Books you thought no one else has read

Brilliant thread.

A couple of children’s books I loved that seem to be completely unknown by anyone other than me (and my mum) are Albion’s Dream by Roger Norman and The Children’s Summer by Sheila Kaye-Smith. An adult book that deserves far more recognition than it got is The Days of Judy B by Rose Heiney. It’s about a newspaper columnist whose writing paints an entirely false picture of her life. It was written before the advent of universal social media but predicted incredibly accurately what it would do to our psyches. Brilliant book.

🤣this book is actually about teenagers discovering sex as I recall !
Moms told their daughters to ask for a Hamburger if things got too steamy I seem to remember …it was published a long time ago ..

Ooh, that rings faint bells...

I remember reading a library book, and I don't remember the author title, but it was talking about going to a shopping mall and getting a Big Mac, and I didn't know what it was talking about. I'd seen shopping malls on screen, but McDonald's was not part of my life at all, and I didn't know it basically just meant a burger.

Other American literature inspired disappointments in life include:
* Hershey's Kisses
* Tootsie Rolls
* Oreos

I mean, the books all made them sound delicious...

My Darling My Hamburger … American teenager romp

Thanks for the recommendation @MedusaAndHerFavourites . I enjoyed Our Spoons Came from Woolworths by the same author so will give this a go.

Sisters By a River - Barbara Comyns.

It's not super rare, but the only other people who have read have done so because I lent them my copy.

One of my favourite writers is Rupert Thomson. I have all his books since coming across the first one by chance back in the 80s.

The only people I know who have read him are DH and DS - and David Bowie, who included one of his books in his list of 100 must reads.

Presumably his readership is not limited to us 4 as he seems to make a good living as a novelist, but his last book got good reviews, with the headlines like 'the best writer you've never heard of'!

I have all the novels of Rosalind Ashe now out of print, who wrote spooky ghost stories that were really good.

I thought it was too.

Yes ; a trilogy by Hull and Whitlock. The Far Distant Oxus, Escape to Persia, Oxus in Summer.

Memoirs 🙂

Is it memoirs rather than Memories? If so, I love that book too.

That's one of the funniest books I've ever read.
I adored Clive James (actually hugged him once at a concert) He also wrote beautiful song lyrics, performed by Pete Atkin.

The oddest book I've read recently, which I loved, was Unreliable Memories by Clive James. Funny, too.

I kind of knew DH and I were kindred spirits when I discovered that not only had he read The Land of Green Ginger, he had all of Noel Langley's other books too - there are quite a few.

I'd forgotten Boomalaka Wee 🤣.
The names in it crack me up, but I suspect would not be considered politically appropriate any more...

You are absolutely right, @Grumpyoldpersonwithcats - it is Tin Tac Ping Fu.

And a trainee genie called Boomalaka Wee.

Re Monica Dickens

When I was about 16/17 in the mid 70s I had two friends called Kate and Emma. One day they were stopped in the street by a woman who asked them to come to her studio to pose for a photograph.

To cut a long story short it was all above board, and they went along (with their mums) only to discover that the photo was one of several which had been commissioned for the Penguin reissue of the novels of Monica Dickens.

Their photo was to be used for the cover of her book Kate and Emma!

I read (and loved) a book called The Far Distant Oxus, about kids camping with their ponies on Dartmoor or Exmoor. Is it connected?

@LoyalGreenHam I loved The Hounds of the Morrigan, sad to discover recently it was the author's only book

R.F Delderfield's books were very popular with TV dramatists in the 70s and 80s - A Horseman Riding By and To Serve Them All My Days were both multi-episode series. AHRB was adapted by three different writers, one of them being quite an interesting novelist in his own right, Alexander Baron, author of the cult London novel The Lowlife. That was another Backlisted episode….once you start looking at all this it becomes a fascinating circular trail!

I recently read To Serve Them All My Days. My mother was a big Delderfield fan, but I'd never read one till this point.

Green Darkness by Anya Seton is one of my favourite books, read it first in my late teens, and re-read several times. I read Katherine much later and didn't really see the attraction.
I didn't know the author was American until just now.

RF Delderfield - discovered in my mid-teens when I read Diana and To Serve them All my Days. I think some have read the Horseman Riding By books, but I preferred the Swann family trilogy, which seems less well known. I also enjoyed the WW2 Avenue books - partly because they were set near to where I live.

Her Benny! I was given that as a child! It was a bit mawkish even for seven year old me, though - proper melodrama.

We had a copy of one called Zack and Debby, too. A proper Victorian cautionary tale that had been given to some poor unsuspecting child as a Sunday School prize. It was like proto-misery porn.

I was ‘adopted’ by the old lady next door when I was little, and she used to pass books on to me. One I loved was called ‘About My Father’s Business’ - a memoir of a little girl growing up above her father’s grocery shop. I think it might have been set around the 1930s. It had some lovely gentle humour in it, and I still remember odd lines from it to this day.

Elizabeth Goudge books.
Green Dolphin Country is my favourite, the one I re-read when I feel under the weather and know chunks by heart but I also love Gentian Hill.
And all the Anya Seton books, not just Katherine.