LIFE: as I know it!: October 2014

Dear Reader,

It's that time of the year again: for my annual Book Shelf Tour. You can see the previous "my space" posts by clicking on the links: 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 (where I made a video). Wow, this is my 5th year now! Though I have not been posting regularly, I have definitely been reading constantly and, given my book-buying-habits, it's no surprise that my bookshelves have changed significantly over the year. So without further ado, here are my 8 or so bookshelves:

1) The Fantasy Corner: It is probably my favourite part of my bedroom.

Starting with the top row are the fantasies that occur in our world though we common humans are blind to it all. From left to right, we have Coraline by Neil Gaiman, all of Maggie Stiefvater books (many of which are signed) and Percy Jackson & the Olympians series by Rick Riordon.

On the bottom row are fantasies that take place in magical worlds conjured from the author's mind: The Old Kingdom Trilogy by Garth Nix (technically Shade's Children is a dystopia but it's here because I wanted to keep all the Garth Nix books together), Throne of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas, the Grisha Trilogy by Leigh Bardugo and the Graceling Realm Trilogy by Kristin Cashore.

This shelf holds many of my pretty stand-alone hardbacks, including The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, Keturah and Lord Death by Martine Leavitt and a signed copy of A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness. These are followed by my Beloved Inkworld Trilogy by Cornelia Funke, my favourite two Jostien Gaarder books and enchanting The Golem and The Djinni by Helen Wecker.

Down on floor we have my Red-Box of Harry Potter books along with Tales of Beedle the Bard, Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them and Quiddtich Through the Ages. To keep Harry Potter company I have Cassandra Clare's The Infernal Devices (one of my favourite YA trilogies) and City of Heavenly Fire. I also placed the Leviathan Trilogy by Scott Westerfeld here, even though it's actually steampunk.

And even after all these years, Christopher Paolini's Dragons are still in battle with Stephanie Meyer's Vampires and Aliens atop my wardrobe.

2) My Classics (& Poetry):

This one, in my opinion is the most beautiful shelf in my room. I love waking up to the sight of it, though the photo does not do it justice, especially as all the titles are obscured. From left to right:

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Middlemarch by George Elliot
After that are all my Charles Dickens books - Bleak House, Great Expectations, then in the red leather and gold is Nicholas Nickleby (though I bought that copy recently, it was actually printed in 1936, making it the "oldest" book in my bedroom), Hard Times, Oliver Twist and A Tale of Two Cities. (Aside: The only ones missing from my Dickens Collection are Little Dorrit and A Christmas Carol. May be they'll be there by next year, Inshallah.)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo in light blue.
A Round the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
Peter Pan by J.M.Barrie
Then in the passionate bright blue is my little Bronte Sisters box-set, made up of Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
Next to that in cheerful orange are the six Jane Austen novels in the order they were written - Northanger Abbey, Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility, Mansfield Park, Emma and then finally the bittersweet and sophisticated Persuasion.
On the other end, lying flat, are books related to Jane Austen or her work including The Secret Diaries of Lizzie Bennet by Bernie Su and Kate Rorick and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith.

And because my love for classics could not be contained on just one shelf, there was over-spill onto the shelf just below:

We start with my two favourite Elizabeth Gaskell novels - Wives & Daughters and North & South.
Then Sir Walter Scott takes over with Ivanhoe, Waverley and The Bride of Lammermoor.
Besides that are a few autobiographies - Falling Leaves by Adeline Yen Mah, Living with the Enemy by Freddie Knoller and The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank.
Then some modern classics including The Book Theif by Markus Zusac, I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith and The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.

After To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, it seems as though poetry holds courts:

Starting with a translation of Selected Poems of Rabindernath Tagore,
followed by The Whitsun Weddings by Philip Larkin. I am not a fan of Philip Larkin, that pretentious, misogynistic pig. I do not like his poems and had to study this anthology for my A-Levels. But I keep a copy of The Whitsun Weddings to remind me that the world and people are incredibly varied, and what I might despise might be another's delight.
Then much more down my alley, we have Ariel by Sylvia Plath,
Beowulf translated by Seamus Haeney,
and The Collected Poems of William Wordsworth, Thomas Hardy and John Keats. (Of my favourite poets, the only ones I don't unfortunately have are William Blake and Robert Browning).

