This suggestion for a Sunday Song comes at least third-hand – Carly told Clare; Clare told me; I’m telling you. I suspect soon a lot of us will have heard of Lana Del Rey, who (quite accurately) describes herself as “a gangster Nancy Sinatra” – this song took a couple of listens before I loved it, and now I’m addicted. Over to you, Lana, and ‘Video Games’:
All
Stuck-in-a-Book’s Weekend Miscellany
Happy weekend folks! And happy October too. I suspect a lot of us in Britain are enjoying the unseasonably hot weather – personally, I’m retreating to the shade with paracetamol, but I’ll try not to begrudge heat-seekers their (literal) day in the sun. I shall even add to their bounty with a book, a blog post, and a link.
1.) The link – is a rather amusing video from an old TV programme What’s My Line? For those not in the know, this ran in the 50s and 60s, where panellists had to deduce the occupations of guests, and then the identity of a mystery famous guest. In this case the guest is Salvador Dali, and his self-belief makes the exchange especially funny. The video is below and, if that doesn’t work, the link is here.
2.) The book – is slightly unusual territory for me. I don’t think I’ve ever read a graphic novel, but I am very captivated by what I’ve seen of Brecht Evens’ The Wrong Place, kindly sent to me by Jonathan Cape. Besides Evens’ astonishingly good name, I love the style of his artistry. At the moment that is all I know about this book… perhaps the cover and an illustration from inside will be enough to captivate you too. (The illustration is taken from Evens’ own flickr set for The Wrong Place here.) It’s not published until Oct0ber 20th, and I will report back further in the future…
3.) The blog post – has to be Sakura’s review of We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson – how lovely that she is reading some of my favourite books this year, and even lovelier that she’s enjoying them so much! But do also keep up with Darlene’s wonderful travel-log (travelogue?) of her time in London. I think I’m going to be in the next instalment, so there’s an incentive ;)
Happy 25th, Bloomsbury!
Firstly, I’m so pleased by your enthusiasm for my A Century of Books project! It really is the anti-challenge challenge – in that I shan’t be making a list beforehand, I shan’t make many rules, I shan’t really even pick books for it, it’ll just quietly fill up as the year goes by… I hope! I’ll certainly be including re-reads and multiple books by the same authors, etc. etc., but I think it should be really fun. I’m really excited about those of you who want to join in, and feel free to do so over the course of one, two, however many years – or maybe just keep a closer eye on the publication years of the books you read?
Jo asks whether I could give some suggestions for books to read from the first half of the 20th century – oh, Jo, I am going to have the MOST fun doing that! I’ll try and compile something, and post it soon – but for some ideas, there are really, really wonderful lists by Lizzy and Every Book and Cranny (sorry, can’t find your name!)
So I’ll try and work out a list of ones I already have read, but not a list for what I will read. And then I’ll be probably keep quiet on the topic until the end of the year…
And now for something completely different. Have I mentioned how much I love Bloomsbury publishers? Well, I really do. Not only have they printed the wonderful Bloomsbury Group series, thus bringing Miss Hargreaves back into print (there you go, Dad, a mention of it!) and the upcoming Bloomsbury Reader e-reprints (more on those uber-soon, promise) but they happen to be the most friendly publishing company in the world. I’ve met lots of lovely publishing folk, and (besides being universally impossibly glamorous) they’ve all been very nice – but Bloomsbury go the extra mile. Alice, my ‘contact’ there, sends me the catalogue with her own inscriptions and suggestions – as well as exchanging emails about cats and baking disasters etc.
Well, today (yesterday by now, I suppose) I went to Bloomsbury’s 25th Birthday Party! I had arranged to meet up with Elaine (Random Jottings) and Karen (Cornflower) both of whom I’ve met a fair few times before, and both of whom it is always an utter delight to see. There they are above; apologies for the blurry photo. And how glad I was to be with them when we arrived at a huge party in Bedford Square – actually in the square, or rather the garden in the middle. Big marquee, lots and lots of people – and us, staring at name-tags to try and find our Bloomsbury friends. In the meantime, we celeb-spotted, and all got in a bit of a tizzy about seeing Paul Hollywood from The Great British Bake-Off. Goodness! Also spotted Grayson Perry, Raymond Blanc, Heston Blumenthal, and (I think) P.D. James.
