#noel streatfield

[rachel-sylvan-author]

"Ballet Shoes" by Noel Streatfeild book recommendation by Rachel Sylvan

Thank you @snuggery.mom for the lovely read! ❤️

[book--brackets]

[mihrsuri]

some getting-to-know-me questions

thank you to my friend @nocompromise-noregrets for the tag <3.

three ships I like: Faramir/Eowyn, Anne/Henry/Thomas (Tudors OT3) and Rey/Finn/Poe.

last song I heard: ‘Darling’ by Halsey as a rec by my saati @shes-a-voodoo-child and then the one below which is beautiful.

favourite childhood book: Tolkien (I read The Hobbit I want to say between the ages of 6-8 and then LOTR when I was eleven), A Little Princess, The Wolves Of Willboughy Chase, The Ordinary Princess (I just got my own copy of this book recently and the illustrations are so lovely as well), Swallows and Amazons, The Drina Series, White Boots (a book by Noel Streatfield about ice skating), Obernewtyn and Narnia are the main ones.

currently reading: I actually just finished Cassiel’s Servant which is a prequel to the Kushiel’s Legacy series by Jacqueline Carey and it was really good/well done - the character POV is great (even though I am still like the only person who is not into one of the pairings) but also I am side eye about the Jewish Fantasy Analogue which did kind of, it was a shadow over. I’m trying to decide what to read next - I have a book about Holbein, the first Murderbot book and I got a couple of Brandon Sanderson from the library to try again because I liked Tress of the Emerald Sea and thought I’d give his other work another go.

currently watching: I am so so bad at convincing myself that I deserve/have earned the right to watch TV shows but - I would like to finish Shadow and Bone S2 even though I curse Netflix for not renewing. Then probably Lockwood and Co and then I have no idea - maybe Percy Jackson?

currently craving: I have been really wanting corned beef with mashed potatoes and cauliflower cheese so I’m going to work hard on making myself that (I actually kind of want my dads cauliflower cheese honestly).

first ship ever: The first one I ever wrote published fic for was actually the Kushiel Books (at least going by fanfiction.net it was in 2003 - this fic does not exist online anymore). I think the first ships I ever imagined out content for was probably Scarlet Pimpernel related - i wrote a lot of gen fic in my head as a kid though.

Tagging (entirely optional): @unseenacademic @sherwoodknights @six-of-snakes @quillington @jesidres @miabicicletta @emilykaldwen

[beirarowling]

Some of JK Rowling's favorite books

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield Black Beauty by Anna Sewell Emma by Jane Austen

(More at the source)

[staceymcgillicuddy]

#4 for the questions game!

Thank you!!!

4. What is your favorite book?

Oh, this is a hard one! I would say I have a few for different occasions. For like... childhood book that's still very special to me, it's Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield. For a book that I will go back to again, and again, and again, it's The Stand by Stephen King. For like... God, this is so beautiful, I could read it ten thousand times and still find new ways to get lost in the prose, it's The Secret History by Donna Tartt. And for sheer "bury me with it" love, it's The Lord of the Rings.

Random Ask Game

[cicaklah]

my girl @ronniebox tagged me and so here we go!

Rules: List ten books that have stayed with you in some way, don’t  take but a few minutes, and don’t think too hard - they don’t have to  be the “right” or “great” works, just the ones that have touched you.

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman - my mother gave me this book to read when I was maybe 11, it was her copy that she had bought when Pratchett came and gave a reading at our local library in like, 1992. I'd say no book has been more formative to me, but in writing this I don't think thats true.

The City and the City by China Mieville - I got into Mieville through my girl @crimeandcricket, and was horribly traumatised by the body horror in perdido street station, and was way too influenced by his often pretentious writing style, but the city and the city is a masterpiece I'll never recover fully from and changed me for the better.

The Children's Hospital by Chris Adrian - I'm fairly sure no one but me loves this book, but it is also a book that multiple people stopped me when I was reading in public just from the cover image. My favourite kind of book is a book that can only be written by one person, and Adrian is a theologian and paediatrician, and this book uses every single one of his hyperfixations and also made me cry more than anything else.

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster - Actually, this book probably did more to calcify my sense of humour than Pratchett did. The smartest, funniest, coolest children's book ever, and this has reminded me to get the tattoo of Tock on my wrist.

Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield - I read this every christmas morning as a treat to myself. I also adore White Boots, the ice skating book, but Ballet Shoes is such a perfect gem of a story that is the favourite of my grandmother, my mother and myself.

