R. L. Stedman

Writer

Reading

Love Pride and Prejudice? Here’s 4 Books To Read

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4 Books Like Pride and Prejudice —

If you love all things period romance, here’s 4 books I guarantee you’ll love.

But first, That Shirt…

Pride and Prejudice

1.   Emma

Emma - a book like Pride and Prejudice

Emma is the second-best Jane Austen novel after Pride and Prejudice. Well, that’s what I think!

Like P&P, Emma abounds in eccentric individuals. And like Austen’s other work, there’s character transformation.

Emma, a rich and beautiful woman, is certain she should be a wonderful matchmaker — why, she knows which man deserves which woman, better even than the individuals themselves…

Like Pride and Prejudice, Emma is very funny and with a surprisingly contemporary tone. Personally, I don’t find it quite as fast-paced as P&P, but it’s still an enjoyable read.

Emma has been made into television shows, movies, stage plays.

Here’s one of my favourite clips from Gwyeneth Paltrow’s version.

2.   Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre - a book like Pride and Prejudice

Charlotte Bronte’s gothic novel about a governess who falls in love with her charge’s father is considerably darker than Austen’s romances.

Jane Eyre is a story of love and loss; of deceit and poverty. I love the settings of Jane Eyre, and Mr Rochester has, I think, more depth than many of Austen’s characters.

BUT — there’s not a whole heap of fun in this book.

However, if you like period romances with a gothic twist you must read Jane Eyre. In this work Bronte created a genre that we’re still enjoying today. From Twilight to Feverborn, readers love the attraction of the dark.

The movie trailer below shows why.

3.  Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome

Three Men in a Boat

Three Men in A Boat is SUCH a good book! Like Pride and Prejudice, Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) is laugh-out-loud funny, and like P&P, it’s true to its era.

Unlike P&P, it’s not a romance. Three Men in a Boat is a travel book, quite possibly the first of its kind! It reads a little like Bill Bryson meets Queen Victoria.

Three Men in A Boat tells the tale of three (slightly hypochondriac) men who feel they need a holiday. So they take a week to travel from London to Oxford by rowing upstream along the Thames.

The story meanders like the river, moving from anecdote to anecdote, and as long as you’re happy to not journey in a straight line, it’s highly enjoyable. Published in 1889, Three Men in a Boat was a hit almost as soon as it hit the stores, and has retained all its charm.

I’ve actually rowed part of the portion in the book, and the descriptions are still accurate. Not all of the pubs remain, alas :).

It’s been made into TV, movies and has ripped off by plenty of comedians and writers. Watch this clip!

4.   Arabella by Georgette Heyer

Arabella - a book like Pride and Prejudice

If you haven’t yet discovered Georgette Heyer, you’re in for a treat! Heyer specialised in regency romances and despite being written in the 1950s, her books feel true to period.

Like Austen, Heyer is very funny and like Austen, she manages to move between third-person limited point of view and third-person omniscient effortlessly. Note to non-writers: this is very hard to do.

Arabella has the classic prejudice of a heroine to the hero; and the hero in Arabella, is extremely proud, but the story is faster-paced than Austen’s.

A brief summary: Arabella is to journey to London to stay with her godmother. The oldest of eight children, from a penniless-but-respectable family, she knows it is her duty to marry well. Unfortunately, she convinces the monde that she is an heiress…

Heyer’s books are superbly written. They’ve been continuously in print since their first edition, and their popularity remains high. However, they’ve never been turned into television or movie, which is a real shame, and Heyer herself never appeared to gain recognition within the literary community.

But if you love P&P, Arabella is the ONE book in this list you must try. And once you read it, you’ll be hooked for life!

But wait – there’s more!

If you’re still short of reading material here’s some other works that are similar to P&P. These books were either written in the same period as Austen, or their tone is similar. The links here lead to the Amazon store, so you can check the description.

Wuthering Heights – by Emily Bronte

My Cousin Rachel – by Daphne Du Maurier

The Grand Sophy – by Georgette Heyer

You could also check out the Silver Petticoat Review; a blog for all things romantic!

Over to you – any books you’d recommend?

Post Script:

Pride and Prejudice bank note
Image Source

Just after writing this post, the Bank of England released a new 10 pound bank note. The bank note features Jane Austen, along with a quote from Pride and Prejudice!

