Books Read 2007

I did a meme the other day about books read this year – well here’s the whole list!
A wonderful new year to you all, see you in 2008…

The Harp in the South – Ruth ParkCymbeline – William ShakespearePericles – William ShakespeareThe Bookshop at 10 Curzon St.: Letters Between Nancy Mitford & Heywood Hill 1952-73 – ed. John Saumaricz SmithTroilus and Cressida – William ShakespeareThe BibleThe Philosophy of the Short Story – Brander MatthewsKeynotes – George EgertonThe Bean Trees – Barbara KingsolverWatching the English – Kate FoxThe Love Child – Edith OliverTroilus and Criseyde – Geoffrey ChaucerMiss Hargreaves – Frank BakerThe Rover – Aphra BehnSir Gawain and the Green Knight – Pearl-poetCleanness – Pearl-poetPatience – Pearl-poetThe Professor’s House – Willa CartherExtreme Motherhood: The Triplet Diaries – Jackie CluneThe Woman in the Moone – John LylyOne Pair of Hands – Monica DickensPistache – Sebastian FaulksPearl – Pearl-poetBefore I Go Hence – Frank BakerAn Invisible Friendship – Joyce Grenfell & Katharine MooreThe Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox – Maggie O’FarrellNo Signposts in the Sea – Vita Sackville-WestThe Pursuit of Love – Nancy MitfordA Winter Book – Tove JanssonOne Pair of Feet – Monica DickensA Well Full of Leaves – Elizabeth MyersHuman Voices – Penelope FitzgeraldKatherine Mansfield: A Secret Life – Claire TomalinHarry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix – J. K. RowlingSarrasine – Honoré de BalzacHarry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – J. K. RowlingThe London Scene – Virginia WoolfNotes on a Scandal – Zoe HellerThree Men in A Boat – Jerome K. JeromeHunting the Highbrow – Leonard WoolfHarry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – J. K. RowlingSylva – VercorsMrs. Miniver – Jan StrutherA Room With A View – E. M. ForsterWork For Four Hands – Margaret PellingDoreen – Barbara NobleThe Matisse Stories – A. S. ByattAfterwords: Letters on the Death of Virginia Woolf – ed. Sybil OldfieldSpeaking of Love – Angela YoungThe Jane Austen Book Club – Karen Joy FowlerReading Groups – Jenny HartleyThe Travels of Lady “Bulldog” Burton – Sandi ToksvigThe Loudest Sound and Nothing – Claire WigfallThe Third Miss Symons – F. M. MayerThe A46 – Sara ParsonsThe Brontës – Alfred SangsterThe Tenderness of Wolves – Stef PenneyDeceived With Kindness – Angelica GarnettThe Go-Between – L. P. HartleyThe Greengage Summer – Rumer GoddenThe Uncommon Reader – Alan BennettMy Turn To Make The Tea – Monica DickensOn Chesil Beach – Ian McEwanCrow Lake – Mary LawsonWho Was Changed and Who Was Dead – Barbara ComynsChristine Kringle – Lynn BrittneyPigs and Pearls – Margaret HoggeA Lifetime Burning – Linda GillardFair Play – Tove JanssonFair Play – Tove Jansson (again!)Parties – Tom LappinThe Stone Angel – Margaret LaurenceThe Closed Door and other stories – Dorothy WhippleA Family Life 1939-45 – Katharine MooreTom’s Midnight Garden – Philippa PearceNightingale – Peter DorwardThe Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret AtwoodA Proper Family Christmas – Jane Gordon-CummingScar Tissue – Ruth Mary HillsNo Star So Lovely – Alice HowlettThe Most Glorious Strip of Bunting – John McGillAll Passion Spent – Vita Sackville-WestA Month in the Country – J. L. CarrThe Wonderful Years – Reiner KunzeFindings – Kathleen JamieOne Good Turn – Kate AtkinsonShakespeare – Bill Bryson

oh, and…

One more thing, as an addendum to today’s other post…

Just thought you ought to know – I’m having a little difficulty using one letter on my keypad. Often I press it and it doesn’t seem to respond. Just wanted to let you know, in case words don’t many any sense, or I seem to have turned into a phenomenonally poor speller. Want to know which letter it is? Well, I haven’t used it yet in today’s post…

And I wonder why it has worn out so much? Perhaps it’s owing to my use of these words:

ook
lirary
odleian
ook
log
ook
y
ecause
proaly
ook
est
rilliant
ook
pulisher
paperack
hardack
ook
and so to ed…

Not forgetting ook. So now you know… please don’t lame me, it’s not my fault.

