Stuck in a Book

This is going to be a little ramble through various things that come to mind. Because sometimes a bit of variety among the book reviews is… well, different anyway.

I’ve bought my final book for 2017, everyone. It’s shipping from the US, so may not come for quite a while – but it’s a study of E.M. Delafield published a few decades ago, but which I either didn’t know or (more likely) had forgotten existed. As soon as I heard about it, I thought that was worth of being my last choice – I wanted to go out with a bang – but now I have to wait for a month before buying any more. (I’ll post my whole list of 24 at some point before the end of 2017.)

I don’t think I’ll be able to go crazy buying books in 2018, though. I toyed with doing Project 24 again, but have decided that would just be too painful – but I have very little room left for books in my little flat. And I sent 350 to various homes, charity shops etc when I was preparing to move house, so I’m down to BARE BONES (if bare bones is approximately 3000 books, of course. Which it is.) I might be able to squeeze in another bookcase if I don’t want to open the living room door fully ever again.

I’m trying to write my sketch for the village show. The Thomases have usually submitted a sketch to the show since we moved to Somerset in 2005, though I’ve missed a couple years. In that time I’ve played a Sound of Music obsessive, a Scottish cardinal, a Yorkshire vicar, half of Jedward, myself (in a postmodern sketch), a time traveller, a BBC news reader, a Victorian cameraman, and another BBC representative. We take it in turns to write, and I haven’t done one for four or five years, and I’ve discovered that ‘just start writing and see what happens’ might not be an inevitable winner. But it’s my only tactic – it’s going to be a spin on David Attenborough (played, though he hasn’t agreed yet, by Dad) and I haven’t named any of the other characters. Wish us luck.

I’m in London as I write this, preparing for the first of three days of playgoing – first up is the Sondheim musical Follies, with the divine Imelda Staunton – marking the fourth time I’ll have seen her on stage. Thinking about it, there are a few cultural events I’d recommend from recent trips. The film ‘Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool’ is absolutely brilliant – you won’t see better performances than Annette Bening’s and Jamie Bell’s this year, and they’d better get Oscar nods. (Also interesting to hear the sort of accent I might have had if I hadn’t moved away from Merseyside aged 6.) Do go and see it if you get the chance – but take tissues. Less readily available is Sofie Hagan’s stand-up – but head to see ‘Dead Baby Frog’ if you live near one of the places on the remainder of her UK tour. I saw it in Oxford the other day, at the theatre where I volunteer as an usher, and laughed my head off (though it’s also very moving – don’t worry, I laughed in the right places).

People keep talking about doing their Christmas shopping. I haven’t even thought about it yet. Maybe I should use London as a good opportunity to do some… but, instead, I’ll just do it all in a rush at the last minute, I’m sure. But I am in three separate bookish Secret Santas, and I have done the buying for those – partly because they come early, and partly because it’s easily the most fun sort of shopping to do. Yes, I’ll inevitably buy some books as gifts too, for other people, but for the Secret Santas it feels less like a “oh, Simon bought books, quelle surprise” cop out.

That’s enough of a ramble for now, and will hopefully tide StuckinaBook over until I write something about books again. Will I finish The Women in White by the time I’m supposed to be discussing it on the podcast next week, with 400 pages to go? Who can say. But seldom has a book mention of mine got so many “Oo, I love that!” replies on Instagram – encouraging. So far I am also enjoying it, though may have read too many Victorian books of late (by which I mean this is the fourth). So. Many. Words.

What a cultural weekend I’ve had, friends. I was up in London, and managed to do three-count-em-three cultural things. That includes seeing a brilliant exhibition of Tove Jansson’s paintings in Dulwich and going to the play adaptation of The Slaves of Solitude at Hampstead Theatre. The novel is absolutely brilliant, and I did enjoy the play a lot, but had to think of it as a separate entity. It didn’t get across the ogreishness of Mr Thwaites, or the dark humour of the novel. And it changed details that didn’t need changing. Maybe it’s just interior a novel, with too distinct a narrative voice, to translate properly to the stage?

But I didn’t really want to talk about them today – I was going to write a little bit about the Bluestocking Books bookshop tour that I went on. Lauren had kindly asked if I’d like to join them, and I wanted to spread the word a bit. There are quite a few different themed tours (see the link above) but Saturday’s tour was more broad – an introduction to different types of shops across London. I was hoping that my friend would be able to join me, but it didn’t work out – but I joined four other people who were being guided by Lauren.

I won’t write exactly which bookshops we went to on the tour, because part of the business model is Lauren’s expertise in the bookshops of London and a curated experience of them, and I’d be giving away her talents for free – but I’ll talk you through where we went in more general terms.

