Project24

I hope you’ve had a lovely Christmas! I’ll be honest, my ongoing eye issues are making book blogging a bit tricky – so I’ll pop in with my Best Books of 2022 on New Year’s Eve, and otherwise I’ll probably have a little hiatus. The treatment isn’t working yet, but I’ve also had flu, so that hasn’t helped. Hurrah for audiobooks but, gosh, I miss reading.

So I wasn’t really in the mood for buying my 24th book for Project 24, if I’m honest – but then realised a perfect choice could be some Mary Oliver. It’s much easier to read a poem than a page of text, and I’ve been wanting to try Oliver for a while. I was a bit worried she’d be too self-helpy for me, but asked Twitter for recommendations – and Heather suggested A Thousand Mornings. And so that is my final book purchase of the 24 books I bought in 2022 (and, no, I shan’t be doing the project next year.)

And, so I have them in one place, here are the 24 books I bought this year… I’ll do more of an overview at some point, but this will do for now.

1.) The Flowering Thorn by Margery Sharp
2.) House Happy by Muriel Resnik
3.) Murder on the Second Flood by Frank Vosper
4.) Why I’m Not A Millionaire by Nancy Spain
5.) The Patience of a Saint by G.B. Stern
6.) In Pious Memory by Margery Sharp
7.) The Chase by Mollie Panter-Downes
8.) The Deepening Stream by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
9.) The Home by Penelope Mortimer
10.) In No Strange Land by Jane Oliver
11.) The Fiery Gate by Ronald Fraser
12.) The Old Moat House by Eleonora H. Stooke
13.) The Comfort Tree by Stella Martin Currey
14.) War Isn’t Wonderful by Ursula Bloom
15.) Jim Comes Home by Frank Tilsey
16.) More Joy in Heaven by Sylvia Townsend Warner
17.) Fifty Forgotten Books by R.B. Russell
18.) Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman
19.) Spring Always Comes by Elizabeth Cambridge
20.) The Crime of Sheila McGough by Janet Malcolm
21.) The First To Die At The End by Adam Silvera
22.) Ducks by Kate Beaton
23.) Sea State by Tabitha Lasley
24.) A Thousand Mornings by Mary Oliver

Embarrassingly, I thought I was doing quite a good job of reading them this year – but, it turns out, I’ve only actually read seven of these books. But they’re all books that I’m pleased have ended up my shelves – and, eyes permitting, I’d be keen to get to any and all of them in 2023.

My blogging has been a bit minimal of late, and that’s because I’ve been having ongoing issues with my eyes – including not really being able to read. Which, I’m sure you’ll understand, has been really difficult for me. After lots of back and forth to the optometrist, they think they’ve worked out what the issue is and I have treatment now – so I’m quietly hopeful that I’ll be able to spend some of the Christmas break reading. But I’ve been listening to lots of audiobooks, so thank goodness for them.

Anyway, in the midst of this my 23rd book arrived for Project 24 – the project where I’m only allowing myself to buy 24 books through the year. I shipped Sea State by Tabitha Lasley from America, because the US cover is so much nicer than the UK cover. To be honest, I ordered this in a ‘I really need to order a book’ mode, and I don’t know if it’s otherwise something I’d have raced towards – but it looks interesting nonetheless. I saw Dorian tweet about it and I’m always drawn to unusual memoirs. Here’s some of the publisher’s description: ‘In her mid-thirties and newly free from a terrible relationship, Tabitha Lasley quit her job at a London magazine, packed her bags, and poured her savings into a six-month lease on an apartment in Aberdeen, Scotland. She decided to make good on a long-deferred idea for a book about oil rigs and the men who work on them. Why oil rigs? She wanted to see what men were like with no women around.’

Only one book left to buy this year. To be honest, with my eyes as they are at the mo, the idea of buying a book seems a far cry. But here’s hoping.

