8 things I love about Bookish by Lucy Mangan

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Bookish by Lucy Mangan cover

I read a lot of books about books and reading, and I almost invariably enjoy them. But they do quite often feel like palate-cleansers in between other books – treading familiar ground, and not quite capturing the love I had of my first forays into the genre, like Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman and Howards End is on the Landing by Susan Hill.

But then, sometimes, I come across a book about being a reader that reminds me why I love them so much. Bookish (2025) by Lucy Mangan is such a wonderful read. Or, in my case, listen – I listened to the audiobook, but I wasn’t far through it when I knew I’d have to get hold of a paper copy too. It’s always hard to write a proper review from my memories of an audiobook, so instead here are some bullet points of things about loved about Bookish.

1. The opening lines

The book starts with ‘I am never happier than when I am in a bookshop’, and you know you’re in safe hands already. Like Lucy Mangan, I consider book hunting to be one of the happiest, most joyful ways to spend time. I’d already really enjoyed her previous bookish book, Bookworm, about childhood reading – and I was even more excited to read her talking about grown up books.

2. Lucy Mangan is a kindred spirit

If that quote doesn’t make it clear, she is One Of Us. Few writers have better captured what it is to live a bookish life – not just somebody who enjoys reading, but somebody who is A Reader. Not in a scholarly, superior way – rather, somebody who lives, breathes, and loves books. There were countless occasions on which I felt seen by her. Which is why I am calling her ‘Lucy Mangan’ in full throughout – because I don’t actually know her, so can’t call her ‘Lucy’, but also now feel too much of a friend to call her ‘Mangan’.

3. She captures stages of life perfectly

There are plenty of life experiences that Lucy Mangan and I do not share – marriage, parenthood, being an incredibly successful journalist. But one thing we do have in common is going to Oxbridge from state schools, and being thrown into seminars and tutorials with students who clearly felt much more comfortable in those environments. The section where she describes that period of her life had me nodding vigorously.

4. She has controversial but correct opinions

I am thinking specifically of her preference for Anne Bronte over Charlotte and Emily. Tell ’em, LM!

5. Our tastes overlap…

To be fair, there aren’t many super-super-obscure books mentioned in Bookish, though there are plenty I haven’t read or are only dimly aware of. But it’s still lovely to read a fellow enthusiast for books like I Capture the Castle and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. And, in fact, Lucy Mangan’s love for those books makes me desperate for her to read Guard Your Daughters by Diana Tutton and O, The Brave Music by Dorothy Evelyn Smith. The four belong together, and it should be impossible to love one without loving them all.

6. …and they also differ

But it was also fun to read Lucy Mangan’s enthusiasm for books I know I wouldn’t like – and that certainly isn’t always the case. She doesn’t like whimsy in books, while I do now and then – and, most decisively different, she adores historical fiction which I usually dislike. And yet reading about her obsession with Norah Lofts was a delight, and I do hope she has read Lofts’ excellent, funny, tense non-historical novel Lady Living Alone.

7. She is wise about owning books

Apparently there are 10,000+ books in her house – and, gosh, I’d love to see her library. The descriptions of culling (limited) and bookshelf arranging (joyful) hit home, and it’s wonderful to read about somebody who sees no problem in overflowing shelves – filled, crucially, with much-loved books and possible-reads, rather than expensive first editions and books bought as investments.

8. It’s funny, warm, and optimistic

Even in the sadder moments, there is a warmth that flows through Bookish. How do you capture it? How do you make a book feel like curling up a sofa for a natter with a dear friend? I suppose by being an excellent writer, and that is a keynote of Bookish. It’s a hoot, it’s self-deprecating and simultaneously celebratory about the reading life. Press it into the hands of any bookish friends and family this Christmas – and put it on your own wishlist. After all, it’ll help justify all the other teetering piles of books.

