Hay on Wye: I bought some books

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I’ve just spent a glorious weekend in this AirBnB in Herefordshire, near the Welsh border, with good friends and great weather. And, yes, it just happened to be near Hay-on-Wye, the town of secondhand bookshop. It also happened (though we didn’t realise this when we booked the holiday) to be the Hay Festival.

When I found out it was the festival, I was a bit worried that all the bookshops would be overcrowded, and all the good books would be gone – but I managed to come away with quite a great haul. AND I saw Jon Sopel talking about Donald Trump, which was entertaining and terrifying in equal measures.

It’s been a little while since I went to Hay, and it was lovely to go back – and, staying nearby, we were able to get there early and leave quite late. ALL THE MORE BOOKSHOPPING. And here are the *cough* 21 books I bought – a haul I’m really pleased with. Bonus: the view from my window at the AirBnB.

Do Butlers Burgle Banks? by P.G. Wodehouse
Company for Henry by P.G. Wodehouse
Barmy in Wonderland by P.G. Wodehouse
One of the bookshops I went in is, sadly, closing down – there do seem to be fewer and fewer each time – and it was holding a half price sale. There were SO many P.G. Wodehouse novels available, and I would have loved to picked up armfuls of the novels I didn’t have yet. I restrained myself and picked three that looked interesting.

Concerning Books and Bookmen by Ian Maclaren
This is a short book about how great books are, and what book obsessives are like – and it was published in the 1910s, which just gores to show that not all that much has changed.

Tantivy Towers by A.P. Herbert
I think APH has appeared in a few of my recent ‘hauls’, and this is a comic opera, of all things.

The Little World by Stella Benson
Here’s a top tip for book hunters: never overlook the ‘pocket classics’ section. I’d long assumed that there were filled with small editions of the standard classics – the Dickens, Gaskell, Wordsworth, etc that could be found anywhere. WELL, not so. It’s where I found this book (travel writing by Stella Benson) and the next one…

Lovers and Friends by E.F. Benson
I was hoping to find some more E.F. Benson in Hay – more on that later – and was really excited to stumble across Lovers and Friends, which I don’t remember ever hearing about before.

Murder at the Manor
Thirteen Guests by J Jefferson Farjeon
More books for my growing British Library Crime Classics shelf! My assumption is that I’ll be reading them for years and years.

Buttercups and Daisies by Compton Mackenzie
I’ve started reading this one already – it’s a very funny novel about a well-meaning tyrannical father and husband who disastrously moves his family to the countryside. I’ll feed back soon!

In the Purely Pagan Spirit by John Lehmann
Having just read some Rosamond Lehmann, I thought I’d read one of her brother’s novels – well, I didn’t know he’d written any novels (despite having read his vituperative memoir of the Woolfs) but now I have one!

Ivy Compton-Burnett by Frank Baldanza
I. Compton-Burnett by Charles Burkhart
Some ICB fan had obviously sold a pile of books to one bookshop, and I was happy to sweep them right UP.

English Journey by Beryl Bainbridge
Apparently this is something of a response to J.B. Priestley’s book of the same name (which I haven’t got or read), but who more entertaining to give her own eccentric and unique perspective on England than Beryl Bainbridge?

The Challoners by E.F. Benson
And another Benson! This was in a shop that had quite a few in stock – though this was the only one I could afford. The man running the bookshop confidently suggested that £250 (which one of the rarer books cost) was “only the price of dinner for four or five people”. Which means that I’ve convinced a stranger that I look like the sort of person who spends at least £50 on dinner, so that’s something.

The Fool Hath Said by Beverley Nichols
News of England by Beverley Nichols
For Adults Only by Beverley Nichols
The Powers That Be by Beverley Nichols
A couple of the people on our trip had popped into Hay the day before I went, and I’d been forewarned about lots of Nichols books – and I swooped in and bought all the ones I didn’t already have. This range seems to encompass novel, essays, journalism, and theology. Versatile!

Rose Macaulay by Jane Emery
I did read bits of this biography of Macaulay in the Bodleian once, but it’s good to have it on my shelves.

Have you read any of these? Or any particularly catch your attention? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Do you want to read my DPhil thesis?

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Any regular reader of Stuck in a Book between 2009 and 2013 will know that I was busy doing a DPhil in English literature, but I can never remember how much I wrote about it here. That’s partly because I found the first year quite stressful and almost quit, and partly because nobody’s interested in hearing how I didn’t manage to get to the library that day, and how annoying it is that no two fantasy theorists have the same definition of ‘fantasy’.