I went for quite a while without buying any of my allotted 24 books under Project 24. And then, dear reader, the dam burst. I couldn’t stop buying. Three of these four were online, and one was from a local bookshop – and, unusually for me, three of these are new books. (There’s also another new book, I guess my 23rd for the year, on its way to me from America – because the US cover is so much nicer than the 24th.)

Here are the four books I bought, and why…

Spring Always Comes by Elizabeth Cambridge

As I said, most of these really came because I was missing book buying. They wouldn’t necessarily have found their way to my shelves with any urgency if it weren’t for me jonesing for buying some books. But Spring Always Comes is the exception. I loved Hostages to Fortune by Elizabeth Cambridge – the one Persephone reprinted – and have read it a few times since 2004, when I first delved in. It’s a domestic novel par excellence – but other Cambridge novels are quite tricky to find. And ever since I read Barb’s 10/10 review of Spring Always Comes, I’ve wanted to get hold of this. And finally a copy turned up online! And now it is MINE.

The Crime of Sheila McGough by Janet Malcolm

Whenever my Malcolm pile gets low, I panic and buy another. And I’m running out. She is just so brilliant. This is her, presumably unusual, take on a investigation into a lawyer who has imprisoned for a crime she says she hasn’t committed.

The First To Die At The End by Adam Silvera

I’m at least two decades older than this book’s audience, but I thought his teen novel They Both Die At The End was really good – the conceit is that, on the day you will die, you get a phone call telling you it will happen. And what a brilliant title! This is a prequel, but I think it’s about two entirely different people.

Ducks by Kate Beaton

Ducks seems to be getting a lot of rave reviews, and I’ve downloaded the One Bright Book episode on it to listen to when I’ve read it. It was on my radar because I follow the author on Twitter, and loved her Hark, A Vagrant cartoon blog for years. She has such an incisive, fun look at literary and historical culture. Ducks is something completely different – a graphic memoir on working in oil sands. I bought a copy for my friend’s birthday and then went back to the bookshop and bought a copy for myself, because it sounded so up my street.

I’ll let you know what the other book is when it arrives – partly because it was my most impulsey of impulse buys and I don’t actually recall the author or the title. What will my final book of the year be?? I was doing really well and now I only have one precious purchase to last me for almost a month…

I’m a bit behind with updates on Project 24, but I have been adding to my piles – including a couple of books arriving through the post this week. I’ve only got six books left for the year, but that makes me more or less on track for success. The four books I’ve bought in the past month offer quite a cross-section of the different reasons that books would make it to the top of my wishlist. And here they are…

Jim Comes Home by Frank Tilsley

I don’t actually know anything about Frank Tilsley or this novel, but I chose it for a couple of reasons. I was spending the weekend in Brussels, visiting a friend, and I like to buy a book as a souvenir of a new place – particularly a foreign country. Usually I aim to buy a book by someone from that country (in an English translation), but couldn’t find one that appealed. Instead, this jumped out: I like that this is a book from the Albatross Modern Library (which are very pleasing to the eye under any circumstances), and particularly that it has ‘Bruxelles’ on the cover. Most amusing is the note saying ‘not to be introduced into the British Empire or the USA’. Sorry, publishers, I have introduced it into Britain!

This is part of the description of the novel from the inside flap, which suggested to me that it would be very up my street, souvenirring-aside:

The scene of this novel by Frank Tilsley is a pleasant country village near the sea to which Jim comes home on seven days’ leave. The theme of the book is why he couldn’t go back. It tells of the loyalties and claims of family life, of the nagging day-to-day worries which beset the ordinary man and woman when faced by such overwhelming forces as war, of the deep emotions which lie hidden behind the outward calm so typical of the English character.

