UKS monday prompt: What are a few (1-5) of your all-time favourite books? What periods of your life were you at when you read them? How did they affect you? What kinds of books are you most likely to pick up and read today? Do you read more or less than you used to?

Firstly I am an avid reader, love books and can easily read anew one in a weekend.
As a child I had my own library that I made tickets for and charged my sister and friends pennies to borrow them!!
My favourite author as a child had to be Enid Blyton, - Secret Seven, Famous five and Mallory Towers books - how I wanted to be able to be a boarder st school! I used to immerse myself totally in whatever I was reading.
At 19 I took a book of my (then) boyfriends shelf and started to read it. That was the start of a relationship with Jean Auel and the Earths Children series (early people and their lives, the clan people/modern man) - cant wait for the next one - its LOooooooog overdue. The second in the series came out the week before we got married and DH bought it for me the day after we got wed, we then went on our honeymoon and yes I did take it.....it was riveting and struggled to put it away - even for that!!!
In my 20's I discovered Jean Plaidy (Royal romance and intrigues of the British Monarchy) and read loads of those. I went through a phase of buying them from charity shops and car boot sales. I recently sold some on ebay - one of them sold for £16.50!!!!! OMG - if I had known I would have set a higher list price......
Last year I went through a phase of Katy Flynn (usually based around Liverpool and dealing with poverty and deprivation - but the characters nearly always come good!) and all books similar to her style of writing - they are a good get away from it read - quite predictable, but good all the same.
At Christmas I was searching for something new on our shelf and stumbled across The Fiery Cross by Diana Gabaldon (Scottish history, Culloden etc) - I quickly realised that it was not the first book and went searching for the first - not knowing how many there were. Hubby quite gladly allowed me to buy all her books and I spent the next few months immersed in those. Again awaiting anticipation the next book all about the Fraser clan. This series of books interested me so much that we actually went to Scotland on holiday this year - okay not quite to Culloden, but the place where Robert the Bruce hid out for a few years. Awesome!

Have also recently read some of Jodi Picoult - a good read, but very predictable.

So come on Jean Auel and Diana G - cant wait for your next books. It might evens top me scrap-booking for a while......!!