Cornflower Books

Men (maybe not) reading

     I'm busy choosing the next title for the Book Group to read, and one author I've come up with might just be a bit much for a couple of our number. Anticipating the reaction of Dark Puss and Lindsay to my possible choice, I see them rather as the grouchy Waldorf and Stadler from The Muppets!
    If my hitherto close friends are still speaking to me after seeing this, please know the gentle tease is most affectionately meant.
    (The book - whatever it is - will be announced soon).

Also on the subject of men (not) reading, have a look at this article!

Tolstoy, but not as we know him

     My thanks to Curzon for this marvellous link:
Our talk of Tolstoy the other day may have made some of you think of giving him a go, or a re-try. If you're still feeling as though he's a bit tough, there seems to be a version of War and Peace (in two volumes) "co-authored" by another very famous and popular writer - have a look here.

    Can anyone explain this?

Portrait of a lady

    Today's post on Cornflower is about the cover of this book, but here I'll try to do justice to what's inside.
    F. M. Mayor's The Third Miss Symons is an account of a woman's life from birth to death, given over a mere 140 pages. "Henrietta was the third daughter and fifth child of Mr. and Mrs. Symons, so that enthusiasm for babies had declined in both parents by the time she arrived", and that sad opening line sets the tone for what is to come, for a child whose life "attain[s] its zenith" at the age of five, for whom bad temper becomes a habit, for one who seeks only to be loved but who fails in the end to mean much to anyone.
   As a portrait of a late Victorian spinster, the 'surplus woman' who missed her chance and whose existence is essentially an aimless one, this is sharp and true and very affecting in the light it throws on the needlessness of its subject's situation. It shows the small turnings that Henrietta - like all of us - could have taken and did not, the slightest alterations of course which could have led to a happier outcome, and the dangers of a fixed, unyielding outlook and a spirit resigned to be displeased.
   It's a book of compassion, though Henrietta will vex and irritate the reader; it's an angular study of a woman whose sharp edges we want to soften, and it's an acute and clever disquisition on the subject of self-knowledge, too. Though apparently a lesser work than F. M. Mayor's 'masterpiece' The Rector's Daughter, this is very much worth reading.

    

And relax.....

    From the findings of a Sussex University study on reading:
 "Reading is the best way to relax....[working] better and faster than other methods to calm nerves..." Both the concentration required and the distraction "of being taken into a literary world eases the tensions in muscles and the heart", and as little as six minutes of this can do the trick, apparently.
     "[Reading] is more than merely a distraction but an active engaging of the imagination as the words on the printed page stimulate your creativity and cause you to enter what is essentially an altered state of consciousness."
     More on this here.

Climbing Everest

    I read War and Peace when I was fifteen - that's my copy there, all 1450 closely printed pages of it in a Signet edition, puzzlingly labelled "A New American Translation"! It led me on to a Tolstoy phase when I fairly lapped him up, but the book which started that craze was a school prize, although chosen by me. When a friend saw it she was quite incredulous that anyone could read a book of that length and of that subject matter - she stated categorically that she could never tackle it. Fair enough, I was probably a bit of an intense teenager and I certainly always had my head in a book, but I thought nothing of reading it and couldn't see why it might be in any way 'difficult'. I haven't read it since, so maybe it is a kind of Mount Everest of a book, certainly one that requires the vigour of youth or a great deal of time and attention - such as over a long school vacation when you have no responsibilities.
     Are there some books which fall into the Everest class, I wonder: ones you've tried and failed to read, some you'd just never attempt because they are too big or perceived as being too tough, some which you have reserved to be conquered when life permits? Proust is spoken of in these terms, though I've no personal experience of A la Recherche..., and after Dark Puss' recent experience with Mann's Doctor Faustus I'm tempted to put that in this category (DP did make it to the summit but he's still got the frostbite to show for it). However, perhaps all we need to tackle these mighty peaks is the right conditions and a following wind? (Does Proust come with sherpas?)
     At the other end of the scale is the 'gentle stroll' of a book - the pleasant wander on a fine day, nothing too taxing, pure enjoyment. I've just read Tea Time for the Traditionally Built which is firmly in that class of things, (the No. 1 Ladies have man trouble and van trouble!).
     But back to the big stuff: do you have an Everest, or are you quite content  - and why not - to trek in the literary foothills?

Mille-feuilles

 

Here's a novel that's a lovely bright and breezy read. Clio, the main character of Susie Vereker's Paris Imperfect is described by someone as having 'bounce', and that quality typifies both her and the book.

    Clio is an Englishwoman living in Paris, a twice-divorced tour guide who is anxious to create a secure future with her French lover, Philippe, chiefly for the sake of her young son, Alex. But Philippe is endlessly critical and demanding, his family difficult, and Clio's not as smitten as she thought she was. Enter Joe, "large and classic and lived in", just the thoroughly nice type to sweep the susceptible Clio off her feet, except that she does what she thinks is the right thing and resists temptation.
    What happens then I can't reveal, but it all adds up to a feel-good love story, the sort of book you sink back into like a comfy cushion whenever you pick it up. Susie's portrait of Paris and the Parisians is a recognisable one, and she clearly knows the city well; add that to her good mix of characters and her sure way with the story and you have a book which is light and crisp and very enjoyable.

Look at these bookshops!

    So Many Books posted the link to these pictures of amazing bookshops - have a look (but watch out for the scary cat!). The Lello in Portugal is particularly interesting, I think, and there's more on it in this guide to European bookstores  - now I have to revise the scale of my dream shop to incorporate that staircase.

