book worm

I am a sucker for stories. Personal stories, historical stories, funny stories. I guess it's why I've always loved reading and why I now work in Children's Publishing. I remember the thrill of my Mum and Dad reading me bed time stories as a child, and how grown up I felt when I could read them all by myself, even if it meant hiding under my covers with a torch cause it was well past my bedtime. 


I love the power of words, how they draw you in, entertain and sometimes surprise you. I love how a good author can create people so real you could recognise them if you walked past them in the street. But what happens when someone changes the format of a story that you've only ever held in your hands? What happens when they transform it to the big screen, or to audio, or change the book cover? I loved One Day and can't wait to see it in the cinema, but I am under no illusions that it's going to be the same story as the one I originally read. Books and films are different kettles of fish and as such, entirely pointless to compare to each other. I am sure the film will be a different, albeit similar, story to the book. 


By it's very nature, reading tends to be a private thing that we share by recommending books and discussing plots. I'm glad stories do get shared in this way because I'm always amazed by how differently two people can interpret exactly the same words. By how the same lines of text can conjure up different images, different emotions. I stumbled on a blog called Book Swept a while ago and keep coming back to it again and again. I love the carefully selected images, the snap shot of how someone else sees a line of text. It never fails to remind me how powerful stories can be when mixed with a little bit of imagination.