The first stop was a bookshop for ‘esoterica’ and spirituality and what I’d call the occult, but I suspect isn’t called that anymore. There was a Christian corner, and I rather dashed for that. To be honest, a lot of this makes me feel uncomfortable (I didn’t relish being around a tarot reading) but I was intrigued by some books on conspiracy theories – not least because ‘conspiracy theories’ was an unexpected bookcase to have in this context. Anyway, that was that, and we were on to the next…

The second was a tiny antiquarian bookshop with a charming, knowledgeable owner who specialised in modern first editions, maps, and classics (in the Greek/Latin sense). He airily said that some of the books were “only £30”, but the ones I picked up were a little too much for my wallet. But it was fascinating seeing the collection, including a copy of Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out that had been owned by Vanessa Bell – and had her inscription. It was wildly more than I could afford, but it was a delight to see it.

The third shop was one of the popular Charing Cross Road shops, and there’s where I did all my buying – I got 6 books, though 4 of them were for Secret Santas. I shan’t say which, in case the recipients see the books! But two of them were for me – being numbers 22 and 23 of Project 24. Only one book left to buy for the rest of the year! I could hardly leave a bookshop tour empty handed, could I? I came away with an E.F. Benson novel and a book about E.M. Forster by Rose Macaulay (published by the Hogarth Press).

The fourth shop was a graphic novel shop that I have been to before – and if I weren’t in Project 24, I’d probably have taken a gamble on one of them. But it was great to have a flick through.

And the fifth and final shop was extremely glamorous – mostly selling enormous art and style books – the sort of thing I’d call a coffee table book if they wouldn’t have necessitated getting a new coffee table. The lady who showed us around was lovely, but I was always treasure a line she said with no irony at all: “I’ve been off champagne for a week and it’s been tough.” Same, friend, same.

All in all, it was an amazing tour – such a great range of bookshops, some of which were great for buying and some were more for the experience. Throughout, Lauren had interesting facts and stories to share, and was a witty, friendly, and enthusiastic tour guide. All of us really enjoyed it, and most of us bought at least one book – and it’s certainly opened my eyes to bookshops I didn’t know existed, despite going around those areas often. To take me to three bookshops I’d not visited before, out of five, is pretty impressive! I had such a fun morning – despite the inevitable London rain.

Lauren doesn’t run Saturday tours all that often, but if you’re available during a weekday (especially if you’re a tourist) then I think you’d love this. Keep an eye out for which tours are coming up!

Rachel and I talked about audiobooks in a recent episode of Tea or Books?, or perhaps not all that recent, but I mostly talked about how they weren’t really my thing. Now that I commute every day, I’ve become much more open to trying them, and in my previous post I talked about listening to Claire Tomalin’s autobiography. But what sort of audiobooks should I choose, if I do?

Because it’s not black and white, of course. Some people might loathe the idea of audiobooks, but nobody (one assumes) is delighted to listen to any at all. And I’m certainly slightly fussy – or, rather, I have a few rules for what I don’t like, and I’m trying to discover what I do.

What are my rules? Well, nothing abridged. I don’t want an incomplete version of the author’s work – why would I? It’s the reason I’ve never bought The Shuttle by Frances Hodgson Burnett in the Persephone edition, for instance. An edited version may be better than the original, perhaps, but it isn’t the same, and I’d constantly be wondering what was missing. (And, yes, somehow the work of an editor before a book is published is different… don’t ask me why.)

In a similar vein – nothing dramatised, unless I’ve already read the original. Or perhaps if it’s a story I already know really well.

And nothing which I have waiting for me in a beautiful edition that I’ve been looking forward to reading.

I’m testing the water at the moment with Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. I love Dickens, but I’ve still only read four of his novels – the size is a bit off-putting. And, while I do have a copy of this (along with all of Dickens – I have a feeling I swiped the set from my parents at some point), somehow the classics feel like fair game for this treatment. They’re so readily available that it doesn’t feel like I’ve made a conscious decision to include them in my book collection, and thus I can listen to it instead of reading the copy I have. Does that make any sort of sense?

I was swayed by it being Martin Jarvis, whom I love (and know chiefly through the Just William audiobooks, which we listened to over and over in our childhood). Then I remembered that I don’t love hearing comedy, because I want to do the timing in my head, and somebody else’s comic timing might not be the same as mine – but Jarvis is doing a grand old job so far. And you may already know that I think Dickens is first and foremost a comedic writer, and that adaptations over the years have placed far too much emphasis on the social commentary.

