Stuck in a Book

Aunt’s Aren’t Gentlemen is one of my favourite PG Wodehouse titles. I haven’t actually read the book, you understand, but the title sums up pretty much everything I enjoy about Wodehouse.

But that isn’t what I’m talking about today. Do you ever come across a book, through perfectly sensible literary paths, which makes you sit back and think “how on Earth did this become a part of my collection?” The connections which led to purchase are wholly admirable, but… Well, if you have to murmur the title to anyone sotto voce, then that’s a sure sign. If there’s a ready-made reason for buying on the tip of your tongue – “Oh, it seems strange, but I bought it because…” – then perhaps you’re in the same boat as me. How did I ever buy Cordial Relations: The Maiden Aunt in Fact & Fiction?

I’ve been reading the letters of Joyce Grenfell and Katharine Moore, on and off, for a few weeks – the latter kept mentioning the writing process, and consequent publication, of her book Cordial Relations (while making very clear that the title was Heinemann’s idea, not her own). Eventually I capitulated.

The letters are very interesting (have I mentioned them before?) Moore wrote to Grenfell after hearing her criticise a poem on the radio, leaping to the poem’s defence. A few tentative missives back and forth, and then the two became correspondents up until Grenfell’s death – though never met. Quite like blogging/internet friendships, really. But some amusingly odd letters – Moore often saw Grenfell on stage or in concert, and would write of it afterwards. How strange to see your correspondent on stage; stranger to think your correspondent could be somewhere in an anonymous audience. A fascinating scenario. Would I know if I walked past other bloggers on the street?

Anyway, I then discovered that Katharine Moore also wrote, and was rather intrigued by this volume. Seemed quite an arbitrary categorisation, but also quite an interesting one. Have a brief think – who do you reckon will get in? Of which maiden aunts can you think? Only had a quick flick through so far, but can tell you that the book includes sections on Jane Austen, Caroline Fox, Emily Eden, Dorothy Wordsworth (hmm, not very maiden, surely), Louisa M. Alcott, Maria Edgeworth, Harriet Martineau; Aunts to the Brontes (where is that pesky accent?), Gibbon, Lamb and Emerson; fictional Aunts in Ivy Compton-Burnett, Saki, Dickens, and, indeed, Wodehouse. What a wonderful selection of people! And a fascinating schema under which to approach them. I look forward to perusing…

And now I can proudly boast the title of this book. Maybe. Any other strange titles you feel the need to defend?

Sometimes it isn’t what you know, but whom you know… (I always get paranoid about who(m) on here… hope that’s right. Apologies if not). And today I want to point the finger at dovegreyreader, who so callously included me in the little list of links at the side of her blog. Callous, I say.

Well, of course I am joking, and am grateful for a longstanding e-friend to point others in my direction. But did she realise that her fame has spread to the independent publishers of the world? And they’ve realised something: these bloggers visit dovegreyreader for a reason – they probably quite like a nice book or two. Or three. Or eight hundred. Probably not adverse to hearing about them… wouldn’t mind a quick email… and catalogue…

And this is how I was the recipient of a very nice email from Ellie, of Hesperus Press.I feel I should make that more clear. Hesperus Press. There we go, that should get your attention. Ellie suggested that I might be interested in a catalogue – well, by now my head was dizzy with the fame of having my blog recognised by an Official Body. I practised my signature a few times on some napkins (definitely the one with the bows looping round the S – though a speedier moniker would have to be developed for occasions when the crowds reached triple figures) and sent an enthused reply. A quick check of their website, you see, showed me that they had books by Virginia Woolf AND Jane Austen. If you’re still wondering why I was excited, then we need to have a chat.
Can I quote my friend Ellie for a moment? “We specialise in revitalising and reprinting neglected classics, and in translating into English major or meritorious works that have somehow evaded translation.” All very admirable. I am especially taken by the reprints of not-so-famous works by famous authors – for the collectors out there, here are the works that Penguin haven’t published in a pocket edition. Alongside Austen and Woolf, authors include Alcott, Bronte (give or take an accent I can’t find), Collins, Conan Doyle, Dickens, Dostoevsky, George Eliot, Fitzgerald, Gaskell, Hardy, Lawrence, Mansfield, Melville, Pope, Shaw, Shelley (M & P), Thackeray, Tolstoy, Twain, Wharton and Wilde. And those are just the authors in whom I’m especially interested. (Pretty certain that ‘whom’ was warranted).

