Book Meme - Day 4

Day 04 - Your favorite book or series ever


This is not an answerable question!!!


The first series I remember reading and rereading was The Chronicles of Narnia, starting when I was five.  Also, around the same time, The Swallows and Amazons books.  Both occupied my imagination to a very large degree for a very long time.  They were a welcome escape from a not necessarily happy childhood, and I was able to take the main characters and run with them in my mind, making up countless adventures inspired by the books and living heroically in my imagination very satisfactorily!


Countless other books have filled a similar niche since then.  My 'favorite' book is often one that I have read recently and thought was wonderful.  My favorite series right now is the Kurt Wallender series by Henning Mankell, a Swedish detective series.  I am about halfway through it and love the darkness and complexity of it.


Edited to add:  How could I have forgotten the incomparable Terry Pratchett!  The man who can write no wrong.  OF course I love Discworld with a passion :)


On the non-reading front - we have been beset with sickness of various sorts here and I have spent more time than I care ti think about sitting around emergency departments while Wombat (twice) and George (once) have been tested and examined and poked and prodded by a series of doctors and nurses that have started to blur into one amorphous mass.  I decided the other day that doctors should not look like they have strayed off the set of ER, as did the registrar dealing with George.  He was an excellent and competent doctor, but those blue eyes!  Mildly distracting :)  What with that, and two hospital appointments for Wombat to check up on him, I have had enough of Monash Medical Centre to last me for a while.


When not sitting around hospitals reading old detective fiction (Agatha Christie, another favorite since I was about 10, is rather good for hospital reading) I have been sorting out my father's books.  As he left them all to Baby bear, and she doesn't want 99% of them, I have taken up the task of sorting them into sundry categories. Keep (books that are of interest to any one of the four of us); Charity; Value (ones that I think I may be able to sell online - I estimate, before starting to value them, that about 50% of these will go to charity also; for the rest I will probably set up a shop on Ebay - I have always wanted to try my hand at second hand book selling!); and Weirdo Stuff for Me (books of no obvious monetary value that I can use for mixed media works). The profits, if any, from selling the books will be going into a trust fund for Baby Bear along with the modest amount of  money her grandfather left her.


I have been struggling with trying to retain a shred of charity for my father.  I have tried hanging onto the good memories, as recommended by a number of wise people :)  Sometimes it works.  Not when I have spent hours sifting through books and remembering rather forcefully that he left his money and valuable possesions to other people, but quite obviously expected me to sort everything out.  Yes, I am feeling a little bitter.  I am glad that Baby Bear will benefit financially (and he left a bit of money to Wombat too), and I am grateful to have the family archival material that he left me.  But I also resent being left with all the ****work and nothing to show for it.