Month: March 2020

How to read in anxious times

StuckinaBook All 58 Comments

Things have escalated really quickly, haven’t they? I don’t know what the situation is in your country, but the UK has gone into full lockdown today. I think most of us are in the stage of finding it surreal – unless we know somebody directly affected, of course, and then it’s all too real. I’ve not been outside my house and garden for a week, and the only human contact I’ve had has been virtual or (at a safe distance) with neighbours over the fence.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably had a few people say that you can finally read all your books -I’ve been saying it to people too. There’s definitely no shortage of books to read around the house. At a conservative estimate, I have over 1500 unread books.

And then there are the lists of books to read during lockdown, appearing in blogs and newspapers and so forth. They’re great, and Rachel has put together a wonderful list.

I hope you’re finding the lists helpful. I hope you are able to get down to some books you’ve been meaning to read.

But I’m writing this for the readers who are struggling to work out how to read at all.

I certainly have plenty of time to read, though I’ve also been having an unprecedented number of phone and video calls. But I am finding it difficult to read anything very much at the moment. I sit down with a pile, intending to change between them and have a nice evening of reading – and I’m only a few paragraphs in when I realise that I haven’t taken in anything. My mind, like all of our minds, is on coronavirus. About what the future looks like.

And it’s not just that. It’s the scary amount of choice, and the scary amount of time. Usually I grab something and read it on my lunch break, or after I come home from something, or for a few hours on a Saturday. Now I have seemingly endless time and seemingly endless options. It’s overwhelming.

I’m trying different things. I picked a light 1920s book. I picked non-fiction essays. I picked Pride and Prejudice. And I am getting through things, slowly. I’m even enjoying them – Lucy Gayheart, the Willa Cather I’m currently reading for the next episode of Tea or Books?, is brilliant. But it’s not coming easily.

And I wanted to share this to say – if you haven’t worked out how to read at this moment, that’s OK. It will probably come as we get used to this new normal. And if it doesn’t, that’s ok too. Your mind is doing all sorts of backflips and cartwheels. There’s no guilt if nothing is distracting you.

There’s also no guilt if you have to go to a pile of Agatha Christies, or re-read books you loved as a child, or only read magazines. If you’re not using this opportunity to read War and Peace, don’t worry. Reading can be a wonderful lifeline at the moment but if – like me – you’re finding it a lifeline that sometimes gives way, and you just need to watch Netflix for a bit, then know that I’m in the same boat. For now.

British Library Women Writers #1: The Tree of Heaven by May Sinclair

StuckinaBook All , , 9 Comments

The first lot of British Library Women Writers reprints are out! And in this uncertain and scary world, I think this series is more vital than ever, in these difficult times – bookshops are probably closed now, but the British Library are still delivering from their shop and lots of local indies are still doing postal delivery.

If you missed my announcement a while ago – this Women Writers series is reprinting novels by and about women from the first half of the 20th century, and I’m lucky enough to be series consultant! I’m also writing the afterword for each one, picking out a particular contemporary issue in the novel. For The Tree of Heaven, I wrote about suffragettes. I’m a bit nervous about my afterwords being out in the world, and hoping that people enjoy them – though of course the main thing is the novel itself.

I didn’t choose these first couple of novels, The Tree of Heaven and My Husband Simon – though they’re great – but I did choose the next batch. More on those soon! As they become available, I’m going to be putting up reviews.

The Tree of Heaven was published in 1917, and it’s always interesting to read a novel published during a World War, because obviously the author doesn’t know how or when it will end. It certainly has an effect on all the members of the family at the centre of the novel: there are four Harrison children, Dorothea/Dorothy, Michael, Nicholas/Nicky, and John. Sinclair is clever in the way that uses each of them to embody something major going on at the time, without making them seem too much like stock characters or simply there to represent a theme. Michael, for instance, is in the aesthetic set – all poetry magazines and being anti-patriotism – while Dorothea gets swept up in the suffrage movement.

They grow realistically from children to adults over the course of the novel, and there is a middle section called ‘the vortex’ where each of them finds that their particular interest or allegiance might lead them into a ‘vortex’ that removes their individuality:

For Dorothy was afraid of the Feminist Vortex […] She was afraid of the herded women. She disliked the excited faces, and the high voices skirling their battle-cries, and the silly business of committees, and the platform slang. She was sick and shy before the tremor and the surge of collective feeling; she loathed the gestures and the movements of the collective soul, the swaying and heaving and rushing forward of the many as one. She would not be carried away by it; she would keep the clearness and hardness of her soul.

