Books for Sharing

Over the last few years I have noticed that most music in the pop charts (could I sound any older? Maybe if I said Hit Parade?) is collaborative - such and such featuring so and so. Well, it is true also of the blogosphere and this week I am very proud to say that Mummysquared is being featured on one of our favourite blogs. Yes indeed, this week, Listography over at Kate Takes 5 is indeed inspired by our very own Granny Bloggings and her ranting about books... pop over and take a look... Kate and I liked her ramblings so very much that we thought it deserved a spin off.

So the idea is this - 5 books you have enjoyed with your little one, or are indeed looking forward to sharing in the future. Simple right? Hmmm. You try picking just 5! Here are the Mummysquared choices - seeing as this is Granny Bloggings' big moment I thought I'd let her go first for a change:

Just 5?

I can't possibly write the list of books I want to share with little CK as she grows older as there is not enough space or time to name them all so I have decided to choose the five books I adored and read over and over again whilst I was a kid...

1. Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. I was given this book as a school prize in 1960 when I was nine. On the book plate inside the front cover it says "given as a prize for always being cheerful and helpful in class." Well, we can't all be academically brilliant! But I used to read that book to the end and then turn to the front page and start again and I think it may have been the catalyst for my love of reading throughout the rest of my life.

2. Heidi by Johanna Spyre. When you live in a small village in England being able to escape to a Swiss Alp and live with a loving grandpa and whole load of goats seemed like heaven to me when I was about eight. I still crave bead cheese and milk whenever I think of Heidi!

3.Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham. Perfect escapism for a seven year old and I still think of those characters as good friends.

4.Black Beauty by Anna Sewell which sustained me until I could have my own pony when I was nine.

5. Moonfleet by J. Meade Faulkner which is the most wonderful story of pirates, treasure, shipwreck, and true love set a few miles from where I grew up.

Of course there were all the others; Shadow the sheep do,g by Enid Blyton, and all the secret seven and famous five books by her too but when you read them these days they are so horribly dated that it is hard to believe how much pleasure they brought me. With the possible exception of Black Beauty all the others have stood the test of time and I hope one day to share them with little CK, preferably by reading them aloud to her.

Can we do a list of our top hundred books since we are grown ups please?

Granny Bloggins

That’s not my book... It’s narrative is too predictable!

My daughter’s best new habit? Getting a book in one hand, labouring towards you trying to crawl and drag it at the same time, clambering up into your lap, opening the book, pointing out some stuff, concentrating on it with you and clapping while you read to her. OK, so it only lasts for about a page, but it is pretty cool while it lasts.
As I am a secondary school teacher and know nothing about children’s books, I thought I would go for grown up ones instead - books I am looking forward to her reading and loving. Or if she hates reading, listening to on tape and loving. A tape worm, rather than a book worm perhaps? Stop rambling and get on with it!

1. Catch-22 - I studied this book for my highers and felt like it was the first proper grown up book that I had found and loved. It is so funny and so heartwarming.
2. The Lord of The Flies - Yes, I know it is old, yes I know we all studied it at school, but no, that doesn’t mean it has to be boring. It’s brilliant - I love teaching it, I love reading it, I love talking about it. Can’t wait to see the horror on her little face - yeah.
3. Everything Is Illuminated - Funny funny funny book about the holocaust. So wrong it is right. Read it and weep, literally. And every book should feature a seeing eye bitch. I love this one for the teenage audience as I think it lends a new perspective to the whole WWII thing which they think they know inside out.
4. The Poisonwood Bible - As my little darling is half African, I thought this should be on the list. Barbara Kinsolver conjures Africa so truly in this novel and she depicts the love and struggle for that continent. Heartbreaking and enthralling all at the same time.
5. The Gormeghast Trilogy - OK I couldn’t restrict myself to 5... so I cheated and threw in a trilogy... ha! Reading this lot is like eating a bar of chocolate; it is rich, deeply dark, satisfying and moreish. What more could a gal want to be tucked up in bed with?!

So go on... let the sharing commence!

