A Matter of Choice

There are many things that I imagined I would do (or not do) when I had children and in most cases it turns out that I was completely wrong - providing fresh home cooked meals every day, no junk food, limited tv and technology time, educational arts and crafts etc but one thing I was right about was the fact I would read to my children and try and encourage a love of books in them. As a child I absolutely loved visiting the local library, and spent many hours there choosing hundreds of books over the years. I remember the excitement of becoming old enough to get an adult card and suddenly being able to take out 9 books at a time.  I think they actually let me get one early as I used to go through the books so fast! When Leo was just a couple of months old I took him to a Baby Bounce and Rhyme time at the library, and although he was way to young to appreciate it I know it is something I would have continued, and I'm sure we would have been regular borrowers of children...

Books and reading have always been a big part of my life, some of my earliest memories are sitting on my Mum's lap reading books together. As a pre-schooler I would insist on Mum reading the same books to me again and again, much like my boys to do me (and her!) now.  Often after I had dragged her out of bed at sunrise and run her ragged all day she would be struggling to stay awake once snuggled up reading books to me, her eyes would droop and I'd complain that she was reading my well loved stories wrong! My Dad is also an avid reader too, and our house was always full of books. I also loved our frequent library trips which continued until I could drive when I would go by myself after work. I can picture the library as well as I can my childhood bedroom and I have fond memories of how we would split up as soon as we entered and find each other later on at the desk with an armful of books each.  There was one book Mum and I regularly read, I can't remember the name...

It's been a very long time since I joined in with Kate's Listography but I couldn't resist at the mention of books. I couldn't even begin to tell you how many books I've read and I have so many favourites but these are these ones which are the most memorable to me. The 'Little House' series - Laura Ingalls Wilder After reading Little House on the Praire at school, and then finding 'These Happy Golden Years at the library I was totally hooked on the story of Laura and her family.  Eventually I owned the whole set and read and re-read them for many years. I can't remember how old I was when I got rid of them but I dearly wish I'd kept them all now. Flowers In the Attic - Virginia Andrews This was the first time I realised how you (usually) ruin a very good book with a bad film.  I loved Flowers in the Attic and the rest of the series, but I sat in disbelief at the film - it wasn't even the same ending! I went on to read almost every...

This week's Gallery theme is 'Books' I can't remember a time when I didn't read. There have been so many books over the years I'd loved, I have no idea how many books I've read but for each time of life there are always a few which stick out in your mind, even as far back as  I can remember, back to my play-school days.... No prizes for guessing which classic book we were characters from... It was our playschools end of year show, I was the butterfly and all I had to do was crawl out of the cocoon (a table covered in brown paper)  after my friend the hungry caterpillar had crawled into the other side. I was very shy anyway and wasn't very happy about doing it probably but unfortunately, I hit my head on the table as I came out - I can still remember the pain!    I saw my Mum in the audience and ran straight to her crying! No amount of persuasion could get me back on stage, I think in the end my Mum came up to...

As mentioned before our family have a huge love of books and we have passed this onto Leo, like his toys his favourites vary from day to day but a some he always comes back to are the classic Mr Men series.  He can name nearly all of them and as well as reading them he likes to spend time looking at them all and arranging them all over the place, I think he's so impressed that he now owns so many of them! I then remembered that his first ever fancy dress costume when he was 9 months old happened to be a Mr Man, long before he had any idea who they were.   It was brought at the last minute from the only place I could find here to sell them and it was one of a choice of two outfits. It was also for a 5 year old to be worn as a top with red trousers but it was that or nothing so we gave it a shot! These days although Mr Noisy certainly suits him a lot of the time,  I'm sure he'd protest and want to be a different one, currently his favour...

Many years ago in our first house on one of our many late night (undoubtedly slightly drunken!) conversations with our housemates and assorted friends, we came to swapping random and probably quite silly jokes  - someone mentioned the 'Wide Mouthed Frog' and although most knew the punchline no-one could remember the joke for the life of them.    I have no idea why but I remember laughing hysterically at Aaron's delivery of the punchline, despite never the fact I had no idea of the original joke. It became a standing joke - just the line 'Ooh, you don't see many of those around do you?'   and still years on we didn't know the rest of it. ( See, this is what happened without Google, in writing this post I searched and found it here ) Moving on to a couple of weeks ago, I saw that Bloomsbury have published the book for children! After all these years, we just HAD to have it! It was a huge hit with Leo, sat enthralled through the ent...

Although I'd heard of the expression 'Tiger Mother' I didn't know much about the book that it came from. I somehow had missed the huge controversial debate that happened after it's release. 'Battle Hymn Of The Tiger Mother' by Amy Chua is, in her own words.... 'a story about a mother, two daughters, and two dogs. This was supposed to be a story of how Chinese parents are better at raising kids than Western ones. But instead, it's about a bitter clash of cultures, a fleeting taste of glory, and how I was humbled by a thirteen-year-old' Amy, is Chinese - American, raised in the traditional strict Chinese way by her parents who immigrated to the USA before her birth.  She chose to raise her two girls in the same way despite the extra difficulties of doing it in a country where it was considered unusual at best and at worst cruel. I deliberately didn't read anything online about the book before I received it, as I wanted to make up my own...

Reading has always been my passion and barely a day would go by without me spending at least a small part of it stuck into a book, well in the good old days before the distractions of the internet that is! Aaron is also a very avid reader and we've spent many days over the years reading in silence next to each other. I can't remember a time when I didn't love books, my Mum likes to tell me how I used to tell her off for falling asleep whilst reading to me as I'd know when she got the words wrong.... much like a certain little man does to me these days.  Our house was full of books and I regularly visited the library with my Dad which was hugely exciting... FREE books, what more could you ask for especially as I wanted to read everything, more than I could ever manage to buy! I spotted on another blog  a prompt to share 'my three books' one each from Childhood, Adulthood and Parenthood which got me thinking of my lifetime favourites so far.  I have ...