How/when did you start reading Isobelle's books?

[Arctic Firefox]

Since we seem to have people here who have been reading the Obernewtyn Chronicles for a very long time - how/when did you start reading Isobelle's books?

I started in late 1995, with Obernewtyn. From what I remember, it was a birthday present from my mother. She went down to the local independent (none of this chain-store crap) bookstore and asked for a recommendation. The owner pointed to Obernewtyn.

I should pause here to say that the bookstore was a wonderful place, with wooden floors, and large, old bookcases. Sadly, it's now out of business and some stupid knick-knack store is in its place. Come to think of it, a lot of local bookstores seem to be disappearing lately.

Anyway, I wasn't too sure what to make of the book with its generic fantasy title (I was more of a sci-fi person in those days) but I forced myself through it despite having a bit of a tough time finding my bearings. Oddly enough, by the time I really started reading it (after an aborted attempt or two), I had already asked for The Farseekers and Ashling for Christmas, so I just had to read it, didn't I?

By the time I passed the halfway mark, I was a lot more interested and before the end I was completely hooked. Lucky for me that the other two books were lying nearby!

After that, I came across Scatterlings and The Gathering, and the rest, as they say, is history ...

I'm so grateful to the owner of that bookstore, because I can safely say that without her advice I wouldn't have encountered Isobelle Carmody's works at all!

[Emi267]

1995??? I was only three back then! Well, I started reading the series earlier this year. I am rather prone to a certain rather magnetic attraction to large, thick books. I was in my local library, looking at premiere reader's challenge books, and the bright orange spine of the very thick Ashlings (well, not that thick) leapt out at me. I borrowed the book, but it wasn't until I got home that I realised it was actually the third in the series! so I ordered Obernewtyn in at the library, and I've hardly read any other books since! (I finished reading the first four and promptly started again after only a couple of days).

[Squirt]

My friend left hers at my place for me to read in about 98 I think. I read it in 2000, she really wanted it back at this point, lol. Then I went out that day and bought the second. I was at our shack when I needed the third and there were no bookshops in a fifty km radius. I was so unimpressed

[Elspeth]

I kept seeing this incredibly ugly-looking book with a fascinating name on a display in my school library and eventually borrowed it, after searching desperately for some decent books to take home for school holiday reading. It was Obernewtyn, of course, and I quickly fell in love with it. I was glad I had borrowed it, despite being put off by both the cover and the blurb. It was either 1990 or 1991, because The Farseekers had recently been released and I existed on those two books until other Carmody books came out.

Then there was the afore-mentioned trauma of the Ashling release, of course.

So it's been at least fifteen years for me.

[Emi267]

Ugh, that cover IS ugly! There's about three copies of it at my school. But fifteen years? Fun.

[Marija]

Lol @ Bunne =) The same thing happened to me =P I was looking for books to read during the school holidays and was hooked on Brian Caswell at that stage so I was looking around the C section. And I saw Obernewtyn and thought the name was cool but was put off by the cover and the blurb =P A few library trips later though I ran out of books I wanted to read so I thought I would give it a try. And I enjoyed it enough to grab farseekers on the next trip and by then I was hooked =P

[Maryon]

My grandparents got all four of the Obernewtyn books for my birthday one year on a recommendation from the store assistant at Angus & Robertson. This would be about 4 years ago (I can't quite remember but I think I was nine or ten, as I was just getting into reading properly after finishing Lord of the Rings, Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice) and I just left them sitting there for a while. Eventually I read them an was hooked.

Strangely enough I didn't look around for any of IC's other books. I wasn't very adventurous when it came to finding books, and virtually needed the book to be shoved under my nose before I would even contemplate reading it. I was in this year 5/6 class at the time which I had to do a test to get into. Our teacher had this kind of mini-library with books she thought were worth reading. The O-Chrons were there as well as Darkfall and I think The Gathering. To this day I haven't read The Gathering, but in year 7 we had to do a book review so I decided to do Darkfall. I was immediately hooked and went out to buy Darksong and madly read it over the next few days.

