I'm rereading the Swish of the Curtain for first time in 25 years, childhood books you have reread as an adult?

[deaconblue]

Feels like I only read it a few months ago, I must have read it so many times that I can remember the next line.

I have all the Marlowe books too, plus the 'Marlowes and their Maker' book - I've been meaning to get the 'Celebrating' book - now I really must order it!

I love Monica Edwards, KM Peyton, Ransome, also, one not from my childhood, but DD's, Sylvia Waugh's Mennym books.

I also love, for totally different reasons, the spectacularly pious Elsie Dinsmore books.

Rusty - I've never actually read the Elsie Dinsmore books - but she gets a number of mentions in the Chalet School books.

There are lots of them sunny, starting when Elsie is a little girl living in the American South before the Civil War & ending with her as a great grandmother - she is a very pious character who apparently sees nothing unChristian in owning large numbers of slaves - it's OK because she provides a church for them so they can go to heaven, where they will apparently 'be white'
She spends most of the first book in tears because her father is 'worldly' and tries to force her to play the piano and read story books on a Sunday. Of course his cruel treatment of her brings her near death and causes him to see the light....

swottybetty, I too dream of meeting a real life Antonia Forest fan!

I always feel a bedgrudging sympathy for Marie - especially as the series continues.
Have you read Cricket Term? If you have, the incident with the netball team on the train makes me squirm for her. I know she is grubby and shallow, but the dismisive way she is treated makes me feel so sorry for the Maries of this world. (Also, I think in school I was perceived as more a Marie than a Nicola )

Sorry 'End of Term' not 'Cricket Term'

I've been buying lots of children's books recently, mostly ones that have gone missing but I've ordered Joan Aiken's last two books featuring characters like Dido and Simon, and a collection of short stories by her. I'd really love to reread them all and also some books by favourite authors that have been published since, such as Joan Aiken and Diana Wynne Jones.

I absolutely love Ballet Shoes and re-read it often - I'm also an enormous snob about TV and film adaptations of books I love - but the recent BBC version was wonderful. I loved it!

Loved, loved, loved the Swish of the Curtain series. I used to pretend my name was Lynette like the girl in it. And I remember one bit in one of the sequels when one of the girls meets a producer or director or someone terribly important and when she says 'goodbye', he says 'let's hope it's au revoir'. I always thought that was unbelievably sophisticated.

Didn't someone die in Flambards? Was it Will? Did he die in the war? I can't remember...

too many to list, but one of my recent ones is Robert Westall - The Machine Gunners is seriously good.

In Flambards Will was killed in WW1 leaving Christina a widow at the beginng of the 3rd book.
She also believed Mark was dead as he was missing in action, believed dead, but he was still alive, just bady wounded.