Which books have I given up on?

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I don’t often give up on books. I think that’s largely because I select the books I want to read relatively carefully, and also because I’d rather speed-read to the end of a book and add it to my list than give up – particularly if I’m over halfway. People often say that life’s too short to read books you’re not enjoying, and I daresay that’s true, but I’m still relatively young (more relative by the day…) so perhaps have yet to feel the impending pressure of how few books I’ll actually manage to read in the rest of my life. Frankly, it’s mostly because I like putting the books I’ve read on a list. I love lists.

But I did give up on a book this week, pretty quickly, and it got me thinking about the books I’ve given up on over the years. I thought I’d go through them, looking at how far I got and why I gave up. (And, since they don’t end up on my lists, who knows how many others I gave up on and forgot about? Incidentally, I’m not including books that I never finished because they got lost in the pile of current reads – these were all intentional give-ups.)

 

The book: The Extraordinary Life of A.A. Milne by Nadia Cohen

How far did I get: c.40 pages

This is the one that kicked off the post. I hadn’t realised a new biography of AAM was out last year, and was quite excited to go to the library and get it. My excitement quickly dissipated. It was written in a sort of tabloidy style (everyone was ‘outraged’ or ‘never forgave’ etc.) and generally quite over the top. Then Cohen referred to his ‘stories about a family of rabbits’. She was referring to The Rabbits – sketches about a group of amateur sportsmen, so-called because ‘rabbits’ is slang for amateur sportsmen. How poor was her research? There was no referencing whatsoever, and – more worryingly – Milne’s autobiography wasn’t even listed in the tiny bibliography. I suspect she read Ann Thwaite’s excellent biography, abbreviated and tabloided it, and churned it out in time for the Goodbye Christopher Robin film last year.

 

The book: We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

How far did I get: c.50 pages

This was all the rage a few years ago, and I made an impulse purchase in a supermarket – which had a big stand of them. Not my usual sort of novel, being quite traumatic, but I thought I’d give it a go as I’d heard such good things. Well, I never made it as far as the traumatic bit. It was so poorly written – so over written – that I just couldn’t continue. I recall that I gave up at the sentence (while the narrator is having a bath and is worried that the hot water might run out) that ‘it permeated my ablutions with disquiet’. Good lord.

 

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

How far did I get: c.20 pages

I’m sure Lolita is brilliant. There are enough people who rave about Nabokov whose opinions I respect that I don’t doubt he is one of the twentieth century’s great writers. But I cannot read about paedophilia, particularly inside the mind of a paedophile. I recognise that that limitation is with me rather than with the literature, and I certainly don’t believe in censoring books (except on quality – there’s no reason that badly written books should be published) but this crosses one of my lines in the sand.

 

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson

How far did I get: c.100 pages

This was for book group. And, of course, everyone was reading it a few years ago – and watching the movie, and then watching the next movie. I wasn’t excited about it, because I don’t love gruesome books. But the reason I actually gave up was because it was so deathly dully. It read like an Argos catalogue – every item mentioned getting its brand name and value. (For good measure, I did get one description of torture and murder that haunts me still.)

 

The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith

How far did I get: c.100 pages

I love the Harry Potter series, and I was certainly very open to reading more by J.K. Rowling, under a pseudonym or otherwise. And a murder mystery sounded perfect for her, since many of the Harry Potter books are essentially mysteries – and she’s quite brilliant at pacing in those. But The Silkworm… again, I just found it really boring. And rather gruesome, yes, but it was the tedium that put me off.

 

Gone to Earth by Mary Webb

How far did I get: 1.5 pages

Never have I given up on a book so quickly. It was just so astonishingly bad. You can read more about my thoughts (and my annotations for those 1.5 pages) in a post from the time. I got lots of lovely comments on it, and one (Anonymous, naturally) telling me that “you probably weren’t worthy of reading it anyway”.

Do share which books you’ve given up on – and if you write a blog post about it, pop it in the comments.

Anybody Can Do Anything by Betty Macdonald

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It’s been a while since I listened to all the Betty Macdonald books on audio, courtesy of review copies from Post-Hypnotic Press, and every now and then I remember to write about them. Anybody Can Do Anything (1950) is the third – after The Egg and I about chicken farming and The Plague and I about life in a TB hospital. This is the most general so far, and also my favourite of the four autobiographical books Macdonald wrote.