Project 24: Book #20

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Surplus: A Novel - Stevenson, Sylvia: 9780930044787 - AbeBooks

Despite having been ahead of myself all year, my birthday helped me get my new-to-the-shelves fix for a while and now I’m… behind? I have four books left to buy this year, and four or so weeks to buy them in. (Is it time to confess that I didn’t count books bought with my birthday book tokens? Cos they were just gifts from friends who needed a little help picking out the book…)

Anyway, book 20 of 24 is Surplus by Sylvia Stevenson, which I saw mentioned on Neglected Books. It’s published in 1924 (though my copy is a 1980s reprint) and is a book about a spinster – but also a very early example of a lesbian novel, I believe. Those things combined made it sound very intriguing, and I’ll admit that I’ll be reading it with one eye on whether it would make a good candidate for the British Library Women Writers series. That series has slowed down a bit, to give a chance for the 25 or so books to pick up steam, but there will be more titles coming next year.

Despite seeming to be quite a significant book in 20th-century literary history, Surplus wasn’t super easy to come by – my copy was shipped from the US – and doesn’t appear to have been massively covered online. So, watch this space and wish me luck!

#144: Simple vs Ornate Style, and Sylvia Plath vs Janet Malcolm

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Sylvia Plath, Janet Malcolm and our thoughts on writing style – welcome to episode 144!

In the first half of this episode, we discuss whether we prefer writing style to be ornate or simple. In the second half, we compare Sylvia Plath’s most famous poetry collection Ariel with Janet Malcolm’s book about Plath biography, The Silent Woman.

You can get in touch with suggestions, comments, questions etc (please do!) at teaorbooks[at]gmail.com – we’d love to hear from you, even if I’m quite bad at replying quickly. Find us at Spotify, Apple podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. If you’re able to, we’d really appreciate any reviews and ratings you can leave us.

You can support the podcast at Patreon – where you’ll also get access to the exclusive new series ‘5 Books’, where I ask different people about the last book they finished, the book they’re currently reading, the next book they want to read, the last book they bought and the last book they were given.

The books and authors we mention in this episode are:

Mrs Miniver by Jan Struther
All The Little Live Things by Wallace Stegner
Lucy Carmichael by Margaret Kennedy
Tortoise By Candelight by Nina Bawden
The Cost of Living by Kathleen Farrell
Bookish by Lucy Mangan
Bookworm by Lucy Mangan
The American Way of Death by Jessica Mitford
Henry James
Wilkie Collins
George Orwell
Yellow by Janni Visman
The Trouble With Sunbathers by Magnus Mills
The Children’s Bach by Helen Garner
Island In Moonlight by Kathleen Sully
The Bloater by Rosemary Tonks
Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion
Barbara Comyns
Beryl Bainbridge
The Forensic Records Society by Magnus Mills
Elizabeth Strout
Anne Tyler
Carol Shields
Margaret Atwood
Virginia Woolf
James Joyce
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Mrs Dalloway: Biography of a Novel by Mark Hussey
Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Bitter Fame by Anne Stevenson
Ted Hughes: the Unauthorised Life by Jonathan Bates
The Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcolm
Two Lives by Janet Malcolm
Fenny by Lettice Cooper
Rhine Journey by Ann Schlee

Birthday books!

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Earlier this month, I turned 40 years old. I think I’m ok with the milestone – and it was put in perspective by my neighbour inviting me to her 90th birthday – but it is strange to think I was only 21 when I started this blog.

I had a lovely celebration with friends from many stages of life, having a civilised afternoon tea in a local village hall. And, of course, I got a lot of books! I won’t write masses about them, but there are lots that I’m excited to dive into. Some were bought were book tokens (which, I have decided, don’t count under Project 24 as they are effectively birthday presents… right?) and that includes Bookish by Lucy Mangan, which I listened to as an audiobook and knew I had to own. It’s SO good. More about that soon.

From the ones I haven’t read, I think I’m most excited by The Bookseller at the End of the World by Ruth Shaw – which I heard about from Kate of The Book Club Review Podcast, when she appeared on a ‘5 Books’ bonus episode for the Tea or Books? Patreon.

The thing that isn’t a book is (gasp) a letter written by E.M. Delafield!!

A lot of books - descriptions below!

