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One Book, Two Book, Three Book, Four… and Five…

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Eyes are steadily improving (though the cold weather isn’t helping), so I’m tentatively ending my blogging hiatus. We’ll see how it goes! And I’m starting with a meme I used to use a fair bit more than ten years ago. Feel free to use it on your own blogs, of course – a handy way to give an overview of what’s what in current bookish life.

1.) The book I’m currently reading

The Story of Lucy Gault (English, Paperback, William Trevor) - BookMafiya - Buy Old books, Second Hand books, Almost New books at lowest price

Last night I started my first William Trevor book – for the year of reading William Trevor, run by Kim at Reading Matters and Cathy at 746 Books. It WAS the only one of my shelves, though keep reading… So far I’m enjoying it, though only about 20 pages in.

2.) The last book I finished

On Saturday, I finished The Seven Good Years by Israeli writer Etgar Keret – while his stories are translated from Hebrew, he wrote this memoir in English. It’s about the seven years between the birth of his son and the death of his father. While it, naturally, isn’t as surreal as his fiction, there is still a recognisable oddness to the way he frames anecdotes – and more heart than his short stories.

3.) The next book I want to read

Scoops by Sam McAlister | Waterstones

Looking back at the times I did this meme before, there are some ‘next books I want to read’ that I still haven’t read, more than ten years later. So, to avoid setting myself up for a fall, I’m going to choose an audiobook I bought the other day – Scoops by Sam McAlister. McAlister was the booker for the BBC’s Newsnight, and the book is a behind-the-scenes on how she went about getting some of the programme’s exclusives. As well as a broader memoir, I think.

4.) The last book I bought

I bought FOUR books yesterday. I am enjoying Project 24 being over! These all came from a remainder and secondhand bookshop in Oxford.

I bought The Portrait by Willem Jan Otten mostly because of that beautiful cover, but it sounds interesting – a Dutch painter is commissioned to paint a dead child, but then the father never collects the painting. And look, there’s the next William Trevor! I’ve wanted The Boarding House ever since Jacqui included it in her round-up of boarding house novels. The Census-Taker caught my eye because I liked China Miéville’s The City and the City, and it’s no secret that I’m a fan of Penelope Mortimer – so was pleased to spot Saturday Lunch with the Brownings.

5.) The last book I was given

Too Much: Amazon.co.uk: Allen, Tom: 9781529397437: Books

A belated Christmas present from my friends Paul and Kirsty – a signed copy of Tom Allen’s Too Much! I really enjoyed the audiobook, so it’s great to have a copy on my shelves.

That was fun, and it’s nice to be back. Hopefully more soon!

2022: Some Reading Stats

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I always enjoy reading other people’s reading stats, and I’m coming out of my hiatus to put mine out. I also managed to read for a bit today, which was wonderful, and gives me a bit of hope for the progression of the treatment for my eyes. Thank you for prayers, especially, and for kind thoughts too.

Over to the stats – some, as always, more idiosyncratic than others.

Number of books read
I read 203 books this year, which I find quite hard to believe. In 2021 I read 182, and that was comfortably the most I’d read in a year – so in 2022 I did even more. In reality, I’ve read a similar number of paper books as I have done for the past few years, but got EVEN more into audiobooks than last year.

Male/female writers
145 of those books were written by women, and 58 by men – so just over 71% of the books I read were by women. It was 70% in 2021, and it’s interesting how similar the percentage always is, without me making any goals or aims about gender in my reading. Of course, some of it is reading for British Library Women Writers – but I’ve read more women than men every year that I’ve recorded.

Fiction/non-fiction
I read 145 works of fiction (98 by women) and 58 works of non-fiction (22 by women). I usually read about a third non-fiction, but this was only 28.6%. I’ve never quite worked out why I read more fiction by women and more non-fiction by men.

Books in translation

In 2021, I read 11 books in translation and that was my all-time high – and I bettered it in 2022! I read 13 books in translation – from Flemish, Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish, Spanish, French, Hebrew, Hungarian, Portuguese and Slovakian.

Re-reads
I re-read 16 books in 2022 and, as usual, they were almost all for podcast, book group, or British Library Women Writers. The exception was that I re-read all the Heartstopper graphic novel series when the Netflix series came out.

Number of audiobooks
I listened to eight audiobooks in 2020, and thought I’d really gone up in the world with 21 in 2021. Ha! In 2022 I listened to 64 audiobooks. SIXTY-FOUR! They really took over my life, didn’t they?

New-to-me authors
My aim for 2022 was to read more new-to-me authors, and I even dedicated August to only reading new-to-me authors. So how did I do? I ended up reading 93 new-to-me authors, really bolstered by that month, so it wasn’t quite half – but it wasn’t far off.