A Little End-of-Year Meme

I think I’ll probably end the year with a list of everything I read in 2007, but before that, here’s a little ‘meme’ to give you a few hints and teasers… I shan’t tag any other blogs, but if anyone else wants to have a go, it’s good fun – leave a link in the comments!

In the parlance of newspapers, all this was true at the time of going to press! Who knows how much I’ll have read by the end of the year… three good days left!

-How many books read in 2007?
87 (so far!)

-Fiction/Non-Fiction ratio?
63 Fiction/14 Non-Fiction, mostly letters or literary biography

-Male/Female authors?
27 male, 57 female, 3 where there were mixed or anonymous contributors

-Favourite book read?
Top ten listed here

-Least favourite?
Don’t think that’s very fair to say… nothing this year which I’ve really loathed. And I tend to only blog criticism about the ones which are either a)by authors now dead or b)dead rich! Either way, they won’t much care if I don’t like their work.

-Oldest book read?
That would be the Bible – though the oldest book I read in English (well, I read the Bible in English, but obviously it’s a translation) was Pearl. Or whichever of the Pearl/Cleanness/Patience/Sir Gawain and the Green Knight manuscript was first written. Or MS Cotton X Zero or something… whatever we’re supposed to call it.

-Newest?
That would be Claire Wigfall’s very excellent The Loudest Sound and Nothing which I read before it was published!

-Longest book title?
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, by J. K. Rowling, actually. If I include subtitles, then it’s The Bookshop at 10 Curzon St.: Letters Between Nancy Mitford & Heywood Hill 1952-73 – ed. John Saumaricz Smith.

-Shortest title?
Sylva by Vercors.

-How many re-reads?
I was surprised to discover that I re-read six books this year, given that I thought I rarely re-read anything. Miss Hargreaves, a couple of Harry Potters, Reading Groups by Jenny Hartley, Fair Play by Tove Jansson (re-read almost immediately) and Aphra Behn’s The Rover.

-Most books read by one author this year?
The ‘Pearl-poet’, or ‘Gawain’poet’ if you prefer, comes in top with four. Next up, step forward Monica Dickens, William Shakespeare and J. K. Rowling on three each.

-Any in translation?
Yep, 6. The Bible, A Winter Book and Fair Play by Tove Jansson, Sarrasine by Balzac, Sylva by Vercors, The Wonderful Years by Reiner Kunze.

-And how many of this year’s books were from the library?
Erm, (shamefacedly) none… That’s not quite true, actually – three came from University libraries. But I haven’t used a public library in some years… which will probably be the topic of another post sometime…

Hallelujah!

“For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and peace
there will be no end.
He will reign on David’s throne
and over his kingdom,
establishing and upholding it
with justice and righteousness
from that time on and for ever” [Isaiah 9:6-7]

Amen! A very wonderful Christmas to you all.

And They Call Me Mellow Yellow…

Thanks for all your sympathy and encouragement with The Challenge! I know, in the grand scheme of things, that a month without buying books isn’t a biggie… but it might well be the first for a few years, and strain my self-discipline. This isn’t about buying books to read immediately – otherwise Peter’s suggestion about using the local library would, of course, meet with my cheerful approval – but more a magpie instinct which could do with calming…

And another book sneaked/snuck into my hands before the ban starts. Well, actually, this book wasn’t an impulse buy. I saw it in one of Crewkerne’s bookshops a few months ago, and decided I couldn’t *really* afford it… but the fact that I’m still thinking about it all this while later suggested that it wouldn’t be an unrewarding purchase.