Here are the books in the pic:

Snowflake by Paul Gallico
Hercule Poirot stories by Agatha Christie
The Garden of the Finzi-Contini by Giorgio Bassani
Arnold Bennett omnibus (RiceymanSteps, Elsie and the Child, Lord Raingo, Accident)
The Clothing of Books by Jhumpa Lahiri
Mrs Caliban by Rachel Ingalls
The Bookseller at the End of the World by Ruth Shaw
Bookish by Lucy Mangan
Look Closer by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
The Picador Book of 40
All Sorts of Lives: Katherine Mansfield and the Art of Risking Everything by Claire Harman
Do Admit: The Mitford Sisters and Me by Mimi Pond
Uncle Fred: an Ombnibus by P.G. Wodehouse

The Reading Promise by Alice Ozma

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Every now and then, I’ll know it’s time to pick a book from my teetering pile of books about reading. I mean this literally, except there is not one pile: there are three. They stand about three feet tall, behind the door into my living room, as there simply isn’t space for them anywhere else – and they are not in any order, so that read and unread books, old and new, a scattergun of unalphabetised authors sit there.

The most recent choice was The Reading Promise (2011) by Alice Ozma, which my friend Malie gave me for my birthday last year. The subtitle tells you what is going on: ‘3,218 nights of reading with my father’.

Opinions differ, within the book, about how the promise started. But it seems to have started on a train. Alice’s dad – Jim – regularly read to Alice at night and now, in 1998, when Alice was in third grade (the internet tells me this is aged eight or nine) they decided to make this casual habit into something official. They started The Streak. Now, their opinions differ on whether they initially set out to do a hundred days or a thousand – one remembers the hundred-day streak ending with a commitment to add another 900 days, while the other thinks it was a thousand at the outset – but the commitment was made.

When I started reading Ozma’s book, I thought it might feature a lot of the books they discussed. And they are in there, of course. But the specifics are somewhat incidental to what is really a memoir of a father/daughter relationship – one that became all the more important after Ozma’s parents divorced. Their shared love of reading managed to get past the awkward teenage period, and they were able to put aside temporary feuds to ensure they had at least a few minutes of reading every night – though Ozma movingly remembers the final time that she lay in the crook of her dad’s arm as he read. And even that was an unusual concession to the significance of the nightly ritual: Ozma builds up a picture of a kind, intelligent, funny and very loving man, but he is not the warm, huggy man you might be picturing from the premise.

My dad is not an affectionate man. As a librarian, he told his students not to touch him, warning them that his skin was poisonous. Kindergarteners seemed to accept this as fact, but the older students often wondered why they couldn’t just give their favourite teacher a hug. He does not like to be touched, and he does not want to touch other people. After school concerts or award ceremonies, I saw other parents hug and sometimes even kiss their children. My father considered it a bold and almost over-the-top display to stick one finger in my hair and scrtach my scalp for a moment with his cracked fingernail, like he was helping me get an itch I just couldn’t reach. If the event called for such a grand gesture, he would do it quickly and then back away several feet. 

The portrait of Jim is necessarily very subjective, and I wasn’t always sure that I would like him were I to meet him, but I loved reading the evolving relationship of father and daughter (with other members of the family much more peripheral). Reading is more of a thread through the tapestry than the main content – there is, for instance, no complete list of books read, just some pages of the ones they remember, ranging from childhood classics to presidential biographies, via Dickens, Shakespeare, Arthur Conan Doyle, and many, many books I haven’t heard of.

And because the reading is really a portal to their relationship, there are lots of chapters about totally unrelated things. There is a clarion call against the American education system for its devaluing of reading. There are the various relationships her father has after divorce, and what an extending, evolving family feels like. The most fascinating tangent is where Ozma writes about her vivid fear of JFK. Even when she learns he is dead, the fear doesn’t abate: she is terrified that his body (still, somehow, evil and out to get her) is in her bedroom. Holding a book he once loved leaves her scrubbing her hands like Lady Macbeth. The terror is so unusual that a novelist might be wary of using it, but Ozma describes it with a heady recollection of the fear, as well as self-awareness about how unrelatable it is, at least as a specific phobia. It’s not what I expected in a memoir about reading, but these sorts of details and anecdotes help set The Reading Promise apart from any book-about-books that ends up retreading familiar ground.