It takes place during the Great Depression, where jobs are scarce and Betty is desperate. So desperate, in fact, that she takes the advice of her go-getter sister Mary. Mary insists that anybody can do anything, and specifically that anybody can get any sort of job. Which is how, in the era of very little employment, Macdonald manages to secure (and lose) a vast number of jobs.

As usual with Macdonald, she meanders around the topic for a little too long before getting into it – each of her books would be slightly better with the first chapter lopped off – but once we’re in the sway, it’s hilarious. She works as a photo tinter, she works a stenographer, she works as a typist. She has various office jobs, she gets involved in a pyramid scheme, she organises the offices for a mining company – and gets in trouble for putting all the maps in size order, rather than by place or contract. Often we don’t see quite how she leaves these jobs, but there are dozens of them – each time, Macdonald describes her own ineptitudes extremely amusingly. She has self-deprecating down so well that you’d swear she was British.

This does all eventually lead to her sister forcing her to try writing, so there was definitely a happy ending. But the pinnacle of the book is a lengthy section that is creepy rather than simply an amusing catastrophe. It concerns a woman whose name I can’t remember but was something like Doritos. She turns up a shift of folding papers and putting them in envelopes (if I recall) and talks wildly, roots through Macdonald’s bag, and later starts stalking her. That doesn’t do this section justice – she is built up like something in a suspense novel, and it shows an element to Macdonald’s writing that I hadn’t seen elsewhere. Masterfully done, and leaves us with nervous laughter rather than the empathetic, happy laughter of the rest.

Macdonald’s personal life is curiously absent from the page. Her time in the TB clinic is glossed over in a sentence (understandably, given the amount of time she spends on it in The Plague and I), but she also acquires a husband almost incidentally – and her children are scarcely mentioned at all. Perhaps she didn’t want to dilute what focus the book does has, but it is bizarre to remember that they exist, in the middle of some amusing exploits in an office Macdonald is comically ill-suited to.

As before, Heather Henderson does a brilliant job narrating this – I can’t imagine Betty Macdonald in any other hands now. Heartily recommended.

Excellent Intentions by Richard Hull

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Who doesn’t love the British Library Crime Classics? I’m amassing them far faster than I can read them, but earlier this month I did read Excellent Intentions (1938) by Richard Hull, which is one of their more recent publications. I was beguiled by the description of it being an unusual twist on the detective novel. And the reason it’s a twist is because we start in the courtroom, with the accused in the dock…

“May it please your lordship – members of the jury.” Anstruther Blayton rose to his feet and, as was his habit, moved some papers that were near him in an unnecessary and fussy manner. At the age of fifty-two he was, he knew, comparatively young to have been selected by the Attorney-General to act as leader in a trial which was arousing a certain amount of public interest. Even though he had been known for some time as a leading K.C. on the circuit, it was his chance and he meant to make the most of it.

That’s the opening paragraph, throwing us right into the midst of the trial. But – crucially – we do not know who the accused is.

As the trial continues, the scenes described run parallel to it. So, as the brilliantly-named Anstruther Blayton talks us through the scene of the death, we then jump to seeing it – Mr Cargate, taking snuff on a train, and dying almost immediately. Cargate is that stereotypical murder victim from this genre – universally disliked, and rightly so. All manner of people are suspected, from his household staff to the inheritors to a group of people involved in (of all things) the stamp trade.

I don’t know if Hull was a philatelist or simply did a lot of research, but buckle up to learn a huge amount about stamps. Unless you already know it, in which case… well, I hope he got the details right. I could have done with perhaps less of this information, not least because I spent the whole time marvelling that anybody could care whether or not a particular stamp did or did not have a dot of ink in a particular place. But Hull does a good job of immersing us in this world.

Hull writes with wit, which always helps this sort of novel, and many of his characters are very vivid – particularly in the silent sparring within the courtroom. The actual plot seems like it might be rather flimsy, but don’t form your opinions until the final page… and perhaps not even then. A worthy addition to the BLCC series.

Stuck in a Book’s Weekend Miscellany

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This week has been long. And sometimes a bit wearying. It started off with a nasty cold and feeling very sorry for myself. It ended with Trump coming to the UK with his hideous rhetoric about immigrants and general terribleness – I went to Blenheim Palace to protest. He truly is a terrible, terrible human being, and I’m ashamed that the leaders of my country were so sycophantic to him – though proud of the protests that the British people have put on in response.

