Library Loot

5 September 2010 20:59

I got a phone call from my local library yesterday morning to let me know that the book which I had requested was waiting for me to collect it. As I didn’t have much planned for the day I thought I might as well go and pick it up. So I now have Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus to plough through.

Saturday afternoon turned out to be a good time to visit the library as there were quite a lot of good books on the shelves, my last visit had been a fruitless one.

So this is my haul:

Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlyle
Oracle Night by Paul Auster
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
The Jewel of Seven Stars by Bram Stoker
Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks by John Curran. Fifty Years of Mysteries in the Making

Well, I’m hopeful that it’s a good haul anyway. The only downside of this is that I won’t be making any more dents in my TBR pile at home. I had been doing so well too.

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My Ántonia by Willa Cather

4 September 2010 23:17

This is the third Willa Cather book which I have read and this one didn’t disappoint me either. I’ve read Alexander’s Bridge and The Professor’s House.

The book begins with the 10 year old Jim Burden travelling to Nebraska by train. Both of his parents have died and he is going to live with his grandparents on their farm near Black Hawk. Ántonia and her family (The Shimerdas) are travelling in the immigrant car ahead and they are headed for Black Hawk too. They are described as Bohemian which meant they were Czech.

The area has already been settled by Norwegians and the book is really about the movement of people and how they cope, or don’t cope, with their changed circumstances. The characters are followed from childhood through to middle-age, and there are surprises along the way at the turns that their lives take.

The immigrants are homesick and pining for their homeland, even when it appears that they have settled down happily. In reality though they are pining for something which doesn’t exist anymore because people and places don’t stand still, just as they haven’t.

We hear tales from the old country and some of them are tragic stories which culminated in emigration. But there is plenty of humour there too, even if it is ‘black’ humour.

Willa Cather has a lovely way with words and describes the countryside beautifully, the trees and grasses and the taming of the land. As the new farmers become more adept over the years, the fields are changed from swathes of red grass to fields full of rippling crops.

I particularly enjoyed her description of Mrs. Cutter:
She was a terrifying-looking person; almost a giantess in height, raw-boned with iron-grey hair, a face always flushed, and prominent, hysterical eyes. When she meant to be entertaining and agreeable, she nodded her head incessantly and snapped her eyes at one. Her teeth were long and curved, like a horse’s; people said babies always cried if she smiled at them. Her face had a kind of fascination for me: it was the very colour and shape of anger.

I can’t help thinking that Mrs. Cutter was a real person, I wonder if she ever read the book and recognised herself.

Anyway, another very enjoyable Willa Cather book is crossed off the list. I had wanted to read O Pioneers first but as I’m still avoiding actually buying books until I’ve read the books which I have in the house waiting to be read, I had to get this one from the library. I might have to request O Pioneers.

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Flights of Fancy

2 September 2010 22:14

I’ve got into the habit of paying calls to favourite blogs late at night, just before I get ready for bed. You do this at your peril because it can be really bad for your sleep pattern. Sometimes an interesting post just grabs a hold of your brain and you can’t stop it from wandering around. This happened to me the other night when I read this post from Karen at Books and Chocolate.

Before I knew it I heard the clock downstairs striking twice and I don’t know when I actually did get to sleep. The upshot of that is this list of places I would like to visit, or books I would like to be in. Karen, I hope you don’t mind me ‘nicking’ the idea.

1. I would have loved to have been a woman lucky enough to escape to the small mediaeval Italian castle, San Salvatore, which features in The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim.

2. Cornwall. I wanted to visit Cornwall for years after reading Rebecca as a young thing and eventually did get around to it. Many Cornish books later, it’s Winston Graham’s Poldark books which, set in Napoleonic times, I would love to be able visit. Minus the “morbid sore throat” obviously.

3. In a punt on the Isis at Oxford during the Brideshead Revisited era. It would have to be a gorgeous day for a picnic and ideally Aloysius the bear would be my companion – he doesn’t have a big appetite and he is teetotal!

