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Stuck-in-a-Book’s Weekend Miscellany

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Welcome to the first Weekend Miscellany of 2013!  I hope you had a lovely Christmas and New Year, whoever you were with.  As of Thursday, I’m back in Oxford, having refuelled on cat, countryside, and family.

1.) The blog post – lovely Thomas at My Porch has had a clear-out, and (as well as admiring his lovely shelves) you can put your name in the draw for his duplicate Dorothy Whipple books.  US residents only, though, since he wanted to keep the Whipples in a country where they’re difficult to find.  It’s open til 31st January.

2.) The link – I’ve yet to listen to it, but Mary has passed on the info about a Radio 4 programme on the incredible Margaret Rutherford.  Click here for it.  If I had a time machine, I’d probably (mis)use it just to go and see her on the stage as Miss Hargreaves.  What bliss that would be…

3.) The book – I really loved The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets by Eva Rice (it was in my top books of 2008), so I was very excited to receive a review copy of her new book, The Misinterpretation of Tara Jupp – with a lovely note from Eva too.  My reading will be taken up by Vanity Fair for the foreseeable future, but Eva Rice’s is one of many 21st century books I’ve been holding off until A Century of Books was finished.  If it’s half as good as The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets, then I’ll adore it!

And not forgetting… the readalong of Cheerful Weather for the Wedding is coming up soon!  A lovely lot of people seemed keen – see here for details – I suggest we post reviews sometime in the week beginning Monday 28th January, and I’ll post links and have a discussion here.  Fun fun!

2012 in First Lines

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I seem to have all manner of year-in-review posts appearing or in the pipeline, but I can’t resist the one Jane reminded me about, which started with The Indextrious Reader, I think.  It’s quite simple – use the first lines of each month on your blog, to give an overview of your blogging year (albeit one which is amusing rather than very useful!)  This probably isn’t the ideal meme for me, since I tend to start my posts in a meandering way, eventually getting to the point after a paragraph or two…

January: “I have set myself the 2012 challenge of reading a book published in every year of the twentieth century…”

February: “I didn’t come back from Hay-on-Wye empty-handed (surprised?) and I thought I’d share my spoils with you.”

March: “The first book I read from my recent Hay-on-Wye haul was Kay Dick’s Ivy & Stevie (1971) about Ivy Compton-Burnett and Stevie Smith.”

April: “I feel I should do an April’s Fool… but I can’t think of anything.  So let’s have a Song for a Sunday as normal, eh?”

May: “A very quick post today – in case you missed it on my previous post, Annabel/Gaskella has taken up the challenge of nominating another author for a reading week, and designing a great badge, and so… Beryl Bainbridge Reading Week will be hitting the blogosphere June 18-24!”

June: “There has been a bit of a theme on SiaB this year, hasn’t there?”

July: “I had a lovely break in Somerset, and was surprised by how well my little sale went – I’ll head off to the post office tomorrow, laden with parcels.”

August: “One of the weirder tangents my thesis has taken me on is the depiction of Satan in 20th-century literature…”

September: “Saturday night was a big barn dance for my parents’ wedding anniversary and my Mum’s birthday, with about 100 people coming.”

October: “Time for the third and final update on how A Century of Books is going!”

November: “Stu is otherwise known as Winston’s Dad, and knows more about literature in translation than anyone I know.”

December: “Happy Weekend, one and all.  And happy December, no less.”

Well, wasn’t that productive?  Do have a go yourself – and let me know in the comments if you have done so!

Reading Presently

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thanks to Agnieszka for making the badge!

This will be the page for 2013’s project, where I’ll list my 50 Reading Presently books – books that were given to me as presents, along with their givers.  I will never use the word ‘gifted’ as a verb, or ‘gifting’ at all.  *Shudder*

