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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.

***

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.

The Proper Place by O. Douglas

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My dear friend Emily and I often watch sitcoms together – we have recently named ourselves ‘sitcommoisseurs’ – but don’t really share a taste in reading. But you know who does largely share my taste? Emily’s relatives – her mum and, as it turns out, her late great-grandmother. Mrs S very kindly thought of me when divvying up the library of her mother, which included books from her grandmother – who was a fan of O. Douglas. I’ve only read one but I really liked it, so gratefully received a little pile of them (thanks v much!) – and over Christmas I read The Proper Place (1926).

As I’ve mentioned before, househunting and moving house are things I love to read about (even though they are a world of anxiety in real life), and the opening pages of The Proper Place are all about it – which is why it was the one I got off the shelf.

The Rutherfurd family are leaving their family seat in the Scottish borders with its twenty bedrooms, no longer able to live up to such grandeur because they are so diminished in size: there are now only three Rutherfurds: Nicole (sprightly, cheerful), her orphaned cousin Barbara (realistic, wry), and her mother Lady Jane (resigned, dignified). They have lost relatives in World War 1, and must start anew – Nicole displaying bright optimism about their future and Barbara, if not dour, then not delighting in the prospect.

“How many bedrooms does that make?”

Mrs. Jackson asked the question in a somewhat weary tone. Since her husband had decided, two months ago, that what they wanted was a country-house, she had inspected nine, and was frankly sick of her task.

The girl she addressed, Nicole Rutherfurd, was standing looking out of the window. She turned at the question and “I beg your pardon,” she said, “how many bedrooms? There are twelve quite large ones, and eight smaller ones.”

They were standing in one of the bedrooms, and Nicole felt that never had she realised how shabby it was until she saw Mrs. Jackson glance round it. That lady said nothing, but Nicole believed that in her mind’s eye she was seeing it richly furnished in rose-pink. Gone the faded carpet and washed-out chintzes; instead there would be a thick velvet carpet, pink silk curtains, the newest and best of bedroom suites, a rose-pink satin quilt on the bed. 

The new occupants are from the nouveau riche – Mr and Mrs Jackson, leaving their community in Glasgow to buy their way into the aristocracy, in the hope that it will be a bright new future for their son. Mrs Jackson is disarmingly realistic about her own shortcomings and how unlikely it is that she’ll fit into her new life, making sacrifices for that adult son (who is fond of her but not all that engaged). The meeting of the Rutherfurds and the Jacksons is not the clash of cultures that you might think – Douglas is amusing, but not at characters’ expense. Mrs Jackson is eager, Lady Jane is kind. There is pain and anxiety on either side, but not immeasurably.

The title comes from a Hans Christian Andersen story that I’m not familiar with – to quote the novel: “at a dinner-party, one of the guests blew on a flute made from a willow in the ditch, and behold, every one was immediately wafted to his or her proper place. “Everything in its proper place,” sang the flute, and the bumptious host flew into the herdsman’s cottage”. I’m not sure how relevant it ends up being, because there is no moral attached to these characters’ house moves, though they are certainly changing places. There is even a suggestion at one point that the Jacksons and the Rutherfurds will swap houses, though the Rutherfurds instead move to a harbourside house in Kirkmeikle, Fife. It’s the sort of downsizing that is a house far beyond anything I’ll ever live in, of course. (You can see where it was based in Katrina’s investigative post!)

Much of the novel looks at this new community – including (somewhat surprisingly) Simon Beckett, who was recently climbed Everest and is writing a book about it. Very little that happens among this new throng of characters is of especial note, but it is all the gentle, enjoyable happenings that are so fun to indulge in reading about. Nicole is such a lovable character, helpfully offset by Barbara’s clear-sightedness, that it was all good fun.

We don’t see as much of the Jacksons later in the book, but I think I preferred those sections. Mrs J’s anxieties about her position, together with a certain over-the-topness, made for good-humoured comedy. And the families do meet again, as Nicole and Barbara sequentially go back for visits – these were my absolute favourite sections, as it was the meeting of the families that I thought worked best. Happily for me, there is a sequel (The Day of Small Things), which I can keep an eye out for.

(I had to skip a few pages of Scots dialect, but far fewer than when I read Pink Sugar.)

 

Others who got Stuck into it:

“Unputdownable & with characters I care about. I loved the feeling of gentle melancholy that is evident in so many books of that post-war period.” – I Prefer Reading

“O. Douglas is a very fair-minded author; she always allows her characters the grace of a deep enough glimpse into their lives and thoughts to allow us to place their words and actions in full context; something I fully appreciated in this story.” – Leaves and Pages

“Her books are as sweet as home-made toffee, but they’re always mixed with sadness somehow, which makes these comfort books of hers more true to life.” – Pining for the West

Reflections on A Century of Books (and looking to 2019)

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Well, my third attempt at A Century of Books was my second success! In 2014 it rather petered out, but in 2012 and 2018 I managed to read a full century of books, finishing in the final days of December. The full list is here, and it’s probably too similar to my overall reading stats to warrant a whole new set of stats, but here are some reflections. At the bottom of the post are my plans for 2019…

It made me read some books I wouldn’t otherwise have read

And that’s been good and bad. There are some excellent books from my shelves that I wouldn’t have read unless I were doing the challenge – notably Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver – and some rather uninspiring ones that I probably wouldn’t have finished if I didn’t have a year to tick off (e.g. Harold Ross’s letters).

