Books you thought no one else has read

[tweetysylvester]

It's so fun to find rare books to read, or just look up or hear about less known books, so thought I'd start a thread about this. Nostalgic novels, YA books, current titles you discovered very randomly...

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!

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

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

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!

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

And a trainee genie called Boomalaka Wee.

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

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.

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

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

Memoirs 🙂

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

I thought it was too.

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

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'!

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.

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

My Darling My Hamburger … American teenager romp

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...

🤣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 ..

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.

Ah - Albion’s Dream! Such an extraordinary book and no one has ever heard of it.

Except us 😄

Oh, I loved Clive James. Such a clever, intellectual man with a sharp sense of humour and a great turn of phrase. He came at TV criticism in a whole new way; so funny and I have his collected columns from The Observer as well as the first two books of his Unreliable Memoirs. I've only this evening discovered there are further volumes so I'm straight off to hunt these out! Great man.

Cannot remember it but read it in the library years ago.