BUT – I shan’t bury the lede – my DPhil thesis is now available to read online or download, should you so wish. I requested a one-year embargo (the lowest available) and, hey presto, four years later it’s here! I still think the topic is fascinating, so you might enjoy reading it. (I don’t want to know about any typos…)

And it seems like a good opportunity to give a quick overview of what I did it in – starting with the title: ‘Dark, mysterious, and undocumented’: The Middlebrow Fantasy and the Fantastic Middlebrow. Yep, that’s a quote from Virginia Woolf – from Orlando, in fact, which was initially quite a substantial part of my thesis, but substantially cut after my first year viva.

Middlebrow fantasy

In brief, the ‘middlebrow fantasy’ was a bit of a conflation: the fake portrayal of middlebrow readers (in the 1920s and ’30s) as unthinking and unintelligent, and middlebrow literature as reductive and limited in scope (oh hi Leavises). I also used it to refer to the fantasy of the ideal middle-class home, without any problems – which was then subverted and challenged by fantastic strands in middlebrow novels.

Fantastic middlebrow

Upon hearing my thesis title (and saying “what?” and having it repeated), people often said “Oh, like Lord of the Rings?” No, not like Lord of the Rings. It doesn’t help that every fantasy theorist, as mentioned, uses the terminology differently – but I was only looking at novels that were based in the real world, but with an element of fantasy that intrudes. And people are surprised, otherwise it would be magical realism. Confusing, no? But this is how I define fantastic literature, and it’s the sort of novel I love – while fantasy novels, set in alternative universes with different natural laws, don’t interest me.

So, which books did I write about?

I was doing a thematic thesis, which meant defining my limits was really hard. I often envied single-author thesis writers, who could just say “I’ll do all their books”, or “I’ll do all their early poetry” or whatever. I’m sure that comes with its own challenges. But I had to try to find every fantastic middlebrow novel of note in the 1920s and ’30s, often just through reading contemporary reviews or blurbs or publishers ads. It was a fun treasure hunt, but I lived in fear that I’d discover a massively important one when I finished the thesis. So far, I have not…

The main books I looked at were Lady into Fox by David Garnett, Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner, The Love Child by Edith Olivier, Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker, Flower Phantoms by Ronald Fraser, The Venetian Glass Nephew by Elinor Wylie, and Her Monkey Wife by John Collier, with Diary of a Provincial Lady by E.M. Delafield as a non-fantastic counterpoint – but I also included bits on books by Virginia Woolf, David Lindsay, Bernadette Murphy, Rachel Ferguson, Stella Benson, Bea Howe, Rose Macaulay, May Sinclair, Rebecca West, G.E. Trevelyan, Herbert Read, Mary Pendered, C.M.A. Peake, and more.

These chapters were the most fun to write. I spent two years working on my chapters on the middlebrow broadly and on fantasy theory, with a lot on the influence of Freud too, and in the second half of my DPhil I could look at primary texts! Yay! Close readingggg! All of this was the most fun, especially as I felt on surer ground – having bedded myself in with all that theoretical reading.

How was it structured?

After those chapters looking at the middlebrow and the fantastic, I linked up manifestations of the fantastic with specific societal anxieties affecting the middle classes of the 1920s and ’30s. First, metamorphosis alongside the changing sexual role of women in marriage; second, creation narratives and childlessness; third, witchcraft and the increase in single women after the First World War.

This did mean I had to dispense with chapters on fantastic time and fantastic space (though the latter pops up quite a bit) because they didn’t seem to me to link to any specific anxieties, and that was the most productive way to structure my thesis.

Writing all this has made me feel rather pleased with how it worked out – and skimming over the contents page makes me want to re-read it. It does feel as though somebody has written the book that most matches my literary interests! It was a long, sometimes slow and painful, often exciting journey to get to the finished thing. And, if you fancy having a gander yourself, do please go ahead.

Tea or Books? #58: Book Groups (yes or no), and The Fountain Overflows vs Invitation to the Waltz

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Rebecca West, Rosamond Lehmann, and book groups – welcome to episode 58!


 
I can hardly believe that we’ve not done an episode on book groups before – but here we are! In the first half, Rachel and I talk about whether or not we’re in book groups, and what would constitute our ideal book group. In the second half, we discuss Rebecca West’s 1956 novel The Fountain Overflows and compare it with Rosamond Lehmann’s 1932 novel Invitation to the Waltz – both the beginning of series, and both about young women entering the world.

