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...

I'm sure when we used to get the Narnia hardbacks out of the library the versions had decorations around the text? I tried for a long time to get a copy of those old ones but not been successful yet.

Loved London Belongs to Me @Nettleskeins . I tried watching the film on YouTube a few years ago but the picture quality made it unwatchable. It's a very filmic book.

I'm fascinated by the set up, some huge old Victorian villas that a widow owns and rents out after her husband dies. Not just single people but families living in a few rooms. Often a setting in a black and white film; the kind to watch on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Not many young people and families would happily share accommodation like that these days. With shared bathrooms and loos. With just a kitchen area in one of the rooms. Probably exist in hostels and detention centres etc.

Children of the Archbishop! I've not read that in years. Must see if my old copy is in my Mum's loft!
Adore Elizabeth Goudge. Green Dolphin Country is one of my 'special' books.

I actually have Children of the Archbishop- I inherited a lot of my parents’ books when my Mum moved in with us many years ago. I definitely read it. Doesn’t a child die of meningitis? Another well loved book about London children was Episode of Sparrows by Rumer Godden.

The film version of London Belongs to Me occasionally pops up on Talking Pictures - Alastair Sim is superb as Mr Squales, the sinister medium. And @pollyhemlock there's also a film of An Episode of Sparrows, changed a bit from the book and rather oddly retitled 'Innocent Sinners' - but worth watching for the astonishingly natural and touching performance of a child actress called June Archer as Lovejoy, who acts everyone else off the screen but hardly seems to have been in anything else.

I remember being repulsed by some of the drawings in The Land of Far Beyond, especially the large, hairy lumps (with hands!!) that they all carried around with them. Just horrific!

Yes - I loved those - don't have any copies now sadly.

There was a tv series of London Belongs to Me in the 70s, it a wonderful story.

A lot of people DP did live like that until well into the 69s and 70s. Bedsit land, or lodgings. My DGM had a big house in Richmond and let out rooms to young women, mainly air hostesses because it was very close to the station so easy to get to LHR. I used to visit her lot and thought they were impossibly glamorous.

DGM was actually rather louche and I adored her. She smoked like a chimney and would try and get me to have a puff of her ciggie (thus putting me off smoking for life) she loved horse racing and used to take me down the bookies which had darkened windows and I had to wait outside. She was also good mates with Roberta Cowell, who underwent Britain's first MTF sex change operation, but that's a whole other story.

I have my mum's original hardbacks of all the Arthur Ransome books - she wanted me to see how much they'd be worth, if she sold them, but none are first editions, so the answer was disappointingly little. After she died, my sister and I decided that we'd keep them to lend to the my grandchildren (she doesn't have any children). They will go to each family on loan, when the children are the right age for them, then get passed on when the next lot of grandchildren arrive and need them.

I hope they will enjoy them - my eldest and his wife adore the Lake District, and plan to take their children there, so I'm hoping they will be sparked into interest in Swallows and Amazons.

I'm in the middle of Hostages To Fortune thanks to this thread. Lovely book.

I think I’ve read all the Violet Needhams. The House of the Paladin was my favourite. Also loved the Emerald Crown. I re-read them all about once every three years.

Has anyone read The Great Gale by Hester Burton? A children's book (maybe 'young adult' would be more accurate) set in Norfolk against the horrific North Sea flooding in 1953.

@DeanElderberry Yes I have read The Great Gale and have several Hester Burton books. She was very good. My copy of TGG has a very evocative cover

That's beautiful - most evocative.

No, but I read In Spite of All Terror by Hester Burton - East End grammar school girl evacuated to middle class family in 1939, and her and their experiences through to the end of 1940.

I’ve read Castors Away by Hester Burton. I think In Spite of All Terror was in our school library & I read it then but didn’t make such an impression as Castors away did.

Thank you for that info @Terpsichore and the stories @TonTonMacoute

I'm a big Talking Pictures addict but have not seen LBTM on it yet. They might even put the 70s tv series on!

I watched Rooms a soap set in a 1970s bedsit/boarding house type set up on Talking Pictures with a young Jill Gascoine.

And Rising Damp gets shown on the naffly names That's TV sometimes talking of being set in a boarding house. House of multiple occupancy is probably the term today.

I've got a picture hanging on my wall that I described to someone as like an illustration from the Otterbury Incident! I must reread it. It's been years and I don't remember the plot at all.

The picture was found by my Dad in a house that had been abandoned and he was employed to clean out. I've had it decades.

@tobee

Oh, I remember Rooms!

Anyone read Three Girls & a Secret by
René Guillot ? Intrigued me as a child, now it’s just alarming!

the mention of abandoned houses by @icake reminded me of it!

Michele and Manuela have a secret 'home', a flat they have furnished in an empty house. Then their dog, Ajax, finds an abandoned baby. They share this secret with their friend Caroline, and between them they look after him at the flat - until the time comes when the house is to be demolished...

I've read several of his animal books (Kpo the Leopard etc) but not that one.

This seems like a good place to ask: I’m searching for a book I’m sure I read with my book group about ten years ago. It’s narrated by a young man who is estranged from his parents. Gradually, we find out that his father can’t forgive him because he sat with his suicidal brother when he took pills and didn’t get help. It was very sad - the narrator explains at the end that his brother had tried to kill himself numerous times and he had come to realise that the best thing he could do to help him was to make sure he felt safe and loved as he ended his life. It made a real impact on me, but I can’t find anyone who remembers it at all! Am starting to think I dreamt it. Does it ring a bell with anyone?

I LOVE Monica Dickens, especially Marianna, and such a coincidence as I recommended her to a friend of mine only today and sent her a picture of my Monica shelf which as 17 of them! Beautifully written, absorbing stories and not at all saccharine - was devastated by Thursday Afternoons and couldn't read it again. Kate and Emma is hard-hitting too. Great to find another fan!

Could this have been Patrick Gale, A Perfectly Good Man? Barnaby sat with Lenny, as I recall

@Whatafabulousoaktreesadly it’s not that, although I now want to read it!

I read it around the same time as I read We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves and The Shock of the Fall - so I think it was possibly popular around then.