Take 5 Places... Listography

Mummy2's Top 5

So over at Kate Takes 5 (one of my favourite fellow bloggers) there is a weekly challenge to do a 'top 5' and this week it really called out to me as the challenge is to compile a list of your top 5 places. Oh yes, me likes. So here, with no further ado, and in no particular order are my Top 5 Hot (and cold) spots:

1. Sossusvlei - you know on Windows you can get a sand dune as your back

drop? That is Sossusvlei; well actually it is the dune just behind the vlei (that's a salt pan to you and me). When we visited there on our African Adventure, hubby insisted I get up before 5am, yes that's right before 5am, to see it in it's glory. Surely it wasn't going anywhere, I protested,

surely it won't be any different at 7am. But (and I HATE to admit this) he was right. We were there alone, as the sun rose, surveying the whole of the Namib desert which lay in front of us. Wow.

2. My house - smug much? Yep, I love my house. It is cosy and comfy and warm and has the biggest couch you have ever seen. A couch which will save us wh

en God sends the flood; a couch on which you truly could fit two of every animal. And this couch of prodigious proportions, it faces the TV. What more does a girl need?

3. Palenque, Mexico. In 2007 the much beloved and I decided to holiday in Mexico and we fell in love with it (once we

left Cancun and all the Starbucks bloody franchises behind - don't get me wrong I love a frappucino every now and again, but I don't go for an 'exotic' holiday in order to get a mini sanitized American experience). We loved the beaches, the food, the culture, the history and t

he ruins. We did not love hurricane Dean which hit when we had no accommodation and only our little tiny hire car to shelter us. So when

we heard he was coming, we packed up and headed in land and found

ourselves in Palenque. And what a find... a deserted

Aztec city hidden in the jungle. My very own Indiana Jones fantasy come to life... Except that my lovely hubby is not quite (almost, but not quite) Harry Ford. Dream on.

4. Loch Katrine - Growing up in Scotland this was one of our favourite family spots for long walks and even though I probably moaned the whole time (Oh come on, it was my job, I was a child) I have very fond memories of picnics and ice creams and roller skating around there.

I

even (believe it or not Granny B) have fond memories of

climbing the mountains nearby. And yes, I moaned all the way up and all the way down. I have perfected my technique nowadays though - always have a bar of chocky to eat at the top - it makes the whole ascent so much more worthwhile.

5. So I reckon I seem like a bit of a coutryphile (countryfile?) from these entries, but the truth is th

at big wide open spaces scare me and I would much prefer the crush of a city street. I love nothing more than romping around the alleys and winds of a foreign hotspot, grazing, gawping and generally gallivanting about. So my finally entry is Istanbul. What an awesome city - no really , it inspires awe in me. It offers everything one would ever want; history, culture, big stuff to look at, tall stuff to climb up, yummy (really yummy) stuff to eat, and we

t stuff to sail about on. Oh and some bloody good moustaches. Thus.

PS Sorry I am so crap at adding photos - other people seem much more proficient at this one.

Granny B's Top 5

I find it interesting that my top 5 places do not completely coincide with my daughters’. By the age of eight my daughter had travelled, with us, right round the world so I thought our 5 places might have been more shared, perhaps we should have left her at home and saved the airfare!

My top 5 places, like everyone elses’ are places where I have been happy, the weather has been, like baby bears porridge, juuust right, the company has been juuust right, the scenery/people have been juuust right…..

1. Milford Sound in New Zealand. We stayed the night in a little camper van, all alone facing down this most beautiful Sound. During the evening an opossum dropped from an overhanging tree onto our roof and then sat looking apologetic at our feet when we tumbled out to see what had happened. A couple of Kia (parrots) decided the liked the rubber on the windscreen wipers and tried to steal it, and when Gramps went for a pee in the middle of the night he found he couldn’t perform as he was accompanied by two curious Kakapo (different parrots) who seemed very interested in his wedding tackle (sorry). It is a truly awesome place and not to be missed.

2. OK here I agree Loch Katrine in Scotland was a favourite haunt of ours; where small visitors fell in the lake, daughter and friends broke the sublime silence screaming past on roller blades, bikes and skate boards, the Wrinkles strolled, friends sat and painted, and American visitors ‘wowed’ a lot.

3. A place on the Dorset coast which will remain namless because, although, dear reader, I love you very much I do not want to share my special place with you! Suffice to say, it is wild and woolly and requires quite long walk to get there but to perfect the experience there is a pub nearby where you can sit by a log fire and eat a pie with brown sauce off a paper plate – ye ha.

4. My daughters house, not because of that ridiculous sofa but, because my favourite people in the world live there.

5. My bed.

Having travelled a lot in my time and been very impressed with things like the Grand Canyon and loads of beautiful beaches I find it interesting that those are my top 5 places, it just goes to show that it is not all about the scenery.

Granny Bloggins