reading swallows and amazons for the first time...

[casbie]

quality writing and pure childish escapism - fantastic!

[DumbledoresGirl]

Not if you like them MAS. Although I personally did not like the fantasy ones: Pater Duck and Missee Lee I think they were called. I liked "real" adventure as a child.

[DumbledoresGirl]

Peter

[SoMuchToBits]

That's OK! It took me a while to work out that Vicky and Bridget were the same person, and that Vicky was just a nickname .

[SoMuchToBits]

I preferred the "real" ones too.

[MaryAnnSingleton]

mm,I think it's because ds tried to read Swallows and Amazons after watching and loving the film version - it seemed quite hard work, but can understand how it wouldn't matter if you loved the books (doing it that way round) iyswim...my dad read them when young and thought the name Titty was very funny

[DumbledoresGirl]

Which was your favourite? I loved "We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea" best. I think I was absolutely gripped with the horror of how a small mistake could lead to such an event.

[MrsBadger]

took me a while to come round to Missee Lee but once I did it was excellent.
the 'better marmalade at Oxford, better scholarship at Cambridge' line is frequently used in family arguments.

[SoMuchToBits]

Hmmmm..... don't know which is my favourite. Now I'll have to go and read them all with ds, so that I can find out! I remember liking Swallows and Amazons, Swallowdale and Pigeon Post quite a lot though.

[MrsBadger]

oh, and 'we didn't mean to go to sea' is certainly the best, though Pigeon Post gives it a run for its money

[evilreturns]

oh i love these books! i like the picts and the martyrs and winter holiday, but like swallows and amazons best..

[SoMuchToBits]

Also loved Winter Holiday. Suffering from real indecision here.

The strange thing is, I was never particularly interested in sailing (unlike dh, who also read them), but just thought they were great adventure books.

[MrsBadger]

I read them all when I was quite small
was first introduced to sailing at 13 or so and perplexed the instructor by knowing all the knots, the names of the ropes and how to tack

pony books unaccountably didn't confer the same skills when I first went riding

[evilreturns]

oh gosh i am quite startlingly uninterested in all things nautical. i just thought they were great stories as well.

[UnquietDad]

Better Drowned Than Duffers
If Not Duffers Won't Drown

S&A totally pisses on the Famous Five.

[evilreturns]

swallos and amazons forever!

[fleacircus]

Went out in a boat on Coniston Water (where it's set) this summer - it was lovely and I decided that Titty is a perfectly reasonable name for our as yet unborn daughter. Sadly DP has vetoed it.

[DumbledoresGirl]

Ha! I put off reading S&A for ages (my mother kept trying to persuade me but I assumed from the title it was about wildlife in South America!) but when I finally tried it, I was hooked for the whole series.

I wonder how to get my own children on to them?

[casbie]

i'm a devoted fan of Famous Five, but Swallows and Amazons is written so much better...

It maybe a bit slow paced in comparison, but the characters are so believable and charming!

poor old John, Captain Nancy is so much better at everything than him!

[Kathyis6incheshigh]

Everyone should say which character they most identify with. I am a Dot.

[MrsBadger]

I might be a Peggy

[Marina]

I hear the National Theatre are dramatising Swallows and Amazons...because Neil Hannon of the Divine Comedy is doing the music
Must revisit for ds, it never engaged me as a child I'm sorry to say
Maybe because all my visits to the Lakes were accompanied by driving rain, a gung-ho fellwalking father and a cursing mother...

[krabbiepatty]

Ah, that reminds me must get these out for the chikdren.
Titty, though, is a terrible name.

[casbie]

like the change to Kitty though...

def a must for reading aloud to the children - i would never keep a straight face otherwise!!

[Katymac]

DD is learning to sail atm

She gets to spend days on the water

On Sunday we all (DH & DD, Nana & Pops & I) all went out on the boat (a dutch sailing barge)and had a picnic it was almost surreal - we could almost have been in any decade over almost the whole centuary

DD thinks sailing is ab fab (& I agree)

We kept quoting S&A (& the others) my mum really felt out of it, as did DH, as neither had read them

I really like Missie Lee, Secret Water & Picts and Martyrs (sp) & Winter Holiday & We Didn't Mean to go to Sea & Swallowdale oh and Great Northerner - umm that'll be all of them then

[EffiePerine]

Secret Water my favourite - not much sailing but a cave