Rainbow Books

Dear Reader,

When sleep evades you, procrastination levels are high and you have this internal compulsion for everything to be colour coordinated, THIS is what happens:

I have no regrets!!!

Nida

my Space edition 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).

And I think that's all for now. Take care and keep reading.

Nida

my Space edition - in a different 4mat

Dear Reader,

As a treat for you, I've made a video version of my annual 'my space edition' bookshelf tour.

Don't forget to subscribe to my channel and follow me on twitter: @Bookaholic786.

Nida

Life as I see it: my Space edition - The Third

Dear Reader,

I think I'm going to turn this into an annual thing, and let see how long I can keep it up. If you, dear reader, are new to my blog and don't know what I'm talking about, I suggest you click on the links for my 2011 and 2010 "my Space editions". But you don't have to, it's entirely up to you. 

1) So I thought that this year, I'll start with my favourite part of my bedroom: the Fantasy Corner.  

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Life: as I see it - my Space (Revised) edition

Dear Reader,

Confession: I've been feeling rather nostalgic lately, for obvious reasons, and so you'll just have to bare with me for this post. So, since it has now been a year (+2 weeks) since I posted Life: as I see it - my Space edition (one of my most popular posts) I thought it was time I showed you, my dear reader, how my bookshelves have changed and how they haven't.

I can't wait to add Maggie Steifvater's Forever to this, which is now finally out. It is something that can't be help it, I'm a compulsive completionist.    

Other favourite writers on this shelf are Na'ima B. Robert and Jamilah Kolocotronis.     

This shelf is directly underneath the one above. You'll  find here Kristin Cashore as well as Kate Mosse, with some Robin McKinley being cut off at the bottom of the picture. 

This use to be my "Classics" shelf, but is now mainly Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters, followed by the DVD of my Favourite BBC adaptations of Classics, including: North & South, Cranford, Middlemarch and Little Dorrit.      

This is my, much more serious, non-fiction shelf of mostly medical books, with the exception of Green Deen and  How I Killed Pluto, and Why it Had it Coming.

Aaahhh, Poetry... These huge collections are three of my favourites (minus LAT - see the comment on the link): Thomas Hardy, William Wordsworth and John Keats.  

And peeping in from the top are some of Rudyard Kipling's best works. 

The One and Only, Original bookshelf. Once upon a time, when I was a very little girl, this was the only bookshelf in my bedroom. Hence it still contains the likes of the Chronicles of Narnia and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I have to admit, I haven't much grown out of these books in all these years.  

I'd also like to mention Philip Pulman's Sally Lockhart books, the under-appreciated Garth Nix, and Frank Beddor for obvious reasons. 

Here we have a small neat section reserved for historical fiction and my favourite autobiographies. I think the titles/authors in this picture are clear enough to read, except the orange Dairy of a Young Girl. Anne Frank, may you rest in peace. 

This is where the rest of the Classics from the "ex-Classics shelf" have ended up, including Charles Dickens (in green), Victor Hugo (in the stripped blue)  and my copy of the Selected  Poems of Lord Alfred Tennyson. 

This is the spot where my beloved Inkworld Trilogy use to reside, but it was burrowed by an old friend and never returned. :'(

So to fill that gap in my heart...I mean shelf, I have filled this spot with the not as much beloved Books of Pallinor. Sorry Alison Croggon, that is just the honest truth.      

   

The Twilight Saga has been transferred, to the top of my big wardrobe to have a teeth and claw battle with...

... Christopher Paolini's dragons. Who will win this epic dual of fantasy vs. horror in the Young Adult Fiction genre? 

Let me know what you think in the Comments section below. 

Aside: Vampires come into the 'horror' category, don't they? Or am I thoroughly deceived? 

To lend his support to the Fantasy genre, is my collection of Tolkein's work, 

(also found at the top of another wardrobe).    

And finally the most important shelf in my bedroom, which resides in the top right-hand corner of my desk, hold my religious books. Most things Islamic, can be found in this shelf with The Noble Qur'an at the heart of it all. If you have been following my blog for long enough, you'll remember that much-used little blue book at the top is my pocket-size version of The Sealed Nectar, a biography of the Prophet Muhammed (PBUH).   

By the way, if you look to the far left, you'll see two unnamed books. They're mine. The grey one is choked-full of my poetry and the floral-pattern-one being my first note book entirely concerned with my novel-in-the-making Life in Conversations.    

I hope, dear Reader, that you have been awed and inspired by my vast array of books. I was going to continue on to a little piece about the gardening I've been doing recently with my mum, and the efforts we have put into salvaging and saving the lives of about 16 small and starved geranium plants we found on sale at B&Q. But I've realised that this post is already far too long and that tales of my epic weeding might bore you, dear Reader, to death. And that is something I don't want on my concious. 

Anyway, making this post longer is now no-longer an option as I must go and make some greek-style pasta for my ravenous brothers. 

Nida