Shabanu/Daughter of the Wind by Suzanne Fisher Staples - The first book that made me cry, inspired my fondness for camels and was probably my first feminist awakening? I've only read one of the sequels, but it was so brutal I still haven't emotionally recovered entirely.

The Amateur Cracksman by E. W Hornung - my mastermind specialist subject, a book that consumed me across time and space, Raffles my beloved, Bunny my beloved, I remember the moment I read the first story and my life changed literally forever. The Black Mask and A Thief In The Night are also obviously amazing and really all three should be considered one book, but something in my life changed for the better when I read the line 'AJ Raffles would be my friend!' in The Ides of March and I realised oh no, they're mine now.

Exhalation by Ted Chiang - very hard for me to choose a Ted Chiang story so thankfully I will pick his second collection, which has The Life Cycle of Software Objects and also the one about the parrots. It does not have Hell is the Absence of God or stories of your life, but tbh, software objects was the first of his stories I ever read, so it deserves to be here, even if it guts me like a fish every time.

Rivals by Jilly Cooper - if I could have anyone's writing career, it would be Jilly Cooper's. Everytime I read this insane soap opera of a book it holds me hostage until I finish it, and its like 700 pages long. The most wonderfully 80s OTT sex farce about horrible people trying to buy an ITV franchise. I genuinely can't believe that disney plus are making it into a series.

The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson - One of his least famous books and yet I think his best? I had read the Mars books several times before I picked this up, but this alternate history where 90% of Europe are killed by the black death, following how world history changes through the eyes of characters who reincarnate but always find each other, somehow??? it grabbed me by the throat and never let go.

tell me YOUR formative texts pls @crimeandcricket @deputychairman @myth-blossom @skylightpirate @stickthisbig @apricotbones @postalninja @cajunandfire @within-infant-rind

[queen-of-empathy]

What book marked your childhood?

I’m actually still obsessed with reading my childhood favourites! I loved Ballet Shoes, His Dark Materials, the Wind on Fire series, the Chrestomanci books (a great series by the author who wrote Howl’s Moving Castle) and also I read a lot of my mum’s old books so lots of Enid Blyton and other Noel Streatfield books n things but also every single word of Tom’s Midnight Garden echoes in my mind every day forever

[wri0thesley]

2, 17, and 22 for the reading questions! hope u, haz, and sir lancelot have a good new year 🎊✨

2) Did you reread anything? What?

not necessarily a 'reread' (we listened to it on audiobook) but theatre shoes by noel streatfield! the 'shoes' books - and classic girl's literature of that time period - are a shared love of both haz and i and it was one we'd only read a few times and a free audible credit, so absolutely worth it! i also re-read 'pretty monsters' by kelly link, one of my favourite short story collections (i did a book swap and my box included it so i thought 'why not'?!).

17) Did any books surprise you with how good they were?

one of my favourite books i read this year was 'the salt grows heavy' by cassandra khaw! i got it in an abominable book club box and i knew nothing about the writer, and generally mermaids as a whole are a huge turn-off for me because i just don't enjoy the concept of them . . . but the prose is so so beautiful, the story, everything ;w;!!

22) What’s the longest book you read?

honestly i'm not sure!! goodreads page count suggests it was 'the sisters of the winter wood' by rena rossner, but that didn't feel that long to be honest - and ofc page count is not the same as wordcount!!!

thank u for the ask haley!!! i hope also that your new year is wonderful, you deserve it! sir lancelot sends purrs and smoochies

[restlesshush]

Choose between Jack watching Buffy with Cas or Cas reading him (insert your favorite books from childhood here)? Also, if you choose the latter, what was your favorite book or series as a kid?

Hiii Pallas I’m going to be so self indulgent with this thank you for enabling me <3

So I think I’m going to go for the second one, because although obviously Buffy is great and everyone should watch it, I think some of the parallels between Jack and Buffy & Dawn and how much better they were treated might give him psychic damage (for example I once wrote my friend a buffynatural essay on the end of btvs s5 vs unity at 3am). Also, I’m not going to pass up an opportunity to talk about children’s books <3

In terms of the media they should consume, it’s not a book but I did write a very self indulgent post several months before I’d met Jack about how I thought he and Cas should watch Bagpuss. I’m not sure anymore whether it actually would fix them, but it is wonderful and they should watch it anyway.