Why did The Streak end? There isn’t a sad story here: it simply ended because Ozma went away to college. And this book is really a tribute to what a beautiful thing it was. An obsessive, perhaps peculiar version of many father/daughter relationships – but lovely to read a memoir of resilient love, and a generational love of reading that persisted long beyond the close of the book. Here are the final words of The Reading Promise (which, in case it isn’t clear, is a book I loved reading):

We called it The Reading Streak, but it was really more of a promise. A promise to each other, a promise to ourselves. A promise to always be there and to never give up. It was a promise of hope in hopeless times. It was a promise of comfort when things got uncomfortable. And we kept our promise to each other.

But more than that, it was a promise to the world: a promise to remember the power of the printed word, to take time to cherish it, to protect it at all costs. He promised to explain, to anyone and everyone he meets, the life-changing ability literature can have. He promised to fight for it. So that’s what he’s doing.

Thirteen years ago, my father made the reading promise to me. He kept his word.

An A-Z of Brilliant Novellas

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As Novellas in November is starting, I thought I’d recommend some novellas you might like to read. And after jotting down a few, I thought… would I be able to make a whole alphabet of them? Without repeating any authors? And, reader, I did. (Almost.)

I’m delighted that this A-Z isn’t just a list of novellas – it’s a list of excellent novellas. I was determined not to sacrifice quality, and I would happily press any of these into your hands and assure you of a brilliant time.

Happy reading! Do let me know if you’ve read any, or if you’re tempted to. You can find reviews of most of them in the review archive, or by searching in the search bar.

Amsterdam by Ian McEwan

I find McEwan quite variable, but this book about the friendship between a composer and journalist – both lovers of a woman whose funeral is in the opening pages – is a page-turner of a dark comedy.

Blue Postcards by Douglas Bruton

Told in 500 vignettes, Blue Postcards covers Yves Klein, Henri the tailor, and the narrator some decades later. It is well-researched, but told with a lovely looseness and freedom.

City of Glass by Paul Auster

The first of three novellas that make up The New York Trilogy, it’s also my favourite. A postmodern play on detective fiction, the protagonist is a detective novelist who gets a call asking if he is Paul Auster and, under that name, investigates a future murder. It is playful and odd, and extremely satisfying.

Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill

Another book in vignettes, this tells the story of a relationship – from dating to marriage to a lost pregnancy to a child to an affair. Somehow these stray fragments give us incredible depth of character.

Echo by Violet Trefusis

Translated from French, Echo is a fun, mischievous story of love and feuds in a Scottish castle that develops into a fablesque tone.

Follow Your Heart by Susanna Tamaro cover

Follow Your Heart by Susanna Tamaro

One of my favourite discoveries this year, the novella is in the form of a grandmother writing to her absent granddaughter – but, like Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, this is really just a way of telling us about everything in the world of these fascinating women.

Gentleman Overboard by Herbert Clyde Lewis

Henry Standish falls off a ship into the sea. And then the rest of the novella concerns the hours afterwards – as Standish is adrift in the ocean, and the passengers carry on with their lives. Lewis presents it all with true psychological acumen.

The Heir by Vita Sackville-West

A romance – where one of the lovers is a house. Having inherited an enormous home he can’t afford, the main character is keen to sell – but, as the point of losing the house grows nearer, he realises he can’t be parted from it. A beautiful example of how important home can be.

Ignorance by Milan Kundera

Translated from French, the novella opens with a Czech woman being asked why she is staying in France after her affair with a Frenchman is over – and Kundera uses it as a jumping-off point to explore the concept of nostalgia. As usual with Kundera, he swims and dashes all over the place, with The Odyssey and composer Arnold Schoenberg the points he often returns to.