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading”

Ironically, this line is spoken by Caroline Bingley — a character who in Pride and Prejudice who is far more interested in Mr Darcy than books.

This bank note makes Jane Austen to be the only woman (apart from the Queen) to be depicted on a UK bank note.

Go Jane!

3 Intriguing Books That Made Great Holiday Reading

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What to Read on Holiday?

fairytale book
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The big problem with holidays is: what to read? You need something chunky enough to occupy the airport layover but with sufficient pacing to hold keep your attention at a thousand feet. I got lucky on a recent trip and found three great books that did both.

Here they are, in order of reading (I’ve included links to the Amazon pages of these books, in case you want to try an extract for yourself).

  1. A City of Mirrors
  2. The Sudden Appearance of Hope
  3. The Bridge to Lucy Dunn

About My Holiday:

If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook, you’ll see I’ve just been to Australia. The trip was a fascinating mix of bizarre and sublime – from an Elvis competition to humpback whales! (I’ll probably blog later on this unlikely combination.)

Each of these books definitely added to my holiday experience, partly because of the themes they tackled, but also because when you have a good book, how can you be bored?

A City of Mirrors

Holiday reading - Mirrors

A City of Mirrors by Justin Cronin

This is the third and final novel in The Passage Series (The Passage, The Twelve  ).

The Passage Series is set in a dystopian future, where a people have been transformed into bat-like vampires; only a few true humans remain.

So far so tropish.

But what sets The Passage apart from others in the genre is the sheer quality of Cronin’s writing, his fascinating characters and the underlying tone of the desparation. The books are long, but they’re very digestable.

A City of Mirrors is, I think, the best in the trilogy. Mirrors follows Amy, the girl from nowhere and we learn about her ability to move through time. There’s more of Alicia too, which I always like (being partial to sword-carrying red-haired heroines!) but mostly the story follows Peter Jaxom and Sara Mitchell.

Peter and Sara believe that the virals have been vanquished. But they forgot about Zero, the oldest and the worst of the Twelve, and Zero never went away – he’s just been waiting.

What’s to like: as with the other books in the series, the writing is very good; at times, it’s brilliant. The story is compelling, the characters interesting and there’s enough tension to keep you reading.

What’s annoying: There’s the largest info-dump in the world, where Zero reveals his life history in one enormously long sequence. Goes on for aaages, and most of it you can pretty much skim. Some characters could be interesting but we never really know them (like Pim, who’s deaf and dumb). Also, the print version is enormous – just on 600 pages. Stupidly, I brought the print version and ended up carrying a brick around in my suitcase. If you’re getting it for a holiday read, definitely get the e-version!

Best quote:
‘The world was real and you were in it, a brief part but still a part, and if you were lucky, and maybe even if you weren’t, the things you’d done for love would be remembered.’

The Sudden Appearance of Hope

Holiday Reading - Hope

The Sudden Appearance of Hope by Claire North

I love Claire North’s writing – her other books Touch and The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August were enthralling, intriguing sci-fi/fantasy mixed with thriller action. Technically (speaking as a writer here) this is hard to achieve – when writing sci-fi you need to explain the world, but a thriller has to be fast-paced to be, well, thrilling. North manages this difficult challenge brilliantly.

You can read more about Touch and Harry August in an earlier blog post here.

Like Touch and Harry August, The Sudden Appearance of Hope features a protagonist with an unusual ability: Hope Arden is totally forgettable. No one remembers her, not her parents, her friends, or her lovers. She’s therefore an extremely successful thief. And borderline suicidal. Enter Perfection, an app promising users a perfect life, a terrorist named Byron and suddenly Hope becomes the key to a new, extremely valuable technology.

Like Mirrors, Hope is a long book, so if you’re reading it on holiday, definitely get the e-version.

What’s to like: Like North’s other works, the pacing is superb. All three of us – husband and teenage son – raced through this book! The ideas unpacked by the story are truly compelling: What is perfection? How much does software understand? What are we, if no-one remembers us? What is memory?

What’s annoying: There are a lot of bullet points and lists. Sometimes this is interesting, sometimes not so much. Hope describes the technology developed by Perfection as a threat to the species – but I never understood how. And finally, the way Hope jets around the world merrily on stolen passports really annoyed me.