Since then I have read Alyzon Whitestarr and regularly checked up on the release date for The Sending. I'm glad I didn't have to go through the wait for Ashling and The Keeping Place

[Swallow]

About 1994-ish, maybe early 1995, i was thumbing about the library, determinded to read the young adult section from A-Z, I would just go in, pick a random book from each letter. At C, my hands fell upon Obernewtyn. I was lucky because not long after there was a display up about Ashling and my heart sored at the concept of finding out what happened, of having an ending.

And all i was given was the kidnapping of my then favourite character. Then i had to wait four years for even more story and no ending. I refused to read another IC book until she had finished Obernewtyn, there was no way i was going to do that to myself again. Until i joined these boards and spent 30mins sitting across from Darksong and couldn't resist it anymore. So i've been suckered in to another series i'll have to wait years to get an ending.

*sigh*

[Cat-Eyes]

Wow, when Bun started reading it I was about 1 or 2

I didn't read it for about three years because someone gave me Billy Thunder and the night Gate and I absolutely loathed it. Then, in year 9 (2004), one of the girls in my class made me read it. Turned out it was MUCH better

Cat

[Marija]

You don't like Billy Thunder, Cat-Eyes? What about her other books??

Flit- hehehe =P I'm impressed with your will power! When I realised she hadn't finished the series, I went out and read every other IC book I could get my hands on (thus finding Green Monkey Dreams, which is the bestest ever!)

[Rushton]

It was 1991 because Farseekers was nominated for the Book of the Year comps.
I was 10 (turning 11) and an avid reader. The library at school had a display of all the books that were nominated and forms for you to fill in and vote with.

I had set myself a goal of reading them all, and the Farseekers was maybe the fourth or fifth book. (I read the second book first!)

Well I was hooked, and begged and cajoled until I recieved both books for Christmas that year. My farseekers copy still has the gold sticker seal that tells you it is a nominated book

[Megana]

Hmm, lets see, I would have been in year 10, which was ... 2001. My english teacher made us do a comprehensive study of The Gathering, and my entire class loved it!! Even the loser guys who never read anything read it, and kicked up a stink when the dog died! I was impressed. Then she let us read Scatterlings just for the fun of it ... well, she made as write an essay on it, but complete chapter summaries and evaluations of themes were gone, thank god!!

Anyway, as I always do, I was reading the ads that were in the back of I think The Gathering, and they had the OberChron up to TKP in it. I thought it sounded pretty cool, just my sort of thing, but didn't really think too much more about it ... Until I was in K-Mart one day before work started, and saw that they had all 4 books in the book section. So, I grabbed them just on a whim really, lay-byed them for about a month while I paid off the 60 odd dollars that I owed, and eventually read them.

I was pretty captivated by Obernewtyn, but it wasn't really until I read The Farseekers that I was well and truly hooked!! I now own not only all of the OberChron up to date, but The Gathering (which I still adore dispite my teacher's valiant attempt to put me off it forever by making me analise every little bit of it), Darkfall and Darksong, which I bought after listening to everyone here going on about it for so long!! I just had to see what the fuss was about, and I wasn't disapointed!!

[Schis]

I'm not sure of the exact details, but I'll give an outline...

It would have somewhere between 2002-2004, im thinking it was 2003, making me in year 9 at school. I was in the school library with my friends going through books we had read and we got up to teh C section where i saw books that i had been mildly intrigued by before- Obernewtyn, coz as said above it was such an ugly cover and the keeping place as it was farily thick....

Neway, my friend said that I had to read them, and so i borrowed them for some holiday reading (only the first three, they had some weird rule that you could only borrow on book by an author at a time, but the librarian knew me and siad i could have three cos it was over the holidays and she knew she'd get them back). Obernewtyn was pretty good, and at that stage I was starting to get hooked to series and so had to read the next one to see if it got better...and it did. Farseekers I think i ended up reading in a couple of days and Ashling took a similar amount of time. Then, first day back after the holidays i borrowed Keeping Place and compulsively read that.

Then, i went ot the town library and got Darkfall from there and convinced them to buy Darksong (by the time they got it, i had already got it for myself) and since then have also read Billy Thunder and the Nightgate and Alyzon Whitestarr...

[Min]

I remember it well

In English at school we had these annoying vivas (like a bunch of book reviews)...this would have been 1995? Anyway, that year we had to complete our viva on ALL Australian authors.
At this stage I didn't have that much interest in reading (I was more into piano), and I needed one more book to get to the minimum quota of books we were meant to read...it had to be an 'own choice' book.
I basically started at "A" in the school library, and looked for the little kangaroo sticker on the spine indicating that the book was by an Aussie.

