What other author are you reading at the moment?

[Katharine]

I've just started reading John Masefield's "Box of Delights". I struggled through The Midnight Folk many years ago, I'm hoping this book is more enjoyable.

It says it's been abridged, so I don't know if that will make it any easier to read or whether his style isn't one that I particularly enjoy.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I like The Box of Delights much more than The Midnight Folk as there's a lot more to it - though I'm not keen on the ending. In 2017 I enjoyed watching a stage version at Wilton's Music Hall in London. I've also got the 1984 TV series on DVD, which I still find quite magical even though the special effects are now dated.

[Debbie]

Totally agree.
The ending doesn't make sense unless The Midnight Folk was the same (trying not to give spoilers).

I have the BBC version too. I remember being transfixed by it when it first came out, and my children loved it when I showed it to them, although they were rather scornful of what at the time had seemed amazing special effects.

[Chrissie777]

Linwood Barclay has been for many years one of my favorite crime novel authors.
Yesterday I looked so much forward to read his latest novel "Look Both Ways" and was sooooo disappointed when it turned out to be a SciFi novel. Hopefully his next book will be a thriller again, because that's what he does best.

[Kate Mary]

I’m reading and thoroughly enjoying The Chartfield School Mystery by Monica Marsden. It’s an ancient relic from my childhood it belonged to my sister before me and she must have got it second hand as it’s a first edition from 1949 and she was only four then. No doubt my grandmother bought it in a jumble sale sometime in the 1950s, she was a great lover of jumble sales and rarely shopped anywhere else! It’s an unusual and pretty good mystery and I’d forgotten just how funny it was.

[Katharine]

I'm still struggling on with The Box of Delights. I'm finding it very disjointed, and a couple of times I've turned back a few pages to see if I've missed something (although I hadn't). I don't know if it's because it's been abridged, or whether there was book before it featuring the same main character, as once or twice it seems as if the author is talking about characters that the reader should already know about.

It probably doesn't help that there is a theme of attacking wolves running through it, which is something that I find particularly destressing/disturbing. It's not the kind of book I would read just before going to sleep as I'd probably have nightmares!

The fact that a couple of people have mentioned they don't like the ending is tempting me to give up with the book now. I suspect it's not going to be the 'happily ever after' that I expect after an Enid Blyton book.

[Debbie]

@Katherine we're not referring to it not being a happily ever after ending.
Don't worry on that account. It's something that (to me) totally ruins the magical atmosphere of the book for rereading is probably the best way of putting it. I felt it changed finishing the book on that lovely high of everything okay into just a flat feeling. I don't think that gives anything away.

The book before it is "The Midnight Folk", and is nothing like as well known, but manages to retain the magical feeling throughout. I read "The Box of Delights" first and there are moments where you feel you've missed out on something from the previous book, but not enough to spoil it.

[John Pickup]

I’m reading and thoroughly enjoying The Chartfield School Mystery by Monica Marsden. It’s an ancient relic from my childhood it belonged to my sister before me and she must have got it second hand as it’s a first edition from 1949 and she was only four then. No doubt my grandmother bought it in a jumble sale sometime in the 1950s, she was a great lover of jumble sales and rarely shopped anywhere else! It’s an unusual and pretty good mystery and I’d forgotten just how funny it was.

I've got some Monica Marsden books, The Secret of the Clocks, The Bronze Bell Mystery and one other but I haven't got The Chartfield School Mystery.

[Judith Crabb]

I've just read "King Solomon's Mines" by Rider Haggard for the first time. There can't be much doubt that Enid Blyton read it as a girl - all those underground tunnels and treasure hoards and death defying escapes. A direct influence may be the eclipses a lunar eclipse in KSM as against a solar eclipse in 'The Secret Mountain' but the outcome is the same - a white man 'kills' the moon/sun and saves the day (or night). In Haggard a 'groan of terror rose from the onlookers. Some stood petrified with fear, others threw themselves upon their knees and cried out. As for the king , he sat still and turned pale beneath his dusky skin.' In Blyton 'they were quite mad with fear and terror. They shouted and moaned and beat their foreheads and dropped to their knees.... The chief went down on his knees and begged for mercy.'

