Five From the Archive (no.11)

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It’s been a few weeks since I last did a Five From the Archive, and perhaps My Life in Books has brought a few new readers (hello!), so I’ll quickly explain what it is.  Once I’d been blogging for five years, I had a glance back at the hundreds of books I’d written about, and thought that it was a shame that wonderful titles would be lost in the annals of my archive.  So every week now and then, I’ll pick a theme and choose five great books from my review archive to fit it – it’s fun finding unexpected connections between much-loved books.  An index of all previous Five From the Archive posts can be found here.  This week, inspired by the wonderful school scene in Blue Remembered Hills, I have picked an apposite theme:

Five… Books About School

1.) St. Clare’s series (1941-5) by Enid Blyton

In short: I could fill this list with children’s school stories, but I’ll stick with this series which I loved as a child – mischievous (but, of course, good-hearted) twins Pat and Isabel get up to schoolgirl antics.

From my review: “Blyton appears to have had a pathological hatred of ‘tell-tales’ (which always seems to me to be invented as an excuse for teachers to ignore the majority of children’s squabbles) and a fervour for sport, and Janet (in the ‘good egg’ category) is so bluntly rude that I wanted to push her down a well – despite all these things, I’ve been joyously reliving my youth through these books.”

2.) More Women Than Men (1933) by Ivy Compton-Burnett

In short: My favourite ICB novel so far, the politics and in-fighting of a girls’ school provide a perfect setting for Compton-Burnett’s characteristic wit and discord.  There is only one line of dialogue from a pupil…

From my review: “Would people talk like this?  No, definitely not.  Would people act like this?  Probably no.   But would people feel like these characters feel?  Yes – absolutely – and it is Ivy Compton-Burnett’s genius that she can interweave the genuine and the bizarre.”

3.) Curriculum Vitae (1992) by Muriel Spark

In short: I would pick The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie if I’d ever reviewed it here – so this is the next best thing.  Spark’s brilliant autobiography includes wonderful sections on Miss Christina Kay, Spark’s teacher and the inspiration for Miss Jean Brodie.

From my review: “There are definitely signs of Spark-the-novelist in the structuring of
the autobiography.  Her usual trick of playing around with time makes an
appearance, but it’s the enticingly disjointed beginning which made me
realise Spark-the-autobiographer was no real distance from
Spark-the-novelist.”

4.) Dusty Answer (1927) by Rosamond Lehmann

In short: We follow only-child Judith Earle through childhood and emotional student days (I’m stretching a point), as she is forever tethered to the family that lived next door.

From my review: “It takes a talented writer to write about childhood without the novel feeling like a children’s book, and Lehmann achieves this wonderfully.”

5.) The Well-Tempered Clavier (2008) by William Coles

In short: A cross between Othello and Notes on a Scandal, an affair between pupil and piano teacher at Eton becomes a study in jealousy.

From my review: “The Well-Tempered Clavier is a beautiful book, managing to use a simple narrative voice without a consequently bland style – honesty, beauty, and passion pervade the novel, but so do humour, youthfulness and energy.”

As always – your suggestions, please!

Blue Remembered Hills – Rosemary Sutcliff

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There must have been a time – a dark, bleak time – before I was introduced to the Slightly Foxed Editions.  I love the Slightly Foxed journal when I get my hands on a copy, but that doesn’t compare to the bottomless affection I have for all the memoirs I’ve read in their Slightly Foxed Editions series.  Which is, I realise, only five or six – I still have a long way to go.  But the one I finished recently is battling it out with Dodie Smith’s Look Back With Love not only for my favourite SF, but for my second favourite book read this year (Guard Your Daughters has secured first place.)

I need to start condensing my preambles, don’t I?  The book is Blue Remembered Hills (1983) by Rosemary Sutcliff, and it is heartwarmingly wonderful.  The original run of 2000 hardback copies has sold out and, due to its popularity, Slightly Foxed have produced this paperback edition.  Unlike most of the people I’ve spoken to about this book, I’ve never read anything by Rosemary Sutcliff.  My allergy to historical fiction has been lifelong, and her Eagle of the Ninth series has never got nearer than the peripheries of my awareness.  That doesn’t matter in the slightest, in terms of enjoying this book, believe me.

Born in 1920, Sutcliff was quite isolated in her childhood – she was an only child, and (after suffering Still’s Disease when very young) had varying levels of disability, and spent a great deal of time in and out of hospitals and nursing homes.  Yet this couldn’t be further from a misery memoir.  Everything is coated with a fascination for life, and a joy for the possibilities of observing and experiencing.

Like Smith’s childhood memoir, Sutcliff has great fun describing all her relatives – how blessed these memoirists seem to have been with comic uncles and aunts! – and especially her parents.  Her mother seems to have had undiagnosed bipolar disorder – Sutcliff describes times when her mood would change for days without warning – and this understandably made her unpredictable to live with.  This was coupled with a difficult personality, and Sutcliff (though generous to her) clearly didn’t have an entirely easy mother/daughter relationship.  Her father (a sailor) spent long periods away from home – all in all, not a simple childhood for young Rosemary.

But, as I say, she finds the beauty and joy in this all – not by ignoring her difficulties, but by maintaining an optimistic attitude.  Indeed, it wasn’t until I sat back and put together the information Sutcliff gives about her parents that I realised the difficulties she faced.  In Blue Remembered Hills this sort of excerpt represents the tone with which Sutcliff recalls them:

He was a lieutenant when he and my mother were married.  The had first met when they were both fourteen, at a mixed hockey match, and he always claimed that the first word he ever heard her say was ‘Damn’, which I suppose, to judge from her vehemence in protesting that it was the first time she had ever said it, was quite a word in those days.  My father’s invariable retort – oh, the lovely ritual changlessness of family hokes and traditions! – was that for a first time, she said it with remarkable fluency.
I think my favourite thing about childhood memoirs is the revelation of family jokes.  It makes the reader feel, at least for a page or two, that they’ve been inducted into the family.  We all have these, don’t we?  And they’re usually senseless and silly, and oh so precious!

