I heart reading

I love books. I love buying them, reading them, lending them. I could spend hours browsing book shops and always come away with something I want to buy. When we were kids books were the only request that was always allowed. At Christmas my sister and me were dropped outside the Waterstones in Manchester and picked up an hour later where mum would pay for the pile of books we chose. It would drive me mad on Christmas day when my sister whizzed through all her books and started on mine, while I savoured each word and the fresh, unspoilt pages. I'm much less obsessive now about corner-folders and spine-crackers and just love the look of a well-thumbed tome. I have built in bookshelves on either side of my fireplace in my little south London flat and the books on there make me smile. I miss the remainder of my collection, uni books and a few special children's books preserved for posterity.

There's a brilliant website (and by that I mean brilliantly nerdy) where you can track your reading and share reviews with other people. I like the look of it, seeing books all lined up like that. It's helpful to remember which books you loved and which you wouldn't recommend to a friend. You can see my Shelfari shelf to the right of this web page, or you can make your own here

There's also another little treasure of a site called Bookshelf Porn, sent to me by a friend who 'saw this an thought of you'. Obviously that's very thoughtful of her, and so true, but there was a mild disappointment that she didn't see something a little cooler and think of me. Ah, well - if she hadn't recognised my bookshelf geekery I never would have seen this lovely shelf.



Reading is the best way of getting an insight into the world, of learning the nuances of grammar and to thoroughly escape.

And now I'm off to bed, with some lovely Roald Dahl short stories to take with me.