Over the last few months I have really gotten into reading the genre of children’s classics and I am actually beginning to see it also crossing over into adult classics as well. As some of you already know I love reading and when something really grabs me. I cannot remember there being many books in the house as I grew up. My mam used to be given piles of women’s magazines and I would devour them. My dad was a member of the local library when we lived in Peterlee. It was housed in a big old white house and one day he took me along and joined me. Thank you Dad….you started me on this beautiful journey of a lifetime love of reading and all things books.

Hubby and I moved around a lot when we first married but it never felt at home until I had a library ticket in my clammy little hands.

Because I have started on this journey with the classics this blog may be longer and a bit listy. I love plain black pretty notebooks… of all sizes…so here goes. In my notebook, I am going to type them out for this blog. I have read, what I have in my pile or re-read it. What I think started this obsession was volunteering in an Oxfam bookshop. Thursday mornings are heaven. I also concentrate on books at Cancer Research where I volunteer as well. It was there I picked “Anne of Green Gables” and I have also seen the movie. I write in my notebooks various headings so I will list each one I have read which is 9……that’s how new this obsession is. So here goes…

1. Anne of Green Gables…First sentence…Mrs Rachel Lynde lived where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow fringed with alders and lady eardrops and transferred by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place; it was reputed to be an intricate headlong brook in the earlier course through these wood, with dark secrets……that in half of the sentence…it is one long on the last sentence…..”God’s in his heaven, alls right with the world” whispered Anne softly.

2. Peter Pam by JM Barrie…I never completed reading this one as I gave up reading this halfway. I found it very dark and a bit disturbing.
First sentence…All children except one grow up.   Last sentence…When Margaret grows up she will have a  daughter, who is to be Peter’s mother in turn, and thus it will go on so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless.

3. Little Women…”Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents”grumbled Jo lying on the rug.
Last sentence “train gathered speed, Uncle Charlie stopped running; Mrs Raggles leant out for the last wave then turning to her husband, she answered. The end of a perfect day.”

I will just list the others that I have read…..The Railway Children, The Family From One End Street, Folk of the Faraway Tree…Enid Blyton and the one I reading at the moment is The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. Black Beauty.

In the bookcase await……Oliver Twist, War Horse by Michael Morapur, Goodnight Mr Tom, Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Vern. Heidi, The Jungle Book. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Wonderful work of OZ, TheSecret Garden(my next choice), The Midnight Garden, Treasure Island, Tom’s Brown Schooldays, Hans Anderson Fairy tales, The Enchanted Wood by Enid Blyton, Famous 5 on Treasure Island, Fantastic Mr Fox, The Further Adventures on the Famous 5, A Christmas Carol, Swallows and Amazons (also watching that on Iplayer). Pollyanna, Alice in Wonderland, Stig of the Dump and David Copperfield.

A huge list of what I am looking for…Watership Down, Ballet Shoes, Charlottes Webb, Narnia books, Water Babies, The Hounds of the Baskervilles (I am not sure but it was on a children’s list, Wind in the Willows, What Katy Did /next.at school,  Mary Poppins, Milly, Molly Mandy, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang…..I did not realize that this was written by Ian Fleming(James Bond), Little House On The Prairie, BFG, Five Children and IT, James and the Giant Peach, The Twits, and Fairy tales from Arabian nights. Grimms Fairy tales, Gullivers Travels, Good Wives, Pilgrims Progress….read to us in class at junior school, Pinocchio, Robin Hood, Robinson Crusoe, Swiss Family, King Arthur and the Round Table, Lorna Doone, Flambards, The Borrowers, The Old Curiosity Shop, Little Dorrit, Beauty and The Beast, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Stuart Little Tom Thumb, Pippi Lockstocking, Doctor Dolittle,

Taken longer than I thought so I will take a break and do Part 2 this evening