Among Sutcliff’s many memories, the ones which most warmed my heart were about Miss Beck’s school.  Education reform has doubtless done much for children’s welfare, but as a side-effect it was removed the possibility of anything as joyful as this:

In a small back room with peeling wallpaper, under the eye of a gaunt elderly maid, I was stripped of my coat, leggings and tam-o’-shanter, in company with twelve or fourteen others of my kind.  And with them, all on my own, so grown up, I filed through into the schoolroom, to be receive, as Royalty receives, by Miss Beck herself, who sat, upright as Royalty sits, in a heavily carved Victorian armchair.

My schooldays proper had begun.

Looking back with warm affection at that first school of mine, I can hardly believe that it was real, and not something dreamed up out of the pages of Cranford or Quality Street.  I suppose nowadays it would not be allowed to exist at all.  Miss Amelia Beck had no teaching qualifications whatsoever, save the qualifications of long experience and love.  She was the daughter of a colonel of Marines, in her eighty-sixth year when I became one of her pupils; and for more than sixty years, in her narrow house overlooking the Lines at Chatham, she had taught the children of the dockyard and the barracks.  She accepted only the children of service families.  Oh, the gentle snobbery of a bygone age; bygone even then, and having less to do with class than totem.  It was her frequent boast that she had smacked, in their early days, most of the senior officers of both services.  Both, not all three, for the RAF was too young as yet to count for much in Miss Beck’s scheme of things.  But I do not think that it can have been true, unless she had gentled greatly with the passing of her years.  For I never knew her to smack anybody during the year that I sat at her feet.
Isn’t that blissful?  There is quite a bit about this school and Miss Beck, who stayed in touch with every pupil she taught (or so Sutcliff claims!) – it is all fairly ordinary, but made extraordinary through Sutcliff’s lovely writing and engaging personality.

In fact, it is the ordinariness of Sutcliff’s life that makes Blue Remembered Hills so difficult to write about.  It is oddly similar to The Outward Room, reviewed yesterday, in being significant not for its incidents, but for the beautiful way in which they are related.  After relaying the activities, thoughts, people and pets of her childhood, Sutcliff relays her early career as a miniaturist (not, she notes sadly, a form likely to win any major notice in the art world) and her first infatuation.  Those are the two important strands in the second half of the book, I suppose, and it continues up to her first literary commissions.  But the events are so much less vital than the tone.

So, yes, it’s another book you have to read to appreciate… but, oh, what a warm, engaging, beautiful book it is.  One of the very few where I cannot bear the lessening pages as I read on – and which I am certain I shall return to time and again.  Slightly Foxed – I don’t know how you do it.  You are my new addiction.  Long may you continue to find memoirs as spectacularly lovely as this!

Others who got Stuck into this:

 “Perfect. My only complaint is that it is too short.” – Leaves and Pages

 “The tone of the book is one of gratitude for life’s blessings & joy at the natural world, her friends, her dogs & her love for her parents.” – Lyn, I Prefer Reading

The Outward Room – Millen Brand

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photo source

A long, long time ago (I can still remember) I was sent Millen Brand’s The Outward Room (1937) to review – in fact, I had asked for it – and it has taken me absurdly long to read it, and a couple months longer to get around to reviewing it.  But it is really very good indeed, and worth the wait.

The reason I asked for this NYRB edition was (apart from the fact that all NYRB editions are beautiful and belong on my bookshelf) that I remembered The Outward Room being mentioned once in a Persephone Quarterly – and it fixed in my mind.

The Outward Room starts with Harriet Demuth’s life in some sort of mental hospital, having suffered a nervous breakdown as a result of a family tragedy.  Estranged from her parents and frustrated by her doctor’s blinkered obsession with Freudian analysis, Harriet’s life has been sucked dry of anything but routine and confusion.  Her ability to articulate her personality and self have been stifled by illness and by the unsympathetic institution which came as a consequence to it.  Brand writes this section very well, but it is necessarily claustrophobic and begins to stifle the reader.

But Harriet escapes.

She makes her way to New York, pawns her brother’s ring, and lives hand-to-mouth for some time.  The Great Depression has given the city a desperate air, and she struggles to find the means of supporting herself – her first ‘job interview’ is for a single day’s work, and consists of standing in a long row with many other women, and not being pointed at.  There are some poignant scenes where Harriet first rents, and then must leave, a tiny apartment.

After about 100 pages, Harriet is sitting in a late-night cafe, unable to afford a cup of coffee, when a stranger approaches and offers to buy her the drink.  John (for this is his name) invites her back to his house for food and shelter and – desperate, and a little naive perhaps – she goes.  At this point I expected awful things to happen to her, or for John’s apparent kindness to (at least) be revealed as covering ulterior motives.  What I wasn’t prepared for was a gentle, gradual, and quite beautiful love story.  Through simple, ordinary scenes of everyday life and undramatic conversations, Harriet and John fall in love and become necessary to one another.  We see some of Harriet at work, and the friend she makes Anna; we see a neighbour or two – but the beauty of The Outward Room is the quiet unfolding of a believable, unassuming relationship.

I don’t normally just give all the plot in a series of paragraphs like that – I usually try to break it up with some of my thoughts about the author’s approach, etc. – but it seemed important to lay out the  structure of The Outward Room and the direction the novel takes before addressing the issue of style.  They are so interrelated.  At the beginning, Brand opts for quite a lot of the disjointed and fragmentary prose that is often used to represent mental disharmony or any kind of mental illness.  Personally, I find it very easy to overuse this style.  Stream of consciousness has of course often been used to portray thoughts, especially of a disturbed mind – but I think it has to be done exceptionally well (we’re talking Woolf-standards well) to work, otherwise it can simply seem sloppy.  These were the sections of The Outward Room which I found least convincing.

