I love these stories. Lots of witchy women in this one. Besides Mrs. Pringle who is the school's resident curmudgeon, there's Mrs. Fowler, a tenant of Tyler's Row. Mr. Willet, the village handy man calls her a Besom, which I am assuming means a Bitch. She is that and then some. The Hales, who are...
Most of Miss Read books can be put in one cute category: quaint. It's a word I don't use often, because of old 80's yuppie connotations. However her stories are quite quaint. I have learned to love each character in Fair acre and in Thrush green. This book is not a disappointment, like so many o...
"Miss Read's charming Thrush Green series continues with Friends at Thrush Green. There had been general dismay when Miss Watson and Miss Fogerty retired to Barton-on-the-Sea after many years of devoted service teaching the children of Thrush Green, so their visit to see old friends in the villag...
Why I wanted to read it: I have been reading Nan's blog, Letters From a Hill Farm, for quite some time and have enjoyed her book reports and felt like I needed to make time for this book that she loved.Source: My public libraryI have to say that I found this book extremely charming. Sometimes I a...
Library copy, rebound. #5 in the Fairacre series, stands alone, but characters better understood having read previous episodes.Over the Gate is a clever collection of stories, relative to the history of the people and dwellings and events of Fairacre, some of which were literally told Over the G...
*Read for S524: Adult Readers' Advisory* I'm COMPLETELY shocked that I enjoyed this book as much as I did. There was a time when my mother's Mitford books infuriated me because they seemed so trite and I felt like they stood for everything I hated. Now I'm all Martha Stewart-ed and stuff, and I c...
The second "Thrush Green" book begins with the arrival of a new resident. Speculation abounds as mystery and romance ensue, amidst an ambitious community project. Characters from the first charming book make cameo appearances, but by and large this is a story of characters who were stage parsle...
Trouble seems to be everywhere in this edition of Miss Read's Fairacre series. A government office is threatening to seize Farmer Miller's land to build a huge new housing community, Miss Jackson is caught up in a love affair with a highly unsuitable man, and MIss Clare seems to have lost her wil...
"A Peaceful Retirement", the last in the Fairacre series by Miss Read is, as always... a very peaceful novel, but not a soporific one. Miss Read, the schoolmistress of Fairacre, has retired and is busy organizing her newfound leisure. This character is the kind of person one would love to have as...
Miss Read books are lovely stories about simple people living in a simpler time. I especially love the Fairacre series as they revolve around the village school teacher and the children. But all of her books are quiet a sweet. Some people say nothing happens in them, and that's true if you always...
Miss Read's books about Thrush Green and Fairacre don't particularly have plots to follow--it's more the ebb and flow of village life in the Cotswolds in the 1950s and 60s. This book is primarily narrated by Miss Read, the head teacher of the two-teacher village school at Fairacre, and gives lip ...
I'm going to do a combined review for all the remaining Thrush Green books (with the exception of Christmas) because although they are all excellent, they are also all basically the same, in the way that episodes of The Archers are all the same. So, still worth reading; but hard to differentiate ...
Library copy, and a re-read. Felt like I'd been there before, but always enjoy her writing. This quote from page 152 sums it up well: "Sitting alone, in that classroom, with only the tick of the wall-clock and the faint shouts of my approaching pupils to be heard, I felt, perhaps more keenly t...
The story takes place not long after the last book, though it was written several years later and seems to have a contemporary setting. Battles are waging at Thrush Green. Albert Piggot, unable/unwilling to work as hard after his surgery, has a complaint about the churchyard. It's too much for hi...
I'm going to do a combined review for all the remaining Thrush Green books (with the exception of Christmas) because although they are all excellent, they are also all basically the same, in the way that episodes of The Archers are all the same. So, still worth reading; but hard to differentiate ...