Anyway. Ugh. Here’s a book, a link, and a blog post to distract ourselves…

1.) The blog post – is on Medium, which feels very millennial of me (is Medium still a thing?) It’s about the buy-out of Capitol Hill Books by the employees and friends of the eccentric owner Jim Toole. I’ve been a couple times, and love it, and the post is quite amusing. I’m so pleased this bookstore is sticking around, so close to the political heart of the US.

2.) The book – where did I hear about Avid Reader by Robert Gottlieb? Can’t remember, but it’s another book about reading (and an autobiography) that I will inevitably buy at some point. With his heritage working at Simon and Schuster, Alfred Knopf, and The New Yorker, how could this not be good?

3.) The link – with Trump on the mind, here’s a link for the best places to donate to help migrant and refugee families at the US/Mexico border. It’s from a few weeks ago, when the situation was a little different, but they could still do with all the compassion and help that we can give.

Delicious Jane Austen

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I got a lovely surprise in the post the other day from my friend Hannah, also known to me as Phu. More on that later. First, look at this delight (and find out, below, how you can get one too!):

I lived with Phu for a few months quite a few years ago, and had been friends for a few years before (I watched Neighbours at her house when I couldn’t get it on my own TV) – when we lived together, our house was known as the House of Baking. All of us did it to a greater or lesser extent, but even then it was obvious Phu was the best – and now she is doing it professionally, under the company name The Art of Baking. Do go and check out her Etsy store, where you can order all manner of pre-made and customised biscuits – a lovely alternative to a card. As her tagline says, why not say it with biscuits??

As for ‘Phu’ – well, this came when Mel (another housemate at the time), Hannah, and I were going to Tesco late night to buy the discounted pastries. Mel and I were holding things up by faffing, but we claimed that we’d put the blame on Hannah instead – and so successfully that everyone would call her the pastry-holder-upper. Or Phu, for short. So far we’re the only two people who have. But we’re still doing it ten years later, which I count a success.

Dolphin Books

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I rather love Dolphin Books. Not books about dolphins (though I’m sure there are some great examples out there), but a short-lived series from Chatto and Windus in the early 1930s. Here are the ones I have…

I haven’t done an enormous amount (read: any) research into them, but there were at least 16 titles in the series – because Dickens by Osbert Sitwell (my most recent purchase) is #16. I don’t think there were very many more, despite their ‘future titles in process’ declaration.

It was my study of Sylvia Townsend Warner that alerted me to them. When I wanted to read her Opus 7, this was the version that arrived – or perhaps, before that, I read her interview in Louise Morgan’s delightful Writers at Work. Either way, I wasn’t intending to come across the series – but once I’d seen one, I was in love. They are a nicely tactile hardback, very short (all under 100pp, I think) and just lovely objects. Quite an eclectic mix of topics, but largely non-fiction – though Opus 7 is a long poem.

Writers at Work was hard to get affordably, but I waited until it was – because it’s such a nice set of interviews with various authors, exploring how they work and where they write. Think a Paris Review Interview but earlier and a little more homely (in the British sense of the word!) But besides that, I’ve not really actively sought them out – I’ve mostly just waited until I’ve seen them on bookshelves. I could probably complete my collection pretty cheaply with a few clicks, but it’s fun to keep an eye out and slowly build up my Dolphin Books pile with serendipitous finds.

(Unless this post means all of them suddenly disappear of course…)

Buttercups and Daisies by Compton Mackenzie

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OK, that’s it. I’m going to have to start buying all the Compton Mackenzie novels I see, aren’t I? I read Buttercups and Daisies (1931) before my 25 Books challenge started, but didn’t manage to write about it – and I bought it in Hay on Wye recently. I always like to start one of the books I buy on holiday, and the intriguing opening pages of this one made it my nomination.

Here are the opening paragraphs – which, accompanied by an illustration of Mr W, were what made me both buy the book and start it immediately:

“This,” Mr. Waterall announced, on a fine Saturday morning in late September, as he gazed over the top of his paper at his wife, “this is what I have been looking for for years.”

Mrs. Waterall’s impulse was to suppose that her husband was enjoying one of those little triumphs to which he was periodically addicted. He had a habit of putting articles away in safe places, forgetting the place immediately afterwards, and accusing every member of his family, from his wife to the boy who came in to do the knives, of having interfered with his arrangements for security. Mrs. Waterall could not be blamed for assuming that. This was one of the mislaid treasures.

“For years!” Mr. Waterall portentously repeated. “Have the goodness to listen, my dear.”