I found "Farseekers" on about the third shelf in, and because I was in a rush, I just grabbed it, thought "this'll do, it's not that big" and borrowed it.
I started it that afternoon, and couldn't put it down.
Only after I read it did I realise that it was BOOK 2 of a series DUH.
So I went back the next day and got out Obernewtyn. Then Ashling (so, Ashling must have been out at this time...).
Then the waiting began

I had no trouble filling my vivas in years to come, though

[Rilla]

'Twas early 2002 and I had no books to read so I went and complained to my mum. She rummaged around in a cupboard and came up with Obernewtyn. I didn't really want to read because it was the first edition, and like others, I was put off by the cover and blurb
But then I did, and I loved it! And I bought the other books and later in the year I joined Ober.net

[avra]

Hmmm.... for me I think it was 1995..., maybe? My brother had done a "negotiated study" on books set in a post-nuclear holocaust world. Obernewtyn was one of the books he used. My mum read it too, and I think she suggested it to me one day when I was complaining that I had run out of books to read. I guess both she and my brother had liked it, because they'd bought both The Farseekers and Ashling too. I remember, when I'd just finished Obernewtyn, I asked my mum whether Elspeth and Rushton ended up together. I think she must have gotten confused between Rushton and Swallow because she told me the wrong thing! It must have been quite late 1995, because I remember it wasn't until I was in year 8 that I found out that a good friend of mine also liked the OC too. We use to sit around discussing how hot Rushton was...

[esspess]

Um..well my friend had all 4 books and she loved them so told me and my brother and sister to read them, my bro read them first but i was turned off them when she said that there was another one still not released yet and when she explained about the fact it was meant to be out already but that it wasnt even finished i thought "how ridiculous im not going to bother just now if im just going to have to wait indefinately!". so a couple of years past and it was now the summer of 2005, and me my mother and brother were staying once again at this same friends house, as we do almost every holidays, but this time we were there for a month minding their place while they were in italy, i had lots of beaching and fun to be had during the first days but at night i had no idea what to do so i scanned her lovely bookshelf for something to read (she always has good books she is convincing me to read) and thats when i stumbled along the Ochrons, the first three were in a three in one version and the forth was seperate, so i picked up the first three and set to work, it didnt take long i was enthralled by the first chapter and needed no persuasion to read the next ones... so during the next few weeks i was busy at reading whenever i wasnt at the lovely northern NSW beaches..
but then there was tragedy..i was only half way through the forth book when we had to leave for sydney, i was torn.. i contemplated kidnapping the book and sending it back via mail when i was done...but in the end was persuaded against my will and had to wait till i got back home before i could borrow the book from the library...oh the painful 12 hour drive home! its still too fresh in my mind.
anyway alls well that ends well i finished the book and found this site but was annoyed when i saw the guilds weren't the ones from the book so didnt join till i was desperate, about a week ago which is about 7 months later....but its great now im here

[Unykorn]

Well, it was 2002 ... and I was year six (11 years). My sister had forbidden me from reading them, though she was obsessed, because, "You're too young, you won't even understand it, and then you won't like it", but I decided that the time was right and got it from the junior school library. I'd read Billy Thunder the year before, and i think I'd done a presentation on it at school (I can't believe you don't like it, Cat!). So I decided to read it in the car, and it so happened that my sister was in there with me, and she insisted that I read it out loud to her. Then, after deciding that I'd be better off if she read it herself (I'd pronounced Jes as Jess, and apparently that was a big no-no), I gave it to her to read out loud. And so it began. I have to admit, I didn't like the start, probably because of my sister, but once I was home and able to read it myself it got a lot better.

