What's your favourite book?
Ooooh please share!
I love books. I love them with a passion. Over the years I find less and less time to appreciate them. I find it a chore sometimes to pick up a book, and to give it the amount of time and attention it deserves. This has lead me to forget just how much joy I get out of reading. Once I take that first step, and actually pick up a book and take the time to get in to it, and get past the first few chapters, there's no getting me to put it down. I'm addicted. I have this thing where when I pick up a good book, I just have to read it, I can sit for hours on end and just read and read. Get lost in this world created by words, painting pictures with my imagination. It's wonderful.
As a student I was made to feel quite guilty about my love of reading. The first book I ever read (read to me) was 101 Dalmations, I've still got the copy that was read to me, so that I can read it to my children one day. I remember spending weekends going out with my dad, and looking for old Enid Blyton books, we'd go all over, to book fairs, to find certain books, that we wanted to read (he used to read me bedtime stories at night). That was part of the fun, findingt these books, hunting for them. Getting lost in old books. I can't describe the feeling. Children today don't have the same appreciation for books as I did then. I'm not even sure children at that time had the same appreciation as me. There's just so many other things for kids now, that simple things such as reading are forgotten, and it's sad. Because children are missing out on so much. I had a teaching assistant job for a while, and the amount of kids that just never read at home was awful. Parents prefered to sit them in front of the tv and leave them to it. I have nothing against tv, in moderation it's fine, just as video games, in moderation are fine. They just need a balance, and nothing beats a good bedtime story at night. I hope I can pass this gift on to my children one day!
So, this lead me to thinking about my favourite book. I love alot of writers, and appreciate alot of different books, but I have to say that my favourite book of all time isn't up there with some of the highly critically acclaimed writers out there. My favourite book is, 'Blast from the past', by Ben Elton. As a comedian, I don't really appreciate Ben Elton, but this book is just fabulous. I've read it loads of times, and that's a sign of a good story, when you can read it a few times, and get something different from it everytime. In short it is a love story, but there's so much more to it than that. It's funny, it's sad, it has politics, murder, freaks and weirdos. It has twists and turns. It shows you just where love can take you and the consequences of having such intense feelings. It really is a great book.
Anyway as I love reading I'm always willing to take on other peoples opinions, and there's nothing like sharing a good book, so what's your favourite book and why?
and Hamlet , although that's technically not a book....