Category: Books

From the Stacks Challenge

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

This Overdue Books Challenge is just what I need. The idea is that during the next three months you read 5 books from those you have already purchased, have been meaning to get to and haven’t read before. No going out and buying new books. No getting sidetracked by the lure of the holiday bookstore displays.

This should help me keep to my resolve not to buy any more books for a while – until at least after Christmas. After all, I’ve got lots of books that I haven’t read yet. My bookshelves are full too overflowingand the books are double stacked. There’s just no more room for another bookcase and there are piles of books on the computer desk and next to the chairs in the lounge, in fact there are books everywhere. When I bought them it was because I wanted to read them, not just to sit on the bookshelves and on the floor. So here’s my provisional list. It’s provisional because I could easily choose others and I want to give myself the option of not reading the ones I’ve listed. That may sound strange, but the odd thing is that previously when I’ve decided I’ll read this book and then that book I then find I resist reading the book. Contrary or what? I don’t know. Anyway here’s my list (in no particular order):

  1. Half a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Adichie
  2. Needle in the Blood by Sarah Bowers
  3. The Testament of Gideon Mack by James Robertson
  4. Winter in Madrid by C J Sansom
  5. The Other Side of You by Salley Vickers

I’m currently reading Cranford by Mrs Gaskell and thought of including it for this challenge, but as I have read it before when I was at school it doesn’t really qualify. I heard last night that the 5 part serial Cranford is starting next Sunday evening on BBC One. Although I did read it many years ago and remember the characters it’s like reading a new book so maybe it does qualify for the Challenge after all.

Remembrance Sunday

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

Today is Armistice Day.
From For the Fallen by Lawrence Binyon
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.


Today I’ve been thinking of my father, who was in the Green Howards Regiment and he took part in the D-Day landings on 6 June 1944. He was discharged from the Army in December 1944 as his Army Service Book records for “ceasing to fulfil Army physical requirements”. He didn’t talk about it to me at all . My mother told me that he suffered from shell shock and was in hospital immediately after D-Day for quite a while. She moved to Lancaster to be near him in the hospital. During the war she had worked in a factory where they made parachutes. The effects of shell shock lingered quite a while, as my mother told me he was very depressed. He did recover and I never would have thought my dad was ever depressed – when I knew him he was always cheerful and never seemed to worry about anything. Both my parents are dead now and I wish now that I had asked them more about their lives.

This makes me think I should know more about the war. There are many books and we have just a few. The Second World War: a narrative history by John Ray covers the campaigns and theatres of war. I have started to read this but am only a short way into it. Then there is the Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose about the Easy Company, 101st Airborne Division, of the US Army, covering the period from 1942 to D-Day and victory. We watched the televised series of this and have it on DVD, definitely one to revisit.

For fiction there are Melvyn Bragg’s books The Soldier’s Return, A Son of War, and Crossing the Lines, although covering the period from 1946 up to the 1950s are wonderful books and look back at the war period as well as showing what life was like in the aftermath of the second world war. Another book set in the period just after the war is One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes (which I wrote about here). I’ve also recently read Eliza Graham’s Playing with the Moon, a novel about the legacy of war, looking back over 60 years from the present day to the time when the Americans were training on the Dorset coast in preparation from D-Day and local people were evacuated from their homes. I’ll write more about this book in another post. BBC’s Countryfile this morning also covered these events in its film about Exercise Tiger on Slapton Sands when US landing crafts for D-Day were intercepted by German U-boats and two were sunk. The 1940s and 1950s are years that I really want to look at in more detail.

Charles Dodgson/Lewis Carroll

Published on by Margaret2 Comments

It has taken me a long time to read this biography of Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll). At times I nearly stopped reading it as Cohen makes so many assumptions and speculates seemingly with little evidence to support his interpretation of the facts. His account of Charles Dodgson’™s life is basically chronological, but because he also looks at different aspects of Charles’™s life it is a bit repetitive. As biographies go this is not one of the most straightforward or readable. It’™s extremely detailed and at nearly 600 pages it is not a quick read.