There’s a lot going on with signing up – or not signing up – to fight, and there’s a subplot about the disputed parentage of another character. There’s a lot going on and, being the 1910s, there is a slightly heightened emotionality to everything – but Sinclair weaves all the strands together really well. I think she’s better at women than men, or at least I found more to engage me in Dorothea’s uncertainty about whether the means justifies the ends in militant suffragism than I did in the different boys’ decisions about whether or not to fight. Not that that isn’t an important discussion, but it felt like Sinclair was a little less invested in it herself, and it’s high and low points lean a little closer to emotional cliche.

But it’s a really engaging, enjoyable, and moving novel. If you’ve only read Life and Death of Harriett Frean then there is a great deal more to love about Sinclair – and this one isn’t as melancholy, though it certainly isn’t a chuckle-fest!

I promise my afterword was more thoroughly researched and diligently edited than this outpouring of thoughts late on a Sunday night ;) – something to compare and contrast if you do get a copy! I’ll be back with more on the other books in the series soon – and revealing which books will be published in the series in the autumn [though if you’re impatient, they’re all in the British Library catalogue and listed on Amazon already].

StuckinaBook’s Weekend Miscellany

StuckinaBook All 2 Comments

Haven’t had one of these for a while, but I think we need some things to cheer us up. Here are three that have caught my attention recently…

1.) The link – is to the site of Simon Palmer, an artist whose work I saw shared on Twitter. They’re country scenes that combine a sense of the magical with a firm understanding of nature. If I saw any of them on the cover of a novel, I’d want to read the novel.

2.) The book – it might seem like an odd time to read about a serial killer, but Dean Street Press have recently reissued Israel Rank by Roy Horniman – under the title of the more-famous film it became, Kind Hearts and Coronets. I’ve not started it yet, but I loved the film many years ago so am looking forward to exploring.

3.) The blog post – I was part of a little group encouraging Ali to try the wonderful Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. And, hurrah, she did!

A trip to Scotland [the other bits]

StuckinaBook All 14 Comments

A few of you asked to hear more about my Scotland trip, and I am very happy to oblige! Gosh, it feels a million years ago now. I do hope you are all keeping healthy, physically and mentally, in this strange new world. I’m self-isolating at the moment, as I have cold symptoms and don’t want to take chances with the health of people around me. Living on my own, I’m going to especially appreciate the online book world this week – and for the next weeks and months.

Anyway, back to Scotland! All the photos in this post are by my friend Will, one of the people who went on the trip. I can definitely recommend taking a talented photographer with you on hols! It’s definitely nicer to have an album of images of this quality, rather than the blurred pics off my phone.

This is the rather extraordinary place that I went with my brother and four friends – yes, we had the whole thing to ourselves.

My room was on the top floor on the right – the fourth floor or the fifth floor, depending on whether you’re English or not! Yes, a lot of stairs, and possibly the old servants quarters – but what a lovely little room. I say ‘little’ – it’s much, much bigger than my bedroom at home, but all the other rooms are so enormous that it felt small.

We’ve been way as a group three times, and we take it in turns to cook – but tend to get a takeaway on the first night. Finding someone willing to deliver to a castle in the middle of nowhere wasn’t the easiest, but we did land upon a very nice curry place (and got so much food that we could have lunch the next day too). Col and I made toad-in-the-hole on our day, which is a family favourite meal and which I seldom have, as it doesn’t make much sense to cook it for one. We battled through the combination of vegetarians and gluten-free people! Luckily we had one person who’d been to boarding school, and thus will eat anything, food or otherwise.

The reason we’d gone up to Dumfries and Galloway was because of its proximity to Wigtown, the bookshop town. It was a first trip there for all of us, so I don’t know how much it’s changed over the years. This time, there were six bookshops, I think – some of which are only open half the week, so we naturally had to go twice.

Going back to Hay-on-Wye many times has a slightly melancholy aspect – because there are fewer bookshops each time. Maybe that’s true in Wigtown. But I had an encouraging chat with a bookshop owner called Ruth, who had only been there for eighteen months. Her shop was delightfully cosy, with a sofa covered in blankets and the feel of being in a very bookish person’s [large] living room.

But, yes, the main attraction was The Bookshop, where Shaun Bythell works. Several of us had read The Diary of a Bookseller and its sequel, Confessions of a Bookseller. Listeners to ‘Tea or Books?’ may remember that my friend Lorna came on the show to talk about it – the self-same Lorna is in this pic, with me [right] and her husband Will [left].

We all wanted to meet Shaun but, as anybody who’s read his book or follows the shop on social media knows, he has a reputation for being scathingly funny. I was rather terrified that I’d blurt out something idiotic and then have to wait a few years to find myself in print. But – we did meet him, and he was very nice. I was buying a copy of Diary of a Bookseller there, because I wanted a copy which quotes my Shiny New Book’s review, and he offered to sign it for me. Lorna mentioned that I was quoted in it, which I was too nervous to say, and he was also nice about that. Phew! We got through it without making fools of ourselves. And we bought a nice pile of books between us.

