A Tour Through My Childhood Bedroom: A Nostalgic Journey

As I step into my childhood bedroom, I'm immediately struck by the nostalgia that fills the air. The room, which was once my sanctuary, has undergone significant changes over the years, but it still retains a sense of warmth and familiarity. I apologize in advance for the echoey acoustics; it's been 10 years since I last set foot in this room. My parents kept some of my books when they moved me out to college, and I've decided to embark on a journey to track down the missing pieces of my literary past.

As I begin my tour, I'm greeted by the familiar sight of my bookshelf, which has been rearranged over time. The top shelf is where I'll start our adventure. My eyes land on a book that brings back fond memories – "The Little Book of Hindu Deities" by Sanjay Patel. This cute and colorful book was a favorite of mine as a child, providing a simplified explanation of various Hindu deities in an engaging cartoonish format. Next to it lies a pair of Jonathan Safran Foer books, which I'll leave aside for now. One of them is "Memoirs of a Geisha," a beautifully written but problematic novel that explores the life of a young geisha in Japan. I have mixed feelings about this book; while it's stunningly written, its authorship by a white man feels jarring to me.

Moving down the shelf, I come across a copy of "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury. This classic dystopian novel was likely acquired during my high school years, and I'm not sure how much I truly connected with it back then. However, one book that instantly stands out is "A Girl in Pearl Earring" by Tracy Chevalier. This historical fiction novel tells the story of a young girl who becomes a model for the famous Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. The book's themes of art, beauty, and identity resonate deeply with me.

As I continue my exploration, I notice a section dedicated to my favorite series – Harry Potter. My love for these books is evident in the way they're organized on this shelf. While I would have loved to organize them by color or genre, life got in the way, and I stuck to what worked for me at the time. It's amusing to see how things fit together as they did when I was younger.

Next up, I'm drawn to a new piece of equipment that's taken over my space – a tripod that can hold my camera securely. It's an exciting development, and I look forward to exploring more of this room with my newfound gear. My eyes land on a book with a peculiar mark on the nose; it belongs to someone else, but I've taken it upon myself to add it to our collection.

As I navigate through the shelves, I stumble upon a Miso Pretty sudoku book that's been sitting here for years. It's amusing to think about why I still have this; perhaps it was meant to be a calming companion during long flights? The sudoku book has given way to more substantial volumes like "Titus Tules," which is not my own but has captured my attention with its adorable illustrations of the Queen's corgi.

The next item on my list is Coraline, a classic children's novel that still sends shivers down my spine. I've always been fascinated by this book, and it's a testament to its enduring power as a storyteller. However, there's one book that stands out above the rest – "Mr. Popper's Penguins" by Richard and Florence Atwater. This charming tale of an explorer who discovers a group of penguins on his doorstep is a staple of my childhood reading list. I've lost count of how many times I read this book as a child; it has a way of transporting me to another world that's both magical and thrilling.