But we were most excited about meeting Stephanie and Alice, the two people at Bloomsbury who have been so lovely to all three of us for the past four or so years. And of course both of them are totally lovely in person too – we hugged, we were introduced as the most important bloggers in the country (doubtless not true, but how nice to be introduced thus!) and I even managed to whisper how nice it would be to have a copy of the latest Magnus Mills novel.
I am much worse than many bloggers at reading review copies – I tend to squirrel myself off to the 1930s and ignore a lot of what’s going on in the 2010s – because I want my blog to reflect my reading tastes, and I think that’s why the people who do read my blog are here (yes? :)) so I’m very grateful to Bloomsbury and other publishers for still keeping me in mind, and being so friendly. I was so surprised to be invited to this shindig, and delighted to accept – it was good fun, and even worth the horribly hot, overcrowded train journey I had home….!
A Century of Books
I tend not to participate in reading challenges, simply because I like to be spontaneous with my reading choices – well, as spontaneous as someone who does a full-time university course and belongs to three book groups can be. It’s relatively rare that I can just grab something off my shelf for pleasure-reading alone, and it’s incredibly un-rare that I buy books. You do the sums…
BUT I have decided to set myself a challenge for 2012 – one which I can’t really envisage myself completing, but which will be fun to try. I want to read (and hopefully review) a book published in every year of the 20th century. I’m calling it A Century of Books.
Why, you ask? Partly out of the simple pleasure of a list, and to have (at the end of 2012) a very selective glance at the course of the 20th century. And partly to make me diversify my reading a little bit – currently the 70s, 80s and 90s are rather neglected in my reading life. But it’s the sort of challenge that I’ll be doing without really noticing that I’m doing it – hopefully most of the years will fill up as a happy coincidence to my everyday reading choices. (It has dawned on me as I write this that similar challenges might already exist… oh well, there is nothing new under the sun, and the more the merrier!)
So, this will probably basically involve reading what I like until the autumn, when I panic and start filling in gaps…
I’ll set up an ongoing list, which I’ll link to whenever I read a book for A Century of Books, so hopefully the enjoyment won’t be all mine. Indeed, I’d be delighted if other people wanted to join in – are you interested?
Feel free to use my logo for A Century of Books, or make your own – I imagine lots of you are more graphic-savvy than I am. (My selection won’t necessarily – or even probably – include the books in the above picture. I just picked books at random and put them in a vaguely chronological order…)
So… 1900-1999, here I come. Or, rather, I will in three months’ time, when 2012 gets around to starting… let me know if you’ll be on board!
quick question for Blogger users…
I’ve recently updated to the new user interface of Blogger (which shouldn’t change the way you read posts, just the way I write them) – but, oddly, it has now made all my gaps between lines double in size. So when I press ‘enter’ it looks like I’ve pressed it once in the draft, but appears as though I’d pressed it twice… anybody able to help?
Books, books, books…
One or two of you have asked about my spoils from last Wednesday, when I gave Claire an entirely altruistic tour of some London bookshops… ahem. Let’s gloss over the fact that, thinking about her baggage allowance, she only bought four books to my nineteen (plus two for other people). Here they are, and I am enjoying have a camera which will takes a non-horribly-blurry photo of amassed books. Let’s take a gander at them, in a vaguely left-to-right manner, in rows…
Red Sky at Morning by Margaret Kennedy : I seem to remember this was on a list of books about twins that abebooks published a while ago? Does anybody know anything about this? I haven’t read a word by Kennedy yet. This came from the lovely Ripping Yarns bookshop, where I had the chance to say hello to shop manager Jen
Awakenings by Oliver Sacks : this is my token non-literary book of the haul. I’m a fan of Sachs’, and I enjoyed Harold Pinter’s plays based on these cases – where people were awakened from years of being in a coma.
Diaries and Letters 1930-39 by Harold Nicholson : as Darlene said, the dates alone would make me want to grab this book – but combine that with Vita Sackville-West’s husband on the cover, and I couldn’t leave it behind.
Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset : this is a hideous cover but a book I’ve been intending to secure for a while. It came from an astonishing little shop (pictured below) near Archway tube station, run by an ancient Irish gentleman. Books were piled at least forty high, in twelve stacks (four wide; three deep). Teetering is the word. Claire and I worked our way through as many as we could see without covering the floor, furniture and ourselves in paperbacks…
The Expendable Man by Dorothy B Hughes : I don’t know much about this Persephone book, but I was lucky enough to come across one I don’t have for only £3 in the wonderful Notting Hill Book & Comic Exchange. Indeed, most of these books came from there…
Mr. Tasker’s Gods by T.F. Powys : I greatly enjoyed Mr. Weston’s Good Wine and have been hoping to find this one for a while – finding it in this lovely Chatto & Windus edition was rather a treat.
The Topsy Chronicles by A.P. Herbert : while I know APH’s name from A.A. Milne’s autobiography and other similar sources, I haven’t actually read anything by him. These look good fun, and (as a bonus) I discovered APH had signed and given this book himself. I love it when these things happen…
Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald : I’ve had luck finding these beautiful editions…
The Golden Child by Penelope Fitzgerald : …and here’s another! Which Penelope Fitzgerald should I read next?
Let The Great World Spin by Colum McCann : I’ve heard good things about this novel, and wasn’t about to leave it behind with a pricetag of fifty pence… (have I mentioned how much I love Notting Hill Book & Comic Exchange?)
The Mandelbaum Gate by Muriel Spark : how many more Spark novels am I going to stumble across?? The woman seems to have been unstoppable.
Don’t Look Round by Violet Trefusis : having loved her novel Echo earlier in the year, I was more than happy to add to my Bloomsbury Group library.
Here’s How by Virginia Graham : this is the book I was most excited about – indeed, I’ve already started it, and it’s hilarious. I adored her faux-etiquette guide Say Please a couple of years ago, and this one is a faux-instruction guide. So far I’ve read How To Sing, How To Dance, and How To Play the Piano. It would be going too far to say I’ve learnt anything practical, but I’ve certainly laugh. I’ll quote some for you all soon…
The Celestial Omnibus by E.M. Forster : I read the title story from this collection when it was published by Penguin in their short story series, and now I’m keen to read some more. And such a nice little edition…
Fair Stood the Wind for France by H.E. Bates : chivvied on by Lyn’s recent review, I grabbed this when I saw it on the shelf. This’ll be my first Bates…
The Devastating Boys by Elizabeth Taylor : I’ve heard all-round good things about this collection, not least in Nicola Beauman’s biography of Taylor – and which of us Virago-fans can resist a VMC?
My Career Goes Bung by Miles Franklin : see above…
Across the Common by Elizabeth Berridge : this is the other book I bought in Ripping Yarns, on the basis that Berridge is a Persephone author. Not that I’ve read anything by her yet… Pictured above are the beautiful shelves in Ripping Yarns, which made me go a ltitle weak at the knees…
Stately as a Galleon by Joyce Grenfell : I need a little more Joyce in my life. This might be my next dip-in dip-out book…
So, there you go! As always, I want to hear your thoughts – on which books you’ve enjoyed, or think you would enjoy, etc. etc. Over to you!
The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac
This post title could easily be a confessional moment for me, couldn’t it? Well, fear not, we won’t be delving into anything too untoward today – rather we’ll be turning back the clock to 1896 and discovering that an irrational love of books is nothing new. For it was over a century ago that Eugene Field’s posthumous book The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac was published, and it feels like a century ago (although it is in fact only two years) since my friend Sherry kindly gave me the book.
I should explain, before you wonder how tawdry this Victorian reader was, that the love affairs are strictly of the literary variety. Mr. Field was a single man up until his death, but his love affairs with books were as lively and happy as many marriages.