1. Moranthology by Caitlin Moran – from my brother Colin
2. The Young Ardizzone by Edward Ardizonne – from Verity
3. What There Is To Say We Have Said : Eudora Welty & William Maxwell – from blog-reader Heather
4. The Diary of a Provincial Lady by E.M. Delafield – from Thomas
5. House of Silence by Linda Gillard – from Linda
6. A Spy in the Bookshop ed. John Saumarez Smith – from Lucy
7. Return to the Hundred Acre Wood by David Benedictus – from Verity
8. Is It Just Me? by Miranda Hart – from Lucy
9. How The Heather Looks by Joan Bodger – from Clare, maybe??
10. Room at the Top by John Braine – from John H.
11. Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn – from Ruth
12. The Easter Party by Vita Sackville-West – from Hayley
13. The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright – from Nichola
14. Skylark by Dezső Kosztolányi – from Our Vicar and Our Vicar’s Wife
15. Bassett by Stella Gibbons – from Barbara
16. The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel – from Colin
17. The Help by Kathryn Stockett – from dovegreybooks reading group
18. Four Hedges by Clare Leighton – from Clare
19. Books, Baguettes, and Bedbugs by Jeremy Mercer – from Charley
20. Some Tame Gazelle by Barbara Pym – from Mum
21. Virginia Woolf by Winifred Holtby – from Lucy
22. Of Love and Hunger by Julian Maclaren-Ross – from Dee
23. Oxford by Edward Thomas – from Daphne
24. Young Entry by Molly Keane – from Karyn
25. Dumb Witness by Agatha Christie – from Fiona
26. The Flying Draper by Ronald Fraser – from Tanya
27. A House in Flanders by Michael Jenkins – from Carol
28. The Restraint of Beasts by Magnus Mills – from Mel
29. The Queen and I by Sue Townsend – from OUP colleagues
30. Mr. Skeffington by Elizabeth von Arnim – from Rachel
31. Six Fools and a Fairy by Mary Essex – from Jodie
32. Cullum by E. Arnot Robertson – from Clare
33. Symposium by Muriel Spark – from Karen
34. Beowulf on the Beach by Jack Murnighan – from Colin
35. Pink Sugar by O. Douglas – from Clare
36. Time Will Darken It by William Maxwell – from Barbara
37. Hetty Dorval by Ethel Wilson – from Becca
38. Phantoms on the Bookshelves by Jacques Bonnet – from Clare
39. Faulks on Fiction by Sebastian Faulks – from Mum and Dad
40. The Compleat Mrs. Elton by Diana Birchall – from Diana
41. The Underground River by Edith Olivier – from Jane
42. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris – from Laura
43. A Reader on Reading by Alberto Manguel – from Lorna
44. Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh – from Colin
45. My Grandfather and Father, Dear Father by Denis Constanduros – from Mum and Dad
46. The Best of Archy and Mehitabel by Don Marquis – from Barbara
47. Ten Days of Christmas by G.B. Stern – from Verity
48. Together and Apart from Margaret Kennedy – from Rob
49. Midsummer Night at the Workhouse by Diana Athill – from Mum
50. Black Sheep by Susan Hill – from Colin

Caitlin Moran is basically Dickens.

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I’m going to start this review by getting all hipster – bear with me one moment while I put on my oversized specs and dig out some ironic vinyl records – and say that I loved Caitlin Moran before it was cool to love Caitlin Moran. Granted, I don’t buy a newspaper myself, or subscribe to The Times online, but my father and brother regard The Times as second only to Scripture and I flick through it when I visit either of them. More specifically, I have read Caitlin Moran’s columns for years. I don’t always agree with her, but I always find her brilliantly, ingeniously funny. The sort of funny that makes reading a newspaper actually fun.

Following on from the success of How To Be A Woman, which I have borrowed but have yet to read, a selection of her columns has been published under the title Moranthology. Geddit? Good. Her topics are widespread – a lot of celebrity-culture and arts & entertainment, but also just the world around her, from new dresses to Gregg’s pasties to tax (she’s pro.) Here’s how she glosses her inspirations in the introduction:

The motto I have Biro’d on my knuckles is that this is the best world we have – because it’s the only world we have. It’s the simplest maths ever. However many terrible, rankling, peeve-inducing things may occur, there are always libraries. And rain-falling-on-sea. And the Moon. And love. There is always something to look back on, with satisfaction, or forward to, with joy. There is always a moment when you boggle at the world – at yourself – at the whole, unlikely, precarious business of being alive – and then start laughing.

And that’s usually when I make a cup of tea, and start typing.
Caitlin Moran and I are unlikely ever to be friends. This is largely – though not entirely – because all her friendships seem to be assessed on the willingness with which said friend will breakdance, drunk out of their minds, in seedy clubs at four in the morning – or how much they admire Ghostbusters, which I’ve never seen. But, should our paths ever cross – at, say, 7.30 am, as she is stumbling back from a faux-Victorian strip club with Lady Gaga, and I am blearily crawling to the corner shop to get milk for my morning tea, not wearing any glasses because for some reason that only feels like a viable option in a post-caffeine world – should we meet, perhaps we would bond a little. Bond about our love of books (she champions libraries wonderfully; ‘A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life-raft, and a festival’) and our distrust of the Tory Party. Maybe even about how great Modern Family is, although that’s not mentioned here. But that might be it. I’ve never seen Sherlock, and I don’t much care for Doctor Who – these admissions are probably enough for Moran to cement-bag me to the bottom of the Thames, a la Mack the Knife. The columns where she reviews or goes behind the scenes of these shows are near-pathological in their adoration.

And, of course, there are plenty of other things we don’t agree about, or enthusiasms we don’t share. That’s beside the point. Moran could write about how much she likes dead-heading roses to make bonnets for foxes, and she’d make the hobby seem not only amusing, but rather bohemian and cool. Because Moran just is cool, without seeming to try at all. The sort of cool which entirely embraces self-deprecation and wears absurd foibles as badges of honour – and makes everything she writes seem adorable and awesome. (The only time I felt disappointed by Moran was when she referred to the ‘anti-choice’ movement. However strongly people may disagree over the issue of abortion, I’ve always deeply admired the almost-universal respectful use of ‘pro-life’ and ‘pro-choice’ by those who oppose either one. Because, Moran – as well you know – absolutely nobody takes an anti-life or an anti-choice stance. That is never their objective.) But, that aside, she doesn’t put a foot wrong. She can babble about Downton Abbey, declare her hatred of children’s book/TV character Lola, or opine on her holidays to Wales, and it’s all just brilliant. And it’s brilliant because she has her tone down pat – a way with simile that is always innovative and hilarious (she, for instance, describes X Factor alum Frankie Cocozza as having ‘a voice like a goose being kicked down a slide’) and a clever mix of high and low registers which is positively Dickensian – throwing slang in with perfect judgement. Because (see above) she’s so cool.