It’s not the passports that strain belief (although I don’t think they’re quite as easy to steal as North makes out, but hey, it’s fiction) but the absence of jet lag. I’ve done enough long haul flights to know how crippled you feel on arrival.

Oh yes, and the part where Hope does her own physiotherapy. That whole chapter (I’m a physiotherapist by training) was really a WTF read. Totally unbelievable. My son goes ‘oh mum, it was fine’! So if you’re a physio, just skip that chapter.

Best quote:

“Truth: sometimes a murderer cannot be found. Truth: sometimes your children are taken and you are left behind. Truth: poverty is a prison. Truth: disease and age come to us all.”

The Bridge to Lucy Dunne

Holiday Reading - Lucy Dunne

The Bridge to Lucy Dunne by Exurb1a

My son introduced me to this work. Exurb1a is a youtuber (I’ve not watched his videos but I sure want to now).

The Bridge to Lucy Dunne is a short-story collection of fantasy and speculative sci-fi. They’re easy to read and very well-written. Some are very short, others are in multiparts. Some are written like an interview transcript, others as diaries,  others as a fable.

Like The Sudden Disappearance of Hope, the stories in Lucy Dunne discuss deep issues: who are we, why are we here, what is God, what is time? But also they’re entertaining and because they’re all so different you can’t really predict what’s coming next.

I think books like The Bridge to Lucy Dunne represent an exciting new wave of platform agnostic narratives: youtube, book, gaming.

What’s to like: The shortness of the stories! Seriously, after reading two massive books it was a relief to dive into a quick read. I enjoyed the diversity of the story structures. But mostly, I enjoyed the ideas behind the stories. My favourite was VASE, about a device that removes your awareness of thought. Without conscious thought, what are we? No depression, but no rapture. And yet, does this make us more or less human?

(A digression: I was listening to this really surreal interview with Thomas Thwaites (GoatMan: How I took a Holiday from Being Human) – some concepts in VASE are real.

Listen to the interview here: Acting the Goat )

What’s annoying: Some of the stories (The Rite, The Flowers) were a little predictable. And some of the more complex issues, like VASE, might be more suited to a deeper structure, like a novella.

Best Quote:
“When cameras were invented plenty of people thought they stole the soul of anyone they took a picture of. There’s always a brief period of hysteria when a new technology comes around.”

Over to you.

Feel free to share. Any book discoveries you’d recommend? What holiday reads have you found?

5 Books That Were Better as the Movie

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Can a Movie be Better Than the Book?

Usually there’s no contest between the book and the movie, but this list suggests that sometimes, just sometimes, the movie might actually be better…

In order of Movie Greatness, here’s my list of 5 movies that were better than the book. Yes, really. Some are new, some are classics and some may surprise you.

Sit back, grab some popcorn and enjoy!

5 Books and 5 Great Movies

5. The Birds

The Birds
While the basis of this short story by du Maurier was similar to the book – birds start attacking humans –  unlike the movie, the book is set in the UK and (spoiler alert!) does not end happily. It’s a long short story and not particularly scary, or (I think) that riveting, unlike some of her other works, which really are page-turners.

The movie is way better – even today, when it seems pretty dated, especially this obvious green screen – because Hitchcock develops the tension amazingly effectively, much more so than du Maurier. After reading The Birds, I wondered why he decided to even use it for the movie, although I’m glad he did.

 

4. Howard’s End

Howard's End
The movie was an Academy Award-winning Merchant Ivory production, starring Emma Thompson, Anthony Hopkins and Helena Bonham-Carter. Like its more famous cousin, A Room with A View, Howard’s End is an adaptation of an EM Forster novel, and deals with class and relationships in Edwardian England. Personally, I find this production not as amazing as Room (it doesn’t have the incredible music score) but the great actors alone make it worth watching.

Unfortunately, the book is not as entertaining as the movie. It grinds on and on and is, frankly, dull. (Unlike A Room With a View, which is just as much fun as the movie). And when reading the book you can’t even become distracted by the gorgeous costumes.

 

3. The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games
I loved the book; really fast-paced, page-turning with epic battle scenes. However…I liked the movie more. Why? Because of the styling. The gorgeous sets of the Capitol, the Louis XIV vibe to the costumes, the colours – so cool. Plus, the movie has Jennifer Lawrence!

