365 Day Journal Challenge - Day 123

[dimity_blue]

Day 123. Discuss your first love and first kiss.

Day 123. Discuss a book you love.

There are so many possible answers to this! I'll go for a book series I've loved since my Auntie Vi gave me a tatty, dog-eared Armada version of the third book, The Princess of the Chalet School.

Comments

[leesa_perrie]

I love how they don't age and yet real life events affect them! Not many authors would even try to do that nowadays, yet it sounds like it works perfectly fine!

*looks at icon* I guess that's you, reading these books! :)

[dimity_blue]

LOL! I'm not quite that red.

It works just fine actually as EMBD was quite consistent over it.

[izzie7]

I loved these too! In fact, I think I have the complete set - although it's hard to be sure because of those truncated Armada editions produced in the 70s that would turn out to be half a book. "Limp, grey and to all appearance, dead" has become something of a catchphrase at home. Hmm. Perhaps this is the origin of my love of hurt/comfort....

[dimity_blue]

EMBD must have liked "limp, grey and to all appearance, dead" as she used it at least twice!

[sallymn]

I love them dearly, have the (admitted truncated, and definitely over wellworn) paperbacks of near the whole series....

Mind you, Joey got a bit annoying as an adult (Mary Sue, anyone?) but in a way that made it easy to laugh.

[dimity_blue]

Lord, yes, Jo turned into quite the Mary Sue. So did Mary-Lou, now I think about it!

[sallymn]

Oh she did (on a Chalet School board I lurk on, they call her Our One and Only (OOAO)

[swordznsorcery]

Is there an element of autobiography in the series? I ask because I was looking through one just the other day: "Jo Returns To The Chalet School", I think it was called. She was all growed up and had become a successful author, and it amused me. Still, what better fate for a writer to give their main character!

[dimity_blue]

Not really. As Sallymn said though, Jo was a Mary Sue. Maybe the author had wanted to be married to a doctor with a bazillion children?

Almost all the 'good' girls wind up married to doctors or return as teachers. Or even return as teachers then marry doctors. I think we can safely say EMBD considered marrying a doctor to be the best thing for a girl to do.

[swordznsorcery]

But not becoming a doctor!

Still, at least she let her characters age, which is more than some authors do. :D

[lost_spook]

At least one of them does become a doctor - but she gives it up to marry a doctor!

[lost_spook]

<3 <3 <3

and the characters somehow failed to age 45 years in the meantime. The Chalet School was (surprise!) a school, specifically a boarding school set in the Tyrol.

To be fair, they do at least age considerably more than most detectives of similar vintage! (I'm not sure how much, but certainly the school celebrates its 21st anniversary and then Silver anniversary before the end, suggesting that it in actual fact it started out in the 30s and finished in the 50s or 60s, which I suppose is sort of handwavily possible. Just. If I had more facts to hand, I expect it could be dated from the birth and age of the triplets, which is something of a fixed point (although Joey's age when she has them gets a couple of years knocked off at some point).

[dimity_blue]

Even the triplets drop a few years. They were born early on in the war (probably 1941/1942) but finished school in 1969, when they should have been 27.

To be fair, they do at least age considerably more than most detectives of similar vintage!

True! They don't seem to age at all!

[lost_spook]

But does it actually end in 1969 in the series? We're given some indication a few books earlier that maybe it is by then the late 50s/early 60s, which is already a bit late for the trips, but I don't know that it's supposed to be 1969. Just vaguely up to date while that being impossible, really! Heh.

[dimity_blue]

That's a good point! I assumed it was 1969 as that's when the last book was written.