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Books/book club

Books we loved when we were young

(58 Posts)
Nanny27 Mon 11-May-26 08:33:35

Having enjoyed the recent thread about Jilly Cooper books, I started thinking about books I loved as a teenager and maybe in my twenties. Harold Robbins who wrote The Carpet baggers and Jacqueline Suzanne's Valley of the Dolls. Did any other Grans read these?

Cossy Mon 11-May-26 08:37:08

Yes! I thoroughly enjoyed them!

GrannyGravy13 Mon 11-May-26 08:38:18

Read them both many moons ago, I thoroughly enjoyed them.

Kandinsky Mon 11-May-26 08:38:45

Secret seven.
Famous five.
Loved them smile

Magenta8 Mon 11-May-26 09:01:12

I read Valley of the Dolls but not The Carpet Baggers. I also read Peyton Place by Grace Metalious, Lady Chatterly's Lover by D H Lawrence and The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.

I must have read other books but those are ones I remember.

shysal Mon 11-May-26 09:24:37

When I was young I enjoyed Heidi, the What Katie Did series and Willard Price's South Sea Adventure series.
As a young adult I read all the Jackie Collins books as well as Jilly Cooper and the Sergeanne Golon Angelique books plus many more.

Nanny27 Mon 11-May-26 09:26:57

I remember mild disapproval from my mother as I ploughed my way through Jacqueline Suzanne. Also Sudney Sheldon.
Flowers in The Attic series was passed around at school

fancyflowers Mon 11-May-26 09:32:29

Heidi
St. Clare's
Mallory Towers
The Sea of Adventure
Autumn Term
The Cricket Term
The Attic Term
Peter's Room
The Thursday Kidnapping

These last five were all written by Antonia Forest. She has a large following of adult readers (with good reason).

Luckygirl3 Mon 11-May-26 09:34:12

The Princess and Curdie - loved that book as a child.

And my all-time favourite as an adult is The Land of Spices by Kate O'Brien.

Moth62 Mon 11-May-26 09:40:17

As a child, I absolutely adored Enid Blyton’s books. They engendered in me a deep love of reading that still exists to this day. They were banned in our high school library in the late sixties until I campaigned to get them reinstated. I can still remember the excitement of saving my pocket money to buy a hardback edition of a Famous Five story. I still have them all now. When my granddaughter is old enough to appreciate that some of the attitudes were very much of their time, then I shall let her read them.

luluaugust Mon 11-May-26 09:41:31

The Famous Five and Secret Seven, Georgette Heyer and then Forever Amber, the Angelique books and yes The Carpetbaggers.

Grannybags Mon 11-May-26 09:43:46

Famous Five. I still have my hardback copies too
Black Beauty.
Borrowers

Jaxjacky Mon 11-May-26 09:50:11

I read them Nanny27, The Joy of Sex also did the rounds, holding the pages at all sorts of angles to work out some of the illustrations!

Shelflife Mon 11-May-26 10:05:19

Lucky girl, I loved The Princess and the Goblin and The Princess and Curdie. Both written by George McDonald. Happy memories- Still have those books, you have tempted me to read them again.

Witzend Mon 11-May-26 10:14:37

The Whiteoaks Jalna series.
Forever Amber was surreptitiously passed round at school, for the naughty bits, though they’d be tamer than tame nowadays.

Funnily enough, just last night I was thinking of Milly Molly Mandy, and the nice white cottage with the thatched roof….

MissAdventure Mon 11-May-26 10:19:11

The secret garden, all of the what Katy did books.
The famius five, the secret seven.
I think i preferred the five over the seven.
The waterbabies.

Hearsay Mon 11-May-26 10:33:46

what katy did and what katy did next also heidi was a firm favourite also milly molly mandy with her striped dress and the family at one end street loved those books too

winterwhite Mon 11-May-26 10:42:47

As a child:
The Secret Garden
Joan Selby Lowndes, Royal Chase and Tudor Star
Cynthia Harnett The Wool Pack and The Great House

As a teenager:
John Buchan
Georgette Heyer

Later Iris Murdoch, Dorothy Lessing, Agatha Christie. Would have loved the Shardlake books had they been available

Nanny27 Mon 11-May-26 11:25:39

Haha Jax. Yes us too. I really began this thread to reference teenage and early adult reading as lots of earlier threads focused on children's books

ExDancer Mon 11-May-26 11:37:17

Anything by Enid Blyton as a child, then Catherine Cookson (recommend by my Gran), more recently Dick Francis' racing novels.

MissAdventure Mon 11-May-26 11:44:52

As a teen, i liked the 'Pan' books of horror stories.
They were very gruesome in some cases, and aways quite shocking.

I used to yearn for the day i could move on to the adult books.

Tenko Mon 11-May-26 12:18:43

As a child I loved all the Enid Blyton books . Famous five. Secret seven and the boarding school ones , which made me want to go to boarding school , which I didn’t go. Oh and the What Katy Did books.
I’ve always been a big reader and when I started work , I would read on my commute . The James Herriot Vet series’s would make me giggle to myself on the train as did the Tom Sharpe books .
I still read every night and I have installed a love of reading to my DC .

Dylis Mon 11-May-26 12:39:58

We lived opposite our local library. I was an avid reader and read every Enid Blyton, Just William, Paddington, The Borrowers, What Katy Did, Pony books etc.
I was a poor sleeper and my parents would leave the landing light on because my sister was scared of the dark. They had no idea that I would sit and read at the top of the stairs until they came up to bed. I admitted it years later and they were astonished that I had never been discovered.

JamesandJon33 Mon 11-May-26 12:49:55

When I was in my early teens, so late 1950’s , I used to buy small paper books for 1 shilling. They were gentle romances. The books black and white printed drawings and four illustrations to a page, I believe. Does anyone remember them?
I have no idea what they were called.

eddiecat78 Mon 11-May-26 12:50:09

Lord of the Rings - mainly with the hope of impressing a boy