2. A Scanner Darkly

A Scanner Darkly
A Scanner Darkly, like Minority Report and Blade Runner, is based on stories by Philip K Dick. Unlike the other movies, Scanner sticks fairly closely to the book’s narrative about a totalitarian police state and an undercover cop. Scanner is a grim read, full psychosis, drug dealing and a bleak future-view. The book is slow going in places and, although it’s got some interesting elements – like the main character’s coat, made up of images of people – I didn’t find it the easiest read.

The movie isn’t the easiest to watch, either, and it does help if you’ve read the book. But there are three things the movie has that the book doesn’t. These are: Keanu Reeves; a tighter script; and AMAZING rendering. If you’re into weird-but-interesting movie productions, A Scanner Darkly is a must-watch.

1. Howl’s Moving Castle

Howl's Moving Castle
Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones is a great read; the story of Sophie Hatter and Howl, the wizard without a heart. BUT, although the book is good, the movie by Hayao Miyasaki is gorgeous! The beautiful anime alone makes it worth watching, but Billy Crystal as Calcifer the Fire Demon is fantastic. (Apparently Diana Wynne Jones wasn’t overly impressed by the movie, but I think she was way too picky. If someone wanted to set one of my books into a landscape as wonderful as this film, I’d be delighted!)

Bonus Runner-Up:

Death on the Nile

Death on the Nile
If you like period dramas and murder mysteries, this is definitely a must-see. The book, by Agatha Christie, is a good read. Christie’s husband was an Egyptologist, and she spent a great deal of time on and about the Nile, so who better to write about a group of affluent tourists on a Nile river boat? Confusion abounds when one is murdered. Fortunately, the world-famous detective, Hercule Poirot is among the guests.

I’m not entirely sure this movie is better than the book (which is why it’s a runner-up). But it has four things that just might make it superior:

  1. The sets – the movie was shot on location in Egyptian, so the scenes in the ancient temples feels just wonderful.
  2. The cast is an all-star roundup of the seventies movie industry: Peter Ustinov as Poirot, Bette Davis, Mia Farrow, David Niven, Maggie Smith.
  3. The costumes – they won an Oscar.
  4. The movie is way less racist than the book.

This trailer is so dated its retro! Don’t you just love the music…

Note: if you enjoyed A Death on the Nile, try Murder on the Orient Express.

Conclusion

Usually there’s no contest between the book and the movie, but this list suggests that sometimes it’s possible to expand on a good story, and make it even better.

5 Books to love forever

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5 Books I’ve Loved —

fairytale book
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Falling in love with a book feels both wonderful and awful. Wonderful, because for a moment you’ve totally forgotten everything else. You’re lost in an imaginary world, where only the characters and their struggles exist. But it’s awful too, because a book always ends. At some point, you’ll have to close the pages and step away.

Sometimes it feels as though a book has ripped your heart out – which is totally crazy, because it’s only words on a page, right?

Here’s my top 5 books of the last 12 months.

I fell deeply in love with each of these books. Each felt different to anything else I’d read before; each was fast-paced and exciting, and dragged me into a different world. Some are part of a series and some are standalone. If you do read any of these I can promise: you will not be bored.

  1. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August – Claire North
  2. Touch – Claire North
  3. Station Eleven – Hilary St John Mandel
  4. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children – Ransom Riggs
  5. The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stievfater (The Raven Cycle, #2)

Why I Fell in Love: Book Reviews

Touch

Touch, by Claire North

Everyone raves about Gone Girl, and it’s a wonderful book; exciting and suspenseful (plus, it made a great movie). But if you like suspense and seat-of-your pants reading, you must read Claire North.

Claire North is a pseudonym of Catherine Webb, a British writer who wrote her first book at the age of just fourteen. Yes, you read that correctly.

Touch is about Kepler, a being who can slide inside other people’s bodies, just by touching them. Kepler has no sex; he/she is the person he inhabits. He’s also a broker, finding bodies for other beings like him. But someone, or something, is after him, and now he’s on the run. In Touch, Kepler moves from body to body, on a quest to find a nightmare. Do you suddenly wake up, with no recollection of where you’ve been, or how you’ve got there? Have you been losing time? Perhaps Kepler’s been using you.