A Jest of God by Margaret Laurence

A masterpiece of melancholy literature. Rachel lives with her mother in the small Canadian town where she grew up, feeling alone and hopeless. Into that world steps a man she used to know at school, and she begins to hope for the future – all the while doubting the security of these hopes.

A Kind Man by Susan Hill

What if a man had the power to miraculously cure people? Hill went through a period of writing short, powerful, parable-esque novellas, and this has a wry beauty and poignancy to it.

The Love Child by Edith Olivier

Up there with my all-time favourite novellas, The Love Child is about a childless spinster who accidentally conjures her imaginary childhood best friend into life – beginning a path of wish-fulfilment that descends into a power struggle. A brilliant slant on the ‘surplus women’ problem of the 1920s.

 

The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono

Almost a short story, this French classic is an allegory about a man who plants trees, as the title suggests. The very simplicity of the story is what is so striking. My edition (not the one pictured above) has sumptuous woodcuts by Michael McCurdy.

No Mama No by Verity Bargate

Don’t be put off by the terrible title – this isn’t a misery memoir. Instead, it is the sharp cry of a woman who hates having young sons – or, rather, hates the identity it has forced on her. Her only freedom is a parallel life where she pretends her sons are daughters. Sprase, odd, and breathtaking prose.

The Only Problem by Muriel Spark

Only Muriel Spark would bring together a theologian writing about the Book of Job with a story about a terrorist organisation. It’s quintessential Spark – strange, spiky, beguiling. You’ll see The Driver’s Seat recommended a lot this month, I’m sure, but it’s worth remembering how wide and deep her talents are.

Portait of Jennie by Robert Nathan

I think this could just sneak into novella territory – I certainly read it in one go, sat on a bench in Washington DC. An artist starts painting portraits of a young girl he meets in the park – but every time he meets her, she has somehow aged several years. A compelling fantasy book in Nathan’s usual readable, affectionate style.

Q’s Legacy by Helene Hanff

Ok, it’s non-fiction, but Q is tricky, ok? It tells of the aftermath of 84, Charing Cross Road – the book’s success, adaptation onto stage, and the consequent whirlwind of fame Hanff experienced.

The Red House by E. Nesbit

Sadly there isn’t a decent edition of this around – my attempts to get it into the British Library Women Writers series have proved fruitless – but it’s a fun novel about a novelist who suspects her house might be haunted, as well as dealing with other domestic inconveniences. It is chiefly notable for some of her more-famous children’s book characters popping up as cameos.

The Skin Chairs by Barbara Comyns

Another one the British Library said no to, actually! Comyns is as strange and matter-of-fact as ever in her coming-of-age tale populated by bizarre and often dangerous characters – and, yes, a group of chairs covered in human skin.

Three To See The King by Magnus Mills

Mills’ books are always a clever mix of surreal and everyday, so that you feel disoriented but don’t quite know why. One of his best is about houses that turn up at long distances in a desert, and what is going on with a curious and charismatic newcomer in the district.

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

What would the Queen read? A fun tale about Queen Elizabeth II getting obsessed with books – starting with Ivy Compton-Burnett, which is often how people first come across her now, it seems.

Valentino by Natalia Ginzburg

Translated from Italian, and coming in at a mere 62pp, Ginzburg gets a whole world into Valentino – a world of resentment, pride, stubbornness and intrigue amongst a family.

Who Will Run The Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore

Not a great title, but a very good novella about girls Berie and Sils who work together at a sort of theme park, whose friendship splinters when Sils believes herself ready for adult life. It’s all told from the perspective of Berie in the future, which gives an added poignancy to the story.

X… ok, I had to give up on X. I did my best. I’m so sorry!

Yellow by Janni Visman

Stella is agoraphobic and neurotic, and Visman’s sparse narrative tells of her growing paranoia and attempts to control it. Hitchcockian and powerful.

Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm

Imagine a woman so beautiful that a whole bunch of undegraduates drown themselves. Beerbohm has a lot of fun with this OTT parable of beauty and infatuation.

