Desert island books

[rosathome.livejournal.com]

I just moved to America (okay, it's not quite a desert island) and had to make agonising choices about which books to bring.  Specifically about which AF books to bring.  My final list was: The Cricket Term, The Attic Term, Falconer's Lure, Run Away Home and Players Boy.  The last one made it because it's new and I've only read it a couple of times.  I'm starting to wonder if I'll miss End of Term when it gets nearer Christmas.  But the others are just books I can't live without.

So which would make it onto your list?

Comments

[lyras.livejournal.com]

The Cricket Term and Peter's Room, which have been my two favourite AFs since childhood.

I hear you about End of Term when it gets closer to Christmas, though!

[res23.livejournal.com]

I agree about Cricket term, though I think I could leave Attic Term. And RAH - although overall it's not one of my favourites, I love the Rowan on the beach bit at the end, and the Christmas scenes.

Falconer's Lure, yes. And I think I'd have to take End of Term.

Not Player's Boy.

[gair.livejournal.com]

Wow, possibly the opposite of yours! In order of urgency: Autumn Term, which is my favourite by a couple of miles; End of Term, Falconer's Lure, Cricket Term and The Ready-Made Family; then The Thursday Kidnapping. I would be able to leave Attic Term, Peter's Room, The Thuggery Affair, The Marlows and the Traitor and Run Away Home behind without too much of a pang, and I would be positively glad to leave the historicals behind, though I might miss them when I had trouble sleeping.

Reading that back... I really don't like boats or Patrick Merrick, do I? In fact I think, apart from the historicals, you could probably make a graph of my favourites in inverse proportion to the amount of (a) boats and (b) Catholic!Patrick and/or Gintyflirting!Patrick contained.

[blonde222.livejournal.com]

I moved to America four years ago, only taking Autumn Term, and pined for End of Term and RAH terribly at Xmases. GGB do mail to the US though...

[rosathome.livejournal.com]

GGB do mail to the US though...

LOL!

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

Cricket Term, End of Term and Falconer's Lure in that order.

The rest all have bits I tend to skip for being either not interesting (boats, the fantasy chunks of Peter's Room (I know, I know), virtually all that rushing about in Thuggery) or too traumatic to re-read too often (Lois' betrayal over guides, the Ginty phoning row, Edwin-Peter).

[darth-tigger.livejournal.com]

Can I cheat and count the two historicals as one book, as that's how (as I understand it) they were originally intended?

If so, I'd go for Autumn Term, End of Term (those two are the first I read by about 10 years, and for years were the only ones I knew existed), Cricket Term, both historicals in one volume, and then I get stuck. I'm tempted to say Falconer's Lure because I've only read it once, but I'd also want Peter's Room because it's great or Attic Term so I could have all the school ones together.

I could live without the Thursday Kidnapping, The Thuggery Affair (though I do quite like it) and Run Away Home. I'd have pangs about Ready Made Family but I could manage.

[rosathome.livejournal.com]

Everyone likes different books best! I love the angst of the Cricket Term, the hawking with Patrick in Falconer's Lure, the Ginty hu-ha in Attic Term and the sail across the channel in Run Away Home.

I don't like the Gondalling which is why I didn't choose Peter's Room, though it does have one of my favourite chapters ever, when Sprog dies. And I love the bit when they're talking about Anne Bronte and Ann thinks they mean her.

Thuggery Affair is my least favourite with all the silly language and no Nicola. And Ready Made Family I do like but I don't re-read it like I do the others.

Autumn Term I like, but not so much as some of the others because of the high level of Tim, who annoys me.

But I think I made a mistake leaving End of Term behind!

[colne-dsr.livejournal.com]

Speaking from a house with (approx.) 35 bookshelves of various sizes, I still don't see how you could leave ANY AF's behind! If I ever emigrate, it would have to be by sea, because I don't think the excess baggage charge would be manageable.

The ones I couldn't leave behind are:
Cricket Term - first one I read.
End of Term - I couldn't lose the Christmas Play.
Run Away Home - in many ways, the best of them all.
Ready-Made Family - Oxford is superb.
Falconer's Lure - almost as good as Run Away Home.
Player's Boy/Players & Rebels - not only very good books, but until GGB reprint Rebels, my copy's worth a fortune!
Peter's Room - the hunt episode is too good to leave behind.

Which leaves Autumn Term, Traitor, Thuggery, and Attic term - what the heck, I'll carry them in hand baggage.:-)

[rosathome.livejournal.com]

Shipping's pretty expensive too - I did check!

