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Honour and Obey

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Wonders will never cease; I am Booking Through Thursday on a THURSDAY. True, there are only 35 minutes left on Thursday, this side of the Pond anyway, but the principle stands. A round of applause, if you will.

One book at a time? Or more than one? If more, are they different types/genres? Or similar? (We’re talking recreational reading, here—books for work or school don’t really count since they’re not optional.)
A fine question. One of the things I like best about finishing my degree (and it is certainly a mixed blessing) is that I can read more than book at once, purely because I don’t have deadlines for reading, and it doesn’t matter whether it takes me a day or a month to read a book. I like to have a few reads at the same time, but generally not more than one novel. So perhaps a novel, a factual book, a selection of letters, the diaries collection I have The Assassin’s Cloak… but if I were reading two novels at the same time, it would be too confusing.

How about you? Less easily confused than me?

Young Love

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You’ll forgive me if I start this post with a little bit of trepidation. I’ve never written a review of a book before with the knowledge that the author would peruse my musings. Takes me back to the first review I had printed in the Oxford Student newspaper, of Ian McEwan’s Saturday. As he was busy filling his pockets with money, it probably troubled him little that I found the novel ill-conceived, cliché-ridden and rather dull. Luckily for Angela Young – the first ‘Y’ in my Book Journal, for those keeping tabs – I didn’t find her debut novel Speaking of Love to be guilty of any of these crimes.

In fact, and Stuck-in-a-Book knows no higher accolade, it’s going straight into ’50 Books You Must Read But Might Not Have Heard About’. Not something I do lightly, you understand. As Mr. Bennet might say, read on.

Angela Young’s novel has similarities with a couple of other modern novels I’ve mentioned on here – Maggie O’Farrell’s The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, and Margaret Pelling’s Work For Four Hands. The main similarity is that one reads investigatively; there is a central mystery to be unfurled, which will help explain why the characters act as they do, respond (or, rather, don’t) to each other in the ways they do. Even without all the other reasons to read on, the need to discover how all the pieces fit together is enough to keep anybody hooked.

Speaking of Love is divided into three narrative strands, Iris’s Story; Vivie’s Story; Matthew’s Story. At first I thought this was overkill, and did get a little confused – surely we don’t need all three voices? How wrong I was. They are distinct personas, and Young cleverly presents Vivie in the third person, alongside Iris and Matthew in the first person, so little overlap occurs. No character has more than a few pages at any one time, and they always took up the narrative again at exactly the moment I was thinking “Hmm, we haven’t heard from Iris/Vivie/Matthew in a while, I hope they’re next”.

Iris is, appropriately enough, a storyteller – though one who has suffered destructive illness – and is heading towards a storytellers’ festival. Vivie, her daughter, hasn’t seen her for years, and is suffering her own personal crises. Matthew, Vivie’s childhood friend, is also off to the festival, with his father, to hear Iris. As these characters and their relationships are explored, so too are their shared and separate pasts – pieces of the puzzle are continually proferred, though never in such a way as they feel incongruous in the narrative. Nothing in Young’s novel is forced, and, given the often stark or emotional subject matter, she does amazingly well to avoid being either saccharine or maudlin. The tagline, as it were, is “Speaking of Love is a novel about what happens when people who love each other don’t say so.” While true, I hope that doesn’t undermine the depth of this novel, the beautiful character portraits and the true humanity which Young has depicted.

Thought I’d give you a little quotation. This makes the novel seem perhaps rather more enigmatic than it is, but it’s also a great, tantalising taster of Speaking of Love, which demonstrates the importance of its key themes; storytelling, relationships, the impact of the past.

‘If life was a story, Vivie,” said her mother, “I could retell it. But it isn’t and I can’t. I just wish that what happened to me never happened in front of you. I wish that you hadn’t had to do what you did and I wish that you hadn’t been so very frightened by it all. That’s what I wish.’

I don’t want to give too much away, but do go and look at the Amazon page for more information, or Angela’s blog, or the book’s website. Above all, read Speaking of Love.

Signed, Sealed, Delivered…

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What do these books have in common?

Give up?

Well, they have all been signed by their authors. A book presents such a complex relationship between the author and reader, which has been documented and investigated and debated by hosts of literary critics over the decades and centuries. This is all made more complicated and fun when the author’s own handwriting appears on the title page – how strange to think that the author has held the book before me! Well, not so strange for A Very Great Profession by Nicola Beauman, and the biography of Judi Dench, for I was present on both those occasions, but for the other three…

When We Were Very Young, I must admit, was not written by Christopher Milne – one of these days I hope to have an AA Milne signature, but alas, not yet – but he has a very close association with the lead character. This copy was sold to me by a man named Peter Guppy, who lived in my old village and did a small business in books, but since he sold it to me for £2, it was really more of a gift. Dorothy Whipple’s The Priory was bought at the Bookbarn in Somerset (or Heaven on Earth, as it may be re-labelled), but it was not until I got home that I realised it was signed. Very exciting! EM Delafield’s novel set me back the most, but as one of my favourite authors, I found the offer irresistible.

