Valentino

Artemis Fowl: Arctic Incident by Eoin Colfer (Mr H's Pick)

After really working hard at the end of last year to get better with our reading, we're looking forward to more reading and more book collecting in 2020! Make sure to swing on over to our Bloglovin page and give us a follow! It's quick, free and easy to sign up for an account and will help you keep up with our new posts.