Bookshelf Tour Part Two: DVDs and CDs

Last week I gave you a peek at the books on my bookshelf, and today I'm back to show you the DVDs, CDs, and trinkets that also reside on the shelves.

If you didn't see last week's post, here's another look at what my bookshelves look like. Every last gap is crammed full of the books, DVDs, CDs and trinkets I've collected over the last fifteen years.

Let's start with the DVDs. I'm not sure exactly how many are in my collection, but I think I have over 300. I've been buying them since I was seventeen or eighteen, when the videos started phasing out! (I'm showing my age here)! I've never gone out of my way to collect them; the collection has just built up from years of treating myself to a couple of bargain-priced films here and there. I don't buy them often anymore.

I've loved movies for as long as I can remember, but who hasn't? There's nothing better than curling up on the sofa with a movie after a busy day. I don't have a particular preference about what I watch; I enjoy watching a variety of genres from chick flicks to musicals and disaster movies to horror.

I own quite a few rom-coms, but show me a girlie girl who doesn't! In my opinon, every girl needs You've Got Mail, Practical Magic, Letters to Juliet, Julie and Julia, and The Family Stone in their collection! 

Above this shelf is a framed photo of my Mum, my sisters, and I in a pretty frame I bought at Paignton Zoo. I'm the one in the white dress, and I was about seven. The other two photos are of my best friend and I back in the nineties. The photo on the right is one of my favourites; we were eleven and drinking Hooch at my sister's eighteenth birthday party back in 1997!

I have even more chick flicks, nineties teen movies, and musicals on this shelf. Basically, your typical girlie movies. I'd recommend The Book Thief, Walk the Line, Australia, and Meet Me in St. Louis if you've never seen them. 

This shelf is mostly dedicated to films from the eighties and nineties; the films I grew up watching like Steel Magnolias, Uncle Buck, Corrina, Corrina, Labyrinth and My Father the Hero. They're all awesome!

Above it are all of my Lost box sets. It's probably my favourite TV series of all time, thanks in part to Sawyer and Sayid being so easy on the eye! Yeah, I'm a perve!

Here's another random selection of chick flicks, musicals, and everybody's favourite dystopian book adaptations.

This shelf is mostly awesome disaster films, and a few slightly-creepy horrors. I'm not a huge fan of horror movies, but give me a dystopian, post-apocalyptic, or zombie flick and I'm so there!

These are just some of my Christmas DVDs, and I'm not even sorry! I'm a self-confessed Christmas enthusiast, and festive films never fail to get me in the festive spirit. I have to watch Santa Claus the Movie, Home Alone, Christmas With The Kranks, and The Muppet Christmas Carol every year!

This cube is mostly disaster films, action movies, and Leo Di Caprio films. Titanic is my favourite movie of all time, but I'm sure with three Titanic DVDs on the shelf (four if you count the unrelated TV series), I'm sure you'd never have guessed... Explanation? I had to buy second and third copies after each edition began skipping all the time from being watched a thousand times. I've never purposefully collected them.

The shelf at the bottom is home to my Harry Potters, and a random selection of thrillers, horrors, and musicals. It's also where I keep a bunch of random CDs and blank discs.

All of the shelves are double stacked, so there are even more DVDs hidden behind all of those shown above! If I showed you them, too, we'd be here all day. A lot of the films hidden away are beyond terrible, but there are also all of the Sex and the City and Friends box sets; a bunch of Disneys; old classics like My Girl and Hook; and a few music DVDs.

As for CDs, this is only some of my collection. I have others in the loft and in the car, and my sister has a bunch of them I'll probably never be given back. I don't buy CDs as often as I used to; unless one of my favourite bands has released something new; I generally download most music these days. I prefer buying the CD so I can sit and read the album sleeve during that special first listen, but it's just easier , and usually cheaper to download, and it saves on space. I haven't really gone through or played any of these CDs for years. Most of them are actually quite old.

It's been a while since I last discovered a new band or artist. I've just been listening to the same favourites on a loop for the last couple of years! My favourite bands are Linkin Park, Fall Out Boy, Boyzone, Ronan Keating, Evanescence, Panic! at the Disco, Kings of Leon, Arcade Fire, and Snow Patrol. Lostprophets used to be one of my favourite bands, but I doubt I'll ever listen to them again thanks to that sick fuck.

There isn't much room left to spare on the shelf, but most of the little gaps and edges are occupied by little treasures like ornaments, trinket pots, and mini teddy bears. I think all of the knick-knacks on the bookcase were presents; they're not things I tend to buy for myself. I have several Just For You bears and ornaments that were given to me as presents in my late teens / early twenties back in the noughties when everybody was obsessed with them. I still think they're cute, but to be honest I got bored of Tatty Teddy a long time ago.

I bought these Pretty Woman and Dirty Dancing canvases from Camden lock market in my early twenties. The stall sold wooden hand-painted canvases of movie scenes and movie icons in both colour and black and white, and being a typical girl, I just couldn't resist these four. The Dirty Dancing ones came in a set, the Pretty Woman one was flying solo, although if there had been a set, I would probably have bought it because I just adore that film!

This heart-shaped polka dot memo board is currently filling a gap on the wall above the shelves. One of my sisters bought me it from Sainsburys last year. I've never actually used it as a memo board; I like it just the way it is.

