Author: StuckinaBook

Sometimes I watch movies

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Yes, I read quite a lot. I spend even more time than that watching television. But I also watch films occasionally, and I thought it would be fun to go through some of the ones I’ve watched in the past month or two, with brief reviews.

The Favourite

It’s been getting good press everywhere, and it’s certainly distinctive. This very odd take on Queen Anne (with the stellar and triple Oscar nominated cast of Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, and Rachel Weisz) dispenses with everything you expect from a historical drama. The humour is dark, though nowhere near as dark as the director’s previous, horrendous film The Lobster. Very strange, and worth seeing.

Mary, Queen of Scots

In contrast, this felt much more like a paint-by-numbers historical drama. Saoirse Ronan is predictably brilliant, but the script isn’t amazing and the score is very heavy-handed. Worth seeing for Ronan’s performance (and the great costumes and hair), but the film isn’t particularly special overall.

Love Per Square Foot

I love Bollywood, and this Netflix film is a delight. Two people need to pretend to be a couple to secure an apartment… guess what happens next?! The two leads are very lovable, and the whole thing is great fun. I’ve seen a few people complain at the length (2 hours 15 minutes) but it seemed very short for a Bollywood film!

Three Identical Strangers

This documentary looks at triplets who only discovered each other as adults, having been adopted by three different families. That’s strange enough, but the more the film goes on, the stranger it gets – as you find out how and why they were separated. I have never felt angrier in a cinema. The quality comes from the story rather than the documentary making, which is only really pedestrian, but the story is certainly interesting enough to survive that.

FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened

Much less worthy, this looks at the disaster (and criminal fraud) behind the FYRE Festival. I’d never heard of the festival, but it’s an eye-opening look at how the Instagram age can get carried away when nobody really knows how to organise a festival (and don’t mind stealing people’s money on false premises). This was the nicest aftermath of it.

Mary Poppins Returns

Watched this on Boxing Day, and it was absolutely wonderful. A very worthy follow up to the original film, and with much better songs than we could have hoped for. Emily Blunt puts on a posh English voice despite having a posh English voice already, and there is a brilliant cameo from the original Jane.

Source Code

I’m not usually one for thrillers, but Jack Gyllenhaal trying to find out who bombed a train – via some strange science thing that isn’t time travel, but feels like it – is done with the right level of humanity and pace. I like a high concept film that doesn’t linger over explaining that concept.

Tallulah

Another Netflix one, this indie comedy pairs Ellen Page and Allison Janney as they look after a kidnapped baby. Janney can do no wrong, and it’s great to see two such excellent and committed actresses get to some interesting, funny, moving material.

First Man

This is the only film I’ve ever walked out of at the cinema. Stunningly boring.

 

Tea or Books? #68: Tact vs Attack, and North and South vs Pride and Prejudice

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The books we hate (and should we tell you?) and Elizabeth Gaskell vs Jane Austen.
 

 

In the first half of this episode, we talk about the books we’ve hated – prepare for things to get contentious! – and then, perhaps belatedly, debate whether or not we should keep those opinions to ourselves. In the second half (thanks to a recommendation by Rebekah), we compare two nineteenth-century classics: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell.

You can support the podcast at Patreon (with a bunch of reward levels, including getting a book sent to you each month), visit our iTunes page, rate and review wherever you get podcasts, or just listen to the episode. Let us know which books you hate, and any suggestions you have for the podcast.

Apologies for some Skype issues we had while recording this, but hopefully you can work out what’s going on! We had to stop and start a few times in places.

The books and authors we mention in this episode are:

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner
The Boat by L.P. Hartley
Alice by Elizabeth Eliot
Rachel Ferguson
Barbara Comyns
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain
The Long Weekend by Adrian Tinniswood
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
Baltasar and Blimunda by Jose Saramago
Henry James
NW by Zadie Smith
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
On Beauty by Zadie Smith
Howards End by E.M. Forster
The Masters by C.P. Snow
Pamela Hansford Johnson
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
Agatha Raisin series by M.C. Beaton
Agatha Christie
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt
Possession by A.S. Byatt
Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
Margaret Drabble
Lee Child
The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch
The Sandcastle by Iris Murdoch
Ivanhoe by Walter Scott
The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West
Dear Mrs Bird by AJ Pearce
Gone to Earth by Mary Webb
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell
George Eliot
Charles Dickens
The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens
Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell
Blue Remembered Hills by Rosemary Sutcliff
Seasoned Timber by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

The Hand of Mary Constable by Paul Gallico

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As mentioned previously, when I’ve written about Paul Gallico, he is an extremely versatile novelist. And, indeed, a prolific one. This is great – but does mean you never quite know what you’re going to get if, like me, you try not to read blurbs before you start a book. So, when I picked up The Hand of Mary Constable (1964), I didn’t have much to go on. The cover is just wording, and so my preconceptions of the book were based largely on connotations of the title – and I had assumed it was a ghost story. (I also didn’t realise that it was a sequel to Too Many Ghosts, which I own and have not read, but it turns out that the stories are pretty separate.) And I guess it sort of is, but mostly isn’t.