More Joy in Heaven by Sylvia Townsend Warner

The green hardback in the picture is More Joy in Heaven, an early collection of short stories by Warner and much harder to find than any of the other collections. I’ve had a wish alert for it at abebooks for a while – this one was more than I’d usually spend on a book, but Project 24 is a great opportunity to invest in those hard-to-find titles that need slightly deeper pockets. I’ve said it a few times here, but Warner’s naturalistic short stories show her writing at its finest – and are, in my opinion, much better than almost all her novels.

Fifty Forgotten Books by R.B. Russell

I mentioned this one a while ago in a Weekend Miscellany – it’s a new book of essays about forgotten books. Having looked through the index, there are a handful of books I love in there (including Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker, which is what tipped me off that Russell would be worth reading) – and plenty more to discover. Exactly the sort of book I cherish.

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman

Perhaps the most surprising title in the pile, but I really love Klosterman’s writing. I read But What If We’re Wrong? a few years ago, and recently read The Nineties as an audiobook. I meant to write about it but have yet to get around to it – I went on a Klosterman spree and have also listened to his collections I Wear The Black Hat and Eating the Dinosaur. This collection, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, isn’t available as an audiobook – and, being very keen to keep reading his funny, unusual takes on the world and his brilliance for making unexpected connections between popular culture and history, I couldn’t resist ordering a secondhand copy of this.

Have you read any of these? Would any of them appeal? I am looking forward to being more fancy-free in my book buying next year, but also feeling very noble at how my reading is outpacing my buying this year.

When I was in the Lake District recently, I paid a visit to a couple of bookshops. In fact, I made a day trip to visit one – Michael Moon’s Bookshop in Whitehaven. My goodness, what a wonderful place. It sprawls on and on, rooms piling out of rooms, and has a great and affordable stock. If it weren’t for Project 24, I’d have bought a lot more. I’ll have to go back.

The other shop was a secondhand bookshop in Keswick – a smallish stock, with some interesting things. Curiously the bookshop was closed except on Fridays and Saturdays, which doesn’t make a lot of sense for a week of the Keswick Convention with hundreds of people visiting the area, but there we are.

Anyway, here are the three new books I’ve added to my shelves this week, and why I chose them:

The Old Moat House by Eleanora H. Stooke
I was drawn to the lovely dustjacket on this one, and the fact that I love books about houses. From some investigation online, it looks like it was previously published as The Moat House, in the early 1900s. There is very little information about this book online, but Michael Moon’s had two copies. Curious! Stooke seems to have been mostly a writer for children – flicking through this one, it didn’t feel like a children’s book, but that may be what it transpires to be on closer inspection.

The Comfort Tree by Stella Martin Currey
I found One Woman’s Year – a non-fiction journey through a domestic year, reprinted by Persephone – to be totally delightful. So of course I couldn’t resist when I stumbled across one of her novels.

War Isn’t Wonderful by Ursula Bloom
This is a volume of memoirs by Ursula Bloom, aka Mary Essex of Tea Is So Intoxicating fame. I was interested enough to take it off the shelf, whereupon I discovered it was signed by Bloom! A fun addition to the shelves.

I’m 14 books in, and that takes me to the end of July, so I’m on track. I’ve definitely been helped by a handful of interesting review books arriving of late, and finding a tree Michael Innes novel in a box at the side of the road – which, by my not entirely logical rules, I’m allowed to have.

On Monday I had the day off, so I decided to go to Hidcote National Trust because I’m young and vibrant. It is a really beautiful garden and June seems like the perfect time to see it. After a wander, I spent quite a while sitting there, reading The Feast by Margaret Kennedy in preparation for the next episode of ‘Tea or Books?’

But while I was up that way, I thought I’d google for local secondhand bookshops – and that’s how I came across Draycott Books in Chipping Camden. It’s less than an hour from my house and somehow I haven’t been before?? Will certainly be rectifying, as it’s a lovely little shop – a great selection of books, affordable and in nice condition. Apparently there’s also a cat, but sadly I didn’t see him/her.

