Guest Post - Shilpa on ‘Back in my day…’: The Books I Liked To Read

My talented cousin Shilpa is an aspiring writer over at http://shilpa-thisandthat.blogspot.com/ . She is also very nice, and so has written a post for us. Enjoy!

 ‘Back in my day…’: The Books I Liked To Read

Wonderful though it is to have such a plethora of new writers, I can’t help but lament the loss in popularity of the writers of my youth. Ask the Modern Child his views on P.G. Wodehouse or Enid Blyton and one is likely to get blank stares or, in the case of the more articulate, some puzzled gurgling sounds. 

Facing wicked wizards and battling hormonal classmates are all very fun and exciting, don’t get me wrong, but what can compare to the thrill of seven (or five) children uncovering pirate activity in coves or of wondering in which strange land the Wishing-Chair would land today? And you won’t find characters like Harold ‘Stinker’ Pinker, Gussie Fink-Nottle (or, as Aunt Dahlia would call him, Spink-Bottle) or – my personal favourite – Claude Cattermole ‘Catsmeat’ Potter-Pirbright in today’s books. Such characters and writing now sadly belong to a different world; a place where people went about saying things like ‘what-what’ and where the nickname ‘Fatty’ was a term of endearment and not a soul-destroying remark on one’s physical appearance.

The comedy of P.G. Wodehouse and fantasy of Enid Blyton have influenced much of today’s writers, and sad as it is that they are no longer fixtures on every child’s bookshelf, you would be hard-pressed to find a writer who didn’t owe some of their style to these two geniuses. And by the way, the next time you find a Wodehouse or a Blyton lying about, pick it up and read it. You won’t regret it.  

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For more of Shilpa's very British sense of humor, please read : This and That