Most disappointing book
I think the most disappointing books are always the ones by authors that you’ve previously loved. And that’s why Beside the Pearly Waters by Stella Gibbons and The Girl From the Candle-Lit Bath by Dodie Smith are probably top of this list. Both of these books were dreadful, largely because the authors tried to cover topics far outside their area of expertise – and which they were very incapable of doing well. And then there was Anne of Avonlea – which I was nervous about saying was disappointing, but most of you agreed. Oh and I hated The Sound and the Fury but I also quite expected to.

Reading pairing that really amused me
Nobody found the fact that I read Heatwave by Penelope Lively and Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O’Farrell sequentially during a heatwave anywhere NEAR as amusing as I did, but I was so proud of myself. (Both very good books, incidentally.)

Author whose name sounded most like a bad pseudonym for a famous country-pop singer
Fifty Sounds by Polly Barton

Best title
I love a successful punning title, and Uneasy Money by P.G. Wodehouse was a lovely play on words – that also, as a bonus, tells you a lot about the premise of the novel. I read a few Wodehouse novels this year, both print and audio, and it was as delightful as ever.

Worst title
Two Thousand Million Man-Power is an unforgivably bad title for G.E. Trevelyan’s brilliant novel.

Most confusing title
I thought Journey Through A Small Planet by Emanuel Litvinoff was science-fiction before I started reading it… and discovered it was his childhood memoir.

Most confusing title (if, like me, you’ve never heard of the things in it)
Iphigenia in Forest Hills by Janet Malcolm makes much more sense as a title if you know who Iphigenia was or where Forest Hills is – which I do now.

Shortest title
Also the shortest title I’ve ever read – D by Michel Faber.

Title which is the same as a Spice Girls song
Too Much by Tom Allen

Persephones
I’m always trying to read more Persephones, and usually not doing very well with it. In 2022, I read… Because of the Lockwoods and They Were Sisters by Dorothy Whipple, William – an Englishman (re-read) by Cicely Hamilton, Every Eye by Isobel English and Heat Lightning by Helen Hull. I’ll slowly get through all the unread Persephones!

Names in book titles
Ever since doing Project Names, I’ve been intrigued to see how often names turn up in book titles if I’m not deliberately seeking them out. In 2021, it was 35. In 2022, it was only 18. WHAT can we interpret from this? Arguably nothing.

Animals in book titles
The Spectator Bird by Wallace Stegner, The Dogs Do Bark by Barbara Willard, Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively, Escaping the Rabbit Hole by Mick West, The Year of the Hare by Arto Paasilinna, Who Will Run The Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore, H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald, Raining Cats and Donkeys by Doreen Tovey, Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman, Storm Bird by Mollie Panter-Downes and I guess, at a push, we can count Julian Barnes’ quite bad book Elizabeth Finch.

Numbers in book titles
Three Things You Need To Know About Rockets by Jessica A. Fox, Four Gardens by Margery Sharp, Five Windows by D.E. Stevenson, Eight Deaths (and Life After Them) by Mark Watson, The Twelve Days of Christmas by Venetia Murray, Fifty Sounds by Polly Barton, Fifty Forgotten Books by R.B. Russell, The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman, Two Thousand Million Man-Power by G.E. Trevelyan

Strange things that happened in books this year

A man emerges from 152-year coma, a woman travels back in time to her university days, a girl dies every day in a time loop, a medieval saint comes back to life, a gunman demands a story, a goldfish grants wishes, a zip unveils a hidden person inside someone else, a man is trapped in endless flooding halls of statues, a man fakes blindness, a robot becomes a household friend, a gentleman falls overboard, a man dodges pagan sacrifice, a cliff collapses and kills a group of tourists, Kings of England are selected by random ballot, a man falls in love with a doll, a cow is smuggled off a Channel Island, a door connects two continents, a sabotaged car kills someone, the letter ‘d’ disappears, and an angel charms a bishop’s wife.

Top Books of 2022

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It’s my favourite time of the book blogging year – seeing everyone’s Best Of lists, and compiling my own. As usual, I have stuck to one book per author, and haven’t included re-reads. I’ve read more than 200 books this year (including 60+ audiobooks), so I had lots to choose from. As it turned out, there were really one or two absolutely all-time brilliant reads, and then lots of very good ones.

Something I didn’t realise until I finished the list was that the top three books had all been on my shelves for about 10 or 15 years before I read them. A lesson never to cull, because every book’s moment could come!