Here’s the opening paragraph:

The sheet of paper clutched in the hand of a backward twisting arm was being jiggled in front of the face of Alexander Hero, investigator for the Society of Psychical Research of Great Britain, and roused him from the doze into which he had fallen. The air in the B.O.A.C. jet airliner had that stale smell of narrow confines, too long occupied by human beings engaged in eating, drinking and sleeping.

I wonder quite why Gallico thought that a good name for his hero was Hero – it feels a bit like a stopgap name – but here he is. He is handsome, intelligent, and (importantly) simultaneously open to ideas of psychical research and keen to crack down on frauds. I liked that touch. Having a hardened cynic would have been less interesting than somebody who is chiefly motivated by the wish to rule out false options, to discover if psychical contact is possible.

Hero has been called over to America, from England, to investigate something – though he doesn’t know what. When he arrives, and talks to various people in the FBI, he learns that Professor Constable has been inducted into a circle of spiritualists who claim that they have contact with his deceased ten-year-old daughter. Mary Constable – for ’tis she, of the title – has apparently been speaking through the Bessmers, and has left (as proof) a wax cast of her hand. This cast even has her fingerprints on it. Is it genuine contact, or is it connected with a slightly confusing plot line about how Constable has influence over a nuclear deal with the Russians?

The Hand of Mary Constable could probably be considered a literary thriller, and there are certainly bits that pretty thrillery. There are even bits that have a James Bond seduction element to them. Those aren’t genres that I usually rush towards, but the mix of that with Gallico’s intriguingly quirky look at spiritualism made me really enjoy reading this book. He brings the sense of the darkly fantastic that made me love his novel Love of Seven Dolls, and is certainly good at creating scenarios that combine the strange and the pacy.

I shan’t spoil the ending, but it did get a little too drawn out with all explanations – the novel would have been unsatisfying without proper explanations, but I wish he’d found a subtler or more concise way to include it all – but I still think #ProjectNames is off to a good start, and I continue to find Gallico an intriguing and unusual writer.

The Books I Bought in Hay on Wye

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I am trying not to buy books this year, but by the time I’d made that resolution I’d already organised to stay near Hay on Wye for a week. Five friends and I stayed in the beautiful Landmark Trust property Shelwick Court, which is about 40 minutes from the town of secondhand bookshops. Every time I go, there are sadly slightly fewer bookshops – two had closed down since I was there last year – but there are still lots of wonderful places to visit and books to buy. And here’s what I got!

Down the Kitchen Sink by Beverley Nichols
The Moonflower by Beverley Nichols

Every trip seems to mean more Beverley! I hadn’t heard of the second of these, but apparently it’s one of his detective novels. I’m excited to see what he’s like in that mode – my assumption is: fab.

The Passionate Elopement by Compton Mackenzie
The Darkening Green by Compton Mackenzie
Reaped and Bound by Compton Mackenzie

I went to Hay with the intention of stocking up on some more Compton. And I did! I even left quite a few behind – I’m starting to think that I might have been lucky before at picking novels from his funny-novel-period, and he might have been a bit more melodramatic before that. But let’s find out! And the third of these is a collection of essays, even though I have no space on my essays shelves…

The Glory and the Dream by Viola Larkins

I’ve realised that, on book buying trips, I often only buy books by authors I know about – either because I’ve read them before, or by reputation. So I decided to mix it up with at least one book, and was drawn to this one. It seems that I picked somebody truly unknown – this book isn’t mentioned anywhere online, that I can discover, and I have had no luck tracking down info about the author. Here’s hoping it’s a lost gem!

A Cure of Souls by May Sinclair

Always happy to find another Sinclair novel to add to my Sinclair shelves! She was so prolific, and so interesting.

It Gives Me Great Pleasure by Emily Kimbrough

I hadn’t realised that Kimbrough had written so many books, and was pleased to find one of them. I don’t love her solo work as much as I love Cornelia Otis Skinner’s, but it’s still good fun.

Woman of Letters by Phyllis Rose

Some might argue that I don’t need another biography of Virginia Woolf, but to those people I say – did you know that Phyllis Rose wrote one?? I love Rose’s writing, and was really pleased to find this.

Parallel Lives by Phyllis Rose

I LIKE PHYLLIS ROSE.

