Adventure series Readathon

[Chrissie777]

I am only 10 years too late but I thought I would resurrect this thread.

What a great idea!

I wish I could find more FF, Adventure and R series threads from 2005 or whenever EBS was founded!

[Viv of Ginger Pop]

T Themes – crimes of major importance – eg, industrial money forging, major defence secrets stolen, trafficking of guns, disposal of kings

It really annoys me when critics say that Blyton's stories are all the same.

According to TV drama, the only crime is murder - and I got bored with it 30+ years ago

Viv

[Courtenay]

Thanks - I was even looking up the dictionary for words beginning with u - really I wanted to say complex and I am sure there is an opposite - un something which means not simple - but I could not see it.

Unsimple!

Seriously, Irene, I really enjoyed your summing up of the Adventure series as well. It's easily my favourite Blyton series for "older" readers (my favourite for younger readers is Galliano's Circus). Just the amount of drama and suspense in every one of those books left me almost breathless when I first read them (as an adult, about 8 years ago). I have to admit my reaction was pretty much "Woah... these leave the Famous Five for dead." No offence intended to FF fans, but the Adventure books just seem so much more thrilling and gripping and colourful to me, not just in the plots and in the amount of actual danger the children face in nearly all the books, but even in the emotional content, with the ongoing sub-plot of how the two sets of children become a family and Bill becomes their stepfather. And it's a refreshing change to have a parrot rather than a dog for the obligatory uncannily smart animal companion! I also agree with Anita that Stuart Tresilian is the best illustrator ever to work with Enid Blyton — his artwork is just exquisite and really adds an extra dimension to the books.

According to TV drama, the only crime is murder - and I got bored with it 30+ years ago

Committed a few too many of them, have you, Viv??

[Viv of Ginger Pop]

Skeletons in the cupboards....

Viv

[Boatbuilder]

Skeletons in the cupboards....

Many a true word....!

Personally, I love 'true crime' dramas. I enjoyed watching 'The Pembrokeshire Murders' last week and am now reading the book by Steve Wilkins who investigated the 'cold case'. I admire the hard work of those who investigate such crimes.

[Irene Malory Towers]

Courtney your post makes me laugh. I was looking for a work beginning with U that meant the opposite of simple but for some reason I did not realise that unsimple was a word ! Oh dear. And I am having to help home school my 11 year old daughter as her school does not do very much. Maybe I should start by home schooling myself !

I have forgotten who added the part about the children becoming closer as they form a proper family. That is an extra feature to the series. I suppose that partly happens in the Secret series when Jack is formerly adopted but it is more dominant here.

I have always felt that the Famous Five is actually one of EB's less good series. The FF's, the Secret series, this Adventure series and the Barney series are much better (in my opinion) and Malory Towers and some of her family books like the Cousins. I have only recently got into the Circus books - and in fact read some of them for the first time as an adult and they are also very good. Perhaps it was the name, Famous Five that is so catchy that really caught the public's imagination, or the children's imagination and really propelled EB into the limelight. Although I think by then she was already well known.

Similarly, for Agatha Christie's Roger Ackroyd (and there is another thread on that) - that book thrust Agatha Christie into the limelight and is widely considered her best. But I think other books of hers are much better, for example, 5 little Pigs, And Then There Were None, Poirot - Final Curtain, After the Funeral and ABC Murders. To me the Roger Ackroyd book relied more on a trick rather than the tight plot, very good writing, or emotional depths found in some of her other books.

I seem to have gone a long way from the Adventure Series so I had better stop !

[Courtenay]

Courtney your post makes me laugh. I was looking for a work beginning with U that meant the opposite of simple but for some reason I did not realise that unsimple was a word ! Oh dear.

Well, it's not, really, to my knowledge — I just made it up on the spot!! But there's no reason why it can't be a new word — it follows a rule we all know (the "un-" prefix) and it's obvious what it means — so...

[Irene Malory Towers]

unsimple - I had looked it up in the Chambers Dictionary which we have which is about 40 years old and it is not there. However, if you look it up on google it appears on wiktionary - which I assume is a combination of wikipedia and a dictionary. Perhaps if we all start using it it will become a more recognized word.

[Boatbuilder]

Now why would you need the word 'unsimple' when we already have many words that means exactly what you want it to mean - 'difficult', 'hard', 'tough', 'gruelling' and numerous others. I think there are too many synonyms for lots of words which probably makes the English language one of the most complex languages there is. Let's keep things 'simple'.

[Courtenay]

Because Irene was doing an acrostic with the word ADVENTURE to sum up all the things she loves about the Adventure series, and for U she put "Utilisation of complexity in the plots" and regretted that she couldn't find a word starting with U that meant "not simple", so that's what I came up with. Here's her post, if you missed it.

[Boatbuilder]

i was really commenting on your suggestion "But there's no reason why it can't be a new word", nothing more than just making the point that another word is not needed.

[Irene Malory Towers]

It is interesting though - how does a word become a word that is used in general circulation. If we use unsimple (although as Boatbuilder says we certainly don't need another word for difficult) do you think it would eventually come into general usage. Lots of families might have their own pet words that are only known to them but sometimes they might leak into general society. I would love to know how that happens. I think you have to have a critical mass of usage.

Again I seemed to have strayed a lot from the excellent Adventure Series. Sorry.

To bring it back to EB I wonder if there is a word or a phrase that she invented that came into usage. Didn't she use googleberries or something like that for the hard sweets that exploded in your mouth in the faraway tree series and we certainly use google a lot. But I suppose that was a word before she used it. I daresay there is a thread on Enid Blyton words - I will have to look it up.

[Courtenay]

To bring it back to EB I wonder if there is a word or a phrase that she invented that came into usage. Didn't she use googleberries or something like that for the hard sweets that exploded in your mouth in the faraway tree series and we certainly use google a lot. But I suppose that was a word before she used it. I daresay there is a thread on Enid Blyton words - I will have to look it up.

There were Google Buns in the Faraway Tree books, and the sweets that exploded in one's mouth were Toffee Shocks. There was also a clown called Google in Circus Days Again.

I remember we do have a thread somewhere on "Words you learned from reading Enid Blyton" (or something to that effect), but I don't know if there's one specifically for words she invented!

[Anita Bensoussane]

I use "scrumplicious" and "delumptious" from The Secret Seven but I doubt Enid Blyton was the first to coin those words.

Enid invented the likes of "Kerolamisticootalimarcawnokeeto" (a magic word in The Enid Blyton Book of Brownies) and "Kollamoolitoomarellipawkyrollo" (Mr. Watzisname's real name in the Faraway Tree series) but it's not surprising that they haven't caught on!

I know it's not a new word, but the phrase "lashings of ginger-beer" gets bandied about because of Enid Blyton - even though she never used it!

Getting back to the Adventure series, I learnt the words "ornithologist" and "cataract" from these books as a child.

[Irene Malory Towers]

I love that Kollamoolitoomarellipawkyrollo - being somebody's name. Maybe that could be the name of the next Royal baby !