Here we are, in reverse order…

12. Because of the Lockwoods (1949) by Dorothy Whipple

Because I’d read a few of Whipples not-quite-as-brilliant books, I’d forgotten quite how wonderful she can be. I read two Whipples this year, and They Were Sisters could equally have taken this slot – both are long, moving, compellingly enjoyable and poignant tales of family life.

11. Delicacy (2021) by Katy Wix

A brilliant memoir by this comedian – about cake and death. She considers significant moments in her life through cakes that remind her of them, and along the way covers deaths of close family and friends. I listened to the audiobook, which is a curiously sombre reading, so that even the undeniably funny sections come across with a certain sadness.

10. Four Gardens (1935) by Margery Sharp

Claire from the Captive Reader recommended this Sharp novel forever ago, so it was a delight to have her on episode 102 of Tea or Books? to compare it with D.E. Stevenson’s Five Windows, both reprinted by Furrowed Middlebrow / Dean Street Press. Sharp is always brilliant, and this story of a life through four gardens has stayed with me.

9. Remainders of the Day (2022) by Shaun Bythell

All of Bythell’s Diary of a Bookseller series are a delight – and this volume is no different. I raced through his latest diaries of running a secondhand bookshop in Scotland, with his sardonic comments on customers always a joy to read. I missed Nicky this time, who had moved on from the shop, but there are new people to get to know.

8. War Among Ladies (1928) by Eleanor Scott

This is the first British Library Women Writers title in some time that wasn’t my recommendation, but it was a wonderful choice – I read it a couple times this year. It’s about the teaching staff of a failing girls’ school, and is quite sad – but Scott’s dry tone, and some brighter moments, prevent it from being a miserable read.

7. Gentle and Lowly (2020) by Dane Ortlund

Subtitled ‘The heart of Christ for sinners and sufferers’, this is the best Christian book I’ve read for years – well, excepting the Bible. Chapter by chapter, he illuminates the character of Jesus in the gospels, and I found the book inspiring and comforting without disregarding the reality of a fallen world.

6. The Home (1971) by Penelope Mortimer

The picture in the collage above is a little spoiler – this will be coming out from the British Library Women Writers series soon. When they asked me to come up with something from the 1970s, I was a bit worried – I don’t know much about that decade. But I wanted to explore more Mortimer, and this semi-autobiographical book about separation after a marriage is darkly comic, ironic and just brilliant. It’s been described as a spiritual sequel to The Pumpkin Eater, and I can see why.

5. On Color (2018) by David Scott Kastan and Stephen Farthing

An unusual read for me, but a brilliant one – Kastan and Farthing go through the seven colours of the rainbow, as well as grey, black, and white, and look at the significance of the colour in history, culture, science. Usually they associate one colour with one theme, and cover a wide range here – from art to race to politics. An ambitious and brilliantly realised book – free on audiobook if you have an Audible subscription.

4. A Town Called Solace (2021) by Mary Lawson

She wrote my number one book last year, and her latest novel is brilliant too – a bit more packed with incident, though still feels quite calm and reflective. It’s the 1970s, and Clara’s sister has gone missing – and a strange man has moved into the house next door, with his own history to the small town in Canada. I suppose A Town Called Solace is a mystery of sorts, but it feels more like another of Lawson’s gentle musings on what it means to be a human in relationship with other humans.

3. Paying Guests (1929) by E.F. Benson

Benson is on top form with this boarding house of squabbling, pretending, brittle and brilliant people. One of the best Bensons I’ve read, it’s all about the big stakes of insignificant lives – how point-scoring and face-saving can dominate everything in their little worlds. Deliciously funny.

2. Suddenly, a Knock on the Door (2012) by Etgar Keret

A collection of very odd stories, mostly set in Israel and translated from Hebrew by Miriam Shlesinger, Sondra Silverston and Nathan Englander. Some of the stories have supernatural elements – e.g. somebody unzips themselves to reveal somebody else beneath – whereas others are simply surreal, like the title story about a gunman turning up and demanding a story. Keret is overflowing with ideas, and knows exactly how to translate those ideas into moments of perfection.

1. A Jest of God (1966) by Margaret Laurence

For the second year in a row, a Canadian novelist comes out top. In A Jest of God, Laurence narrows her focus to Rachel – a woman living in the same house where she grew up, teaching at the school where she was a pupil. Her claustrophobic life is dominated by an uneasy relationship with her mother and a complete lack of hope about the future – until Nick, an old schoolmate, returns to the small town. I read another of Laurence’s Manawaka series this year (unrelated books in the same region of Canada) – The Diviners, much more sprawling in terms of time and place and page count. I thought that was brilliant too, but found Laurence was superlative in miniature. An extraordinary success.