Mrs. Waterall, realising that her husband wanted to read something from the Daily Telegraph, jumped to the conclusion that he had discovered another cure for baldness. She hoped it would not be as complicated a cure as the last one he had tried, when he had sat for two hours in the bathroom every Sunday morning, wearing upon his head a hemisphere of indiarubber which has kept firm by the vacuum and was connected by a long tube to an electrical apparatus emitting fizzes and blue sparks.

But what he has actually found, in fact, is a cottage in Hampshire for sale. I say cottage – it is a ‘two-roomed bungalow’, but Mr Waterall has bold ideas about what he can turn it into. He doesn’t intend to move his wife, daughter, and two sons there permanently – but he certainly intends for it to be their country house. Off he goes, to meet the man selling it. For some reason, I can never get enough of house hunting scenes in novels, particularly if they’re amusing ones, and Mackenzie’s is a corker. It becomes more and more apparent that the man selling the bungalow is a charlatan, who lies and evades questions and flatters Mr Waterall’s ego until he has agreed to take it. All he needs to do is add a few more rooms, buy some trees, and he’ll be good to go.

The novel shows how his long-suffering wife, adventurous boys, and simpering girl (simpering mostly because she knows how best to placate him for her own advantage, to the ire of her brothers) are carted out to the middle of nowhere. All does not go well. The buttercups and daisies of the title are certainly ironic. Little Phyllis falls down a well. A cow wanders in, because they don’t have a back door to the kitchen. The neighbours range from amiably mad to obstreperous.

And I loved reading all of it.

The other Mackenzie novel I’ve read, Poor Relations, was also very funny – with a put-upon protagonist whose success comes with the price of having all manner of relatives expect to live off him. In Buttercups and Daisies, we exchange an empathetic lead for one who is a well-meaning tyrant. His absolute certainty of his own rightness, and the fact that he blights lives around him without being remotely malicious, puts him in the fine tradition of characters like Mr Pooter. Mackenzie is a very amusing writer, with an excellent use of the narrative voice that undermines the character – and it’s all extremely funny.

As the novel goes on, we get more from the brothers’ perspectives, which I found a trifle less enjoyable – perhaps because it feels like we’re supposed to be on their side as they plot pranks, trespass etc., and they didn’t seem particularly likeable to me. And the tide of the novel gets taken up with whether or not the community should be called Oaktown or Oak, which does work as a conceit, but comes a bit late in the day to be the main thrust of the novel.

So, it’s not perfect – but, particularly in the first half, it’s rather wonderful. And the second half is also fab, even if I wish Mackenzie hadn’t broadened his focus so much. But one element that doesn’t falter is the ego and bravado of Mr Waterall. How I wish there were a sequel, so I could find out more about him!

There isn’t a sequel, but there are an awful lot of other Mackenzie novels out there. It seems a shame that he is basically synonymous with Whisky Galore and nothing else, when he clearly was far from a one-trick pony. Any recommendations from anyone?

Stuck in a Book’s Weekend Miscellany

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Happy weekend! I suspect it’s a scorcher (if you’re in the northern hemisphere – well, much of it), but I’m not intending to leave the house very much. I’m busy taking “feed a cold” seriously, and catching up on the excellent sitcom Superstore. And maybe a bit of reading because (a) why not?, and (b) I have two enormous books to read for Tea or Books? and I’m behind. But here’s a book, a blog post, and a link…

1.) The book – I absolutely covet The Illustrated Dust Jacket 1920-1970 by Martin Salisbury, and not just for that frankly stunning cover. My friends Paul and Kirsty got a copy and I flicked through it and it is gorgeous AND educational. I will give in and buy it soon, I’m sure.

2.) The blog post – Check out Ali’s wonderful review of Four Day’s Wonder by my pal A.A. Milne. I can’t remember if I’ve already posted it here or just on Twitter, but you can get five A.A. Milne books for the absurdly cheap price of £7.99. Do it, and start with either this or the glorious Mr Pim Passes By, please.

3.) The link – It’s sort of another bunch of blog posts, but I’m sure we can all make our peace with that. Basically, go to Shiny New Books and look at the Man Booker retrospective – where different reviewers have been covering all the winners (including me on Penelope Fitzgerald’s Offshore).

25 Books in 25 Days: #25 Albert’s World Tour

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The end! I did it! And it was the most fun. I’ll do a bit of a round up about the experience, but first – today’s book: Albert’s World Tour (1978) by Rosemary Weir.

