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...

Did anyone else read the Sue Barton nurse books? I loved them as a child, reading them in the 1970s. I've just looked them up - they were written in the 1930s - I had no idea!

If anyone has read any Russell H Greenan I would love to know what you think of his writing!

for some reason his work is very popular in France but not here!!

Does anyone remember a series set in Liverpool called The Wood Street Gang by Mabel Esther Allen? It was about working class children. And a spooky book called The Stonewalkers by Vivian Alcock?

I did and had no idea they were from the 1930s. I love a good series. I feel I learnt a lot about nursing, sailing, horses, country dancing, ballet, schools, theatre, spies and all sorts from my reading! I’m not sure how accurate my knowledge is though…

Yes. The editions I read at school mostly had 1970s photo covers, though, which is why I didn't realise then when thry had been published.

They're another series I reread during lockdown. Helen Dore Boylston, the author is interesting- she published a diary about her experiences as a nurse on the Western Front, and later travelled in Europe with Rose Wilder Lane, Laura Ingalls Wilder's daughter. She wrote a biography of the woman who set up the Red Cross, too, though I've not read that.

YES!

As an adult, I have so many concerns about those kids, but when I was young, I was like, 'Seems perfectly reasonable to me 🤷🏻‍♀️'.

Yes I agree, she really went through it.
I've always wondered which rock band the author had in mind when she wrote them.

Me too! I think my expertise in most things is probably at least 100 years out of date now!

I've read that a few times

😃

Does anyone remember a series set in Liverpool called The Wood Street Gang by Mabel Esther Allen?

Don't think I ever read that, but I read others by Mabel Esther Allen. She was very prolific. She was also Jean Estoril, who wrote the Drina books.

Yes I read a couple of Sue Barton books. Think they belonged to my mum.

Also in a similar vein a Cherry Ames book, and one dramatically titled The Making of Mara.

Thanks, I will look those ones up!

@Feeltoooldtostudybutdoingitanyway

@InterestQ

The Children who Lived in a Barn and The Tree that Sat Down were two of my childhood favourites.

@Pianoaholic
I read all the Monica Dickens books when I was in my teens/20s, I loved them.

I read some Pullein Thompson books but I think they were all pony books. I preferred the Jill books (Ruby Ferguson).

I’ve read the Secret River, and several of Kate Grenville's other books but I think that's the best.

Love The Children who lived in a Barn - I read it to my 8yr old last year and she loved it too

Also loved the Monica Dickens "one pair of hands" etc. had forgotten about them, am inspired to re-read.

"Twopence to cross the Mersey" (Helen Forrester) was another book (first of a series) I was obsessed with as a teen alongside the Monica Dickens.

Other favourites that seem to be becoming less well known - Nancy Mitford books and E.F.Benson's Lucia.

I am always a bit bemused when people claim there was no real YA fiction in the seventies and eighties. I read loads, some excellent, some indifferent, some downright bloody awful. Just the same as today.

In this vein, I nominate Futuretrack Five (Robert Westall), and A Rag, a Bone and a Hank if Hair (Nicholas Fisk), The Prince in Waiting Trilogy (John Christopher), and almost all of Monica Hughes (including the now unfortunately named Isis trilogy).

When I was at high school we had to pick a book to write a long discursive essay about. The teachers all basically begged us not to pick Trainspotting as it had been done to death by then. My parents ended up giving me a random book of theirs to write my essay on and I've never come across anyone else who's read it.

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. Had to Google for the author as I couldn't remember it but it's by Joanne Greenberg.

I ended up absolutely fascinated by schizophrenia and other mental health conditions at the time because of it.

There was a whole section in Back Home, by Michelle Magorian, where she did up an old cottage in the woods or something with stencilling. Had quite the impact on me and my sister when we were little!

A Rag, a Bone and a Hank if Hair (Nicholas Fisk)

I've definitely read that but can't remember any more than the title and a vague sense of horror. Cloning people, perhaps?

It was cloning - 1940s children into a sterile future. But it was far stranger, and more thoughtful, than that.

Where it Stops, Nobody Knows by Amy Ehrlich. I must have read this at least 10 times as a teenager. Never met anyone else who remembers it.

And now I've gone back and read the rest of the thread, I also loved The Snow Spider and the rest of the trilogy and The Family at One End Street.

And I've remembered one more - one of those books you got in a library sale called A Peep Behind the Scenes by O F Walton. It was a proper Victorian morality tale about a travelling circus. No sin went unpunished and it made me bawl.

I absolutely loved The Farthest Away Mountain and still think about it sometimes to this day! Really wish I had kept my copy.

Stone Virgin by Barry Unsworth

Loved this, read it to my children, and also to my primary school classes...