However, when Brand didn’t concentrate this effect into single chapters, he used a more successful variant on it – by simply omitting verbs and pronouns.  It’s a bold way to start a paragraph, giving a sense of both immediacy and uncertainty, and it think it works well within a sparser descriptive mode:

Dark, the smell of stairs.  She began to notice the stairs as she had not the day before.  She leaned and looked down the dark stairwell.  These stairs were not solid; their treads sagged, the staircase was pegged to the walls with iron rods at each landing.  The house was old.  She went down and when she came into the light of the lower open house door, she looked around her.  She saw only a bare hallway; on one side was a large metal barrel with a warped cover, on the other a table on which were several letters – evidently this was where mail was left for those in the house.  Except for this, the hall was vacant; scribbled on the plaster were a few names – “DIDOMENICO 2nd” “LICORA” —
Brand moves between this fairly straightforward narrative and a fluid, more consciously beautiful prose.  And that is the result (and the cause) of the relationship between John and Harriet.  Which comes first?  I don’t know – the gentle unfolding of their love is both mirrored and created by the gentle unfolding of touching imagery and emotional explorations.  This paragraph was picked more or less at random, but hopefully it gives you a sense of what I mean:

Breathing the air deeply, she looked down at the courtyard.  Hardly changed, a little dirtier from melted snow, the tinge of winter.  Frost had made new cracks in the cement, in the so-called paving.  Yet the evidences of winter were small only to be seen, like the signs of spring, by the heart that feels small changes.  The room too had its changes from winter, but because of her need of its permanence they too were small, only what had been absolutely necessary.

It is incredibly difficult to write about this sort of novel, because it is of the variety which can only be appreciated once one is reading them.  Perhaps that is true of any book, but it seems especially so of The Outward Room.  And that being said, it is especially impressive that Peter Cameron writes such a good afterword in the NYRB edition.  Good afterwords and introductions are hard to find, aren’t they?  One thing Cameron writes will strike home with many of us:

It’s somewhat frightening to learn that good books – even books heralded in their time – can disappear so quickly and completely.  We like to think that things of enduring quality and worth are separated from the dross and permanently enshrined, but we know that this is not true.  Beautiful things are more likely to disappear than to endure.  The Outward Room is such a beautiful thing.  
None of us are surprised when we find that wonderful, beautiful books have fallen by the wayside – we all know too many examples.  Despite having an initial print run of 140,000 copies (wow!), The Outward Room has fallen victim to this disappearing act – its peculiar qualities are those which can so easily be overlooked.  Thank you NYRB for bringing it back – the novel definitely deserves it, and I hope you give it a chance too.

Reading Plans?

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Thank you so much for all your lovely birthday wishes!

I’m off to a conference tomorrow – gosh, my third this year! – and will be speaking on David Garnett’s Lady Into Fox.  I have barely thought about it, to be honest, which is good as it has meant that I’m not nervous yet.  Whether my paper is up to much is an entirely different matter… but I rather doubt anyone there will have read Lady Into Fox anyway!

So, I’ll be back late on Friday night, so I’ll leave you with a question.  It’s getting to that time of year when people start to mull over next year’s book projects.  I’ve really enjoyed doing A Century of Books this year – it has joined my love of reading to my love of lists – and it’s made me vary my reading a lot.  But while I think I’ll revisit it one day, I don’t want to do the same project two years on the trot.  (And who knows if I’ll even finish this one on target!)

Instead, I’ve picked a project that is shamefully unblogworthy.  A lot of lovely people have given me books over the years, and I am rather awful at getting around to reading them.  Bloggers and other bibliophiles tend to understand – but I still feel a bit guilty, as well as missing out on all the potential gems on my bookshelves.  So, I’ve decided that in 2013 I’m going to read at least 25 books that other people have given me.  I haven’t even checked that I have 25 such books – but I rather expect that it’s nearer double that.  Just looking at my shelves in Oxford, not counting review books or books I got for my birthday yesterday… oh, there are 34.  Well, that answers that question!  I think it’ll be a nicely varied pile – as well as enabling me finally to thank folk properly for my presents.

Howsabout you?  (If you wavered on A Century of Books this year, I can definitely recommend it as a really fun and fruitful project – which, of course, can be spread over two years or more, if need be.)  Any reading plans, or are you just going to go with the flow?  Or is it still too early to think about it?

See you at the weekend!  Wish me luck with my paper…

It’s My Birthday and I’ll Post Photos of the Lake District if I Want To.

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Happy Birthday Me!  Today I turn 27 – the age at which Anne Elliot was washed up in Persuasion.  Don’t worry, I don’t actually have a neurosis about 27 – even though I spend a lot of my time amongst undergraduates, so I feel ancient – but when 30 rolls around, things might feel rather different.  My goal is to have finished accruing degrees by then… (!)

I thought I’d indulge on my birthday by sharing with you photographs from my recent trip to the Lake District.  I’ve been there many times throughout my life, often with family, and this time I visited my friend Phoebe (who works at Wordsworth’s house) and was joined by Colin.  Autumn in the Lake District is pretty stunning, I have to stay.  Well, enough with words – shall we let some pictures do the talking?

This is the view from my friend’s house – amazing, no?

Getting ready to go on a ferry… and it’s sunny! (but freezing)

The original purpose for visiting for a birthday visit to beautiful Blackwell –
an Arts & Crafts house; one of my favourite places in the world.
Sadly no photos allowed inside, but more on their website.
Not a bad view to have from the house, is it?

And here we are, outside it!

My friend and her boyfriend, on Wansfell.

I’ve never carved a pumpkin before – so I was pleased by my first effort
(inspired by the peacock frieze at Blackwell)

And we make a delicious cat carrot cake!

I co-ordinate with the autumn, by Lake Windermere

Sepia makes EVERYTHING like classy, doesn’t it?

The sun didn’t last long – Colin and I take a walk over to Ambleside,
and it was cloudy and rainy – but still beautiful.
I don’t think the Lake District could be unbeautiful if it tried.

Shrinking Violet

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cover design: Suzi Ovens

I have read my first Kindle book!  Before you ebook-fanatics get too excited, I should say that it was on Kindle for PC, and the only reason I read it was because it was written by a lovely friend of mine.  But if it weren’t good, I’d have read it on the sly, and never mentioned it here.  As it is, I can  happily and honestly say that it is brilliant – without any fear of compromising my integrity (which, post-Dewey, is probably in shambles anyway.)  It’s Shrinking Violet (2012) by Karina Lickorish Quinn, and the ebook is available for only 77p!  Considering how fab it is, that is a complete steal.

