Popular books, 1971

[wellinghall]

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
3. The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle
4. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
5. The Flambards, KM Peyton
6. The Owl Service, Alan Garner
7. Treasure Island, RL Stevenson
8. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
9. Little Women, LM Alcott
10. The Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham

As far as I can remember, I've read five of these.



1. The Silver Sword, I Serraillier
2. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
3. Little Women, LM Alcott
4. Wind in the Willows, K Grahame
5. Tom's Midnight Garden, P Pearce
6. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
7. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
8. The Railway Children, E Nesbit
9. Heidi, J Spyri
10. The 101 Dalmatians, D Smith

As far as I can remember, I've read four of these.

Comments

[pellegrina.livejournal.com]

I've read eight of the first list and nine of the second.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Sadly, I've read all of them with the exception of Flambards, and I hate quite a lot of them. Heidi is particularly horrible.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

No, I tell a lie, I only tried to read Wuthering Heights but I did hear the radio serial all the way through and wished I hadn't.

[the-marquis.livejournal.com]

four and four

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

Triffids! :D

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

PS. I loves me some triffids. :D

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I'm rather suspicious of these lists. They seem rather high-brow. Maybe "things were different then," but I doubt it was that different. I've read studies of children's reading that were written in the 70s, and the children's preferred reading matter was more about annuals, Famous Five, Nancy Drew, and "trash" than about classics.

I'm feeling smug, though, because I've read all the books on both lists. Not that I can remember much about some of them...

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I've read them all too.

I bet annuals weren't included as 'books'.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

It does look rather as though the parents did the voting, rather than the children.

I should ahve said that this comes from the Observer. How many under-12s do you know who read the Observer?

[muuranker.livejournal.com]

As a 12 year old in 1973, I had read most of these (still have 101 Dalmations and the Sherlock Holmes to go (maybe - I have a collection of short stories somewhere, which may be this). And these were certainly among my favourites / the books that were being talked about.

I think it is more a case of the children being selected than the books (although there is definitely an annual filter on, or the Girl Guide Annual and the Blue Peter annual would be there).

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

I *think* I've read all of them, too. Well, I'm sure I've read all of the second, and I know I've read between 8 and 10 of the first, depending on things like whether the KM Peyton is the one I think it is, which it might not be, and whether one of my books might have been an abridgement.

The thing I'm pleased about is seeing The Silver Sword at the top of the second list, as Ian Serraillier (and his wife Anne, co-editor of the Windmill Series) was a friend of our family.

[tree_and_leaf]

All of them (at least, I've read some of the Flambards books) except Black Beauty. Slighly baffled by Wuthering Heights, though I suppose it might appeal to a certain type of teenager.

[tree_and_leaf]

Mostly rather splendid books, though, (with the exception of Flambards, which bored me, and the Heights, which just isn't my sort of thing...)

[findabair.livejournal.com]

I've read seven and six, respectively, most of them in Norwegian while growing up in the eighties. It's actually quite encouraging to consider how many of these are translated into Norwegian!

'The Day of the Triffids' I know only as a very scary Norwegian radio play - it scared me enough that I never dared to read the book :)