Old Soldiers by Paul Bailey

I’ve only read one Bailey novel, and I see quite a lot of his around in secondhand bookshops. Having looked at quite a few in Hay, this is the one I came home with.

The Ponder Heart by Eudora Welty

This was the first Welty novel I read, many years ago, but it was a borrowed copy. It seemed about time that I had my own, right?

The Great Victorian Collection by Brian Moore

I still haven’t actually read The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, but I’m banking so much on liking it that I bought another. This is about a man who dreams a Victorian market and then can’t tell dream from reality – which seems super up my street.

The Best We Can Do by Sybille Bedford

I didn’t expect to find Bedford in a green crime Penguin – this is an account of the trial of John Bodkin Adams, a serial killer. Not the sort of book I’d pick up if Bedford hadn’t written it, but hopefully I’ll be brave enough to read it at some point.

Julian Probert by Susan Ertz

I have two Ertz novels I haven’t read, so fingers crossed I like them and want to read this third! And, I’ll be honest, part of me bought it because I thought the cover was rather lovely in its simple design. (And wasn’t it nice when covers weren’t plastered with generic quotes from people you don’t care about?)

Stuck in a Book’s Weekend Miscellany

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I’m off on an unseasonal holiday – yes, I know I’ve just been away for Christmas, but holidays are a lot cheaper in January than at other times of year – so I’ll be back in a week. I’ll leave with a song for a Sunday coming up tomorrow, and the weekend miscellany today. Have a great week!

1.) The book – I saw Eric/Lonesome Reader tweeting about All the Lives We Ever Lived by Katharine Smyth, and it seems almost absurdly up my street. The subtitle is ‘finding solace in Virginia Woolf’, and its a memoir of turning to Woolf’s writing during a difficult grief.

2.) The link – is a little unusual for a book blog. I don’t think I’ve mentioned Bulb before, have I? If you’re in the UK, I recommend them as a potential energy supplier – they’re much cheaper than my previous one AND they use renewable energy. Start the new year with an ethical power decision! And if you use my referral link, we both get £50 off our bills – but they’re great with or without my referral link, promise.

3.) The blog post – a little belatedly – enjoy what is sure to be the most delightfully middlebrow ‘best of 2018’ list you’ll read (and will doubtless have us all off hunting through secondhand bookshops).

10 Books I Want To Read For Project Names

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‘Project Names’ is – ironically? – a terrible name for this reading project, but I can’t think what else to call it. I’ll try to avoid calling it anything. Though have now set it up as a tag. I am nothing if not contrary.

I don’t particularly like planning ahead for my reading projects, because it can suck the joy and spontaneity out of reading for me – but I was going through my shelves to find out how many books-with-names-in-the-titles were there, and I couldn’t resist making a list of some books that jumped out at me. As mentioned the other day, I have 145 candidates on my fiction shelves – so lots of options – but these ten were ones I wrote down. Which will doubtless mean I don’t read a word of any of them in 2019, but here they are nonetheless! Any you’ve read? Any I should rush to?

Mariana by Monica Dickens

This was one of the first batch of Persephones published, and has been on my shelves for at least a decade. I’ve read and enjoyed four or five novels by Monica Dickens. At this point it’s kind of ridiculous that I haven’t read this one. (Ditto her Joy and Josephine, for a bonus title.)

Susan and Joanna by Elizabeth Cambridge

I was overjoyed when I found this rare title (in a very tatty edition) for 50p at a jumble sale. In a village called Lower Slaughter, no less. That was 2010 and I still haven’t read it, so get on with it, Simon!

Mr Pye by Mervyn Peake

A birthday present from my friend Clare that looks super interesting and fun – and which has been compared to Miss Hargreaves! (She may get a re-read this year…)

Mr Fox by Helen Oyeyemi

I really like Oyeyemi (most of the time), and I love that she named this after a Barbara Comyns novel – which I have enjoyed. I should probably read this one before her new novels comes out.

Adele and Co by Dornford Yates

Hayley is a big fan of Yates, and possibly gave me this book? I don’t know much about him except that his books are often massed in their dozens in secondhand bookshops.

What Hetty Did by J.L. Carr

I’ve read three Carr novels, and they’ve all been so wildly different from one another that I am very intrigued to know what sort of book this might be.

Miss Linsey and Pa by Stella Gibbons

Another lucky find at a jumble sale, I am slightly discouraged by it being one of the few Gibbons novels that Vintage chose not to reprint… maybe it was TOO good??