Project 24: the final book (and all the books)

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I hope you’ve had a lovely Christmas! I’ll be honest, my ongoing eye issues are making book blogging a bit tricky – so I’ll pop in with my Best Books of 2022 on New Year’s Eve, and otherwise I’ll probably have a little hiatus. The treatment isn’t working yet, but I’ve also had flu, so that hasn’t helped. Hurrah for audiobooks but, gosh, I miss reading.

So I wasn’t really in the mood for buying my 24th book for Project 24, if I’m honest – but then realised a perfect choice could be some Mary Oliver. It’s much easier to read a poem than a page of text, and I’ve been wanting to try Oliver for a while. I was a bit worried she’d be too self-helpy for me, but asked Twitter for recommendations – and Heather suggested A Thousand Mornings. And so that is my final book purchase of the 24 books I bought in 2022 (and, no, I shan’t be doing the project next year.)

A Thousand Mornings: Amazon.co.uk: Oliver, Mary: 9781472153760: Books

And, so I have them in one place, here are the 24 books I bought this year… I’ll do more of an overview at some point, but this will do for now.

1.) The Flowering Thorn by Margery Sharp
2.) House Happy by Muriel Resnik
3.) Murder on the Second Flood by Frank Vosper
4.) Why I’m Not A Millionaire by Nancy Spain
5.) The Patience of a Saint by G.B. Stern
6.) In Pious Memory by Margery Sharp
7.) The Chase by Mollie Panter-Downes
8.) The Deepening Stream by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
9.) The Home by Penelope Mortimer
10.) In No Strange Land by Jane Oliver
11.) The Fiery Gate by Ronald Fraser
12.) The Old Moat House by Eleonora H. Stooke
13.) The Comfort Tree by Stella Martin Currey
14.) War Isn’t Wonderful by Ursula Bloom
15.) Jim Comes Home by Frank Tilsey
16.) More Joy in Heaven by Sylvia Townsend Warner
17.) Fifty Forgotten Books by R.B. Russell
18.) Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman
19.) Spring Always Comes by Elizabeth Cambridge
20.) The Crime of Sheila McGough by Janet Malcolm
21.) The First To Die At The End by Adam Silvera
22.) Ducks by Kate Beaton
23.) Sea State by Tabitha Lasley
24.) A Thousand Mornings by Mary Oliver

Embarrassingly, I thought I was doing quite a good job of reading them this year – but, it turns out, I’ve only actually read seven of these books. But they’re all books that I’m pleased have ended up my shelves – and, eyes permitting, I’d be keen to get to any and all of them in 2023.

Project 24: Book 23

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My blogging has been a bit minimal of late, and that’s because I’ve been having ongoing issues with my eyes – including not really being able to read. Which, I’m sure you’ll understand, has been really difficult for me. After lots of back and forth to the optometrist, they think they’ve worked out what the issue is and I have treatment now – so I’m quietly hopeful that I’ll be able to spend some of the Christmas break reading. But I’ve been listening to lots of audiobooks, so thank goodness for them.

Anyway, in the midst of this my 23rd book arrived for Project 24 – the project where I’m only allowing myself to buy 24 books through the year. I shipped Sea State by Tabitha Lasley from America, because the US cover is so much nicer than the UK cover. To be honest, I ordered this in a ‘I really need to order a book’ mode, and I don’t know if it’s otherwise something I’d have raced towards – but it looks interesting nonetheless. I saw Dorian tweet about it and I’m always drawn to unusual memoirs. Here’s some of the publisher’s description: ‘In her mid-thirties and newly free from a terrible relationship, Tabitha Lasley quit her job at a London magazine, packed her bags, and poured her savings into a six-month lease on an apartment in Aberdeen, Scotland. She decided to make good on a long-deferred idea for a book about oil rigs and the men who work on them. Why oil rigs? She wanted to see what men were like with no women around.’

Only one book left to buy this year. To be honest, with my eyes as they are at the mo, the idea of buying a book seems a far cry. But here’s hoping.

Six Degrees of Separation: from The Snow Child to

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I keep an eye on the 6 Degrees of Separation meme from Books Are My Favourite And Best, and was pleased to see it kicked off this month with a book I’ve read and loved – The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey. As Kate says – ‘Start at the same place as other wonderful readers, add six books, and see where you end up.’

The Snow Child.jpg

Starting book: As I said, the first book is Eowyn Ivey’s take on a fairy tale, The Snow Child, where a childless couple in 1920s Alaska discover a child living alone in the snowy wilderness. They want to take her in and she wants to remain wild, and a love story of sorts begins between these kind, hurt trio. I found it a deeply moving book – I had to put it down for a few months at first, because it is so piercingly poignant.