If it weren’t for Project 24, I’d have come away with an armful of books – I left behind a Pamela Frankau I don’t have, the short stories of Theodora Benson, and three boxfuls of Virago Modern Classics (although I did own most of them already). In the end, I chose two –

In No Strange Land by Jane Oliver 

Like lots of us, I loved Jane Oliver and Ann Stafford’s Business As Usual, and I’ve been wondering what their other books are like. The info with the book seemed to suggest they weren’t necessarily of the same calibre – but at least this way I can find out for myself.

The Fiery Gate by Ronald Fraser

I’ve read a couple of books by Fraser, both of which were in my doctoral thesis to different extents – Flower Phantoms (where a woman turns into a plant) and The Flying Draper (where, uh, a draper can fly). Apparently The Fiery Gate is another one of his fantastic narratives – and, while his writing wasn’t particularly brilliant in the novels I’ve read, that’s enough for me to be keen to give it a try.

I’ve jumped ahead of my rationing a little, as 11 books takes me to halfway through July. And I definitely have a bookshop trip or two planned in July. I guess I might have to be particularly abstemious in August!

I have been buying some of my allotted 24 books for Project 24, but didn’t want to interrupt Novella a Day in May with the spoils – but I am now up to nine books. That only takes me halfway through May, in terms of my allowance, so I’m doing well with the schedule. For now…

And here they are!

The Chase by Mollie Panter-Downes

I think I might now own all of Mollie Panter-Downes’ books?? Her early novels seldom appear online (until the British Library reprinted My Husband Simon, of course) and definitely not at affordable rates. The only copy I can now see online costs over £600 – please know that I didn’t spend anywhere at all close to that. I keep an eye on ebay for harder to find titles, and it paid off in this case. Looking forward to seeing what it’s like – and, you never know, could end up another one for the BL series.

The Deepening Stream by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

I finally made the journey to the new Persephone Books shop in Bath, to which they relocated a little while ago. I’m delighted they’re in Bath, which is such a beautiful and bookish town – the shop feels very like the Lamb’s Conduit Street one did, though a bit lighter because of a bigger window at the back. I knew I wanted this Fisher, so snapped it straight away. It’s a real doorstopper, so who knows if I’ll actually get it read any time soon.

The Home by Penelope Mortimer

You might have already seen my review of this one – and excellent it was, too.

So, very pleased with the nine books I’ve bought so far in 2022! Not counting the many audiobooks I’ve downloaded, of course. And let me tell you, my Amazon wishlist is getting LONG. Watch this space to see which others are added to my very full shelves by the end of the year.

Having rationed my book buying severely in the early days of the year, I have tumbled through my first six books quite quickly – even more quickly than posts appear, because I bought this one more than a week ago but waited until the 1954 Club finished before sharing.

(For those not in the know – I’m only buying 24 books this year. Click the Project24 tag to see what else I’ve bought.)

I was in London to see a play, so obviously I went to Charing Cross Road. Firstly, I found that Henry Porde books has moved and got rid of most of its stock? But Any Amount of Books is still there, and I made for the basement. Weirdly, I felt oddly confident that I’d find a Margery Sharp and it would be one I didn’t own. Which is precisely what happened!

I hadn’t heard of In Pious Memory before Ali wrote her review of it last year – and you can see me in the comments saying how keen I was to get hold of it. So I am delighted that I now have! It does look like I was very lucky to get hold of a cheap copy, since there aren’t many secondhand copies online.