I suspect it’s a coincidence that it’s as the 25 days finishes, but I’ve come down with a horrible cold today – and I couldn’t face reading anything more demanding than a children’s book. Growing up, I loved the Albert the Dragon stories – or, more particularly, Further Adventures of Albert the Dragon, which is the one we read most I think. We certainly didn’t have the third, fourth, and fifth in the series – and I decided to buy them up earlier this year. Though only found the fourth and fifth cheaply – and accidentally just read the fifth (for such is Albert’s World Tour) out of order.

Albert is a vegetarian dragon who, as the series starts, is rather feared by the community – but a little boy called Tony becomes friends with him, and the villagers soon realise that Albert only sets fire to things by accident. As the books continue, he has quickly-resolved but rather lovely adventures – and in this book, they decide to fly around the world. They visit Rome, China, and generic-Africa, so job done.

What I loved (and still love) about these books is Albert’s gentle, lovable character, and Weir’s way of putting slightly awkward conversation in the mouths of dragons, unicorns, wizards, and so forth. It’s all very charming, even without the nostalgia I have for the books. And I rather suspect seaweed-eating Albert is, deep down, the reason I’m vegetarian.

So, I haven’t finished on great literature, but it certainly worked with how grotty and tired I’m feeling…

—

And the 25 Books in 25 Days project in general? I’ve loved it! It’s been surprisingly easy – I’ve been reading a bit before work, and while walking to and from the Park and Ride in Oxford (I walk for about half an hour after parking, for such is Oxford’s parking restrictions), and finding there is a lot more time for reading in the day (my day) than I usually allow.

I do recognise that only someone in my position – living alone, lots of free time – would be able to do this. Kudos to those with families and full-time jobs managing to read anything! But if you only have one or other of those, I think it’s very doable.

I deliberately didn’t plan out the books I was reading. Each night, I’d pick something for the next day that suited the sort of mood I was in – mixing up fiction and non-fiction, different periods, different genres. Similarly, I wasn’t tying it to my Century of Books intentionally – I thought it would be more fun just to see afterwards how many slots I filled, based on what I wanted to read. And it turns out that 14 of my books matched empty slots on A Century of Books – a happy bonus!

Would I do it again? Definitely – if I have enough short books left on my shelves. I had to pick a period when I didn’t have other reading demands, or an enormous amount of things going on. But maybe next year I’d give it a go. And one thing I’ve really enjoyed is writing short blog posts – perhaps not as useful a resource for my own memory, but getting my thoughts across concisely and quickly.

Anybody tempted to try a similar project??

25 Books in 25 Days: #24 The Misunderstanding

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(So close to the end!) I think I got a review copy of The Misunderstanding (1926) by Irene Nemirovsky in about 2012, when it was published in English for perhaps the first time, by Sandra Smith. I’ve certainly bought or been given quite a few Nemirovsky novels, but have only read Suite Française and one other. While looking around my shelves, I thought… why not?

The Misunderstanding was Nemirovsky’s first novel, and it is a love story of sorts. As Sandra Smith points out in her translator’s note, the original title Le Malentendu can be translated as ‘the person who is misunderstood’ and ‘incompatibility’ as well as the title the novel was given in English, and it is the last of these that perhaps gets the biggest focus – as we watch disaffected Yves start a relationship with the bored wife of an old friend. They are passionate but uncertain, and we follow something of a strange trajectory, as each miscommunicates what they feel about each other – dashing through 1920s French seaside and Paris. One of the biggest obstacles to their agreed happiness is – he is poor, and she is rich, and all the awkwardness and pride that comes with that.

It was already very hot; it was the beginning of a beautiful summer’s day; women’s faces peered over the balconies; street sellers passed by with their little carts full of flowers, shouting: “Roses! Who wants some beautiful roses!”; tiny fountains of water from hosepipes sprayed from one side of the pavement to the other, glistening like liquid rainbows; young children went past on their bicycles, chasing each other and singing loudly; they had wicker baskets on their backs and their smocks fluttered in the win. Yves tried hard to notice every last detail in the street, just as a sick man desperately tries to concentrate on the countless little things in his bedroom.

I’m not always particularly interested in stories about love affairs, but I did find the way Nemirovsky wrote about Paris – and about people, about their flaws and lack of self-knowledge – rather poignant and lyrical. If it leans a little on the histrionic, we can blame that on the author’s youth – I’ve certainly read books with less emotional restraint by writers who should know better.