Will Bob lose weight?

December 29th. 22.40
A new comment has produced a list and even I can spot the difference. I am surprised that Jane Austen gets on the list of books that are read at the same sort of age as Black Beauty or Ann of Green Gables would be read but maybe that is the best time to read her. I almost lost the will to live when I read the complete works about twenty years ago and I made definite plan never to read them again. Woody Allen was asked what he would do differently if he had his life over again. He replied that he wouldn't read Moby Dick. I feel the same about Jane Austen. I am also a bit surprised at the inclusion of Charlotte Bronte. I am talking about my reading between the ages of ten to thirteen and I think that girls of that age wouldn't be reading Bronte, though I do of course acknowledge that they they are more precocious readers than boys and have weird taste.
The books in both Anniethegrannie's comment and in my last blog were largely written for either girls or boys so its no great surprise that we have different memories of our reading material at that age. I'm not sure whether Buchan, Dumas, Dickens(C), Christie or Sayers imagined that their readers would be predominantly male or female, or even young or adult. I had thought that Agatha Christie might have been included in one of my lists eventually as I went through a phase of reading a lot of those green Penguin books dedicated to crime and I'm sure she was one of the authors who was honoured by the simultaneous issue of ten of her stories. I think that John Dickson Carr and Erle Stanley Gardner were two others at about the same time. I used to hitch-hike to and from school to save the fare money to buy paper back books which were really just beginning to proliferate for the first time. Penguin had already been issued for several years. Pan and Corgi joined the expanding numbers on the shelves, costing two shillings or two and six or even three shillings. One of the most popular genres was the war reminiscences which told true tales of derring-do rather than commentating on the conduct or morality of the Second World War. So, in fond memory of those books, I offer the following ten:-
141. They Have Their Exits by Airey Neave (PAN 2/-)
142. Escape- or Die by Paul Brickhill (PAN 2/-)
143. Beyond The Chindwin by Bernard Ferguson (FONTANA 2/6)
144. The Wooden Horse by Eric Williams (FONTANA 3/-)
145. The Dam Busters by Paul Brickhill (PAN 2/6)
146. The Colditz Story by P.R.Reid (PAN 2/-)
147. Dare To Be Free by W.B.Thomas (PAN 2/-)
148. Enemy Coast Ahead by Guy Gibson (PAN 2/6)
149. The Naked Island by Russell Braddon (PAN)
150. Boldness Be My Friend by Richard Pape (PAN 2/6)
Not bad really; eight books for under a pound! I wonder if anyone reads them today? More recent wars don't seem to have produced a similar 'literature'. I realise that no female author has been included but I didn't think that the Diary of Anne Frank or Odette were quite in the same vein and I can't think of any others.
Too wet for the allotment but there have been a few games of squash . Weight loss unlikely this week but no scales available until the next weigh day next year.