My pick – Enid Blyton

Just musing… Rowling & Blyton… both women writers, both wrote for children (and were read by all)…

I like any book that keeps me hooked, and Harry Potter did keep me hooked. But was it just quality writing that got her to the top, or was it the media hype? Thanks to Bloomsberry, it seems they even projected her as a male author initially, so that young boys would not get pissed off!

Yes, Potter’s popularity has made any human being oblivious to the muggle world an illiterate. (By the way, I just read Rowling was going to write some “who dunnit” stuff, would love to read that!) But give me a choice between Rowling and Blyton, my first pick would be Blyton.

Her best sellers being the famous five series and secret seven series (though I personally preferred the mystery series, also called the five find-outer series), there was something about the way she wrote, that made me drown into the book, literally live the book, every single page of it.  My mom would supply dinner at my table; seizing the opportune moment I would not nag her cooking. (Oh, she’s an excellent cook, but I loved nagging her!) I would not know if I ate less or more. And then when I finished the book, my five senses still functioning abnormally, with just the recent memory functioning at it’s best, I would recollect moments of the fantasy world Blyton had taken me into.

The fact that her books still sell over a million copies every year shows… I have a lot of company!