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Patch Picks a Prizewinner!

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It’s been over a month since I started my 7th birthday prize draw, but fear not, I have not forgotten it!

I also got a lovely email recently from a blog reader called Vicki, and she mentioned that she liked seeing Patch helping with prize draws in the past.  I realised I hadn’t called on his services for some time, and he was more than willing to oblige… (as you see, there are two colours of paper – but we closed our eyes when picking a winner.)

The prize wasn’t revealed before – other than the warning that it’ll be a bit tatty – but I can now reveal that it will be two books by authors I love dearly: The Skin Chairs by Barbara Comyns and The Ridleys by Richmal Crompton.

Congratulations to…

Well done Helen! I think I probably have your address somewhere, but I’ll email to confirm…

Stuck-in-a-Book’s Weekend Miscellany

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This post is written while the Eurovision Song Contest is on, so apologies if I accidentally launch into incoherent rambling about world peace. Otherwise, here are some things to amuse you for the rest of your weekend…

1.) Our Vicar’s Wife and the bookshop she runs from our garage on Saturdays now have a blog – Honey Pot Books!  For those of you who like pictures of Sherpa (and which of us doesn’t?) there are plenty of those – especially since she just had her fourth birthday.

2.) Have you been to my brother’s blog recently? He wrote a short story after reading my The Museum, and you can see it if you go to the archive for May 2014 (I don’t think I can link directly to it.)

3.) Have you read about the Book Benches? Now’s your chance.

I’m sure there were lots of other things I was going to include in this.  Sorry, publishers and publicists who have sent me things to mention, apparently my email filing has failed!

More Muriel

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My stream of reading Muriel Spark doesn’t look likely to come to an end any time soon – so was just so wonderfully prolific – and the latest one I’ve read is Territorial Rights (1979), given to me by Virago in their nice new edition, and reviewed over on Shiny New Books.  The copy I read, I will confess to you, was the copy given to me by Hayley after Muriel Spark Reading Week (and I gave the Virago copy to a deserving friend).

It’s not in the top two or three Spark novels – or maybe even top ten – but it’s still brilliant, with lots of recognisably Sparkian elements. Head on over to my Shiny New Books review to find out more…

A weekend away in Paradise…

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I took my cold off to a beautiful cottage, aptly called Paradise, in Herefordshire – and lost my voice in the process – and I just have to share (a) how lovely the house was, and (b) the books I bought on a trip to Hay-on-Wye.  You can see the proper pictures of the house on its webpage (I want to go into full PR mode for them; it’s so incredibly beautiful) but here are some I took.  The first two are my bedroom.  I didn’t manage to get very good (or friend-free) photos of the living room, dining room, or kitchen – but I had included one of the porch, which is in itself more beautiful than anywhere I will ever live.

 

 

 

 

 

And then we spent a day in Hay on Wye.  Most of the group of friends weren’t all that bothered about buying books, so I strode off saying (or, voice gone, croaking) “I hunt alone” – and saw them later.  I came away with 11 books in the end, and here they are…

Too Many Ghosts by Paul Gallico
I keep hoping to find another Gallico novel as brilliant as Love of Seven Dolls – but even if this one ends up not being, at least it has such a lovely cover.

Open the Door by Osbert Sitwell
Still haven’t read anything by any of the Sitwells.  Maybe Osbert’s short stories?

Elizabeth Bowen by Patricia Craig
Biography of a woman novelist, you say?

Alfred and Guinevere by James Schuyler
If you think I can resist a cheap NYRB Classics edition, then this must be your first time to Stuck-in-a-Book – welcome!

Mr Emmanuel by Louis Golding
Here’s a pair of authors I get confused… Louis Golding and Louis Bromfield.  Anyone read this Louis?

The Romany Stone by Christopher Morley
I love Christopher Morley’s essays, and this edition is beautiful – and signed!  Annoyingly, Richard Booth’s Books have started sticking price stickers to the backs of their books, and this meant the back got damaged.

Accidents of Fortune by Andrew Devonshire
Mr. Debo Mitford’s autobiography

Beside the Pearly Water by Stella Gibbons
This was rather an exciting find – dustjacket and all, if you care about those sorts of things (I do, on entirely aesthetic grounds).

Picture by Lillian Ross
I’m sure I’ve heard about this somewhere – but a look at the cinema from the 1950s was irresistible.

Popcorn by Cornelia Otis Skinner
I never blogged about it, but Our Hearts Were Young and Gay was one of my favourite reads from a few years ago, and I’ve been hoping to stumble across more by one or other or both of the authors.  There are plenty of cheap copies online, but it’s nice to stumble across them – and these light essays look great fun.

The Dolly Dialogues by Anthony Hope
I don’t remember where I heard about these, but a reprint of them has been on my Amazon wishlist for four years – nicer to find a copy while browsing, and even nicer to find a nice old edition!

So, not a bad haul – not huge quantity, but definite quality.  Have you read any of them, or want to?  As always, comments extremely welcome!

