The idea is delightfully simple: for 30 days, you post once a day in response to a book-themed question. That’s it. No essays, no footnotes, no need to summon the ghost of Shakespeare, just honest answers, curious reflections, and maybe a few cheeky confessions about your reading habits. I have decided to take part this year, and since I picked a month with 31 days (I know it would have made more sense to use a 30 day one) I am using March 1st to explain what I am doing.

Each day brings a new prompt: favourite characters, memorable endings, guilty pleasures, and the books that made you weep, rage, or fall in love with the written word. It’s a gentle nudge to celebrate your literary life, one post at a time.

So why not give it a go? Dust off your bookshelf, sharpen your wit, and join the challenge. Thirty days. Thirty questions. One slightly eccentric bookworm’s journey through the pages.

DAY 20. – Favourite childhood book.

My favourite book as a child was The Hobbit, but I have already used The Lord of the Rings as an answer for a previous day, and those books are not really considered children’s books in the traditional sense. So for this one I will choose something that sits more firmly in the realm of childhood reading.

I will go with The Hardy Boys. Yes, it is a whole series rather than a single book, but I devoured those stories when I was young. They sat proudly on the same shelf as The Three Investigators, and together they formed the backbone of my early reading adventures. Those books were absolutely written for children, and I adored them. They were my first real doorway into the world of mystery, where every chapter held a clue and every clue whispered a promise.

I have always loved a good puzzle. Even as a child I would sit there trying to work out who the culprit was long before the grand reveal. I would study the characters, weigh up the motives, and convince myself that I had cracked the case. Sometimes I was right, sometimes I was spectacularly wrong, but the thrill of the chase was always the same. Looking back, I suppose I have always had an inquiring mind, the sort that refuses to leave a question alone until it has been poked, prodded, and unravelled.

Those books did more than entertain me. They shaped the way I think, the way I observe, and the way I approach a mystery even now. They were my first companions in the art of curiosity, and I still hold them fondly in the library of my memory.