Memories of my oldest book

The Universe listens to you and and has it's own ways of manifesting our wishes and desires.....so said a friend of mine over a cup of tea just a few days back.

She was trying to get me to blogging again, and begin I did......and I was thinking about a post about books and wanted to share my childhood favorites with all my readers. I wanted to tell everyone about the one book (from my childhood) that stays on in my mind after alllllllllllll these years.

And here I am doing this post about the same....and had it not been for Shruti's post about Diwali Moments, I would have never gone and looked at blogadaa, and all the amazing contests they have there. BTW: Shruti won the blogadda contest about Diwali Moments !!

Getting back to the memories about my oldest book....

The book was bought by my Papa, and although I don't remember the exact date/year of when he bought it, but I can say this much that I knew how to read...so maybe I was 7-8 years old. So the book has been in the family for over 26 years !! that's like quarter of a decade !!

My Papa has a practice of writing the name of the recipient on the first page of the book in the most creative manner...I follow this practice with my son's books !!

The book I'm talking about it 'The Adventures of Dunno and his Friends' by Nikolai Nosov, a Russian author. The book was translated in English by Margaret Wettlin.

The book was thick, hard bound, with a nice cover with the picture of the main character 'Dunno' on it....the cover is still picture clear in my mind.

(Image Courtesy: http://home.freeuk.net/russica2/books/nez/book.html)

The book is in my home in Pune, where it rests with all other books that Papa got for us (big brother and me) as kids. It is super fun to look through this collection whenever we go there...sadly now it's only a couple of times every year. Sigh !!!! One of the many drawbacks of not living in India :(

The very fact that the book still remains in good condition in our Pune home, shows that I have no plans of letting go of this treasure, firstly because it's a book and having parents who love books and collections of their own, I was/am never under any pressure to de-clutter or give away !! The same collect-books streak continues today at my home in KL, and every year we have to make a trip to IKEA to get a new book case !!

Secondly, we hope to pass on the book collection to our next generation, so it's our duty to safe-keep it.

The book is about the amazing little people of a fun town called 'Flower Town'. Dunno, the main character has many friends, and they manage to run into some kind of adventure after another.

The plots are simple, and very funny. One begins to love each and every character in the book.

One thing that I am going to do for sure during my next trip to India is get this book back for my son who is 5 years old, and loves books and reading !! All these years I only allowed him to browse through the book and always had a very watchful eye on him !! for fear of he causing any harm to my beloved book. And my son is a guy who has never broken a toy or torn a book !! My possessiveness comes into action unknowingly !!

I hope the book brings as much joy to my son and my brother's kids over the years ahead .... as much as we (big brother and I) had while we read it as kids.

I highly recommend this book to all parents, not only is it a great read, but it has amazing illustrations and drawings on each page which make the book more readable and super duper enjoyable !!

Through blogadda, I was happy to learn about a company called 'Friends of Books'. This looks like something I'm going to love...as they have an Online Book Rental Library and also a Bookstore full of amazing second hand books. The best part is that they operate 24x7 and 365 days a year !! Hold on...there's more....the books are delivered to your doorstep all over India !!!

Goshhhhhhhh that's like THE best thing for a book-lover like me.

I can buy the books and have them sent to my home in Pune and then have the family ship them over here !! Sadly I can't avail of their library service...but I'm going to tell all my friends in India about this great service.

and I connect with bloggers at BlogAdda.com