Category: Books

Library Books

Published on by Margaret10 Comments

At the weekend Danielle posted a Library Meme. What do you have checked out from the library? So here’s my list. The photo above is of the latest books I borrowed a few days ago.

  • Darkmans by Nicola Barker, shortlisted for the Booker Prize. I’ve started this one, but so far I’ve not found it too riveting, but then I’m only up to page 24. It’s so long and so, so heavy (in weight, that is), not for reading in bed. I’m not going to finish this before the Booker Prize is announced.

  • The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad. A friend recommended this a while ago.

  • The Daphne Du Maurier Companion edited by Helen Taylor. This has interviews with her family, essays by contemporary authors and a long-lost short story by Du Maurier. I’ve read the short story “And His Letters Grew Colder” – it’s sad.
  • Astrid and Veronika by Linda Olsson. I found this in the “1st Novel Collection” and sat down in the library to start reading. There are some comfy chairs, which are spread around the library, which are ideal for browsing whilst you decide what to borrow. This looks very good. It set in Sweden, where Veronika, a young writer arrives seeking stillness and solitude. She is observed by her elderly, reclusive neighbour, Astrid. Eventually they become friends and confide their secrets.

I’ve also got these books on loan:

  • Lewis Carroll by Cohen Morton. I’m currently reading about a chapter a day of this. I’ve just got up to Chapter 5 ‘The Alice Books’, which is about the writing and publication of the books in the 1860s.

  • Crow Lake by Mary Lawson -I’ve finished this one and enjoyed it very much. I’ll write about it soon.

  • Four Letters of Love by Niall Williams, because I enjoyed As it is in Heaven.

  • Generals Die in Bed: a novel from the trenches by Charles Yale Harrison. I borrowed this because I’m interested in reading a novel about the Western Front. It’s short book, so it shouldn’t take too long to read.

  • The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood, one of my favourite authors.

  • The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl. I ploughed my way through his Poe Shadow, which was interesting although parts were a bit tedious. This another quite long book – but not as long as Darkmans.

  • Digital Photography for Seniors in Easy Steps by Nick Vandome – I need some help. My photos are a bit hit and miss.

  • Ancestors of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley. I read her Mists of Avalon a few years ago. This is about the fall of Atlantis and the origins of Stonehenge.

  • Ghostwalk by Rachel Stott. I’ve finished this – another good book, which I’m going to post about.

  • Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons. Ann recommended this. I’ve read it many years ago and enjoyed it then, so when I saw it in the library I picked it up.

  • Emerson’s Essays. This is an Everyman’s Library edition first published in 1906. I found it in the Reserve Stock (where they keep books that supposedly aren’t borrowed very much. This book was last checked out in July 2005). Stefanie’s posts on Emerson led me to this book.

Fortunately, unless someone else has reserved it you can renew a book 6 times on-line before you have to take it back in and if it has been reserved and you haven’t finished it you can reserve it at no charge! Wonderful. I’d never get through this lot in 3 weeks.

TV dramatisation of Cranford by Mrs Gaskell

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

Coming up on the BBC this autumn is Cranford by Mrs Gaskell, starring Dame Judi Dench and a whole host of stars, including Dame Eileen Atkins, Julia McKenzie, Barbara Flynn, Julia Sawalha and Imelda Staunton. Set in the fictional town of Cranford, a small Cheshire town based on Knutsford (where Mrs Gaskell grew up), the 5 part drama was filmed on location in various places including Lacock Village in Wiltshire (as the setting for Cranford), the Ashridge Estate, Hertfordshire in the Chilterns (also used in the Harry Potter films)and the Buckinghamshire village of West Wycombe owned by the National Trust.

Cranford is based on three of Elizabeth Gaskell’s works, Cranford, My Lady Ludlow and Mr Harrison’s Confessions and I see from Amazon that The Cranford Chronicles is to be published on 4 October to tie-in with the TV series.

The National Trust Autumn Magazine has an article “The Dame Game” about the filming at the NT locations, with some great photos of the actors and the settings. At the moment the Summer Magazine is available to look at on-line, so I expect that eventually the Autumn Magazine will be too.

The Gaskell Web has lots of information on Elizabeth Gaskell plus photographs of present day Knutsford as well as prints of Knutsford Past, with connections to her life and works. These photos are of St John’s Parish Church, where Elizabeth married Rev William Gaskell in 1832 and of the Old Vicarage.

I read Cranford at school and haven’t looked at it since, so I’ll be able to watch the series without many preconceived ideas about the characters and the story, although as I used to live near Knutsford, no doubt I’ll be comparing Lacock to my memories of Knutsford. It’s to be broadcast on BBC1 this autumn – I can’t find a precise date on the television listings yet. One to look out for.

