TGIF: Most Valuable Book

Source

Most Valuable Book: From your personal collection of books, which ones hold the most value to you - is it signed by the author? or maybe it's your favourite story of all time? Share it with us.

I have lots of books that are very, very special to me and here they are:

Yeah...just a few. As you can probably guess I tend to buy different versions of the same books a lot. 

I have two versions of The Hobbit here, but I also have another copy that isn't so special. The two here are special because one I've had since I was a kid and is an anniversary edition and the other is one of my favourite cover versions. The Hobbit is a firm favourite of mine, and you can probably guess from looking at the photo what other books are also favourites of mine.

The two versions of Skellig belong to myself and my fiancé and are both signed (see below). 

The little red book is Through The Looking Glass and I also have an old version of Alice in Wonderland. I really like Alice in Wonderland by the way. In getting these books out I also discovered that I have two identical copies of the Penguin annotated classics version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Alice's Adventures Through the Looking Glass which I didn't realise, I thought I had lost one of them so bought a new one because I couldn't bear not having a reading copy to hand.

I adore the Narnia boxset here but I also have another set of Narnia books, I have another copy of The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe that would have originally been a part of a boxset, I also have the TV cover version, as you can see, and I have this copy of The Magicians Nephew which my Dad got me. I really like The Chronicles of Narnia.

The Little Grey Rabbit books, Betrix Potter books and Molly Moves House book are all childhood favourites. 

The Room With A View, The Go-Between, The Awakening and the Christina Rosetti poetry books are all from college and I love them to pieces. 

The Last Rabbit book contains a favourite poem (The Last Rabbit) which both my mum and I love. 

Earthsea Quartet was given to me by my sister and I still love it. 

Stolen, Flyaway, Fighback and Blood Hunters were written (and signed) by my former university tutors. 

Writes of Passage is the anthology that has a piece of my writing featured in it.

Signed books! Lucy Christopher and Steve Voake both taught on my university course and my masters course, they're wonderful people and I'm still in contact with Lucy. So of course I asked them to sign my books.

David Almond did a talk during the Bath Literature Festival a couple of years ago so I took the books along to be signed by him, I asked him to sign my fiancé's book too because he had to go to work so couldn't attend which was rubbish, but at least he now has a nice signed book.

I have a lot of books that I adore and I would be so sad if I ever lost them. This is also interesting because I think it accurately reflects what kinds of books I like, I obviously have a thing for fantasy and children's/YA books.

This week at The Paralian Girl:

Listen To This: Enya
Page Turners: Making Comics
From The Review Pile: 172 Hours On The Moon
TGIF: Most Valuable Book

Still to come:

Something For The Weekend

Sunday Catch Up

Thursday Thought: How Much Do You Spend On Books?

How much do you spend on books each year?

How much have I spent on books in my life?!

I was looking through my review pile the other day which consists of about twenty books both read and unread. That doesn't include other books I have waiting to be read that aren't for review. It doesn't include comic books, graphic novels or manga. It doesn't include all the books I already own.

I read about three books a month, plus one or two comic books. I aim for around 50 books a year. Luckily I don't have to buy reading books much at the moment thanks to my reviewing gig (they're sent from publishers for free) so that saves me a fair chunk. If you have the spare time and love reading, look around for websites and blogs that need reviewers, you get paid in books! I used to review manga and anime too which worked in the same way but was less frequent than the website I now review for. I probably still spend a good few of hundred a year on comic books alone. But I'm sure we'd all agree it's money well spent!

Image from: Prettybooks

What about you?

A Little Update

Some new lovely review books arrived yesterday, I now have a stack of twelve!

Aren't they pretty? Pod and The Demon's Watch are proof covers. I can't wait to get stuck into them but I must finish Arcadia Awakens first!