(no subject)
After the trouble I had choosing 5 books for my "top five" on the CBB, I started musing about (fiction) books in general - not just the ones I've most enjoyed but the ones that have had a big impact on me and which are associated with certain periods of my life, so I've written a long waffle about them, in approximate chronological order of the first time I read them/the first time I read one of the series.
The Chalet School series, by Elinor M Brent-Dyer. I started reading these when I was 8, although to my later regret I was talked into getting rid of my copies when I was in my mid-teens and supposedly too old for children’s books. I do now have the whole series, though! Of all the children’s books that I got rid of - all the Enid Blytons et al - these were the ones that I never forgot, and I think EBD has the dubious honour of being responsible for my insistence on “doing” lots of Austrian history at university, and for the fact that the first proper holiday I went on without Mum and Dad was to Austria. Of course, without the CS books I would never have got involved with the CBB, and I can’t imagine life without that now!
The Little House books, by Laura Ingalls Wilder. These survived the mid-teen cull on the grounds that they could be classed as American history books! I’ve never watched the TV series, funnily enough. I don’t really know why I like these books so much: I just do!
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 ¾ and The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole, by Sue Townsend. There are several sequels, but none of them are a patch on the first two: the thing doesn’t really work once Adrian’s grown up. Looking back, it was amazing the impact that these two books had on mid-1980s Britain: everyone of every age group read them, they were top of the best-selling books list for weeks on end, and there were TV and stage adaptations of the books. Practically everyone in my class at school started keeping a diary at the time, although I’m probably the only one who still does so! They’re very much about “Thatcher’s Britain” so the jokes don’t seem as funny now as they did then, but at the time everyone was just obsessed with them.
Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen. I like all Jane Austen’s books, although it was a long time after first reading this before I read any of the others, but this one’s special. For years I identified with Charlotte Lucas - and find it very depressing that I’m now 5 years older than she was. The mid-1990s “Colin Firth” TV series was wonderful as well!
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte. We “did” this in the 3rd year at secondary school, but I first read it when I was at primary school. All the Gothic horror novel stuff isn’t usually my sort of thing, but I really do like this book.
The North and South trilogy, by John Jakes. Ah, now these were real life-changers! These are partly responsible for my choice of both degree subject and university, largely responsible for my choice of dissertation subject, responsible for the choice of several holidays, and just generally responsible for an awful lot of things about me! They’re also kind of poignant because Grandad loved these books as well and he never got the chance to read the third one because it was only published in the U.K. a few weeks before he died (November 1987). The TV mini-series made of the books was the most expensive mini-series in history at the time , but unfortunately they rewrote everything that happened in the second and third books to avoid killing off the character made by Patrick Swayze! Was making a mini-series of a best-selling book a 1980s thing? They don’t seem to do it much any more!
A Woman of Substance, by Barbara Taylor Bradford. This was the first “proper grown-up” long novel I read - and another one that was made into a TV mini-series. There are 5 sequels to it, which get progressively worse as they go on, but the first one’s wonderful. The rags to riches thing was very 1980s, but the book still works for me now.
The Thorn Birds, by Colleen McCullough. I was too young to read this when it was a best-seller - and the subject of yet another TV mini-series! - in the late 1970s/very early 1980s, but when I did read it I loved it, and I still did. Calling it a romantic novel, or a novel about a relationship between a woman and a Catholic priest just completely oversimplifies it, because there’s a lot of stuff about classical/ancient ideas worked into it. Amazing.
The Sadlers Wells series, by Lorna Hill. These also survived the mid-teen cull, for some reason. The first 7 books are wonderful, the last 7 books less so. We once had to read out a passage from a book of our choice in an English lesson at school, and I read a passage from No Castanets at the Wells: I don’t think anyone else chose a GO-type book so the teacher was rather bemused, and I’m useless at public speaking so I made a mess of it anyway LOL!
First Among Equals, by Jeffrey Archer. This is still my favourite political novel ever. I had ambitions to enter politics for ages after reading this, but I never did …
Gone With The Wind, by Margaret Mitchell. The best book ever! And the best film ever! For some strange reason I didn't read this until I was 14, even though I was into the War Between The States/the Old South years before that.
Men on White Horses, by Annette Motley. This isn’t a particularly good book, and the author “based” it almost entirely on a biography of Catherine the Great written by a historian, but it was the first Russian history novel I read - the first of hundreds!
Passing Glory and A Dark and Distant Shore, by Reay Tannahill. A Dark and Distant Shore is the best of the two, but Passing Glory had a bigger impact on me because of the way it ties the story of a family in with the changes in Britain from the end of the Victorian age of Empire etc to the late 1940s period of austerity.
The God is an Englishman trilogy, by R L Delderfield. These also tie the story of a family in with British history, but in this case it’s from the Indian Mutiny to the First World War, and quite a bit of it involves Lancashire.
The Kirov trilogy, by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles. These tie nineteenth and early twentieth-century British and Russian history together, and are wonderfully well-written.
The Wintercombe series, by Pamela Belle. The Civil War/Glorious Revolution etc aren’t particularly my favourite periods of history, but they’re so important that you can’t not be interested in them, and these four books are lovely.
The Lights of Manchester, by Tony Warren (the creator of Coronation Street). I read this whilst I was at university in Birmingham and feeling homesick, and since then I’ve read it so many times that - like a lot of the other books listed here - my copy of it’s falling apart!
The Queens of England series, by Jean Plaidy. I love royal history: someone should make a soap opera out of the history of the kings and queens of England! I read these when I’d just graduated and was faced with the unwelcome prospect of having to work in a boring office rather than reading history books all day. In particular, these helped to get me interested in medieval history, because at university the medieval tutors weren’t up to much so most people opted for the modern history courses!
Bridget Jones’s Diary, by Helen Fielding. Hooray, it’s not just me! Except that Bridget has lots of mates and does eventually find Mr Right.
I'm bound to have missed something ... but those are the main ones!