Ok, the authors are great. But let’s get judging books by covers – Hesperus’ are stunning. Not really obvious from the picture, but do check out the website. Howsabout another link? Here we go. They’ve gone for that close-up-detail thing that works so well, and looks so impressive. Let’s face it; I want them all. And when do you not need these books? That’s a much better way of phrasing it… And they’re an independent publishers, as I said, which always make me feel like I’m Saving The World in general, and Baby Seals in particular.

So my first order has gone in. Update when the books arrive…

I’m not working on commission. Yet…

Oh dear, I think it may have just swung past Thursday and into Friday. But I shan’t let that deter me from my post. Via Danielle, I think, I came across a great little website called ‘Booking Through Thursday’. The premise is: we bloggers get a bit of a day off from thinking. Instead of pondering the bookish direction any particular post will take, the good people of BTT have done the thinking for us. I answer the question, and await others to do the same in the comments – everyone’s happy. I’ve only just noticed the website, but it’s been going on steadily for quite a while, and provides diverse and intriguing approaches to bookishness. And hopefully I’ll be able to tack on an apposite sketch.

This week: where DON’T you read? (the previous week was ‘do you R.I.P.? i.e. read in public – and obviously everyone did!)

So… where don’t I read. Well, there certainly aren’t any places I’d be too ashamed to read – but there are some places it’s not practical to whip out a novel. Church, say, or a tutorial. Have done it in lectures before now, when they got too tedious. Not at a birthday party, though might at a regular dinner party; not during Neighbours… And not at the dentist. You?

I shan’t lie to you: this isn’t quite the view I’m getting at the moment. It’s nearly midnight, and very dark outside – but I took this photograph a few days ago. One of the downsides of this room in college was that it faced a wall – a fair bit of distance between us, but hardly a botanical garden. “Great,” thought I, “nothing to look at there then.” Well, as the good people of 3191, and Cornflower, so often show (in a far superior manner) – often the mundance can be beautiful and fascinating. When I looked out of my window and saw this, I realised my wall wasn’t as dull as I thought.

Where am I heading with this? Views, that’s where. More specifically, the views which are directly ahead of you as you blog – I don’t know what many of the blogging community look like, but neither do I know their surroundings. Mine are open to the public, which makes them rather less secretive, but I’ve always been fascinated by what people are looking at when they write. Moreso for authors, novelists – we can pick up a Penguin Classics edition of, say, Austen, but the text becomes so divorced from her writing experiences – it wasn’t until I got to visit her house in Hampshire that I felt I could grasp the process slightly. I could see where she sat, which door she looked at, to hide her papers if she noticed an approach. The village green out of the window. The little lane – probably various siblings and local children dotted over it now and again.

Is this fanciful? Well, probably – but it does make a difference to me. Was the author glancing up to see countryside, or did they have a view of a road? A wall? No view at all? Amazing how little of this comes across in the final voice, but how important it must be in the creating process. It gives some depth to reading a novel, I think, but it is disappointing when I discover that such-and-such writer spent the entire writing period stuck in a bedsit, or even the suburbs. Noble places, I’m sure, but how much more wonderful is Wordsworth’s house? Hardy’s?

How about the bloggers out there? What do you see? A window, or a door, or do you just take your laptop wherever there’s space? Now you know what I look at while I type. I wonder if it changed your opinion of the blog at all…

Now to today’s sketch.

Pensive?

Or…
…Vain?

I spent a lovely day today, visiting a village I moved away from about two years ago. They have an Open Gardens weekend every year, which my Dad helped to set up, and it’s great fun – lots of people open their beautiful gardens to the public, there’s Maypole Dancing, old motor cars, Arts & Crafts… everything one could want from a village. See www.eckington.info for more, erm, info.

They also have a bookstall. And, along with a trip to a charity shop earlier in the week, this amounts to a Mini-Haul, I think. So I thought I’d share it with you.