So, there you have it! A slightly incomplete alphabet of brilliant novellas. I do hope it has inspired you with something to read this November.

#143 : Do We Avoid Books That Will Upset Us? and Agatha Christie vs Ethel Lina White

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Agatha Christie, Ethel Lina White, and sad books – welcome to episode 143!

In the first half, we use Geraldine’s suggestion – do we avoid books that will upset us? In the second half, we compare They Came To Baghdad by Agatha Christie and Fear Stalks The Village by Ethel Lina White.

You can get in touch with suggestions, comments, questions etc (please do!) at teaorbooks[at]gmail.com – we’d love to hear from you, even if I’m quite bad at replying quickly. Find us at Spotify, Apple podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. If you’re able to, we’d really appreciate any reviews and ratings you can leave us.

You can support the podcast at Patreon – where you’ll also get access to the exclusive new series ‘5 Books’, where I ask different people about the last book they finished, the book they’re currently reading, the next book they want to read, the last book they bought and the last book they were given.

The books and authors we mention in this episode:

Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion
Training School for Elephants by Sophy Roberts
Return to Cheltenham by Helen Ashton
King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild
The Reading Promise by Alice Ozma
They Came Like Swallows by William Maxwell
Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
The Railway Station by E. Nesbit
The Unbearable Bassington by Saki
Their Finest Hour by Lissa Evans
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Diary of a Lone Twin by David Loftus
Let Not The Waves of the Sea by Simon Stephenson
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan
The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens
The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
Tess of the D’Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy
They Were Sisters by Dorothy Whipple
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
The Five-Year Sentence by Bernice Rubens
R.L. Stine
A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
Other People by Celia Dale
P.G. Wodehouse
The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White
E.F. Benson
Some Must Watch by Ethel Lina White
The Silent Woman by Janet Malcolm
Ariel by Sylvia Plath

Announcing the next club…

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The 1925 Club has been a joy! What a fun time, celebrating the tenth anniversary of the reading weeks. As ever, I am quite behind with updating my reviews page and reading all of your posts, but bear with me…

And, of course, Karen and I are instantly thinking about next time. We didn’t want to linger too close to 1925, and we have jumped to a very promising year. So here is your six-month warning for the 1961 Club!

1961 Club badge: a library from the 1960s, with the dates 13-19 April 2026 and The 1961 Club overlaid.

The Little World by Stella Benson – #1925Club

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Little world (Caravan library) : Stella Benson : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

My final review for the 1925 Club is Stella Benson’s The Little World. I found it in Hay-on-Wye seven years ago, exploring the pocket editions section where, it turns out, it’s not all uniform editions of Kipling, Trollope, Galsworthy etc. I was excited to add to my Benson collection, but hadn’t realised until I picked it off the shelf for the 1925 Club that it wasn’t a novel. It wasn’t even (as I wondered next) short stories. It is, in fact, travel essays.

Having said that, it starts with a couple of sections – ‘Trippers’ and ‘Oldest Inhabitants’ – which are more short stories than essays, since Benson is not involved and the first one involves the premeditated murders of tourists. There may be some living in places like Cornwall that would have empathy, but it’s hardly travel writing proper.

After that, most of the book is about the places Benson goes, often five or six sections in a row in the same place. The ‘essays’ vary from a couple of pages to over 50, and the places she goes are the US, Japan, the Philippines, Hong Kong, China, India, and Vietnam – perhaps surprising for woman in the 1920s, particularly one who seems to travel mostly alone or with a female companion.

If you’ve read Benson’s fiction, you’ll know what marks her out as a novelist. Her writing style is eccentric, dry, and totally unpredictable. I love it, and her ways of framing a sentence are extraordinary. Once I knew what The Little World was, I wondered how similar the tone would be.