It was surprisingly easy this time

Reading 153 books this year meant that I didn’t struggle too much to fill my century. Last time I successfully completed ACOB, I read 136 books – also rather above my usual average. So maybe ACOB encourages me to read more? (The time I failed, I read 98…)

Audiobooks are your friend

And specifically Librivox – quite a few of my earlier titles were unabridged audiobooks from the free audio site Librivox. Though that did clutter up the beginning of the century, because they had to be out of copyright.

The 1920s went quickly

Because of course they did They also included reading some books I’ve been meaning to get to for many, many years – like David Lindsay’s Sphinx and Edith Olivier’s As Far as Jane’s Grandmother’s.

Shifting the century helped

Last time, I read 1900-99. This time I read 1919-2018, and that really made the process much easier – partly because I found the pre-WW1 years quite hard last time, and partly because I missed the post-1999 years. Doing the previous 100 years is definitely how I’d do it again another time. (Though I’d be sad once I’m chipping into my beloved 1920s!)

Buddies helped 

Quite a few people were doing ACOB this time – either in one year or spread over several. I don’t think I quite matched up with the buddy system Claire at the Captive Reader and I had back in 2012, but it was good to know that others were doing it alongside.

Reading the zeitgeist was quite rewarding

Last time, I sort of cheated a bit by reading lots of 1980s and 1990s books that were about earlier periods – author biographies, etc. This time I still did that a little, but I almost entirely read books that reflected the 80s and 90s. I think ACOB counts either way, for sure, but there was a nice feeling of authenticity to it this time.

Iris Murdoch didn’t come along to scupper my plans!

Last time, The Sea, The Sea almost proved my undoing – being enormously long and completely baffling. This time around, I don’t remember any particular blockers. One of the longest books I read, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton, was pacey enough that it didn’t hold me back.

So, yes, I’ll probably pick it up again in 2020. Watch this space!

As for 2019…

Coming off the back of ACOB, I do feel rather unstructured at the moment. The two books I’m reading right now are for podcast and book group, so I’ve yet to feel wholly unleashed on the infinitude of literature – but I do wonder if I should put in some parameters.

And yet, except for the club years that Karen and I run – 1965 Club coming up in April! – I haven’t made any reading commitments. The nearest I’ve got to it is a determined effort to read more from shelves, which I say every year – but this year I’m backing that up with a vague resolution about… not buying books? I guess? (Exceptions for going on special bookshop trips – e.g. I am going to Hay-on-Wye in a few weeks’ time.)

I’ve done Project 24 a couple of times and it’s been hard but good – but also means being on constant look out for which books might make the grade. If I do a more blanket ban, then I’ll stay out of temptation’s way. Riiiiight?

And if anybody knows of any reading projects like ACOB or like club years – i.e. some structure but a huge amount of choice therein, and able to be completed with books I already own – then let me know!

Becoming by Michelle Obama

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I think it’s fair to say that my reading isn’t the most zeitgeisty. I usually only read a small handful of books published in the year I’m reading them, increasingly new non-fiction. But when I had audiobook credit towards the end of last year, I decided to spend it on one of the year’s bestsellers – Michelle Obama’s autobiography, Becoming (2018). All 19 hours of it.

Those 19 hours were read by Obama herself – which was one of the reasons I was keen to get it, as I love her voice. And, yes, she reads very well; I’d certainly recommend this way of experiencing the book.

The book takes us from Obama’s earliest memories through to leaving the White House and the inauguration of Donald Trump – and the most amazing thing about it is her astonishing powers of recall. Steadily, step by step, she takes us through every stage of her life – seeming to remember vividly what she experienced and thought at each part. She gives the same rigorous attention to (say) watching her father suffer with MS, or her path to getting into law school, as she does the minutiae of her husband’s rise to the White House. It is all-engrossing, and throughout she reflects with wisdom, thoughtfulness, and clear-sightedness about her own journey – and how this has been influenced by being a black woman.

Clear-sightedness is, indeed, the hallmark of Obama’s writing. My favourite parts of the book were probably her view of the first election campaign – as Obama fought first for the Democratic nomination and then for the presidency. While obviously wanting her husband to win, and believing he would be the best choice for the job, she has no illusions about the downsides of campaigning and the way opponents and the press manipulate everything. She says at the beginning and end of the book that she is not a political person and has seen nothing over the past ten years to change her mind – no, she isn’t going to run for president – and my heart ached with sympathy for somebody thrust into this position she would not have chosen. With her blessing, of course, but not with joy.

Anybody interested in how politics works in America will find the campaign trail section extremely interesting, and I can’t imagine anybody else has written about it from quite her perspective (or, frankly, with her humanity and wisdom). The same is true for life as First Lady – from how she wanted to use the role for the nation’s good to how she tried to ensure that her daughters’ lives were as normal as humanly possible.

It closes with her hopes for the future. She is refreshingly open about her disdain for Donald Trump (which dated back to his endangering her family’s lives through his ‘birther’ attacks, which led to a gunman attacking the White House) – like many of us in and out of America, she couldn’t believe that America had seen him for what he was and chosen him.

The book is certainly long and every anecdote is thorough and detailed, even when it adds only background detail. But it works – all the details come together to show you who Michelle Obama is. And the only mystery I leave with is that somebody so modest, selfless, and unbombastic came to be persuaded to write an autobiography at all. She suggests it is to show other young black women what they can achieve. Well, I’m very pleased she did – and I think the book will continue her good work.