The Yellow Book: A Selection comes, unsurprisingly, from The Yellow Book – I wrote about this quite a bit in my Special Topic thesis on Victorian Short Stories. It was around in the 1890s and published fin-de-siecle stories, poetry and art in a beautiful yellow, good quality format. The 1949 anthology followed these pointers, and this book is a delight to both behold and hold. What’s more, the contents are great – although set up with the amusing purposes of a)avoiding advertising in periodicals and b)avoiding Oscar Wilde altogether, The Yellow Book witnessed some of that very early Modernism, alongside some very late Victorianism. Writers include Henry James, Arthur Symons, George Gissing, Kenneth Grahame, Yeats, Edmund Gosse, George Moore, Max Beerbohm, Richard Garnett. I know rather less about the art of the period (or, indeed, any period) but recognised Walter Sickert’s name and, of course, Aubrey Beardsley.

Lots of copies from abebooks.co.uk cheaper than I paid (The Bodley Head edition) and definitely a work of art as well as literature – a great coffee table book too, it must be admitted. Especially if your walls are yellow.

Mission Impossible

What have I done?

It all started out so innocently. I was having lunch a week or so ago with my library cronies, Lucy and Clare, and the topic of my book-buying came up. These gals aren’t foreigners to the world of book buying, believe me, but for some reason they thought I took the art to excess. And somehow, in the course of this conversation, I managed to agree to a bet that I wouldn’t be able to abstain from book-buying throughout January. Once again, in bold, I will not buy any books in January. Goodness.

A couple exceptions. I can buy gifts; I can receive gifts. I just can’t buy books for myself. For a whole month. Eek.

Yes, I do have something of a backlog to get through. But popping into a charity shop and buying a couple of 20p books – this is like oxygen to me. So will I manage a whole month? Will I forget and order something from Amazon? I’ll let you know, and perhaps post a photograph of the monies I receive from/give to Lucy…

These are a couple I bought today, making the most of my last days as a book buyer. Tara talked about Chatterton Square by E. H. Young a while ago, and couldn’t this Jonathan Cape publication. He also published Elizabeth Cambridge’s Hostages to Fortune originally, and since then I’ve been drawn to that entrancing typeface used on covers… never seen a dustjacket, though. Also had to buy the sequel to Three Men in a Boat, especially with that nice cover…

Oh, and I went carol singing with Paddy Ashdown for the second time this evening… that might mean nothing to non-UK/Irish readers.

All Passion Spent


I don’t know if any of you joined in on Cornflower’s first ever Book Group read, All Passion Spent, but here’s the link if you wanted to follow the animated conversation. Lots of strong opinions and lots of people contributing – can’t quite match the fun and furore of a real live book group, but comes a close second.

You may remember that I got All Passion Spent as my Secret Santa present – and I Woolfed it down. Yes, I know Woolf didn’t write the novel , but there wasn’t a great deal of punning potential in ‘Sackville-West’… unless some sort of badinage on ‘string-vest’…

I was a little surprised that not everyone loved the novel, but I must assure you that it is brilliant. I had 22 contenders for my top ten books (well, I read a great deal more than that, but there were 22 on my shortlist) and All Passion Spent came in about twelfth. It’s the tale of Lady Slane, a widow who decides to buck her troublesome family (which does include, however, the rather lovely dreamer Ethel) and live alone for the first time in her life. She quietly moves to a house she first saw thirty years previously, refuses to see her grandchildren and great-grandchildren (though, again, in a quiet and calm way) and reminisces about her childhood, courtship, and marriage. In many ways the old-woman-seeking-dependence plot is like The Stone Angel, which I wrote about here, but where Hagar was undeniably selfish and bitter, Lady Slane is dignified, sensible and kind throughout.

A background of great, slightly eccentric, characters such as Mr. Bucktrout and FitzGeorge complete this witty, calming, beautiful novel. Above all, the writing is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful – each sentence is constructed with care and humanity. Would make excellent Boxing Day reading.

Top Ten… of 2007

And here we are!
I’ve spent my day in the kitchen, making my vegetarian Christmas dinner to freeze (artichoke and wild mushroom pie) so I don’t get in Our Vicar’s Wife’s way come Christmas Eve. Also made some mince pies (and variants with syrup and with honey as the Carbon Copy doesn’t like mince pies) and something made entirely of cream, chocolate and Baileys. Mmm.
At the end of that, which was great fun, seems right to share 2007’s top reads. I know you’ve thought of little else for the past week…
Here goes…

10. Three Men In A Boat – Jerome K. Jerome
Wonderfully funny, and must read the sequel before too long. More here.

9. Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead – Barbara Comyns
Surreal but special – in the 50 Books… here.