I then went back to the junior school library to get the second, and alas! They didn't have it. So i had to get it from the senior school library, and this is how all the library staff knew who i was before I even came to the senior school. It's funny, whenever I borrowed a fantasy/sci-fi book from there, the librarian would always say, "so you're still into those kinds of books are you?" Then I read all the rest, and had a competition with my friend to see who could read it the quickest (this was really unfair, as she could read SO fast) and then argued endlessly with her abotu whether Dragon really did wake up or not. I said she she had (obviously, it said so), but she said she hadn't, and it turned out she's missed a page because it was stuck together. I gloated about it for weeks ;D And then I read Legendsong, because the second had just come out. I started much earlier than my friend, and by the end we were within a chapter of one another. We promised that we'd save the last page and read it together, but she didn't

But it's weird, I think I may have read the start of Ashling much earlier, when i was about nine. My sister and I (she's seems to be in all my stories!) went to violin lessons together, and I get half an hour and then she would, and we'd read when it was the other's turn. I'd forgotten my book, so I decided to pick up this giant thing of hers and read it. I got the impression that there was a girl who was in some sort of camp with a lot of talking animals

[avra]

How are you supposed to pronounce Jes then? :/

[Swallow]

I suppose some people would assume it was Jez, but to be perfectly honest, i just thought Jes was the masculine version of Jess in IC's mind. Let's be honest, she has some flair with naming characters, that poor bloke with the heart disease and all....

[Elspeth]

I've always pronounced it "Jez" in my head.

[nychthemeron]

HOLY COW some of you guys are so OLD lol sorry, but this thread surprised me muchly!!

Here I was thinking everyone was AROUND my age or not too much older or younger... how naive I am. I seem to be about the middle range though, at 17.

Well well, like Cat I was given Billy Thunder for my eighth birthday, I think someone went, "Oh, she likes to read, let's give her a big book." I read it a couple of times and went, oh... that's interesting, and then forgot about it.
BUT THEN - I discovered Darkfall, through my stepmum who has almost exactly the same taste in books as me, and fell madly in love with it, and went out and bought Darksong right away, and then had a heated discussion with an Angus&Robertson salesperson over Darkbane - [glow=red,2,300]"WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT'S NOT PUBLISHED YET!?!?!?"[/glow] - so I went home to console myself with Obernewtyn Chronicles, which luckily Mum had as well. Unfortunately she didn't have the first book, so I went too school and cried my woes to my friends. One overheard the conversation and bought it for my birthday. The rest, as they say, is history. We had to study The Gathering in '04 for y9 english, and everyone hated it except me. Mind you, everyone hates most of the texts we do, just cos our school overdoes everything .

Now we have... Obernewtyn, The Farseekers, Ashling, The Keeping Place, The Gathering, Billy Thunder and the Night Gate, The Winter Door, Darkfall, Darksong, The Legend of Little Fur, A Fox Called Sorrow, Alyzon Whitestarr, and I'm pretty sure there's a copy of Green Monkey Dreams hanging around somewhere. I've never read Scatterlings, is it good???

[Pippin]

ooh, I do feel at little on the older side now..

Well my story begins with a visit from Isabelle to give a talk, and a creative writing lesson to our class back in around 1992.
Jealous now aren't you?!
I would have been around 12 and one of the main things I remember is one of the funky rings she wears on the end of one of her fingers - I think it later appeared in her photo in TKP.
Afterwards, I borrowed Obernewtyn form the library and got hooked. However, like many others I had to wait anxiously for Ashling and TKP - When TKP came out I didn't leave the house for 2 days reading it!
I don't know how may times I’ve re-read the series and I'm re-reading it all again at the moment since discovering this site. My copies are quite battered now…
I’ve also read all her other books except the little fur series. I feel at 26 I should be too old for little fur, but I'll probably end up reading it anyway.
So I guess I’ve had about a 14 year wait for the series’ completion now… sad isn’t it?!
I’m sure my poor local bookshop owner has had a break-down from me asking everytime I pass about the release date of Ashling, TKP and now the Sending– at least I’ve now found this site to check progress instead of bugging him!

[Min]

Pip, you're never too old to enjoy it! Carmody's work seems to be ageless (in that, any age group can enjoy it, as is evident by the range of people / ages on this site).
I'm completely jealous that you had Isobelle visit your school when you were 12!! That would have been so awesome.

*cough* and I'm not old !

Also; I say it "Jess", too.

[Elspeth]

pip said:

ooh, I do feel at little on the older side now..

Not at all, good Pip. A great deal of the members on this site are in their twenties and there are quite a few around your age (myself included). After all, Obernewtyn has been in print for almost twenty years now, so it's natural to assume that there are fans of all ages avidly waiting for the final book in the chronicles.