4. On a Mississippi riverboat with Mark Twain as my companion and the smell of good cigars.

I found this riverboat photograph on Wikipedia and almost swallowed my tongue in surprise, (honestly) when I read that the Delta Queen was built in Dumbarton, the town I grew up in. I love the internet!

5. In Neverland telling stories to the “lost boys” and giving out lots of “thimbles”. (I’ve obviously got empty nest syndrome.) Sadly, few people read the original Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie.

6. In Newfoundland around about the Quoyle’s Cove area, as featured in The Shipping News by Annie Proulx. Lots of warm clothing required.

7. An inhabitant of Tilling in the Mapp and Lucia books by E.F. Benson. I would love to contribute to the gossip.

In reality, we have a little list of places which we hope to visit one day and we are working our way through it.

1. Stratford upon Avon. To see the sights and whichever play they have on at the theatre there.

2. The City of Bath. I know that Jane Austen wasn’t keen on the place but I would love to walk in her footsteps and visit The Pump Rooms and generally soak up the Georgian atmosphere.

3. Derbyshire. For Jane Austen reasons again.

4. Norway. Ideally on a ship so we could sail up a fjord. I did this when I was 12 and remember it as being magical.

5. A certain French farmhouse in Normandy again, close to the D- Day landing beaches.

6. Cornwall again, especially the atmospheric Tintagel area which is steeped in King Arthur lore.

7. American Civil War areas. I’ve been interested in the subject for a long time and have the Ken Burns film with that great character Shelby Foote. This isn’t likely to happen as I don’t want to fly or have to go through all the security stuff. Still waiting for that “Beam me up Scottie” thingy.

I could go on for a long time, especially with the book ones, but seven seems like a good number to stop at.

I’ve just realised that I forgot to mention The Orient Express, minus a murder of course.

If anybody would like to share their ‘wish to visit lists’ with me, please leave a comment or a link to your post on the subject.

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Lavinia by Ursula Le Guin

31 August 2010 23:37

I really don’t like it when books don’t have chapters, so my heart sank a wee bit when I started reading Lavinia. It just makes it easier when you can break off your reading at the end of a chapter. I can see that chapters wouldn’t have worked in this book though.

It really wasn’t a problem with Lavinia, for one thing the book flows so smoothly and easily that I found myself reading it in just three big bites.

Ursula Le Guin has taken Virgil’s epic The Aeneid and concentrated on the character of Lavinia. She is the daughter of King Latinus and is very close to him but her relationship with her mother, Amata, isn’t so good. Queen Amata has never recovered from the death of her two small sons and with Lavinia as the only surviving child her mother’s only wish is for Lavinia to marry Turnus, who is a cousin.

Lavinia has been to the sacred springs of Albunea, where a poet has told her of her future, and Turnus doesn’t feature in it as her husband.
Her decision not to marry him causes death and destruction all round.

Ursula Le Guin certainly knows human beings and the characters are all so believable that before you know it you’re completely wrapped up in a mythology of how the area around what became Rome was settled.

Amongst other things it’s about how wise leaders avoid war and strife because they are able to see the waste and sorrow which it brings to their people.

I found the Afterword to be really interesting too. Le Guin mourns the fact that Latin is no longer taught in schools (and I’ve done that myself here) she says:
So with the true death of his language, Vergil’s voice will be silenced at last. This is an awful pity, because he is one of the great poets of the world.

All in all, a very enjoyable read. The only other books of hers which I have read are the Earthsea ones and her book of short stories The Sea Road but I’ll have to dig some more of her books out.

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Virago Books

30 August 2010 23:32

I have a small collection of books published by Virago It’s a feminist publisher and I usually buy the books which they have re-printed and saved from obscurity. I don’t think I’ve ever been disappointed by a Virago book, and they never spend long in the TBR pile.

It looks like quite a pathetic haul really but I suppose I’ve read a lot more than these ones, having borrowed a lot from the library.