Cohen uses many sources, including the published Diaries and Letters of Lewis Carroll, along with earlier biographies and magazine articles. There is an extensive index and the chapters are extensively annotated. It is also a very well illustrated book, including many photographs taken by Charles Dodgson as well as reproductions of illustrations from his works and facsimile copies of his letters.

I’m reading Hermione Lee’s Body Parts: essays in life-writing and she quotes a passage from Virginia Woolf on the reductive effects of biography, which I think, is very apt. Woolf compares the writing of biography to the examination of species under a microscope and considers that we arrange what we see about a person and read into their sayings all kinds of meaning that they never thought of. Because of the mass of material available this means that Cohen has inevitably had to select what to include and what to omit and there many places in his biography where he has hypothesised and interpreted the events in Charles Dodgson’s life. For me there are too many questions that Cohen asks and suggest answers which he uses to pyschoanalyse Dodgson’s personality. The parts of the book that I liked best are those about the production of the Alice books, Charles’s interest in photography, his beliefs, and love of games, puzzles and inventions.

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was born on 27 January 1832 at Daresbury in Cheshire and died on January 14 1898 at Guildford. He was tall and slim, had a stammer, was deaf in his right ear, was generous, sociable and had many friends. Charles told one correspondent that he used the name ‘œLewis Carroll’ rather than his own name ‘œin order to avoid all personal publicity. ‘œ Charles attended Rugby School from 1846 to 1849, went to Christ Church Oxford University where he was awarded a BA with First Class Honours in Mathematics in 1854, eventually becoming the Mathematical Lecturer (until 1881). As well as the books he published as Lewis Carroll, Charles also wrote and published many mathematical works.
Cohen recounts the story of how Charles came to write the Alice books. In 1862, he and his friend Duckworth were rowing on the river at Nuneham with the three Liddell sisters, Ina, Alice and Edith. Charles told them the story of Alice down the rabbit hole and Alice liked it so much that she pestered him to write it down for her. It was two and half years later that he completed his manuscript, illustrated with his own drawings. The book was eventually published in 1865, with the well-known illustrations by Tenniel. I was interested to read how Charles went about writing:“Sometimes an idea comes at night, when I have had to get up and strike a light to note it down – sometimes when out on a lonely winter walk, when I have had to stop, and with half-frozen fingers jot down a few words which should keep the new-born idea from perishing … I cannot set invention going like a clock, by any voluntary winding up … Alice and Looking-Glass are made up almost wholly of bits and scraps, single ideas which came out of themselves. Poor they may have been; but at least they were the best I had to offer.”

He was ordained as Deacon in 1862 but never took full orders as a priest. He was deeply religious, but took a moderate and tolerant view of others’™ beliefs. He was not a ‘œHigh Churchman’, was repelled by ritualism, did not believe in eternal punishment, and refused to exclude non-Christians from salvation. Side by side with his religious beliefs Charles was also interested in psychical research and was a charter member of the Society for Psychical Research along with Conan Doyle, Gladstone, A J Balfour, Frederic Leighton, Ruskin and many more. He took a particular interest in ghost stories and ghost pictures, spiritualism, thought transmission and supernatural phenomena. He was also a keen photographer and theatregoer and was acquainted with the Terry family.

Charles had many other interests. He loved games, puzzles and gadgets and was very inventive. He invented amongst other ingenious objects, a chessboard to use when travelling; a Nyctograph for taking notes under the covers at night ‘“ this was in the days before the college rooms at Oxford had electricity; a variety of word games and games of logic, a game of circular billiards, a rule for finding the day of the week for any date; new rules for elimination for tennis tournaments; new systems of parliamentary representation; a device for helping a bedridden invalid to read a book placed sideways; a new sort of postal money order; and many other things. He was an accomplished conjurer and a collector of toys, games and puzzles and mechanical and technological inventions as well as music boxes, fountain pens and pencil sharpeners.