As I continue to explore my childhood bedroom, each shelf reveals more stories, memories, and experiences that have shaped who I am today. It's amazing to see how these books have stood the test of time, and I'm grateful for this nostalgic journey that allows me to reconnect with my past.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enCan you hear, like...? Oh it just even sounds great! Hello everyone, and welcome to my childhood  bedroom! If it's echoey, I apologize. If you notice the sunburn on my cheeks, we're back in California!I'm gonna give you a little tour. I'm going to go through my bookshelf that is in my room - I  moved out 10 years ago technically, like I went - I entered college 10 years ago, isn't  that insane? So because of that, during that time everything has changed - my wall color has changed,this has now become the guest room. This is no longer my room, but obviously my parents  kept some of my books. I have noticed that some of my books have been roaming around the house  so maybe we'll also go on a little journey through my home and try and find my missing books.  So this isn't this all of the books that I had but also thinking about it,  I don't think I bought a ton of books, like for the amount of books that I read as a kid, I don't think  I bought a ton of them. I think - my mom works at the library, I think I was just raised on library  stuff so this is gonna be maybe a quick one, I don't really know. I haven't really dug into  what's in here so this is gonna be kind of a first reaction video too, but yeah shall we get  started? There's no good angle to do this in either. We're very cramped up in here. My bookshelf is like  here so this is gonna be a little bit messy but I think it's gonna be a little bit of fun, you can  see who I was as a child so let's begin! Greetings! I have opened it, it's in this little chest thing  that I don't believe, I don't believe was part of my childhood. I don't really remember. You're  going to hear that a lot - I don't remember a lot of things. Beginning with the top shelf - oh I remember  this book! I love this book. This is the Little Book of Hindu Deities and it's this cute little  cartoonish, short, very simplified, explanation of some of the Hindu deities. It is by Sanjay Patel.  It's real cute. There's that. I have these two Jonathan Safran Foer books - we'll pass those by.Memoirs of a Geisha - a complicated book. The thing is, it's a beautiful book but  got not such a great background. It's written by a white man first of all. I wish  it were written by somebody else that's all I can say. I've got Fahrenheit 451 - to  be honest I think that I only have that because of high school, no shade at Ray Bradbury butit is what it is. I have A Girl the Pearl Earring which I don't really remember reading. I have - oh  this book I remember really liking. This was The Lady in the Tower - I'm pretty sure  this was about Anne Boleyn. By Jean Plaidy. I don't know, I went through when I was a kid  I went through like a hardcore Tudor England obsession phase and a phase that hasn't super  ended, like I'm always very interested in the Tudors. So yeah anything Anne Boleyn,you're gonna, I'm gonna be interested in it. So this was actually a really interesting one.Never Let Me Go, obviously by Kazuo Ishiguro. Oh what? A picture of me and my grandpa in this book.This is a ticket - San Diego to San Francisco. I guess I was going home after I had come home from  Christmas, I was going to Seoul and I was using it as a bookmark - bougie. The things you find in  my books. I don't remember reading this but Ihave a book about the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  And then I have I think this might have been a this was a birthday gift but this is the  Elements of Style but there's that. This is like the catch-all, question mark shelf. I  also would love to hear how you guys organize your shelves because even as a kid I would just  organize them like I'd organize them by series, which as you can see this is a Harry Potter shelf...It is what it is. So I would organize it like if I could by series and then  it was literally just how things fit on the shelf. I never did it by color or by  genre. I could not and I still cannot so that's what's going on. Next up, I actually love  this shelf and this is gonna be impossible for me to bring you down to talk about. I just got  a new tripod and it actually holds my camera, isn't that crazy? And I have a mark on my nose.Okay. Are some of these not finished? Oh they aren't finished! That's so funny. I bought this  for a plane trip I think I did only a couple of them - it's a Miso Pretty sudoku book, that's  so weird why do I still have this? Okay anyway let's just grab a couple of these off the shelves -I have a - this is not mine - but I have a JD Salinger, I have this really cute  book, it's called Titus Tules and it's about the queen's corgi and he has I forget what  it is but it's just one of those adorable little kids books that has Right? It's cute! So anyway  Titus Rules. I've got this Coraline. I remember buying, I got this in the UK but like for some  reason this cover is ingrained in my memory and terrifies me to this day, I don't know why.And then this is, this is the freaking best book ever, I read this so many times as a kid. It is Mr.  