I usually buy them from second-hand/used bookshops but I don’t feel guilty about not buying them new, mainly because my local bookshop is a Waterstones and they were pretty ruthless when they expanded their business. They targeted towns which already had independent bookshops and set about putting them out of business. The local family run buiness here didn’t last very long after Waterstones turned up, they just couldn’t compete with them and so had to close down after years of trading. But that’s another gripe altogether.

I’ve just discovered after looking at the Virago site that I could be buying them straight from the publisher, I hadn’t realised that!

I prefer the older Virago covers to the newer ones which have the apple logo on them. I think the old ones look classier.

I’ve just realised after looking at the photograph that one of the Rosamond Lehmann books is a Collins. Silly me!

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Weather update

30 August 2010 13:33

The weather forecaster is saying that there is a chance of a ground frost tomorrow. If that is the case then it means that there hasn’t been a frost free month during the whole of the last year.

It’s feeling distinctly chilly now and the trees in my garden are all beginning to look autumnal. I like autumn, in fact it’s my favourite season, but when we’ve had hardly any summer weather at all it’s only natural that you hope for a bit of an ‘Indian Summer’ in September.

I think it’s a bit of a forlorn hope though and I’m beginning to wonder why I bothered to change from the winter duvet to the summer one. Maybe next year I won’t do it and that will guarantee us a sweltering summer! By sweltering I mean about 70F.

Nowadays autumn seems to last for only a few days and then we go straight into winter with a BANG. But I always think of John Keats now and his Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!

Ode to Autumn

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No Wind of Blame by Georgette Heyer

29 August 2010 00:13

This book is a murder mystery and I must say that I prefer these ones to Heyer’s romances, but I’m not a huge fan of romances anyway. I didn’t read the blurb on the back of this book until I had finished it, and I’m thankful that I didn’t as it gives away part of the mystery. Why do they do that? The main detective in this book is Inspector Hemingway but as he doesn’t really have a huge personality I found that he didn’t contribute much to the flavour of the whole thing.

Heyer manages to combine murder mysteries and humour successfully which is a nice dimension to her books and I can’t think of any other crime novelist who attempts comedy. Well, I suppose Dorothy Sayers did but not to the same extent.

At 348 pages this is quite a thick book as vintage crime goes, and I had put off reading it for a while for this reason. But it was actually a really quick read and enjoyable. It was first published in 1939.

I wouldn’t call the first paragraph an interest grabber: “The Prince is coming by the one-forty-five. That means he’ll be here in time for tea. Well, I do call that nice.”

This is a classic country house mystery, usually a good start for any thriller. The house, called Palings, is owned by Mrs Ermyntrude Carter who had been a chorus girl in her day, and she has a husband who spends his time squandering his wife’s money and is a general liability. His cousin Mary is also part of the household.

The rest of the characters consist of the neighbours, the local doctor
and Vicky who is Mrs Carter’s daughter and fancies herself as a bit of an actress.

The crime doesn’t occur until about a third of the way through the book so part of the mystery is figuring out who the victim is going to be, as well as who is the culprit.

Georgette Heyer seems to be unable to write anything which doesn’t have a dollop of romance in it but it doesn’t descend into the gloopy, schmalzy sort.

Dorothy L. Sayers said Miss Heyer’s characters and dialogue are an abiding delight to me… I have seldom met people to whom I have taken so violent a fancy from the word “Go”.

One thing I must mention is that the only other Ermintrude that I have ever come across before is of course the cow in The Magic Roundabout. O.K. the spelling is different. But at the beginning I couldn’t help thinking of Ermintrude the cow whenever the character of Ermyntrude Carter was speaking.

If you want a reminder of that iconic BBC programme for children of all ages, have a look here.

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Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain

26 August 2010 23:33

I dug a lot of books out of the attic during my recent clean up and decluttering binge, and one of them was Testament of Youth which is Vera Brittain’s autobiography from 1900 – 1925, definitely one for keeping and re-reading. This book was first published in 1933 and the BBC dramatised it years ago.