Unsurprisingly, my brother did not buy any books in there. He’s used to doing crosswords in the corner of bookshops while I hunt. But he did buy one book in a different bookshop – the one that is rented as an airbnb, so you run a bookshop on holiday. It was Michael Palin’s Around the World in Eighty Days, in case you’re interested – and above, here he is in a bookshop, actually the one in Carlisle, holding another actual book. [No, apparently this is The Book Shop – thanks Rebecca!] Wonders will never cease!

It was such a wonderful holiday. Other than books, we mostly read, chatted, played board games, and went for a walk to the coast. Until the tide came in, and then we had a scramble onto a golf course, and a walk along that…

I’m so glad we managed to go before coronavirus lockdown happened. I know we’re really lucky. I’m thinking of and praying for you all. Here’s to sharing lots of the joy of reading while we wait for what happens next.

A trip to Scotland [the books I bought]

StuckinaBook All 20 Comments

I spent much of this week in a castle in Scotland, which was a rather wonderful way to escape the coronavirus headlines – this castle, to be precise. There’s a group of us who try to get to a Landmark Trust property at least once a year, and this location was chosen because it’s not far from Wigtown. That’s the Scottish equivalent of Hay-on-Wye, and the book town made famous by Shaun Bythell’s Diary of a Bookseller. Many of the group love his books and were keen to meet him – as well as a little nervous, in case we said anything stupid and ended up in a sequel.

On the way up, we stopped in Carlisle and went to the extraordinarily good Bookcase bookshop. I hadn’t been for quite a few years and had forgotten how enormous it is. Not the cheapest, but a real Aladdin’s cave.

Anyway, between the Wigtown bookshops and Bookcase, I came away with quite a haul. Here we go…

Three Things You Need To Know About Rockets by Jessica Fox
If you’ve read Bythell’s book, you’ll know about his on/off American girlfriend Anna. Well, turns out Anna is Jessica and she wrote a book about moving to Scotland and helping run a bookshop.

The Finishing Touch by Brigid Brophy
I’ve still only read one book by Brophy, but… now I can read more.

Middle Class by Sarah Gertrude Millin
I’ve never heard of Millin, but I’m increasingly on the look-out for books that could be contenders for the British Library Women Writers series. Which means I’m buying a lot of obscure books and not reading very many of them…

Rose Under Glass by Elizabeth Berridge
And the only Berridge book I’ve read is her short stories published by Persephone, but I’ll add another to the shelf.

Sapphira and the Slave Girl by Willa Cather
I thought I already had this, but when I was looking for a copy for the next episode of Tea or Books? I realised I did not. Well, too late now for that episode, but good to have on the shelves nonetheless.

The White Riband by F. Tennyson Jesse
All I know about FTJ is the two books Virago published by her – of which I’ve read only the brilliant A Pin To See The Peepshow – so it was fun to find another.

I’m Not Complaining by Ruth Adam
Speaking of Virago, I’ve seen a lot of love for this Virago Modern Classic over the years, so thought it was worth nabbing a copy.

The Cheval Glass by Ursula Bloom
I’ve only read Bloom under her Mary Essex pseudonym – and I’m delighted that Tea Is So Intoxicating will be one of the BL Women Writers reprints in the autumn. This one has a fantastical premise and you KNOW I love a fantastic premise.

Calypso by David Sedaris
I also love Sedaris! Always happy to add another of his hilarious and observant essay collections to my shelves, though it’s been too long since I read one.

Twenty-Five by Beverley Nichols
Some would argue that 25 is too young to write an autobiography, but Nichols alleges it’s the oldest age that one should. It’s a tongue-in-cheek statement, of course, and this looks like it’s more about the period. His book about the 20s written from a distance, The Sweet and Twenties, was my favourite the year I read it – this one is more up close.

Raspberry Reich by Wolf Mankowitz
I really like the offbeat charm of A Kid For Two Farthings and Make Me An Offer. This one looks heavier on the offbeat than the charm, but I’m keen to give it a go.

Turnabout by Thorne Smith
Thorne Smith is one of those names I’ve seen around for many years and never really explored. Bookcase had a big and inviting pile of his books, and I was quite tempted just to buy them all, but I thought I should exercise restraint and try just one. Smith usually does comic, fantastic books, and this one is a body-swap comedy. What’s not to like?

Business as Usual by Jane Oliver and Ann Stafford

StuckinaBook All , , , 13 Comments

When I read Business As Usual (1933) in January, it was difficult not to write about it immediately. But there are few things more irritating than reading about a delightful book and then finding that it’s not yet available to buy – and while there are doubtless 1933 editions of Business As Usual out there somewhere, you can now buy the lovely Handheld Press reprint of it. At https://taxfyle.com/blog/can-i-deduct-my-medical-expenses/ you will find purposes of the medical expenses deduction. And if Handheld Press never achieve or achieved anything else, the rediscovery of this novel would secure my eternal gratitude.

