| Author | Message | ||
     Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.171.167.11 |
*The* major force in my reading life in the Fifties. And apparently she still sells 8 million books a year. She wrote 750 books. The excellent drama last night with Helena Bonham-Carter was very provocative about her life. A case study in the Intentional Fallacy and Nemonmity, I feel. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.171.167.11 |
Quoted in 'Nemonymous Five": “'Secret Way!' said Anne, her eyes shining. ‘Oh, I hope it’s that! Secret Way! How exciting. What sort of secret way would it be, Julian?’ ‘How do I know, Anne, silly?’ said Julian. ‘I don’t even know that the words are meant to mean “Secret Way.” It’s really a guess on my part.’” -- Enid Blyton (Five Go Adventuring Again). | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 82.38.75.85 |
I didn't see the drama, but there was a report online yesterday about how any chance of dramatising Blyton novels was scuppered by the BBC for many years as she was deemed "second-rate" - effectively, she was banned by the BBC (apart from Noddy, of course). I must say, much of my early reading was Blyton - mainly the Adventure series. I loved them and they really got me into reading. Island of Adventure, Castle of Adventure, etc - wonderful stuff. OK I was very young and not a good judge of writing, but the sense of adventure they instilled into my reading, and the desire they gave me to seek out exciting books/stories to read, was tremendous. I reckon kids from our generation - me, Des and so on - have an awful lot to thank Enid Blyton for.  | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.106.220.19 |
Caroline - I loved the "... of Adventure" books as well! Wasn't fussed about the Famous Five or Secret Seven, but the kids with the parrot did it for me as a boy. | ||
| Seanmcd (Seanmcd) Username: Seanmcd Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.151.243.114 |
LOVED 'The Secret Seven' as a boy. | ||
| Steve Jensen (Stevej) Username: Stevej Registered: 07-2009 Posted From: 82.0.77.233 |
She wrote 750 books. Oh dear God, she wrote more books than I have sentences... *weeps*  | ||
| Steve Jensen (Stevej) Username: Stevej Registered: 07-2009 Posted From: 82.0.77.233 |
There's a few articles about Blyton on the Guardian website. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books Also, a superb article about Nabokov, written by Martin Amis. The piece contains a stunning, heartbreaking quote from Nabokov's Pnin...took my breath away. Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/nov/14/vladimir-nabokov-books-martin-amis Finally, a decent article about Capote's In Cold Blood: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/nov/16/truman-capote-in-cold-blood | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.131.109.157 |
Ditto the feelings about 'Adventure'. Recently I read some of her Faraway Tree books to my kids and they loved them; they were so odd, even frightening. Also one scene in one of her books (Rockingdown Mystery?) was one of the best descriptions of an old empty house I have ever read in my life, and the story behind it was both horrible so and heartbreaking - and scary as hell. I used to dream about her books. Some of my strongest reading memories ever. | ||
| Stephen Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
To my knowledge I haven't read a single Enid Blyton book. I was more of a C.S. Lewis, Alan Garner, Agatha Christie & (best of the lot) Frank Richards child. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.106.220.83 |
I was more of a C.S. Lewis, Alan Garner, Agatha Christie & (best of the lot) Frank Richards child. Yep, read all those as a kid too (well, apart from Christie - tried one, didn't like it). | ||
| Stephen Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I started reading Christie at a ridiculously early age because my Mum was a big fan and we had loads of the books in the house. I remain inordinately fond of her work while being totally aware of her limitations as a writer. Who was your favourite Frank Richards character? A toss-up between Herbert Vernon Smith & Horace Coker for me. His writing is immortal imho. | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.56 |
You never read a Noddy book when you were very young? Or a famous Five or any of those? That's amazing. | ||
| Stephen Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Nope... always thought they looked a bit twee to me. I also remember reading some Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard as well as 'The Hobbit' when I was very, very young. | ||
| Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 86.29.188.51 |
Anyone see this Ross Kemp/Famous Five spoof from a couple of weeks back? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdEBsIOclss | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 88.202.207.22 |
Sorry all but I COULD NOT STAND Enid Blyton's books | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.199.37 |
I read quite a lot of Blyton between the ages of (roughly) seven and ten. She was a placebo, an own brand cornflakes. She didn't compare with Arthur Ransom or E. Nesbit or Richmal Crompton, all of whom she imitated. Her work lacked attention to detail, it lacked authenticity, it lacked power – because she lived inside her home and her head, and because she knocked out twenty books in the time it would take those writers to produce one. But what she wrote was predictably energetic and bracing and had a certain conspiratorial air of juvenile defiance. The 'Adventure' books and the two 'Secret' books are her best by a long way. If you want a good laugh, read her portrayal of juvenile delinquency in The Six Bad Boys. They are rude to grown-ups! They stay out past their bedtime! They find money in the street and keep it! Chavs pale in comparison. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.240.106 |
I must admit, Blyon never did it for me either. My heart always dwelled in the realms of Narnia and Elidor. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.178.83.10 |
Blyton was all the things Joel says - I read her at a very young age (wonderful parents taught me to read before I started primary school) but I soon tired of her stuff. Loved it initially, though, but soon after discovered The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and that was that! Garner was the first author who's work I consistently re-read as a child. It was just a shame he writes so little, at least compared to many authors. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.171.167.11 |
In the Fifties, other than Blyton, there was very little (obviously) available for a working-class boy to read. | ||
| Paul_finch (Paul_finch) Username: Paul_finch Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
