And also I guess that I love the #ChaletSchool, extremely problematic worts and all for the nuance they have (which far outstrips Blyton), sense of place, and an interesting insight in to attitudes of a woman and her readership between 1923 and 1970.

I don’t know if people that are maybe younger gen xers to zoomers understand fully how common epidemic disease was before vaccines and how it could devastate learning and life.

And I’m not even just talking about flu. Measles, mumps, rubella, scarlet fever & their after effects.

TB (often shown in books due to a symbiotic relationship between the #ChaletSchool and a tb sanitarium - some children even lost parents to it in the series) & polio (not shown “on screen” but recovering people were)

Again, these were written contemporaneously with the war, sometimes to the clear detriment of the story. Want to know how unforeseen the invasion of the Channel Islands was? Exile (1940, presumably sent to press or published before April that year) had the #ChaletSchool relocate from Austria to Guernsey bc of Anschluss.

Goes To It (1941) had to start the book by relocating from Guernsey during the fall of France to “Armishire” (Herefordshire).

It’s also enormously interesting from a social attitudes perspective in some cases, especially in the books between and including The Chalet School in Exile (published 1940) and Jo to the Rescue (1945). In some ways the #ChaletSchool series is one of the best placed for this.

There are a lot of things that are interesting about reading unabridged #ChaletSchool books, the first of which is 98 years old this year. The last is 53 years old.

Some are High Critical Yikes: huge amounts of smoking, racist language of the period casually tossed around.

via @DesertHarper

"#Mastodon "To help make connections: name 5-7 things that interest you but aren't in your profile, as tags so they are searchable. Then boost this post or repeat its instructions so others know to do the same."

I hate those Facebook-type 'chain letter' posts, but this seemed like a good idea.

So, a bit more about me:

#Choir
#ChurchMusic
#StarTrek
#StarWars
#SciFi
#SFF
#1632
#GrantvilleGazette
#GirlsSchoolStories
#ChaletSchool
#HarryPotter
#Slytherin
#HEXRPG
#antiTERF

So, a new second hand bookshop has appeared at the end of our road, and today we wandered in for the first time, since we were passing and it was open, and oh, my goodness, look at what was just sitting on a shelf, minding its own business!

#chaletSchool

This year was my fiftieth Christmas, and the first one over which I saw no family. One phone call from my brother on Christmas Eve, texts from my sister and mother, Discord comment from my cousin. That was the entire family contact. I wondered whether this would be good for my mental health. Turns out it was absolutely fine. I watched episodes of #Shetland, read #ChaletSchool books, and ate my weight in sweets. And no one hit me, yelled at me, or passive aggressed me.