Every Good Deed – Dorothy Whipple

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It wasn’t until I listed Every Good Deed among my purchases at the Bookbarn that I realised how scarce it was – as a couple of commenters pointed out.  That made me feel duty-bound to read it asap, despite having only read some of the Persephone Whipples available (Someone at a Distance, They Knew Mr Knight, Greenbanks, High Wages, and The Closed Door – more than I’d thought, now I come to list them).  Well, judging by Persephone’s love for Dorothy Whipple, I predict that Every Good Deed (1946) will one day join that number – but perhaps they needn’t rush.  It was enjoyable and interesting, but it wasn’t Whipple on top form…

They general idea is that a couple of oldish spinster sisters adopt a child from a local sort of orphanage, and all does not go well.  Susan and Emily Topham are shy, caring, worried about what society thinks of them, and above all not ready for a trickster.  Their cook (Cook, if you will) is a little more worldly-wise, but just barely.  Enter Gwen.

She steals, she talks back, she lies, she is (when a little older) no better than she ought to be.  She abuses their care and runs amok – and runs away.  She’s not even an orphan; her wily mother uses the situation to exact cash from the Topham sisters.

There were hundreds of children who, in the same circumstances, would have responded to their care, would have loved them and been grateful; but by mischance they had hit upon Gwen.
That’s Whipple’s slightly half-hearted attempt to make sure we know Every Good Deed isn’t supposed to be a universal cautionary tale.  The classism of the book did make me a little uneasy, and I’m not sure that sentence saved things…

There are a few more ins and outs in the narrative than this, but not many.  Although I enjoyed reading it, and Whipple is an expert at writing a very readable book, it did feel a lot like a short story which had got a bit long.  There is only one arc of the narrative – subplots not welcome – and the moments of crisis feel like the climaxes of a short story, not multifaceted moments in a novella.  Every Good Deed is only just over a hundred pages long, but I reckon it would have made more sense at, say, forty pages, in one of Whipple’s short story collections.  An enjoyable enough read, but if you’re struggling to find a copy anywhere… well, don’t feel too distraught about it.

Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome

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Another month, another cold… and I still haven’t written properly about the book that got me through the last cold.  I did tell you that Swallows and Amazons (1930) by Arthur Ransome was being my solace – battling out with another 1930 book, actually, Diary of a Provincial Lady – and what a perfect solace it was too.  Thank you Vintage for sending me this stunning copy a year or so ago.  Not a word of it came as a surprise, devotee as I was of the film (watched when ill as a child), but that wasn’t really the point.

If anybody doesn’t know the book at all (can this be?) it is the first of a series about John, Susan, Titty, Roger, and various others (in this novel, the Blackett sisters) who join them or war with them in their boating adventures.  It kicks off with that famous message of parental care, telegrammed by their father: BETTER DROWNED THAN DUFFERS IF NOT DUFFERS WONT DROWN.  There are those namby-pamby types among us who will argue that children are not better drowned than duffers, but I suspect we aren’t supposed to take his words entirely seriously.  The father knows whose side the novel is on, and that no calamity will befall the children – even if they are sent off as young as seven to fend for themselves (albeit in striking distance of home).

One advantage the film has over the book is that you can just watch them doing things to boats, and all is clear – I ended Swallows and Amazons as ignorant as I began, despite Ransome’s valiant effort to immerse the reader in the minutiae of sailing. Tacking this and gunwale that.  It didn’t matter that I hadn’t a clue what was happening.  It was all such fun.

But… I think Swallows and Amazons is probably best enjoyed as a child, or in a sickly state such as I was.  Something I’ve noticed while reading or re-reading classic children’s books as an adult – be it E. Nesbit, A.A. Milne, Richmal Crompton, or whoever – is that they are often funny in a way that is intended for the adult.  The child will still love the story, but something more sophisticated is going on too.  Well, unless I missed it completely, there is nothing at all sophisticated in Swallows and Amazons.  Ransome tells the story in tones of breathless excitement; the narrator is every bit as childlike as the children.  There isn’t really any humour (besides a good ‘ruthless’ pun), and there certainly isn’t any wryness or winking to the reader.  Everything is ingenuous and cheerful.  I don’t think I could have a reading diet which consisted just of this boys’/girls’ own variety of adventure, but, my goodness, it was perfect for my sickbed.

Letters from England – Karel Čapek

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When Claire recommended Letters from England (1924, translated by Paul Selver 1925) by Karel Čapek it was one of those very welcome recommendations – being for a book that I already had on my shelves.  Usually I note when and where I buy books, but this time I didn’t – I can only assume it was because the name rang a bell, the physical book is quintessentially 1920s, and I have a soft spot for books about England. And, oh, how fun this book is.

It doesn’t that Čapek shares my feelings about the relative merits of London and the rest of the country. It is amusing, in the 1920s, to hear him complaining about grim housing and traffic (goodness knows what he’d think if he visited it today), but I entirely agree with him about the ferocious busyness of the place.  It is rather easier to be funny when one is criticising than when one is praising, of course, and Čapek is very amusing in these early chapters.

