Old Style Inspiration Books

snoozer

Peem,

I've still got my Chalet School books as well. In fact my favourite place in the world is the Achensee in Austria, which was the model for the Tiernsee. It's still got the rack and pinion railway, the steamer and the dripping rock and it's a beautiful deep turquise colour. DH and kids have strict instructions that my ashes are to be scattered there (sorry if that'a a bit morbid).

Iguana

snoozer wrote: »

Peem,

I've still got my Chalet School books as well. In fact my favourite place in the world is the Achensee in Austria, which was the model for the Tiernsee. It's still got the rack and pinion railway, the steamer and the dripping rock and it's a beautiful deep turquise colour. DH and kids have strict instructions that my ashes are to be scattered there (sorry if that'a a bit morbid).

I remember those!

Gingernutmeg

Ooooo - I love the Chalet school books (have far too many ) and the Katy books, and the Naughty Little Sister books! I remember those so well from when I was smaller. I loved the story about the bread crusts being pushed into the kitchen table drawer, and the box of things she was given to play with when she had chickenpox, I so wanted one of those! They are wonderful books, I must look out for them again

Milly-Molly-Mandy was a favourite too, and the books by Rumer Godden, especially the 'Miss Happiness and Miss Flower' and 'Little Plum' series. The first has the most amazing descriptions of how to make a Japanese dolls house. Not strictly OS, but great for those of you that like dolls houses!

Ancalime

balmaiden wrote: »

Does anyone remember "The secret island" by Enid Blyton? Four children run away and live on an island growing their own food and living in a cave they took chickens with them and a cow I believe. To this day I fancy doing that very same thing!!

I loved this book as a child! They had it in the primary school library I wanted so much to escape to an island like they did! I had forgotten the name of it thank you for the reminder.

Ancalime

mioliere

donna73 wrote: »

these books sound great thanks everyone, i have made a note of the titles. i was going to look on ebay or amazon straight away, but then decided it would make more sense to check at the library first.

hey maybe i'm getting the hang of this money saving lark!!!!!

Don't forget to look in charity shops, too! That's where I get almost all my books - you get to keep them and help a good cause!

mioliere

What books are posters reading right now? My current one is 'The Amateur Marriage' by Anne Tyler. She wrote 'The Accidental Tourist' which was the first one of hers that I read and it was such a good book that I have been collecting the rest of her titles as and when I can. Yesterday I found three in three different charity shops - total spend £1.50! Would have cost at least £21.00! My favourite book of all time - now that I am grown-up(!) is 'Forever Amber' by Kathleen Winsor - her writing is fantastic. She takes you through the great fire of London, the plague - makes you feel you're there in the story! It's not all doom and gloom, though! Another book I'd recommend is 'Gone with the Wind' by Margaret Mitchell - I read the book before I saw the film with Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh (no, I didn't go to the cinema WITH them!) and the film - despite being extremely long - misses out such a lot - I was really disappointed. Would be interested to know what others are reading. Have a great day!

twink

i remember kyle reading all the nancy drew books, she had heaps of them but i enjoyed reading all the ladybird books to her when she was little, i still have them all

Hardup_Hester

Oh dear, this thread confirms what I've thought for so long, I spend far too much time reading. I've read every book mentioned in this thread & as for Enid Blyton, I've read everything of hers form Noddy to Famouse Five.
I'm currently reading 5 books (I always read this way)
I have one by my bedside, Anne Robinson, Memoires of an unfit mother
I have one in the kitchen, Kathy Lette, How to murder your husband
I have one at work, Jodie Sheild The Fig Eater
I have one in the living room, Terry Pratchett A Hat full of Sky
I have one in the car, Tom Clancy The Cardinal of the Kremlin.
Has anyone read The All of a kind family, by Sydney Taylor, set in America about a Jewish family with 5 daughters, my children loved this when they were younger.
Hester

Lusignan

balmaiden wrote: »

Does anyone remember "The secret island" by Enid Blyton? Four children run away and live on an island growing their own food and living in a cave they took chickens with them and a cow I believe. To this day I fancy doing that very same thing!!

Yes I remember this; it's similar to her Valley of Adventure (different set of children) where the 4 kids get on the wrong plane and end up living in a cave behind a waterfall (Switzerland maybe?) and outwitting the Nazis searching for treasure, if memory serves me correctly. There are natural shelves in the cave where they store cans of food found in an abandoned airplane; I developed a passion for tinned peaches based on that book (along with pilchards and fruit cake thanks to the St. Clare's and Malory Towers midnight feasts).

The Secret Island was one of my favourites; we tried to build a shelter by tying together tree branches in our den just like they did, and would traipse into the woods to have a fry-up over a fire (in the days when this kind of thing hadn't been banned by the local authorities). Nothing better than outside-cooked food, and we were always ultra-responsible in how we set and extinguished the fire.

The Adventure Series

If you like reading books which remind you of childhood, I do recommend Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's 'Good Omens.' It's an hilarious laugh-out-loud spoof of The Omen story, but the children are in a gang and it really conjures up oldfashioned English childhood life and the way kids think.

competitionscafe

I liked these two 'downshifting' good life type books:

The Moon Is Our Nearest Neighbour by Ghillie Basan
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Moon-Our-Nearest-Neighbour/dp/0751531294/

Story of a couple who moved from Edinburgh to a remote cottage in the Cairngorms.

C'est La Folie by Michael Wright
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cest-Folie-Michael-Wright/dp/0593054695

Funny story by a guy who moved from London to rural France, renovates a wreck, gets sheep and chickens....

Driving over lemons was a good read too.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Driving-Over-Lemons-Optimist-Andalucia/dp/0953522709/

Try https://www.Greenmetropolis.com for cheap 2nd hand copies, or ebay, the Ghillie Basan book was in a charity shop for 50p; C'est La Folie I got recently for £3.99 from thebookpeople with free postage from a code on the voucher board, driving over lemons I got from amazon when it came out about 10 years ago but I have seen it in charity shops loads of times (it was a bestseller in it's day, I also went to a talk by the author at Waterstones)