August reading

 I was delighted to find an Anne Tyler book on the mobile library as I love her work. Not this time. I found the central character quite irritating, a real shilly-shallier. I was surprised at my reaction as I am usually immediately involved and sympathetic to the people in her stories.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had similar difficulties with the main character in Julian Barnes novel, 'The Sense of an Ending', narrated in the first person. Oh, I felt as though I knew this sort of man, supercilious grammar school boy who thinks he has been educated, sleepwalking through life. I wonder about the message, the conclusion that the author wants us to draw from the ending of this book. And once again the central character irritated me. Perhaps it's just the mood I'm in! It is a book that I would like to discuss with other readers.

 

 

I chose a large print book from the library. Years of detailed illustration work  has resulted in poor eyesight so I really appreciate a large print book for reading in bed. This one was a period piece about skullduggery, set in Yorkshire which is why I chose it. By 'eck, can't be nowt wrong wi' that!

The book has everything in it that one expects from a period thriller - everything bar the kitchen sink in fact. Brave lady detective, faithful side kicks, a body and so forth. Enjoyable enough for a rainy day but the story is over manipulated.

In the pink

 Did you buy many clothes during lockdown? I had been consciously cutting back prior to last year anyway, but going nowhere and doing nothing certainly made it easy not to think about having anything new. Not Dead Yet stopped posting outfits from women all about the world so I wasn't looking at my choice of clothes with any critical eye. But then I got a longing for colour and for a swishy skirt. A look online at the Boden sale delivered the goods. How cheering!

And it really does swish!

I bought a pair of trousers in the same colour in the sale while I was at it.

Constant heavy rain today and I'm confined to quarters, wearing a linen babygro/all-in-one/ jumpsuit. Blissfully comfy and such a cheerful colour. 

I hope that you are feeling in the pink as well.

I hope that you are feeling in the pink as well.

Nearly normal!

The local library service is back in action after many months of closure. The mobile library stops right outside our gate but it no longer gives a loud blast on the horn so we have to keep an eye on the time so that we don't miss it.

Having enjoyed Kate Atkinson's 'Big Sky' I ordered  more of her work and three novels were on the bus for me to collect. It is useful to pre-order because the choice on the shelves is very limited. I don't need to enter the bus as the librarian can just hand the books out to me. It is a wonderful service but one that is always under threat of being lost.

The three books all feature Jackson Brodie. I've read the first two books and am about to start on 'When Will There Be Good News?' .It is interesting to read one book after the other like this because you really see the pattern of the author's writing style. The criticisms  of 'Big Sky' apply to these books as well, a rather similar voice for different characters and a bit too much going on. You do know that it is all going to end with Brodie as hero, the good winning, the bad punished, so you could say that they are comfort reads, not quite like real life!

Nearly normal? Yes - I haven't been able to get a dental check since March of last year. (My dentist is from Portugal) and my hairdresser has been pinged, so it is craft scissors and the bathroom mirror for me. Perhaps this is the new normal.

A book to rave about.

'Hamnet' by Maggie O'Farrell is currently in the best seller list and for once I can agree with all the praise and attention that this book is receiving. I have not enjoyed a new book to this extent for a long time. Although the title is the name of Shakespeare's son, the story really belongs to Shakespeare's wife. She is wonderfully created, with qualities taken from various characters in Shakespeare's plays; wise, creative, rather magical and also, in part of the book, absolutely grief stricken. This book had me thoroughly involved - and from time to time in tears.

The author clearly wanted to give Shakespeare a fitting partner and there are so few known facts about their life that she was able to use great imaginative freedom. We know that his wife was older than Shakespeare and already pregnant at the time of their marriage. The only other known fact is that in his will Shakespeare left all his considerable possessions to his elder daughter but only his second best bed to his wife!

 

As soon as I'd finished the story I looked in my bookcase for a bit of historical information and found the historian Ian Wilson's book, 'Shakespeare the Evidence". It is full of interesting detail. It contains a copy of Shakespeare's will. I'm afraid I'm not as optimistic about the quality of his marriage as is Maggie O'Farrell!

This month the Yorkshire book group had a zoom meeting to discuss a novel set in Yorkshire by a well-known Yorkshire writer,  Kate Atkinson. The book, 'Big Sky' is one in a series featuring the detective Jackson Brodie. It met with a mixed response and a lively discussion - one of the members said that he threw his copy of the book across the room, but most of us enjoyed it, especially because we know the various places featured. The book is written as an entertainment, with a large cast and many sub plots, too many was the general opinion.  The 'hero', Jackson Brodie, has interior dialogues with his ex-partner who invariably ends his thoughts with a put-down. Other characters have interior monologues, but I thought they were all a rather similar voice. I liked the depiction of the two teenage boys in the novel, they made me smile.

There was an interesting division within the group between the males and the females. The main subject matter of the story is about a paedophile and trafficking ring and the men in the book group were uneasy with the contrast between the jokey style of the writing and the serious subject, they felt that the two didn't sit together well. The females in the group were not concerned by this, it was an interesting division that we thought we would discuss when we are able to meet once more in person.

A mixed bag of books

 The zoom book club meetings in February and March involved reading new novels and an old favourite. I was distinctly under-impressed with a couple of the new novels and fail to see how they garner such praise and remain for so long in the top ten list. I read 'Where the Crawdads Sing' on kindle which never enhances my reading experience. I gain much more with a physical book in my hands, although kindle does save my groaning bookshelves. The territory of this book was a very alien place for me and the story line and characterisation at times felt very contrived. It is the story of a young girl essentially left to grow feral and how she reacts to events by what she has observed from the nature around her. Some of the group loved it and it did make for a lively discussion, but it isn't a book that I would recommend.

