Wowee…this is a hard one.  First let me start off by saying “I think books are the coolest things on earth” This may seem like a sweeping statement especially since I’m prone to exaggerate in daily speech about it being “the best plate of food I’ve ever tasted!” or the “funniest joke I’ve ever heard!” When it comes to books though, I’m dead serious…

My obsession started when I was small. I can totally thank my mom for my love of the written word. She’s an incessant reader, devouring 3 to 4 books in an average week. At one stage she worked her way through the library starting with A and working from left to right. I know… Crazy! When you’re small you copy the stuff your parents like – if you’re dad’s into fishing, chances are, you’re going to get into it yourself.

I fell in love with books at quite an early age. Not being able to read in English, I started with Saartjie, Trompie and Die Meisies van Maasdorp which were books about the mischief you get up to at school and boarding school. The moment I could master the English language, I started on The Famous Five from Enid Blyton. I remember the first book I read was called ‘Five go on an adventure together’ and it was the most exciting book I’ve ever read. It was so scary. I fell in love with the characters, especially Georgina Kirrin, the temperamental tomboy with her trusty dog Tim.

So Famous Five was really the start of it all. I finished the whole series and after that I just finished every other Enid Blyton book I could get my hands on. The list continues after Enid Blyton, though. Here are a few favourites:

• Anastasia Krupnik by Lois Lowry (Nine books about an awkward teenager with big owl-shaped glasses “just trying to grow up”)
• Sweet Valley Twins/Sweet Valley High/Sweet Valley University by Francine Pascal (3 different series about blond, blue-eyed twins growing up in California – this is probably the Olsen Twins series of my childhood!)
• Who killed Peggy Sue? by Eileen Goudge (An edgy quartet about a high school beauty contest where the reader knows one of the four contestants will die – but which one?)

There’s more but let’s move on. What followed was the university I-Am-So-Deep-And-Complex reads that you believe will help you figure out the meaning of life. Here's a few:  The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Milan Kundera), Sophie’s World (Jostein Gaardner), Charles Bukowski (Anything I could find), Paul Auster, J.D.Salinger, Don Delilio and others. These were the books that made you pause and say ” Wow! That’s exactly ‘it’! I’ve always felt it and now here it is, in words”.

I am going to stop now – seeing it’s only Part One. I’ll post my all-round top 10 later this week. Be sure to visit this space again…