It's funny about Peter's Room - there are lots of things about the book that I dislike, especially the Gondal stuff and the Ginty stuff but I find that I keep thinking of scenes in it that I really love like the Sprog scene I mentioned earlier, and you're quite right about the hunt. I've never hunted, can barely stay on a horse, and yet through Nicola's eyes it's magical. And I like the late-night scene with Rowan and the lambs. And the hand-me-down dresses. Hmm - maybe I should have brought it after all.

[forester48.livejournal.com]

Peter's Room is my favourite because the Gondalling bits - which I used to skip because I don't like adventure stuff much - get more and more interesting as they reveal so much about the characters, eg Patrick's exploration of betrayal. And I like very much the way the fantasy starts to weave into the real events. Slight bits of spookiness like Peter's sovereigns actually being farthings are good - effects of light and dark are very strong in this book - and so is the way the gun turns out to be actually loaded even though Peter's checked them.

Top of my list by a long way.

[elizahonig.livejournal.com]

So unable am I to be without my Antonias that I actually have two sets of AF books, one (incomplete) in Amsterdam and one (complete) in America--but the incomplete one is mainly that way because I couldn't manage to acquire a second complete set. There wasn't much choice involved.

If I did get to choose, the one I'd need the most would be *End of Term*--the first one I read and still my favorite. Then *Autumn Term.* Other early ones, like Falconer's Lure and even The Marlows and the Traitor, would come next. And I really like *Ready-Made Family.*

By the later school books, Attic Term especially, too many of my favorite characters are gone. No book without Lois, Rowan, and Jan can be totally perfect. So I'll leave Attic out, and possibly Cricket as well. Peter's Room has some great moments but I don't care for the Gondalling, I tend to skip those bits. Thuggery Affair--a curiosity, not a great book. The historicals--could lose them. Thursday Kidnapping--a decent story but nothing on the Marlows, not worth luggage space. This leaves Runaway Home. I read that late and somehow it didn't make a big impact on me. I think I need to reread it--so I'll take it to my desert island.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

The four school novels and Peter's Room. I seem to be in a minority (and I think AF may have written those bits with a certain degree of tongue-in-cheek glee) but I really enjoy the Gondal bits and occasionally just read the first chapter with Peter out in the wonderfully evocative cold and then the parts in italics. I also think it's important for the beginning of the Ginty/Nicola/Patrick mess - in many ways it and The Attic Term go together for me, and I couldn't have one without the other.

The Marlows And The Traitor I first read as an adult, and it doesn't quite feel as woven into my life as the ones I found between the ages of nine-or-so and fourteen. Ditto for Falconer's Lure; I like the neat, unsparing, unemotional portrayal of the internal and external upheavals caused by Jon's death, but like Nicola with The Lamplighter, I'm not making room on my desert island for a book with even the offstage death of a cat in it, and that's that.

The Ready-Made Family and The Thuggery Affair are both 'issue' books and both give too much time, in my opinion, to characters I'm not particularly interested in - I'd be sorry to leave them, but not sorry enough to leave Autumn Term or End Of Term out of the suitcase in their favour.

I can put the historicals back on the shelf without a pang.

Run Away Home, again, I'd be sorry to leave - but I didn't even realise it existed until the 1990s, so it hasn't made quite such a place for itself in my mental reading-room. Ask me again in twenty-five years. :)

[rosathome.livejournal.com]

I take your point about Peter's Room being important for later Ginty/Patrick/Nicola issues, but so is Ready Made Family. Actually for years, before I'd read/knew of the holiday books, I kept wondering what I was missing. Eventually I came to the conclusion that AF just had a very well-developed background story between the school books that you could work out bits of if you read closely!!

I'm interested in your point about books that have become part of your life. I can never decide when (probably, if) I ever get on the real Desert Island discs, I'd want a book I know and love - that's become part of my life - or whether I should take the risk and go for something I've wanted to read but not got round to.

In my actual packing, Player's Boy made it in precisely because it's new to me and I thought I'd enjoy being able to re-read it.

[elizahonig.livejournal.com]

Don't you think that Run Away Home is an "issue book" too, just as much if not more than Ready-Made Family? I haven't read it in ages, but that's how I remember it. I have a feeling that another good children's writer, possibly Nina Bawden, did a book on the same issue at around the same time.

[(Anonymous)]

Although I'd be sad leaving the others behind, It's quite easy for me to choose which ones I'd take. It'd be: Autumn Term, Falconers's Lure, End of Term, Ready Made Family, and Run Away Home. For me, those are far and away the best books, and the most important plot-wise too, although if I was allowed two more in my hand luggage I'd take Peter's Room- because I love the Merrick's party, and Cricket Term, because that's the only one I haven't read yet!

[rosathome.livejournal.com]

You haven't read Cricket Term?????

Read it. Read it now.

Honestly, it's really (one of) the best of AF's books.