How about you? Any signed copies? It’s easy enough to find signed modern novels and biographies, Waterstones seems to stock little else, but what about older authors and treasured novels?

A-Z

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I finished reading another Persephone Books publication this week – Doreen by Barbara Noble – which Carole very kindly sent me, as a sort of reciprocal gift in BAFAB. Thanks so much Carole! Really good novel, as all of PB’s books are, but I shan’t say much about it now, as dovegreybooks@yahoogroups.co.uk are soon to embark on a group discussion about it, and I don’t want to forestall myself. So I haven’t started talking about Barbara Noble’s book to give a review, this time – Doreen makes an appearance for a subtler reason.

For my birthday last November, a friend of the family (who happens to be a vicar’s wife and mother of twins, but is not Our Vicar’s Wife) gave me a notebook entitled ‘Books I’ve Read, Books I Want To Read’. Well, this was rather a perfect little gift, I’m sure you’ll agree. There are pages for every letter of the alphabet, which invite you to write the author, title, date completed, and compose a comment. I’m afraid I jettisoned the comment section straight away – I need all the space I can get to include all the books I’ve read, and, since I’ve kept a record since 2001, there were plenty to include. What I didn’t realise is that, from 2001 until last week, I had read nothing by an author whose surname begins with N. I, Q, U, X, Y, and Z are similarly empty, but N is now no longer virgin territory – step forward Barbara Noble. I know for a fact that I’ve read E Nesbit, if no other N-ers, but Noble is the first to be entered into the book.

And so I’m going to follow the advice of a particularly unpleasant article I read about ‘How To Make Money From Your Blog’, and present a list. Feel free to send wads of cash in the post afterwards, if it takes your fancy. It interested me, and it might interest you, to see the oldest and most recent entry for each letter of the alphabet. The first book listed is the oldest one under each letter; the second is the most recent, and probably has been mentioned on the blog at some point. If that sounds deadly dull to you, then here’s a question to answer instead – do you keep a list of the books you read? If so, where? And in chronological order, or by author?

Jane AUSTEN – Pride and Prejudice
Jane AUSTEN – Lady Susan

Lynne Reid BANKS – The L-Shaped Room
A.S. BYATT – The Matisse Stories

Lewis CARROLL – Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Jackie CLUNE – Extreme Motherhood: The Triplet Diaries

E.M. DELAFIELD – The Provincial Lady Goes Further
Monica DICKENS – One Pair of Feet

Mary ESSEX – Tea Is So Intoxicating
George EGERTON – Keynotes

Helen FIELDING – Bridge Jones: Edge of Reason
E.M. FORSTER – A Room With A View

Gillian GILL – Agatha Christie: the Woman & Her Mysteries
Joyce GRENFELL & Katharine MOORE – An Invisible Friendship

Anne HART – Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot
Zoe HELLER – Notes on a Scandal

Tove JANSSON – The Summer Book
Jerome K. JEROME – Three Men In A Boat

Felicity KENDAL – White Cargo
Barbara KINGSOLVER – The Bean Trees

E.V. LUCAS – Mixed Vintage
John LYLY – The Woman in the Moone (sic…)

Christopher MILNE – The Path Through The Trees
Elizabeth MYERS – A Well Full of Leaves

Michael ONDAATJE – Anil’s Ghost
Maggie O’FARRELL – The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox

David PELZER – A Child Called ‘It’
Margaret PELLING – Work For Four Hands

J.K. ROWLING – Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
J.K. ROWLING – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Elizabeth D. SHAFER – Exploring Harry Potter
Jan STRUTHER – Mrs. Miniver

Ann THWAITE – A.A. Milne: His Life
Claire TOMALIN – Katherine Mansfield : A Secret Life

VOLTAIRE – Candide
VERCORS – Sylva

P.G. WODEHOUSE – Quick Service
Leonard WOOLF – Hunting The Highbrow

Booking Through… some day or other…

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I do wonder if I’ll ever manage to do Booking Through Thursday on an actual Thursday… signs aren’t good. But they say that any day can be Thursday, so far as Booking is concerned, and I couldn’t resist this week’s set topic. Here it is:

Do you have multiple copies of any of your books?
If so, why? Absent-mindedness? You love them that much? First Editions for the shelf, but paperbacks to read?
If not, why not? Not enough space? Not enough money? Too sensible to do something so foolish?