I was lucky enough to see an early draft of some chapters, because Karina wanted to know my opinion – I was a little nervous, in case it wasn’t good, but I was able to give her a double thumbs up with complete enthusiasm.  She has very sweetly given me a ‘thank you’ on one of the opening pages, which is rather thrilling!  Ok, now onto the book itself – I just wanted to lay all that before you, so you’d know in advance my connection to Shrinking Violet.  But I hope you know me well enough to know that I wouldn’t say it was great if I didn’t believe it.  But I will be calling the author ‘Karina’ rather than ‘Lickorish Quinn’, because I’ve known her for seven years, and it would feel odd to call her anything except Karina.

Shrinking Violet could have been written to my requirements, so perfect is it for my taste.  It’s a quirky, slightly surreal but not macabre, novella about Oxford – and it’s heavily influenced by Lewis Carroll’s Alice (as I will discuss later).  I also detected a lot of similarities with Barbara Comyns’ Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead (one of my favourite books) but I know they were coincidences, since Karina didn’t read the Comyns novel until after she finished writing the book.  I love a quirky domestic setting, and I was drawn in by the lovely description of Violet’s house…

It was true that it was a most impractical house. Violet’s family lived in a higgledy-piggledy house with seven floors, because no two rooms were level, but each was connected by a set of stairs to the other. The house was also full of doors here and there of all shapes and sizes leading to cupboards and passages or to nowhere at all. There was not a single right angle in it. Under every piece of furniture was wedged a notebook or a folded handkerchief to stop them from wobbling on the uneven floors. Every breakable object was stuck down with glue or adhesive tape. Not even the pictures on the walls could be balanced in such a way as to hang straight.
Violet herself is an inquisitive young girl as the story starts, short for her age and with an unusual perspective on life.  Karina captures really well the disjointed nature of a child’s view – a determination to read some sort of logic into any scenario, alongside the readiness to accept or imagine anything.  Violet can be quite literal in her understanding of what people say, but lends her own enchanting interpretations to the world around her:

“What I do not understand,” Violet had said “Is that when you tell me I have eleven apples and to take five away, you do not tell me where those five apples should go.”   

Her teacher had given her five minutes standing out in the cloisters for that remark. Violet did not very much fancy the idea of standing out in the cloisters today, so when she was told she had five goats and she should take three away, rather than asking her teacher where she should put the three goats, she used her own initiative and sent them to wait in the quad with the other animals that were swimming and paddling there. I am very sorry to have to send you out, she explained to the goats. But you see my teacher does not have time for my questions and you know you cannot stay in the classroom, unless you want to do some sums, and I am afraid there aren’t any spare desks for you.  

Violet sighed as she turned the page to find that every question involved the taking away of a certain number of elephants and cats and ferrets from a larger group of elephants and cats and ferrets, so that very soon the quad was filled with her cast away creatures.
Onto that Alice mention I made earlier.  Karina uses the legacy of Alice very cleverly.  It isn’t intended to be a subtle background reference once or twice – it swirls and unfurls throughout Shrinking Violet, like the flood which carried the knitting sheep, perhaps.  Karina’s novel isn’t a sequel to or a retelling of Carroll’s Alice, but it could perhaps be found in the same universe.  The influence threads through the minutiae of the novel – there are mentions of a Dodo, jam tarts, pocket-watches, chess – but it is the feel of Shrinking Violet which truly unites the two.  Where Carroll’s books have their own curious anti-logic, Karina takes on the surreality of Alice, but mostly in Violet’s unusual view of the world, rather than that world itself.  The narrative slips into the little girl’s imagination, so that her curious conclusions and conversations with the inanimate sometimes seem to be coming true, but this simply indicates the vividness of the world she inhabits and creates.  As she grows older (and taller – like Alice, her height suddenly increases, although it doesn’t oscillate…) the world around her becomes less fantastic, but the tone never loses its wonderful surreal qualities – but a surrealism rooted in the domestic.  The events of the novel could certainly happen – a school day, a wedding, a funeral – but they take on their own peculiar, touching, curious character through Violet’s eyes and Karina’s words.

One of the stylistic traits which Karina uses wonderfully is the off-balance end to sentence or paragraph, often adding a little pathos to a quirky character or, alternatively, adding an unusual twist to an otherwise grounded section.  Here is an example of the former:

Aunt Dora was rarely awake and even then, barely. It was often said of her that she could sleep anywhere and did. When she was young she had found it impossible to sleep in silent or solitary places and so had paid to visit museums, watch films and take train journeys just to sleep where there would be noise and crowds. She had slept through an opera, a circus show and a riot. None of her family knew this about her because she saw it as a rather sordid secret. Her friends did not know it because she did not have any friends.
This pathos comes most affectingly with Violet’s grandfather Julius.  To my mind, he is the most delightful character in Shrinking Violet.  Somehow he is both eccentric and straight-talking.  He doesn’t beat about the bush, but his world is almost as fanciful as the infant Violet’s.  He once wrote a great novel, but now writes haiku on bits of paper and leaves them around the house.  His interactions with the everyday world – with his granddaughter’s wedding, or his wife’s illness – are fragmented and uncertain, but he is still in control of his personality and his opinions.  He’s a fascinating character – and it is with him and Violet’s relationship with him that the sadder, more serious undertones of the novel come to light.

For a short novel, an awful lot is packed in – but, unlike a lot of first novels, I didn’t feel that Karina was trying to put too much in.  There is a definite unity to Shrinking Violet, in terms of style and tone, which suggests a much more experienced novelist.  Perhaps it is not entirely clear how Karina will write when detached from the deliberate influence of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but I think her ability to depict the quirky alongside the moving can be transferred to her next book, without the allusions to Alice.  I’m looking forward to finding out what happens.

As a friend of Karina’s, I want to say “Buy it! Read it! Blog about it! Tell your friends!”, but as a reader of books, I need no sort of nepotism simply to say “Buy it! Read it!”  It’s a really wonderful little book, and I’m proud to have any connection with it – Karina is a talented and imaginative writer, Violet is a wonderful character, and Shrinking Violet is a joyous, eccentric, thoughtful little beauty of a book.

My Life in Books – Series Three over!

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Thanks so much to everyone who participated in My Life in Books this year – another great line-up of wonderful bloggers, and lots of inspiring choices.  This is just a short post to say how much I enjoyed the week – and it seems like you all did too – because I wanted to leave the focus on people’s answers before moving on to reviews etc.  Do go back and read, comment, visit their blogs etc.