On occasion, you could see the novelist in evidence. The opening of an essay on the US is ‘Being alive at all is an incessant shock and, I think, all the best lives are melodramas.’ That could be lifted from any of novels, whether the narrative or a line from one of her joyfully unhinged, determined heroines. Similarly, this paragraph from a section on teaching in Hong Kong could have one of her heroines’ self-deprecating humour (of the variety that isn’t really humble, because she doesn’t expect you to think any the worse of her):

I lacked not only degrees, diplomas and all necessary knowledge, but also the voice and address of the teacher. I had a very noisy and robust-spirited class, but to its credit let me say that no boy ever actually defied me. If any boy had defied me on a hot day I should have cried; I don’t mind confessing that now. The boys, in spite of a penchant for pea-shooters and cribs, were in the main extremely kind to me, and I think that was because my teaching did not tax their brains, and my discipline was so erratic that it demanded an almost paternal tolerance on their part.

But, for the most part, it didn’t have the same sparkle as her novels. It felt like a subdued version of Benson. For whatever reason – respect, perhaps, a genuine intention of informing her audience – she is much more restrained. The greatest exhuberance seems to come out in the sections on the United States, but otherwise she could be dry, not to say worthy.

In her novels, particularly I Pose, Benson has a powerful feminist voice. And that is threaded in occasionally – curiously, not really about the role of women in the countries she visits, but as asides that help contextualise a country. I noted down this section, which I don’t think would offend a Hindu, but apologies if it does:

Cows in India occupy the same position in society as women did in England before they got the vote. Woman was revered but not encouraged. Her life was one long obstacle-race owing to the anxiety of man to put pedestals at her feet. While she was falling over the pedestals she was soothingly told, that she must occupy a Place Apart—and indeed, so far Apart did her Place prove to be, that it was practically out of earshot. The cow in India finds her position equally lofty and tiresome. 

Of course, I should admit that travel literature is not really my cup of tea. I love learning about other countries, but I want to do that through the eyes of somebody from that country – not from a British person who happened to pass through. That is true of writing today, and it’s true of writing from 1925. And, of course, the countries that Benson sees will have transformed enormously. I was most engaged by the section on India, because it is the country covered that I am most interested in, but in 1925 it was under British rule. Benson has more sympathy than many of her compatriots for the Indian men and women who are living as colonised people, but I would still rather read about it from an Indian point of view. And there is something distasteful about the ease with which she visits and travels around, compared to the everyday lives of people being oppressed within their own country.

All in all, I think The Little World is for Stella Benson completists only. Or perhaps travel literature aficiandos. I did like the final words of the book, though, so that is where I’ll leave the review:

Having at last boarded the dirty little ship, we sleep and sleep and sleep. And so we lose the end of a journey, we lose the transition from one life to another, from the known to the unknown, from a life of seven-headed snakes and ghosts and gods under a red sinking moon to a life in which the cook wants seventy cents to buy a chicken for supper.

Unnecessary Rankings! 10 years of Club Reading Weeks

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I took a look at all the books I’ve read for the club years since 2015, and it is *drum roll* exactly one hundred! Isn’t that extraordinarily pleasing? Who’d have thought it would work out so neatly.

Having made a list of them all, I decided to rank them. Since ranking 100 books would be unhinged, I’m ranking my favourite dozen from over that decade – all absolutely brilliant books. Many of them are books I wouldn’t have picked up if it weren’t for the club, so I’m very thankful.

12. Laughing Gas by P.G. Wodehouse – #1936Club

When my friend Malie told me that P.G. Wodehouse had written a body-swap comedy, I knew I had to ignore the piles of PGWs on my shelves and seek it out. A dentist mishap sees an Earl and a golden-haired Hollywood child swap bodies, and it is as silly and fun as you’d hope.

11. Love by Elizabeth von Arnim – #1925Club

My review only went up yesterday! A wry, funny, poignant look at an age-gap relationship where reality overtakes fantasy. One of Elizabeth von Arnim’s best, in my opinion, especially in the first half.

10. Darkness and Day by Ivy Compton-Burnett – #1951Club

For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like – nobody divides readers like Dame Ivy, but I loved this dark, twisty, extremely funny story in which, as always, the heightened way everyone speaks in circles is far more important than the plot.