And... that concludes my book shelf tour! If you've made it through all of that, thanks for sticking with me!

If you'd like to see part one of the bookshelf tour, you can find it here.

Do you have a DVD collection to rival mine? What are your favourite films?

Bookshelf Tour Part One: Books

Today, I thought I'd do something a little bit different and give you a tour of my book shelves!

I'm splitting this post in to two parts to keep the length down, and today I'll be giving you a peek at the books; obviously. You can't have a book shelf tour without books! Mine just happens to have other things on it, too.

This is my bookcase; the view at the foot of my bed. I'm stuck living with my parents for now because of my back problems, and I feel a bit like an over-grown teenager with all my stuff still in one room... but at least I have a roof over my head, right?

My bookcase is home to my DVDs, CDs, books, and a few little trinkets, and most of what you can see has been collected over the last fourteen or fifteen years. Like most people, I love movies, music, and reading, so naturally I have quite a lot of each in my collection. The shelves are deep, so each cube has a double row of books, DVDs, or CDs. Please excuse the eye-sore that is the wall above it; I'm still looking for some pretty pictures to replace the ones I took down.

I bought the bookcase from Argos for about £40 when I was sixteen or seventeen, needing something cheap and practical. While it's not the prettiest thing to look at, it's served me well for twelve or thirteen years, and it holds a hell of a lot of stuff. I'm actually surprised it hasn't buckled under the weight of it all... yet! (Especially since I built it from flat-pack)! One day I'd like to replace it with tall white bookcases, but I doubt anything will ever hold as much as this one does. (Also, how amazing is the vampire lips clutch bag from ASOS? I'm obsessed with it!)

Focusing on the books, I don't have a huge collection these days. I've only kept one book from before the Millennium, and most of my reading is now done on my Kindle. That's something I never thought I'd say; I used to hate the idea of reading a book through a screen! Now I couldn't live without one!

I've finished every book you can see on this shelf, except The Lucky One, and Haunted. I somehow finished reading 'Guts', one of the first short stories in the book, which is pretty much the most graphic, nauseating short story I've ever read. I felt so physically sick by the end of it, that I didn't have the stomach to keep reading. I had to put the book aside and read something else; anything else. No other book has ever gotten that reaction from me before or since! Thank God. The book is definitely NOT for the faint-hearted. I keep meaning to go back to it and finish it, but I keep finding other books to read. I know I'll go back to it eventually because Chuck Palahniuk is one of my favourite authors, and as twisted as some of his novels are, I love reading them!

My favourite book of all time is The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (tied with Stephen King's The Stand). It was one of those books I just fell in love with instantly. I adore the characters, the unique story-line, the writing style, everything. (Read the plot here). It's so beautiful, and I love it more and more each time I read it. One of my sisters bought me a beautiful cloth-bound edition a few years ago, and it's without a doubt the prettiest book on the shelf.

I think this shelf of random books shows that I enjoy reading a variety of genres. I'll happily read a bit of everything, although my favourite genres are horror, and dystopian fiction. My least favourite is probably chick lit, but I do read some from time to time; I just don't enjoy them all that much. As for Fifty Shades? Not a chance in hell. 

I went through a bit of a Richard Laymon reading binge in my mid to late teens; I bought and read almost thirty of his novels in a few years, except for the two or three I'm saving for later. Laymon died of a heart attack in 2001, which I was gutted about at the time because I loved his books. He was a great horror writer, although not in the same league as Stephen King, but he wrote some fantastic page-turners. In my opinion, his best are 'Island' and 'Quake', but they're all well worth a read if you fancy giving his work a try.

I know it's a cliché, but Stephen King is my favourite author. His novels and short stories are always so imaginative, gripping, fast-paced, and well written; it's no wonder he's one of the greatest and most loved writers of our time. He's been writing (published) novels for over forty years, and the quality of his work is just as good today as it was in the seventies. That must be quite a rare achievement, even for the most talented of story-tellers. 

I haven't read all of his work, or all of the SK books I own, but I'm slowly working my way through them. My favourites are The Stand (my all time favourite book tied with TTTW), Under the Dome, The Tommyknockers, and Misery. This whole cube is dedicated to King's books, and above it is a framed autographed picture of Ronan Keating.

Another author I return to time and time again is Dean Koontz, who writes horror and thrillers. I only started reading his books in my early twenties, so I haven't read all that many yet, but I've enjoyed every one I've read so far. I'd recommend The Taking and Sole Survivor.

Behind all of the books I've shown you are even more books, but if I showed you all of those, too, we'd be here all day! Among them are the Harry Potters, more Laymons and Kings, random coffee table books, autobiographies, crap chick lit paperbacks, and a few favourites from childhood, like 'Goodnight Mister Tom' and 'The Magic Faraway Tree'.

You may have noticed I don't really have a system for organising my books and that's because my space is so limited. I try to group each author's work together, but that's really where my system ends. If I had tall, classic bookshelves I would probably alphabetise them by author, but I don't, and what I have works for me just fine.

I hope you've enjoyed reading part one of my bookshelf tour. I'll be back with part two later in the week, when I'll be giving you a peek at my DVD and CD collections.

Have you read any of the books on my bookshelf? What are your favourite books?