Reading as a cheap hobby

bouicca21

W E Johns wrote a girls’ version of Biggles, about Worrals who delivered planes.  I found her really boring.

Floss

bouicca21 said:

W E Johns wrote a girls’ version of Biggles, about Worrals who delivered planes.  I found her really boring.

My mum found me a copy from her library and I agree, it was boring and the proper Biggles books were much better!

PipneyJane

weenancyinAmerica said:

Pip - It was The Secret of the Old Clock. There was a section written in what was supposedly black dialect having to do with a caretaker. Part got shorter in the second edition. Later editions eliminated the position entirely.

I had a complete set of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. Now passed along to grandniece and grandnephews. 

I mainly read mystery cozies now and non-fiction books on a wide variety of subjects. 

Thanks @weenancyinAmerica.  Definitely not one that I’ve ever read, but I may try to track down a copy.

Without reading the piece, I can’t comment on it but I will say that dialects are difficult to represent on paper.  There are multiple dialects in the US, just as there are in the UK.  It is not improbable that a poor, black gentleman from one of the southern states talked in dialect, especially as the book was written during the segregation era.  How that dialect was represented and the words stated are different matters.

- Pip

Wednesday2000

I'm reading The Last Passenger at the moment. I didn't like A Game Of Lies at all. I thought it was by an author I liked, but I was getting Clare Mackintosh mixed up with Clare McGowan! I stopped reading halfway through.

catclaires

@Wednesday2000 this made me laugh as I also frequently get those two authors muddled up! I'm sure I did enjoy something by CMac that was good (The Hostage?) but not sure about that DC Morgan series. Your other two look interesting - authors I'd not heard of.

I read Truth Truth Lie by CMcG the other week and enjoyed it - it had a brilliant setting on a remote/bleak Scottish island (the kind of thing I love), and I think she writes so well even if the storyline was quite overly dramatic!

I've been reading Girl A by Abigail Dean - I wasn't sure if I wanted to, but it was free to borrow through Prime, so I thought I'd give it a go. It's a strange one but is unique and compelling and not as harrowing/depressing as I thought it might be.

On the subject of Enid Blyton books, I went through a stage of being absolutely addicted to them (mostly the Famous Five) when I was around 6 or 7 in the mid-80s - I have a random memory of getting told off by my parents because I wouldn't stop reading on a journey somewhere when they wanted me to look at the nice view I think they started to feel a bit 'dated' even for me not long after that age and in that era, though - I wouldn't be in a hurry to reread them now!

Wednesday2000

catclaires said:

I read Truth Truth Lie by CMcG the other week and enjoyed it - it had a brilliant setting on a remote/bleak Scottish island (the kind of thing I love), and I think she writes so well even if the storyline was quite overly dramatic!

I've been reading Girl A by Abigail Dean - I wasn't sure if I wanted to, but it was free to borrow through Prime, so I thought I'd give it a go. It's a strange one but is unique and compelling and not as harrowing/depressing as I thought it might be.

That was the one of hers i read last week too! I did like it, although it wasn't exactly a believable storyline.

I have Girl A on my kindle. I haven't got to it yet.

bouicca21

I enjoyed Famous Five when I was young but was horrified when my children went through s similar phase.  After all, I had made sure they had been introduced a wide range of good books, whereas when I was young there wasn’t a lot else around.  I soon realised that Enid Blyton really was just a phase - a bridge to more difficult fluent reading.  Whatever you say about Enid Blyton, she knew her market and pitched her books accordingly.

weenancyinAmerica

Pip - the book made the caretaker sound like he was very low IQ and not very smart otherwise. Upset me the first time I read it, so was glad to find they were redoing it before I would get a copy for my niece.

Some of my favorite books growing up were the L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables Series, especially Anne of Ingleside. 

I was always reading. When I was 5, I would climb an apricot tree in our yard and read up there. When we moved to a new house and my father built a swing with a bar for pullups, I would take out blankets and make a tent over the bar and hide in there for hours. Can't imagine living anywhere with no access to a library. I even visit the libraries in almost every town I have ever visited (probably well over 200 by now). Even did this in Switzerland when I visited there. Always one of my first stops everywhere I go, even in tourist towns like Stratford upon Avon, London (several - really like the Islington Library), York, Edinburgh, and Belfast.

Brie

I think the worst book I read as a child was one given to me by my neighbour who was my adopted grandmother (20 years older than my parents and only boys in her family so loved having me about as a pretend granddaughter).  

Called "What Katy Did" it was about a young girl very much a tomboy who was fond of climbing trees and not neat and tidy.  So very much me.  And then one day she has an accident falling out of a tree and is essentially paralysed.  This of course makes her very miserable but then she learns to become sweet and nice and a proper little lady. 

Now I don't know if the neighbour gave it to me thinking "this is something Brie needs to know" or if she just thought "oh here's a book for someone Brie's age, hope she enjoys it".  I'm hoping it's the second.  

Like so many books from that era (Little Women being another) the ultimate outcome for the adventurous girl is to turn into a lady rather than just a woman.  

MrsStepford

I had my mother's Famous Five and Malory Towers books, but haven't read any Secret Seven. We had Noddy wooden egg cups with felt hats, but I don't remember any Noddy books. 

Toxic Books Warning
https://metro.co.uk/2024/08/18/warning-issued-harmful-chemicals-found-books-21445708/

I'm a bit worried by this as I have quite a lot of old books. Mrs Beeton, poetry, architecture, all sorts. Think I will just round them up and put them in the landfill. I certainly don't have specialist knowledge to be able to store them safely. Nor would I want to inflict them on a library or charity shop.