9. The Bird in the Tree by Elizabeth Goudge – #1940Club

What makes this book so wonderful is the matriarch of the family – firm, loving, principled. It is so unusual today to have a novel that celebrates self-sacrifice, and Goudge does it in a beautiful way.

8. The Museum of Cheats by Sylvia Townsend-Warner – #1947Club

Not my favourite STW short story collection, but up there. She is at her best in Lolly Willowes and in her short stories, and these looks at ordinary lives capture the heartbreak, misunderstanding, and gentle hope that are the keynotes of most of our most memorable times.

7. Catherine Carter by Pamela Hansford Johnson – #1952Club

I was wary of this long, historical novel – but totally won over by this immersion in the world of Victorian theatre. It’s a page-turner, and the dynamic between Catherine and the man who is her manager, critic, and then husband is done with such nuance that you can’t look away from the page.

6. The Equations of Love by Ethel Wilson – #1952Club

Really here for the first of the two long stories – every word chosen perfectly, managing to be very funny while also deeply poignant about a couple living in near-poverty and near-distrust in mid-century Canada.

5. Tea at Four O’Clock by Janet O’Neill – #1956Club

I’d read a couple of O’Neill novels I was lukewarm about before picking up the extraordinarily good Tea at Four O’Clock. It opens with the funeral of Mildred, Laura’s sister – giving Laura agency and freedom for the first time in her life. And then the wastrel brother returns. It is such a complex, satisfying portrait of family dynamics.

4. Treasure Hunt by Molly Keane – #1952Club

As with O’Neill, I’d read a few Keane novels I liked but didn’t love – and then Treasure Hunt bowled me over with its humour. The younger generation are trying to save the ancestral home by taking in paying guests, and are obstructed at every turn by a trio of unhinged older relatives. So funny, and so engaging.

3. Tension by E.M. Delafeld – #1920Club

I read Tension in the early days of the pandemic, and it was in the British Library Women Writers series within a year. Delafield is so good at everyday monsters with no self-awareness – in this one, a respectable Lady does everything in her power to destroy a new teacher at the school, in the name of morality.

2. Miss Linsey and Pa by Stella Gibbons – #1936Club

Poor relatives move to be nearer their more well-to-do in-laws, and the clash is the source of the pain and humour in this novel. More humour provided by dead-on satire of the Bloomsbury Group. Much better than almost anything else Gibbons wrote (though sadly quite racist at times, which is why it’ll be unlikely to see the light of day again).

1. Merry Hall by Beverley Nichols – #1951Club

Gosh, what a journey this book kicked off! I absolutely fell for Beverley Nichols’ hilarious account of doing up a house and garden – and since then I’ve read many Nichols books and bought even more. His turn of phrase is endlessly funny, and the whole Merry Hall trilogy is a timeless delight.

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I also want to celebrate 10 years of this project more broadly. I am so thankful to everyone who has helped made it such a joy every six months. There are always far more reviews than I can keep up with, and such a range of authors, nationalities, genres, formats, languages. When I first emailed Karen about the idea, I hoped we would get some good take up. I couldn’t have imagined it would become such a fixture in our corner of the bookish internet, and I am grateful to Karen for always being an amazing co-host – and to all of you for joining in.

I did a little hunt, and I found the original email I sent to Karen in September 2015! And here it is…

Hi Karen – As is my wont, I had a thought about another mini blog project, and wondered if you fancied partnering up for it? Basically, I thought it would be fun to pick a particular year, and encourage everybody to read any book (or books) from that year – and thus build up a list of titles that give an overview of what was going on then?
And the year I thought might work was 1924 – just based on going through reviews on my blog, and there seems to be a good selection here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1924_in_literature – though I’m also definitely up for other suggestions if you think another year would work well!
What do you reckon?? I was thinking perhaps advertise now, then run it towards the end of October, or a bit later. Hopefully it would be pretty low effort for people, particularly if we can come up with a list of suggestions – though it would be the most fun if people thought up their own. And ‘The 1924 Club’ seemed a fun title.
Of course, Karen said an enthusiastic yes – and the rest is history!