Books you thought no one else has read

@Ellabellahockney I was a big fan of Noel Streatfeild and read Apple Bough as a child. Also -The Growing Summer, where 4 children are sent to Ireland to stay with their Great Aunt Dymphna (fabulous name) while their parents dealt with some emergency (I forget what, now).

@EBearhug would that be the Arthur Marshall from Call My Bluff? A real blast from the past if so!

Apparently so - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Marshall_(broadcaster)

I read it, as did a few of my friends at school - it went round our group.

@Terpsichore. I imagine that was a lovely exhibiton @Terpsichore . I'm sorry to have missed it.

@EBearhug would that be the Arthur Marshall from Call My Bluff? A real blast from the past if so!

A couple of years ago, I reread ballet shoes by Noel Streatfeild And on the cover it said she was also the author of a book called Apple Bough which is also called travelling shoes

It was about a family who was very musical if I remember rightly and I really enjoyed it at 58 years of age

It was all about stencilling! 😀

Goodness, I'd forgotten that one too!

Starting to wonder if I shared a tiny niche library with half the people on this thread.

The Tree That Sat Down by Beverley Nichols and Angela Brazil, generally - loved For the Sake of The School!

Giggling in the Shrubbery was wonderful! Lots here are republished now. Love Girls Gone By publishing for that.

Not a book but a very useful website called fantasticfiction.com

I found some of the authors in some of the post, but not others

It’s handy because where books are written as a series it list the series in order and if you want to create a log on you can then tick off the book you’ve read.

It also enables you to look at authors that are similar, which is handy if you like a particular storyline.

@Livinggently I love Rebecca's World too and don't know anyone else who's read it. It's an amazing story and has a strong environmental message.

Sadly it's now out of print - I think there was a dispute about Terry Nation's estate which caused difficulties. However, I was lucky enough to find a copy of it in a charity shop about 15 years ago so I could read it again and share it with my children.

You can get her entire collected works on kindle for 99p!

Summer of my German soldier by Bette Green. I didn’t read a lot of teenage fiction but this one really touched me somehow. Don’t know anyone else who read it!

@maximist
thank you, I remember only the one, have you read them all? I’m debating looking for second hand copies.

Love Thomas Pynchon.

I found those at a secondhand book fair. I was doing a brutal book cull and sent them to the op shop. I told a friend who said she had been looking for them for years and had recently paid over a hundred for her copies. Ooooops.

My user name comes from Lymond, a conversation between Marthe and Sibylla.

I constantly reread ‘The Farthest Away Mountain’ by Lynne Reid Banks as a child and have recently been trying to find a copy to see if it matches up to my memories

My go to comfort book though is ‘The Cat Who Came In From The Cold’ by Deric Longden - a lighthearted narrative of Deric’s accidental acquirement of a kitten, just a real hug of a book

Frozen Summer by Crysse Morrison, about a woman suffering from amnesia who has to live with a husband and child she can’t remember. She thinks she’s a 20 year old student whereas she’s a married mum in her early thirties.

Ferney by James Long, timeslip novel about a couple that moves to the country and meet an old man who seems to know everything about them and there’s an immediate connection between him and the woman of the couple - almost as if they’ve known each other for years already…

Never met anyone else who’s read either of these.

I loved "Girl of the Limberlost" @ Barabajagal. Still can't see a butterfly without thinking of it. And I'm fascinated to hear there's a prequel. I'll see if I can find it. Unless it's not as good?

I think The Water of the Hills is both Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources as a single volume, though I could be wrong.

If anyone has Lone Pine Books, some of them are worth a small fortune (says person who bought the gaps she had in the series in lockdown.)

I have Giggling in the Shrubbery somewhere- it was Granny's originally. Arthur Marshall.

Hamlet, Bananas and All That Jazz by (I think) Alan Durrant. Brilliant book about navigating teen friendships, peer pressure and drugs, but more entertaining than that sounds!

The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian.

A really good book, supernatural/ witchcraft themes.

I went 'on An-Excursion-to-London' to the John Singer Sargent exhibition last (?) year and was delighted to see 'Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose'!

Geoffrey Trease!

I read all of his books - well everything my local library had at any rate, but I think that really was all the historical fiction he wrote up to the mid 70s; the library had a great historical fiction section, and there was a school.series too, set in the Lake District iirc.

I loved his characters. I seem to remember there were some inspiring girls in his books.

@sandgreen , I've also just ordered Independent People; it sounds excellent. And I would love to visit Iceland one day, so reading books set there can only be a good thing ..

@mimbleandlittlemy I've read Jean de Florette in French; I had no idea it was available in an English translation. (I don't think The Water of the Hills is a very good title, but it's an excellent, heartrending story).

@Pianoaholic I read One Pair of Feet ages ago and have Mariana on my TBR pile. I think I also read One Pair of Hands but remember OPOF much more clearly.

@Livinggently Somerset Maugham is great; very underrated.

I absolutely loved The Family at One End Street too.

For anyone who wants to revisit The Family who Lived in a Barn, Persephone Books currently publish an edition with the most beautiful cover.

A pp mentioned James Thurber. Famous as the author of Walter Mitty, I love his collection of humorous writings My Life and Hard Times. Written in 1933, they're still laugh-out-loud funny. I don't think many people have heard of him .. but I could be wrong ..

What a brilliant thread! Thanks OP.