All

Every Saturday morning Our Vicar’s Wife runs The Honeypot from our garage. Not many people can say that sentence, can they now? The Honeypot is about a year old now, and is a church-linked initiative but open to all, where people can drink coffee, buy goods, get involved with crafty activities, generally natter, and… buy books. Donate them too, of course. Now we have shelves of secondhand books adorning the garage wall, which I raid every time I pop home. Sorry to see that my duplicate copies of Woolf and the Brontes remain in place, alongside a stray Iris Murdoch and an AA Milne – but then not everyone can enjoy my esoteric tastes, and who says Virginia Woolf is necessarily better than Virginia Andrews… euch, I need to wash out my mouth with soap.

Anyway. Today was no different to other Saturdays, and whilst saying hello to the visiting villagers, I managed to scoop up a handful of books. Set my back £2 for the lot…

– John Banville, The Sea
This counts for having a finger on the pulse, so far as Stuck-in-a-Book is concerned. Won the Booker in 2005, didn’t it? And has a pretty cover. Bonus.

-E.F. Benson, The Osbornes
Haven’t read any non-Mapp & Lucia books by EFB, so this nice old hardback can slip into the tbr pile.

-Doris Lessing, The Sweetest Dream
Now this really is up-to-the-minute stuff. Well, published in 2001, but as you probably all know, Ms. Lessing was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature this week. I read a transcript of her reception of this news, and she sounded ungrateful, but watching it on youtube, she just sounded witty and grounded. Strangely Chick Lit cover for this book, which isn’t quite how I remember Memoirs of a Survivor

– Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter
I feel I should own a copy of this… will I want to read it? Any thoughts?

– Mary Lawson, Crow Lake
Just as I was going to buy a copy online… great review by Margaret over at Books Please here, which made the novel seem irresistible.

And I thought I’d have nothing to read on the train home…

Another brief post today – but with a link to a rather longer one. If you just can’t get enough of my library burblings, then you’re in luck – Lisa (Bluestalking Reader to many of us, and also one of the loveliest people I know) asked me, bless her, to be a guest blogger on a library blog she runs, over in the US. We go back a few years now – on the dovegreybooks online reading group – and she has watched me morph from highschooler to Grown-Up, always with kindness and wittiness and general loveliness. Well, I’m still basking in having been labelled charming by her ;-) Before I descend into a, wholly justified, bout of mutual appreciation, here is my contribution to the blog. Some of it is stuff you’ve read before, maybe, but if you want to print off and memorise my first few weeks’ experience, it’s a useful resource. And of course you should have a mosey around the website: lots and lots of interesting things to read about. Her mention of my sketches does, however, make me remember how negligent I’ve been. Could Do Better.

Back in Somerset now for the weekend, Our Vicar and Our Vicar’s Wife and all. Long train journey, on which I finished one book and made good headway through another, and I look forward to seeing the countryside again in the light.

Just a brief ponder today, brought on by talk of L.P. Hartley yesterday – has an author’s name, or appellation thereof, ever caused you confusion? I know it probably shouldn’t make a difference, but when I discover that an author is male when I thought they were female, or vice versa, it alters the way I read or think retrospectively of their work. I didn’t realise, you see, that LPH was a man until a few months ago – in fact, I was sure he was a she… and, do you know, I became more reluctant to read The Go-Between when I discovered this. Perhaps it’s based on the knowledge that I usually prefer books by women, but either way it’s a form of bigotry, I suppose, and thus ought to be stamped out… Is bigotry too strong a word? Well, probably. But it definitely makes a difference. Or is this distinction rational? Do you do the same?

Some other authors where confusion has arisen…
– Who didn’t think Richmal Crompton was a man when they first read the William books? Many of my friends still don’t realise.
– Harper Lee – thought she was a man for years…
– J.K. Rowling – while I always knew Jo was a woman, this is an example of initials being used for deliberate ambiguity, so that boys would be happy to read Harry Potter.
– D.H. Lawrence – another one I got wrong for a few years… but having read a couple of his books, it could never have been a woman could it, really?
– P.L. Travers – another poor woman whose gender was assumed otherwise by my younger self

Then there are those with whom I never had trouble – or perhaps just guessed correctly. P.G. Wodehouse, L.M. Montgomery, L.M. Alcott, C.S. Lewis, A.A. Milne, E.M. Delafield, J.R.R. Tolkein… is there something about these that ties them to their gender, or did I just guess luckily? And which authors do you accidentally gender-realign?!

A few people were having trouble accessing Our Vicar’s Wife’s blog… all should be well now!