Being a twin, duplicates are a necessary feature of my everyday life. And there, dear reader, I may have found the world’s worst excuse for buying too many books. What did I just say?! Too many books! Must wash my mouth out with soap.

It will probably surprise none of you to discover that I do have mutliple copies of some of my books. And not a small number. They fall into three rather specific categories, which are helpfully illustrated by photographs. The first is connected to Persephone Books; as you may remember, I’ve been a fan of their lovely books for a few years – and, as a complementary collection, I often buy earlier editions of their reprints. Only if they’re cheap, mind. I may be book-mad, but I set myself some (very flexible) limits.


Category number two happens to be AA Milne – one of my favourite authors, especially when I was starting to buy books at an Olympic rate. Somehow I’ve managed to accumulate quite a few duplicates here, usually because I like the covers, or the newer one is cheap, or I want to keep an uncut version of Michael and Mary, or Snow Books print a lovely new edition of one, or… you see, always a reason.


And the final category just happens to be… er… miscellaneous. Books I love.


Miss Hargreaves couldn’t just possess one corner of my bookshelf, could she? And I bought a second copy of The Waves because my first fell apart, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw away the first. Hostages to Fortune just kinda happened, and I ‘needed’ a second copy of Portraits because I’d scribbled notes in the other. The Mapp & Lucia series – well, I’d coveted the Folio editions for a while, but decided I couldn’t afford them and collected the Black Swan paperbacks, but later found the Folio ones for, erm, not a huge amount of money…

My plea is guilty. Any one else want their crimes to be taken into consideration?

Foxy Lady

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Today I’m going to multi-task, and address a new entry on ’50 Books You Must Read But May Not Have Heard About’, while chatting about one of the books I read on holiday. Smooth, no?

UPDATE: a longer and better review has been done by Simon S here!

The first, to become no.13 on the list of books you should read, is Lady Into Fox by David Garnett, published in 1922. Don’t really know how renowned this novel is already, but I didn’t know anything about Garnett when my piano teacher mentioned Lady Into Fox. This is the lady who recommended Miss Hargreaves, so I was confident that the novel would find favour. The fact that Garnett was Virginia Woolf’s nephew-in-law could only be a bonus.

Lady Into Fox – can you guess the plot? Sylvia (clever name) suddenly turns into a fox – the novel follows Mr Tebrick, her husband, as he witnesses Sylvia increasingly lose her human nature, and degenerate into vixenhood. What could be quite an absurd narrative is dealt with cleverly, and the fantasy never takes over. Instead, Garnett delivers a gentle tale with strong and genuine emotions, which becomes an admirable story of pathos.

Sylva (which presumely sounds like the precious metal, and makes referring to the novel audibly rather tricky) was written in 1962 as a response to Lady Into Fox, though I didn’t know that when I bought the book. Interestingly, I bought it because I’d just read Garnett’s novel. Gosh. Anyway, this novel is actually a French one, by ‘Vercors’ (Jean Bruller), though of course I have a translation. It acts as ‘Fox Into Lady’, if you will, reversing the central conceit of Garnett’s work, and making it all a little grittier. Drug abuse is thrown in along the way, but Vercors’ novel is mostly interesting as a study of development and psychology – Sylva’s progress is intended to resemble that of mankind, but the centuries are condensed into weeks. A few too many ponderous expostulations, but enough charisma in the characterisation to make up for it. Both fun novels, but with thoughtful backgrounds and premises, and it’s always interesting to read books in a pair like this. Who’d have thought foxes could be so entertaining?

Pottering About

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I must start by saying that there will be spoilers in this post, so anybody who hasn’t yet read that Harry and Hermione were really the same person all along…. heehee… ok, that one’s a lie, but don’t read on if you want to keep everything else secret.

I had intended to talk about some of my other holiday reads, but they will have to wait as Mr. Potter et al get their appraisal first. I suppose the best way for me to sum up my response to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is that it is my least favourite book in the series, and that I loved it. Yes, nothing to approach Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban as my favourite (and also the first one I read), but still a compulsive dash through the hundreds of pages. It felt very strange to come to the end of a eight year journey, knowing that I’d never read new accounts of Harry again – unless, of course, I learn Chinese and read ‘Harry Potter and the Large Funnel’, which I believe is in the offing.