We’re always very happy to hear suggestions for topics or authors – do let us know if there’s anything you think we should cover.

Our iTunes page is here, and you can support the podcast through Patreon – and get various ‘rewards’, including a book a month picked by us.

The books and authors we mention in this episode are:

Villette by Charlotte Bronte
The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gower
The Railway Children by E. Nesbit
Stonecliff by Robert Nathan
Portrait of Jennie by Robert Nathan
The Train in the Meadow by Robert Nathan
Mr Whittle and the Morning Star by Robert Nathan
Golden Hill by Francis Spufford
Being Dead by Jim Crace
Reading Groups by Jenny Hartley
Kamchatka by Marcelo Figueras
Regeneration by Pat Barker
Thomas Hardy
Guard Your Daughters by Diana Tutton
Jose Saramago
George Macdonald Fraser
P.G. Wodehouse
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Immortality by Milan Kundera
E.M. Delafield
Illustrado by Miguel Syjuco
To The North by Elizabeth Bowen
Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker
The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay
Invitation to the Waltz by Rosamond Lehmann
The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West
This Real Night by Rebecca West
Cousin Rosamund by Rebecca West
The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann
Illyrian Spring by Ann Bridge
Barbara Comyns
Rachel Ferguson
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West
The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West
The Echoing Grove by Rosamond Lehmann
Dusty Answer by Rosamond Lehmann
Virginia Woolf
Thank Heaven Fasting by E.M. Delafield
‘Her First Ball’ by Katherine Mansfield
Harriet Hume by Rebecca West
H.G. Wells
Rebecca West by Victoria Glendinning
Random Commentary by Dorothy Whipple
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

Kamchatka by Marcelo Figueras

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People often say that the best thing about book groups is getting to read things you wouldn’t usually pick up. To be honest, I’m not often looking for new things to pick up – I’m in a book group so that I get to talk about books with people and, more often than not, I’m not particularly bowled over by the book choice. Which is why it was a lovely surprised that I enjoyed Kamchatka by Marcelo Figeuras so much. Published in Spanish in 2003, and translated into English by Frank Wynne in 2010, this didn’t sound at all like something I’d like – but I really did. (A thank you to Annabel for giving me her copy!)

The novel concerns the political crises in Argentina, specifically the coup d’etat, in the 1970s. Now, you’ve quite possibly either thought “Oo, sounds intriguing” or “Um, no ta” right off the bat – but the latter group of you should keep reading. I knew almost nothing about Argentina in the 1970s, or any other period, and had rather conflated Evita with the disappearances. But this puts me rather in the same place as the young boy who is at the forefront of Kamchatka (in a narrative that is simultaneously from his young perspective and from that of a his adult self, looking back on events – a dual perspective that is handled extremely deftly). He also doesn’t really know what’s going on around him, and is swept up in events that control his life without being comprehensible.

His parents are evidently on the wrong side of the new ruling power, and they must go into hiding – though at first his mother maintains her work as a scientist (I love that this was her role), and they don’t travel too far. They do assume new names, though. The unnamed narrator becomes Harry, after his idol Harry Houdini. His funny, wild younger brother (known as ‘Midget’, which wasn’t very comfortable to read) chooses Simon – hurrah! And an older boy, on the cusp of adulthood, also joins the family. He says he is called Lucas, and Harry and Simon shift from an initial distrust of him to a really beautiful love for him.

And why is the novel called Kamchatka, when that is nowhere near Argentina? You (like me) might know the placename only from its appearance on the Risk board – the board game where your figures battle each other to achieve world domination. But it’s also the word that Harry uses for his mental escape – his imaginary refuge – and thus what he labels the strange place they’ve gone.

I loved how well Figueras built the story from a collage of what Harry would have found important – Houdini, Risk, his family – and from the stuffed toys, school uniforms, and other everyday objects that created his world. We never quite see what the dangers are, or hear about what has happened to those who vanish – but we see enough to feel his fear, or his shame when his old best friend can no longer see him. In short, short chapters – often no more than two or three pages – we enter his world.