British Library Women Writers 11: The Love Child by Edith Olivier – Stuck in a Book

1st degree of separation: A very clear link with Edith Olivier’s 1927 novel The Love-Child, in which a childless woman so keenly yearns for a child – well, for friendship really – that she inadvertently brings her old childhood imaginary friend Clarissa to life. All goes well, but a power struggle evolves. It is a novella, but so perfectly and movingly done.

A Curious Friendship: The Story of a Bluestocking and a Bright Young Thing: Amazon.co.uk: Anna Thomasson: 9781447245537: Books

2nd degree of separation: I never tire of recommending Anna Thomasson’s wonderful biography of the friendship between the author of The Love-Child, Edith Olivier, and the artist Rex Whistler. Though from different generations, they had a beautiful meeting of minds in the 1920s – and Thomasson tracks how Olivier had a new lease of life in her middle-age, surrounded by these bright young things. It’s an absorbing, brilliant, and unusual biography.

The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson

3rd degree of separation: Let’s go for a book about an artist – one, like Rex Whistler, who was taken seriously for illustration when she would rather have been known for other artwork. I’m talking about Anna in Tove Jansson’s darkly brilliant The True Deceiver (trans. Thomas Teal). You can listen to Rachel and me talk about it on a recent ‘Tea or Books?’ episode.

Things that Fall from the Sky by Selja Ahava, Emily Jeremiah | Waterstones

4th degree of separation: Another brilliant book by a Finnish write – Selja Ahava’s Things That Fall From The Sky (trans. Emily and Fleur Jeremiah). It’s about people to whom very unusual things have happened – whether winning the lottery twice, being killed by a falling block of ice, or being struck by lightning repeatedly. Though really it’s about how people respond, and it’s told in a tone that seems to mix dream and reality.

Notes Made While Falling (Goldsmiths Press): Amazon.co.uk: Jenn Ashworth: 9781912685196: Books

5th degree of separation: I really wanted to pick a novel about something unusual that falls from the sky. Wouldn’t that be a good link? I couldn’t manage that, so let’s go with the falling connection – Jenn Ashworth’s memoir Notes Made While Falling. I say memoir, but it fuses so many genres and ideas that it is hard to categorise. It starts with an extremely traumatic birth that Ashworth experienced – the sound of her blood falling on the floor returns and echoes through the book. From there it covers an extraordinary amount of ground. It is such a special, ambitious book.

Shakespeare in a Divided America: Amazon.co.uk: Shapiro, James: 9780571338887: Books

6th degree of separation: There is a chapter of Ashworth’s book that is ostensibly about why she doesn’t like King Lear, but is really about fathers and memories. I love the technique of using Shakespeare in interesting ways to discuss other cultural, historical or personal moments – and that’s what a book I’ve recently read is about: James Shapiro’s Shakespeare in a Divided America. A fascinating look at the unexpected significance of Shakespeare’s writings in many important moments/periods of America’s history – from Lincoln’s assassination to the anti-slavery movement to the affair of Bill Clinton.

There we go, what a journey – but starting and ending in America.

Project 24: 19, 20, 21, 22

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I went for quite a while without buying any of my allotted 24 books under Project 24. And then, dear reader, the dam burst. I couldn’t stop buying. Three of these four were online, and one was from a local bookshop – and, unusually for me, three of these are new books. (There’s also another new book, I guess my 23rd for the year, on its way to me from America – because the US cover is so much nicer than the 24th.)

Here are the four books I bought, and why…

Spring Always Comes by Elizabeth Cambridge

As I said, most of these really came because I was missing book buying. They wouldn’t necessarily have found their way to my shelves with any urgency if it weren’t for me jonesing for buying some books. But Spring Always Comes is the exception. I loved Hostages to Fortune by Elizabeth Cambridge – the one Persephone reprinted – and have read it a few times since 2004, when I first delved in. It’s a domestic novel par excellence – but other Cambridge novels are quite tricky to find. And ever since I read Barb’s 10/10 review of Spring Always Comes, I’ve wanted to get hold of this. And finally a copy turned up online! And now it is MINE.

The Crime of Sheila McGough by Janet Malcolm

Whenever my Malcolm pile gets low, I panic and buy another. And I’m running out. She is just so brilliant. This is her, presumably unusual, take on a investigation into a lawyer who has imprisoned for a crime she says she hasn’t committed.

The First To Die At The End by Adam Silvera

I’m at least two decades older than this book’s audience, but I thought his teen novel They Both Die At The End was really good – the conceit is that, on the day you will die, you get a phone call telling you it will happen. And what a brilliant title! This is a prequel, but I think it’s about two entirely different people.

