Bibliophile: Books from childhood

I'm a fan of books and I LOVE the background template of books on shelves which is framing this blog of mine....so colourful and apt for me!
It's probably the main reason which persuaded me to switch to Blogger from Wordpress when I first hopped on the blogging bandwagon.
Yes, I like to think I'm a bibliophile (don't you just love that word??) and have been from childhood. In fact, I still have treasured tomes from then which I've not had the heart to give away or sell, simply because of all the memories associated with them...memories of my Mum reading to me at bedtime and myself leafing through them for leisure and lapping up all the stories within.

Here are a few faves:

Seraphine was such a cute little girl! I loved her bonnet, umbrella and duck! :)

This collection gave me countless hours of pleasure...there were rhymes, poems and stories in it, including The Tale Of Peter Rabbit, with beautifully-done illustrations!
Like so:

And I didn't just like fiction only, you know....

My brother gave me that Human Body book when I was eleven...that was probably the beginnings of my ambition which would explain my present profession...lol!

The picture right at the top of this post  is of one of the many bookshelves in my house. In it are books, some from nearly forty years ago, lovingly kept and packed amidst multiple home-shifts. Some are in plastic wrap; many are not. A few are 'newer' editions bought to replace copies which were, literally, falling apart. I sometimes wish I HAD kept all those dusty old books with their loose pages ...especially my Little Women series and my Secondary 4 copy of  To Kill A Mockingbird (which I read to death even before the new school year had started!). The covers were classic and are  unlikely ever to be found again.

And here are the books I received as prizes for...ahem...*cough cough*...Proficiency in English in my Primary school days:

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Despite loads of TV-viewing in those days (as evidenced by my earlier posts), there was alot of time for reading too.
There was a spell in Primary school when I had to stay back in the afternoons to wait for my Mum (who was the school principal) to go home together. And invariably, during my lunch, I would have a book with me as I was eating, absorbed in my own world and oblivious to the other girls around me...haha..I think many of them thought me somewhat 'proud' and told me so a few years later when I got to know more of them in Secondary school...lol! Thankfully, they were pleasantly surprised to discover that I was actually quite a goofball and not at all 'proud' in person. :)
One thing I'm extremely glad about is that, despite my bookwormish (and TV-addictish) tendencies, my eyesight has remained remarkably good and it was only in my forties that I had no choice but to wear reading glasses, of which I'm now the proud owner of about six pairs. :)

End of Bibliophile: Part One