I know very little about some of these authors, so if anyone else does…

She – H. Rider Haggard – a book I knew of beforehand, but haven’t read it. Have only properly come across ‘She’ as performed by Elvis Costello. I imagine this isn’t particularly similar.

Testament of Experience – Vera Brittain – I have Testament of Youth on my shelves at home, and have been recommended VB over and over again. Must be something in it… Somehow I never quite feel ready to go ‘over the edge’ with this author – but perhaps if I amass enough of them, my opinions will change.

Up the Junction – Nell Dunn – a Virago novel (or perhaps collection of short stories; can’t quite tell). But this claims to have ’caused much controversy’ when dramatised by the BBC, so perhaps not my cup of tea. We shall see. Like the bad librarian that I’m not quite yet, I’ve thrown away the plastic dustjacket. Hate ’em.

Anybody Can Do Anything – Betty MacDonald – do you ever get that a book stalks you? It’s there, in every secondhand bookshop; every charity shop; every… well, you get the picture. Winifred Holtby’s South Riding is one; Betty MacDonald’s The Egg and I is another. Thus far, I feel too oppressed to pick them up – I’m playing hard to get. But I’ve tentatively let Betty McD in another route.

Georgie Merton – F. Harrington – an old children’s book. I can never resist old children’s books – somehow they seem to have memories attached them much more overtly than other older books. Doreen Lamb of Dagenham, Essex once owned this. I hope it brought her pleasure. The frontispiece is of children escaping up a tree, from a bull. How could it be a bad book?

I do hate to harp on… but if you have an RMH come to mind yet, do mention it. One of the problems with comment boxes/stats counters is that I feel a little like a performer at times, counting the number of empty seats in the theatre…

But I’m calling on you all for help again, I’m afraid! This will be another little series, in the same line of my ’50 Books…’ But instead of my despotism coming through, a little blogging demoncracy will be introduced…

Wait one moment while I attempt to sound like a Heart-Warming Family Viewing Programme. *Clears Throat* “Bookshops give so much to us, isn’t it time we gave something back?” But it is true. Where would we be without secondhand bookshops? I’d still be reading Goosebumps, probably. Well, probably not – but I wouldn’t have come across half of my favourite books, and I’m sure the same is true of my visitors – so let’s celebrate some of the bookshops (secondhand or otherwise; even some on the internet, why not) which have given us such literary privileges.

Every family holiday is spent in search of secondhand bookshops, consciously or otherwise. Our Vicar will always be on the look-out for a Tourist Information, regardless of whether or not he’s been to the place eighteen times in the past month. The Carbon Copy will wander around Woolworths wherever he is in the country, rarely buy a single item, and clearly relish in the identical home-from-home that every Woolworths is. Our Vicar’s Wife doesn’t consider a walk down the drive complete without having stopped somewhere for “a nice cup of tea” (on this we are in accordance). But all the family will willingly spend time in a secondhand bookshop, however much our tastes and spending differ. True, my squeak of excitement is perhaps solitary, but the rest of The Clan are probably squeaking inside.

So, I’m going to start the ball rolling with Bookcase of Carlisle.

When did you find out about them?
We have friends who live in Cumbria, and I think we came across this shop when visiting in 2001. I think I’ve been back just twice, but next time I’m in Cumbria…

Why are they so great?
Scattered over three floors, every square inch of this huge, old house is covered with books. Lots of modern paperbacks, but also many old hardbacks – and lots of non-fiction, probably, but I rarely venture into those realms. Pricing is sometimes reasonable and sometimes not quite so, but a lot of books you’re unlikely to find easily elsewhere.

What did you buy?
Gosh, I can remember what I bought in 2001. If I May, Once a Week and First Plays by AA Milne. They were some of the first AAM books I bought, actually, and I was very excited. The next time I went, I’d set myself a budget for books bought (fool!) and so had to leave behind the Journals of Sylvia Plath. Did buy a Penguin guide to Twentieth Century Literature. (Does anyone else remember where their books came from, like this?)

Contact information?
Can’t find a website, but there is some information here. Also bookcasecarlisle@aol.com – but the best thing I can suggest is to visit if you’re ever in that part of the world!