And that mention of Dickens isn’t careless. Caitlin Moran is basically a 21st-century Dickens, with crazy awesome hair. In amongst all the hilarious columns on the ugliness of fish names or how someone stole her hairstyle, Moran gets in some serious social politics. So, like Dickens, she is incredibly funny – but uses the humour to slip in social commentary; the difference being that Dickens would give us a plucky urchin at the mercy of Sir Starvethechild. It would be glorious, but his point would be rather lost in a thicket of the grotesque. Moran, give or take some emotive wording, just tells it as it is.

Moran grew up on a council estate with eight siblings and parents who were on disability benefits. As she says, ‘I’ve spent twenty years clawing my way out of a council house in Wolverhampton, to reach a point where I can now afford a Nigella Lawson breadbin.’ But she still knows what poverty was like firsthand, and writes movingly, sensibly, and brilliantly about various issues to do with cutting benefits or alienating the poor.

All through history, those who can’t earn money have had to rely on mercy: fearful, changeable mercy, that can dissolve overnight if circumstances change, or opinions alter. Parish handouts, workhouses, almshouses – ad-hoc, makeshift solutions that make the helpless constantly re-audition in front of their benefactors; exhaustingly trying to re-invoke pity for a lifetime of bread and cheese.

That’s why the invention of the Welfare State is one of the most glorious events in history: the moral equivalency of the Moon Landings. Something not fearful or changeable, like mercy, but certain and constant – a right. Correct and efficient: disability benefit fraud is just 0.5 per cent. A system that allows dignity and certainty to lives otherwise chaotic with poverty and illness.
Who but Moran could write about her hatred of creating party-bags, her love of David Attenborough and her friend with schizophrenia who has to move cities in order to retain state-given accommodation? Not in the same column, you understand, but I wouldn’t put it past her. Moran has won all sorts of awards, I believe, and I would say that she deserves them – but, quite frankly, she is the only columnist I ever read. I’ve been enjoying her columns for years (some in this book are, naturally, revisits for me) and I’m so delighted that they’re now available as a book. I’ve got my fingers crossed for another, since this can only represent a small percentage of her output. But I’ll count my blessings with this one (thanks Colin for giving it to me!) and urge you to seek it out. Like I said, Moran is basically Dickens. Hilariously funny, socially conscious, rocks some impressive sideburns. Well, two out of three ain’t bad.

More Statistics!

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Happy New Year!




You’ll be sick of these soon… but what is the new year for but to share book-reading statistics?  I’ll be revisiting the meme I started a few years ago – quite a simple one.  I’ll be doing some comparing with the results I got in 2011.

Number of Books Read
135 – rather more than the scant 106 I managed last year.

Number of Books Bought
I don’t know, and you shouldn’t guess.

Fiction/Non-Fiction Ratio
95 fiction, 40 non-fiction – a higher percentage of non-fiction than ever before, which seems to be a growing trend – but does not reflect the books I have waiting on my shelves…

Male/Female Authors
45 books by men, 90 by women.  My reading is always slanted towards female authors, but not usually this much.  Maybe I should make 2013 the year of the male author.  But I won’t.

Re-reads
Only 9 this year, and most of those were for my thesis.

Biggest turn-around in opinion
How could I not have realised how brilliant One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes was the first time?

Oldest book read
Castle Rackrent (1800) by Maria Edgeworth.  And I didn’t like it.

Newest book read
My friend Karina’s Shrinking Violet (2012).  And I loved it!

Shortest title
Mamma by Diana Tutton.  Which unwittingly reveals my confession that I have read it, and never wrote about it!  It’s not very much like Guard Your Daughters.

Books in translation
Only 8, which is far fewer than I’d imagined – from French, Swedish, Spanish, German, and Czech.

Most books by one author
6 each by Sylvia Townsend Warner and Muriel Spark – no surprises there, since I wrote a chapter on Sylvia Townsend Warner and co-led Muriel Spark Reading Week.

Place names in book titles
The Abbess of Crewe, Mrs. Harris Goes To Paris, Mrs. Harris Goes to New York, The Westminster Alice, Brighton Rock, The House in Paris, Lovers in London, Reginald in Russia.


Animals in book titles
Dear Octopus, When God Was A Rabbit, His Monkey Wife, Dewey the Library Cat, Lady Into Fox, Gentleman Into Goose, The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies.

Strange things that happened in the books I read this year
I loved doing this bit last year.  Ok… A donkey played chess, a man turned into a teapot, another man turned into a bug, several people turned into flowers, parliament turned up with Alice in Wonderland, a ring turned people invisible, someone sought lots of Mr. Browns, someone sought lots of Mr. Blacks, a woman was haunted by a reappearing corridor, a nunnery was bugged, and a man married a monkey.



If this all sickens you completely, go and enjoy C.B. James’ irreverent take on end of year stats!

A Century of Books: Complete!

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As I mentioned yesterday, I have finished A Century of Books – and, even better, I think there was only one other person who was trying to get all 100 books read during 2012 (a few others were joining in with longer-term aspirations) and she managed it too.  Well done Claire!  If I could reach to Canada, I’d give you a pat on the back.