I was pretty sure I’d love it when I heard the barest outlines: it is a novel in letters from the 1930s about working in the book department of a department store. I might as well stop my review there, and some of you are probably ordering a copy as we speak. But it’s even better than it sounds.

All the letters are by Hilary Fane, and we must imagine the replies (and are easily able to do so from her replies). She has just finished university and is engaged to a pleasant young man called Basil. Being the 1930s, she is preparing to prioritise the doctor’s role of wife once she is married, and Edinburgh society is ready to receive her in this role. It (and her parents) are rather more surprised when she decides she wants to wait a year, get a job, and see something of the world. Off she goes to London.

Here, she manages to find an overpriced, unlovely flat (plus ca change!), and begins to realise that life alone and on the job market isn’t quite as simple as she’d hoped. But she takes it in good part. Hilary is such a delightful character – it’s so hard to create an optimist who isn’t annoying, but Oliver and Stafford have done it. She refuses to be crushed down, but does allow the odd acerbic moment to sneak into her letters – not least when she begins to prove people wrong:

Basil Dear

I meant to write to you last night, but I waited, because I thought there might be a letter. And there was – a very sweet one. Bless you! But I don’t think one enjoys: ‘I told you so’ however beautifully it’s put. It isn’t true either I’VE GOT A JOB. So I won’t be coming to heel just yet.

It’s always fun to read about people being out of their depth, and Hilary’s first job in Everyman’s (a department store clearly based on Selfridges) is as a typist in the books department. If you’ve enjoyed Monica Dickens’ hilarious One Pair of Hands or Betty Macdonald’s Anybody Can Do Anything, then you’ll know what to expect. She is initially enthusiastic and confused and inept – and later just confused and inept. This clearly isn’t her forte. Oliver and Stafford don’t diminish those who are good at this sort of routine-work, and Hilary admires them with an open heart – but it is not where she should be.

As she comes to the attention of the manager, Mr Grant, when dealing with a difficult situation, she is given the more responsible task of improving the organisation of the department. Her rise through the ranks is a trifle unrealistic, but we’ll forgive it because it gives such a fascinating insight behind the scenes of this lending library feature of a bookshop that has long disappeared.

Her life begins to shift in interesting ways, and not always the ways I anticipated when I started reading it. What remains consistent is how funny, joyous, and addictive Business As Usual is.

I often write here that I’m looking forward to rereading a book, and it’s relatively seldom that I actually do end up rereading. But I’m going to say with confidence that Business As Usual will join the pantheon of those books I return to when I want to read something that will put a broad smile on my face.

Tea or Books? #82: Australia vs New Zealand and two Adrian Bell books

StuckinaBook Tea or Books? , 6 Comments

Australia, New Zealand, and Adrian Bell – welcome to episode 82!

Audio Player

In the first half, we do a topic suggested by Lindsay – books by Australians and books by people from New Zealand. And my GOODNESS we don’t know anywhere near enough to be discussing it. But we plough on!

In the second half, we look at two non-fiction books by Adrian Bell: Corduroy and A Suffolk Harvest.

If you’d like to get bonus mini episodes, and a whole bunch of other things, you can find us at Patreon. And you can listen via Apple Podcasts or your podcast app of choice. Do get in touch at teaorbooks[at]gmail.com if you have topic suggestions or just want to say hi!

The books and authors we mention in this episode are:

Rose Macaulay: A Writer’s Life by Jane Emery
Rose Macaulay by Constance Babington Smith
Rose Macaulay: A Biography by Sarah LeFanu
Aunt Mame by Patrick Dennis
Shadows on the Rock by Willa Cather
Circe by Madeline Miller
‘The Garden Party’ by Katherine Mansfield
Janet Frame
Opening Night by Ngaio Marsh
My Katherine Mansfield Project by Kirsty Gunn
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
Emma by Jane Austen
My Place by Sally Morgan
The Middle of Nowhere by Geraldine McCaughrean
The Secret River by Kate Grenville
The Harp in the South by Ruth Park
Poor Man’s Orange by Ruth Park
Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay
The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas
Breathe by Tim Winton
The Spare Room by Helen Garner
My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin
My Career Goes Bung by Miles Franklin
Elizabeth von Arnim
Barbara Comyns
Sylvia Townsend Warner
A.A. Milne
Corduroy by Adrian Bell
A Suffolk Harvest by Adrian Bell
The Balcony by Adrian Bell
A Lost Lady by Willa Cather
Lucy Gayheart by Willa Cather