Merflerher

Did any of you read the Abbey Girls books? I've recently bought some of the titles I read over 40 years ago, I'm wallowing in nostalgia:D

Ooh, Ngaio Marsh, yes, I started on her round about that age, and Agatha Christie - they're such easy adult reads and it makes you feel very grown-up to be reading that sort of book as a child. But I also loved Enid Blyton too, 'specially the 'Five Find-outers and dog' series - I really liked Fatty.

We used to have 'computer-free Wednesday' at school - no computers available all lunchtime - and a lot of kids came in to the library to read. But the sixth form objected because they have coursework all the time and can't guarantee that a teacher won't insist on them using the computer that day, so we had to stop doing that.

Today was the first day of term, and I opened the school library at lunchtime to our new yr 7s. They haven't got their log on details for the computers yet, so instead of sitting Googling they were lounging on the new beanbags and reading...the Deputy Head came in and said to me 'Are they real or dummies? and he went over and prodded one to make sure they were real:lol: Just goes to show what an unusual sight it is...*sigh*

I love poetry, I used to carry a copy of Palgrave's Treasury around with me when I was in my teens, you know, one of those books with the very very thin paper and very close print? My favourite poets are Blake, Keats and Gerard Manley Hopkins, who was a Jesuit priest who invented a new system called 'sprung rhythm'. His poems are difficult to read because his style is very odd, but one of his best poems is Pied Beauty: Glory be to God for dappled things

I liked the Cordelia Gray stories very much and wish she'd written more with her as the central character. I find Adam Dalgleish a bit too good to be true sometimes - does he have any faults?

Have none of you read Felidae and Felidae on the Road? The author is Pirinnci, I think. About a cat who investigates the murder of another cat. When I was a child I read the Mr Twinks books, again about a cat detective (can you see a theme here??). I tried tracking them down on Amazon and Abebooks and they are selling at over

I read Claire Tomalin's biog a couple of weeks ago, highly recommend it, it's very readable and I feel I understand Hardy better now. My favourite of his is Return of the Native.

I've read The Eight, good thriller, I've seen it on sale in a few shops but it doesn't seem to have been as well distributed as other titles.

I went through a horrible period a couple of years ago when I was on antidepressants and one of the side effects was that i just couldn't concentrate enough to read anything...which made me feel even more depressed:roll: I was eventually diagnosed with underactive thyroid and although I'm now back to normal (debateable!!) I still get times when I just can't read. I find going for a walk sometimes helps.

Have you read Compulsion by Meyer Levin? - very good novelisation of Leopold/Loeb case. Out of print I think but I managed to track down a copy via amazon and you can probably find it in libraries.

Captain Corelli - ugh! I really can't understand what people see in this, I've tried reading it three times, got three quarters of the way through last time but gave up in disgust.

I've just bought Naming of the Dead. Haven't read any for some time, I read most of his Rebus books in quick succession about five years ago, so quickly that I can't distinguish them! In fact my son who was still at primary school then, drew a picture of me reading an Ian Rankin book with the caption "Mum's always reading"!! I started reading them after I saw the televisation of Black and Blue, with John Hanna playing Rebus - I reckon he was much better than Ken Stott, in fact I always visualise Rebus as John Hanna when I'm reading.

Do you ever find that reading a novel takes you to nonfiction books about the same topic, or vice versa? Earlier this year I reread Gone with the Wind, and ever since then I've been reading books about the American civil war, both novels and history. The best ones have been Confederates in the Attic, which is a Brysonesque journey around the southern states looking at the monuments to the war, etc and The Killer Angels which is a novel about the battle of Gettysburg. This obsessing with a theme has happened to me several times, most notably when I read The Quincunx by Charles Palliser which is a pastiche of Dickens and Wilkie Collins - I spent the next year perusing old maps of London and reading Victorian memoirs, as well as rereading Bleak House. Anyone else get obsessed like this?

In my first year at secondary school we did Emil and the Detectives, with Miss Chorley who was a very old-fashioned English teacher and made it more boring than it should have been! But we also did Alison Uttley's Country Child which is beautiful. For O level I did Macbeth (it's been on the syllabuses for centuries:D) and Keats. We went to see a production of Macbeth at Wigan Little Theatre which was dire, all the swords were bent and one of the actors came on stage so mincingly he got catcalls from all the boys in the audience (there were at least three school parties there, so you can imagine:roll:). For A level I did Chaucer, Richard II, Antony and Cleopatra, Return of the Native and The Spire which I absolutely hated, it's put me off Golding ever since.

She visited our school last year to give a talk to our yr 7s about life in Rome - she's very funny and her talk had 60 little boys enthralled. I agree, her books aren't as popular as they ought to be, but that's probably because historical fiction doesn't go down well with younger kids - if she was promoted as an adventure author she might get more sales.

I've used Alibris, they're quite good. Also if you google Hay-on wye + used books you'll find several of the booksellers there do mail order.

I'm usually known as Mrs FH to my pupil librarians. My initials are MLFH, and I use all of them when I'm signing things. One of the boys was commenting on it and playfully muttering them and came up with 'muhleferher' which quickly became merflerher, and now they all call me that.

Boy in the Striped Pajamas - it gave me nightmares, and I couldn't stop thinking about it for days.

Yes, I've done that too. When I worked in public libraries, I'd frequently find little marks or initials on the back page, from readers trying to make sure they didn't pick up the same book again. Can't do that in Waterstones though! What I find annoying is the way publishers use the same picture for bookcovers; or they issue a book with two different covers...the number of times I've bought duplicates:roll:

I've just been re-reading all my Ngaio Marsh's, some for about the fourth/fifth time. It doesn't matter that I know whodidit, the pleasure is in meeting an old friend again.

As usual, I've leapt straight in and posted on various threads without noticing there's an introductions thread...doh! Anyways, I'm Margaret aka Merflerher (nickname invented by one of my pupils). I'm a school librarian in a boys school in South London, I'm 50 going on 18 and I read anything that comes my way. I run a very large library, over 30K books, and I try to speed read everything we acquire. I've also kept a reading diary since 1972. I'm currently going through a nostalgia phase and trying to track down some of the books I read as a child. Glad to have found this site and I hope I'll make a lot of friends here:D

I can very clearly remember desperately wanting to be able to read, at the age of three - watching my mum reading a book and knowing the print meant something but not being able to decipher it! I became an avid reader very soon and remember being terribly bored by the reading books we were given at school. I do know that at the age of 8 my reading age was 14, we were given tests and the teacher was so impressed she sent me to see the headmaster. I was given permission to choose books from the school library instead of working my way through the reading scheme stuff everyone else was lumbered with. My earliest memories of books involve a series called Teddy Tar, little board books you could buy from Woolies, anyone remember them?

I notice most people have said 'no' to this - yet, if you re-read a book, surely you already know the ending - so what do you do, temporarily forget it? It doesn't bother me if I know the ending to a book, or a film for that matter, and I frequently look at the ending, particularly if I'm getting bored, to see if it's worth carrying on!

Hi folks, I'm a new member. I'm also a librarian and just thought I'd say that most public libraries have noticeboards where you can advertise book-related stuff, so rather than stick bits of paper inside library books, just ask the branch librarian to display a large flier. There's nothing more irritating than shelving books where bits of paper keep falling out:D