A True Story About Books In A Suitcase And A Teenage Boy

The seven books over seven days challenge on facebook has awaken another book related memory that I wanted to share, as I find talking about books interesting and is one of the pleasures I miss from my public library days and, before that, my reading group days. Also, the people that are sharing and challenging on facebook may find it interesting too. Of course they may not, but that's never stopped me writing anything before. *Laughing face emoji.* So gather round my social media chums and listen to my story. *Smiley face emoji with maybe a winking face one too?*


Once upon a time, in the dark days and even darker nights of the 1970s; before social media, before smart phones and laptops; when there were just three television channels: BBC1, BBC2, and ITV, that stopped broadcasting overnight and had only been broadcasting in colour for a couple of years (I know, right?); in a council house that was owned by the local council before a wicked witch cast an evil spell that confused common people into believing they had a right to buy the council house they lived in (and caused a housing shortage and even homelessness in years to come), the King family lived in a crescent named after the author of Robinson Crusoe, at No. 44.

The eldest child, a handsome, intelligent and misunderstood teenage boy used to enjoy reading the books that were in a brown suitcase belonging to his father, an ogre who lived in the local public house and who every now and then would pop home for a visit between pints, for some food and to break wind violently, often blowing the back door off its hinges and frightening the elderly lady that lived next door.

Why the books were in a suitcase we will never know, and the boy never asked, just took it for granted. Here is the story of some of those books, and the handsome, intelligent, muscular boy (look, it's my story, okay) that read them...

              I remember Mario Puzo's 1969 The Godfather. I can see the black cover as clearly now as  I could then, with its large white writing and puppet-controlling hand. It was/is a brilliant book filled with descriptive sex and violence, and one hell of a story. Just the thing for a teenage boy. I never saw the equally brilliant 1972 film until I was in my thirties, but I do remember mum and dad going to see it one evening, one of the rare times they went out together. (Perhaps the pub was closed?).

Whilst most of the books in dad's suitcase were paperbacks, I remember three hardback ones; Born Free, Living Free and Forever Free. Joy Adamson's story of Elsa the lioness and her three cubs Jespah, Gopa and Little Elsa. Published respectively in 1960 (the year I was born), 1961 and 1962. Again made into films starring Virginia McKenna as Joy and Bill Travers as her husband George. I don't know if these three books, filled with black and white photographs were original copies or not, but I wish I still had them. They were beautiful.

The other hardback I remember was Thor Heyerdahl's 1948 The Kon-Tiki Expedition, the story of the 1947 journey across the Pacific Ocean in a raft made from balsa wood, containing Heyerdahl himself and a small team. What greater adventure story for a teenage boy. There have been television documentaries and a film. I doubt very much if this book was the original as it was published in Norwegian.

Back to paperbacks now and the Get Smart series, written by William Johnston, based on the hugely successful 1960s American comedic secret agent spoof TV series featuring Maxwell Smart, aka agent 86, and his female accomplice agent 99, who's real name is never revealed. Before the age of mobile phones Max had a phone in his shoe, which he had to take off to answer, and access to intelligence agency CONTROL's underground headquarters was from a public telephone box. There were a few full-length films made, by far the best of which is the 2008 film starring Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway as agents 86 and 99. I remember reading these books and genuinely laughing out loud, a few decades before LOL was even a thing. So there. If only I had a penny for every LOL. Oh well.

I remember the sun reflecting off one lens of a pair of sunglasses on the 1970 Pan Books cover of  Colonel Sun. Originally published in 1968 by Kingsley Amis, writing as Robert Markham, the first of the so called continuation James Bond novels published after Ian Fleming's death in 1964. I'm certain some of Fleming's Bond books were in the suitcase as well. I've always preferred the written Bond to the screen bond, with its over-emphasis on the gadgets and the women. You get a real feel for the flawed Bond, and his relationship with M, none of which comes across on the big screen. A few years ago, during one of my low periods, I re-read all fourteen of Fleming's Bond books, in order of publication. An absolute treat. I also bought a copy of Colonel Sun from eBay. Not the sunglasses cover sadly, but a 1978 Triad Paperbacks version. It says on the back cover; "Colonel Sun is an exciting, violent, sadistic and sexy piece of reading matter." So there!

I also remember John Gardner's 1964 The Liquidator, featuring British secret agent Boysie Oakes, and perhaps a couple of others from that series. Also a film; etc. I can't really remember much about the books, though Gardner went on to pen sixteen 'continuation' James Bond novels in the 1980s and early part of the 1990s, two more than Fleming wrote.

There were several Westerns, many of which I read and none of which I can remember either an author or a title. Which says everything you need to know about them I guess. I did enjoy a good Western though, in the days before I learnt the truth about Cowboys and Indians, and the reality broke the spell.

I'm sure there are one or two I will have forgotten, and will wake up at three in the morning exclaiming "Aha! there was that one." But for now, dear reader, that's enough about dad's suitcase of books and some that I read. I don't know what happened to it, or the books in it.

Thanks for reading.