I had seen the sunscreen video before. Very clever and very smart. I can still use this advice.

I have no memory of What Katy Did at School, so I’m thinking I did miss that one. I’m glad to know that you loved those books. I was beginning to think poor old Susan Coolidge’s audience was primarily abroad. There were so many wonderful books for girls when I was growing up. Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm was another import from the States; almost as well-loved as the March girls. And, of course, there were the Canadian imports, Anne of Green Gables and the Bobbsey Twins. And wonderful English books, too - by Angela Brazil, Elsie J. Oxenham, Elinor Brent-Dyer. I loved them all. And I had the good fortune to live next door to a houseful of readers — two brothers and a sister, several years older than me — and to be given free rein of their attic, where all these treasures were stored.

Just as well you don’t know the Katy books. I guarantee you’d have been beaten to a pulp in the playground if you’d been reading those books when you were a chiseller! They were junior chick lit.

I’d never heard of Sebastian until I saw Secret Scriptures in the long list for the Man Booker Prize. Now, of course, I want to buy everything he’s ever written. I live in terror that the tower of books by the bed will fall over and crush me in my sleep one night. Not that there aren’t worse ways to die …

Tail. Trail. Same diff, no? You will love The Secret Scripture … and I’ll be happy to interpret some of the topical references, which were one of the facets of the book that I loved most.

I guarantee you will love Kate’s blog, and some of her links will be especially interesting to you, since you’re so far ahead (by comparison with the rest of us, ahem) with your novel.

As to trailing me on the reading list, you should start with my second-last read of 2008 then: The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry was a marvellous read, so beautifully written and with a strange little mystery at its heart. Can’t recommend it highly enough.

Hi Kate. I thought your choice would be deliberate. As you can see from WWW’s comment, the Katy books were very popular in Britain and Ireland — perhaps more so than on this side of the pond? I had my own little sibling drama around it, too. My older sister, who did not read and hated me just for being born, used to wait around and watch until I reached the last few pages of whatever book I was buried in. Then she would grab it from me and hurl it into the kitchen range, adding a good rummage with the poker to make sure I could not fish it out again. For a fairly stupid little girl in other ways, she was fiendishly clever at devising ways to torment me. To this day, I have to resist reading the last three pages of any book.

You may very well be right on the date — I got 1999 from Wikipedia, and we know how reliable that can be …

Doesn’t it just?

Nobody who has read her would doubt that Kate is the “onlie begetter” of her blog, so I guess I knew what you meant and never noticed the slip.

And I’d never even heard of the books until reading this post, so thanks for expanding my horizons. Although I’m just a tad disappointed that Kate may not have come up with that blog all on her own!

Both Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse-Five very close to my heart. When I was teaching, I once played for my class a recording of Vonnegut reading from his book. The way his voice sounded when he said “…but it wasn’t a melodious owl — it was a FLYING SAUCER from TralFAMadore” is permanently etched in my brain.

It was through Kate’s blog that I found yours, in this global village of blogging we inhabit — that would have blown Marshall McLuhan’s mind, had he lived long enough. The Katy books were very much girl’s books, along the lines of Little Women and its ilk. Highly moralistic to our modern sensibilities, but I can still remember how I longed to become a pale and interesting invalid, like Katy, and blow the doors off everybody with my selflessness and saintly demeanour. Ah, innocence and egotism, thy name is childhood …

I should have known you did, my kindred spirit! You won’t regret reading Kate, I promise.