I think I saw the tv programmes first but soon after that I bought the book and the sequel Testament of Experience.

Vera Brittain was one of the very few women to get into an Oxford College in 1914 but after one year she gave up her studies to become a VAD nurse and ended up nursing in London, Malta and at the Front in France. It’s a heart-breaking read as all of the young men close to her are lost, including her fiance and her beloved brother Edward. But if you are interested in World War 1 then this is a “must read”.

Vera became a pacifist and was active in the League of Nations. She did get married and her daughter is Shirley Williams, who was once a lib-dem M.P. and is now in the House of Lords.

I think I’ll buy the dvds because I haven’t seen the series since it was first shown.
I like this anniversary cover although it isn’t the one which I have, mine has Cheryl Campbell on the front, she played the part of Vera in the series.

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Blooding Mister Naylor by Chris Boyce

25 August 2010 22:24

This book was published in 1990 and my husband thought that I might enjoy reading it, and I did. Chris Boyce was a Scottish writer who wrote mainly science fiction but this one is a political thriller which is set in and around Glasgow. Just like I used to be, in fact the very first paragraph mentioned The Dumbuck Hotel, Dumbarton, which is where I worked when I was a schoolgirl and is a 10 minute walk from the house which I grew up in.

When Lexie Beattie, a veteran left-wing nationalist is discovered beaten to death in her own home, Alan Banks, one of the activists based at the peace camp (obviously modelled on the one at Faslane Naval Base) is accused of the murder and local lawyer and ex-army captain Jackie Naylor is given the job of defending him. He has defended the peace campers before but has never dealt with a murder and the senior partners in his firm do not want him to take the case on.

He soon discovers that there is a lot more to the case than he thought and he becomes embroiled in a world of double-dealing and violence.

It isn’t all doom and gloom, there is some humour scattered throughout the book, well it wouldn’t be Glasgow without humour and verbal duelling.

I did like this book but for me the fact that I could picture all the locations in my mind added to the whole thing and obviously that wouldn’t be the same for everyone.

It was published by Dog and Bone who are no longer in existence, which is a pity. I was going to offer myself to them as a proof-reader. The book is full of typos, extra words, missing words, just lots of mistakes, which is very annoying.

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School for Love by Olivia Manning

23 August 2010 23:37

I really like Olivia Manning‘s writing. Her husband was a British Council lecturer in Bucharest when World War 2 broke out and her experiences at that time led her to write a series of books which were heavily influenced by their experiences there. She and her husband evacuated to Egypt as the Germans advanced and her husband eventually ended up in charge of the Palestine Broadcasting Station.They didn’t return to England until 1946.

School for Love was published in 1951 and is set towards the end of the war in Jerusalem. Felix Latimer, a teenage boy has travelled there to lodge with Miss Bohun after the death of both of his parents. His only relative is an uncle in England, unfortunately he can’t travel there because all of the ships are being used to carry troops. Jerusalem is jam packed with people in the same situation, just waiting for the end of the war when they can escape the place.

Miss Bohun who had a very distant connection to Felix’s father’s family turns out to be one of those religious tract distributing females. She’s the leader of a Christian sect called the Ever-Readies, who are in Jerusalem awaiting Jesus’s imminent second coming. This has similarities with Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm, although not as funny.

The whole book revolves around her personality really and how the other characters have to cope with her. She turns out to be a truly ghastly person. Money grasping, mean and mean spirited, thinking the worst of everyone and all under the guise of being a good Christian woman. I absolutely hated her which I suppose just shows you what a good writer Olivia Manning was, but it almost spoiled my enjoyment of the book.

School for Love isn’t nearly as good as her earlier works, The Levant Trilogy and The Balkan Trilogy but it is still worth reading.

I find it quite worrying that there was probably a character very like Miss Bohun in Palestine at that time as Olivia Manning got a lot of “copy” from her wartime experiences. She definitely lived in interesting times.

Anthony Burgess described Manning as “The most considerable of our women novelists.”

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