And another thing Figueras does well is combine narrative and philosophy. We’ve probably all seen this done badly enough times to know how difficult it is to achieve. But Figueras will move from the general to the specific, or draw out the essential human truths of a situation, masterfully – and without making it feel as though we have lost touch of the narrator’s striking voice and unusual angle on things. Here’s an example that I found affecting, even with an abiding dislike of geography:

Sometimes I think that everything you need to know about life can be found in geography books. The result of centuries of research, they tell us how the Earth was formed, how the incandescent ball of energy of those first days finally cooled into its present, stable form. They tell us about how successive geological strata of the planet were laid down, one on top of the other, creating a model which applies to everything in life. (In a sense, we too are made up of successive layers. Our current incarnation is laid down over a previous one, but sometimes it cracks and eruptions bring to the surface elements we thought long buried.)

Geography books teach us where we live in a way that makes it possible to see beyond the ends of our noses. Our city is part of a country, our country part of a continent, our continent lies on a hemispheres, that hemisphere is bounded by certain oceans and these oceans are a vital part of the whole planet: one cannot exist without the other. Contour maps reveal what political maps conceal: that all land is land, all water is water. Some lands are higher, some lower, some arid, some humid, but all land is land. There are warmer waters and cooler waters, some waters are shallow, some deep, but all water is water. In this context all artificial divisions, such as those on political maps, smack of violence.

A word should also be said for Wynne, the translator, of course – who manages to keep not only the poetry and vividness of Figeuras’s writing, but also coped with all the wordplay that recurs in the novel. Well done, Wynne!

So, yes, something rather out of my comfort zone, but a real success – I very much recommend it.

Who Was Sophie? by Celia Robertson

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I can’t remember why I ordered Who Was Sophie? (2008) online, but I can tell you that it arrived on 6th June 2011 – and, while I was browsing and looking for some unusual non-fiction to read, I picked it up. Since I also didn’t remember anything about the what the book was about, it all came as rather a surprise – strange, intriguing, and rather special.

Having now read it, I have to assume that it was the Virginia Woolf connection that led me to pick up this book. It concerns Joan Adeney Easdale who, as a teenager, became an unexpected prodigy – published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press. This biography (by Easdale’s granddaughter) looks at her life – and what led from her being feted by the literati to being a destitute, lonely, eccentric old lady by the 1970s. As for the ‘Sophie’ of the title? That’s Joan too – a name she went by much later in life, and a fact that is only properly addressed after about 200 pages. Suffice to say, I don’t think I’d have called the book Was Was Sophie? if it had been my decision!

Robertson doesn’t include footnotes or references (beyond a broad list at the end), so it’s not always clear where all her information came from – but we follow Easdale from childhood, and presumably she has gathered good research. Indeed, we start a bit earlier – looking at Easdale’s parents, and particularly her pushy mother Ellen. Ellen was determined that Joan and her brother would become successful – and not just successful, but be recognised as geniuses. And her brother did, indeed, end up as a renowned musician. Joan started earlier – when Ellen optimistically sent off her poetry to the Hogarth Press, it was recognised as special.

Some of her poetry is included in the book (and, indeed, the final section is the entire facsimile of her long poem Amber Innocent, which she works on for many years – a lovely touch). I don’t particularly enjoy it myself, but it’s fascinating to read how Joan considered her own work – and to compare Ellen’s letters to friends with Virginia Woolf’s diary entries. Woolf was, it turned out, rather laughing at the family as people (though respectful of Easdale as a writer).

I found all of this section really interesting – though there also looms over it the knowledge that things will change. I shan’t type out all of the rest of Easdale’s life, but it can be broadly summed up by the effects of mental illness. It spoils her marriage and alienates her children; it destroys her relationships with those around her, and perhaps also contributed to the end of her writing. As she gets older, she seems not to want to consider herself a writer at all – despite her husband’s fervent encouragement – and it is one of many leaves that drop from the tree.

Robertson documents the life extremely well (even though I would have loved footnotes!) – sensitive, and combining a good level of objectivity and subjectivity. We do not forget that she is the subject’s granddaughter, but we still feel in the safe hands of a biographer. My only criticism, in tone, is that she occasionally writes about her own journey as a biographer – particularly when travelling to Australia to follow Easdale’s life – but not enough. Some biography purists would prefer the biographer to be completely absent. I really love biographies that integrate the journey of discovery into the narrative itself, but it has to be done to a sufficient amount to feel deliberate. In Who Was Sophie?, it was perhaps a bit too sporadic.

Ultimately, I’m still not quite sure what brought this to my shelves – nor how Robertson managed to persuade somebody that this forgotten writer was worthy of a biography – but I am very grateful that both things happened. It was exactly the sort of unusual non-fiction I was looking for.