Outmoded Authors – Ivanhoe – Introduction

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I’ve now started my choice for the Outmoded Authors Challenge as Dorothy’s post on Scott’s Waverley has encouraged me to start my reading of Ivanhoe. Currently I’ve been reading books for the R.I.P. Challenge and being a bit disappointed with Edgar Allen Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination had turned to modern books and Ivanhoe had slipped down my list of books to be read.

I’ve never read Scott before and didn’t really know what to expect. So far Ivanhoe has had me chuckling. I’m delighted to find it so entertaining and thinking I wish I’d read this before. My copy was published by the Odhams Press Ltd in the 1930s and has this line drawing of Sir Walter Scott as a frontispiece. From the Foreword:

“Certainly there have been few more lovable, more unselfish figures than the lame Laird of Abbotsfield.”

It continues promising a enthralling tale of the “triangular love drama of Ivanhoe, Rowena and Rebecca, the pomp and chivalry of the Lists and the adventures of Robin Hood, Friar Tuck, and the merry gangsters of Sherwood Forest.”

So, a complete change of mood from Poe and modern fantasy novels.

Ivanhoe is set in the time of Richard I, also known as Richard the Lionheart (1157 – 1199), over 100 years after the Norman Conquest of England, when there was still opposition between the conquering Normans and the native Anglo-Saxons. Scott’s introduction(dated 1830) to the novel (written in 1819) follows the foreword in which he explains why he has decided to write a novel based on English history instead of Scottish – he felt he was “likely to weary out the indulgence of his readers, but also greatly to limit his own power of affording them pleasure”, as, “when men and horses, cattle, camels and dromedaries, have poached the spring into mud, it becomes loathsome to those who first drank of it with rapture.” In other words he didn’t want to bore his readers with more of the same and he fancied a change himself.

Scott called his novel Ivanhoe, as it has “an ancient English sound” and because it didn’t convey anything at all about the nature of the story. A rhyme including the name had come to his mind “according three names of the manors forfeited by the ancestor of the celebrated Hampden, for striking the Black Prince a blow with his racket, when they quarrelled at tennis.”After the Introduction there is a “Dedicatory Epistle to the Rev Dr. Dryasdust, F.A.S.”, which Scott uses to expand his reasons for writing an English historical romance and apologises in advance should the antiquarian think “that, by thus intermingling fiction with truth, I am polluting the well of history with modern inventions, and impressing upon the rising generation false ideas of the age in which I describe.”The novel eventually starts on page 29, where follows long and detailed descriptions of the location of the story; of the continuing hostility between the Normans and the Anglo-Saxons; and of the first two characters that we meet.

To some extent this reminded me of the rustic characters in Shakespeare’s plays, provided for comic relief, but as I’ve only just got on to Chapter Two perhaps I shouldn’t be too hasty in my views. Anyway, so far I’m finding this book refreshingly very different from the books I’ve read recently, although that’s not to say that I haven’t enjoyed those, because I have enormously. But it’s a relief to find that I’m enjoying Ivanhoe, as I had thought it might be a bit dry. If I start to write in long, complicated sentences, with detailed descriptions I can blame it all on Scott.

R.I.P.Challenge update

Published on by Margaret

When I decided to join the R.I.P. II Challenge I thought I’d only read one book for Peril the First. The book I chose is Edgar Allen Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination. So far I’ve read a few of the stories. I’ve always found short stories to be a bit of a let-down and I’ve found some of these a bit too short to create an eerie, scary atmosphere. Admittedly they are written in a very formal and somewhat objective style, but I’m not getting that feeling of nervous tension I experienced when reading Season of the Witch, which I wrote about here.

I picked up Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott in the library, just on the strength of the cover and the title alone, usually an unwise basis for choosing a book. But I’m about halfway through and it’s really good, a combination of mystery and historical investigation, with alchemy, Isaac Newton and a love story thrown in for good measure. It moves between the present and the 17th century.

So, I ‘ve now decided to go on to Peril the First, which is to Read Four books of any length, from any subgenre of scary stories that you choose. In addition to Ghostwalk, I’ve just bought The Book of Air and Shadows, by Michael Gruber, which is described on the book cover as “a modern thriller that moves deftly between the 21st and 17th centuries”, (I like the 17th century).

The fourth book is a book of faerie tales – Susanna Clarke’s The Ladies of Grace Adieu and other stories, because I enjoyed her book Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.

The little ginger cat in the photo is a bookmark that I’m fond of as it reminds me of our cat Lucy – her photo is somewhere over on the left.

R.I.P. Challenge Tales of Mystery & Imagination

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

I found the unexpected when I started to read Edgar Allen Poe’s Tales. I was disappointed. They had built up I my mind as scary, creepy tales, partly as a result of my mother saying not to read her copy of Tales when I was a child. Of course I got it out of the bookcase when she wasn’t around and had a peek inside and was scared and put it back quickly before she caught me. I hadn’t looked at the book since.