So, that means I have my list of 100 books – it’s really fun to see an overview of the 20th century, especially since it’s such a subjective overview.  It’s a Stuck-in-a-Book overview.  There are definitely many entries which wouldn’t make a canonical list – there are plenty which I wouldn’t recommend myself – but it’s still (to me) a really interesting list to have.

If you click on the link up there, you’ll get to Claire’s post about her experiences with A Century of Books.  I agree with her – it’s been great fun, with plenty of surprises along the way.  I wasn’t surprised by how quickly I filled in the interwar years – with the curious exception of 1920, which proved quite elusive.  But I hadn’t realised how tricky the 1900s and 1910s would be – I’d prepared myself to run out of ideas for the 1970s onwards, but they turned out to be rather easier.

I’ll be doing more stats on my whole year’s reading, but I couldn’t resist giving one or two statistics for my 100 books in particular:

— Only 6 re-reads

— 46 fiction by women
— 25 fiction by men
— 21 non-fiction by women
— 8 non-fiction by men

— Of those from the second-half of the century, 24 related to the first-half of the century or earlier – i.e. biographies, adaptations etc.  Simon, you CHEAT!  I perhaps haven’t explored the post-1950 world quite as I might have done…

And let me imitate Claire, and give you some advice, should you wish to try it yourself (and I encourage you to do so!)

Spread it out…
Don’t read all your comfort zone years before the end of March!  If you get to winter and have to read 1900-1915 (or whatever it might be) straight through, you might tire of it all.

Short books are your friend
I love short books all the time, as you might possibly know – but even moreso for this project.  So sometimes I could get through half a dozen years in a week – but then an enormous book would come along and throw things a bit off kilter.  I haven’t told you about Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, The Sea yet, and how much that almost ruined my schedule…

Friends are also your friend
As Claire says, it’s much more fun when someone else (at least) is doing the same project – so that you can encourage one another.  I don’t know if anybody is trying A Century of Books within a year for 2013, but there are plenty of people continuing a longer-term project – and if you wait for 2014, Claire and I will probably be doing it all again.

The agony and the ecstasy!
As everyone who’s done (or is doing) A Century of Books is in agreement about one thing – the pain when the books you want to read consistently fall into years which have already been covered!  EVERYTHING was published in 1953: FACT.  (Maybe not a fact.)

Reviews are harder than reading
In normal practice, I often decide not to blog about certain books, or simply forget about them.  That wouldn’t work with A Century of Books, if you wanted a page which linked to all the reviews.  And so I started doing round-up posts with three or four short reviews – that seemed to work a treat.

But don’t meet trouble halfway
It’s not really difficult, though!  A few commenters seemed to think it would be too restrictive.  Well, I can only say that I didn’t find it so – especially for the first ten months or so of the year.  It really is the anti-challenge challenge (so long as you’re used to reading more than a hundred books a year) and embraces every genre, form, author, nationality etc.  What did surprise me was how perfectly the timing ended up – 25 qualifying books finished after three months, 50 after six months, 75 after nine months and, of course, 100 after 12 months.

Enjoy!
I loved doing it, and I’ll be doing the project again – but not until 2014.  Like Claire, I’m missing 19th-century books – and 21st-century books too.  Right now I’m onto Vanity Fair…

Here is the whole list:

1900 – Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K. Jerome
1901 – The Spinster Book by Myrtle Reed
1902 – The Westminster Alice by Saki
1903 – Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw
1904 – Canon in Residence by V.L. Whitechurch
1905 – Lovers in London by A.A. Milne
1906 – The Railway Children by E. Nesbit
1907 – The Enchanted Castle by E. Nesbit
1908 – The World I Live In by Helen Keller
1909 – The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies by Beatrix Potter
1910 – Reginald in Russia by Saki
1911 – In A German Pension by Katherine Mansfield
1912 – Daddy Long-legs by Jean Webster
1913 – When William Came by Saki
1914 – What It Means To Marry by Mary Scharlieb
1915 – Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
1916 – Love At Second Sight by Ada Leverson
1917 – Zella Sees Herself by E.M. Delafield
1918 – Married Love by Marie Stopes
1919 – Not That It Matters by A.A. Milne
1920 – The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
1921 – The Witch-Cult in Western Europe by Margaret Murray
1922 – Spinster of this Parish by W.B. Maxwell
1923 – Uncanny Stories by May Sinclair
1924 – The Rector’s Daughter by F.M. Mayor
1925 – Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos
1926 – Blindness by Henry Green
1927 – Dusty Answer by Rosamond Lehmann
1928 – Time Importuned by Sylvia Townsend Warner
1929 – A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
1930 – His Monkey Wife by John Collier
1931 – Opus 7 by Sylvia Townsend Warner
1932 – Green Thoughts by John Collier
1933 – More Women Then Men by Ivy Compton-Burnett
1934 – Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
1935 – The House in Paris by Elizabeth Bowen
1936 – Summer Will Show by Sylvia Townsend Warner
1937 – The Outward Room by Millen Brand
1938 – Dear Octopus by Dodie Smith
1939 – Three Marriages by E.M. Delafield
1940 – One, Two, Buckle My Shoe by Agatha Christie
1941 – Country Moods and Tenses by Edith Olivier
1942 – The Outsider by Albert Camus
1943 – Talking of Jane Austen by Sheila Kaye-Smith and G.B. Stern
1944 – Elders and Betters by Ivy Compton-Burnett
1945 – At Mrs. Lippincote’s by Elizabeth Taylor
1946 – Mr. Allenby Loses The Way by Frank Baker
1947 – One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes
1948 – The Corner That Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner
1949 – Ashcombe: The Story of a Fifteen-Year Lease by Cecil Beaton
1950 – Jane Austen by Margaret Kennedy
1951 – I. Compton-Burnett by Pamela Hansford Johnson
1952 – Miss Hargreaves: the play by Frank Baker
1953 – Guard Your Daughters by Diana Tutton
1954 – M for Mother by Marjorie Riddell
1955 – The Winds of Heaven by Monica Dickens
1956 – All The Books of My Life by Sheila Kaye-Smith
1957 – Raising Demons by Shirley Jackson
1958 – Mrs. Harris Goes To Paris by Paul Gallico
1959 – Miss Plum and Miss Penny by Dorothy Evelyn Smith
1960 – The Ballad of Peckham Rye by Muriel Spark
1961 – A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis
1962 – Coronation by Paul Gallico
1963 – A Favourite of the Gods by Sybille Bedford
1964 – The Garrick Year by Margaret Drabble
1965 – Moominpappa at Sea by Tove Jansson
1966 – In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
1967 – The Joke by Milan Kundera
1968 – A Cab at the Door by V.S. Pritchett
1969 – Sunlight on Cold Water by Francoise Sagan
1970 – Frederick the Great by Nancy Mitford
1971 – Ivy & Stevie by Kay Dick
1972 – Ivy Compton-Burnett: a memoir by Cecily Greig
1973 – V. Sackville-West by Michael Stevens
1974 – Look Back With Love by Dodie Smith
1975 – Sweet William by Beryl Bainbridge
1976 – The Takeover by Muriel Spark
1977 – Injury Time by Beryl Bainbridge
1978 – Art in Nature by Tove Jansson
1979 – On The Other Side by Mathilde Wolff-Mönckeberg
1980 – The Shooting Party by Isabel Colegate
1981 – Gossip From Thrush Green by Miss Read
1982 – At Freddie’s by Penelope Fitzgerald
1983 – Blue Remembered Hills by Rosemary Sutcliff
1984 – The Only Problem by Muriel Spark
1985 – For Sylvia: An Honest Account by Valentine Ackland
1986 – On Acting by Laurence Olivier
1987 – The Other Garden by Francis Wyndham
1988 – Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga
1989 – Maestro by Peter Goldsworthy
1990 – The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan
1991 – Wise Children by Angela Carter
1992 – Curriculum Vitae by Muriel Spark
1993 – Something Happened Yesterday by Beryl Bainbridge
1994 – Deadline Poet by Calvin Trillin
1995 – The Simmons Papers by Philipp Blom
1996 – Reality and Dreams by Muriel Spark
1997 – The Island of the Colourblind by Oliver Sacks
1998 – The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
1999 – La Grande Thérèse by Hilary Spurling

Happy New Year!

Frederick the Great – Nancy Mitford

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I’ve done it! I’ve done it! My book for 1970 is finished, and with it is finished my Century of Books. I was so fearful that I might stall at 99 on December 31st, so finishing on December 28th was rather a relief. I’ll write more about the project, including the sort of stats and things that interest me, but for today I’ll get on with reviewing the title I chose for 1970 – Frederick the Great by Nancy Mitford.

Vintage Books kindly sent me a couple of Nancy Mitford’s biographies a while ago, and I was in a bit of a quandary about them. Those of you who were reading Stuck-in-a-Book in 2008 may recall my Mitfordmania, which has lessened a little (mostly because I came to the reluctant conclusion that Debo Mitford probably wouldn’t become my best friend) but is certainly not dead. So I was all eagerment to read another book by Nancy Mitford – but my interest in notable figures of French history is so minute as to be negligible. On which side of the balance would Frederick the Great fall down? More Mitford or more History? Frivolous and funny, or scholarly and dry? I thought I had my answer on the first page:

He was the third son of his parents: two little Fredericks had died, one from having a crown forced upon his head at the time of the christening and the other when the guns greeting his birth were fixed too near his cradle; the third Frederick, allergic to neither crowns nor guns, survived, and so, luckily for him, did his elder sister, Wilheimine.
Can this possibly be true? Had two heirs did in such surreal circumstances? I decided not to take recourse to Wikipedia, but just to take Nancy’s word for it. Even if Nancy is honestly reporting events, the tang of Mitford is evident in the bizarre way she phrases them, and the absence of any sort of explanation. I’m sorry for the children and their mother, but I was delighted that Mitford didn’t lose her tone when writing non-fiction.

Indeed, for much of the time it felt novelesque. Mitford uses almost no footnotes and, whilst there is a bibliography at the end, her biography is evidently incredibly subjective. Since she doesn’t reference properly, even when giving excerpts, it is impossible to ascertain where she gets her information – and where she is making stuff up. I doubt she ever invents battles which didn’t happen, or friendships which never existed, but she certainly imposes a great deal that she cannot have known for certain. The first 80 or so pages of Frederick the Great concern his life as a prince, principally (ahaha) his relationship with his father. It was the section of the book I found most interesting, but Mitford blithely imagines Frederick’s thoughts and feelings, giving no evidence for these forays into his consciousness – for, indeed, what evidence could there be?

