Page 1 of Favourite Roald Dahl Books - Does anyone remember Henry Sugar?

It`s all gone a bit Dahl crazy over here. Documentaries all round and yesterday I caught the tail-end of a Blue Peter special.

It got me thinking - does anyone remember Henry Sugar and other stories? - I remember the Henry Sugar story, about a man who finds a school book that teaches him to see through card and paper. He uses it to outfox the casinos, but realises that material wealth doesn`t interest him, so he spends the rest of his life screwing the casinos out of money and giving it to charity. It was a blinding story.

I`m intrigued at the fact theat most, fi not all of us cherish the Roald Dahl books, did you have a favourite? can you recommend some light bedtime reading (for the kids)?



ps - Just loved Danny, The Champion Of The World

RD books were the ones that got me into reading..
I think my favourite was the witches, thats the one I read the most.. As I got older, I remember reading, "boy" which i think is his autobiography... not sure now, but that was a good one.
did he write a bad book?

I think his autobiography was "Flying Solo". It was indeed a cracking read.

No he didn`t ever write a bad book. Easily as good as (if not better than) Harry Potter.

cool - Boy is the first of his autobiographys.. the other, which i had not known about, is the second. I`ll have to dig that out..
The pictures were always as good as the books themselves.. well done Quentin Blake too!

I always liked Danny the champion of the world - the film version was on last weekend.



why take life so seriously..its not like you are going to make it out alive

Is Henry Sugar the book with a hideous but very memorable story about a bully who forces his victim to lie very still on a railway line so the train passes over him? Then the bully cuts the wings off a swan and attaches them to the victim who then flies away?

I read it when I was about ten and it frightened the life out of me!

That "Imagine..." documentary was both incredibly interesting and *painful* to watch, I felt so sorry for his daughter Tessa who appeared much the worse for drink and being second-best to a dead child.

My absolute favourite book was "Revolting Rhymes" or "Matilda". "Matilda" is my favourite of all the film adaptations, the new "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" was a huge disappointment.

Edit: Quentin Blake came to my junior school once and did a drawing of my brass band (tenor horn, two years) teacher. :)

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This item was edited on Tuesday, 26th July 2005, 12:16

I liked `The Twits`......they were completely evil!

Neil

Kathy Burke was born to play Mrs Twit - there *needs* to be a film version!

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Kathy Burke and Robbie Coltrane .

box office goes - kerching!

Yeah, RD got me into reading too.

Boy was great. Almost as good a story as his fiction books. The lancing the boil bit still makes me wince....

I think esio trot was one of the first books that was read to me. Still a great story.

My top 5 would probably be

1) BFG (I loved that book. Espcially the desciptions of the evil giants. The Blood Bottler!)
2) Georges Marvellous Medicine
3) Matilda
4) The Witches
5) James and the Giant Peach

Honourable mention to Revolting Rhymes and Fantastic Mr Fox. Also, honourable mention to Quentin Blake, who made the stories come alive. Most of my memories of the books are accompanied by his illustrations, so fair play to him.