50 Book Challenge 2019 Part Three

Oh Heidi. Read it literally until the the pages disintegrated!! And Olga . Also loved Arabella's Raven.

Am I the only one on here who hated could never get into both Swallows and Amazons and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe? The first 'real' books I read by myself and was totally gripped by were The Hobbit and Watership Down.

I think I read quite a few of the Enid Blyton Secret Seven, school stories etc but the series of books I remember loving most were Olga da Polga, all the Gerald Durrell ones and lots of very un-PC Willard Price adventures involving animals and exotic places. Animals were a definite theme, come to think of it.

Later on I loved Bilgewater, I Capture the Castle, and Daddy Long Legs, while also devouring huge quantities of science fiction (which I hardly ever read now).

For me the big omission from Bookworm was Heidi. I bloody loved Heidi and I I blame it for the several years I spent living in the Alps.

mynameisMrG I didn't get the Gatsby hype either. I was really disappointed by it.

The Up Sticks books are by a different author though, I think.

I hope so because the real Tim Moore is good. The writing style is very different so I expect it is a different one.

Not everybody can appreciate the greatness that is S&A

I’ve never read Swallows and Amazons. Although I noticed a copy in our local library the last time I was in with smallest Stitches.

I did have a complete set of the Narnia books. I read and re-read those until my copies were falling apart.

Getting an important plot detail wrong about it in Bookworm does sound annoying. You’d think it wouldn’t be too hard to skim through a copy of The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe to double check the details if she was unsure about it.

I love Swallows and Amazon's, we used to play it on the lake at home with cousins

And

Brizzle

Swallows & Amazons Forever! Ans death to Captain FLint!

My two favourites are Swallowdale & Winter Holiday.

Always wanted to be Nancy.

I adored Bilgewater, by Jane Gardam, Pencil.

S & A insufferably posh for me. & a girl called Titty? Just wrong. Almost as bad as Dido Twite, the heroine from Nightbirds in Nantucket by Joan Aiken.
Also despised Watership Down, Narnia books, LotR and Hobbit. Didn't like the Iron Man by Ted Hughes much. Or the Silver Sword by Ian Serailler (or something). Strangely all the teachers did though.

However, I did like Ballet Shoes and others by Noel Streatfield. & I read A Long Way from Verona by Jane Gardam about 10 times This was discussed on a Booklisted podcast and the speakers said they didn't think it would be aimed at teenagers now - too adult.

The Up Sticks books are by a different author though, I think.

Whispers too ... me too biblio. Sorry brizzle!

I also had the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe read to me by a magnificent primary teacher (the same one who read us The Hobbit and Watership Down) I re-read them to dd (had to buy the same copies I had as a child- that's me being carnal again)
Brizzle- is that the Tim Moore of Nul Points? (Eurovision nerdiness)And You are awful but I like you (visiting the worst places in the UK) I have both of those and really want to like his writing but there's something not quite very good about it. The premise for wry observation and Bill Bryson-esque hilarity are there, but he doesn't get to grips with them properly somehow.

I am still on the Angel's Game and getting through it much quicker than Shadow of the Wind. I like it more. My quibble with Zafon however is his inability to write women. All his female characters seem to be the same person and I don't think he likes them very much.

Go on Brizzle - you can't tantalise us like that!

I can, you'll all say other books are the best children's book and then you will all be Wrong!

Swallows and Amazons.

Oooh splother you do a great angry review

Go on Brizzle - you can't tantalise us like that!

I was furious about one omission which is the best children's book ever written.

I knew you people would understand my indignation . It's not that she liked different books to me or didn't include my favourites. It's that she couldn't be bother to get it right!!

It was the Secret Seven for me: I loved the Famous Five but the Secret Seven never appealed. I think most children were in one camp or the other perhaps?
I enjoyed the Faraway Tree books.

There are so many books people talk about from childhood that I didn’t read because I was confined to what my small library had on the shelf - I read a lot of Enid Blyton but didn’t get into the Faraway Tree books.

toomuch I completely understand this - I write a little bit in real life and even if I know the subject inside out, I always go back to the source to double check and it drives me crazy.

tottie was my favourite too and one of the few books from childhood I own. I was a library child too, my children have lots more than I did but still nothing like a book a week! The first books I chose for myself were from the school book club and that was where I got The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe. I read it to death. Some time later a friend of my parents moved house and passed on the whole set. I had no idea it was a series and it blew my mind.

Splother I started Bookworm and didn't finish it because she irritated me at a particular point of the book - I can't remember now. Maybe I will go back to revisit it, today I have to work as I have a deadline tomorrow but I'm procrastinating. I really could do with my kindle developing a temporary fault for 24 hours!

I bought From a low and quiet sea and have promised myself that I will read it when I've met the deadline this may never happen

splother, I get the indignation about Bookworm - when you identify with so much of what she writes, any divergences feel like a massive betrayal. I was irrationally annoyed that she either didn't mention or else paid insufficient homage to my all-time childhood favourites (The Borrowers, The Dark is Rising sequence, the Bagthorpe Saga). I lived in those books. I can't remember if you read Francis Spufford's The Boy that Books Built, but he also adored the Narnia books.

10. Don’t you forget about me - Mhairi McFarlane

I like McFarlane’s books, well written chick lit/ rom com with humour and a bit of bite. I’ve mentioned before that she reminds me a bit of Marian Keyes. This one was maybe not the best, few too many cliches the author should have tried harder to resist, and the opening premise flimsy, but I still inhaled it in a day and enjoyed it overall.