I intend to another series next March, I think – if you would like to be considered as a participant, or can think of a blogger whom I’ve yet to ask (first two series archive here, and I’ll put up an updated version soon) then let me know!

Coming up in the next few weeks – photos from my holiday, including my first ever pumpkin carving; I do a u-turn on a famous novelist; a funny sequel; a brilliant novella which was my first Kindle [for PC] read; a really lovely children’s author’s memoir – and, on Wednesday, my birthday!

See you soon.

My Life in Books: Series Three: Day Seven

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Frances blogs at Nonsuch Book, and I shamelessly stole the idea of centered, lower case post titles from her… thanks, Frances!

David blogs at Follow The Thread, and is (I think) the only person other than me who attended both the Bloggers Meet-Ups I organised a while ago! [EDIT: Oops, no, he wasn’t!]

Qu. 1.) Did you grow up in a book-loving household, and did your parents read to you? Pick a favourite book from your childhood, and tell me about it.

Frances: I did grow up in a book-loving household. A seriously book-loving family. My grandfather and his sister never said no when it came to a book and some of my best memories from childhood are of book shopping expeditions. All those possibilities! I was read to frequently by all members of my extended family but they did take to hiding my favorite book, The Lorax, because I cried every single time when we reached the end and the Lorax picked himself up by the seat of his pants and disappeared through the grey clouds.

David: I’ve always been around books and words, though I don’t think I’d say my household was more book-loving than the average. My father in particular has read books as long as I remember, but I wouldn’t describe him as a true bookworm – I’ve always been the most bookish person in my family. I was read to as a child: the Munch Bunch books were my mum’s main books of choice, and the Mr Men were my dad’s. Richard Scarry’s work was another childhood touchstone – I remember a book of 366 stories and poems, one for every day of the (leap) year.

My reading as a child took in myths and legends, books of obscure or humorous facts, fiction, poetry, and more. Given that, it’s hard to just choose just one book, but I’ve gone for Can You Get Warts from Touching Toads? by Peter Rowan. It’s a collection of answers to kids’ medical questions, such as whether eating bread crusts makes your hair curl, or whether it’s better to run about or fall asleep after Sunday lunch. I had great fun browsing this book, and the Quentin Blake illustrations only added to that (I can still remember one of the grandfather who claimed he could blow pipe smoke out of his ears).

Qu. 2.) What was one of the first ‘grown-up’ books that you really enjoyed? What was going on in your life at this point?

Frances: Every Christmas, my family would listen to a recording of A Christmas Carol on Christmas Eve, and I just loved that. Got it into my head that I could read Dickens when I was much too young to appreciate but I persisted. No wonder that re-reading Dickens as an adult was a completely different experience than those childhood reads. :)

David: Terry Pratchett was my bridge between children’s and adult fiction. I first got into his work through the wonderful animated version of his novel Truckers; moving on to the Discworld books in my mid-teens was a natural progression. There are so many I could choose, but Wyrd Sisters is one of my favourites. The book great fun for Pratchett’s humorous riffs on Shakespeare (“When shall we three meet again?” “Well, I can do next Tuesday”). But it’s also an incisive exploration of one of his main themes as a writer – the ways we use stories to shape the world. For all Pratchett’s success, I think that aspect of his work is significantly underappreciated.

I also have to mention Wyrd Sisters because it was one of the texts I used in my A Level English Language coursework project, comparing the humour in three comic fantasy novels. That was a busy and enjoyable time – and probably one of the first occasions when I really thought about how my favourite books worked.

Qu. 3.) Pick a favourite book that you read in early adulthood – especially if it’s one which helped set you off in a certain direction in life.

Frances: The World According to Garp. But that is a deeply personal story.

David: Summer vacations from university were a great opportunity to get some concentrated leisure reading done. In the summer after my second year, there were two large books in particular that I wanted to read. One was China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station; as that’s become the better-known of the two, I’ll concentrate on the other one here. Mary Gentle’s Ash: a Secret History was one of the first books I read because of online reviews: the vast (1000 pages, though it reads quickly) tale of a female medieval mercenary, which proves in time to encompass much more than that. I devoured it in a week and can still remember the experience. (Incidentally, both Ash and Perdido Street Station were shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award; this was one of the first years I paid attention to the shortlist, which has since become a highlight of my blogging year.)

Qu. 4.) What’s one of your favourite books that you’ve found in the last year or two, and how has blogging changed your reading habits?

Frances: A History of Love by Nicole Krauss is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read, but I have to say that some of the best reading experiences I have ever had have been because of my blogging life especially with my on-too-long-a-hiatus online book group, The Wolves. We have read the treasured together (Virginia Woolf) and all manner of new things. It is how I came to the infinitely playful Perec, Conversation in a Cathedral and many other wonders. I came to blogging for the conversation and that satisfied the want and then some.

David: Blogging has broadened my reading habits, and helped me to see that what I really like is not a type or genre of book, but a set of qualities that I can find in all sorts of books. I’ve also become interested in reading new literature, and seeing what writers of my own generation have to say. So the book I’m going to choose here is Mr Fox, Helen Oyeyemi’s journey through different versions of the Bluebeard story. When I read a writer like Oyeyemi, I know that the future of literature is in good hands.

Qu. 5.) Finally – a guilty pleasure, or a favourite that might surprise people!

Frances: I read comic books. Have always been a big Thor fan. All the Nordic myth stuff plus the fact that he sacrifices his godlike status to dwell and live among humans in part.

David: I don’t really think of myself as having guilty pleasures – if a book is a pleasure to read, there’s a good reason for that, and I don’t see a need to feel guilty over it. Which leaves me with a book that might surprise people…

I’m going to say Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë. I only read it this year, but I’m choosing it because I think it’s a sign of where I am as a reader right now. I’m not as well read in the classics as I’d like to be, and there was a time when I wouldn’t have chosen to read a novel like Agnes Grey. But I really liked it, and appreciated it in ways that I wouldn’t have previously. That’s how I know I’ve grown as a reader, and I hope I will continue to do so in years to come.

And… I’ve told you the other person’s choices, anonymously. What do you think these choices say about their reader?

