I moved from the UK to Los Angeles a couple
of years ago, and the one thing that broke my heart was leaving most of my
books behind! I allowed myself a single box of my most-beloved reads, and left
the rest in storage in my mum’s attic. Oh, for my Sweet Valley Highs…
I’m a big fan of books as décor (what else
do you need in an apartment?!), so I like to arrange them by color, and display
them with my favorite shoes and purses. Books I will reread forever are Bet Me
by Jennifer Crusie, and Love Walked In by Marisa de los Santos: they’re my
go-to feel-good books on a bad day. In the blue stack, you can see my childhood
loves A Dream of Sadler’s Wells series (which I bought up on amazon for a
twitter bookclub re-read) and The Swish of the Curtain, an amazing book from
the 1940s about a teen theatre company which Pamela Brown wrote when she was
just 15!
Some more of my YA faves on this level:
Shadow and Bone, and the amazing follow-up Siege and Storm, which I borrowed as
a galley from the author, my friend Leigh Bardugo, and have yet to return.
Whoops! Stephanie Perkins’ swoon-worthy Anna and the French Kiss, and Rachel
Shukert’s new debut Starstuck, which is a glitzy, captivating story about three
girls trying to make it in 1930s Hollywood.
Here lies the romance! There’s an amazing
book-store in downtown LA packed to the rafters with $1 second-hand books. $1!
I go crazy there and buy armfuls at a time of my favorite romance authors:
Eloisa James, Julia Quinn, and newer fave Sarah MacLean.
This is what I like to call my vanity
shelf: foreign editions and copies of my own books. When I’m having a tough
writing day, or I feel really uninspired, it helps to look up here and see that
I’ve done it before, and I’ll be able to do it again!
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