My main memory of Enid Blyton is a charater called 'Dame Slap' who ran a very strict boarding school and had the same response to every indiscretion, no matter how small. It rang a bell of familiarity because I'm sure that teacher also taught me. | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.56 |
If you can track down a fifties or sixties copy of her book The Three Gollywogs it's a real eye opener. The three gollywogs in question are called Golly, Woggy and Nigger and every story in the book revolves round the fact that they all look the same... And their Aunty is Aunt Coalblack... | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 82.38.75.85 |
True, writing then was definitely VERY un-PC - but those were the times we were living in. You have to look at things which were written in those days in that context. I mean, we used to watch The Black and White Minstrel Show and think it was just nice family entertainment, without realising the offence it caused. It would be very interesting now if the BBC DID decide to dramatise one of Blyton's ".. Adventure" novels say. The adaptation would have to involve considerable rewriting in order to make it acceptable (and relevant) nowadays, but I still reckon they'd make ripping good yarns. Now, there's a comedy we haven't mentioned on the comedy thread - "Ripping Yarns" ... | ||
| Barbara Roden (Nebuly) Username: Nebuly Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 142.179.19.195 |
Blyton is relatively unknown in the States, but here in Canada her books are pretty common (or were when I was growing up; I haven't looked recently). I discovered her books in 1972, when I was nine, at the same time I was hoovering up the Nancy Drew series, and loved them. Yes, she had a lot of limitations as an author, her plots are formulaic, and she's wildly un-PC to our eyes, but she tapped into the desire of kids for adventure, unsupervised (or only vaguely supervised) by adults. Even in the free and easy (for kids) early 1970s, her characters had enormous freedom, and what child doesn't find that hugely appealing? There's one novel - THE SECRET ISLAND, I think - where the four kids run off because of upsets at home and establish a sort of Robinson Crusoe-lite (very lite) self-supporting existence on an island. Thrilling stuff! I only read her books for a couple of years, before I discovered Conan Doyle and Christie and was catapulted into the world of grown-up books, but they were a marvellous couple of years. | ||
| Stephen Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
'Ripping Yarns' was absolutely brilliant but can it be considered a sitcom? At one time Michael Palin was literally the funniest man on the planet... now he's just one of the nicest. | ||
| Barbara Roden (Nebuly) Username: Nebuly Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 142.179.19.195 |
To tie Michael Palin and Enid Blyton together, one need go no further than BERT FEGG'S NASTY BOOK and the spot-on parody 'The Famous Five Go Pillaging'. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 82.38.75.85 |
>>To tie Michael Palin and Enid Blyton together<< That made a most disturbing image pop into my mind!  | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.171.129.74 |
Along with Stan Lee, Blyton pretty much taught me to read. Started her after Marvel comics, aged about five, Five Go Down to the Sea it was. Complete shit to anyone over the age of nine, but she did the do for me before I got discerning and started Nick Fisk and assorted Scandinavian myths before getting my brain rewired by adult SF. Good luck to her. | ||
| Steve Bacon (Stevebacon) Username: Stevebacon Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 90.204.111.246 |
I read the 'Adventure' series of books when I was very young, and I enjoyed them. I even thought the 'Mystery' series was okay, in a vague impression of how I imagined 1950s middle-class England might have been. One day one of my mates called to my house to play football with me, and he caught me reading one of Blyton's books set in an all-girls boarding school, Mallory Towers. Oh I wish I'd had a sister so I could have said it was hers... | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 62.243.85.108 |
Mark: 'Along with Stan Lee, Blyton pretty much taught me to read.' ________ Same here with Blyton Mark, not Stan Lee- though my first comic book I remember, lying around the house, might have been a spider-man comic- translated into Danish- full of felt pen I think, when I was five or six. My mum also passed the Blyton to my sister and me, when we were young, to keep up our English, in the years when we were living in a non-english speaking country. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.171.129.71 |
My first comic-book was a Fantastic Four, Karim. I'd some pocket money, a rare thing in itself, and my brother and I went to the local newsagents intent on spending our pooled resources. In the end my brother opted for some penny chews, but I eschewed the sweets in favour of the Fantastic Four comic with the wonderful cover (wish I could remember it in detail: it had little bearing on the contents), even though I'd barely started school (in fact, a Google trawl on the comic's dates suggests I hadn't started school) and knew only a few written words from picture books. Stan Lee became a kind of God or legendary figure to me, in the small textile/mining village I lived in. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.170.178.4 |
We must never scoff the first people we read and love, however simple they are. Those first reads are like baby steps, those being our Appollo missions, psychically speaking, the most important of our lives. | ||
| Stephen Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
For me that would be the Ladybird books and especially the one about the overflowing porridge pot and the guy with a sausage stuck on the end of his nose. I found those tales and the illustrations indescribably disturbing and magical all at the same time. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 82.38.75.85 |
And for me, along with Blyton, it was two wonderful books which are still in my dad's bookcase at home today - Grimm Fairy Tales and Aesop's Fables. I loved the stories and illustrations. Oh, and not forgetting Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass. Beautiful! | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.171.167.11 |
After my time, but I still have a sort of nostalgia for the Ladybird series simply because I read them along with my own young children in the Seventies. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 82.38.75.85 |
I remember having to read Ladybird books at school - and for that reason, they don't mean much to me. It felt more like a chore then, something we had to do because our teachers said so, rather than reading for pleasure. |