NOSTALGIA BOOK TAG.

I've been thinking a lot recently about the books I used to read when I was younger, and how some of them have really resonated with me for various reasons. I've always been a big reader (even more so when I was younger than now, sadly.) I'm pretty new to this whole blogging thing but I've done a little search and can't seem to find a pre-existing tag that specifically caters to what I want to talk about, so I've decided to make one of my own.

The idea of this tag is for you to cast your mind way back to the books you read as a child/young teenager. Let's go...


Your favourite childhood book:
MOLLY MOON'S HYPNOTIC TIME-TRAVEL ADVENTURE - GEORGIA BYNG.

I remember picking up the first books in this series from the bookshelf at primary school because the author had the same name as me and I thought that was super cool. I went out to WHSmith with my pocket money and bought the third book in hardcover, and I used to take off the outer sleeve and pretend I was reading a super old, fancy book. The story was always full of action, and I loved the whole adventure-story vibes at that age (still do to be honest) so it was a book I could read over and over without getting bored. Molly was such a great main character; she was one of those diamonds-in-the-rough who wouldn't take crap from anyone, even just aged 11. Now I think about it, this series is probably where my love for strong female protagonists began. NICE.

A book you remember reading and hating:
JANE EYRE - CHARLOTTE BRONTË.

I read this when I was 11 of my own volition (why did I subject myself to the pain? Masochistic child.) and absolutely hated it - it was slow and boring and in my head there wasn't even a happy ending. I re-read it a couple of years ago and found I pretty much still dislike it as much as the first time. (Little did I know back then that gloomy, mopey stories are what the Brontë sisters did best...and all that they ever wrote.)

A book with a background story to it:
TOTALLY LUCY (MAKEOVER MAGIC AND FANTASY FASHION) - KELLY MCCAIN.

I used to read a magazine called Girl Talk and one day they had a special page for a competition to win a bunch of prizes and so my mum let me enter for a few of the prizes, including the first two books in this series. After more than six months (and after I had forgotten I'd even entered the contests) I got the two books in the post. I must have enjoyed the novels, because I went and bought the third and fourth book too.

An underrated children's/YA book:
TANGLEWRECK - JEANETTE WINTERSON.

This was probably one of the books that really cemented my departure from the girly-but-generic novels I had been reading a lot of before this. Tanglewreck is written for children, but deals with some pretty big subject matter (the philosophy of time, belief, perception, love) - in fact, it's almost in the same vein as a few dystopias I've found myself reading more recently. I remember reading it for the first time and being confused, but mostly intrigued, and I tried again and found that I really enjoyed it.

The book that made the biggest impact on you:
NOUGHTS AND CROSSES - MALORIE BLACKMAN.

To this day, this book really affects me. Now that I'm thinking about it, it was the first book that ever made me feel such intense emotion (note: I'm not an emotional person, so this was not only an impressive feat but it actually overwhelmed me while I was reading because I was just so unsettled by it) and one of the most explicit in its depiction of social injustice, depression and political problems - subjects I had barely considered previously. I still think it's such a powerful way to paint injustice and it truly has resonated with me not just as a reader but as a person.

A book you can pick up and read even now:
THE GIVER - LOIS LOWRY.

I re-read this during the summer and found it was just as intriguing as when I read it when I was 11. It's aimed at children but I find that it's not written in a patronising way, which is always good when you're reading it aged 19. Apparently over the years I've developed a penchant for dystopian fictions, and The Giver is just that (although arguably it's meant to be presented first as a utopian fiction, but throughout the story it becomes evident there are flaws within the society.) As a novella, it's a quick read, but the story is entrancing and always interesting.

A book/series you read when you were younger that now has a film adaptation:
THE NORTHERN LIGHTS - PHILIP PULLMAN.

A lot of the books I read as a child seem to have now been made into films, some better adaptions than others. I think the His Dark Materials trilogy on our bookshelf was my older brother's, but as the intellectually competitive child I was, I wanted to be able to read them too. I had to try quite hard with the trilogy, but once I got into them I really enjoyed them. The film adaption on the other hand (The Golden Compass) was possibly one of my least favourite adaptions of a book ever; they missed out huge parts of the storyline and while I'm all for changing stories to make them compatible for film (I am a Film student after all), I think this detracted from it rather than making it more accessible.

A book you realise now is actually just shit:
TWILIGHT - STEPHENIE MEYER.

Need I say more? I feel like even when reading it I acknowledged that it was badly-written, but I chose to ignore it. What I cannot ignore now, however, is frankly how bizarre the premise is, even for a supernatural fiction, which is by its very nature meant to be a bit weird. Vampires who have barely any of the prerequisites for being a vampire? Creepy stalker guy? Protagonist with almost no character development? A lot of people had a Twilight phase, but while mine was perhaps longer than others', I like to hope I'm quite definitively out of it now.

A book you'll never forget:
MARSHMALLOW MAGIC AND THE WILD ROSE ROUGE - KAREN MCCOMBIE.

For the most part this novel is very similar to all others of its genre, but it has a little something that sets it apart. There's a twist at the end of the story that I remember shocked me, and I think it was the first book I read where I felt like the narrator had lied to me, that they had betrayed me as a reader. In retrospect, this kind of self-conscious reading (where the conventions are defied, severing the narrator/author-reader link and rendering you conscious of the fact that what you're reading is just a book, just words on a page) adds a more mature edge to the story, and I think that's why it sticks in my memory.

A book that is important to you:
HARRY POTTER - JK ROWLING.

There is no way I could write a post about childhood books without mentioning Harry Potter - it was a huge part of my life growing up (and most of my other family members' too). I have a distinct memory of being in year 2 and reading the Chamber of Secrets while everyone else was on the Philosopher's Stone, and my classmates would come up to me and ask me what certain words meant, and I'd tell them with conviction (not letting them know that I had actually asked my mum what those very words had meant just a few weeks before when I was on that book myself). The image of a little six-year-old girl reading these books seems funny now in hindsight, but I found myself so thoroughly immersed in a magical world for ten years; one that holds a special place in my cold little heart to this day.

-----

I tag Natalie and Aimee in this but anyone is welcome to do it if they want to!

I hope this gave you a little bit of insight into the kind of books I used to read/still love. Feel free to comment with your responses or do the tag even if I didn't tag you in it, I'd love to see what other people's childhood reading experiences were like.

See you next time!

Georgia