Posted by Robert Hill on November 15, 2005 at 01:53:19 from 195.92.168.167 user eclrh.
In Reply to: Re: The fascinating topic (yet again)of which books we like posted by Jim McDowell on November 15, 2005 at 00:53:31:
I've said this before, more than once, but there may be people here now who weren't then.
PM was not very high up my preference list as a child, but as an adult it's possibly my favourite. It's usually a desire to re-read PM that leads me into another cycle of reading the series (or at least, several of the series - I sometimes lose interest after reading six or seven in a row).
I think Peter Ceresole has given a nicer summary of some of the attractions of PM than I've seen before, though in my case I also love to see Nancy manipulating the adults, and on a more positive note her concern to protect her mother.
I like the fact that for much of the time the story is just about the D's, who are probably the characters in the series with whom I have most in common. In WH it's a bit disorienting to feel distanced from the Swallows who were central in the first books, but who now, as seen from the Ds' point of view, are super-competent at everything and super-energetic. That problem is solved in PM by the Swallows being absent.
I quite like GN, but as my top six places in any preference list of mine are pre-empted by the lake books and WDM, GN is inevitably forced into the bottom half of the list.