A Cup of Tea for Mr Thorgill by Storm Jameson

Not gonna lie, I bought this because I thought the cover was interesting and lovely (and, sorry, slightly blurry). But Jameson is one of those authors I’ve been meaning to try for a very long time. This book doesn’t seem to have the best reception (in the few reviews I can find), but The Hidden River doesn’t have a name in it, so…

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore

Quite a few people have been reading this one across the blogosphere lately, often in beautiful NYRB Classics editions that I don’t own. I’m 99% I’ll love it, so let’s find out!

Mr Scobie’s Riddle by Elizabeth Jolley

I bought quite a few Jolley novels a few years ago, on the recommendation of Kim, so this should be the year I finally read her.

The Unpopular Opinion Book Tag

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I was in a mood to answer some questions about my reading, and I decided to have a google and see if I could find some such questions. That turned out a bit harder than anticipated, largely because the word ‘meme’ has changed a bit since I first started blogging. Anyway, I stumbled across a set of questions that are probably aimed at romance readers, but here we are and there’s no turning back? I guess?

1. A popular book you didn’t like

I don’t know if it’s exactly popular, but it did win the Pulitzer Prize – the first one that came to mind was Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See. It’s not often I finish a book and think “what was the point?” – but I did with Doerr’s doorstopper. Or Doerrstopper, if you will.

2. A book series that everyone hates but you love

Why would they commission a series if everyone hates it? This is a weird question. Also, I have read very few book series – and the ones I have read are pretty widely liked (Harry Potter, Narnia). If I ignore the ‘series’ bit, I will say Ivy Compton-Burnett – on the basis that three-quarters of people who read her will loathe her, and the rest of us are devoted for life.

3. A love triangle where the main character ends up with the person you didn’t want them to end up with

This was where I started to wonder if this was for romance readers. Anyway, Jane Eyre. Rochester is trash, and St. John is – well, not exactly romantic, but at least he has morals. (She should really have ditched them both and run away to sea or something.)

4. A popular genre you rarely reach for

I have all sorts of prejudices when it comes to genres, which aren’t really prejudices because they are based on long-suffering experience. Particularly with historical fiction. There are exceptions, but generally I’m not a fan – I’d much rather read what the people from that time wrote.

5. A popular character you didn’t like

Besides my disliking for Mr Rochester, Lord Peter Wimsey is one of the most annoying characters I’ve ever come across, and I can’t see how anybody can find him non-annoying.

6. A popular author you can’t seem to get into

I shan’t turn this into a Dorothy L Sayers bashathon, so I’ll turn to my usual whipping boy of Iris Murdoch.

7. A popular trope you’re tired of seeing

It’s more a structural thing than a trope, but I find it really hard to get on with books that start with one scene in the present, then go immediately back into the past and lead chronologically up to that scene. It happens a lot, and I find it gives the whole novel a sense of anticlimax.

8. A popular series you have no interest in reading

Again with the series! More or less any of them – His Dark Materials, Lord of the Rings, Fifty Shades of Grey. Take your pick.

9. Which movie do you prefer to the book?

I love The Devil Wears Prada (movie), but the book was terrible.

There were only nine questions in this quiz, which was quite unsatisfying, so I have added a tenth myself:

10. Which character do you love whom we were probably meant to hate?

My sympathies were entirely with the kind-but-dull husband in Frenchman’s Creek. Kindness is a more important quality than swashbuckling, Daphne du Maurier, and that is a lesson we should all take with us.

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Please do join in and do the meme/tag/quiz if you’d like to! Pop a link in the comments if you do.

My 2019 Reading Project

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Having said that I wasn’t sure what I’d do for a reading project in 2019, I have a brainwave the other day. I am still thinking of informally joining in with Karen’s very popular Back to the Classics challenge (many thanks to those who recommended it!) but I also have a more idiosyncratic project of my own: books with people’s names in the title.

I think this features in a few other challenges as a category, but I’ve decided I’ll read as many as I can this year. At the moment I’m not setting a concrete target – I initially thought I’d aim for fifty, but then I decided to use it as a guiding principle for selecting my reading, rather than a fixed goal.

I’ve been through my unread books and, at a rough count, I have 145 candidates on my shelves. And that’s just fiction – there are obviously quite a few more if I like at my biography shelves.

Why do I like this project? Well, it answered several things I was looking for post-A Century of Books:

  • I need some structure! Coming off ACOB straight into unbridled reading felt too loose.
  • I can read from my shelves.
  • There’s lots of choice, and a lot of variety – no pre-determination about what the books are likely to be like.
  • It’ll make me pick things off my shelves that might otherwise have been neglected.

So, watch this space! You might not notice it’s happening – just that a preponderance of people’s names turn up. Or I might set up a separate page, we’ll see.

And if you want to join in, please do! And feel free to add suggestions and recommendations, though I’ll be trying to do it from my shelves as much as possible.