Post-Christmas, with all the new bookish arrivals, I got into that slightly overwhelmed frame of mind, with all the books all over the place and clamouring for attention. As I shared on social media, I decided to have a bit of a reshuffle – this always tends to clarify the mind as well as reminding me what books I actually own! But there was an added impetus to this, as a Twitter conversation with Retroculturati had reminded me that I had two boxes of Penguin collections somewhere in the house… A bit of digging about revealed them and this is what I found:

Penguin Great Loves box set

Penguin English Journeys box set

The observant amongst you will be aware of my Penguin Reading Projects: I’m gradually making my way through the Penguin Moderns box as well as the Penguin Modern Poets and the Penguin Great Ideas. These are not projects that will be completed any time soon… However, the temptation to add the English Journeys and Great Loves to my Penguins was immense and after a lot of shuffling I ended up with this:

Please excuse my rubbish photography skills – the unit is not lopsided, I’ve just made it look so….

I was pleased to discover that all the various Penguins for the projects fit nicely on this little bookcase and this will help me keep my mind clearer about them. To look more closely at each shelf:

The top shelf has my Penguin Modern box set, alongside the Little Black Classics. I’ve read a lot of the latter, but I by no means own them all. So that’s going to be a long-term project!

Next up the middle shelf. This houses the Penguin Modern Poets and the Penguin Great Ideas. Once again, I am far from owning all of these! Another project is actually going to be getting hold of all of the missing books!

Finally, on the bottom shelf, we have the Penguin English Journeys and the Penguin Great Loves. Both fit nicely on the shelf, with a bit of space, which is very convenient…. Because the conversation I had with Retroculturati started when they shared an image of some Penguin Great Journeys books, and I wasn’t sure if I’d come across that set. A quick online search revealed that they might be another series I would be interesting in reading. And as I had a Christmas gift card lurking – well, this happened:

Ahem. I’ve only got four of the titles so far (with one more on the way) but I think this will be an equally lovely set of books to make my way through. This one and the English Journeys are particularly appealing during these times when we’re not allowed to travel!!

So now the bottom shelf of the case looks like this:

And pleasingly, there’s plenty of space to fit in more Great Journeys. Having done all this, I suppose at some point I’ll have to update my Penguin Projects pages to reflect the new sets. Gulp – I hope I haven’t bitten off more than I can chew! 😀