Ducks by Kate Beaton

Ducks seems to be getting a lot of rave reviews, and I’ve downloaded the One Bright Book episode on it to listen to when I’ve read it. It was on my radar because I follow the author on Twitter, and loved her Hark, A Vagrant cartoon blog for years. She has such an incisive, fun look at literary and historical culture. Ducks is something completely different – a graphic memoir on working in oil sands. I bought a copy for my friend’s birthday and then went back to the bookshop and bought a copy for myself, because it sounded so up my street.

I’ll let you know what the other book is when it arrives – partly because it was my most impulsey of impulse buys and I don’t actually recall the author or the title. What will my final book of the year be?? I was doing really well and now I only have one precious purchase to last me for almost a month…

Two Thousand Million Man-Power by Gertrude Trevelyan

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Two Thousand Million Man-Power eBook by Gertrude Trevelyan - EPUB | Rakuten Kobo United Kingdom

One of the questions asked about Gertrude Trevelyan (the artist formerly known as G.E. Trevelyan) is why she has disappeared, when her writing is so good and her early reviews were glowing. One answer, of course, is that any number of brilliant writers disappear – and that’s why we should be grateful for reprint series like Recovered Books (edited by Brad Bigelow aka Neglected Books). Another reason, with this book at least, is that Trevelyan chose one of the worst titles imaginable. Please don’t let it put you off. Two Thousand Million Man-Power (1937) is so much better than the title suggests.

It comes from a quote about machine power in the US, and essentially how it will put an awful lot of people out of work. One of the men in danger of losing work is Richard Thomas – a research chemist whose work has largely been concerned with cosmetics, face creams etc. He is definitely at the commercial end of the research scientist world, which might be thought to help him in an era of increasing capitalism. And you’d be wrong.

The other main character in Two Thousand Million Man-Power is a schoolteacher called Katherine. The early sections of the novel chart their coming together and falling for each other, against a backdrop of youthful idealism and radicalism. While both have jobs, and are thus perhaps part of the machine of capitalism, they rail against it. They have hope for changes in the future, while also still enjoying any trappings of middle-class life that do come their way. Impressively, Trevelyan makes both Robert and Katherine deeply empathetic. They may have aspects of hypocrisy from the beginning, and they may be more earnest than is usual for a lovable fictional character, but we are invited into their lives in such detailed ways that it’s impossible not to care about them.

Throughout the novel, Trevelyan uses a conceit that must have been difficult to pull off, but is rather brilliant. After some pages of scenes of daily life for Katherine and Robert, she will give a list of significant world events happening – often hinting towards a war that was still a prediction rather than a reality when the novel was published in 1937. And she will then swoop from the broad to the specific, narrowing in on a simple action of Katherine’s or Robert’s. It’s like a camera panning in suddenly. Here’s an example from early in the novel:

The Protocol is coming. France rejects the notion that there is no such thing as a German air-force: air-ports springing up: Dutch, Danish, Italian and Russian establishments produce aeroplanes for the Reich. Powder and munition factories in Russia work full time under German engineers: ten thousand aeroplane programme. In Rome a great demonstration celebrates the sixth anniversary of the birth of Fascismo. Naval manoeuvres off Magdalena Bay – “greatest concentration of naval power ever assembled in the Pacific” – show America powerless to protect the Pacific coast against an attack of enemy air-force. The Government of Great Britain is unable to accept the Protocol. Katherine, with her paper spread out on the stuffy green cloth of the parlour table behind the ferns of 26 Verbena Road, feels terribly flat and wear, and all at once she knows that the one thing in the world she wants is to tell Robert Thomas all about it.

As the book spans from 1919 to 1936, these sections must have required a lot of research – or a lot of faith in her memory. I found them very effective, written with a Woolf-like rhythm and making the emotions of the two protagonists feel equally significant with huge world events. Because, of course, they are – in the eyes of Katherine and Robert. All of us still feel our everyday lives very deeply, whatever else is going on in the world. (The introduction and the afterword to this edition, which are remarkably similar in content, both mention that John Dos Passos had recently done something similar in his USA Trilogy – I haven’t read it, so can’t comment on how original Trevelyan was being – but, to my mind, it really sets the novel apart.) (Incidentally, the afterword also mentions a ‘near-complete absence of any mention of Trevelyan’s work in any sources I could locate online’, and I’m proud to say that I was one of the few exceptions – both on this blog and in my DPhil thesis, where I wrote about her novel Appius and Virginia.)