These houses look rather like family vaults; I tried to make a drawing of them, but do what I would, I was unable to obtain a sufficiently hopeless appearance; besides, I have no grey paint to smear over them.
Oh, yes, he includes plenty of pen and ink illustrations, of the variety that are deceptively simplistic.  He is particularly good at animals, despite what he says in the text.

But – thankfully for the self esteem of the nation – he doesn’t just stay in London and criticise it.  Instead, he travels around the countryside and (belying his title) pays visits to Scotland and Wales, and writes about Ireland without actually going there.

Where are you to pick words fine enough to portray the quiet and verdant charms of the English countryside? I have been down in Surrey, and up in Essex; I have wandered along roads lined with quickset hedges, sheer quickset hedges which make England the real England, for they enclose, but do not oppress; half-opened gates lead you to ancient avenues of a park deeper than a forest; and here is a red house with high chimneys, a church-tower among the trees, a meadow with flocks of cows, a flock of horses which turn their beautiful and solemn eyes upon you; a pathway that seems to be swept as clean as a new pin, velvety pools with nenuphars and sword-lilies, parks, mansions, meadows, and meadows, no fields, nothing that might be a shrill reminder of human drudgery; a paradise where the Lord God Himself made paths of asphalt and sand, planted old trees and entwined ivy coverlets for the red houses.
You see his way with words, and his fondness for the long sentence.  We will forgive him referring to any group of animals as a flock, and believeing Essex to be ‘up’, because he is so expressive and enthusiastic an appreciator of the English countryside – which means so much to me too, in a way which transcends expression.  The countryside is the only place where I feel properly alive, and I would love to have accompanied Čapek on his travels, gasping at the beauty of the Lake District, admiring the simple aesthetic pleasure of a thatched cottage, and (for we are not perfect human beings) sharing eye-rolls at the sort of person who bustles hither and thither in a city all year, and never ventures out to visit a sheep.

Ordering Winnie et al

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I was listening to the latest podcast from The Readers, and being reminded that Thomas doesn’t like Winnie the Pooh.  Now, of course, he’s crazy.  I choose to believe he’s having a temporary mental block or something, because we all know what a wonderful, unparalleled gem of a book it is (well, paralleled only by The House at Pooh Corner), and Thomas is a great guy.  To understand is to forgive, and all that.  But, as A.A. Milne once wrote of The Wind in the Willows, ‘When you sit down to it, don’t be so ridiculous as to suppose that you are sitting in judgment on my taste, or on the art of Kenneth Grahame A.A. Milne. You are merely sitting in judgment on yourself.’

Ok, tongue in cheek, but it did lead me to a fun discussion with some friends – if you had to, how would you rank the characters in your esteem?

It was hard. I love them all. But I do not love them all equally.  From first to last, here is the order I came up with (which might change tomorrow, but would always have the same two at the top):

Eeyore, Pooh, Roo, Piglet, Tigger, Owl, Kanga, Rabbit, Christopher Robin

Take your time over a decision as important as this.  And if you’ve not read the books yet, or – Heaven forfend – have only watched the Disney adaptations, then familiarise yourself with A.A. Milne’s words and E.H. Shepard’s perfect illustrations.  Unless you are experiencing Thomas’s temporary glitch, then you’ll love them all.

Boy, Snow, Bird – Helen Oyeyemi

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One of the nice things about doing Shiny New Books is that I feel I have more of a grasp on what’s happening in publishing at the moment – as you doubtless know by now, modern novels are seldom my go-to.  Having said that, there is a tiny handful of living authors whose careers I follow and whose books I await – and one of those is Helen Oyeyemi (even with a couple of her books unread on my shelf).  Well – and you’ve guessed this by now – I reviewed her latest, Boy, Snow, Bird, for Shiny New Books, and flipping good it was too.  You can read my review here, and (exciting!) the Q&A I did with Helen Oyeyemi too.

Have you read… Nancy Spain?

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Apologies to Karen/Cornflower for borrowing her ‘Have you read?’ title, but I need to crowdsource this one.  I was recently re-reading Ann Thwaite’s biography of A.A. Milne, and towards the end she writes about a meeting between AAM and Nancy Spain, as Spain wrote about it at length in her autobiography.  So I went hunting to learn more about her… and, by a lovely coincidence, that fantastic Invisible Ink column in The Independent did a piece on Nancy Spain this week. (That link isn’t working for me at the mo, so if you’re having trouble then maybe Google it… and it might only work in the UK?)

She sounds a fascinating woman.  Apparently she was once famous on panel shows and the like, but – of more interest to me – she wrote detective novels in the 1940s and ’50s. And they have brilliant titles (Death Before Wicket; Out, Damned Tot; Murder, Bless It and so forth) – not to mention that several are set in a girls’ school called Radcliffe Hall. Ahem, if I may.

What really intrigues me is that (as I found out here) she was turned down from the Detection Club as her detective novels were considered too funny. I want in.

Many of the series are incredibly expensive and scarce, but – matching up with the gaps in my Century of Books – I have bought Cinderella Goes to the Morgue… so I’ll report back soon.  But does anybody already know her novels?  Are they due a reprint?