8. Watching the English – Kate Fox
Fascinating pop-anthropology about my very own English people. Also in the 50 Books… back when I took much effort over my photgraphs… here.

7. The London Scene – Virginia Woolf
Our friend Ginny has appeared in ’04, ’05, ’06 and ’07. What an accolade for the lass.

6. Cymbeline – William Shakespeare
Not one of his most popular plays, but read the final scene as comedy and you’re away.

5. Speaking of Love – Angela Young
Neighbour to Billybob, Angela! Another 50 Books… entrant; look out for the paperback in 2008.

4. A Winter Book – Tove Jansson
Read it on a beautiful beach – maybe I should give this book a re-read in more wintery temperatures. More here

3. The Love Child – Edith Olivier
A bit like Miss Hargreaves in that it’s domestic life with a fantasy twist, the protagonist conjures to life an imaginary childhood companion, but power tussels ensue… more on The Love Child soon.

2. One Pair of Hands – Monica Dickens
Been ages that I’d intended to read some Monica Dickens, and what a treat I’d been missing. Makes the fourth 50 Books… this year. So what beat it?

1. The Bible
No, not the first year I read any of the Bible, of course, but I did finish reading it this year. Started with “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” and ended with “The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s people. Amen”. Not really going to be any competition, is there?

Top Ten… of 2006

Getting very close to this year’s list, but before I let you in on 2007’s top ten, here’s what made the grade last year. As always, it is ones I’ve enjoyed most, rather than those which are most meritworthy. Otherwise I might have some trouble justifying my choice of no.1 over my choice for no.5…


10. A House and Its Head – Ivy Compton-Burnett
ICB is a love-or-loathe author, and luckily I love her. Preferred Mother and Son, but this is quite wonderful too.

9. There Were No Windows – Norah Hoult
Another Persephone Book (not often they aren’t good enough for my top ten) and one which is both heart-rending and very funny – about an authoress with dementia.

8. The Two Doctors – Elizabeth Cambridge
She appeared on my 2004 list, and this is a worthy follower.

7. Discipline – Mary Brunton
Jane Austen mentions Mary B a couple of times in her letters, quite sardonically, and she is certainly worth reading. The 1980s introduction to my copy kind of misses the point…

6. The Vicar of Wakefield – Oliver Goldsmith
Very funny, and finger-on-the-pulse theologically too. Nice combination.

5. All’s Well That Ends Well – William Shakespeare
Saw this with Dame Judi Dench in it, which probably helped me choose this Billybob play. No two entries by the same author, doncha know.

4. We Have Always Lived in the Castle – Shirley Jackson
Lisa (Bluestalking Reader) sent this one in the dovegreybooks postal group – we don’t often disagree on books. Brilliantly Gothic and a classy page-turner.

3. Evelina – Frances Burney
See here…

2. A Writer’s Diary – Virginia Woolf
Leonard Woolf edited Woolf’s diaries into this book, which deals mainly with her literary output. Good place to start with Ginny.

1. The Letters of… – Elizabeth Myers
Only from Myers side, these letters are to all sorts of people (including Walter de la Mare) and reveal a gentle, humorous and ultimately slightly tragic figure. Myers died quite young, and, as the letters are divided into sections for each recipient, you feel this death coming on again and again and again… Still, this collection has a fragile beauty which cannot be forged.

Top Five… of 2005

2005 wasn’t a great year for reading. Not for me, that is. Somehow I only managed to compile a top five of the year, since nothing else I’d read qualified… shame. It was the first full year of university, and I suppose that meant I read mainly chapters of things and so forth. Did get through Ulysses, but that didn’t come close to making the top 5, believe you me… anyway, without further ado:

5. Lady Into Fox – David Garnett
Which I talked about here

4. Jacob’s Room – Virginia Woolf
Ginny strikes again.

3. The Mill on the Floss – George Eliot
Still the only Eliot I’ve finished, and surprised I only placed this at number three, since it’s one of my favourite novels. Very strange title, if you think about it.

2. The Long Afternoon – Giles Waterfield
Angela sent this out on the dovegreybooks postal book group, and I thank her for it. Look out for it in my 50 Books…

1. Blind Man’s Buff – Richmal Crompton
Must eulogise about Ms. Crompton at greater length, one of these days…