The first one I read, William Wilson, just wasn’t scary at all. I didn’t find it mysterious, or very imaginative either. I read this a few days ago and on reflection it wasn’t as bad as I first thought. It’s about the nature of personality and how we can’t see or come to terms with our own nature.

If you don’t want to know the story then you’d better not read any further, but I did find it predictable and so there was no suspense or shivery feelings for me in this tale.

William Wilson, not his real name, meets another William Wilson, not his real name either, at school and becomes convinced that his namesake is making himself into a perfect imitation, which he detests and he left school to get away from him. Three years of ‘folly’ follow and then at Eton during an evening of ‘debaucheries’ when the wine flowed freely at a ‘party of the most dissolute students’ he re-encounters his double. He continues in this vein whilst at Oxford University descending to yet greater depths of depravity, and then flees to Paris, Vienna, Berlin and Moscow in attempts to shake off the presence of his tormentor, all the time demanding, ‘Who is he? – whence came he? – and what are his objects?’

Finally in Rome, having ‘indulged more freely than usual in the excesses of the wine-table’ he determines to confront him ‘Scoundrel! Impostor! Accursed villain! You shall not – you shall not dog me unto death! Follow me, or I will stab you where you stand!’ They struggle – he stabs him. Then, and this is where I think the tale is so predictable and I had seen it coming from way back, he sees a large mirror and the reflection of his antagonist who whispers ‘In me didst thou exist – and in my death, see by this image, which is thine own, how utterly thou hast murdered thyself.’

So I thought I’d try one I’d heard of and read The Fall of the House of Usher, having a vague memory of seeing an old black and white movie with Boris Karloff opening a huge, ancient door, covered in cobwebs and creaking loudly on its hinges, at the dead of night. I’ll write about what I made of this in another post.

Speaking of Love by Angela Young

Published on by Margaret2 Comments

I enjoy reading Angela Young’s blog Writing, Life and the Universe and so of course I just had to read her book, Speaking of Love. I found it a moving book, but never sentimental and as stated on the book cover it is:

… a novel about what happens when people who love each other don’t say so. It deals passionately and honestly with human breakdown. And it tells of our need for stories and how stories can help make sense of the random nature of life.

This is a story told by three people – Iris, her daughter Vivie, and Matthew. It takes place over three days leading up to the story-telling festival where Iris is performing. Iris and Vivie are estranged and gradually the reason is revealed as all three characters tell their stories. As the book starts Matthew and his dad Dick are about to travel to the festival, Iris is already there and Vivie, living in London is having a crisis in her life, unbeknown to the others. Matthew and Vivie had been childhood friends, living next door to each other at the time when Iris first suffered a breakdown, which is later revealed to be schizophrenia.

This is also a book about story-telling, indeed the book is structured into separate tales which interlink and finally unite. Along with the stories of the three characters’ lives there are also the stories that Iris tells. These are reminiscent of folk and fairy tales. Appropriately, Iris treasures the book of fairy tales that had belonged to her mother. I must have read all the books of fairy tales in the junior library as a child – I loved them. So it was with nostalgia that I read Iris’s stories such as ”Earth and Sea”, the story of the fisherman, his wife and Murmurina their daughter, ‘born with a fat fishtail that glistened where she should have had legs’ and who ‘made O shapes with her mouth when she should have had a voice’.

The story-telling motif also runs through Dick and Matthew’s journey to the festival. Dick has planned it to take place over three days, stopping over night at various places and using only the minor roads. I liked the comparison of travelling in this way as ‘darning’ by going under and over the motorways and A roads.

The main theme is the effects that not communicating has on the people we love. Iris’s father is locked in his grief after the death of his wife and Iris believes he blames her for her mother’s death; Iris isolated by her illness can’t communicate her love to her daughter; Matthew, who learnt at the age of twelve that ”if you say how you feel you lose control over what happens next’, couldn’t tell Vivie he loves her; and Vivie knew that ‘you had to be on guard because you never knew when your own insides. or anyone else’s insides ‘might spill out.’

The book explores the difficulties and effects of living with someone with schizophrenia, burying frightening experiences and the way we lose control over events. Dick sums it up in his advice to Matthew:

The real risk, it seems to me, lies in not talking about the things that matter the most. That’s what made Iris ill. What we don’t say doesn’t go away. It stays inside and after a while of not being spoken about it turns against us. The things we don’t talk about fester and then they infect us. They eat away at us like a cancer.

The book is full of beautiful descriptions – of trees, particularly the laburnum (the “story-telling tree”) and gardens in East Anglia, of the mediaeval castle over looking the Bristol Channel and the festival performers and the landscape of England as Dick and Matthew travel across country, which brings the story alive.

The opening sentence sums up Iris’s story ‘I have come home, after a long and difficult journey.’ Everything after that is the story of how she got there. A book worth reading.