Looking back on #ProjectNames

My reading was distinctly in the doldrums at the end of 2018. Having been a complete bookworm since my mother first started taking me to the local library at the age of three, I was reading less and less and missing it more and more. Other things – work, family, the dreaded social media – had crowded in, so when I saw Simon’s #projectnames idea, I knew it was just what I needed.  I spent an enjoyable hour searching my shelves for suitable titles, assembled them all in one place, and began what has become one of my most rewarding years of reading for decades.

My first book was DE Stevenson’s Bel Lamington; Stevenson was born here in Edinburgh, and having once been to a wonderful Persephone Books tea at which her granddaughter shared childhood memories of this amazing woman, I like to think of her, prone on her chaise longue, a cigarette (in an ornate holder, of course) in her hand, dictating her books to her secretary. She wrote many ‘light romantic’ novels, but this description does her a disservice, as all of them have sharp observations and wonderful characters. Later in the year I returned to Dorothy (who had a handy tendency to use her heroine’s name as the title) for Charlotte Fairlie. Both of these novels had been languishing on my bookshelves – I bought them in a job lot in Michael Moon’s famous Whitehaven shop years ago when visiting my in-laws; #projectnames led me to read them, and I am so glad that it did.

The focus on names meant my reading this year was far wider in scope than it had been of late. Sara Hunt of the estimable Saraband Books sent me Iain Maitland’s Mr Todd’s Reckoning, something I’d never normally have opened – but the title fitted, so in I plunged, and what a book it was. The twisted, self-justifying mind of a psychopath is brilliantly revealed, bit by tiny bit, as the temperature rises in a run-down suburb of Ipswich. Mr Todd could be your neighbour; he could be mine. Terrifying, and definitely one of my books of the year. I’d also never read any Henry James, always thinking he’d be hard work, but Daisy Miller was a name, so read it I did; I loved it and still think of Daisy often – surely the mark of a great novel.

I decided also to re-read some Amanda Cross. Cross, aka Professor Carolyn Heilbrun, was one of my very favourite authors in my student years, and I did wonder how her books would stand up after all this time; although they are all murder mysteries, they are very much rooted in the radical feminism of my youth, and I feared they might now seem dated. Well, maybe it’s because I am also now somewhat dated, but it was pure joy to return to The Question of Max, and especially to No Word From Winifred, the first Cross I ever bought from Heffers bookshop. Would readers who weren’t around then like them? I don’t know (I feel the same way about Posy Simmonds’ Wendy Weber cartoons – if you weren’t there in the 80s, would you get it?) but I thank #projectnames for leading me back to them. 

Reading more widely did, of course, mean that I came across a few duds as well. I was disappointed with Sandi Toksvig’s Gladys Reunited, and with Nella Last’s War (sorry Simon!), and Don’t Tell Alfred was certainly not one of Nancy Mitford’s best, but I’m still glad I read  all three. And I discovered some real gems too; I’d probably never have picked up Patrick Dennis’s eccentric Auntie Mame or Mavis Cheek’s Country Life, but both got four stars from me. I’m finishing the year with AJ Pearce’s Dear Mrs Bird.

So thank you so much Simon for reinvigorating my reading life, and I look forward to 2020’s theme, whatever it may be, with great anticipation.