David, on Frances’s choices: This reader has chosen a classic ghost story and a work based on Greek myth, so there’s an interest in traditional tales here. Anyone who would choose a Dr Seuss title as a childhood favourite surely loves language. Put the two together, and I think you have someone who appreciates storytelling – it wouldn’t surprise me if this person enjoys the spoken word as well as the written. The Thor comic makes me think of grand, sweeping action; and the Irving and Krauss books tell epic stories about individual lives – so I’d say this person enjoys books with a large or small focus. Definitely someone who’d be interesting to talk books with!

Frances, on David’s choices:  At first glance, this list seemed to suggest a very clear picture of this reader – inclined to the fanciful but only in a smart and sometimes irreverent form. A reader with a sense of humor certainly. Perhaps a subtly wicked sense of humor. And then I get to the end of the list and see Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte and became suspicious that this exercise is not “determine a portrait of this reader” but a “which one of these things is not like the other” proposition. Another excellent novel on the list but stark, purposeful and loaded in its intent in a way not present in the others. This must be a reader that has an obvious passion in his/her reading choices but with depths and range not immediately obvious.

My Life in Books: Series Three: Day Six

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Laura blogs at Laura’s Musings, and has been the brainchild between the year-long celebration of Elizabeth Taylor throughout 2012.  Thanks, Laura!

Jodie is better known to most of us as Geranium Cat, and was (I believe) one of the first bloggers I met in person.  Lovely!

Qu. 1.) Did you grow up in a book-loving household, and did your parents read to you? Pick a favourite book from your childhood, and tell me about it.

Laura: My mother was an avid reader and always had something on the go. To this day I can picture her curled up in her “reading chair.” She made sure I learned to read before starting school, and took me to the library on a regular basis. I outgrew the library’s juvenile fiction before I was old enough to receive an adult library card, but was given one with a special designation that allowed me to check out all but the most “mature” books.

When I was very young I received several books by Joan Walsh Anglund as gifts, and I adored them. They are small books that fit well in a child’s hand, with very sweet illustrations and titles like Love is a Special Way of Feeling and A Friend is Someone who Likes You. Their central message was all about being loved and caring for others. I remember having them read to me, and then reading them on my own. They were a regular source of comfort, and even now their covers bring back warm feelings.


Jodie: Yes and yes. I adored books and was encouraged and read to by everyone around me. One grandfather read Winnie-the-Pooh and Christmas Carol to us “with voices” and Granny was wonderful both at reading Alice and at making up stories. My favourite book from my early childhood was Barbara Sleigh’s Carbonel, about a girl who buys a witch’s cat and has to free him from a spell. It’s the first book I can remember reading to myself, because everyone else was too busy that day. I’m sure learning to read wasn’t quite that straightforward, but it’s a book I still love.

Qu. 2.) What was one of the first ‘grown-up’ books that you really enjoyed? What was going on in your life at this point?

Laura: I read Jane Eyre one summer, I think I was about 12. At that point, this was the longest book I’d ever read. I entered a local bookstore’s summer reading competition, so who knows why I chose such a long book! I remember taking it with me to summer camp, partly because I was enjoying it, but more than anything I wanted to win the competition! I didn’t win, but I did well enough to earn a small gift certificate. And Jane Eyre definitely sparked my interest in classics and made me more willing to approach books others might consider difficult.

Jodie: As soon as I was old enough to go to the library alone I was sent every week (not that I needed encouragement) to choose books for my father to read on the theatre switchboard when there were no lighting changes and, inevitably, I read them too. So I grew up on a diet of crime and science fiction – H.P. Lovecraft, James Blish, John Creasey, Robert van Gulik…I definitely shouldn’t have been reading van Gulik’s The Haunted Monastery at whatever age I was then (probably about 12), I was distinctly shocked by it, but I’ve got it on my bookshelf now, so I think it should get the “first grown-up book” category. Choosing those books certainly shaped my own reading habits though, because I had to be discerning; I couldn’t simply take 4 books off the shelf and hope that they’d do.

Qu. 3.) Pick a favourite book that you read in early adulthood – especially if it’s one which helped set you off in a certain direction in life.

Laura: In the mid-1990s, I joined a book group with a lot of fantastic women, all older than me and great role models. One of them introduced me to The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley, a retelling of the Arthurian legend from a female perspective. At that time, I was just becoming aware of the way history, myth, and legend can differ based on who’s telling the story. Mists sent me off on a period of reading alternative points of view and learning about the often unsung role of women in history.

Jodie: I think that has to be The Once and Future King by T.H. White, because after I read it I became quite obsessed by myths and legends, something which has never changed. Following the trail started by White led to so much other literature, from his contemporaries like Sylvia Townsend Warner to his sources, such as Malory and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I love multi-layered fiction, and I think White was my first experience of it. Um, the only thing that’s wrong with this answer is that I read it when I was 12, but it really is the well from which all my interests spring.

Qu. 4.) What’s one of your favourite books that you’ve found in the last year or two, and how has blogging changed your reading habits?

Laura: In the recent past I’ve discovered two wonderful authors: Winifred Holtby and Molly Keane, who wrote two books that landed on my list of all-time favourites: South Riding and Good Behaviour. Both are Virago Modern Classics, which have had a profound impact on my reading habits (and my pocketbook)! When I started blogging in 2007, I read a lot more contemporary bestsellers, mixed with some classics but mostly ones typically taught in school. I discovered Virago Modern Classics through LibraryThing, and have been introduced to so many fine women writers I never would have discovered otherwise.

Jodie: The recent favourite is easy – Angela Thirkell’s August Folly, the first of her books that I read. I came to blogging almost through despair – that’s hardly too strong a word. Five years ago I had read everything that I could face on the library shelves, a nauseating cocktail of chicklit, inferior crime writing and poorly-written fantasy. I was utterly miserable but I decided that the Internet must be good for something by then and started looking for recommendations by people who liked the same sort of books as me and bombarding the library with requests for books – oh yes, and buying them. I no longer wait for a good book to come to me by chance, I actively pursue them, as far as I can afford to, and the proportion of newly published books I read has gone down considerably. I still read crime and fantasy, but I can be much more discerning, and I won’t finish a bad book just for the sake of having something to read.

Qu. 5.) Finally – a guilty pleasure, or a favourite that might surprise people!

