8 Things meme = 8 books brought home from England

I was tagged with the "8 things about yourself" meme by Susan over at Chicken Spaghetti. Thinking that books are more interesting than many other things, here are 8 of the many books that came home with me from my recent trip book shopping across the pond:


1. Alison Uttley's memoir-ish account of growing up in the English countryside, A Country Child (1931)


2. The Player's Boy, by Antonia Forest. Shakespeare fiction, by one of the best 20th-century English writers for children. Her books were incredibly hard to find, even in England, but have recently been reprinted by Girls Gone By Publishers. However, most of the republished titles are now sold out, so she is still hard to find. The only one of her books that made it over to the US is The Thursday Kidnapping. It's not representative, not her best, and has mostly been ditched by US libraries so even that is not very findable.


3. Chiltern Adventure, by Mabel Esther Allan. This is the second of MEA's books to be reprinted by Fidra Books.


4. The Incline, by William Mayne. I like some of Mayne's books very much (Earthfasts, and especially his Cathedral book series--Swarm in May etc.), and some of his books not much at all. But this was a cheap hardback, not a library discard like all the hc Mayne one sees over here, so what the heck.


5. Tell Me No Lies, by Malorie Blackman. I am saving most of these books for Mother Reader's 48 Hour Reading Challenge, but a girl has to read something in the meantime. It passed the time, but I found it unconvincing.


6. Upper Fourth at Mallory Towers, by Enid Blyton. A boarding school book, rather fluffy, but it made me happy to buy it. I discovered Mallory Towers when I was seven, and now have a complete collection again.


7. Heather, Oak, and Olive -- three stories by Rosemary Sutcliff that I have never read before. Happy! We wanted to go to Hadrian's Wall this trip, but never made it that far north. We did, however, go and visit the Roman fort at Hard Knott, which was as evocative as all get out:


8. Finally, a real treat for myself-- The Abbey Girls Win Through by Elsie Oxenham. This is one of a long series involving girls, school, folk dancing, improbable romance, and a ruined abbey.


There's no way I can think of 8 people who haven't done this meme yet, so I shall let it die a peaceful death...