Reading as a cheap hobby

bouicca21

Oh my goodness, yes, it wasn’t Peter and Jane that was the reading scheme at my primary school, it was Janet and John.  Stultifying.  

Wednesday2000

I really loved the Ruth Galloway books by Elly Griffiths!

I finished In Cold Blood and then watched the film Capote last night which is based on Trueman Capote writing the book about the Clutter murders. It was interesting that he had Harper Lee helping him research the book as they were childhood friends. 

I am going down a rabbit hole now and I am going to read Helter Skelter which is supposed to be the second most famous book about true life crime.

Brie

Savvy_Sue said:

MrsStepford said:

There was a series of books featuring Peter and Jane. Peter would help pipe-smoking Daddy in the garden and Jane would help Mummy in the kitchen. They seemed old-fashioned and sexist to me, even before I got to double digits Did anyone else have these at school ?

Oh dear me yes! And still traumatised by them. Ladybird Books, I think. It is frankly a surprise that I ever took to reading at all, after being 'taught' on Janet and John, which were equally dreadful. 

Unless it was the J&J that Wogan would read out.  I wonder how many near accidents those stories caused with people listening as they drove to work.

Coxy11

Loving this thread.

I think reading can be both a necessity AND a hobby.

I was an avid reader as a youngster and when I started work I had a decent train commute which meant I read regularly. Nothing too high brow, mainly interesting fiction. Then I had three children in five years and just didn’t have the time or energy to read for a number of years except for bedtime stories and school reading texts.

Happy to say I’ve now got a book constantly on the go. I work FT with a short bus commute which doesn’t lend itself to reading but I read most lunchtimes and before bed each night. I’m quite odd in that I journal a list books I read with a short synopsis, and then at the end of the year I look back and highlight my top 3 (a bit like Vivi) because I like to see the range of books I’m reading plus be able to recommend to others. My top 3 from 2023 were:

1 – The 100 year old man who climbed out of the window and disappeared – Jonas Jonasson (CS purchase)

2 – Apple Tree Yard – Louise Doughty (Ts community library purchase)

3 – Small Great Things – Jodi Piccoult (CS purchase)

Most of my books are from CSs, WI book sales, or the community library shelf at Ts/Sainsbobs. I’m another who loves the Elly Griffiths books, also Jodi Piccoult, and currently reading Freckles by Cecelia Aherne. I have a stack of approx. 25 unread books on my nightstand and have made a pledge to not acquire any more for the time being!

Thank you for the recommendations – keep them coming.

Coxy

MrsStepford

I'm reading John Carson's Ice Into Ashes but unimpressed. Seems to have a lot of padding. Impatiently awaiting next books by Damien Boyd and J M Dalgliesh (Hidden Norfolk series).

I was spluttering coffee at your remark @Savvy_Sue 😯 The redeeming feature of Ladybird books, was the artwork. Oxfam Wallingford salvaged illustrations from damaged Ladybird books and mounted them. I snapped up eleven or twelve farming ones from the 1960s and put them in glass frames. They are positioned above our main stairs and I think they look pretty good.

I deplore the vandalism practised by eBayers and the like, of removing illustrations from Edwardian and Victorian books, mounting and framing them and passing them off as prints. 

Have books ever changed your habits or introduced you to new things ?

I enjoy David Gatward's Grimm Up North series. The local police are obsessed with Wensleydale cheese plus cake and Wensleydale cheese with fruit, so I bought some for husband at Christmas and he loved it. 



 

florianatwobob

My mum taught me to read and I started writing before I started nursery (at 4). It was rather a necessity as I’d become word perfect in my nursery rhymes and Mum wasn’t sure if I’d memorised them or if I was reading along. Turns out it was both - Mum found a Ladybird book of Comic Rhymes including Spike Milligan’s Ning Nang Nong. When I left primary school at 10 (an August baby) I had a reading age of 13+ years.  Like others I was blooming glad to get off the reading scheme books and be let loose on the school library. 

For recommendations:

Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series are great (especially if you’re a Discworld/Terry Pratchett fan). 

I enjoyed Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City in my late teens. 

Marian Keyes books are good and not your typical chick lit,

I do love a good Golden Age of Crime novel and although I’ve read most of the Poirot stories I can’t get into Miss Marple. I do enjoy a Marjorie Allingham or Dorothy L Sayers mystery though. 

-taff

Love the Rivers of London series, but aren't the novellas expensive! I bought one by mistake...Also Mark Lawrence books

I was sneaky and got to use the bookcase in the next year up at primary school until I fluffed it by getting a book I didn't like and not being able to tell the teacher the one time I didn't read something what it was about...I managed to join the adult library a couple of years before you were allowed to because i'd read everything in the childrens.. I didn't understand much of a marxist winnie the pooh though.....two books that stick in my memory of the childrens library were one about a journey a young boy? makes through the representations of the zodiac, I do remember the scorpion stinging him on the head to send hm back to his world, and another which scared the pants off me, there was a demon or something in it called The Shadrach but blowed if I can find what it was, this would have been late seventies...

Brambling

MrsStepford said:

I'm reading John Carson's Ice Into Ashes but unimpressed. Seems to have a lot of padding. Impatiently awaiting next books by Damien Boyd and J M Dalgliesh (Hidden Norfolk series).

The next Damien Boyd is due the beginning of June 🙂 I'm another fan of his Nick Dixon books. I've been given a JM Dalgliesh book it's on the pile, it may get bumped up 

I've just finished a Stephen Booth 'Cooper and Fry' book set around the Peak District unfortunately he hasn't written a new one for a few years.  I need to see where my mood takes me for the next book, I was also given a couple of Barbara Erskine but not sure if I want to read them just yet and they are hard backs so too heavy for reading in bed 😁 

alicef

Late joining to this lovely thread.  We're trying very hard to hold onto our village library in the light of ever more drastic county budget cuts!

My favourite reads, when young(er), were the Borrower series; Stig of the Dump; Once and Future King; A Traveller in Time etc.

These days - mostly non-fiction; current read list 'Where the Wild Flowers Grow'; Weatherland; The Point of the Needle

fiction wise reading, at the moment  the 1930s/40s crime writer Patricia Wentworth.

MrsStepford

Yes yes, Stig of the Dump ..

Winnie the Pooh.

A biography of Edward Gordon Craig OBE, son of actress Dame Ellen Terry. Can't remember the name sorry.

Jump for Joy by showjumper Pat Smythe. Serve to Win by Novak Djokovic, which has recipes !

Two Booker prize winners The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst and Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart. 

I have to wait until June for the next Damien Boyd @Brambling oh no 😯