#SOCS ‘Spellbound by Paddington Bear’ #WorldBookDay

This post was written in response to Linda G, Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt.

This week’s Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “spell.” Use the word “spell” any way you’d like. Bonus points if you use it in the first sentence. Enjoy! Link back to Linda’s prompt post here. Anyone can join in!

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Spellbound by Paddington Bear

Spellbound, that’s me.

It happened over fifty years ago.

I think it was Paddington Bear who did it to me in the first place.

It’s the first book title I can vividly remember reading at school.

The second culprit was the public library.

I read plenty of children’s books at school and at the public library, an unforgettable place.

Then at secondary school, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn were the first grown up books I can remember reading.

Sister Catherine read us the Moonstone and told us all about the mischievous Victorians.

David Copperfield and Oliver Twist enchanted me next, and Dickens is still my second favourite writer.

I hadn’t met my favourite writer yet, that happened when I was 13 and I went on a school trip to see Twelfth Night, that was when I met my favourite writer of them all, and yet in spite of being in awe of Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet, and Richard III, Twelfth Night is still my favourite of Shakespeare’s works.

My first romantic novel was Rebecca. I was about 14 by then.

After that momentous event, I remember devouring Daphne du Maurier’s novels. That reminds me that The King’s General, was a favourite I haven’t reread in a long time.

Shortly after I read Jane Eyre, and I’ve been rereading it ever since, as you all know.

I can’t remember exactly when I read Persuasion, but it was about the same time.

Thomas Hardy, followed closely after Wilkie Collins and Dickens, Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd, unforgettable.

Then as a result of the television series I adored, I read the novels of The Forsythe Saga, Poldark, and the Clayhangers devouring all the novels in the sagas.

So, it probably doesn’t surprise you that I love writing Victorian Fiction, but it might surprise you to know that I’m pushing myself out of my comfort zone, and due to a petition from my best friend, Anna M. I’m writing a contemporary thriller at the moment.

Someone said, ‘Eppur si muove’, so I suppose that’s what I’m doing.

Reading definitely cast a spell on me at an early age, and I’m so glad I’m still spellbound, because I’m never alone and always inspired.

I feel as if I’m conversing with people all over the world synchronically, that is with those who are alive at the moment, and diachronically, with those who are no longer breathing, but they’re still well and truly living.

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Does reading have you spellbound?

Which writers have you spellbound?

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Happy World Book Day for tomorrow!

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