Initially I thought Field and I would have little in common – since he died before the end of the 19th century, he necessarily could not have encountered many of my favourite writers – and, even with the 19th century stretching out behind him, he makes no mention of Jane Austen, and only scant whispers of Hardy and Dickens. Instead he reserves his fondest passions for Boccaccio and others of that ilk. He quotes reams in Latin and Greek. And he cares deeply about fine volumes from centuries ago, beautiful bindings, and the scarcity and value within a library. I, on the other hand, don’t. I love having books signed by some of my favourite authors (including E.M. Delafield, Rose Macaulay, and Dorothy Whipple) but aside from that, I don’t care whether a book is a first edition or a scruffy reprint – except for unrelated issues of aesthetics. I’d rather have an attractive reprint from the 1980s than an ugly 1880s first edition.
So I settled down into Field’s company, expecting to enjoy the lust of a collector with the same detached interest that I read Wolf Mankowitz’s excellent novella Make Me An Offer about hunting down a valuable antique vase. But then I found Eugene Field writing things like this:
Books, books, books – give me ever more books, for they
are the caskets wherein we find the immortal expressions of humanity –
words, the only things that live forever!
are the caskets wherein we find the immortal expressions of humanity –
words, the only things that live forever!
and this:
As for myself, I never go away from home that I do not take a trunkful of books with me, for experience has taught me that there is no companionship better than that of these friends, who, however much all things else may vary, always give the same response to my demand upon their solace and cheer. My sister, Miss Susan, has often inveighed against this practice of mine, and it was only yesterday that she informed me that I was the most exasperating man in the world.
not to mention this:
All men are not as
considerate of books as I am; I wish they were. Many times I have felt
the deepest compassion for noble volumes in the possession of persons
wholly incapable of appreciating them. The helpless books seemed to
appeal to me to rescue them, and too many times I have been tempted to
snatch them from their inhospitable shelves, and march them away to a
pleasant refuge beneath my own comfortable roof tree.
considerate of books as I am; I wish they were. Many times I have felt
the deepest compassion for noble volumes in the possession of persons
wholly incapable of appreciating them. The helpless books seemed to
appeal to me to rescue them, and too many times I have been tempted to
snatch them from their inhospitable shelves, and march them away to a
pleasant refuge beneath my own comfortable roof tree.
A kindred spirit! A fellow bibliomaniac, indeed! No matter that the biblios he maniacked were centuries-old copies of Latin poets whilst mine are 1930s novels by middleclass British women, we are singing from the same song-sheet. This collection of essays is a bit like other Stuck-in-a-Book favourites like Susan Hill’s Howards End is on the Landing and Anne Fadiman’s Ex Libris, in that it bubbles over with a love for books and reading.
Field’s collection of essays starts off quite generally, with the sort of sentiments quoted above, before getting increasingly specific. Since our tastes diverge so greatly, it was the more general sections which I truly loved. I wanted to reach out, across the entire 20th century dividing us, and shake his hand. The beautiful essays at the beginning of this volume, tastefully over-written in the paradoxical way which so inimitably belongs to the 1890s, touch so closely at the shared love of literature we all have. They could have been blog posts. For even if his books are valuable, he does not appreciate them simply as valuable objects, as though books were no different from ornaments or houses or bank vaults. As he says:
There are very many kinds of book collectors, but I think all may be grouped in three classes, viz.: Those who collect from vanity; those who collect for the benefits of learning; those who collect through a veneration and love for books. It is not unfrequent that men who begin to collect books merely to gratify their personal vanity find themselves presently so much in love with the pursuit that they become collectors in the better sense.
I doubt many of us have, or want, valuable libraries – but I think many of us can empathise with the assembly of a book-collection which comes from ‘veneration and love for books’. And there is one manner in which Field is simply a blogger ahead of his time. I, with Project 24 under my belt, did have to laugh at this:
Whenever Judge Methuen is in a jocular mood and wishes to tease me, he asks me whether I have forgotten the time when I was possessed of a spirit of reform and registered a solemn vow in high heaven to buy no more books. Teasing, says Victor Hugo, is the malice of good men; Judge Methuen means no evil when he recalls that weakness – the one weakness in all my career.
No, I have not forgotten that time; I look back upon it with a shudder of horror, for wretched indeed would have been my existence had I carried into effect the project I devised at that remote period!
Oh, Eugene! There is a place for you in the blogosphere. How many of us have had this absurd intention, and how few of us have seen it through? And even fewer of us regret this decision!