As the novel continues, and time passes, Katherine and Robert lose some of their idealism in the face of financial realities. Or, rather, everyday practicalities have replaced any fervour they had for effecting change. Their anxieties have moved from whether they’ll be seen together, unmarried, to whether or not they’ll be able to find work. There are sections of both going looking for jobs, and the reasons they are turned down. Their household objects are ranked by what can be sold. On the other hand, when anything looks up these objects are re-bought, and Katherine starts looking for nicer homes to move to. Their whole life seems to be guided by what they can or can’t afford, and the exact slot this puts them into.

They might always have been like that, he a coward and she not really caring about anything, but they hadn’t known it. That was what the machine had done to them, shown them one another. Each had seen the other as something the machine didn’t want. And now it had caught up Kath again and tired her out, so that she couldn’t think of anything but food and rent. It didn’t make much difference whether the machine caught you up or threw you out; it came to the same in the end.

Trevelyan is brilliant at taking the reader through these all-encompassing scenarios, so we feel the stakes as keenly as Robert and Katherine. Even the ‘newspaper headline’ style reminders that much else was going on in the world can’t compete. These two lives are the most significant things on the page. And while Two Thousand Million Man-Power certainly isn’t a happy book, it also didn’t feel too miserable. It helps that the writing is beautiful and the authorly control of the narrative is absolute, but ultimately the feeling I got from the book was that happiness and unhappiness aren’t the point. The novel ends up being about survival, and what the constant drive to keep head above water can do to a couple. And yet we get to know them too intimately to feel that this novel is about some abstract point. It’s about Katherine and Robert, and how they lost their identities.

Fifty Forgotten Books by R.B. Russell

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Fifty Forgotten Books | And Other Stories

One of the books I took on holiday to read was also one of the books I’ve bought under Project 24 – Fifty Forgotten Books (2022) by R.B. Russell. It’s exactly the sort of book I can’t resist, and it was every bit as enjoyable as I’d hoped. I absolutely loved reading it.

Of course, bibliophiles who tend to read slightly more obscure books will ask, ‘Are these really forgotten?’ And of course they are not all completely obscure books, but I have only read five of the 50. Four of those were actually books I discussed in my DPhil thesis (The Brontes Went To Woolworths by Rachel Ferguson, The Haunted Woman by David Lindsay, Flower Phantoms by Ronald Fraser and – hurrah! – Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker). The fifth is The Unspeakable Skipton by Pamela Hansford Johnson, perhaps one of the best-remembered names in the book. But, yes, there were an awful lot of titles and authors I’d never heard of, and I very much enjoyed reading why Russell had chosen them for inclusion.

There certainly isn’t any attempt to make this an objective collection of titles. They are certainly books that reveal one man’s personal taste, and in some ways Fifty Forgotten Books is a memoir, a little like The Books of My Life by Sheila Kaye-Smith. Compared to something like Christopher Fowler’s The Book of Forgotten Authors (which I enjoyed, and which also includes Miss Hargreaves), Russell’s book is much more personal and he doesn’t devote each short chapter exclusively to the book being mentioned. Rather, he will use the book in question as a prompt for writing about something going on in his life. Or, I should say, his bookish life. That means we get truly delightful looks behind the scenes at the development of his literary taste, his bookshopping habits, or the origin and history of Tartarus Press – a small-edition publishing house that Russell co-runs, and which came to my attention when they reprinted Miss Hargreaves in the mid-2000s.

Tartarus Press specialises in the literary supernatural/strange/horror, and that is certainly reflected in his selection here. It overlaps with my love of the fantastic (hence the four books that were in my thesis on the Middlebrow Fantastic) and, while I’m unlikely to leap towards some of the horror or fantasy books he recommends, I still loved reading about them. I was already feeling confident that Russell was something of a kindred spirit when I got to the Miss Hargreaves section. This opening line makes me wonder if I am secretly the same person as Russell:

With limited house room, there is little excuse for owning multiple copies of the same book. I do, though, feel I can justify my five different copies of Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker.

Why, yes, I do also have five copies of Miss Hargreaves, and would readily buy any future ones I find, so long as they’re not editions I already have. One of the differences between Russell’s bibliophilia and mine is that he cares about first editions. He often talks about replacing copies of much-loved books with first editions, perhaps then moving on to a first edition with a dustjacket, and so forth. It’s an angle of literary life that I’ve never understood. I’d definitely opt for a book with a lovely dustjacket, for aesthetic reasons, but I can never see why anybody cares if a book is a first edition or a 50th edition, so long as the text is the same. Well, it saves me money!

