I started a thread at SPCNET Forums about Sue Townsend's Adrian Mole series. You may like to have a look there but I am also reproducing the contents here. This is my first of many posts (coming soon) about my favourite authors, apart from JK Rowling. Just want to share with you and maybe I may find someone who has the same interests as I...Before Bridget Jones, there was Adrian Mole, to me England's greatest diarist. In fact Bridget Jones isn't exactly original. I feel I can read some very similar elements of Adrian Mole series in Bridget Jones and this is one series that I haven't really seen anybody discussing about it. I like to start one to check out any fans of Adrian Mole series by Sue Townsend here?
I have read every one of her Adrian Mole books, a few times over each and each time as hilarious as the last. I basically stumbled into her books, as I have read the first book received critical success like decades ago so I bought it. I was bowled over by her wit and her style. Adrian's eternal love for chain smoker Pandora, his useless parents, his sons and his neurotic self...I can't get enough of the books. He's such a loser and a pathetic as well as chronic whining know it all who doesn't know anything at all and yet such an interesting loser. I can say my least favourite is the latest book which is very serious and too political and preachy about the Iraq war entitled Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction. The wit's still there but looks like Miss Townsend may be slowing down a bit recently.
I absolutely love the 1st book, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4 . The writer's style is very distinctive, very witty, and yet appropriately a boy of that age. As he grew older, her writing skills got more mature but still her Adrian Mole is as hapless as ever. I somtimes wish she gives his writing career the success I hope to see. Her writing of a novel within a diary called Lo! The Flat Hills Of My Homeland never failed to make me chuckle and his relationship with his eldest son is very touching.
Check out the book covers as well, very imaginative and whimsical. Reminds me of Roald Dahl's book illustrator/cover designer, I think his name is (or maybe was, don't know if still alive or not) Quentin Blake if I am not mistaken. I stand to be corrected.
Anyone ever read Sue Townsend's Adrian Mole series or even her other books, such as The Queen & I (very very funny), etc? After I read her books I realise Bridget Jones' Diary isn't that original. The first book's structure and some part of the story borrowed not just from Pride & Prejudice but also from Adrian Mole. Her 2nd book was like an exact replica of Persuasion.
I'm just curious why Adrian Mole never become a big screen adaptation? Or maybe there was one?
A brief intro..amazing she left school so early and yet has such talent for writing...
INTRODUCTION
Sue left school at fifteen and started writing immediately. For twenty years nobody knew that Leicester housewife, Mrs Townsend, was a writer. She joined a writers' group at Leicester's Phoenix Theatre and was soon installed as the Writer in Residence there.
Adrian Mole Complete Series
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4 (1985)
The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole (1984)
The True Confessions of Adrian Mole (1989)
Note : This is actually 3 diarists in one, Sue Townsend being one of them, then a collection of diary entries by Adrian Mole & the third one an unknown diarist, a young girl whose father was a grocery shop owner. You will have to finish the short entries to know who Sue Townsend was talking about. Simply brilliant work.The Wilderness Years (1993)
The Cappuccino Years (1999)
Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction (2004)
Her other works
Rebuilding Coventry (1988)
The Queen and I (1991)
Note : Very funny and impossible scenario but I am sure the Queen & Charles may find it funny.Ghost Children (1997)
Number Ten (2002)
Note : Also very funny but takes patience to read.The Public Confessions of a Middle-aged Woman: Aged 55 3/4 (2001)
Note : Collection of short articles written by Sue Townsend about her daily life in some newspaper. Quite funny observations.
[
SOURCE]
Feel free to post your thoughts about her works in here or in SPCNET Forums or both! But please limit our comments to Sue Townsend and her books or any other authors similar to her style. I am sure in days to come I'll probably post something about an author that you personally like. 
1 COMMENTS
Thanks to the brilliance of someone in the literature department, I get to read the musings of a wannabe writer, mostly teenage whinings. And not to forget the many entries on Pandora's heaving chest. haha
13 3/4 is the best. I tried reading the follow up book but never manage to finish it. Now I have the urge to dig up 13 3/4 from where ever I stored it and read it again.