Anything else of interest?
Like all the best secondhand bookshops, it’s down a backstreet and away from the town centre – and, if memory serves, opposite a church which has been converted into a printers. I happened upon the shop entirely by accident – thought it looked like the kind of street which might have a secondhand bookshop, though The Clan tried to dissuade me. Triumph, methinks!

Ok, that’s my first one. DO PLEASE HELP ME OUT! Would love to hear about your favourite bookshops, whether in England or elsewhere. If you’d be happy to help out, with answers to these questions, and perhaps a pic or two, then just email or say so in the comments. I’ll hopefully be able to make this a semi-regular feature. Let’s give bookshops the thanks they deserve!

Not many RMHs out there – still thinking, are you? Do add one if it crosses your mind – or go out and find one, if you don’t have it yet.

I’m afraid I’m entering the world of Book Memes. A ‘meme’, for those who don’t know, is something akin to a chain letter on the internet, though less obtrusive, as I’ve gone and sought it out myself. 10 questions, relating to books, which you can feel free to respond to yourself.

1. One book that changed your life
The obvious answer is the Bible. But that is 66 books, and I’m going to go beyond the obvious on this one. I think I’m going to say The Enchanted Places by Christopher Milne. Perhaps an odd choice, but it is this book that catapaulted my reading into a new sphere. Having read it, I sought out AA Milne’s autobiography, and other works, which in turn led to EM Delafield, Richmal Crompton and Stephen Leacock… which went to Persephone… and the rest is history.

2. One book you’ve read more than once
Hmm. I don’t do this much (so many books out there! So little time!) The ones I’ve re-read include Diary of a Provincial Lady, It’s Too Late Now, Miss Hargreaves… all of which have appeared in my ’50 Books You Must Read But May Not Have Heard About’. So I’m going to go for Diary of a Nobody, as it’s the only Victorian novel I’ve read more than once. Oh, wait, I may have read The Picture of Dorian Gray twice… well, take your pick from the above. The only novels I’ve read three times are Miss Hargreaves and The Provincial Lady Goes Further.

3. One book you’d want on a desert island
Bible again, but I suppose that’s a given? Other than the ones mentioned (Provincial Lady would never stop me laughing) I think I’ll go for Virginia Woolf’s The Waves, because there is so much IN there; I’d never run out of finding news things. Or Pride and Prejudice.

4. One book that made you cry
It takes almost nothing for a book to make me cry. Oddly enough, the one guaranteed to make me blub is Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. It is that one where we eventually meet Neville’s parents, isn’t it?
I wonder what Virginia would say about being mentioned so close to Harry.

5. One book that made you laugh
Anything by P. G. Wodehouse can make me laugh out loud. Sam the Sudden is the most recent I read, possibly. Reminds me, I must make sure I get some back to Jacq before long… after finals, I’ll have a Wodehousefest.

6. One book you wish had been written
Miss Hargreaves Returns. There simply isn’t enough of her. I know it’s quite common to wish Emily Brontë had written something else, or Jane Austen had scribbled a few more novels, but I think it’s quite nice to have a limited amount – think of someone like Wodehouse. If he’d written six books, they’d have been classics. As it is, with over ninety, most people can’t name any of them.

7. One book you wish you had written
Gosh. So many. I’m going to try not to mention authors or books mentioned already, because I’d put a tick by almost all of them. Hostages to Fortune by Elizabeth Cambridge, I think (a Persephone book) as it’s the perfect example of domestic fiction.

8. One book you wish had never been written
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Ulysses, The Lord of the Rings. The first because it’s so very wildly overrated, and bored me on my A Level syllabus (not to mention getting me my only B); the second because the IDEA was so good, and the execution so self-important and tedious, but means no-one can now attempt the same grand work and be original; the third because then people studying Science subjects might have read something else, and the cinema might show something else.

9. One book you are currently reading
One Pair of Hands by Monica Dickens. You may remember it from my ‘what shall I read next?’ post. Well, I caved and started this – so very, very funny. Quite the antidote to revision.

10. One book you’ve been meaning to read
Oh, all of them. Well, that’s not true. Other than the ones in my ‘what shall I read next?’ post, I definitely want to read To Kill A Mockingbird and Middlemarch and Great Expectations and The Innocents Abroad and Barchester Towers and….