Every Tuesday over at  The Broke and Bookish we all get to look at a particular topic for discussion and use various (or more to the point ten) examples to demonstrate that particular topic.  This week’s topic is:

Top Ten Reasons I’m Thankful For Books

This week’s top 10 was ‘books we’re thankful for’ but I’ve altered it slightly to 10 reasons I’m thankful for books:

1. They’re so entertaining!  Reading is my hobby (you may have guessed) and I prefer  it to many other forms of entertainment.  It’s fun – do it.  Pretty please.
2. You never feel lonely – firstly, you will fall in love with well written characters, you will care for them and worry about them.  Secondly, if you blog or interact on social media then you’ll find a whole new space where like minded people, authors, bloggers, publishers, will be more than happy to share their thoughts with you about books they love – this is perfect.  Especially for me. I can be a bit vocal about my love of books and I think I was turning into that person that would yap away about books to people who, well, just didn’t care and would therefore try to avoid me – or at least that’s the reason I’m sticking to when I see people dive into their houses or behind posts when they see me coming.
3. Visit weird and wonderful places – when are you ever going to visit such great places.  Feed your imagination and go travelling – literally, the sky is the limit and no pesky queues at airports, worrying about if you turned the iron off or ‘did you lock the back door’ – just crack open the pages and you’re away.  Like having your own personal transportation device – ‘beam me up Scotty’
4. Educational – perhaps a boring choice – or maybe not (I don’t think so), but by reading you improve your grammar, your vocabulary and pick up all sorts of random bits of information that stick in your brain much easier than facts and figures used to do at school.  Who knew.  Perhaps this could be a new teaching tool for logarithms…. and then on second thoughts maybe not.
5. Watch great adaptations – how many films have you watched, or series for that matter, that come from books?  Too many to list here is all I know.  A lot.  A whole lot.  TV and cinema would be a lot less entertaining without them there books!  The is all.  Dusts of hands, stands and departs, feeling smug…
6. Never short of choice – yeah, we all know this one.  I’m sure I read somewhere that if you read a book a day for a year you’d only have read 1% of the available books (published that year) – I could be making that up though.  As we know 79% of all statistics are made up on the spot 😀  Regardless we all know what our TBRs look like – and they’re serious are they not.  If TBRs could develop personalities mine currently looks like a curmudgeonly so and so – if TBRs could move about mine would follow me around the house and try to kill me by toppling over.  What a scary thought – death by TBR stalker.
7. Something for everyone – no matter what you need to know about there’s probably a book been written to help you out.  I dare say everyone will come up with some special problems to prove that wrong now but at this moment in time I’m convinced it’s bang on.
8. You can multi task – you can read a book whilst doing other things – like having a bath – the counts as multi tasking.  Or, you can do a whole host of things by listening to an audio book. I’ve found a new love for this even though I resisted it for so long (don’t know why).
9. Your very own wormhole – this is the best so I saved it for last.  There’s nothing like that book that sweeps you away, everything else around you dissolves into background nothingness and you’re in your very own wormhole.  Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about.
10. This one is blank for why you love books???????

Every Tuesday over at  The Broke and Bookish we all get to look at a particular topic for discussion and use various (or more to the point ten) examples to demonstrate that particular topic.  This week’s topic is:

Top Ten Books I Recommend for Children

I’m not going to particularly say what ages these are for – I think they’re all fairly young although Not Now Bernard, Winnie the Pooh and the Dr Seuss books are probably slightly younger than the others and the JK Rowling book – the Philosopher’s Stone is the first and because of the way the story develops and becomes quite dark it’s a good series to read one a year so that the reader grows along with the characters in the story.  I actually had more than 10 this week but I’ve shown some restraint:

1. David Mckee – Not Now Bernard
2. Roald Dahl – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Fantastic Mr Fox, Esio Trot
3. E B White – Charlotte’s Web
4. JK Rowling – Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
5. CS Lewis – the Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe
6. JRRTolkien – The Hobbit
7. AAMilne – Winnie the Pooh
8. Frances Hodgson Burnett – The Secret Garden
9. Mary Norton – The Borrowers
10. Dr Seuss – The Cat in the Hat, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Green Eggs and Ham

Every Tuesday over at  The Broke and Bookish we all get to look at a particular topic for discussion and use various (or more to the point ten) examples to demonstrate that particular topic.  This week’s topic is:

Halloween Freebie

I’m going to go with 10 books that you can either read or watch the adaptation for Halloween:

1. Bram Stoker’s Dracula – lots of adaptations for this and various spin offs.  I love this book.
2. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein – I love this book too.  Thought provoking not to mention the inspiration for many adaptations.  Let me know if you have a favourite.  Strangely enough I love the comedy adaptation Young Frankenstein.
3. The Shining by Stephen King.  I saw the film long before I read the book and actually thought it was pretty damn scary – but, having now read the book – wow!
4. I am Legend by Richard Matheson.  Another great book that probably became the inspiration for countless zombie books and movies.  Now, I’m not going to lie – I prefer the book to the adaptation, I think the film is a good film but I don’t like that the ending was changed.
5. The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle.  Okay, not maybe so scary but a great read for Halloween and plenty of adaptations.
6. Salem’s Lot by Stephen King.  This is one scary book and adaptation (i’m thinking of the adaptation that was in two parts).  Brrrr.
7. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson.  I like the old black and white version of this book – more atmospheric.  Regardless of which adaptation you watch the book makes a great read.
8. Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire.  Both equally.  I saw the film before reading the book and having now picked this one up I think the adaptation is really good.
9. Carrie by Stephen King.  I read this book as a teenager and I was going through my phase of reading all the horror and dark things – I thought the film was brilliant too – excellent performances by Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie.
10. I’ve left this one blank so you can recommend something for me to read/watch

And, I’ll leave you with these three:

Oh look, another glorious morning. Makes me sick!