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My Favourite Books

When I first started to read…

I really loved Enid Blyton’s:

  • The Enchanted Wood
  • The Magic Faraway Tree and
  • The Folk of the Faraway Tree

When I grew up

I still liked books written for young people and discovered:

  • Playing Beattie Bow by Ruth Park
  • Of a Boy by Sonya Hartnett

And, of course, J K Rowling’s Harry Potter series

Then I discovered

  • The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
  • Heidi by Johanna Spyris
  • Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
  • Anne of Green Gables by L M Montgomery

As an Adult

I have read and re-read

  • Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (and visited her home in Georgia, USA)
  • The Winds of War and War and Remembrance by Herman Wouk
  • Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

There are so many other great books I’ve enjoyed…


Here are some of them in no particular order:

  • The Valley of Decision by Marcia Davenport
  • The Citadel by A J Cronin
  • Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
  • Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding
  • The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
  • How Green was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn
  • The Far Pavillions by M M Kaye
  • A Fortunate Life by A B Facey
  • Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
  • Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell
  • Wild Swans by Jung Chang
  • The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough
  • House of Sand & Fog by Andrew Debus
  • Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
  • Mao’s Last Dancer by Li Cunxin
  • Anna and Mr God by Fynn
  • Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
  • Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
  • Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald
  • Small Island by Andrea Levy
  • The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
So many great books to read

Then there are the authors i love…

Again no particular order:

  • Farley Mowat
  • Charles Dickens
  • Mark Twain
  • Bryce Courtney
  • Jodi Picoult
  • Alexander McCall Smith
  • Bill Bryson
  • Taylor Caldwell
  • Gerald Durrell
  • Edward Rutherford
  • Stieg Larsson
  • Khaled Hosseini

Authors I love

YOU CAN FIND DELLS BOOKS AT

Books by Dell that you may like…

A Brummy's Backyard
As the lumbering jet swoops low over the grey, legoland housing rows that surround Heathrow Airport, the story of the author’s year of living in England begins. Recipients of a teaching exchange, Australians Dell and John are bound for schools in the West Midlands, and find that things are quite different in Brummyland.
The story of two young women determined to live outside the confines of the Victorian Age and who have a lasting impact on the fledgling town of Melbourne.
An epic story of life and death amid the turbulent years of the Victorian gold rush, narrated by the three main characters, Adam, Joey and Tom.
Penny Taylor, from London’s East End, finds herself part of the struggling Hapless family, living in a caravan park in the Illawarra on the south coast of New South Wales. She is kept busy with three young children, two of whom belong to Dudley Hapless, her present partner and a professional basketball player with the Hawks.
The Weif is a sweeping story of servitude and the struggle for freedom, of the law and its cruel inequities, of the privations and harshness of a rugged new land and of a brother and sister’s fragile home on life during the tumultuous early years of settlement in Australia.
Kit Markham’s world turns upside down when Jack, the boy she always believed she would marry, turns out to be her half-brother. At sixteen, feisty and headstrong, she leaves her home in Melbourne and flees to England. The year is 1855.
Stina caught the excitement spreading like wildfire amongst the passengers. The Friedeburg had anchored in Moreton Bay and the long and uneventful voyage was finally over.
A group of mates from the Sydney suburb of Botany answer the call from king and country and go away to fight in the first world war. Far from the adventure they imagined, the five years of the conflict bring challenge, fear and loss but also lighter moments and some unexpected romance.