How excited are we that today there’s another amazing End of World Books post? I am super excited….. As always, but a lot more today because the lovely Sophie agreed to become blogger victim number 4! If you haven’t met Sophie, or you’re not following her blog then you can check it out here, as well as her Twitter here! Sophie is always friendly, supportive and she’s a complete bundle of joy!
If this is your first time ‘tuning’ in, you can check out my last End of World Post with Mac now!
Sophie has provided a cracking post! Check it out below!
When Danielle first asked me about this, my mind immediately began to run away with itself. Everyone is in panic, sirens are wailing, TV and news radio stations are blaring out the terrible news…you have time to shove a handful of belongings into your bags…which five books would you take?!
After the fear subsided, I (gradually) realised this actually is a great opportunity to get ahead of the game and prepare my evacuation book list. I toyed with a few strategies – taking the biggest books on my shelves for maximum hours reading, taking five books I’ve not read yet so that at least could make some headway with my TBR, using an elaborate scoring system to calculate my official all-time favourite books….
In the end, I just listened to my heart, and ended up with this very nostalgic list. In no particular order (please don’t make this any more difficult than it already is…!), my five books are:
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte
Orphaned as a child, Jane has felt an outcast her whole young life. Her courage is tested once again when she arrives at Thornfield Hall, where she has been hired by the brooding, proud Edward Rochester to care for his ward Adèle. Jane finds herself drawn to his troubled yet kind spirit. She falls in love. Hard.
But there is a terrifying secret inside the gloomy, forbidding Thornfield Hall. Is Rochester hiding from Jane? Will Jane be left heartbroken and exiled once again?
When I think of books, reading, and literature, I can’t not think of Jane Eyre. It was one of the first books that I not just loved at the time, but also knew that I’d love forever. Every time I read it, I’d happily close the last page, flip it over and begin reading from the beginning again. If I was lucky, perhaps I’d manage to commit most of it to memory, before my already battered copy falls apart during the apocalypse…
Unless by Carol Shields
Reta Winters has a loving family, good friends, and growing success as a writer of light fiction. Then her eldest daughter suddenly withdraws from the world, abandoning university to sit on a street corner, wearing a sign that reads only ‘goodness’. As Reta seeks the causes of her daughter’s retreat, her enquiry turns into an unflinching, often very funny meditation on society and where we find meaning and hope. Unless is a dazzling and daring novel from the undisputed maser of extraordinary fictions about so-called ordinary lives.
This is another book that has to be credited for helping me fall in love not just with literature, but with words and language. It ignited in me a love for lots of things I now look out for in fiction, and I feel a very strong connection with this book and with Carol Shields’ writing. You can read about what it means to me in my blog post here.
Among the most powerful accounts of the Nazi occupation, “The Diary of Anne Frank” chronicles the life of Anne Frank, a thirteen-year old girl fleeing her home in Amsterdam to go into hiding. Anne reveals the relationships between eight people living under miserable conditions: facing hunger, threat of discovery and the worst horrors the modern world had seen. In these pages, she grows up to be a young woman and a wise observer of human nature. Anne Frank’s account offers a compelling self-portrait of a sensitive and spirited young woman who turns thoughtful and learns of the many terrors of the world.
As I’m sure is the case for many people, when I first came across Anne Frank and her diary as a child, she immediately became one of my heroes. As a young child who, like Anne, loved reading and writing, I was very affected by her story and have been ever since. I’d love to take this one, not just to read, but to protect for future generations.
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Margaret Mitchell’s monumental epic of the South won a Pulitzer Prize, gave rise to the most popular motion picture of our time, and inspired a sequel that became the fastest selling novel of the century. It is one of the most popular books ever written: more than 28 million copies of the book have been sold in more than 37 countries. Today, more than 60 years after its initial publication, its achievements are unparalleled, and it remains the most revered American saga and the most beloved work by an American writer…
Despite the fact that since studying a course on American Literature at university I now see flaws and complications with this depiction of the American Civil War, there’s no getting away from the fact that it was a book I loved as a child. My mum will remember my ever so slight obsession with this book well (and also the extremely lengthy film which would often be on at Christmas). An added bonus with this one is that it is really, really long!
Tom’s Midnight Garden, by Philippa Pearce
When Tom is sent to stay at his aunt and uncle’s house for the summer, he resigns himself to endless weeks of boredom. As he lies awake in his bed he hears the grandfather clock downstairs strike . . .eleven . . . twelve . . . thirteen . . . Thirteen! Tom races down the stairs and out the back door, into a garden everyone told him wasn’t there. In this enchanted thirteenth hour, the garden comes alive – but Tom is never sure whether the children he meets there are real or ghosts . . . This entrancing and magical story is one of the best-loved children’s books ever written.
Pure childhood nostalgia drew me towards this choice. I actually am going to need to purchase a physical copy of it (in preparation for the dark times to come), as I owned this as a cassette as a child and used to listen to it again and again as I fell asleep. The storyline is quite haunting, and I’ve never forgotten this book.
Wow, Sophie has chosen some literary crackers there, ones that I am ashamed to say I haven’t read (although I do have Anne Frank’s Diary on my TBR). I LOVE that she has such emotional attachment to her chosen books for a variety of reasons! Have you read any of the above classics? Would they be on your End of World Books list? Let us know!
Thankyou again Sophie for taking a trip to The Reading Closet, I hope that you enjoyed your stay as much as I loved having you, you’re a star! My TBR pile may not be so happy about it though!
End of World Books is usually a bi-weekly post, this month, as it’s summer, I’m treating you to a post every Sunday! Next week, one of my favourite Edinburgh lasses shall be visiting, keep your eyes peeled!
The Reading Closet 
Ha, Sophie and I have 2 books in common 😊
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Love it! Although I haven’t read any of them 😬😳
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