Bookworm
I wonder how you know when you’ve written well?
I was asked this week what my favourite book is. I find that really hard to answer.
Would it be Badger’s Beech by Elleston Trevor? This was my mother’s favourite book as a child and she read it to me many times. We both loved Woo Owl, and knew many of his lines by heart, quoting them to each other at appropriate moments to make each other laugh. Badger’s Beech is a place of warmth for me, full of memories, full of my mum, and has given me a lifelong love of owls.
Or perhaps, like many, many others, it would be Harry Potter, by JK Rowling? I resisted Harry Potter for a long time, determined not to jump on a band wagon. I was given the new Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban one Christmas by a child in my class who was horrified by my lack of engagement and who assured me that I was missing out. And, of course, I was! The whole series has become my most read, the last time being during the Covid lockdown when it was wonderful to escape into another, magical world. If I had to choose, my favourite of the series remains Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, partly because it was the one that captured me, thanks to Rachel, and partly because it is the book where you begin to see the depth and complexity of the story that’s coming.
It could be Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte. It is the only book I have ever asked to borrow from school over the summer holidays, because I wanted to know the end and we had run out of time. I had a teacher that I found quite frightening and it is testament to how much I was caught by the book that I risked approaching her. I was 13 and it was my first step into the world of classics, and I realised that this new genre was not just for others but for me too.
It might be Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien. Our Danish family had come over to stay for the summer holidays with us in England, and my cousin and I, in our early teens, quickly dropped all pretense of being sociable as we both sat and became completely hooked by this incredible story. We sat curled up in my parents’ comfy chairs and each read all three books, one after the other, without a break, unable to break, until we had absorbed the saga in its entirety. I can remember how woolly my brain felt at the end, almost like a hangover, from the intensity of not being able to put it down. Interestingly, I have not read it again, though…
Strong contenders are Hotel on the Roof of the World by Alec Le Soeur and Stargazing by Peter Hill, which are my favourite books from my favourite bookshop in the whole world. There’s a book and coffee shop in Gairloch in North-West Scotland that has the best, most captivating choices of books that I have ever come across. They are not the kinds of books you would find easily in Whitcoulls or Waterstones. Most tell stories of travel and adventure, and these two are ones that take me to worlds that I revisit again and again, and gifted me when I first bought them the feeling of, “I wonder if I could ever do that… I probably could… One day…” Although today those worlds are gone and only these words in my bookcase remain.
I wonder if it is, quite simply, The Bible? A book that is full of stories, poetry, history and incredible wisdom. A book that is much more than The Nativity, David and Goliath and Noah’s Ark. A book that I think is unusual to have read from beginning to end, and yet remains one of the world’s best sellers. It’s a book I dip into every day, and that is more than I have ever done with any other book that I own…
In the end, I opted for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Why? Because it was the easiest to explain. There are few words needed to connect one Harry Potter fan to another!
Perhaps you know that you have written well when you realise your words and stories are memorable, and that perhaps one day someone might write about you…
Digger Mole, Old Stripe, Potter the Otter and, of course, Woo Owl.
Badger’s Beech by Elleston Trevor.