[Judith Crabb]

Another thought. It is conceivable that Blyton read or re-read 'King Solomon's Mines' as she decided on the setting of her next 'Secret' book. In order to establish the date of the eclipse Haggard has Captain Good provided with an almanac in his medicine chest and Blyton provides Jack with a pocket diary.
Even films wildly unfaithful to the books can send me back to the originals. I was inspired to read the novel by a 'King Solomons Mines' dvd starring Patrick Swayze. Granted the film is a ripping yarn, except for the setting which seems to be filmed in Africa, it seemed to me dreadfully phony, a plot dreamed up in Hollywood, not by a 19th century novelist at the top of his game. The film plot has very little to do with Haggard who I imagine gives a fair picture of what Africa was like at the time Europeans started venturing far into the interior. I was amused at the beginning of the novel when Alan Quatermain warns the reader that they will be disappointed by the lack of 'petticoats' (i.e. English women) in the story. In the film he is provided with a beautiful (presumably leggy though hard to tell with the flowing robes in which she tackles the African interior) blonde to fall in love with as the party traverses the Kalahari desert, the blond getting her hair a bit mussed and a sleeve torn when abducted by rival treasure seekers.
Any other readers find novels far, far different from films?

[Anita Bensoussane]

Like you, Judith, I imagine that adventurous books like King Solomon's Mines (1885) would have appealed to Enid Blyton and that certain elements would have captured her imagination and lingered in her mind. I believe that H. Rider Haggard initially had a solar eclipse in King Solomon's Mines but that it was changed to a lunar eclipse in later editions because it was pointed out that a solar eclipse could not have occurred in the way that Haggard described. Enid might also have been aware of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889). Knowing that there is to be a solar eclipse, Hank Morgan threatens to blot out the sun if the king goes ahead with his plan to execute him. The device was also to play a part in one of the Tintin comic-books by Hergé - Prisoners of the Sun - though that was published in 1949, eight years after The Secret Mountain. Turning to history rather than fiction, it's claimed that explorer Christopher Columbus took advantage of a lunar eclipse in 1504 to convince the indigenous people of Jamaica that their god was angry at their treatment of Columbus and his men.

Regarding novel v. film, I judge each according to its own criteria. A film generally needs to be faster-paced and (of course) visual, while a story in a book can unfold more slowly (but still needs to move the reader on). Books allow more time to ponder and reflect - and they let the reader create his/her own mental images, of course. Reading is more personal than viewing on the whole, though I do enjoy a beautifully presented and sensitively acted film and can appreciate the creativity behind it.

[Lucky Star]

I've just finished Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho first published in 1794. The book is regarded as the first Gothic novel and was a huge bestseller in it's day. Today it is probably best known for being extensively mentioned (and parodied) by Jane Austen in Northanger Abbey.

Anyway, as I approached the end of this 672 page monster a minor plot point was resolved in a manner straight out of Enid Blyton when mysterious noises in the empty wing of a Chateau were revealed to be, not ghosts, but the activities of a band of local pirates who would row out to sea, rob ships, then row their booty back to shore, into an obscure cave, and thence by a hidden passage up to the Chateau's cellars where they would store it until they could sell it.

I immediately thought of Spiggy Holes or even Smuggler's Top when I read this page. I wonder if Enid ever read the book.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Ironically, Jane Austen has probably brought many, many readers to The Mysteries of Udolpho!

[Kate Mary]

I’ve got a copy of The Mysteries of Udolpho on my bookshelves but to my shame I’ve never read it. I had thing about 18th century novels at one time and I read The Old English Baron (1778) and Sarah Fielding’s The Governess, or the Little Female Academy (1749) which is brilliant, the first girls’ school story. Perhaps one day I’ll get round to Udolpho.

[Anita Bensoussane]

It's good to hear that you enjoyed Sarah Fielding's The Governess, or The Little Female Academy, Kate. It sounds fascinating and I keep meaning to track down a copy (preferably a paper copy rather than a digital one).