Things I am very good at:
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Buying books
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Reading
books
Things I am very bad at:
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Taking photos
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Getting rid of books
I will start with my
floor-to-ceiling bookcase, which my dad built for me six months ago. It’s so
tall; I had to stand most of the way across the room to get the whole thing in.
And, of course, it’s overflowing. But it is organised! The bottom shelf is
actually double-layered and full of YA; the second is my academic shelf –
school folders and the beginnings of my university book collection; the middle
shelf with the lamp is literary theory and reference; and the rest are all classics. Yeah. Nuts.
These are the bottom two shelves: the most easily reachable
from my bed, so I can grab these books at any time of the night when I get a
midnight craving. At the very bottom is the Harry Potter series. I’ve read
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone eighteen times, so you could say they
have a very special place in my heart. I’ve also just noticed they are out of
order...
The Twilight Saga, which is hidden by HP, also deserves an
honourable mention. They inspired my own vampire writing, and the only reason
they and their gorgeous covers aren’t on the front row is because they won’t
fit.
Placed horizontally on top of Harry Potter are a collection
of proofs and published titles from HarperVoyager, my publisher, who were kind
enough to send me away with a goody bag when I went to visit. (They asked if I
would prefer them posted to me, but they literally couldn’t tear them out of my
hands). My boyfriend’s copy of Dan Brown’s The
Lost Symbol is there too.
On the second row up are a pile of books ready for me to
take to the University
of Oxford, where I am
embarking on a course to read English this October. It’s a terrifying pile, so
to cheer myself up I store a proof of my own debut novel, The Dark Heroine on top. It’s only being published this autumn, so
I am in still in the honeymoon period where stroking the cover makes me very,
very happy...
I love the middle shelf here! It’s full of the wonderful
Jane Austen. After all, who can resist a bit of Mr Darcy? There are also two
books here that make me shudder a little – Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles
and Golding’s Lord of the Flies – which are both books I had to study at
school. The flags are leftover from a summer of patriotism with the Queen’s
Diamond Jubilee and the Olympics, and the Canadian flag was a present from a
Canadian friend. I keep it on my bookshelf because the writing community I started
out on, Wattpad.com, is Canadian, as are my beta reader and editor. It reminds
me of how lucky I am.
Lastly, the mammoth bookshelf from our living room. For the
most part, it’s full of books on physics, war and machines. I don’t visit it
very often.
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