I used to read Mary Stewart books back in the 1970's, this looked different. Turned it over and read
"A long lost novella"....... .............
Because of the British Library Crime reprints and The Furrowed Middlebrow reprints from way back anything that says 'long lost' surely means I probably haven't read it.
So I paid my £1 and brought it home, looked in my book-of-books-read and there among the list of Mary Stewart books was "Wind off the Small Isles".
Surely if I read a 'long lost' book at the time it was originally published, it's not really 'long lost' ........ or I'm much older than I thought!
Oh dear.
Back Tomorrow
Sue
Is the photograph your original one or the one you purchased for £1? I am confused. 1970 is 50 years go.
ReplyDeleteThis is the book I found a couple of weeks ago in a charity shop.
DeleteThe original would have been a library book and I started working in the library in 1971 and read my way through all Mary Stewart books back then.
lol - ooops! I really enjoyed Mary Stewart stories and my favourites were the Merlin trilogy.
ReplyDeleteShe was a great story teller.
xx
I remember the Merlin books being really good. I think most of her fiction was fairly light? although it's an age since I read any.
DeleteYes, it was mostly light and, in a way, a bit samey but the Merlin books were different.
DeleteAs a prodigious reader I wish I had kept a list of all the books I read. The late historian AJP Taylor kept one from childhood throughout his life. Perhaps I’m just not a list-maker.
ReplyDeleteMy book began in 1971 when I started working in a library. It's very tatty and has loads of extra pages stuck in but I'm hanging on to it
DeleteMust be fascinating to look back on.
DeleteI found my book list in the book shelf and I started my list Sept.1989 but I was a book reader loog before that, I can remember playing at libraries with my friends. Sadly my last book was in February 2018 when 1 had the stroke.
ReplyDeleteHazel c uk
Do you organise your ‘books read’ list by date or author?
ReplyDeleteI just jot down title and author when I have finished reading. Sometimes it takes a lot of trawling through the years to check on the title of something I think I ‘ve read.
They are in an ABC book by author
DeleteI used to keep lists of the books I'd read, but not in a properly organised fashion. Of necessity we are downsizing our library, and I'm finding it incredibly hard. With the demise of so many public libraries, I hope I'll still be able to find good reads in the future!
ReplyDeleteIt may be worth reading it again, you may not remember it if you read it a long time ago. I've been reading Agatha Christie books, some of which I read in my teens, but there isn't one amongst them which I can remember now.
ReplyDeleteYes I intend to read again -it won't take long
DeletePeople do like to dramatise and overstate things these days, don't they. All to get people to buy.
ReplyDeleteI've read books all my life, and never thought to keep a list. Duh! It's a bit late now, but I keep a list at the back of my diaries and that is only because my 'friends' on blogs are doing it and it seems a good idea. (I'm not by nature a lemming, lol).
If I come across books I know I've read, however many years ago, I will still read them, especially if I remember that I enjoyed them.
It has to be a special book for me to read it more than once - so many books and so little time!
DeleteApart from one year on my blog I have never kept a record of the books I have read. Something I should have done really, it would make for fascinating reading through now.
ReplyDeleteI have never read a Mary Stewart book though I know that for sure.
Mary Stewart was ever so popular in the 1970's.
DeleteMy book of books read is very valuable to me, it doesn't leave the house!
I found the same thing to be true when reading some of Rosamunde Pilcher's smaller books. Turns out I had read some of them when they used to be serialized in one of the British women's magazines back in the 60s. Kept wondering why I recognized the stories.
ReplyDeleteI too read through all the Mary Stewart books. A bit of mystery and a bit of romance. Perfect. I started a booklist in 2002 and have kept it up since then. Just the title and author and what number book it is for the year. In 2002 I read 20 books. My numbers increased once I retired in 2010. Reading book #4 for this year.
ReplyDeleteThe "long lost" may be more applicable to readers in the US, because until this edition The Wind off the Small Isles had never been published in the US. US fans like me who discovered that it existed paid big money to have UK first edition copies sent to the US and only then discovered that it was (1) very short and (2) quite different from most of her other works, and were disappointed. I admit that having the fore-running short story The Lost One, to get acquainted with a major character did build the strength of The Wind.
ReplyDeleteThat could certainly explain the 'long lost'.
DeleteThis is why I LOVE blogging, so much information out there which I would never know without the blog
I read most of her novels, but never that novella or the short story. I don't think they were published here in Canada either.
ReplyDeleteI was keeping track of the books I had read, but gave it up. Now when I go to the library I keep my fingers crossed that what I choose has never been read before. I usually know if it has by the time I read the first chapter.
God bless.
oh, dear. Well as long as your marbles aren't lost, not so bad, right?
ReplyDeleteI started writing down the books I have read in 2008 when I started my blog. I wish I had been doing it all my life. I do have a list, alphabetical by author, of all the books I own in a word document on my phone.There's about 1200 books there and so it is easy to end up with a duplicate or two if I didn't have my list. I keep track of the ones I've read by just changing the colour of the script so I don't buy them over again.
ReplyDeleteI love it when I come across a favorite book I have not seen in many years. It's like finding an old friend. It's funny, sometimes 1970 does not seem like it was 50 years ago.
ReplyDeleteLOVE the British Library crime reprints. This one looks like a good read!
ReplyDeletewe've ben duped a few times at my book group. A book by a popular author with a new title and it turns out to be a re-print and the names been changed. I hope it was a good read.
ReplyDeleteI have a list of books I have read, but only since the 2000s, with a few lines of what I thought of each book.
ReplyDeleteI'm impressed, that you have a book-of-books-read. I think that sounds like a lovely accomplishment.
ReplyDelete