As an author, I’ve found a lot of things that inspire me in everyday life. Without inspiration, it would not have been possible for me to have written and published two full length novels. When I was recently asked to write an inspiring and motivational blog, an ingenious idea struck me: why don’t I tell you what books I would take with me to a desert island?  To make it easy, I’ll list 10 titles with a brief comment.

1)         Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte): Is there anyone on earth who has not heard of this classic English novel? Even if you have not read it, you must have watched one of its many movie versions. The most recent version hit UK screen two weeks ago – for more of my thoughts on Jane Eyre, please go to my blog site: http://www.junyingkirk.com.

2)         War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy): I read the Chinese translation of this epic many years ago, but I would love to read the English translation, since the Russian language is beyond me;

3)         A Poetry Collection: I am no poet, but I would love to be able to appreciate poetry more. There are so many fabulous poets from the past to the present, from all over the globe, too many to list;

4)         300 Chinese Tong Poems, again I want to recite and memorise these beautiful poetry, going back in time when China had great poets and wonderful literature;

5)         In the same vein, I’ll read The Water Margin again to refresh my knowledge of history and legends;

6)         Penguin’s Book of Erotic Stories by Women, where else better to savour the pleasure of senses, away from the rest of the world?

7)         A language textbook, perhaps Spanish, something new and challenging to my brain; Since I am already competent in the other two major languages in the world, namely, Chinese and English, adding command in Spanish would allow me to go anywhere in the world free of communication barriers;

8)         The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas), another classic well worth revisiting and this time in English;

9)         The Bible – never had time to read it from beginning to end except some excerpts, I would at last devote the time necessary to study it and perhaps even discover the exact reason why it is the most read literature worldwide;

10)      As I come to end of my list, I am faced with the impossible decision as to what to pick, another classic I have loved or a new book by one of many of my favourite Scandinavian writers? Again I have a stroke of a genius: my KINDLE! With my handy Kindle E-Reader, all my headaches and indecisions disappear and with relief I can now select as many books as I like, including Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, the whole backlog of Henning Mankell’s Wallander and Jo Nesbo’s Norwegian series, and many more.

My happiness has been short-lived as I just realised that if there was no electricity on the desert island, then how would I recharge my Kindle? Then I decided that by the time I was forced to live on a desert island, our creative and innovative mankind would have invented a solar-energy charged version. After all, would we ever be short of sunshine, or wind or wave, alternative energy sources?

Now would you like to share with me what is on your list if you were stranded on a desert island? I’d love to hear from you.

Junying Kirk came to Britain from China in 1988. She grew up in the turbulent times of the Cultural Revolution. A British Council scholarship led her to study English Language Teaching at Warwick University, followed by further postgraduate degrees at Glasgow and Leeds. She has worked as an academic, administrator, researcher, teacher and cultural consultant.

When she is not travelling to courts & Police stations as a professional interpreter, she loves spending her time reading & writing books. The first two novels of her ‘Journey to the West’ trilogy, ‘The Same Moon’ and ‘Trials of Life’ have been published on Amazon Kindle, as well as on Smashwords. She is now writing her third, which is to be released in April 2012.

She has a grown-up son and lives in Birmingham with her husband.