Oh dear, it’s crept past midnight again (though I am trying to deceive the computer into thinking it’s still Tuesday… we’ll see if it works). And I’m very sleepy, so you’ll have to prepare yourself for a book review tomorrow – to whet your appetite, I’ll show you a photo of a bit of my bookshelf. The book I’ll be reviewing is one of those in the picture… guess which. Not too tricky, perhaps, but means you get both text, photo and interactivity without me having to use my brain at all.

Patch the Wonder Dog wasn’t feeling quite as athletic as last time, but offered to help this time’s BAFAB in a more adminastratorial position. I pointed out that adminastratorial wasn’t a word, but he assured me that it was – or at least very soon will be. Please try and use it in conversation within the next week.

So, rather than rolling around in sellotaped bits of old paperchains, Patch wielded pen and paper…

And then selected the one winner…

Which is…

Congratulations Karen! We had two Karens entering the draw, but this is the one from verbatim.blogs.com. Just select one of the thirteen-so-far books in my 50 Books You Must Read…, and I’ll pop it in the post to you. My reviews of them are all links in the list, so should help make a decision… Then email me at simondavidthomas@yahoo.co.uk and we’ll sort it out from there…

Thanks for entering BAFAB, everyone – more next time!

Ow. I have just performed the most exercise since… well, at least eight years. And it took much longer than I anticipated – which is why today’s post has slipped over into Sunday. Oops!

No, I haven’t run a marathon or won the rugby world cup (topical, no?) Yes, I have battled with the tester of mental and physical agility which Argos label a ‘bookcase’. It took about three hours. I have genuine blisters. But it got done. Some will suggest that giving up on screwing in screws, and lunging at them with a hammer instead, is a short-sighted and foolish measure. To these people may I repeat – blisters. And the bookcase hasn’t fallen down yet.

So here it is – looks simple, doesn’t it? At least the instructions were in English, unlike some Ikea bookcases I’ve purchased. And a tent I tried to put up a while ago appeared to have instructions in Polish or Dutch or something that was of minimal use to me – though doubtless swathes of Poles or Dutchmen have successfully put up enough to keep fields of campers dry. Oh, and the list is purely photographic-angle stuff, promise.

More importantly, on go the books. Only a small fraction of my books came with me to Oxford. Which brings me to the question of ordering – this can raise strong opinions from people. Harriet recently shelved some books in colour order – something which looks beautiful, but which I think is only practical in the home and should never be attemped by anyone trying to sell books; how am I to know where to look?! My friend Barbara-from-Ludlow arranges many of hers in subject/period/tone etc. in a very personal system which means everything is with companionable neighbours, as it were. What did I go for? Alphabetical, I’m afraid. The librarian in me coming through, isn’t it? There are slight twists – separate shelf for Persephone Books and one for my beautiful Jane Austens. Sorry the titles and spines aren’t very clear in the photo – I think it’s because it’s past midnight, and thus dark… and another day without a sketch, but I think the image of me putting this contraption together is quite amusing enough without further illustration. If you have read my post till here, then I would suggest you get some tools such as poulan pro chainsaw, Wagner flexio, and the Graco paint sprayer before buying any form of DIY projects for your home. These tools can help you simplify and complete the DIY project quicker.

BAFAB draw tomorrow – or, rather, later today – so very last chance to enter: here!

Our Vicar’s Wife was very touched to have lots of you pop over to visit her, so do keep saying hello! Carole asked me if Our Vicar would complete the family of bloggers… well, we can ask him, but I’m not sure he’ll take the bait. We’ll see.

I mentioned my Book Group the other day – well, our next meet-up is November 13th, and we nominated potential books for a poll. At the moment my suggestion, Tove Jansson’s Fair Play, is winning, with 7 votes to 2. Looking likely that it will prevail, and I thought I’d take the opportunity to extend the group to all readers of S-i-a-B as well. Fancy joining in?

I’ve not read Fair Play, but loved A Summer Book and The Winter Book by Jansson, also author of the Moomin books. Her writing is beautiful and evocative and did I mention beautiful? It;s about two woman growing old together on an island, I think… “philosophically calm – and discreetly radical” according to the blurb. Would be great if people fancied reading it before November 13th and sharing their views, so that I can take a barrage of opinions along to the book group! If you want to, then it’s here for Amazon UK, and currently in the buy-one-get-one-half-price in Borders… Sorry US-residents, you might have to take sneakier routes.

What fun!

ehonyaku, I don’t remember you posting before – would love to know which books you’ve bought from seeing them here, and what you thought of them!?