Sharp makes up a third of the books I’ve bought so far for Project 24 – and, while I doubt that rate will keep up, I am pleased to be using my meagre allowance on an author I love and admire so much. Now I just have to read some of the Project 24 books…

Sometimes it isn’t that I really need a particular book that makes me add to my Project 24 list – sometimes it’s just that it’s been too long since I went to a bookshop. So on Saturday I went to one of my favourite secondhand bookshops, and certainly the nearest good one – in Wantage. As usual, there were a lot of books I might have taken a gamble on if I weren’t under Project 24 restrictions. As it is, I came away with these two…

The Patience of a Saint by G.B. Stern

I had a bit of a flurry of reading Stern last year, and still have some of her non-fiction left to read – but this novel seemed extremely up my street. Here’s a bit from the dustjacket copy that persuaded me that The Patience of a Saint (1958) had to come home with me:

It is the unshakeable conviction of Lady Eileen Francis that on the millenary of his martyrdom, St. Cedric of Hallowbridge will appear again. And he does – but not quite in the way she expected.

Why I’m not a Millionaire by Nancy Spain

My shelves already have a Spain novel and a memoir that I’ve not read, but I’ve been keeping an eye out for this one for years – not assiduously, because I might have then noticed it was reprinted a couple of years ago, but I’m still keen to read it. Why? Because of the pages that Ann Thwaite refers to in her biography of A.A. Milne, where Spain meets him. And I’m hoping the rest of it will be interesting, of course!

I’m still one book in hand, given that I could have bought six by now. (Have I read any of my Project 24 books yet? Er, let’s not ask.)

That was a longer break than intended – but don’t worry, Covid didn’t hit me all that hard. The fatigue was the worst part, but the whole thing was over within a week. Thank goodness for vaccines! Then I went off on holiday for a week to a converted railway station. It was with the same group that went away in early March 2020, in fact, so it felt like a sign of normality creeping back into our lives.

On the way there, we stopped off at Astley Book Farm. It’s one of those bookshops that is more enjoyable for the experience than the stock, necessarily, though the stock is vast and affordable so you’re bound to find something to read. It’s a converted farm that is now a lengthy warren of book-filled rooms, and their café is the best I’ve found in a bookshop. Soup, toasties, simply enormous pieces of cake.

There were lots of books I’d probably have taken home if I weren’t Project 24-ing (only buying 24 books this year), but two really stood out…

House Happy by Muriel Resnik

The turnover isn’t massive at Astley Book Farm, and I often find myself mulling over books that I reluctantly left behind on my previous trip. I’ve picked up House Happy every time I’ve been to Astley, over the past five or so years. It was a little more than I’d usually spend on a book (though rather less than it is selling for online), and Project 24 meant I could afford to splurge a little.

I was drawn in by the lovely, lively cover – but also by the description on the jacket flap. ‘It all start with an enormous bed. Lucy Butler bought it in a secondhand store on impulse, a force which activated most of her decisions.’ Turns out it is too big for her apartment, and so she has to house hunt (my favourite thing in a novel) – and finds a dream house she can’t afford.

Murder on the Second Floor by Frank Vosper

I hadn’t heard of Vosper, who is more famous as an actor (Wikipedia tells me), but the opening paragraph cried out to me:

Meet Sylvia Armitage. She is the heroine of this story. Sylvia is not reclining gracefully in a hammock, attired in a simple gown of flowered muslin, beneath a cherry-laden tree in a quaint, old-world garden. Neither is she sitting on a table, swinging her long, slim, graceful legs, with a cocktail in one hand and a cigarette in a long holder in the other, saying shocking things about biological urges to a horrified aunt. She is not even in a notorious night-club in New York, standing on a table, attired in less than half a bathing-dress, with a gentleman’s silk hat at a rakish angle on her wicked little head, drinking her own health – in such liberal potations as must seriously impair it – surrounded by fifty intoxicated lovers in paper hats, carrying a dozen balloons apiece. No; at the risk of opening our story in a drab and disappointing manner, the truth must be told. Sylvia Armitage is washing-up. Yes, washing-up, in the scullery in the basement of a most ordinary boarding-house in a most ordinary street in Bloomsbury.

I couldn’t leave it there, with that paragraph, could I? I’m delighted with all three of my Project 24 purchases so far, though have yet to read any of them. But I think I’ll remedy that before long – but which to start with?