Frederick William (Frederick the Great’s father) loved hunting and religion (if not noticeably God), and hated intellectuals and the French. Frederick the Great was – from birth, it sometimes seems – the exact opposite. He suggested that hunters were below butchers (because butchers killed out of necessity, and did not enjoy doing it), he enjoyed winding his father up by being blasphemous or heretical, and worshipped the French tongue so greatly that he always signed himself Fédéric, could barely speak German, and prized French culture above any other. At least this is what Nancy Mitford claims – but I began to suspect she might be superimposing her own devotedly Francophile feelings upon this German king, just a little.

It is something of a truism of biography to present the subject as a ‘mass of contradictions’. Certainly, Frederick the Great seems that. Mitford emphasises his love of culture (he was passionately fond of Voltaire, at least until they met; he practiced the flute four times a day) and his progressive nature (legal reforms which saw only a handful of death penalties given a year, in contrast to the rest of Western Europe; decreasing cruelty to civilians during warfare) but alongside this is, of course, his reputation as an invader and ruthless militarist. That reputation was, indeed, all I knew about him before starting this biography. But Mitford is much keener to present him as a human, even lovable, character – anecdotal foibles and all:

The King’s time-table when he was at home did not vary from now on; many people have described it and their accounts tally. He was woken at 4 a.m.; he hated getting up early but forced himself to do it until the day he died. He scolded the servants if they let him go to sleep again, but he was sometimes so pathetic that they could not help it; so he made a rule that, under pain of being put in the army, they must throw a cloth soaked in cold water on his face.
He often comes across as rather a silly, but ultimately adorable, little boy. When it comes to his militaristic tendencies, Mitford is clearly quite bored by them – and, in turn, makes the chapters describing them by far the most boring of the book. It’s true that I would never thrill to the accounts of battles and tactical manoeuvres, but Mitford’s style loses all charm or polish when she comes to write about them. These secluded chapters are written with all the panache of a primary school essay about a child’s holiday activities – “Then he did this, then he did this, then he did this” – and Mitford evidently can’t wait to get onto the next chapter.

Ultimately, it is a very involving character portrait, with so much subjectivity laced silently through it, that Mitford is in every sentence. Since it is non-fiction, people appear and disappear, arrive far too late in the narrative or inconveniently die – Mitford can’t help it, of course, but that doesn’t make it any less confusing for an ignorant reader like me. So, poor historian that I am, I can’t pretend that Frederick the Great will ever rival Nancy Mitford’s novels for my affections, and this wasn’t the all-consuming, utterly-joyous reading experience I’d hoped might round off A Century of Books, but it was definitely interesting to see how Mitford might approach the topic – and, who knows, I might even have learnt a thing or two that I’ll remember.

Two Classic Children’s Books

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A Century of Books has led to me reading more children’s books than usual in 2012.  The debate about whether or not adults ought to read YA fiction (a phrase I hate) is probably best left for another day – but I think most of us understand the call towards unashamed classic children’s fiction, which doesn’t have the slightest pretence to being adults’ literature.

First, very speedily, a suggestion Claire mentioned when I was struggling to fill in 1909 – Ann Veronica went back on the shelf for another day (next to Rebecca West, amusingly enough) and Beatrix Potter came off instead.  Well, actually, since I don’t have a copy of The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies, I downloaded the free ebook from Project Gutenberg, and read it on my Kindle for PC.  It’s lovely – of course it is.  Peter Rabbit’s sister Flopsy and her wife Benjamin have quite a few children – ‘They had a large family, and they were very improvident and cheerful.’  (Which picture book writer today would use the word ‘improvident’?  Or ‘soporific’?  Love you, Beatrix.)

You probably know the story.  Wicked Mr. Macgregor is back, and does his best to kidnap the Flopsy Bunnies… will he manage it?  Can you guess?  (By the way, this cartoon is an amusing counterpart to Beatrix Potter’s bunny stories.)  It feels a bit like I’m cheating with 1909 – but I suppose Potter is more influential than most of the other authors featured in A Century of Books.  And it was delightful!

*  *  *

A whistle sounds, a flag is waved.  The train pulls itself together, strains, jerks, and starts.”I don’t understand,” says Gerald, alone in his third-class carriage, “how railway trains and magic can go on at the same time.”And yet they do.
This seems like a very apt quotation from E. Nesbit’s The Enchanted Castle (1907), because she is best known (at least in our household) as the author of The Railway Children.  Her own writing, then, successfully combined the possible – if unlikely – story of children living near a railway, and this novel where all manner of extraordinary things happen.  But it is, perhaps, the possible events threaded through the novel which made it most effective, in my eyes.

Everything starts off believably.  Siblings Jerry, Jimmy, and Kathleen are bored during their summer holidays, spent with one of those eternal Mademoiselles of children’s fiction from this period.  Only this one is not cantankerous or hysterical, and is quite happy to let them go off to explore.  On their exploits, they discover (as one does) a beautiful castle, with grounds replete with marble statues, etc.  And – look! – a sleeping princess!  She awakes, after Jimmy (somewhat reluctantly) kisses her – and she takes them through to see her jewels.  One of these is a magic ring, she confides, which can make the wearer invisible.  Only they have to close their eyes for a bit whilst it works.  And, yes, it works!