Laura: This is difficult to answer because I don’t usually read for escape, or for guilty pleasure. But since most of my reading tends to be “heavy” stuff, I do need a break occasionally. Then I find that mystery or crime novels, which I rarely read otherwise, can be just the ticket. Most recently I escaped into Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl and have enjoyed C.J. Sansom’s Matthew Shardlake mysteries, set in the Tudor period.

Jodie: Well, not exactly guilty, but this one has not only spent the last year on my bedside table, but I regularly take it with me when I’m away from home. It is The Illustrated NFL Playbook, subtitled: “Pro football explained in diagrams, charts and definitions”…I should explain for those to whom the letters “NFL” mean absolutely nothing that this is American football, as mysterious to the uninitiated as cricket (which I loathe, along with virtually every other form of sport I can think of). All I can say in my defence is that it has proved a wonderfully safe topic to steer conversations towards on those occasions when my three large menfolk disagree (sometimes joined, I’ll admit, by me) on quantum computing, or whether pecorino is better than parmesan, or what to do about the Palestinian question. At such times all I have to say is, “Who do you think has the better defensive line, the 49ers or the Bears?” and they’ll be throwing statistics around for hours. The funny thing is, I’ve started to really enjoy it…



And… I’ve told you the other person’s choices, anonymously. What do you think these choices say about their reader?

Jodie, on Laura’s choices: There were two books I didn’t know at all. Googling Love is a Special Way of Feeling by Joan Walsh Anglund shows that it looks very sweet, and ideal for parents to read with their child sitting on their knee – a book for sharing. I’d guess that this is someone who grew up in surroundings where books were treasured. South Riding – Winifred Holtby and Good Behaviour – Molly Keane? Well, I suspect that this person’s bookshelves may have quite a few volumes with dark green spines and probably a collection of Persephones too? And that they probably like secondhand bookshops and would much rather read a book published last century than the latest bestseller. In The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley, I think I might detect a fellow lover of myths and legends? Definitely a romantic, at any rate, though, taken along with Jane Eyre, perhaps a romantic with a sense of restraint. Something these books have in common is the strength of their female characters: even quiet Jane refuses the safe option, while Sarah, Aroon and Morgaine struggle against the dictates of their worlds. Finally, Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn – this is the other book I don’t know, but I think all these choices tell me that this person is interested in how people and relationships work and in the role of woman in society, and is someone who looks for emotional integrity in their reading.

Laura, on Jodie’s choices: I felt a bit anxious to begin with, because I’d never heard of Barbara Sleigh or Robert van Gulik. Thank you LibraryThing for filling me in! This reader strikes me as an anglophile whose lifelong reading has been shaped by a love of fantasy. I was excited to see The Once and Future King as their early adult read, since I was strongly affected by a woman’s version of the same tale. The Angela Thirkell is really different from their earlier choices, which makes me think this person is open to new experiences at least in reading, and possibly in life as a whole. But I have to say, The Illustrated NFL Playbook had me scratching my head. I’m guessing this person has a great sense of humor, having thrown in a selection so different from the others. There has to be an interesting explanation, and I can’t wait to read their what they have to say!

My Life in Books: Series Three: Day Five

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Lisa blogs at A Bloomsbury Life, and gives me daily life-envy.  But it’s impossible for me to hate her, because she’s so funny and sweet and has Persephone Books in her blog banner.

Jane is better known to most of us as Fleur Fisher, and her distinctive style and excellent taste make her a daily must-read.

Qu. 1.) Did you grow up in a book-loving household, and did your parents read to you? Pick a favourite book from your childhood, and tell me about it.

Lisa: One of my earliest memories is seeing my mother curled up with a book in a Saarinen Womb chair while my four younger siblings wreaked chaos around her. She had escaped to somewhere else completely and I remember wishing I could follow her! She was a voracious reader and read to me all the time. I had my Enid Blyton phase and my Jean Plaidy phase but it was The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles by Julie Edwards (i.e. Andrews) that clicked on a light bulb for me. The children in the book use “thinking caps” to take them to the fantasyland of the Whangdoodle. It struck me that our imaginations are the only super-powered vehicle we need to make our dreams come true. And that if we work toward something and think positively and don’t give up, there’s no limit to what we can achieve.

Jane: My parents were both readers, and there were always books in the house. Over the years they built up a collection of books that they wanted to keep, and borrowed many others from the library. My baby book records that my first walk was through the Morrab Gardens to the public library. 

I remember being given classics for birthdays and at Christmas, being encouraged to spend my pocket money on books rather than sweets, and regular library visits. Best of all though were the book than my mother had saved, hoping that she would have a daughter to share them with one day.

And the very best of those was Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. It was a lovely hardback edition, but we’ve read it so many times between us that it is coming to pieces. I wanted a sister, but she never arrived, and so a story of four sisters was quite irresistible. I loved that they were so different and yet they were such a close family. I loved their different stories, and I felt so many different emotions as I watched their lives unfold. It was all utterly real to me – it still is – and I wasn’t at all surprised when I discovered that the book was inspired by the author’s own family.

Qu. 2.) What was one of the first ‘grown-up’ books that you really enjoyed? What was going on in your life at this point?

Lisa: I read Atlas Shrugged when I was twelve partly to be precocious and partly because a friend of my parents had asked me, “Who is John Galt?” and of course I had to find out. A lot of Ayn Rand’s moral relativism went over my head but her strong-willed protagonists were potent role models for a shy middle-schooler whose life resembled The Diary of a Wimpy Kid. I think it was the first time I realized that I had a choice in life: I could follow the herd or I could follow my heart. And that if I chose the latter, I needed to stop worrying about what people thought of me and start making my own damn decisions.

Jane: I remember, in my first or second year in secondary school, an English exam with a comprehension test that used a passage from Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy. I loved his rich, descriptive prose and I picked up a copy of the book from the library not long after. I loved the language, I loved reading about country life, and I loved the story that Hardy span around Bathsheba Everdene and her three suitors.

After that I read my way though every book by Thomas Hardy I could find, and I looked closely at anything I came across that was dressed in the black garb of Penguin Classics. The Brontes came next, then Wilkie Collins, then George Eliot. And when I saw a book that looked very similar, but was dressed instead in green, I picked that one up too, and discovered Virago Modern Classics. But that’s another story.