When he heard that Charles Babbage had invented a new calculating machine in 1867 he met Babbage, who showed him over his workshops. Charles then bought a calculating machine and in 1877 an ‘œelectric pen’, recently invented and patented by Edison. In 1888 he bought an early model of the ‘œHammond Type-Writer’ which he used to write letters and entertain his child visitors. In 1890 he went to the London exhibition of ‘œEdison’™s Phonograph’, which he thought was ‘œa marvellous invention’. When he heard the ‘œprivate audience part’, he recorded that’œListening through tubes, with the nozzle to one’™s ear, is far better and more articulate than with the funnel: also the music is much sweeter. It is a pity that we are not fifty years further on in the world’™s history, so as to get this wonderful invention in its perfect form. It is now in its infancy ‘“ the new wonder of the day, just as I remember Photography was about 1850.’

Much of the book is taken up with Charles’™s writings as Lewis Carroll, his relationship with the Liddell family and his friendship with many children, apparently mainly young girls. The relationship between Charles and the Liddells has been the subject of some controversy and there is a mystery surrounding the disagreement that led to a breakdown of the friendship. Cohen analyses and speculates for many pages on this and on the implications of Charles’™s friendship with young girls. I didn’™t like it, nor did I like the chapters on Charles’™s interest in child photography. Morton quotes from a letter Charles wrote to his sister in1893, in reply to her letter about the gossip she had heard:

‘œYou, and your husband have, I think, been very fortunate to know so little by experience ‘¦ of the wicked recklessness with which people repeat things to the disadvantage of others, without a though as to whether they have grounds for asserting what they say. I have met with a good deal of utter misrepresentation of that kind.’

He went on to explain that he applied two tests when having a particular ‘œgirl-friend’ as a guest. These were first his own conscience, whether he felt it to be entirely innocent and right, in the sight of God and secondly, whether he had the full approval of the friend’™s parents for what he did. He continued: ‘œAnybody who is spoken about at all, is sure to be spoken against by somebody: and any action, however innocent in itself, is liable, and not at all unlikely, to be blamed by somebody. If you limit your actions in life to things that nobody can possibly find fault with, you will not do much!’ Enough said, I think.

Charles Dodgson had enormous energy, worked extremely hard in all he did, was concerned and engaged in many of the topical and political issues of his times, was deeply and sincerely religious and produced the Alice books, that have been widely praised and acclaimed since they were first published. He had a great many friends and his generosity was boundless, both to his family and to others wherever he saw a need. He loved giving presents (unbirthday presents, like Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking Glass), and gave away many copies of his books to children’™s hospitals, mechanics institutes and village reading rooms. He was known and welcomed for his gift for making people laugh. Morton Cohen writes: ‘œHumor and its concomitant laughter are surely minor miracles, overflowings of a mysterious inner force, momentary flourishes like lightning or a rainbow. They come from where we know not where and last but a fleeting second. Charles was one of those rare artists who could create those flashes, and did, to divert and amuse others.’

This book has increased my interest in Charles Dodgson. Other writers have written biographies, giving a different interpretation of his life from Cohen’™s. In particular I would like to read In the Shadow of the Dreamchild by Karoline Leach ‘“ see also the website The Carroll Myth.

Set in Darkness: an Inspector Rebus novel by Ian Rankin

Published on by Margaret4 Comments


It’s taken me some time to finish writing about the books I read in October. Set in Darkness completes the set. I made no notes as I read, as I did not want to pause and interrupt the flow of reading. I devoured rather than read this book, which is the first ‘Rebus’ book I’ve read. Because I watched the TV series I was familiar with the character of Rebus and the setting in Edinburgh. As I was reading it I vaguely remembered that I’d watched this particular story, but as I often fall asleep watching TV I couldn’t remember the details.

I read an interview with Ian Rankin on line in which he explained that

the title comes partly from the setting: it’s winter in Edinburgh, where it’s dark when you go to work and it’s dark when you head home. It’s also part of a line from an obscure American poem: – Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light.’ I thought the title worked well, because the new Parliament could be leading Scotland into the light after 300 years of being linked to England. And Rebus, you know, has his moments of darkness, but always he seems to finally reach a point of light.’