Book-wise, I still as an adult insist that the Just William series is just objectively excellent comedic writing, so I’d like to think they could have a good time reading that – it’s glorious. Also as a bit of a rogue one, the lead character from Wintle’s Wonders by Noel Streatfield (now published as Dancing Shoes) is the only children’s book protagonist where I still think about them sometimes and go “godddd” (the ways in which she’s misunderstood by the adults around her but the narrative Gets It I remember finding quite gut-punchy), and I think Jack could get something out of that too.

(Also, I do have various thoughts about Jack and children’s books characters in general. He is Sara Crewe – in a post-canon scenario where Cas is still dead but Jack is living in the bunker, Jack would read A Little Princess and sob. Then also, more analytically, see this post and compare to eg Beth March, or other more watered-down examples of that archetype. Victorian perfect martyr child 😐 (which drives me up the wall conceptually, but which I do think is an interesting lens to view his writing through).)

Make me choose

[readingbooksinisrael]

Top 5 Wednesday: Training Regimes

The heralds in the Heralds of Valdermar series undergo an intensive training regime to become a full-fledged herald, especially Talia (the mc), who has a specific position. I always really loved the descriptions of the exercise trainings (mostly because it validated me that fighting “dirty” is good when you’re in a scrape). [fantasy, he first book is YA, the second NA, the third Adult]

The goodreads summary of Ender’s Game reads: Andrew "Ender" Wiggin thinks he is playing computer simulated war games; he is, in fact, engaged in something far more desperate. The result of genetic experimentation, Ender may be the military genius Earth desperately needs in a war against an alien enemy seeking to destroy all human life. The only way to find out is to throw Ender into ever harsher training, to chip away and find the diamond inside, or destroy him utterly. Ender Wiggin is six years old when it begins. He will grow up fast. // My favorite thing about the training in this book was the training in no-gravity rooms. [sci fi, NA-ish]

There’s a lot of training going on in the Septimus Heap series: Young Army, Extraordinary Wizard Apprentice, Alchemie Apprentice, Keeper, Queen training, even in the Manscriptorium they have to teach the scribes how to be a scribe. I really wish we got more details of most of these, especially the training as the Extraordinary Wizard Apprentice. [fantasy, MG]

In Movie Shoes (my second favorite in the Shoes series) Jane is chosen to play Mary from The Secret Garden in a film adaptation despite her lack of training or experience (which means she has to go through a lot of on-site training. I especially liked the first time she sees the animals that will be in the Garden. [contemporary to the time it was written (~1950s), MG]

Laurence was meant to be captain of a ship, not captain of a dragon. Unfortunately for him, life thrust the egg of Temeraire on him and he becomes the captain of a dragon-all in the middle of the Napoleonic Wars. He has a lot to learn. [historical fantasy, YA]

[cheeseanonioncrisps]

Sometimes I think Ballet Shoes deserves more recognition for having probably the least conventional family set up I've ever seen in children's fiction and literally never making it sound anything less than totally normal, despite being written in 1936.

Like, sometimes a family is just three unrelated sisters, their legal Guardian, the Nanny who is basically a family member by this point, a colourful cast of lodgers— including a mechanic who teaches one of the girls to fix cars for fun, and two retired academics who are quite probably lesbians— the cook, the maid, and an estranged Great Uncle Matthew who nobody's seen in over a decade.

Not to mention the fact that even today, you'll struggle to find girls' coming of age fiction that doesn't focus almost exclusively on boys and romance. Like, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with writing about that stuff, but it's nice to find a book about teenage girls that has barely any male characters in it at all (there's the mechanic, Great Uncle Matthew, and then that's pretty much your lot), and is instead all about the main characters trying to find good careers.

[ninja-muse]

7 Book Covers in 7 Days Challenge! Rules: Each day, I will post the cover of a book that I love and nominate someone new to start the challenge. No explanation, no discussion, just post the cover and by doing so spread some literary love! 

Tagging @brightbeautifulthings

[winterroseposts]

Based on the author's childhood before World War one, the story centres around Victoria. The second of three sisters - she often feels overlooked in favour of artistic Isobel & pretty Louise. Her methods of getting attention often lead to disastrous consequences. Unlike Noel Streatfeild's other stories the author isn't completely on the side of the protagonist. Still there are times when Victoria seems to get away with very little punishment for what - especially at that time - would be considered outrageous behaviour. SPOILERS The book also ends very abruptly with a character death. 2.5 Stars

[ijustkindalikebooks]

Book haul from yesterday!

[livelovecaliforniadreams]

Chris Messina In You’ve Got Mail 

[girldraki]

most of our childhood reading was antiquated and oddly british-skewed