Rowan Tree and Red Thread

Through a large part of my teen years, Islands in the Sky was a comfort book that I read regularly every summer when my family or I went camping. I had an old, battered paperback copy from the sixties, I think. I don't know whether it was from my parents' bookshelf, or whether I picked it up at a used bookstore or something. I haven't read it in years, and I haven't really read anything else long by Clarke (other than 2001), although I have read some of his short stories.

I'm pretty sure that Islands in the Sky was my introduction to proper science fiction, which led me to Heinlein and James White. I saw "proper science fiction" because I read a number of "Boy's Life" type stories way before reading the Clarke (i.e. the "Mad Scientist Club" series, the "Alvin Fernald" series, the "Danny Dunn" series, the "Great Brain" series), and their emphasis on science and "popular mechanics" often had tinges of science fiction to them.