My only problems so far, besides occasionally wishing I could read the funny narrative myself, are connected with the vast cast and the way Dickens enjoys wallowing in the verbal acrobatics of a scene. It’s brilliant, but it means I’ve driven for half an hour before a scene is over – and even something like wine spilling on the ground can take 10 minutes to read out loud. I might not see characters turn up for the second time until I’m halfway through my week’s commute. And by the time I finish the audiobook, I might well have retired.

Do you have any rules for the audiobooks you pick, or any red flags?

A few weeks ago, I spent a week in Canada. A few people have been surprised that we went all that way for a week – in turn, I’m rather surprised at the time off work and money that people have to go longer than that! But our limited time in Toronto and surrounding area meant that we really wanted to pack things in – and pack things in we did. (‘We’ is my brother Colin and me, btw.) Colin had even made a spreadsheet with all the activities we would do each morning, afternoon, and evening – chiefly so that I “wouldn’t read all the time”. Obviously I sent back the first version when it hadn’t included any time for looking at bookshops.

Day 1 – travel and getting a bit lost

Thankfully Colin, like me, is a bit of a nervous traveller – in terms of getting to the right place at the right time and preferably earlier. I can’t stand those people who plan to get to the departure gate at the last minute, or wander off into shops when boarding is called. No. I need to be ready and waiting a long time before the last minute. As I always point out, one might as well be waiting in the right place as the wrong place.

So, I did get to do some reading on the bus from Oxford, and in the various waiting areas of Heathrow airport – and, indeed, on the plane. Though I did also watch the excellent film Lion, having a bit of a cry between the two strangers I was seated with. I’m not at all a nervous flyer, once on a plane, so I quite enjoyed the flight – and was very excited to touch down in Canada. As one of the few countries I’ve been keen to visit, it felt very exciting even to be there.

Less exciting, perhaps, to wander around the streets, getting lost between train stations and other forms of travel (unspecified in our plans) based on not-very-useful maps printed off in England. But Canadians are friendly, y’all. The stereotype is true. They helped a couple of clueless, jet-lagged Brits find their way across Toronto – and to a really, really lovely airbnb. It was in The Annex – a leafy suburban area of Toronto, with lots of independent shops and pretty houses. In fact – here’s the airbnb. You should go and stay at it. Larry, who runs it with his wife, was a total delight – funny and friendly and helpful.

Day 2 – church, bookshops, and wandering about

We found a Baptist church around the corner from our airbnb, and were given a lovely welcome by the people there. And then we were off – hurrah! – to secondhand bookshops. Or used bookstores, as I should say. My sole preparation for the trip had been printing off a map of them, and I’d plotted out a few for the first day (with the hope of doing a couple more later in the week).

I’d saved up some ‘credits’ for books I could buy, under Project 24, and could buy up to nine books on the trip – though was hoping it wouldn’t be all my remaining ration. In the end I bought six (and got some gifts – more on that anon) and was trying to buy Canadian authors for the most part. I did just that on my first shopping day… The opening hours amazed me. Bookshops open til midnight!

Selected Letters of Margaret Laurence and Adele Wiseman – the bookshop had two difference correspondences of Laurence, and I spent some time choosing between Adele Wiseman and Al Purdy. I hadn’t heard of either of them, so picked the edition I liked more… but, either way, a nice opportunity to get to know more about Laurence.

Swamp Angel and The Equations of Love by Ethel Wilson – two really lovely editions of one of the few Canadians published by Persephone.

My Remarkable Uncle by Stephen Leacock – a Leacock I didn’t have! It’s not a very nice edition… and it turned out that every bookshop had this, usually in nicer editions. Oh well. It did feel odd seeing so many Leacock paperbacks, since he hasn’t been printed in the UK for many decades, and all my copies of his books are chunky early-20th-century hardbacks.

After some bookshops and some FroYo, we spent the rest of the day walking and walking and walking until I thought I’d drop down dead. But we saw the university, which is very pretty. One of the universities, I should say.

Day 3 – Orillia, and Stephen Leacock’s house

Whenever we told Toronto residents that we were spending a day in Orillia, they looked puzzled and asked us why. Well, it’s because Stephen Leacock’s house is there, and I love him – not many people in the UK have heard of him, but all the Canadians I spoke to had (though not many had actually read him).

We took a 2 hour coach journey out to Orillia, and quickly discovered why people might not pick it as the first place to spend 7 hours. The waterfront was lovely, and there was a nice new books bookshop, but there isn’t a lot to do… and quite a bit feels a little run-down or dispiriting. Sorry Orillia. But Leacock’s house – well, it felt so wonderful to see it. It’s all wood panels, and his garden borders a lake with stunning views. Walking around the house where Leacock wrote many of his books was something I never thought I’d be able to do, and it was quite moving. And, to commemorate, I bought Stephen Leacock by Margaret Macmillan from the gift shop.