Qu. 3.) Pick a favourite book that you read in early adulthood – especially if it’s one which helped set you off in a certain direction in life.

Lisa: Easy. David Copperfield. I read it sophomore year of college and for a long time afterwards, it was my favorite book. It’s all about the triumph of character over circumstance. Dickens tells us, “Look. Life is a struggle, but it’s important to suck it up and keep plugging along because unimaginable joy could be just around the corner. And if things go wrong, it helps if you try to find the funny.”

Jane: When I came home from university for Christmas one year my father told me that he’d bought my mother a book. The Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Penman: a big historical novel about Richard III and the end of the Wars of the Roses, painting a more sympathetic than usual picture of the last Plantagenet king of England. I wasn’t at all sure she’d like it. In those days my mother usually read romances and family sagas, historical novels, and I had no memory at all of her reading historical fiction.

When I came home next, for Easter, the bookmark was still just a few pages into the book. Just before I left my mother told me that she didn’t like it at all, but she thought that maybe I would. I started reading on the train back to London and I was smitten. It brought a period and characters I had known little about to life and it brought it home to me that history was rewritten by the winners, that there could be very different interpretations but on the same facts. I’d read a little historical fiction before then, but since then I’ve read a great deal more.

Qu. 4.) What’s one of your favourite books that you’ve found in the last year or two, and how has blogging changed your reading habits?

Lisa: I read Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig a few years ago and its intensity still haunts me. I think of Zweig’s writing style as Sigmund Freud meets F. Scott Fitzgerald. It’s psycho glamour. In the novel, an innocent act sets off a chain of events which spiral to a horrifying conclusion. The tension is so palpable that it feels like it was written in one long breath. I’ve now read everything he’s ever written.

And yes, blogging has started to change the way I read. Blogs are the 21st century version of a 19th century literary salon. I love hopping from site to site and listening to a miscellany of different voices and perspectives – the mash-up can create some incredible connections. Lately, I’ve been doing the same thing with books. Right now, I’m alternating between Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks (dense, fascinating) and Hilary Mantel’s Bring Out the Bodies (a thrill ride). Reading both together feels like a richer experience.

Jane: There was a point in my life, a little over six years ago, when I had to store a lot of my books in boxes in the attic. I decided I needed to catalogue them, so I knew what I had and where it was, and after a bit of looking around I decided that LibraryThing was just what I needed. Not long after I’d started entering books an invitation to join the Virago Modern Classics Group landed. It was wonderful to find that there were so many people, in so many places, who still loved those green books, and those people led me to new books, new publishers, new places to find books. Blogging came a little while later, as I found some lovely blogs when I explored ‘similar libraries’ and found myself wanting to write a little, to fix the books I was reading in my mind.

All of that didn’t so much change my reading habits as make me realise that because there were so many books out there I had to be a little more selective than I’d been in the past. And that it was always worth picking up an unknown title by an unknown author if the book caught my eye, just in case it was a lost gem waiting to be revived by one of those lovely reprint houses.

And that brings me to Love in the Sun by Leo Walmsley. I picked it up, from the Cornish fiction bookcase in the Morrab Library, because I knew people with the same name. There didn’t seem to be a connection, but the dust jacket was beautiful and an enthusiastic introduction by Daphne Du Maurier (a friend and neighbour of the author) told me that I had to read it. I found one of those lost gems.

A man and a woman from the north-east were in love, but their situation was complicated, so they ran away to Cornwall. They leased an old army hut and struggled to live off the land, while he wrote a novel. Love in the Sun is fact rewritten as fiction, honestly, thoughtfully and beautifully written. It was out of print when I read it, but I was thrilled to hear from the Walmsley Society that they now have it back in print, in a very nice new paperback edition.

Qu. 5.) Finally – a guilty pleasure, or a favourite that might surprise people!

Lisa: I am starting to feel guilty that I might be too insistent that my friends read Beverley Nichols. His Merry Hall memoirs are so wickedly funny. Beverley writes like he’s Noel Coward lost in a P. G. Wodehouse novel and I want to live in every house he ever writes about. If I’m feeling clever-deficient, I read a few pages of him and my wit comes snapping back.

Jane: I don’t really believe in guilty pleasures. Books can offer so many different things, and I think the trick is picking the book that offers what your head and heart need at any given moment. And if sometimes that’s great literature and sometimes its chick lit, so be it. I’m not sure what might be surprising either, because I can see a thread that runs through pretty much everything I read.

But maybe this is the time to confess that I sometimes read to Briar (my border terrier) from The Dastardly Book for Dogs by Rex and Sparky. Santa Claus left it for her a few years ago and she has learned a great deal from it. How to pick a pill out of peanut butter; what to do during a thunderstorm; building a bed out of your owner’s laundry; the formal rules of fetch; making toys out of household items …

And… I’ve told you the other person’s choices, anonymously. What do you think these choices say about their reader?

Jane, on Lisa’s choices:My initial reaction was that I have no idea, and that I don’t think we’ve ever crossed paths.
Then I thought a little more and I decided:
1) This is someone who is very purposeful, and not afraid of hard work.
2) This is someone who lives in a city or a big town, not in the country or by the sea.
3) This is probably a cat person rather than a dog person.
but it wouldn’t surprise me at all of I’m wrong on all counts.

Lisa, on Jane’s choices: How fun! Let me put my Miss Marple hat on…and away we go. First of all, Little Women suggests someone who understands the struggle between family devotion and the desire to be independent and live your own life. With Love in the Sun, I’m envisioning someone who is passionate about adventure and life’s simple pleasures. Including The Sunne in Splendor with its empathetic perspective of Richard III makes me think this person doesn’t rush to judgment and has faith in the power of redemption. He/she also possesses a great sense of humor about the absurdities of modern life (The Dastardly Book for Dogs) and has a deep and haunting empathy for the vagaries of human nature (Far From the Madding Crowd).

So to recap: This person is fair-minded, optimistic and always gung-ho for adventure, has a keen sense of the absurd, a deep passion for domesticity and family and looks on life’s tribulations as being exciting opportunities for personal growth. Who says the perfect person doesn’t exist?!