But the princess is rather surprised.  It turns out she is, in fact, Mabel – the housekeeper’s niece – and wasn’t expecting the ring actually to turn her invisible.  And thus their adventures begin…

There is a curtain, thin as gossamer, clear as glass, strong as iron, that hangs for ever between the world of magic and the world that seems to us to be real.  And when once people have found one of the little weak spots in that curtain which are marked by magic rings, and amulets, and the like, anything may happen.
And anything does happen.  Invisibility, expanding, swimming statues, ghosts…  I prefer my novels’ fantastic elements to be rather more restrained, with parameters neatly set.  This all felt a bit scattergun, but I suppose Five Children and It is similar and that doesn’t bother me, but that’s probably because I grew up reading Five Children and It, and this is my first reading of The Enchanted Castle.  I have a feeling that this would feel a much more coherent book for those who loved it as a child.  As for me, sometimes it seemed like dear E. Nesbit was making it up as she went along.

What saved it completely, though, was her delightful tone.  I wrote, in my post on The Railway Children, that I’d no idea E. Nesbit was so witty – and that continues here.  There are plenty of asides and sly nudges to the reader – a wit that was probably put in for the parent, but could well be appreciated by the child too.  Alongside the amusing style, my favourite aspect were the non-fantastic relationships – between siblings, between the children and Mademoiselle, between Eliza the maid and her young man, and between… no, the last two I shall leave you to find out for yourself.

It was all good fun.  And yet I’m going to throw my copy away.  Because it looks like this now…

Ooops!  TV tie-in paperbacks from the 1970s weren’t built to last, were they?

Two lovely children’s books to round off 2012.  Just one book left for A Century of Books… a biography for 1970.  Any guesses?

Reality and Dreams – Muriel Spark

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I’m away with my family for a few days, out of range of internet – the vicar escaping, post-Christmas Day!  I’ve scheduled some posts to appear, but I shan’t be able to reply for a bit – and hopefully I’ll be back with internet in time to write a post about the only one of my Century of Books that I’ve not yet finished!

If you were thinking that I’d had enough of Muriel Spark during Muriel Spark Reading Week, then think again!  One of the final books I’ve read in 2012 is her last of the 20th century, and third last overall – Reality and Dreams (1996).


Tom Richards – presumably a deliberately bland name – is a famous film director.  The first line of the novel, and thus the line which kicks off our impression of him, is archetypical Spark: ‘He often wondered if we were all characters in one of God’s dreams.’  And, with Spark’s panache for combining surreality with restraint, she goes no further with that paragraph.  It hangs, so strangely, and we are shepherded straight to the second paragraph – where we learn that Tom Richards is recovering in hospital, having fallen out of a crane whilst directing a scene.  He broke nearly all his bones, but is lucky to be alive.

For the first few pages, reality and dreams swirl, as Tom fades in and out of lucidity.  I often have problems with the ways in which authors try to convey any mental distortion – whether disorientation or illness – as it usually seems clumsy and heavy-handed, or simply unreadable.  Spark, reliably, does it brilliantly.  Even something as simple as this conveys the disjointedness of time:

She poured out some milky tea.  He opened his eyes.  The tray had disappeared.
And then the complicated family arrive.  His wife Claire is patient and unshockable – and has affairs as often as he does, quite casually.  There is his angelically beautiful, but unvivid, daughter from his first marriage (Cora), and stolid, moaning, unattractive daughter from his current marriage (Marigold).  And there is the squabbling, self-absorbed cast of his film, originally called The Hamburger Girl – inspired by a brief sighting of a young woman at a campsite, who captivated Tom.

The various marriages in the family (some disintegrating), the cancelled and re-commissioned film production, the disappearance of one of his daughters and ensuing police search – all come together and interweave, creating a curiously mixed structure.  I think one of the most distinctive qualities in Muriel Spark’s writing is that everything is always on the same level.  She refuses to get overly-dramatic about anything – possible kidnap and murder is treated in the same matter-of-fact way as Tom’s physiotherapy, or the workings of the film shoot.  For it is, of course, the sphere of cinema which influences Spark’s title:

that world of dreams and reality which he was at home in, the world of filming scenes, casting people in parts, piecing together types and shadows, facts and illusions
Apart from the mental disorientation at the beginning of the novel, there is never any wider suggestion that reality and dream might have been exchanged – but there is the possibility that fictitious events are starting, in a distorted way, to become true.  It’s never overdone, but is a clever thread through a clever novel.  It’s all quintessential Spark, and a perfect reminder of why she’s one of my favourite authors.

Books of 2012: A Baker’s Dozen

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Have a very wonderful Christmas!  I’m going to leave you for two or three days with my Books of 2012.

I always have great fun compiling my favourite reads of the year, and this year was actually somewhat easier than usual.  There were plenty of excellent books (albeit also more duds than usual) but ten stood out immediately as really exceptional.  But then I added another three, because I couldn’t face leaving them out.  Even as it is, some really great books aren’t making the grade.

My usual rules apply – an author can only feature once, and re-reads aren’t included.  And, of course, these aren’t just books that were published in 2012.  Because I believe I only read one book published in 2012.  (It was very good, incidentally – Shrinking Violet by my friend Karina Lickorish Quinn.)  And I love making lists, so these are in order.  None of that ‘in no particular order’ for me!  Clicking on the book title will take you to my original review.