Day 4 – the entertainment district

Having done chiefly things I wanted to do on the first two days, day 4 was Col’s turn. And he wanted to check out the entertainment district – lakeside parks, galleries, museums and whatnot. It was a lot of walking, because things are spread out in Toronto, y’all. And it was all oddly sparse. I guess I’m used to the touristy jam-packedness of London (and, indeed, Oxford) so it felt odd to turn up in an area that supposedly would be touristy and find that we were the only people there.

We ate at a Mexican place that had outdoor seating – only we hardy Brits and a woman who sounded Russian chose to sit outside in the fairly cold temperatures. It might have been Day 4 that I had my first of four consecutive Dairy Queens. I love Dairy Queen so much.

(The books are the ones I bought earlier in the week, but I didn’t have a picture for today. Unless you want to see me eating Dairy Queen.)

Day 5 – Niagara Falls

But of course we had to go to Niagara! Another coach journey, another opportunity to do a bit of reading, and eventually we arrived – and were the only people who chose to walk the half hour from the coach stop to the Falls. (Why, one wonders, does the coach not drop people there? To encourage local bus services? It might have been to encourage people to buy things in the row of shops there – but that clearly didn’t work; it’s one of the most depressing little places I’ve ever seen, full of boarded up businesses.)

We’ve all seen photos of the Niagara Falls, but nothing could quite prepare me for how spectacular they are. Really worth visiting, even if you know exactly what you’re going to find. We didn’t cross to the US side (partly because I’ve decided not to go to America while Trump is President), but we’re still going to be partisan and say the Canadian side is better. It’s definitely got its fair share of tacky amusements – thankfully out of sight of the Falls. We went to an amusingly terrible waxworks museum (trying to guess who each one was was entertaining) and glow-in-the-dark golf (I WON). And I ate Dairy Queen in the rain.

We discovered, on the way back, that they’d overbooked our coach by about 30 people. After lots of walking back and forth, the customer services guy arranged for taxis to take us all back to Toronto! Quite the expensive mistake… and I felt a tiny bit of Schadenfreude towards the people who pushed in front of us to get on the coach when we overtook them on the way back.

Day 6 – laziness, and… ice hockey

I was exhausted by Thursday, and wanted to spend the morning enjoying Canadian Netflix, so did exactly that. Col went looking at another district, I forget which, and in the afternoon we reunited to explore a new area. I think it was Thursday that I bought my final book of the holiday – a Hungarian rather than a Canadian; A Journey Round My Skull by Frigyes Karinthy, which Oliver Sacks writes about. It’s a non-fiction book from 1939 documenting the author’s experience of a brain tumour.

And in the evening we went to the ice hockey – or ‘hockey’ as Canadians apparently call it. This was the compromise for our trip to Orillia. Colin likes sport, and seeing countries’ favourite sporting events. I do not like sport, and went under sufferance. It was the third sports match I’ve ever attended – a football match in 1998; half a rained-off cricket around the same time; this. The hockey was probably the best of the three, I guess, in that people were mostly nice (unlike football matches) and it wasn’t super long (unlike cricket matches). But there wasn’t really any vegetarian food. I didn’t understand what was going on. The Maple Leafs lost. I remain baffled that adults can care about who gets an object into a different place the most, but one half of the world does not understand the pleasures of the other.

Day 7 – Darlene and fish

One of the things I was determined to do while in Toronto was meet up with Darlene – blogger at Cosy Books – who gave invaluable advice when we were deciding where to stay and what to do. We’ve met several times in England, but it was lovely to see her on home turf – and we had a great time looking around the aquarium.

Naturally, we did something of a book swap – I gave Darlene a couple of hard-to-find E.H. Young novels, and she gave me Coral Glynn by Peter Cameron (which I remember reading about on her blog, and on Thomas’s blog Hogglestock) and Blow up the Castle by Margaret Moffatt. They both look a total delight – as is Darlene. And we bumped into Col when we left the aquarium, as he’d gone up the CN Tower (I’m not good with heights, so did not fancy it) – so we all went for a later lunch together, and she was able to attest that he is not really like me at all.

Oh, we started the day with amazing maple syrup and pancakes (and bacon, if you’re Colin) and a whistlestop rush around the Royal Ontario Museum. Or whatever ROM stands for.

Day 8 – the return to England

We left the house at 5.30am (urgh), determined not to miss the flight back. And we didn’t – the day was basically all travelling, encompassing underground train, overground train, plane, coach, and walking to my friends’ house to let myself in and sleep. A truly wonderful trip. One day I’ll come back, Canada! (And, Dairy Queen, please open up in the UK.)