Hunt the Slipper by Violet Trefusis

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Last Bank Holiday weekend, I decided to go and spend a bit of time at a National Trust property, enjoying the sunshine and reading a book or two (or three). None of the books I was reading at that juncture felt quite right – and so I scouted round my shelves until I found something that did. And I chose Hunt the Slipper (1937) by Violet Trefusis.

I’ve read a couple of other novels by Trefusis before. I loved Echo, and quite quickly read Broderie Anglaise, which I didn’t much like. Then I came to impasse and waited a few years, clearly. The cover to Hunt the Slipper was enough to persuade me – that, and the fact that it fitted one of my empty years in A Century of Books.

Trefusis’s novel is about privileged, artistic, middle-aged types – experimenting with love and with detachment. At the centre is Nigel Benson, on the cusp of 50, and living with his sister Molly. He has been something of a lothario, but is becoming a little more interested in fine furniture and architecture. Into his life – because she is the new wife of his close friend Sir Anthony Crome – walks a young woman called Caroline. She has little time for manners, airily says what she thinks, doesn’t really understand the mores of his world. And they fall awkwardly, uncertainly in love. In Paris, of course.

Trefusis has a rather assured and engaging tone – quite arch, witty, and the right level of detachment from her characters. Here’s the opening paragraph:

Molly Benson was clipping a small yew with a virtuosity, a flourish that would have put many a professional topiarist to shame. The click-click of her secateurs, monotonous, hypnotic, was sending her brother to sleep, the newspaper on his knees had slithered to the ground, and his head lolled… Molly had hoped this would happen. Poor pet! He gets so little, she thought, meaning sleep. She was glad to contribute to that little. An excellent sleeper herself, she was rather proud of his insomnia. It set him aside as a superior being. Like Nietzsche, he only obtained by violence what was given others freely.

It’s her wonderful writing style that stands out. And particularly the ways that characters observe and misunderstand each other – and how they see a whole scene, including crockery, sideboards, walls, landscapes. They each build their own interpretations of surroundings, and Trefusis convinces us that they are whole people. Often her turns of phrase and small similes are perfect – and this helps elevate the story above the traditional love triangle tropes. I rather liked this excerpt:

“Well, good-bye, my dear,” he said, with a sickly heartiness. “I shall look forward to seeing you in May. Don’t forget my address is the Grand Hotel, Florence.” 

“Good-bye, Nigel. I can never forget all you’ve done for me.” They were like guilty correspondents who imagine that so long as the end of their letters is above-board, nobody will inquire into the rest.”

I certainly preferred the sections of the novel that weren’t about love affairs. It’s something I find rather tedious to read about, and is the reason Broderie Anglaise was a misfire for me – but she is rather more clever about it in this book. We don’t get pages of people pouring their hearts out, or a narrative that expects us to weep when they weep. The characters are no less sincere, but Trefusis knows better than to expect us to buy into it completely.

Incidentally, the title is explained at one point:

He did not suspect that by one of Love’s infallible ricochets she was behaving to him as Melo had behaved to her. Her cruelty was Melo’s legacy; her indifference to him was out of revenge for Melo’s indifference to her. Love had passed from one to the other, furtive, unseizable, like the slipper in ‘Hunt the Slipper’.

I still wish I could read a Trefusis novel where she’s not writing about romantic love – because I think she’s better and more interesting on other topics – but I’ll keep reading whatever she has written. She might mostly be remembered now as a footnote in Bloomsbury love triangles, but I think she deserves more than that.

Stuck in a Book’s Miscellany

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The weekend may be more than half over, but why not have a miscellany nonetheless? I was up in London yesterday, enjoying the spectacular royal wedding from the Southbank. I particularly loved the wonderful sermon from the minister – telling the world about the wonder of God’s love. Such a beautiful day for it all, too!

And here’s the book, blog post, and link…

1.) The link – I still freelance for OxfordWords, and wrote a really fun post about words in book titles that have changed in meaning: ‘What’s brave about Brave New World?‘

2.) The book – I didn’t love the only Salley Vickers novel I read, but I am drawn to The Librarian – not least for this stunning cover. Though it is a rip-off of Joan Bodger’s brilliant How The Heather Looks (google it!). I’d rather hoped it would be non-fic about a particularly influential librarian in Vickers’ reading life – somebody write that book! – but it could still be great anyway.

