I voted Fatty too - he's intelligent, kind, organised, resourceful. Also, although he is terribly boastful, especially in the earlier books, he's very straightforward and you always know where you are with him. I wouldn't feel that way about Peter and Julian - I think that the standards they set are...

Blyton - It would have to be the Five Find-Outer books, but I don't know which individual books because I always read them as a series! Probably Burnt Cottage and Secret Room as they were the first two I had, in a double-book edition. Non-Blyton - Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons books, specifi...

Selling these as I need the cash! And at least selling them here I know they will go to loving homes... Postage at cost for all books Adventure Books hardback illus. Stuart Tresilian, no dustjackets - £3 each The Island of Adventure The Valley of Adventure The Sea of Adventure Five Find-Outers books...

I've just bought a pack of three Sherlock Holmes books from The Book People. They're in my (150-strong) pile of books to be read...

I like that Enid Blyton includes characters with a temper and allows those tempers to be a part of the character and not necessarily invariably a bad or destructive thing - sometimes it is justified. I'm thinking of, for example, the Chalet School books, where having a bad temper is pretty much alwa...

I've just read Code Name Verity and Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein. Both were really good - very sad and uncomfortable in places, but interesting and very very well written.

Just finished Five Children on the Western Front by Kate Saunders which is a sequel to the Five Children and It books. Set ten years later than E. Nesbit's books, it's absolutely gorgeous. The characters grow up beautifully and the story itself is lovely (and sad...). Highly recommended.

I'm now on Fragments by Dan Wells, which is the second in the Partials series. It's a post-apocalyptic Young Adult series, very exciting and well-written, and I suspect this book and the third will bring up some interesting questions about what it means to be a human or a person.

I suspect that with both the twins and Mirabel, there's an element of straightforwardness that Prudence just doesn't have. You would never know where you were with her; you'd always feel that she was quite capable of doing something nasty behind your back while pretending to be your friend, whereas ...

I got the impression that it was more because she liked to show off by seeming to be interested in such topics, whereas the other girls are a bit more down-to-earth. I guess she would have gone to another school, though whether she would have got into a good one after that I don't know.

When I first read the books, I just thought 'good riddance' about Prudence being expelled, but now I'm not so sure it was the right thing to do. She doesn't seem to do anything so very serious, and I feel like a stiff punishment together with a real talking to from the Head about why what she did wa...

It is a heftyish sort of tome...

Moonraker wrote:Next on my list is Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot's Christmas. I start that tonight.

Ooh, that's quite a good one! Have fun!

I am reading "The Blunders of our Governments" which is quite interesting and entertaining.

I love folk music. I've never got my head round modern music really, but I like some classic rock and classical music too.

For me, characterisation is always the most important thing in any story, and Enid Blyton excels at this - she can paint a character in just a few words and make you really see them as a person. Also, she doesn't fall into the trap of always having the bad character reform, which many children's boo...