Any more specific response? Well, I felt the absence of Hogwarts keenly. In amongst the admirable good/evil battle, and Harry busy discovering himself and his past, I’d always loved the school atmosphere, and the lessons and teachers we were treated to. Couldn’t you just imagine Maggie Smith reading the latest book, and thinking “Shan’t bank on that film to cover the weekly shop”? The omission of Quidditch I could cope with happily, but McGonagall, Trelawney, Sprout and Flitwick were sadly underused. In their place came endless wandering through fields to rival the first Lord of the Rings film. In fact, the whole Deathly Hallows plot felt rather unnecessary – but perhaps that was only because, like most people, my mind was wholly fixated on “who dies?!” and I didn’t allow enough of my attention to be caught by the matters of the book itself, rather than the series.

Oh, the deaths. Rowling cleverly killed off characters of increasing importance, through the last few books. I mean, who cared at all when Cedric died? But Sirius… and then Dumbledore. Must confess, I kept expecting him to come back to life… more on that later. We were similarly eased in with HP7 – Hedwig was sad, as was Mad-Eye, but nothing to whip out the Kleenex for. Dobby, on the other hand… and by the time we got to Fred, I was positively inconsolable. Mostly because the twin thing is a little too close to home.

Onto Albus. What WAS that half-dead/half-alive thing? “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” was rather a clever line, but didn’t make the whole scene less confusing. Any thoughts?

All in all, a satisfying end to a brilliant series – my thoughts about the books as a whole, and Rowling’s ability, were mentioned a while ago – and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows shouldn’t just be remembered for the deaths it contains.

Being away from the blogging world for the Launch Day, I’ve no idea about the general consensus…???

The Prodigal Returns

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I’m back, I’m back!

Oh dear, it has been a long time since I was here, hasn’t it? I’ve been on holiday for a couple of weeks, attending weddings and a Christian camp, and doing some Youth Hostelling with the Carbon Copy up in the Lake District. But now I’ve returned, and I’m looking forward to getting into the blogosphere again… I do hope you’re all still here, and willing to join in a bit of bookish chat.


Let’s kick off with a few pictures of where I’ve been. The Lake District is possibly the most beautiful part of England, and certainly the most beautifully dramatic. The above picture is the view from the first Youth Hostel we stayed at, Windermere YH. The dining room/conservatory looked out over this view – this is why I love youth hostelling; even if the beds aren’t comfortable and the facilities are basic, you get to stay in some wonderful houses and stunning locations.

In amongst our wanderings, I went to Blackwell. An Arts & Crafts house designed by Baillie Scott between 1898-1900 (according to the website), it’s also an amazing place to be. Go and try the virtual tour on the website, though it’s no substitute for visiting the actual place. Coming from the dark, wood-panelled hall into the white drawing-room, radiant with light and overlooking Lake Windermere… well, make sure you visit if you’re ever in the area.

Before I transmute into the Cumbrian Tourist Board, I’ll stop my ramblings. It should surprise nobody that I managed to read a few books in my time away. To whet your appetite, here’s a rather blurry pile of perused tomes. More anon. It is nice to be back…

Animal Magic

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Sorry my posts have been a little sporadic of late – I’m afraid that’s going to continue for a while, as I’m off on several exciting little trips – to Momentum (a Christian student camp thing), a couple of friends’ weddings, and Youth Hostelling with the Carbon Copy. Will try and get a few quick ‘hello’s in when I’m near a computer, but otherwise… To placate you, Patch has made a return, in cartoon form.

Anyway, plenty of books to chat about before I head away. And when writing about Three Men In A Boat, I got thinking about animals in literature – Montmorency the dog being rather a wonderfully comic creation… Animals must be quite a tricky thing to pull off successfully in a novel, especially if they’re made to speak – even the idea of introducing animals to a book brings out all sorts of unpleasant connotations of whimsy and saccharine kittens (actually, I can never dislike kittens in any context; throw more of ’em into novels, I say). When done well, though, novelistic pets can be witty, illuminating about the other characters, and a very valid contribution to literature. My favourite has to be the cat in Ivy Compton-Burnett’s Mother and Son – sardonic, selfish and unfeeling, he is the most sympathetic character in the novel. Any other animal favourites?

…and so, of course, I went to scout out some other books on my shelves. To be honest, the chosen tomes merely have animals in their titles, but that’s a valid alternative…
1. Tortoise by Candlelight – Nina Bawden
2. The House of the Deer – DE Stevenson
3. Lady Into Fox – David Garnett
4. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon
5. Toad of Toad Hall – AA Milne
6. Mr. Fox – Barbara Comyns
7. Flaubert’s Parrot – Julian Barnes
8. Love Among The Chickens – PG Wodehouse (my personal favourite title!)
9. Performing Flea – PG Wodehouse
10. Lobster Salad – Lynne Doyle
11. The Go-Away Bird – Muriel Spark
12. Animal Farm – George Orwell

So… which is your favourite animal in literature? And any other titles to contribute?