Thank you, Sherry, for sending this book to such an amenable bookshelf, and to so kindred a spirit. I hope this blog post will send Eugene Field to many other appreciative libraries around the world.
A word of warning. There are lots of unattractive print-on-demand copies dotted around, and it can be difficult to find the pre-1900 editions on bookselling websites, even though they’re actually pretty affordable once you track them down. To save you some time, they’re here on Amazon.co.uk and (cheaper) here on Amazon.com.
Song for a Sunday
Have a great Sunday, everyone, and whilst you’re doing that, why not listen to Come On by Princess & Mr. Tom, featuring Elin Ruth Sigvardsson?
Happy Sunday!
Stuck-in-a-Book’s Weekend Miscellany
Happy weekend, everyone. I’m tucked up in bed, feeling better than yesterday but not quite fighting fit just yet. But fit enough to give you a link, a blog post, and a book. In fact, as a special treat, let’s have two each of all of ’em… and a question for you too.
Does anyone have any tips for finding out when people link to your blog? I use Google Alerts, which used to be quite good, but now don’t seem to turn up many results – often I find blog posts have linked to me, and I’ve been unaware of it. Occasionally I check Technorati, which catches some of them, but I’d like an alerts service that actually does the job….?
1.) The blogs – two whole new-to-me blogs this week, rather than just blog posts! Firstly, Helen at A Gallimaufry – she’s been going for a while, but somehow I’ve only just spotted her blog. It has a lovely scrap-booky feel, with beautiful archive photos surrounding her insightful reviews. How could I not love a blog which has featured reviews of The Love Child and The Skin Chairs? Go and have a gander.
And secondly, my friend Barbara – my e-friend, that is, whom I’ve known online for seven years – has finally succumbed and set up this rather beautiful photo-orientated blog, Mi Lady’s Boudoir. Travels and photos and books and delectable things like that.
2.) The books – are both review copies, and rather from the sublime to the ridiculous. The sublime, from Frances Lincoln publishers, is Enthusiasms by Mark Girouard. It’s a collection of the unusual minutiae of literary exploration, from a neglected clue to Jane Austen’s first love affair to the location of Waugh’s Brideshead, stopping off at SiaB favourites like Oscar Wilde and Vita Sackville-West. This one’s going to be fun.
But perhaps not as much fun, and certainly not as much guilty pleasure, as the book Michael O’Mara Books sent me – Brendan Sheerin: My Life. For those not in the know, Brendan is the (international) tour guide on one of my favourite TV programmes – Coach Trip. It’s the world’s most budget reality TV programme, utter rubbish but completely compelling. Friends come around and we watch seven episodes at a time. This book will doubtless prove as guiltily entertaining.
3.) The links – are both of a bookish nature, quelle surprise. Lyndsay pointed me in the direction of this – Esquire have named 75 Books Every Man Should Read. Oddly all but one of them are by men. Methinks they got confused about Carson McCullers… Naturally I think this is probably all quite silly, from the idea that men should read different books from women to the idea that men should only read books by men (and Carson McCullers). But I loves me a list, and couldn’t resist it.
Speaking of lists… Laura of Guardian Books sent me a link to their Power 100. Also clearer list etc. here. It’s the hundred most powerful people in books, including booksellers, authors, publishers, agents… and nary a blogger in sight, which isn’t really entirely surprising.
So, twice as many goodies as usual there. I’m off to bed with a book…
Cold in da doze…
Sorry not to reply to comments yet, there have been some very lovely ones which made me feel all warm inside, and also very lucky to have met such wonderful bloggers (oh, and Rachel, the Edith Wharton came from the previous day, otherwise I’d have offered it to you first!) but right now I’m feeling all sorry for myself, with a cold. I know, man flu man flu… I must confess I’m good at feeling sorry for myself, but I’m also good at being proactive about it – I have bought most of the Boots medicine counter, and made myself a big saucepan of carrot and coriander soup to see me through the next couple of days.
So I’m getting lots of early nights at the moment – will come back and tell you about the twenty (!!) books I bought on Wednesday when I’m feeling more alive.