Books you thought no one else has read

Where it Stops, Nobody Knows by Amy Ehrlich. I must have read this at least 10 times as a teenager. Never met anyone else who remembers it.

It was cloning - 1940s children into a sterile future. But it was far stranger, and more thoughtful, than that.

A Rag, a Bone and a Hank if Hair (Nicholas Fisk)

I've definitely read that but can't remember any more than the title and a vague sense of horror. Cloning people, perhaps?

There was a whole section in Back Home, by Michelle Magorian, where she did up an old cottage in the woods or something with stencilling. Had quite the impact on me and my sister when we were little!

When I was at high school we had to pick a book to write a long discursive essay about. The teachers all basically begged us not to pick Trainspotting as it had been done to death by then. My parents ended up giving me a random book of theirs to write my essay on and I've never come across anyone else who's read it.

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. Had to Google for the author as I couldn't remember it but it's by Joanne Greenberg.

I ended up absolutely fascinated by schizophrenia and other mental health conditions at the time because of it.

I am always a bit bemused when people claim there was no real YA fiction in the seventies and eighties. I read loads, some excellent, some indifferent, some downright bloody awful. Just the same as today.

In this vein, I nominate Futuretrack Five (Robert Westall), and A Rag, a Bone and a Hank if Hair (Nicholas Fisk), The Prince in Waiting Trilogy (John Christopher), and almost all of Monica Hughes (including the now unfortunately named Isis trilogy).

Love The Children who lived in a Barn - I read it to my 8yr old last year and she loved it too

Also loved the Monica Dickens "one pair of hands" etc. had forgotten about them, am inspired to re-read.

"Twopence to cross the Mersey" (Helen Forrester) was another book (first of a series) I was obsessed with as a teen alongside the Monica Dickens.

Other favourites that seem to be becoming less well known - Nancy Mitford books and E.F.Benson's Lucia.

@Feeltoooldtostudybutdoingitanyway

@InterestQ

The Children who Lived in a Barn and The Tree that Sat Down were two of my childhood favourites.

@Pianoaholic
I read all the Monica Dickens books when I was in my teens/20s, I loved them.

I read some Pullein Thompson books but I think they were all pony books. I preferred the Jill books (Ruby Ferguson).

I’ve read the Secret River, and several of Kate Grenville's other books but I think that's the best.

Thanks, I will look those ones up!

Yes I read a couple of Sue Barton books. Think they belonged to my mum.

Also in a similar vein a Cherry Ames book, and one dramatically titled The Making of Mara.

Does anyone remember a series set in Liverpool called The Wood Street Gang by Mabel Esther Allen?

Don't think I ever read that, but I read others by Mabel Esther Allen. She was very prolific. She was also Jean Estoril, who wrote the Drina books.

😃

I've read that a few times

Me too! I think my expertise in most things is probably at least 100 years out of date now!

Yes I agree, she really went through it.
I've always wondered which rock band the author had in mind when she wrote them.

YES!

As an adult, I have so many concerns about those kids, but when I was young, I was like, 'Seems perfectly reasonable to me 🤷🏻‍♀️'.

Yes. The editions I read at school mostly had 1970s photo covers, though, which is why I didn't realise then when thry had been published.

They're another series I reread during lockdown. Helen Dore Boylston, the author is interesting- she published a diary about her experiences as a nurse on the Western Front, and later travelled in Europe with Rose Wilder Lane, Laura Ingalls Wilder's daughter. She wrote a biography of the woman who set up the Red Cross, too, though I've not read that.

I did and had no idea they were from the 1930s. I love a good series. I feel I learnt a lot about nursing, sailing, horses, country dancing, ballet, schools, theatre, spies and all sorts from my reading! I’m not sure how accurate my knowledge is though…

Does anyone remember a series set in Liverpool called The Wood Street Gang by Mabel Esther Allen? It was about working class children. And a spooky book called The Stonewalkers by Vivian Alcock?

If anyone has read any Russell H Greenan I would love to know what you think of his writing!

for some reason his work is very popular in France but not here!!

Did anyone else read the Sue Barton nurse books? I loved them as a child, reading them in the 1970s. I've just looked them up - they were written in the 1930s - I had no idea!

It’s a lovely feeling finding other people who have read the same books and not just ‘bestsellers’. @Stormyinacoffeemug I remember Easy Connections and the sequel. They were gripping but oh my goodness, the story was shocking. The poor heroine.

Another Lone Pine fan here.
Loved them as a child.

Yes, I think I’ve read nearly everything on the thread, other than Donald Barthelme, and even then I’ve read some of his short stories — and disliked them —.

Two favourites of mine where I’ve never met anyone else who’s read them:

Hila Feil’s The Ghost Garden (1975) a very subtle, odd children’s novel about two girls living on Cape Cod who try to see ghosts. Brilliantly atmospheric on the contrast between tourist-crammed CC in summer, and eerie quiet off-season.

Margaret Gillard’s The Spires As They Are Seen From the Railway (1987), which DH found in an Oxfam when we were students in Oxford. I think it was the author’s only novel. It’s about an affair between two married teachers in a north of England comprehensive, and very affecting, but it’s also about the demise of grammars, changes in education, about Oxford, about failure.

Mel, Easy Connections, and Easy Freedom by Liz Berry.
Read them while at school from the school library. Teenage books with adult themes. I always wondered why they were in a school library.
Never come across anyone who had read them.