Set in Darkness takes place in Edinburgh when Queensbury House was being incorporated into the new Scottish Parliament. Rebus is assigned to a group set up to advise on security matters for the Scottish Parliament and whilst being shown round the building a mummified body is discovered bricked up in a fireplace. A tramp jumps off the North Bridge and is found to have a building society passbook showing a balance of over £400,000. Then the body of Roddy Grieve, a Scottish MP is found in a summerhouse in the grounds of Queensbury House. How and why these crimes are linked is revealed as Rebus and his colleagues investigate.

Rebus works with his colleagues, Wylie and Hood, aided against Rebus’ wishes by DI Linford. Linford is the blue-eyed boy, in his late twenties, keen to impress with a result, fast tracked and headed for big things in the police force, in contrast to the hard smoking, hard drinking, independent Rebus, who is out of favour with his superiors. As you would expect there are many twists and coincidences, and a whole host of characters and sub-plots to keep track of. It’s compelling reading, and I read it straight through as it’s not a book to put down and leave for a few days.

As it is the 11th Rebus book there are characters that have obviously been in the earlier books but I didn’t find it difficult to follow who was who and their relationships. Big Ger is one such character. He is a ‘Mr Big‘ in the Edinburgh crime scene and his relationship with Rebus is complex, both hostile and aggressive and yet they work in partnership in Set in Darkness, with Big Ger helping Rebus.

I like Rankin’s writing style. It’s precise and yet vivid, it moves at a fast pace with a distinctive rhythm and lyricism:

‘Darkness could make you forget what was in front of your face. Darkness would swallow the caravan site, the old putting green, and St Rule’s Tower. It would swallow crimes and grieving and remorse. If you gave yourself to darkness, you might start to make out shapes invisible to others, but without being able to define them: the movement behind a curtain, the shadows in an alleyway.’

I’ll be reading more Rankin soon.

One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

An ordinary day, an ordinary family, ordinary lives, but an extraordinary novel.

I read One Fine Day fresh from reading The Verneys, moving from England in the seventeenth century to England in the twentieth century; from one century dominated by the English Civil War to a century divided in two by the Second World War. I enjoyed the contrast between the books, one non-fiction and the other a novel. I’m also very fond of the cover of my copy of One Fine Day.

One Fine Day is a beautiful, poetic novel about England in 1946 after the Second World War had ended. It was written in 1946 and published in 1947 and although it recalls an England that had disappeared with the war it also looks forward with optimism to the future. It’s a novel vividly evoking life in the post-war period. I was fascinated and drawn into this book right from the start. Part of my fascination was because it made me think of what life was like for my parents, picking up their lives together after the war and part was because of the wonderful imagery and sense of time and place.

Not a lot happens and yet so much is conveyed of the changes in society as the novel recounts the events of a hot summer’s day in the lives of Laura and Stephen Marshall, a middle class couple struggling to manage the house and garden without the servants they had before the war.

Meanwhile, here they were awkwardly saddled with a house which all those pleasant years, had really been supported and nourished by squawks over bread-and-cheese elevenses, by the sound of Chandler’s boots on the paths, by the smell of ironing and toast from the nursery. The support, the nourishment, had been removed. Now on this summer morning, when doors and windows stood open, it was possible to hear the house slowly giving up, loosening its hold, gently accepting shabbiness and defeat. Nature seemed to realize its discomfiture. Birds hopped boldly through the front door, evidently meditating a lodging; Laura’s dusting hardly discouraged the bold machinations of the spiders. As she sat drinking her tea, a yellow butterfly came in and settled on the faded plum-and-white pattern of the curtains as though it could no longer distinguish between outside and in.’

It’s not only the house that has changed. Laura feels life is passing her by, that she is getting grey and dull and like an old sofa. She pictures her life ‘From being a measureless room with endless arches stretching away, away, contracting to a span the size of a hearthrug.’ Such a powerful image of the contrast between youth and age.

