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...

Nice to meet a fan. I found it better on subsequent readings.

Ah! We have a collected edition of the Conan Doyle’s!

Oh fab!!

Dr Syn series by Russell Thorndike.

Oh yes! Dr Syn’s alias is the Scarecrow and there was a terrifying tv adaptation in the early 60s with Patrick McGoohan in the title role where he wears an actual scarecrow mask. Gave me nightmares.

Actually that was a DISNEY film!!!
Saw it in the cinema when I was a child. Nightmares for weeks...

Ah yes- looking it up definitely a film. I may have seen it on tv I suppose. I just remember a horrible bit where he’s hiding and pretending to be an actual scarecrow and his eyes look all red through the mask . Really stuck in my mind. And not in a good way.

I’m trying to remember a book I read as a child and thought this might be a good place to ask. The bit I remember really clearly is a scene where one of the children makes a ‘leap of faith’ off a cliff - he/she thinks they’re going to die but it turns out this is the only way to enter a beautiful new world. I remember a big description of what it felt like to fall and being transformed during the fall.

I’ve googled and come up with ‘The Brothers Lionheart’ by Astrid Lindgren which sounds like it might fit, and I did read some of her books. But it’s puzzling me that none of the rest of the book seems familiar (maybe the cliff leap bit just stuck in my mind though?)

Is this ringing any bells for anyone else?

The Brothers Lionheart

There’s a cliff leap in the Silver Chair (Narnia chronicles).

Oo is there Inigo? Thank you, that sounds more like it as I read that and had vague memories of it being linked to Narnia! Is it at the beginning though - is that how they get into Narnia?

Yes it’s quite early on, it’s how Eustace and Jill get to Narnia, Eustace falls off the cliff and Jill is blown by Aslan.

Jill is blown by Aslan

😳don't remember that!

Yes, I think I remember that - will have to get hold of a copy of the Silver Chair and re-read. I can see I’m going to have to get hold of the Brothers Lionheart too - it’s bugging me!

Stumbled into a niche kind of fanfic there!

Well a google searchtonight for a distantly remembered book I readin the 60’s led me to page 14 of this thread! I’ve been posting to my overseas little grandchildren some of my childhood ladybird books which then my children read and now my grandchildren. I was thinking about other books I enjoyed as a child - we didn’t have money to buy many but I was taken to the library every week and became a voracious reader, still am, always have a pile of books on my bedside table plus plenty on the kindle for reading elsewhere.
I was googling a book I was bought for a Christmas present in the 1960’s called “ Penny’s Way” by Mary K Harris , can’t remember much about the actual storyline ut I loved it and reread it often. I vividly remember Penny was sad that she had an ordinary name when her sisters had glamorous unusual ones, one sister had a name beginning with C!
Unfortunately the only copy I’ve been able to find online is about £60! I’d be very grateful if the poster on page 14 has the book, please could you find out the name or sister that begins with C?!

Cordelia?

@Storynanny1 There were four children in the Pennington family and they all had unusual names. Penny explains it: “Father hoped that if he gave us all unusual names we might all turn out unusually clever. it worked with everyone except me.”

The eldest is Alexander, who is studying engineering, followed by Cordelia, taking science A levels at grammar school, then Joanna, who is at a ballet school in London, and lastly Penny, who is really Persephone, and in the C stream at the grammar school after proving “less bright”.

cordelia! that’s it
The amazingness of mumsnet,thank you

Alexander and Joanna were unusual names? Would never have guessed that.

and persephone is far more unusual so don’t understand why she was annoyed! I really want to read this again, going to keep my eyes open for it in second hand book shops
I need to go back to Hay on Wye - I bet it was there somewhere in one of the many book shops!

I think Alexander and Joanna must have been rather more unusual names in the 1960s when Penny’s Way was first published. When I first read it in the 1970s I certainly didn’t think it odd to describe them as “unusual”, and I hadn’t met anyone with those names.

It isn’t the unusualness or not of the names that Penny minds. It’s that Mr Pennington’s strategy for ensuring his children are clever or talented by giving them unusual names hasn’t worked with her, and she thinks of herself as the one dull child in the family and that she has got into the grammar school by a fluke - a definite case of serious imposter syndrome.

She’s very likeable and engaging, and Mary K Harris is really good at conjuring up the everyday troubles and triumphs a twelve-year-old might encounter and making the reader care - the terrifying Maths teacher, the spiteful ‘friend’ mocking her because the family have moved to a flat above a fish and chip shop, the well-intentioned ideas that turn out badly. It ranks with Antonia Forest’s Marlow family series for me and I wish there were sequels. I would love to know more about the Pennington family.

Good hunting @Storynanny1 . I’m looking for a copy of The Bus Girls, also by Mary K Harris and also seemingly only to be had at a frightening price. I did have it once but my copy seems to have disappeared in a house move.

I have Seraphina, Jessica On Her Own and Emily and the Headmistress, all by Mary K Harris, as well as Penny’s Way. Jessica is quite a similar character to Penny in that she has an older sister at the grammar school and a bright , annoyingly precocious younger sister, whereas she herself has failed the eleven plus and ended up at the secondary modern, not what her family expects. Mary K Harris had a real gift for characterisation , particularly for girls who don’t quite fit in .

Oh I loved Emily and the Headmistress! I was just searching for it online the other day: there looks like a copy on eBay (I do have my old copy somewhere as far as I know, but I think it’s in my parents’ loft…)