It’s that time again, Bookshelf Travelling in Insane Times, a meme which was started by Judith at Reader in the Wilderness, but I’m collecting the posts for the moment. Again the shelf is from a bookcase in our guest bedroom and it’s a mixture of authors that I really admire such as Sarah Dunant, Hans Fallada and Zola and some not so great. I haven’t read all of these books, I was given Donna Tartt’s The Secret History by my brother who enjoyed it, but it says the original bestseller on the front and I rarely want to read what everyone else has been reading. It’s 629 pages long and I wonder, should I read it?
I enjoyed Ethel Lina White’s Some Must Watch which was published in 1933 and made into a film titled The Spiral Staircase in 1946. It’s a bit of a puzzle as to why it’s in this bookcase and not with my vintage crime books, maybe I thought when I shelved it that putting it beside T.H. White’s Arthurian books was sensible.
For a bit of armchair travelling the Chinese author Chiang Yee’s Silent Traveller books are entertaining. The one on this shelf is The Silent Traveller in London (1946), and although it has some illustrations they are very sparse, mundane and insipid compared with the Edinburgh version. Presumably he didn’t find much of beauty in London to draw! I haven’t read this one yet.
I could not stand Joyce’s The Dubliners. I loved Laurie Lee’s books about his early life, then I read that they were mainly fiction and that to say the least he was economical with the truth – and that annoyed me.
To the far right of the shelf there are several books in Dutch and a Dutch dictionary. They represent an epic FAIL. The books are Enid Blyton’s Famous Five in Dutch. I thought they would be a good starting point in my endeavours with the language, there’s also a copy of Rumer Godden’s The Greengage Summer in Dutch, but I haven’t touched them for ages. I did think that the lockdown would be a good time to get on with things that I had been putting off for ages – such as Dutch – but I’ve done hardly any of the things that I ‘hadn’t had enough time to do before’ and the time seems to have shrunk with the end of yet another week arriving before I had really realised that it had begun.
Anyway, that’s another of my bookshelves. Have you read any of them?
Other Bookshelf Travellers this week are:
A Son of the Rock
Hi Katrina,
I do recommend “The Secret History”, as it is really different, and I enjoyed it. My husband started it after me and to my surprise didn’t get on with it at all. It just goes to show you can’t predict how someone’s going to react to a book.
As for “Bestseller” on the front; these days it seems to mean nothing at all – almost every paperback has it, presumably meaning only that enough readers bought the hardback to make it worth publishing in paperback!
Janet,
Thanks for your thoughts on The Secret History, I read the blurb and thought it sounded not quite up my street, but I’ll give it a go now.
I think you’re probably right about ‘bestsellers’.
I have several novels by Ethel Lina White but haven’t read any of them yet. Only one of her short stories.
I was trying to think if I had done anything that I had put off before Coronavirus. But as I retired in December, it is hard to decide which has had the most effect. I probably would not have gotten back into gardening so much without the “shelter in place” rules, and that has been a good thing. I have not done the decluttering / purging I had planned to do after retirement. Oh, well.
Hi Katrina,
I loved the experience of reading The Secret History, but I must mention I did so in the early months of 1993–the winter before I turned 40. I was so grateful that I had that book during a really horrible bout of whooping cough. It kept me sane, it was my friend during the nighttime hours when I couldn’t sleep. I loved it, but I doubt I would now. BUT, all that being said, it is extremely well done. It’s a tour de force, I thought at the time. Compelling.
Of The Dubliners, I loved “The Dead.” But I did not read the other stories.
I think The Secret History is worth trying. I read it long ago but remember thinking most of it was very compelling and not liking the ending (but now I don’t remember how it ended so I don’t think that is a spoiler).
I read Dubliners in high school but was unimpressed (but did want to visit Dublin!). I don’t think we read anything I liked that year except The Great Gatsby.
I have always meant to read Ethel Lina White; will have to see what my library owns.
Constance,
I will give The Secret History a go sometime.
I also wanted to visit Dublin after seeing some of it on TV but that might have been the only scenic bit as a friend hated the place. I have been to Belfast and hated it, the scenery was very mundane compared with Scotland. I did enjoy The Great Gatsby though.
I hope your library has some Ethel Lina White books.