3.) The blog post – Hayley’s celebration of Virago at 40 is fab. And gives me a good excuse to post a picture of the beautiful tea cosy she made me while listening to ‘Tea or Books?’! Thanks Hayley :)

Tea or Books? #57: save vs binge, and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd vs The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

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Murder mysteries and binge-reading – enjoy episode 57!

 

In this episode, we compare an uncharacteristically modern novel – The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton, published in 2018 – with Agatha Christie’s classic Poirot novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. In the first half, we debate whether we binge-read authors or spread them out to save them.

Feel sorry for Rachel this week – she’s rather croaky with a cold, but she powers on admirably! I’ve edited out most of her coughing, poor thing, but apologies for any that have snuck in.

You can check out our Patreon account – where you can support the podcast at various different reward levels, including having a book sent each month. We also have our iTunes page, and you can read Rachel’s reviews of The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

The books and authors we mention in this episode are:

Kamchatka by Marcelo Figueras
The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar
Charlotte Bronte: A Life by Claire Harman
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Villette by Charlotte Bronte
Iris Murdoch
A.A. Milne
E.M. Delafield
Richmal Crompton
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Charles Dickens
P.G. Wodehouse
Jane Austen
Miss Read
Enid Blyton
Point Horror
The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton
The Cazalet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard
The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy
The L-Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks
Albert the Dragon by Rosemary Weir
Further Adventures of Albert the Dragon by Rosemary Weir
Barbara Pym
Dorothy Whipple
Elizabeth Taylor
Elizabeth Bowen
Sanditon by Jane Austen
The Watsons by Jane Austen
Lady Susan by Jane Austen
Night and Day by Virginia Woolf
Beverley Nichols
Anne Tyler
Rose Macaulay
The Loved One by Edith Olivier
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
Death in the Clouds by Agatha Christie
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie
Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie
Invitation to the Waltz by Rosamond Lehmann
The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West
Cousin Rosamund by Rebecca West

Stuck in a Book’s Weekend Miscellany

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It’s Eurovision weekend!! I’m off to Bristol to watch it with friends, though I can’t imagine it’ll do anything for the headaches I’ve been getting this week. Anyway, whatever happens here’s a blog post, a link, and a book to keep you going.

1.) The link – was sent to me by Farid on Instagram. Thanks Farid! It’s a jam roly-poly recipe inspired by The Diary of a Provincial Lady. What a fun idea – even if the original in Delafield’s novel doesn’t sound that appetising. Follow the link for more context.

2.) The blog post – you probably already listen to the Reading the End podcast – but I’ll give a heads up, nonetheless, that in their latest episode they did the topic I suggested. It’s about whether or not you take your personal morality into reading experiences.

3.) The book – Rex v Edith Thompson by Laura Thompson looks fascinating. It’s about the infamous murder case that inspired F Tennyson Jesse’s A Pin To See The Peepshow and E.M. Delafield’s Messalina of the Suburbs.

Which books did I buy in April?

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Yes, I bought books in April. I bought eight books. But I read 11! So I’m continuing my reading-more-than-I’m-buying streak – spoilers, this will not be the case in June, as I’m going to Hay on Wye. But so far so good in May.

Here are the books I bought, and where and why etc.

Honeybubble & Co by A.P. Herbert
This is the first of three books I bought at a donkey sanctuary table top sale (classic me). APH was one of those Punch types whom I’ve not read much of, but vaguely know about. Something to add to the pile.

A Legacy by Sybille Bedford
I always think I have all of Bedfords novels, but I didn’t actually have this one before. Now i do!

Rolling in the Drew by Ethel Mannin
Mannin is another of those authors I think I know about, then realise I’ve just seen her name a lot. This looks really funny – a satire of a health retreat, from 1940.

The Bankrupt Bookseller by Will Darling
The original book and its sequel collected in one edition. Fun!

We Think the World of You by J.R. Ackerley
I really hope I like Ackerley, since this is the fourth book I’ve bought by him without having read any. But NYRB Classics… so beautiful.

Out of the Ordinary by Jon Ronson
I do really enjoy Ronson. This will be a nice, undemanding read sometime.

To See Ourselves by E.M. Delafield
My friends know me well enough that they knew to message me when they found this in Hay-on-Wye, and ask if I’d like them to pick it up for me. Er, yes please!

The Vanishing Celebrities by Adrian Alington
I couldn’t resist this murder mystery (I think?) with such an intriguing title. I was going to read straightaway, but A Century of Books means this one might wait a while.