The second book, first published in 2017, 'The Keeper of Lost Things' by Ruth Hogan I thoroughly disliked. I think it falls into the category of 'feel good' writing but it did nothing for me.

I found it slight and obvious. 

The author seemed to have a tick list to work through.

NOT recommended.

It was a relief to return to a much loved classic. Up for discussion was 'As I Lay Dying' by William Faulkner and, unlike the previous one, this book really makes the reader work hard. It is densely packed and the language of interior monologues takes a while to comprehend but it is well worth the effort. it was interesting for me to compare this book about a poor, ignorant rural family with  the Crawdads book, two depictions of rural America.

A present came in the post, a book of of poetry. What a delight! I was unaware that I knew her work but when I looked inside I realised that I knew some of the poems but had not registered her name. She is a wonderful discovery for me. The book is a hard back edition, a pleasure to handle.

With the libraries closed I've been rereading books in the house. (Message to self, in future never buy an omnibus edition, they are too heavy to read in bed!) How I enjoy my distinctive dark green Virago books. I especially enjoyed 'The Doves of Venus', it reminds me of pootling around London as an art student in the sixties. Seems a long time ago now!

January reading

 

The traveling library has been out of action for months and when you take a look at our sagging bookshelves you will understand why we sometimes order books on Kindle. I far prefer to hold a real book in my hands, to know where I am in the tale, to flick back at will. If it is a hardback with good quality paper and a suitable/clever cover (ever the picky illustrator) then so much the better. But our shelves are laden to the point of sagging, so when we are to read a book chosen by one of our reading group and know nothing about it we resort to Kindle. I think it lessens my enjoyment. In December we discussed Walter Kempowski's, 'All for Nothing', a bleak tale about everyday Germans in the 2nd World War. It engendered a good discussion but was a depressing book to read in troubled times. 

It was followed in January by Daniel Kehlmann's 'Tyll',  a book of magical realism mixing folktale, wonderful imagery and historical figures, all set in a romp through the thirty years war. Does that sound a hotch-potch?  Yes, it is, but delightfully so.

 I had recently read Muriel Spark's 'Symposium' but completely forgotten what it was about. After watching a programme about her on Sky Arts I picked the book up again. What a tricky character she was, and yes, you can see it in her writing. The book is quite wicked, she obviously had a lot of fun writing it. It is set around the members of a dinner party, and what a bunch they are. Biting satire. This writer can bump people off without a care!

I used to love Margaret Atwood's writing, especially her poetry but am left absolutely cold by her more recent work. 'The Testaments' is a follow-on to 'The Handmaid's Tale', written after a gap of thirty-five years. (I read it in a good quality hardback but even that didn't help!) I found it mannered and clunky. It actually made me cross. In her acknowledgement Atwood states that no event was allowed into the book that does not have a precedent in history and while this is always clear it feels very heavy-handed. It is coming up for discussion with my women's lit group later this month and I'm interested to find out what others think of it.

I'm still on the look-out for a REALLY FUNNY BOOK!

Grey days

 The months of January and February are grey times for me. When the Christmas decorations have been taken down and packed away for another year the rooms look rather spartan.  It is cold outside, but worst of all, grey. I find low light levels, day after day very depressing. 

In the light of the frightening rise in Covid cases I doubt there will be a local seed swap this spring so last night I placed my order online. My, what a price packets of seeds are when you have to buy them rather than store and swap! I think another full country lockdown will be announced any day soon, so I'm pleased that I had a good two inches lopped off my hair before Christmas. The fringe I can attack anytime with craft scissors.

I am hugging the fireside and doing lots of reading, dressed, in tune with the weather, in grey; a Gap blouse, a cashmere jumper and my cosiest wool and alpaca trousers from Nicole Farhi. The trousers are  big and baggy and gloriously comfortable. They are years old and the fabric is now dangerously thin in the bum - good job I'm not going anywhere! I regret that Farhi is no longer designing clothes but now works as a sculptress. I love everything I have that was designed by her.

A friend  sent me the Patchwork book by Claire Wilcox, an autobiography described through a series of short written pieces or more appropriately, 'patches', as her career is in the fashion department of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Several well-known people are mentioned in the book but not named, so in places it is a bit of a guessing game and it did make me feel that I was viewing her information rather cloudily through carefully wrapped tissue paper. 

I did a short study course at the V&A when I was a student in London and have visited many times in the years since to wander through familiar rooms or to see special exhibitions, including  the Frieda Kahlo which was co-curated by Claire Wilcox.

This month the book club in Yorkshire, now held on zoom, will be discussing 'Lark Rise to Candleford', the semi-autobiographical trilogy of country life in Oxfordshire in the 19th century written by Flora Thompson (1876-1947). I bought this illustrated copy for my mother, since when it has gravitated, together with other family books, back to me. The red and white spotted cover copies the pattern of the large cotton handkerchiefs that could be tied at the neck or used to wrap up a chunk of bread and cheese for lunch out in the fields.

I enjoyed the book although I did think that the life she described was over sentimentalised or over-sanitised in places. She writes of the menfolk of the hamlet never getting drunk a biography states that her father was an alcoholic. She also states how healthy all the children were, despite them often going hungry, yet I seem to recall that when young men were called up for the First World War a great many of them were found to be severely malnourished.

It is going to be interesting to hear what the other book group members think of it. They live in a rural part of Yorkshire and may well consider that some aspects of Flora's life still continue in much the same way today.

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The illustrations comprise old photos, reproductions of period paintings and pressed flowers and they cheered me up - the promise of spring to come!