As I showed in my first post I’ve got a lot of bookshelves. In that first post I showed you some of my favourite Blytons and various nicknacks, then I showed off a couple of shelves of more random collections.

This time I have two shelves of mostly short story collections from the very bottom of my first bookcase, and also a shelf of non-Blyton children’s books.

Remember you can click on any photo to see it bigger (if you’re anything like me you might struggle to read all the titles on the spines).

Small short story collections

The short story books are more or less organised by height, regular book sized ones on the upper shelf and the bigger annual-sized books on the bottom.

I’ll do a before and after here, because after I had photographed this shelf and written about it, Brodie decided to climb the bookcase, tipped this shelf up and all the books fell on the floor. As it was a bit disorganised and untidy (and some of the series books were in the wrong order) I decided to do some reorganising as I put things away.

Here’s the before (it was taken in poor lighting so it looks even worse!)

As you can see it has a mixture of different heights and there are stand alone titles in between series.

Taking this in daylight with the flash on helps, but I think it looks much better reorganised.

Starting from the left;

The taller books are the eight Hodder story books (now in the right order), four Enid Blyton’s Magazine Annuals, and two Parties at Green Hedges books.

Then the shorter books start with four Methuen colour story books.

After that three incomplete series; I’ll Tell You a Story and the next six make up 7/8ths of the Macmillan Story Readers, then The Brownie’s Magic and the next two books are 3/5ths of the Macmillan Nature Readers, and In Storyland and Happy Stories are two of the five Treasure Trove Readers from the 1940s.

Then there’s three two book series; A Book of Naughty Children and A Second Book of Naughty Children, Rainy Day Stories and Happy Day Stories, Tales after Supper and Tales after Tea.

The last four books are the stand-alone titles, Tales at Bedtime looks like it should be part of the last series especially in the Collins dust jackets with the oval picture windows. Also there is Chimney Corner Stories, Rubbalong Tales and The Book of Fairies, which was previously on the shelf above.

I moved Enid Blyton’s Omnibus up beside my Secret Sevens, and The Fourth Brer Rabbit Book now sits beside my other fantasy titles which I rearranged into proper series order.

Annuals, big books and bits and pieces

While I had the sofa out and was down on the floor I thought I might as well rearrange this shelf too!

Before:

It doesn’t look too bad, but mostly because without titles on the spine you can’t tell that there’s a random selection of stand-alone titles on the left.

Somehow I got them standing a bit straighter after reorganising them. I didn’t move an awful lot, mostly just the random stuff on the left.

From the left;

The Enid Blyton Dossier, the 90s Famous Five Annual and the three recent Famous Five Annuals. These are all modern so go together fine.

Split into small categories the random books are now;

Story collections, starting with Blyton contributions to mixed books – Every Girl’s Annual, Collin’s Children’s Annual, a 70s Purnell Story Book, a Marks and Spencer’s book (one of three), and a Big Noddy Book.

Then two miscellaneous books about animals – The Zoo Book, Down at the Farm, and two Collin’s Colour Camera books about Belinda.

After that are some series which stayed the same.

First the Foyle flower story books, I’ve got four of the eight but one is an abridged reprint, then the holiday books of which I’m missing the first and third.

After taking the initial photo I had thought these should go to the left as stand-alone titles, and actually I was right, I don’t know why I didn’t move them. Anyway these are The Book of the Year, Animal Lovers’ Book and Enid Blyton’s Treasury.

It goes a bit random again at the right with two Alec Rowley plays books (the first edition comes in a single volume), Before I Go to Sleep (an unusual buy for me as I don’t tend to go for the religious books, I have perhaps two or three others and they’re in the bottom of my wardrobe [I think!]), two versions of Eva Rice’s Who’s Who in Enid Blyton, and Noddy’s Farmyard Muddle. But when you shelf books because of their height the randomness can’t be helped.

Crammed on top;

A copy of Tales of Toyland with no spine, a Bedside Book, The Magic Snow Bird and Others Stories (1/8 Pitkin Pleasure series), The Christmas Book, Round the Year with Enid Blyton and the Famous Five Survival Guide.

There are children’s books not by Enid Blyton?

This is mostly my Harry Potter shelf, to be honest! When I first moved in I had Harry Potter, Malory Towers and St Clare’s together, as they are all, technically, boarding school stories. But then my Harry Potter collection expanded and I didn’t like having my remaining Blytons spread over three part shelves, so I did some rearranging. I would have liked to have the Blytons on the top shelf but then I’d have to move the shelf heights around.

Anyway, we have;

The Cursed Child play (I didn’t hate it as much as many fans seem to), the two Fantastic Beast screen plays, a pop-up book about the wizarding world, a special Hufflepuff edition of the first Harry Potter book, and then the whole series in an as-yet unread set of paperbacks (my previous read throughs were done with my mum/sister’s collection and on audible).

There are also a lot of Harry Potter related objects;

On top – an Aragog made of lego and two tiny lego spiders.

A snow-globe of Harry flying his broom, and Funko Pops of Harry and of Snape.

And the lego scene with Harry and Ron that goes with Aragog, and a Ron (and Scabbers) that came out of a surprise bag.

There should be a golden snitch on the shelf but yet again Brodie climbed on the back of the sofa and had stolen it before I took this. One wing was on top of the bookcase and the rest had gotten lost down the back.

Here’s a slightly off centre and less-well lit picture I took before with the snitch in place.

The non Harry Potter stuff has, accidentally, become a sort of If-You-Like-Blyton area. I haven’t yet recommended the Magician’s House quartet by William Corlett, but I should. Stef reviewed The Mystery of the Clockwork Sparrow by Katherine Woodfine, I reviewed more than the two I own of the Murder Most Unladylike series by Robin Stevens (I now notice these are in the wrong order!), I should recommend The Hobbit by J R R Tolkien, seven of the Adventure Island books by Helen Moss, The Animals of Farthing Wood by Colin Dann, and a collection of Sherlock Holmes puzzles which Fatty would like but I have no hope of ever solving.

There are probably two more posts to go, as I have four more shelves of children’s books. One is mostly Blytons, two are vintage childrens and the last is mostly modern children’s with some Blyton biographies on the end.