Popper's Penguins by Richard and Florence Atwater and it's just about this man who - I forgetwhy you're like this - oh...it just even sounds great, anyway. What is his thing? So this is Mr. Popper.  He randomly gets interested in explorers and the antarctic and so he writes a  fan letter basically and Captain Cook is like \"hey man let me send you a penguin\" and so he sends him  the penguin, whatever happened, there sudden comes along another penguin and then there are many many  penguins and they just get into a lot of mischief and he decides to train them and they kind  of are this traveling circus of penguins. I don't really know, I literally don't remember anything  other than very much enjoying this book so yeah Mr. Popper's Penguins was a great one. I  loved this one, there's the Wizard of Oz and then there's the Marvelous Land of Oz and then there's -I read a bunch of these, I love the illustrations, but yeah I went through a phase where i read  like all of the Oz books like Zelda of Oz, oh this one even - this one even has the colored versions.And then this, my mom told me that she packed all the other ones in this series because I guess  I own the whole series but I have the first one and this is the Children of Green Knowe which  I have talked about before and I literally cannot explain to you what the series is about -  there's like this kid who for whatever reason moves to his ancestral home in the country  and it's just him and his grandma but then he also finds out that like the ghosts  of his great-grandfather as a child is there and like he plays with - I don't know, I can't tell you  what the series is about but I just remember absolutely loving it, it was just, it's very much  like this victorian kid's tale, you know? It's by LM Boston, Lucy Maria Boston. I really really loved  this series and I'm glad that I still have this one. And this too! I don't know why, why we don't do  these anymore but like this book has illustrations too, like a chapter book but it has illustrations.Yeah there's a lot of like hidden stuff around this like abandoned manor so I was into it.  ~anyway~ So I'm gonna make an entire separate video about this series and this film and I posted  a story on my bookstagram about it and I'm so glad that you guys, like so many of you messaged me and  you were like \"Georgia Nicholson! I love her!\" Yeah so I don't know why I only have the sixth one in  this series - And Then He Ate My Boy Entrancers is the title - I really hope it's not problematic, like  if I read back on it I'm sure I would have issues with it but it is this series that starts with  Angus, Thongs, and Full Frontal Snogging which has been made into a hilarious film but it is  written, it's a diary as you can see there are time stamps - it's literally just the confessions  of Georgia Nicholson and she is this British girl, I think she lives in Brighton and she  begins the story by - she is in high school and she falls in love with this guy who she calls  the \"sex god\" - there's no sex in these books. And like her \"boy entrancers\" are her, she bought false  eyelashes and stuff. Like she's just so funny, she has a cat that is insane, she she's just she's  very much a teenager. Louise Renison really captured like she's so self-conscious and she  will try all these ridiculous things like \"I'm going to meditate and listen to dolphin noises in  order to become a proper woman\" and all this stuff and then at the same time she's overly cocky  and the tiniest things get blown up into the biggest - she's just very very funny  it's really excellent. Again there's definitely probably issues now, these are from - I read these  in middle school, 2005. Like laugh out loud funny, these books. We've got another Tudor one, we've  got this beautiful book - I don't even know what the book is about but I stole it from my university  library because they make a lot of money and nobody was reading these books and so I just took  it. My completely beat up - can you see, you see how loved these books were? This is A Wrinkle in Time  and A Wind in the Door. Adore these books so much, I can't say enough about them. I love them, I  love them, I love them, I love them. I've talked about them before I will link a video above.  I do have it - this is the book I was talking about! I forget in what video but when I said  I thought that this was a fever dream and it wasn't and I've just read it a million times.  