13. The House in Paris (1935) by Elizabeth Bowen
If the whole novel had taken place in the Parisian house, without the half of the novel devoted to flashback, this would have been further up my list – but, still, it’s an amazing reassessment of Bowen on my part.  Thanks to Darlene for making me try Bowen again!  An understated and beautiful chance meeting of two children on one day in Paris.

12. At Mrs. Lippincote’s (1945) by Elizabeth Taylor
I don’t love Taylor quite as much as some, but this novel about a woman and her husband stationed in the absent Mrs. Lippincote’s house, during WW1, is both her first novel and my favourite.  Very subtle, moving, and often witty.


11. Three Men on the Bummel (1900) by Jerome K. Jerome
I think I actually prefer this sequel to Three Men on a Boat – all of the same silliness and hilarity, and even less of an ability to stick to the point.  Gloriously funny stuff.

10. All the Books of My Life (1956) by Sheila Kaye-Smith
2012 was a great year for reading autobiographies, and although I’ve read none of Kaye-Smith’s rural novels, I loved her account of her life, told through the books she cherished at different periods.  Filled with great anecdotes, it is her love of books which comes across most strongly – and strikes a chord with me!

9. The Only Problem (1984) by Muriel Spark
Of all the Spark novels I’ve read this year, none have come up to the high standard of my favourite (Loitering With Intent), but this eccentric, brilliant novel was the strongest contender.   Who but Spark would combine someone researching the Book of Job with a terrorist organisation?  Mad, but madness dealt in calm doses.  Utterly Sparkian.

8. Art in Nature (1978) by Tove Jansson
Any newly-translated (thank you Thomas Teal) Jansson book is a shoo-in for my Best Reads of the year.  This short story collection is no different – Jansson can turn her eye to anything, but of especial interest to her here are the ideas of artists and creativity.

7. More Women Than Men (1933) by Ivy Compton-Burnett
My favourite ICB novel yet, this is set in a girls’ school, rather than her usual sprawling families.  None of the girls get a line, but the in-fighting of the teachers, an unwanted wedding, and a peculiar death all come together to make a very amusing, very Ivy novel.

6. Ashcombe (1949) by Cecil Beaton
A really gorgeously beautiful account of Beaton’s fifteen-year lease of Ashcombe house.   His eccentric redecorations, his love for the countryside, and his amusing waggish friends come together to make this an absolute gem of a book – not without sadness, as WW2 rears its ugly head towards the end of his stay.

5. Raising Demons (1957) by Shirley Jackson
The sequel to Jackson’s Life Among the Savages is just as uproariously funny – difficult to believe the Gothic-horror-type novelist, best known for one of the most unsettling stories ever, also wrote delightful, hilarious accounts of being a busy wife and mother.  Get hold of these by any means possible.

4. I. Compton-Burnett: A Memoir (1972) by Cicely Greig
Any perspective on my beloved Dame Ivy is welcome, but that of her typist (and friend) is unique. Greig writes understandingly, without rose-coloured glasses, but also as a fan of her writing – it’s a great combination of personal memoir and literary appreciation.

3. Look Back With Love (1974) by Dodie Smith
Oh, how spoilt I was with memoirs this year!  A rich, enchanting account of Smith’s wide family and happy childhood – including the inspiration for some of her writing, and hilarious accounts of her early attempts at acting.  Everything interests her avidly.  Just delightful – and, even better, three more autobiographical volumes to read later!

2. Blue Remembered Hills (1983) by Rosemary Sutcliff
The best memoir I read this year, and another triumph from Slightly Foxed.  I haven’t read any of Sutcliff’s novels (and, given my distaste for historical fiction, I’m not especially keen to) but her autobiography is, like Smith’s, a total delight.  Despite a very difficult relationship with her mother, and living in and out of hospital through her childhood, there is nothing melancholy or self-pitying here.  Just an absolute joy to read.

1. Guard Your Daughters (1953) by Diana Tutton
I was only a couple of pages into this heavenly book when I knew it would be my book of the year.  Morgan narrates the bizarre life of her isolated family of sisters.  It certainly owes a debt to I Capture the Castle, but is perhaps even better – the most charming, lively, lovable, and eccentric family imaginable, I couldn’t believe how good it was, while I was reading.  Others have been quite lukewarm, but causing a mini-revival for this glorious novel has been one of my proudest blogging moments.

And that list again:

13. The House in Paris – Elizabeth Bowen
12. At Mrs. Lippincote’s – Elizabeth Taylor
11. Three Men on the Bummel – Jerome K. Jerome
10. All the Books of My Life – Sheila Kaye-Smith
9. The Only Problem – Muriel Spark
8. Art in Nature – Tove Jansson
7. More Women Than Men – Ivy Compton-Burnett
6. Ashcombe – Cecil Beaton
5. Raising Demons – Shirley Jackson
4. I. Compton-Burnett: A Memoir – Cicely Greig
3. Look Back With Love – Dodie Smith
2. Blue Remembered Hills – Rosemary Sutcliff
1. Guard Your Daughters – Diana Tutton

If you’ve created your own list, do pop a link in the comments.  Happy Christmas, one and all!