Threaded through a lot of sections is the memoir-esque bit that I found the most intriguing – Russell’s experiences with the Arthur Machen Society. We learn about the machinations (ho-ho) of this society along the way, including misunderstandings, draconian leaders, unsettling periods in leadership, and the start of a rival organisation.

There are times when you can find yourself embroiled in unexpected battles, even in literary societies where so little might appear to be at stake. […] Matters came to a head in September 1966 when a member from Tunbridge Wells phoned to ask why he’d had a subscription reminder when he had received no journals or newsletters in the previous year. When I passed this complaint on to Mrs X, her reaction was such that I could only share Mr Talbot’s concerns. She could not explain how the subscriptions had been spent, and when I suggested that this was an unsatisfactory situation, she launched an unpleasant personal attack upon me. I was confused and hurt, and I could see no option but to resign.

Any of us with experience of big fish in small ponds may well recognise the type of Mrs X. What I found impressive is that, even when Russell is writing about disputes and fallings-out, he comes across very well. He always seems kind, thoughtful, and eager to share passions about literature with like-minded people. He is refreshingly free from any book snobbery, taking in all genres and all types of literature equally. In short, it was a pleasure to spent these 254 pages with him – and, for that reason, I think Fifty Forgotten Books would be very enjoyable and engaging even if you’ve never heard of any of the 50 authors.

I’ve come away with a little list of books to look out for, happy reminders of some titles I’ve enjoyed and, above all, the happy experience of spending time in the company of somebody who unabashedly loves books and knows the power they can have to grow as a person, form communities, and connect with authors who are long gone.

The books I got for my birthday

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I’m back from my holiday – staying on the Menabilly estate, which is where Manderley from Rebecca is based on! We weren’t in the old house, so no need to worry about unhinged housekeepers – we were in the rather lovely gardener’s cottage. It was a relaxed, fun week. And then I stayed with some friends while my bathroom were redone, so it’s like coming home to a different home. Well, one different room in the same home.

It was my birthday while I was away and, unsurprisingly, I got quite a few books. Hurrah! Some of these were from my wishlist, while others are lovely surprises. From left to right…

Remainders of the Day by Shaun Bythell
If it weren’t for Project 24, I’d have bought this as soon as it was published – as it was, I was delighted to get a copy of it from my parents. And, indeed, I’ve already read it. More soon! It’s the third of Shaun Bythell’s hilarious diaries about running a secondhand bookshop in Wigtown, Scotland. It’s just as brilliant as the others, and I hope he keeps writing them forever.

You Don’t Look Like Anybody I Know by Heather Sellers
The first of two books my friend Malie selected from my wishlist – I don’t remember where I originally heard about this memoir of prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness, but it’s a topic I find fascinating.

The English Library Journey by John Bevis
I hadn’t heard of this memoir – of a man trying to get a library card for every library in the UK. But gosh it sounds exactly up my street. A bookish, quirky tour of the country? Yes please. Thank you to my friend Lorna for spotting this and knowing it would be perfect for me.

How To Be A Heroine by Samantha Ellis
The other one from Malie – a delightful-looking book about learning from literary heroines that has been on my wishlist for such a long time. Really pleased to have the opportunity now to read this one.

A Natural History of Ghosts by Roger Clarke
I added this to my wishlist after Rachel mentioned she was reading it on an episode of ‘Tea or Books?’ – it sounded so weird and interesting. I don’t believe in ghosts, but I am very intrigued by the history of people believing in ghosts, and the lengths they’ll go to to find out more. My friend Clare bought it, having also read and loved it, and I think it’s next on my non-fiction reading list.

The Seven Good Years by Etgar Keret
This is the other book from Clare – I added it to my wishlist earlier this year after reading Keret’s brilliant collection of short stories Suddenly, A Knock on the Door.

The Trouble With Sunbathers by Magnus Mills
Sunbathers in a Bottle by Magnus Mills
These were from Colin – I love Magnus Mills, as long-time readers of Stuck in a Book will know, and he got quite prolific in the past few years. I’m going to line these up for Novella A Day In May next year, I think,

The Forensic Records Society by Magnus Mills
And another Mills! Fittingly, this one was from my friend Mel, who introduced me to Mills in the first place. I actually gave this one as a birthday present to another friend a couple of years ago and had to resist reading it myself first, so now I have the chance.

What Writers Read edited by Pandora Sykes
A lovely book about books from my friend Phoebe (aka Esther Rutter, author of This Golden Fleece). Everyone knows how much I love these!

The final ‘book’ on the pile is actually a book of postcards – Tom Gauld’s wonderful bookish cartoons, collected as The Snooty Bookshop, which were a gift from my friend Emily.

Very pleased with my birthday haul – anything you’d enjoy or recommend?