This is the book and i still have it so wouldn't you know. Oh we also have Number  the Stars by Lois Lowry. We had to read this in fourth grade I believe. This is about a  non-Jewish German girl and a Jewish German girl who are friends and then the Nazis start to take  over and they have to hide their friend. It was a very hard one to read obviously but I'm very  happy, I'm very glad that we did read it when we did. So Number the Stars. And then we enter  my favorite section, oh my god I think I have more - oh my gosh I have so many, wait. All right,oh man, I have one two three four five six seven eight of these. If they were  available in America, I would have bought more. I purchased these all when I was in England so  these all went into my suitcase and my parents made us travel using only carry-on luggage so.I also got my first vaccine shot so yay for me. Enough of that. It's dusty, it's dusty in here.  It's been a while. I cannot tell if - I'm blurry in real life so if I'm out of focus  it's not the camera's fault. These are called Horrible Histories and depending on where you're  from in the world you might know about these.They are cartoony style very quick history books  that are just so funny and they, they're very British humor so it it's very  self-aware, it makes fun of itself, it recognizes how ridiculous some of these situations are. Imean talking about the beginning of world war one right, like who the hell was Franz Ferdinand  and why did like that one little thing - for example this one, look at this like \"boo you stink\" you know?Like just how kind of childish many issues in our history were. I just really liked it so I have  First and Second World War, Queen Elizabeth I, Awesome Egyptians, Terrible Tudors,  Even More Terrible Tudors. I'm telling you guys, it was an obsession. Cleopatra, Ireland and then  the Cutthroat Celts. Absolutely freaking adored these books and I might read them  while I am here at home, I don't think I'm going to take these home with me but these are absolutely  excellent excellent books. This is another book that I swear to god I thought it was a fever  dream. It is called The Fairy Rebel by Lynne Reed Banks. She wrote Indian in the Cupboard.Oh yeah okay I remember this, so basically this older woman is in her garden and she sees a fairy  which is usually not supposed to happen because grown-ups aren't supposed to see fairies  and she's crying because she wants to have a baby so badly and it's just not working out  and so this fairy is like \"you know we aren't supposed to help humans but she's really  sad so maybe I should\" and so the fairy helps her and so the woman has a baby  that is like blessed by fairy luck, you know? So the fairy queen finds out and is pissed and so the  child has now kind of grown up and the fairies kind of come after her and try and trick her or  whatever, like the fairy queen wants her revenge on this baby. So yeah I literally don't  remember any of the details but I just remember absolutely loving this book and yeah again again  with the cute - let me find a cuter one - it's got all these cute little illustrations. The  blue tuft! Right yeah the the baby had blue hair for some reason. And then the evil fairy queen.Yeah so this is a book that, again, was like a fever dream in my brain. We're almost done guys I swear,  there's like very little left. I loved these books. If you liked, I would say, The Lion, The Witch, and the  Wardrobe, like specifically The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe - not necessarily the rest of, oh my god  the name escapes me, the series - Chronicles of Narnia! Thank you, geez. This had a very similar  feel. This one is called the Doomspell. It's a trilogy and I don't have the second  one for some reason but I do have the third one - The Wizards Promise and I got a signed one, right?  Yeah I got it signed! Again, this - I purchased in England. I found this just randomly in a  store in England. Ooh what's this bookmark? Carlsbad city library, I checked out a book in 2003. What is  this even about? It's like these kids get - okay so these two siblings get snatched away by the witch  and so they get like sucked into this other dimension except these kids, the girl,  the older sister, happens to have magical powers so the witch is like \"oh I can use this girl\"  but the sister is like \"no you're evil no way\" and so they like fight each other and  try to find their way back into the real world. I just remember the imagery in this  was fantastic, it's very like ice queen going on. I really enjoyed it and I might read it again  but yeah it's the Doomspell and then what's the second one? The Scent of Magic, oh that's right yeah!  Anyway, great trilogy, I don't know if anybody else has read it - if you have let me know because I feel  like I was the only person who had ever read this but yeah the Doomspell trilogy, excellent.A Spanish and English dictionary, I have a Japanese and English dictionary. Okay I also have the  rest is just Japanese stuff, I told you I liked kanji, right? So yeah it's the rest is Japanese.I got an advanced copy I guess this is I don't know why I got this but this is Luca and The Fire  of Life which is the sequel to Haroun and the Sea of Stories which I've already talked about  as being one of my favorite books. It's just an arc so it literally doesn't even have - it's like  'a tentative date' 'tentative price' etc. There it is, anyway. Let's talk about this book.  