Virginia Woolf, Jane Cholmeley, and authors who wrote too much or not enough – welcome to episode 129!
In the first half, we use a great topic suggestion by David – do we prefer authors who wrote too many books or those who didn’t write enough? And what do we mean by that? It was really fun trying to decide which authors fell into which category.
In the second half, two quite different works of non-fiction: A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf and A Bookshop of One’s Own by Jane Cholmeley.
If you’d like to find out more about our appearance at Marlborough Literary Festival – here’s their events info.
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The books and authors we mention in this episode are:
Bodily Harm by Margaret Atwood
A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid
If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid
The Visitors by Mary McMinnies
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Shirley by Charlotte Bronte
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Villette by Charlotte Bronte
P.G. Wodehouse
The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer
Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie
The Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
Dorothy L. Sayers
Mapp and Lucia series by E.F. Benson
Diary of a Provincial Lady by E.M. Delafield
Barbara Pym
Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
My Husband Simon by Mollie Panter-Downes
Storm Bird by Mollie Panter-Downes
One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes
Sanditon by Jane Austen
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Dorothy Whipple
Virginia Woolf
Barbara Comyns
Muriel Spark
Mary Essex/Ursula Bloom
Paul Gallico
Ian McEwan
Michael Cunningham
Mary Lawson
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
Sarah Waters
Adele and Co by Dornford Yates
Tove Jansson
The Old Wives’ Tale by Arnold Bennett
Riceyman Steps by Arnold Bennett
The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen
The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen
The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen
The House in Paris by Elizabeth Bowen
To The North by Elizabeth Bowen
Babbacombe’s by Susan Scarlett (Noel Stratfeild)
High Wages by Dorothy Whipple
What a great topic! Thanks for a really fun episode guys!
Just don’t forget that you’ve already compared High Wages with The Lark by E Nesbit 😊
Glad you enjoyed, Andrea!
And oh gosh, did we?? We may well do something else instead of High Wages, then.
I’ve just finished listening (great to get a mention, thank you; now I have to comment, although I feel rather diffident about publishing what I think because I know I am probably in a minority, so I feel a bit wary of exposure!).
First of all, the non controversial subjects:
I’m sorry your trip to my home county was dreary and dismal conditions, Rachel. Thank goodness for reading on rainy retreats!
I really enjoyed your analysis of David’s great idea for a discussion. I would find it hard to decide that one.
Right – I did not like A Bookshop of One’s Own and have to confess to even only skimming the last third of the book. It was interesting to hear Rachel felt A Room of One’s Own lacked passion because for me it was (what came across to me) Jane’s anger, not to go quite so far as bitterness but nearly, was too much. I also found her writing style annoying. I agree with the comment about contemporary non fiction too frequently being fairly poorly written (because the message is so important so it maybe doesn’t matter that it should be beautiful prose?). I concede that there was an important story that deserves telling with the Silver Moon bookshop but I like Simon,wonder whether Sue’s book would have been better.
So – I would definitely, definitely go for A Room of One’s Own. Unlike you two literary types, I read this first only just over a year ago (I am now trying to make up for a lost arts education!). I love the way Woolf uses the invention of fictional characters to work through her ideas and, whilst she was of course, not perfect in so many ways, I think her talent does mainly deserve the recognition that it still gets today. Yes, she was privileged but the theory that a woman can be creative and have a fulfilling marriage and motherhood experience, even in the twenty first century, is more complicated than one would like, especially in our very individualistic society. Anyway, thanks for a very stimulating episode once again. I love the way books provoke discussion and raise so many important issues.
BTW – I’m just reading a bit more about Woolf in Francesca Wade’s ‘Square Haunting’ (discovered courtesy of the inspirational kaggsysbookishramblings. That is a non fiction book whose style I can cope with too!
Thanks so much for your interesting contribution – and glad you were on my side on this one :D I was glad I could cope with Cholmeley’s writing in the end, but I did find the slightly slapdash writing style was so at odds with the formalisation of the book, with footnotes etc.
Square Haunting has been on my radar for so long – clearly need to read it eventually.
I’m on the Georgette Heyer listserv, and when ‘top books’ are discussed we tend to each have four or five different favorites, rather than zeroing in on an accepted top one, two or three. I’d say my favorites are, in no particular order, Frederica, Cotillion, and The Unknown Ajax. As for The Grand Sophy, it’s rather frowned upon because of a scene with a very stereotypical (Jewish) moneylender. Some people can dismiss that, some can’t. In fact it’s said that on TikTok TGS has been used for ‘don’t read this author!’ declarations – and those from people who have only read that one book.
Oo good to know, especially as Frederica is one that I bought recently – and fills a gap in my Century of Books. I wonder if I’ve heard of TGS because it’s more of a controversial one.
Intriguing discussion about too many or too few… I first started reading P. G. Wodehouse in the early 70s and his current books were the ones most easily accessible in libraries then. It would be some time before I’d get to the earlier and far better works from the 30s and 40s, so there was definitely a falling off in quality and creativity in the later years, but they were still brilliant enough to make me a fan for life. Iris Murdoch is a bit of an outlier; I’ve always thought her late long slightly mad novels were her best (or at least ones I go back to most readily) (barring Jackson’s Dilemma, which just strikes me as a fragment or outline of a much longer novel we’d never see.). I don’t think there’s any decline in quality in Anita Brookner’s books but I have any idea she decided her last novel would be her final one, so maybe she felt she’d written herself out. I feel about Ivy Compton-Burnett the way I do about Wodehouse; the later books are not her best and really more of the same but I’d still happily read them (and the later books might make for an easier entry point, as they’re shorter and sparer and almost entirely dialogue, so read more like plays.). During the COVID lockdown period I started working my way through all of Angela Thirkell’s Barsetshire series. There’s not really much to distinguish one from another over a 30 year period; you just keep encountering the same characters as they age, marry, have children, and (occasionally) die, but the series presents an interesting portrait of a changing rural England (and might make the definition of comfort reading.). No real falling off in quality, but I’ve still got a few more to go…
But that does make me think of a not unrelated topic: completing an author’s unfinished work, yes or no?
Ah yes, good point about Wodehouse – definitely better in earlier books. I’ve also found that with Thirkell, but perhaps haven’t read enough to judge – I fully intend to do a big reading project of her at some point, but it hasn’t happened yet. On the other hand, I hadn’t noticed any drop off with ICB – interesting. I’m not really sure which were published when, because they feel to me like one amorphous whole.