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

The first 15 lives of Harry August by Claire North

Harry August lives his life over and over again. Each time he dies he finds himself reborn in a restroom in 1919. He is an Ouroboran, destined to repeat his life. He is not alone; there’s a club of members who pass messages throughout time, from one Ouroboran to another. Don’t let the sci-fi premise put you off, because at its heart, Harry August is both a thriller and an intriguing tale about one man’s struggle with loneliness.

Station Eleven

Station Eleven by Hilary St John Mandel

Hilary St John Mandel is a Canadian writer; this is her fourth novel. It’s a powerhouse of a story, and has one of the most complex narratives I’ve  read. The story weaves back in forward through time, beginning with the death of Arthur Leander in London. Leander, playing the role of Lear, collapses on stage of a heart attack, just before the beginning of a pandemic that spreads rapidly through the world, annihilating civilisation and grounding planes. Station Eleven moves through multiple points of view: Arthur, his ex-wife, a child actor, an audience paramedic. Each character has their own story to tell. The pace is extraordinary; for such a complex novel, it’s never boring, and at sometimes so mind-blowing I couldn’t bear to put it down. This was my must-read novel of 2015, and I’ve already read it again since.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

Jacob  always thought his grandfather couldn’t distinguish truth from fiction; his tales of growing up in an orphanage filled with children of peculiar gifts seemed a fantasy to obscure the truth – that his family was murdered by the Nazis in WW2. But when his grandfather is murdered, Jacob realizes that perhaps the truth is stranger than he’d thought. I’m in awe of this book. Not only because of its wonderful story, but because of the craft behind it. Riggs does a wonderful job of scenes with multiple characters (it’s really hard to do this and not get the reader confused) and his prose is both economical and powerful, a trait only the best writers display. Miss Peregrine is illustrated by the most awesomely bizarre photos. It was these photos that were the genesis of the story, and its worth getting the hard copy of the book rather than a download, simply because of these images.

Miss Peregrine’s being made into a movie, due for release shortly, and since I read this book there have been two more books in the series published. Miss Peregrine’s is one of those stories that’s so perfect in itself that it makes me reluctant to read the rest of the series, in case it can’t live up to the promise of the first!

The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stievfater (The Raven Cycle)

The Dream Thieves

Oh my god, this series is fantastic! (see my earlier blog post on this book). The Dream Thieves is Book #2 in the Raven Cycle and I’ve listed The Dream Thieves here – rather than the other books in the Cycle – because The Dream Thieves a) was the first book I read in the Cycle and b) it totally blew me away.

Compared to the other 4 books listed in this post, The Dream Thieves isn’t that complex. Set in Aglionby Academy, it tells the story of the extraordinary Ronan, a psychic called Blue and their mad friends. The Dream Thieves contains a sometimes bizarre, always exciting mix of drag racing, ghosts and dead Welsh kings. If you enjoy fantasy, adventure and historical references this is a must-read.

Confession time: I haven’t read the last book in The Raven Cycle yet! Like Miss Peregrine I’m almost scared to, because the rest of the series was just so great that I don’t want to be disappointed at the end.

In Conclusion

I read a lot of books. Some of them I put on my shelf at Goodreads.com , although recently I’ve been slack and haven’t been as religious at filing them as I should. (I might update it shortly, so keep an eye out). But even though I read a LOT, I rarely fall in love.

How to Make Your Teen a Lifetime Reader

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Make Your Teen a Life-Time Reader

It can be hard to find the right book for a teen. I know; I have two of them (teens, not books!).  There’s so much vying for a teen’s attention: Videos, TV on demand, gaming, social media. Mostly all at once.

 

teenager - school visit

The advantage of the right book, though, is that a) it doesn’t need batteries and b) teachers approve. And once you’ve found the right one you’re golden, because a teen will devour it, watch the movie, read the sequel, and wear the clothes. They’ll be quiet for hours, totally immersed in another world. Books may appear solitary, but teens use them to form communities. They’ll discuss their favourite books with on-line or real world friends; they form fandoms.