I'm obsessed with this book. I'm so sorry you have to sit at the angle in which this mark is on my  nose I don't know what to do. Pirates by Celia Rees, she also wrote a book called Witch Child  I think which is about the Salem witch trials? I adored this book, oh my god, like look at the insideright? It was just so good so basically if I'm remembering it correctly - let me do it without  looking at it - there is a girl who lives in England and her dad is like a trader, or he has ships.  I think he trades like sugar or something so probably not a good guy, she decides to run  away for whatever reason. I'm realizing that I'm losing, quickly losing the plot in my brain.  Right, so there's Nancy and Minerva. One of them is the rich merchant daughter the other is her  enslaved friend. They set sail from Jamaica, so they escape on this pirate ship, so they  join a ship that already is a pirate ship because she doesn't - she's avoiding an arranged marriage  and then Minerva is escaping slavery, they both decide like \"screw it we actually don't want to  go to England\" - so they live in Jamaica- they're like \"actually we don't want to go to England, we  just want to be pirates\" and so they just become pirates and it's freaking great. I remember  adoring this book. It's just very much like Pirates of the Caribbean but without all of the like  hocus pocus kind of stuff. Again, I haven't read it in a long time so  I don't really know how well handled Minerva's character was but I just, I remember reading  this book so many times and I would love to know if any of you guys have read it so Pirates  by Celia Rees. What else is there? I have the complete works of Lewis Carroll.  Literally it's all just Japanese studying books. If you guys are into Kpop or Korean music in general,if you know Tablo, he is in Epik High and he is also just a solo artist, he is also a writer  and I read his book Pieces of You. I underlined a lot of it, I seem to remember but yeah it's  just like kind of these short short story kind of things going on. I enjoyed it in high school  immensely, I haven't read his new book though. I don't know why. And now if we look above to this,  this is my Murakami shelf. Getting toasty in this room. So yeah I've just, I've got them all.  I don't know what else to say, what is that? What is this? A reader's guide?  Oh that's weird, okay, well anyway. I do have more of his books but they have been relocated  around the house but that's that. I got this in Windsor. So yeah those are my those are my  shelves I definitely think I had more books but again they have been moved - oh and Alice,  Alice, and then I do collect the Petite Prince in every language for the places that I go. I don't  seek it - it's not like a big important thing to seek out but like if I see it, like I was in Rome  and I happened to see this in a bookstore so I got it. So I have it in Japanese, Italian,  Korean, Korean again, and English. So there's that and this isn't my bookshelf but I will  show you the bookshelf downstairs because I showed it momentarily  in an instagram story and everyone was like \"I need to see it\" so here it is.So the story behind this bookshelf is that we are actually moving, as you guys might  know. This is why I'm actually home at all, I'm helping my parents move which is  very sad, hence the boxes everywhere. But in order to make the house look nice  as we're selling the house, my mom decided to make a rainbow bookshelf, that's why actually  where did it go? Teah like she has, she used some of my Murakami and stuff but yeah  this is not even a taste of the books in my home, everything else has been packed already. Louie do  you want to say hello? Louie is a great reading companion because Louie does not like to move.If he could stay laying down and sleeping all day he would, so if you lay down on the couch, he  will lay down with you and he loves nothing more than to be a lap dog while you're reading. Anyway  that was a tour of my childhood books, sorry that there weren't a ton they've mostly been packed  but again like I said I'm pretty sure that I just didn't buy a ton of the books that I read.I made great use of my school libraries and my city library but yeah let me know if you've  heard of any of those more obscure ones. I'm gonna leave you guys here. Thank you so much for  watching and I will see you guys next time. A couple people requested doing like a 'bookstores of  San Diego' video but just right now because I'm only half vaccinated, I'm not really going out and  about, so I definitely do want to give you a tour of our library because I love our library so much  But yeah I'll have to come back to San Diego another time to do that. Anyway once again thanks  for joining me. Louie, do you want to say goodbye? You want to go to sleep? I should leave you alone?I should leave you alone? Yeah okay, well I'll see you guys next time, thank you always, bye!\n"