Which books from your childhood would you like to re-read?

[Idontknowhatnametochoose]

I'm feeling quite down lately and been thinking I'd like to re visit some of the books I loved as a child. At the moment I want to read...

Enid Blyton:

Adventure series, starting with The Island of Adventure.
St Clares series
Mystery series starting with The Burnt Cottage.

Patricia St John:

Treasures of the snow
The Tanglewoods Secret

Jill Murphy:

The Worst Witch

Just wondered if anyone else is re - reading old books?

Rereading childhood favourites is a comfort thing for me. Anne of GreennGables, Malory Towers, little women, Agatha Christie

Keep meaning to reread the various Narnia books by CS Lewis - loved them as a kid. Guess I am scared they won’t be as good as I remember, so I have up to now, left them in my childhood memories. I reread Catcher in the Rye a while back - loved it as an angst-ridden teen, and god it’s a pile of pretentious self-indulgent wank.

The Katie Carr series are free on Kindle, there are several more books after the first and most well known 3 I read and reread as a child, that I found a few years ago, featuring Clover, Elsie and Rose Red as adults.

There was a book called East of Midnight. Can’t remember who it was by but I loved it. Also everything by Diana Wynne Jones.

I've read loads with my DC. Faraway tree series , Narnua, Famous 5 etc. As a young teen I loved Flowers in the Attic, I wonder what I'd think of it now!

I was coming in to say Famous 5! I re-read them all (out loud) with DC when they were early primary age and I really enjoyed it.

Did you read Time of the Ghost? I found it quite disturbing as a kid.

I don't think I could read Flowers in the Attic again!
I loved Faraway Tree- I quite fancied myself as Silky!

I read all of Malory Towers again not long ago. I love them.

I still re-read old books, partly because most of them are excellent, and because new and interesting books aren't published quickly enough!

Growing up, I always had my head in a book. After Enid Blyton and Jill Murphy, it was Hilary McKay and the wonders of Eva Ibbotson, amongst others (to fill in the space between the Harry Potter books being published...). Happy re-reading, OP!

The Little House on the Prairie series, as though as an adult I'm not sure I could.

All the Famous Five
Silver Snaffles
The Heron Ride

But most of all the Lone Pine series by Malcolm Saville, they are now rare and expensive so cannot re read them.

No! Is that DWJ? I might try and find it. I loved things like Howl’s Moving Castle and the Chrestomanci series

Loved the Faraway tree books and the wishing chair. Read them to my children.

I reread childhood favourites all the time, have rebought many of them.

Children of Green Knowe
The Little White Horse
Tom's Midnight Garden
Ballet Shoes
Little House on The Prairie (yes to PP, it lands differently as an adult. The Long Winter is horrific!) (Also highly recommend her biography Prairie Fires)

Diana, RF Delderfield.

I love reading the books of my youth.

Five children and It.
Swallows and Amazons
The Jill pony books by Ruby Ferguson
Linda Craig mystery books
The lIttle Princess
The Secret Garden
Tom's Midnight Garden (I had this as an audiobook on a long trip recently and the Dcs loved it)
Oh yes and The Worst Witch. That book got me through tough times as a tween
The Jinny books.

etc.

They give me joy and I love reading about the mores of those days- particularly when it comes to manners and food and lifestyle etc.

They really stand up to rereading. The Long Winter is a brilliant novel. (Especially when you read biographies and realise that another family was living with them all that winter, whom LIW left out of the novel.)

Is everyone aware of how many of the books mentioned are available for free on Faded Page?

Huge numbers of Enid Blyton, CS Lewis, Elinor M Brent-Dyer, LM Montgomery etc.

https://www.fadedpage.com

Somehow managed to not mention the pony books
Jill series, My friend Flicka ,The Silver Brumby.
Also, non pony related, Sweet Valley High, saw me through summers with my nan, borrowed from the mobile library.

Oh yes - loved Malcolm Saville! In fact I loved them so much I used to take them all on holiday with me as a kid. I didn’t have quite all of them - they were hard to find even then - but luckily a friend up the road also collected them so we swapped back and forth. I remember years later FINALLY managing to get hold of a copy of Not Scarlet but Gold which I had never read and being ecstatic!

Yes it is. I think I would enjoy it more as an adult. It's definitely very good!

I loved the Jill series!

I read all the Saddle Club, although totally different to Jill of course. I think Jill was written in the 1950s?

I loved all of these too.

Even more disturbing when you know that DWJ based it on her own childhood which was completely messed up!

The Dalemark Quartet of hers is absolutely epic.

She also wrote books for older audiences like Deep Secret and Hexwood which are good.

The My Friend Flicka books are brilliant. I did reread some of them as an adult, and they’re much darker and stranger than I remember. As a child I read them as being about a child loving and training a pony, but there’s an awful lot about the parents’ marriage, the ranch failing, Oedipal stuff, religious belief etc etc.