Books!

[ailbhe]

So I've read a stack of Antonia Forest - must get someone to take them to the post office - and am working on Chalet School. The Forest I've read are, from memory:

Autumn Term
End of Term
Attic Term
The Thuggery Affair
Run Away Home
The Ready-Made Family (and boy was THAT distressing!)
Falconer's Lure
Peter's Room

Want: The Marlows and the Traitor, The Cricket Term

I fully intend to start buying them to own. They're simply ripping, or gear, or similar, depending on what year they were written in. I was surprised to find how many of them I'd read before, when I was 13 and in the middle of a custody case. I'd read Autumn Term, Attic Term, End of Term, and Thuggery, and possibly some others - it's hard to be sure.

I'm going to try to read the Chalet School books in order; many editions have the numbers helpfully printed on the spines.

Comments

[nicolap.livejournal.com]

Antonia Forest is wonderful. And Ready Made family possibly my favourite, despite the trauma.

I can lend Marlows and the Traitor if you send your address (nicola_parkin@hotmail.com), but I think Cricket Term may be so well loved it's fallen apart.

[helenprev.livejournal.com]

That is the only reason I didn't send Cricket Term along with the others - mine is in a million pieces!

And I think I lent the Marlows and the Traitor to someone local ages ago and haven't got it back yet. Or that would have been in the parcel too.

RMF is my favourite too and the one I reread the most recently. I spent years and years and years wanting the back story to how Karen was suddenly married in Cricket Term - and that was long before I ever knew there was actually a book about it!

[mrs-warwick.livejournal.com]

my sister and I had a lot of chalet school books, they're in my parents' loft now. I remember trying to read them in order, but a lot of books for some reason were not in print. We had e.g. books 10, 11 and 12, then 15 and 16 because 13 and 14 were no longer available. Good luck with finding them all!

[lnr]

The numbers on the spines are less helpful than one might hope: there are at least two different numbering systems.

I gradually bought them all from ebay and it is possible to get all the paperbacks, though quite expensive (very). What I really want to do though is gradually replace them with the lovely editions being issued by Girls Gone By - which have the advantage of being unabridged from the hardbacks. Some of their editions are already out of print but still available from resellers, and they're a long way from covering them all. http://www.ggbp.co.uk/

Wikipedia has a nice list of them in order and which ones were split or re-named for paperback: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalet_School

[lnr]

Ooops, I appear to have just added a list of the add-on books by other authors to that Wikipedia page.

[nicolap.livejournal.com]

Parcel winging its way towards you. I have also included a spare copy of Autumn Term I had lurking around (liberated from the PTA summer fair bookstall) which you are welcome to keep For Your Very Own or pass on to spread the joy.