Life is also changing in other levels of society. The young people are leaving the village, for the cities where there is work. George, who she hopes would take over from their old gardener is off to work in a garage in Coventry and the girls who previously would have be live-in help are also leaving: ‘Ethel and Violet had disappeared squealing into the big bright world where there were no bells to run your legs off, where you could go to the flicks regular, and where you worked to the sound of dance music pouring out continuously, sweet and thick and insipid as condensed milk dripping through a hole in a tin.’

During the day Laura meets several people when out shopping (food is still in short supply and rationed), talks on the telephone with her mother, still harking back to the days of the British Empire and goes out on her bicycle to look for Stuffy, their bitch who has escaped she thinks to go the gypsy’s dog on Barrow Down. On her way to look for Stuffy, she meets Edward Cranmer. The Cranmers, whose family have lived in the old manor house for generations are giving up the house, as they can no longer afford its upkeep. Edward’s mother and aunt will still be living in a flat over the stables wing, whilst the house is going to be used partly as a holiday hostel and partly as an agricultural training centre for boys. Yet, another reflection on the changing times.

Laura continues on her search for Stuffy and finds her with the gypsy on Barrow Down hill. In contrast to the Marshalls and the Cranmers his life is unaffected by change, living in an old railway carriage in a rough field, unencumbered by possessions and property. Laura is envious of him and when she finds the dog instead of going home she spends the rest of the afternoon and evening on the hillside, leaving Stephen and Victoria wondering and worrying where she can be. From Barrow Down she looks out over England. I could quote many passages where Mollie Panter-Downes so beautifully captures the essence of the English countryside, but here is just one quote:

The country was tumbled out before her like the contents of a lady’s workbox, spools of green and silver and pale yellow, ribbed squares of brown stuff, a thread of crimson, a stab of silver, a round, polished gleam of mother of pearl. It was all bathed in magic light, the wonderful transforming light in which known things look suddenly new.

Although there is nostalgia and a tragic sense of all that has been lost, Laura realises how lucky they are, lucky to be alive and all together and what it would have meant if England had lost. She ponders that life will go on: ‘We are at peace, we still stand, we will stand when you are dust, sang the humming land in the summer evening.’

A memorable novel about England in the aftermath of war.

Broken – One Resolution and One Pair of Glasses

Published on by Margaret4 Comments
A few weeks ago I resolved not to buy any more books for a while. My resolve lasted until this weekend when we went shopping. Unfortunately Waterstones sells coffee as well as books, so this was the cause of my downfall when we went in – just for a coffee. The coffee shop is upstairs and although I looked round at the books up there I resisted buying any. But on the way downstairs I decided to clean my glasses and succeeded in breaking them in two. I’m short sighted so I can see close up, but distance is terrible. I was OK in the shop and D left me there whilst he went into the Panasonic shop opposite to look at speakers for the TV.

Big mistake – one of the books that caught my eye in the 3 for 2 was Mary Lawson’s The Other Side of the Bridge and as I loved Crow Lake I thought I’d just have a look. Well, of course I couldn’t leave it there and when I saw Paul Auster’s Travels in the Scriptorium (I loved Oracle Night) I had to look for a third book.

The Savage Garden by Mark Mills looked the ideal book, set in Tuscany (one of my favourite places) and a story of love, revenge and murder separated by 400 years. The Sunday Telegraph quote on the back cover clinched it “An intriguing puzzle, elegantly written … the atmosphere of an Italian summer and of the mysterious garden are beautifully captured.” What could be better for a November read? I’ve never read anything by Mark Mills, but my choice was confirmed when I got home and read Roberta’s post as she recommended it.

Now I have to wait until next Tuesday for my glasses to be repaired and as my old glasses are so different I can’t wear them and only have my computer glasses that are any good at all. They’re great for close work, but the rest of the world is all blurred, out of focus and fuzzy round the edges and I feel a bit woozy and detached from everything – quite nice really.