The Vine: October 8, 2010
It’s a bookfest on today’s Vine — and don’t forget, the TN Read-Along thread and chat hit Monday the 11th! Chat is at 8:30 PM ET; I look forward to seeing you there!
In the 4th or 5th grade (early ’80s), my teacher started reading the most awesome book in class…ya know, a little at a time to keep you hangin’…then something happened and she just never finished the darn thing!
I have tried to search, but what I have or remember could be any number of books, but isn’t…make sense?
Here is what I can tell you; two children, brother and sister, go to stay with a relative for the summer. They get to Relative’s house and no one is there. They hide their luggage behind the bushes, grab their sack lunches (no idea why they have lunches) and jump in a rowboat with their dog (don’t know where they got the dog) and row out to an island.
They don’t do such a great job at tying up the boat and the tide takes it away, and they are stranded on an island with only sack lunches and a dog. No one knows they are there because they hid the stinkin’ luggage! On the island there is a small cabin/shed that they take refuge in after getting very sunburnt and possible ill from drinking the salty ocean water.
That is as far as she got with the story. Anyone?
JB
Dear JB,
That sounds really familiar to me too; it’s the sunburn part that rings a bell. Readers?
Hi, Sars,
In the summer of 1995, a friend and I mainlined a quartet of books in one week. They were classified as romance, but not the tawdry, bodice-ripping kind — much tamer and probably meant for a younger audience (we were 13, and nothing struck me as scandalous in my very innocent 13-year-old mind).
The quartet was about a guy and girl in college who got married very young. I think the guy’s name was Matt? And the girl’s name was Julie? I remember that in one of the books, the guy gets cancer, and then the couple has a baby who’s born prematurely. There are also subplots about their friends, and I think one was a girl named Delia or Dahlia or Delilah.
I thought the book titles came from marriage vows (For Better or Worse, In Sickness and in Health, etc.), but searching for those titles hasn’t yielded anything.
If anyone has any clues to titles or the author, it would be much appreciated!
I Swear I Don’t Read This Kind of Junk Anymore
Tags: Ask The Readers popcult The TN Read-Along
JB — is it possible the first one is a Famous Five book (by Enid Blyton)? Julian, Dick, and Anne were siblings who would go and visit their cousin George. George owned both a dog and an island. I used to love these books, though they’re perhaps a bit young for 4th or 5th grade…
Hey! I know one! The first letter is referring to Two on an Island (by Bianca Bradbury), and that book has STAYED WITH ME. The cabin has some canned goods in it, but they can’t open them. Then, the brother drinks the sea water because he’s just to thirsty to be sane, and the sister saves him by finally finding a can opener in the sandy floor of the cabin.
Love!
I think the 1995 book series is the First Comes Love series by Jennifer Baker, published in the early nineties!
http://www.amazon.com/Better-Worse-First-Comes-Love/dp/059055624X
That may be the fastest an “Ask the Readers” has ever been put to bed.
@Katie – that’s it! And now that I look at the summaries, I’m surprised I remembered so many of the details. I may have to shell out the four cents to read them all again.
According to the reviews, the various First Comes Love books are “one of the best books written!!” the “greates book ever” and “Excllent.” Now *I* might have to get a copy!
Don’t forget, “This book showed me a new perspective on life, at the time I needed it most.” And the review under that says that it portrays problems every married couple will face. I know I for one can’t wait to have a melodramatic marriage with an 18-year-old!