3) The Original Shelf:

With the exception of Philip Pullman's Sally Lockhart Series (which are historical Crime/Thrillers), this shelf mostly contains my favourite high-fantasy. Here's a quick break down, from left to right:

The Chronicles of Narnia (box set) by C.S.Lewis.
My Tolkien Collection - Tales from the Perilous Realm, The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, The Lord of The Rings Trilogy and then a lovely little Arthurian Legend Sir Gawain and The Green Knight.
Continuing with the theme of King Arthur and his Knights, we have Idylls of the King and Selected Poems by Lord Alfred Tennyson, (Did you think I'd forgotten about him in the poetry section when mentioning my favourite poets? ... Well Alfred Tennyson gets a special place all to himself.)
More Arthur in T.H. White's The Once and Future King and T.A.Barron's Merlin: The Lost Years.
Then we move on to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carol, and my favourite Alice-retelling The Looking-Glass Wars Trilogy by Frank Beddor.
On top of all of that is Johnathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (in 3 volumes) and The Ladies of Grace Adieu by Susanne Clarke (a delightful combination of Jane Austen and Neil Gaiman).

4) A Hodge-Podge:

This shelf is hard to explain. I'm not sure how it happened either, but here there are books from all over the place (generically speaking).

Kate Mosse's mature real-world fantasies - Labyrinth, Sepulchre and The Winter Ghosts.
Followed by Susan Hill's The Woman in Black, Dolly and The Small Hand. These are the only real "horror" books in my bedroom.
More Neil Gaiman - The Graveyard Book, Neverwhere and Stardust.
Then come 2 of the funniest books I've ever read - Good Omens by Neil Gaiman & Terry Prachett and The Princess Bride by William Goldman.
After that are two books where a female is kidnapped - Sunshine by Robin McKinley and Stolen by Lucy Christopher.
Some fairytale re-tellings - Sisters Red by Jackson Pearce, Beauty by Robin McKinley and Beastly by Alex Flinn (I dearly wish that The Lunar Chronicles where on this shelf but, alas they are only on my kindle, for now.)
Which leads to a wonderful array of children's books - The Grimm Legacy by Polly Shulman, Fairy Tales by The Grimm Brothers and Hans Christian Andersen, Tales from The Arabian Nights translated by Andrew Lee, Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book and The Man Who Would Be King and finally The Story of The Treasure Seekers by Elizabeth Nesbit.

5) Science, Sci -Fi & Dystopia:

Lying flat under my jewelry box are a handful of non-fiction science books including Cranioklepty by Colin Dickey, which I have reviewed here, Aspirin by Diarmuid Jeffreys, The Female Brain by Dr. Louann Brizendine and The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean.
After that we have some slim, black volumes of classic Sci-Fi by Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, and some classic Dystopia: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury and The Handmaid's Tale by Margret Atwood.
Then moving into more modern times, we have the incredibly engulfing Shatter Me Trilogy by Tahereh Mafi, the time-traveling Ruby Red Trilogy by Kerstin Gier and end with Veronica Roth's Divergent Trilogy. (If it wasn't for my Kindle, then this shelf would have also contained The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins, the Uglies Series by Scott Westerfeld and the Delirium Trilogy by Lauren Oliver.) And hopefully "coming soon" to this shelf will by the The Maze Runner Series by James Dashner.

6) Shakespeare/Graphic Novels:

Starting on the right this time we have my second favourite Shakespearean comedy (The Taming of The Shrew) and favourite tragedy (Othello), followed eloquently by Shakespeare's Sonnets and Poems. Then comes a whole collection of Manga Shakespeare, including my favourite comedy: Twelfth Night, and history: Richard III. These were a wonderful birthday gift from my brothers.

After that is the graphic novel version of Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, Illustrated by Cassandra Jean whose work I have been following online for quite some time now. She's quite talented.

Then we have a set of official comics centered around my favourite video game series Assassin's Creed, that I love playing with my brothers (hence the comics were also a gift from them). And finally, my childhood/teen obsession with Avatar: The Last Airbender series in exemplified in the beautiful Collected Editions of their spin-off comic book. (I still need to get The Rift which comes out some time next year.)

7) The Library Books:
I think the title is rather self-explanatory, and nothing more needs to be said about this collection other than the fact they're all due by some time this month.

And here's what it looks like when you put almost all of the above together (not including the fantasy corner of course):

8) My Deen:
The Window - which primarily contains books written by Muslims or about Muslims. The real stand-outs of this crowd are:

G. Willow Wilson's Alif, The Unseen, The Butterfly Mosque (her autobiography) and Cairo: A Graphic Novel
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (I Haven't yet read his And The Mountains Echoed so I can't say how that compares to his previous work).
From My Sister's Lips by Na'ima B. Roberts and her teen-novel Boy vs. Girl.

The Desk - this is where all of my Islamic books are housed, including: biographies, Islamic-lifestyle guides, books on Ahadith, with the Qur'an, in both Arabic and English, at the heart of it. On the very end are my Notebooks (which have drastically increased in number) and The Fat Grey Book (where resides all the poetry I have ever written).