I found myself in possession of a few small but sturdy boxes recently. Ideal for packing books in I thought because as you well know, bigger boxes are useless for books because they quickly become too heavy to budge.

So I decided to pack some books away in them and started having a rake around bookcases where I have books ‘double parked’ on wide shelves. I had thought that I could take the opportunity to weed out unwanted books to pass on to a charity shop. Some hope!

I think I must have already parted with everything which I’ve read and didn’t want to keep. I couldn’t even part with my old Penguin Classic books, Bronte, Hardy, Eliot and such, most of which I bought when I was about 13 or 14. Since then I’ve inherited lovely old editions of a lot of them, but I had an inkling that charity shops don’t cherish classics, preferring to have best sellers donated to them. So I thought my old books probably wouldn’t be given good homes and decided to keep them.

But I did unearth my copies of the Arthurian trilogy by Mary Stewart –

The Crystal Cave
The Hollow Hills
The Last Enchantment

I remember that I really enjoyed reading those books and others by her way back in the 1970s, I think they’re due a re-read by me. They set me off on an Arthurian phase and I went on to read and enjoy The Once and Future King by T.H. White and being keen on Mark Twain I just had to read A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur, both of which I still have.

I can’t think what else I read though so I suppose I must have got others from the library.

If you’re interested you can read an interview here in which Mary Stewart answers questions about the trilogy.

Although Mary Stewart was born in the north of England, she married a Scot and has lived most of her life in Scotland so I think she can be regarded as a Scottish author.