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 see them categorised here as 'memoirs'; he moved from the village in Huntingdonshire to London (during the war) and then to a Georgian house he called 'Merry Hall' in the books. Very funny, acute observation of character, and good plant talk.

I read Tristram Shandy. Took me about 5 years, because he takes half the bloody book just to be born.

I decided lfe is too short ever to read Moby Dick.

Has anyone else read The Riddle of the Sands, by Erskine Childers?

Very likely out of print at this point.

Has anyone else read The Riddle of the Sands, by Erskine Childers?

Yes! Arthur Ransome meets John Buchan.

Don't know if it's in print, but it's out of copyright, so it'll be free online on Project Gutenberg or somewhere.

That's the Nichols link I meant to post earlier

/https://www.goodreads.com/series/96575-allways-trilogy

Yes, I've read the Riddle of the Sands

Childers - a brave man, a gentleman, and a true patriot.

Yes to Erskine Childers.

I loved As Music And Splendour - but I love all of Kate O Brien's novels. would highly recommend them.

Norah Lofts is another writer who has fallen out of fashion but is excellent. I regularly re-read her.

I have also read Riddle of the Sands. One of my late father’s favourite books and a great spy story. Actually features a character called Carruthers of the Foreign Office.

It’s great to meet another fan of As Music and Splendour! The usual KOB narrative is that the quality of her work tailed off after That Lady, but AMAS is by far my favourite of hers (and I think The Flower of May is underrated too…) For me, her poorest novel is The Last of Summer.

I love The Riddle of the Sands, though I must reread it — it’s been years.

I’ve read Seven Little Australians @LittleBitofBread

also Molesworth, George MacDonald and Angela Brazil. Love Angela Brazil! My daughter has read a lot of them too as you can get them free on kindle.

Yes, by Eileen Bell. My children enjoyed these, still have copies of them in the loft.

I've not only read Seven Little Australians, but also its sequel (The House at Misrule).

I think all of Kate O Brien's offer something. She writes wonderfully about beauty - so even The Last of Summer has that - plus the mother in law from hell :)

Oh I absolutely love her! I am (slowly) collecting all her books. Have just finished 'Madselin' and 'Day of the Butterly'.

There's a real gritty, edginess to her books. You can feel the dirt beneath your feet, and smell the smoke from the hearth. People are revealed as being envious, malicious, and outright twisted, even children.

Such a great description @Araminta (and araminta is such a norah Lofts name :) )

I reread Gads Hall and The Haunting of Gads Hall nearly every year.

I've read Seven Little Australians too, @Matildatoldsuchdreadfullies - I remember the TV series from when I was a child. I didn't realise there was a sequel, though - off to Amazon for me!

Thank you. Gad's Hall was the very first Norah Lofts book I ever read, and then I was absolutely hooked. I can't believe she's no longer in print?

My all time favourites are The Town House trilogy and her Knight's Acre trilogy. Of her stand alone books, I think I love The Lute Player and How Far To Jerusalem the most?

Sorry that's How Far To Bethlehem

Has anyone else read The Crowthers of Bankdam? I read it around the end of primary school, & re read it for years but have lost my copy. Must get one & see what I think of it now!

Has anyone else read The Crowthers of Bankdam?

I may have read it a long time ago. I've definitely read Dover Harbour, by the same author (Thomas Armstrong) and I think I read King Cotton.

Has anyone read anything by Kenneth Roberts? He wrote long historical novels set in America mostly around the time of the American Revolution.

And Elswyth Thane? She wrote a series (The Williamsburg series) featuring linked American and English families from the time of the American Revolution down to the Second World War, taking in a lot of national and international events.

Oh, just looked and there are cheap Kindle editions. Surprising, because some of the books are set in the American South, and I'd have thought that (while perfectly OK for the time they were written) they wouldn't be acceptable today.

I loved The Lute Player and Lovers All Untrue. Loosely based on the Madeline Smith case.

Oh I didn't know that? What was the Madeline Smith case?

I found Lovers All Untrue so depressing!

I haven’t read the books mentioned, but Madeleine Smith was a 19thc Scottish girl of a wealthy family who conducted a passionate illicit affair with a young man from the Channel Islands, Emile L'Angelier. There were compromising letters and when she tried to break off the affair because her parents were marrying her off to a suitable fiancé, L'Angelier threatened to go public. He died horribly of arsenic poisoning - Smith had been seen buying said arsenic - the letters were found and Smith was tried in 1857. Famously, the case was found 'not proven' and there’s been argument ever since over whether or not she actually killed him.
She moved to America eventually and didn’t die till 1926.

I've seen the film! I meant to read the book but I don't believe I ever got round to it. Wasn't the author shot as a traitor?

In Seven Little Australians, does one of the children die after being bitten by a tick?

I think I was given it aged 9 when we had just moved to Australia temporarily, and remembered being terrified - not least because I had no idea what a tick looked like.