10 lovely literary LitBits to stroke your bookish-bones this week...

The travel site cheapflights.co.uk has created a rather fabulous infographic exploring some of the real-life locations as featured in children’s books. And as we love a) infographics and b) kids books we simply had to share.

We are thrilled and delighted to announce that our charity partner this year is the Children’s Reading Fund and we will be donating 20p to them for every book traded-in through our recycled-readers book exchange scheme.

Last week I succumbed to the dreaded 72 hour lurgy and ended up spending much of Sunday, Monday and Tuesday between the bed and the sofa.  Not fun especially as I’m not a particularly patient patient, I should also confess that when I’m under the weather reading is low on my list of recuperative tools and I turn to light telly to pass the time instead.  There is however only so much day-time TV that this girl can take so I started scouring the book-shelves for a good sick-bed read.

With the camera's about to start rolling on the film adaptation of SJ Watson's debut novel Before I Go to Sleep we got to thinking about some of the other hugely successful debut novels that have been re-worked to celluloid.  In no particular order here are our tip-top picks for books that have been as popular on film as they are in print. 

There’s no doubting that January and February are weird months, you’re still feeling slightly sluggish after the excess of December, the weather is grey & dreary and you’re catching up financially from Christmas.  As a result us bookish types tend to retreat indoors armed with our to-read list, all very well and good but how about breaking out a bit and indulging in some light-hearted literary fun with a board game?

January 18 marks the birth-date of A.A. Milne one of the world’s greatest children's story tellers.  Born in 1882 in Kilburn, North West London Alan Alexander went on to write for Granta and Punch magazines as well as publishing and producing a number of plays, poems and novels.

As it nears the end of the year it’s time to reflect back on all the books I have read throughout 2012 and selecting a couple that I would recommend to anyone – friend or foe.  So without giving away any plot spoilers in case they are on your ‘to-read’ list for 2013 here we go:

In his book How Bad Are Bananas? Mike Berners-Lee reports that the average adult spends a whopping £440 on Christmas presents, madness when you realise that approx. 20% of that is unwanted bits of tacky Christmas tat - creating the same carbon impact as consuming 3500 bananas! 

Would you believe it’s only four-and-a-half weeks to Christmas?  To alleviate the terrible shopping panic we’ve done all the hard work for you and have compiled a little list of treats for the book-lover in your life.  Be it a lovely literary object, a gorgeous new book or a readers subscription hopefully you’ll find some inspiration for family and friends, or maybe as your little treat-to-self!