George Orwell, E.H. Young, guilty pleasures – welcome to episode 127!
In the first half of the episode, we ask: what is our guiltiest reading pleasure? Has that changed over time? Do we feel guilty about anything connected with reading? In the second half, we compare two similarly titled novels: The Vicar’s Daughter by E.H. Young and A Clergyman’s Daughter by George Orwell.
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The books and authors we mention in this episode are:
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Love in a Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Wifedom by Anna Funder
Burmese Days by George Orwell
A Bullet in the Ballet by Caryl Brahms and S.J. Simon
I Would Be Private by Rose Macaulay
Theatre by W. Somerset Maugham
Miss Read
Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary by Ruby Ferguson
Malory Towers series by Enid Blyton
The Love-Child by Edith Olivier
The Plant Hunter by T.L. Mogford
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
The Warden by Anthony Trollope
Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
Jane Austen
Charles Dickens
He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope
The Rector’s Daughter by F.M. Mayor
Chatterton Square by E.H. Young
The Misses Mallett by E.H. Young
Miss Mole by E.H. Young
William by E.H. Young
Fifty Sounds by Polly Barton
The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa
I’m in the middle of listening, but paused to comment here. I am interested to know why Rachel feels Dorothy Whipple is a guilty pleasure. Are they considered sort of low brow? I love them, and consider them quality novels.
Good qu, Shannon! I will try to remember to ask her for the next episode.
Personally I don’t like the phrase ‘guilty pleasure’, and especially when applied to reading. Why feel guilty about the books we read?
FYI Fifty Sounds is by Polly Barton.
Oops, thank you!
I quite agree with The Warden as an introduction to Trollope.
My first taste was The Eustace Diamonds – set book for O-level, and utterly murdered by the gig!
It took me years to return to Trollope – partly encouraged by Donald Pleasence’s brilliant portrayal of Mr Harding in the TV dramatisation of the book. And I was hooked!
How about a frolic into the comparison of Trollope’s Barsetshire and that of Angela Thirkell? Now there’s a ‘guilty pleasure’!
And the doorstop, of course!
OMG, I remember learning about the Dionne quintuplets! Very controversial, by the way.
I’m sure!
One of my guilty pleasures has to be the novels of Georgette Heyer. They are sometimes despised but she recreates the Regency era so well, her writing is elegant and I love diving into her world.
Trollope has become one of my favorite writers and I’ve come to prefer him to Dickens because I love the realism of his stories. He Knew He Was Right is a great stand-alone. I would also recommend The Way We Live Now (probably his most famous novel), as well as two lesser known works, Miss McKenzie and The American Senator.
I really liked the solitary Heyer I’ve read, so I must read more. And thanks for the Trollope tips!
I recently re-read Heyer’s _Why Shoot A Butler?_, and really enjoyed the sharp, witty dialogue. Great sense of humor.
I’m not so sorry now that I only managed to reread (after decades) my copy of The Clergyman’s Daughter, which I found fascinating, as The Vicar’s Daughter disappointed you both. I hope to read The Rector’s Daughter soon.
As I, too, am fascinated by women’s writing especially during the 3 – 4 decades following WW I, I cannot regard reading such books as guilty pleasures!
Yes, I think all pleasure, no guilt!
I loved the episode, Simon and Rachel! Just a few comments. 1. We learned about the Dionne (pronounced Dee-Yon) quintuplets in Canadian history. Born during the depression, their story is incredibly sad. (Link: https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/dionne-quintuplets). 2. Story with a Maltese link? A Google search revealed quite a few, but I once attended a literary lecture in Toronto by the wonderful Robert Adams, who spoke about Trezza Azzopardi’s The Hiding Place. That novel features a family living in Wales: the mother is Welsh but the father is Maltese. During his lecture, Adams took the opportunity to give us a little lesson on Maltese history. BTW, Azzopardi’s novel was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize (when it was called that, back in the day). 3. Never feel guilty about re-reading! Apparently, Nabokov once said, the only reading is re-reading. Or words to that effect. One version of this quote from the inter-webs: “Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader.” Loving the podcast, which inspires me to try to read more.
Ah yes, it does make sense for more people to know the Dionne quintuplets your side of the Atlantic. And thanks for the Malta tips!
Reading Patricia Wentworth’s Miss Silver mysteries must be a guilty pleasure. I discovered her in the past year. At first, I thought her books inferior to those of the more well-known Golden Age writers. However, they grew on me, as a I read a few more, and began to feel as if she was world-building more than constructing mysteries. I enjoy entering the old-fashioned environments she creates. The characters are fun to read about. The melodramatic endings are nearly always so unbelievable, that it’s unlikely they will ruin a good night’s sleep.
One or two people read her for the recent 1937 Club and it intrigued me!
Hello, I’m writing from northern Vermont in the States. I enjoyed the discussion of Trollope on the April podcast of ‘Tea or Books’. I want to give a shout- out to the actor Timothy West ‘s wonderful readings of Trollope available on Audible. I recommend The Eustace Diamonds as a first Trollope read, or listen, followed by Can You Forgive Her.
Linda
Oo good to know, Linda, thank you!
Thank you for another stimulating and entertaining discussion. There were so many comments made that really resonated with me. I loved the observation by Simon that once you get to more than 100 unread books you stop feeling guilty – that’s becoming a hardened sinner!!
Trollope is my absolute favourite 19th century classics author. I came to him relatively late in life (probably a good thing as his humour and portrayal of relationship dynamics is probably a bit wasted on the young), but I have still read the Palliser series and Barchester Chronicles twice as well as several stand alone ones. The Warden is definitely the right place to start; that is a beautiful book and Septimus Harding is just lovely.
I did try to read both the E H Young and Orwell. I’m afraid I skimmed a lot of the latter because, although I could recognise it was well written and clever, I hated the way he portrayed faith and thought it was awfully nihilistic and hopeless. I agree with The Vicar’;s Daughter being quite difficult to get into and it is definitely much weaker than Chatterton Square, Miss Mole and William but, nevertheless, I did quite enjoy it and thought the characterisation was interesting, different and well developed. I have also in the past struggles to get into The Misses Mallet and that’s now on the charity pile (there’s plenty of books piled up to fill the space on the shelves!).
Looking forward to the next episode. I’m trying to get copies of the books to read along again.
P.S – a teaorbooks comparing Trollopes would be wonderful, but I appreciate it would need to be a double bill with extra pre-episode reading time!
Glad we are like-minded in so many of these things, Sarah! The way Orwell writes about faith gets even worse at the end, and quite disappointing.
I would love to do the Trollopes – might have to be when we have a non-reading-prep ep (like our best books of the year), so we have a couple of months to read!
The only Malta-related novel I know is Conventional Weapons by Jocelyn Brooke (one of my all-time favorite writers) where the framing narrative is set in Valletta. Have read a good bit of Trollope over the years and would say about the Barchester books that the middle ones of the series are really stand alone tales, just set in the same area. I’d recommend The Small House at Allington. The Palliser novels are more interconnected, though The Eustace Diamonds is a bit of an outlier. This has spurred me to finally giving The Way We Live Now a day in court as I’ve always heard it was one of the very best and its doorstopper qualities can be eased in ebook format…. Thanks again for the discussion and the episode.
Thanks for the Trollope recommendations!