 5 (free) Resources:

  1. Your school librarian. A great school librarian is the best resource ever. If you home school or don’t have the best library, you can try Teen Librarian Toolbox, a website for teen librarians (that is, librarians for teens, not the other way around!) or My Best Friends are Books, curated by the Amazing Zac from Christchurch City Library.
  2. Goodreads, a social media site for readers. There are a lot of Young Adult (YA) pages, where readers can hang out with their peers.
  3. #bookstagram on instagram, twitter or tumblr. Just pop it into the search bar, and you’ll come up with a range of sites. Because many are curated by people under 25, you’ll generally find a whole bunch of book ideas and connect with a lot of passionate readers.
  4. Book blogs. I’m planning on doing a post on my favourite book bloggers later, but if you check out bookbub’s blog that’s a good start. Just pop “teen” into the search function on the right, and you’ll find a whole heap of suggestions.
  5. Poetry is a rich resource. Check out Slam Poetry on Youtube (also check out the comments on this link – teens are fabulous supporters of one another.)

The Importance of Books

I follow @westerosreader on Instagram. In one post he said he never was a great reader until his Aunt leant him the Maze Runner and … well, now he’s hooked! He now has over 16K followers and a great fan base.

So never, never, stop encouraging kids to read; the right book at the right time can change a teen’s life.

How to Fall in Love With Words

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Falling in Love with Words —

Two nights ago I went to a workshop called ‘A Continued Sense of Wonder’.

Picture Book
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Hosted at the awesome Dunedin Public Library, the workshop was about children’s literature. It’s to be held quarterly, and is open to anyone with an interest in kids books. Best of all, it’s totally FREE!

What did I learn?

This group reminded me of how central a book can be in a child’s life.

We each brought a book that had resonated with us, either as a kid or as an adult. Books ranged from Tintin’s Explorers On the Moon to The Illuminae Files, and we each had an interesting story about why this particular book was, or had been, important to us.

(Rather cheekily, I brought along my own book, The Prankster and the Ghost, because to be honest, this is the kid’s book that has touched me the most. I learned an awful lot about myself while writing it, and I wanted to share a little of that experience.)

Why we like stories

We talked about how a favourite book provided a pathway into fantasy. ‘I used to imagine myself as Laura Ingalls Wilder, playing in the prairies.’

Books provided street cred: ‘I was the only girl in my class who had read a book eight times!’

Books created friendships: ‘I biked round to my friend’s house to read her books’.

Books provided escape: ‘It was awfully soothing, just reading and listening to the waves.’

Books are important to us

We hold our favourite books gently. We smile as we talk about them and we turn the pages slowly, with reverence. If we’re talking to others about the book, we tip the book to share the pictures inside. Books carry more than a story; they carry memories; they remind us of a time we were happy.

Through stories, kids make sense of the world.

The evening reminded me again of just how much I had loved reading as a kid – oh, the memories! Mum coming home from the library with a bag full of books; picture books for the little kids, chapter books for us older ones. And the excitement of going to the library by myself, with my own library card. Reading by torchlight when I was supposed to be asleep; of the disappointment of watching Little House on the Prairie and realising it was nothing like the book.

How stories have changed, and how they’ve stayed the same.

I used to read books that had been translated. Heidi, Pippi Longstocking, Asterix. It’s much harder now to find translated works for kids (The Gecko Press is doing some great work in this space).

Thirty years ago, the plots of kids books had a slower pace, and frequently the words were more complex.

But many of the great novels are still as loved as they’ve always been. Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking is as unorthodox and fun as ever – who wouldn’t love to have a horse on a verandah? Charlotte’s Web still makes kids cry. And children cheer when the Peach leaves with James inside.

Kids today are even luckier than we were because now they have Harry Potter!

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Remembering the importance of books

Sadly, it’s all too easy to lose sight of the enjoyment your work provides others. Perhaps I need to remind the marketers of this when they talk about ‘what is the unique selling point of your book?’: It’s not about my book – it’s about all books. Writers are not in competition with each other.

Caught up in the drive to update the Facebook page, to increase the word count, to promote one’s work, sometimes its good to step back and remember: we write because we love it.

We write because, once upon a time, we fell in love with reading.

Finally…

What was your favourite book as a child? What’s the first book you remember reading? And now you’re an adult, what kids book do you love the most?

More information:

Dunedin Library’s A Sense of Wonder meets quarterly and is open to anyone who loves kids books (writers, readers, illustrators, librarians, parents, grandparents…). You can download the Fiction Highlights from the Children’s Collection here: Continued Sense of Wonder 1 Booklist

Just for fun, I’ve added links to the Amazon holdings of all the books mentioned in this post!