Shop window

     Hands up if you've ever dreamed of having your own bookshop - go on, admit it! I certainly have, and still do, and I'm probably mad, but we knew that.
     Having a site like this is great, of course, because I get to talk about books and spread the word about good ones and often mention new ones that readers might not yet know about, and to keep pace with what's coming in I'm putting a fresh list of books over there on the right. For want of a more original title just now I'm calling it "New arrivals", but it will act a bit like the shop window in which the new stock is displayed; what's there will change every so often and will usually end up with a proper post of its own before too long as I work my way down through the TBR pile.
      Now back to day-dreaming about that shop I've always wanted ......

Reviewed

     Having only recently been introduced to the books of Margery Allingham through the wonderful The Tiger in the Smoke and Sweet Danger, I am very keen to read more but also to learn about the author, too. So here's another book which has been added to my very long wishlist (and thankyou for all those informed and informative comments!) because it sounds just the thing and the review of it which appeared in Saturday's "Telegraph" backs that up:
The Adventures of Margery Allingham by Julia Jones is described as ".. an excellent, lively biography, as neatly composed as a mystery from the golden age of crime writing", and the author who "has an affinity for her subject", "sets Allingham's novels into their proper context .... and paves the way for a reassessment of her work".

Anyone for Pym's?

 

     It has been many years since I read any Barbara Pym, but No Fond Return of Love was a delightful re-discovery. You wouldn't choose this book for its plot, but for its observation, its gentle humour, its careful, pensive mood. It is of its time in that published in 1961 when the author, then in her late 40s, was 'middle-aged', it has its central character Dulcie (not 'old' at all herself) looking forward to a cup of Ovaltine as the highlight of her evening.
     That's the thing about Pym's people, there is an air of slight sadness to them as if their lives, when finally assembled, had been found to have a crucial part missing, and the gradual fading of hope into disappointment pervades. But for all the gas-rings in sparsely furnished rooms, the relegation of the unmarried woman "to the shelf and good works", there is such humour in the book, and such interest as a portrait of a period and a type, that it is a great pleasure to read.
    There were good lines, too, from the opening: "There are various ways of mending a broken heart, but perhaps going to a learned conference is one of the more unusual", to a discussion of the curious habits of the locum vicar - "that seems to point to some dreadful kind of frustration - eating cold brussels sprouts in the middle of the night and tampering with the heating", and then there's the almost Fawlty Towers-like West Country hotel with its moulting (stuffed) eagle which 'attacks' the lady cleaning it with the Hoover attachment, and where the proprietress boils the coffee and the table cloths are made of plastic.
      "Who will run to greet him and be gathered to his heart?" wonders Dulcie of the alluring Dr, Aylwin Forbes, subject of so much of the book's spinsterly manoeuvrings. The reader must wait until the final page to find out.

Wishlisted

     I use my Amazon wishlist as a virtual notebook for jotting down the names of books I want to read. It is currently 318 items long and includes all manner of things which reflect my interests, and I do look at it regularly and sometimes even prune it to keep it relevant and 'manageable'! But as it is added to all the time, I thought I'd pick a few books and canvass your opinion on them: should they stay on the list, or do they not merit a place there?
     To start with, how about Michael Frayn's Headlong: an art historian, a lost Bruegel, iconography and slapstick. Is is "witty and entertaining" or "smug and irritating", as the reviewers contrarily say?
     Next, travel and Patrick Leigh Fermor's A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople - From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube. This one is rated very highly, but someone complained it was too 'literary', and suggested Eric Newby instead. Any views?
     Lastly, Olive Kitteridge: A Novel in Stories by Elizabeth Strout. Depressing, or impressively heart-wrenching?
     If you haven't read any of the above but want to suggest a 'must read' book to add to the list, please do.

Le Grand Meaulnes

    Anyone who has read The Lost Estate, last month's Book Group book, may like to see this very good piece about it. I was interested by the comment from John Fowles which Brian Smith quotes there, and in the light of that I now want to go and re-read The Magus which I loved years ago.

Later: Re. Dark Puss' comment, I think the links work now!

Oh, Pooh!

    Here's something specially for Simon, A.A. Milne fan that he is:
In the current edition of the National Library of Scotland magazine, the "Curator's Choice" article features Andrew Martin, Curator of Modern Scottish Collections and his choice from the catalogue, Winnie-the-Pooh in Scots by James Robertson, a Scots translation of the classic!
     Follow that link in the title and scroll down to 'product description' to read the opening of the book - it's braw!
    Pooh is still Pooh, but Piglet is "Wee Grumphie", Owl is "Hoolet", Eyeore is "Heehaw" and Kanga has "the Bairn Roo". While Milne wrote that Piglet was "small and weak", "Wee Grumphie" is - delightfully - "shilpit and dwaiblie", and when the English version has Pooh rolling in "a very muddy place", the Scots one puts him in "a gey glaury dub".

Comfort

     I enjoyed enormously - as always - the comments on this month's Book Group book, A Month in the Country, and thankyou to all who contributed. You can read everyone's thoughts here, and will find, I hope, that the different insights others have had enrich your own experience of the novel, or may lead you to read it if you haven't done so already.
     I was particularly struck by what Mary had to say. Like many of us, she was affected by the stillness of the book, but in her case that quality was all the more important, given what she says next: "I read it in a hospital sideward two weeks ago where someone close to me was very ill and I felt calmed by it where other books would have irked."
    Also on Saturday I read an interview with Alexander McCall Smith, from which the following paragraph stood out:
"To say McCall Smith is a literary phenomenon doesn’t quite describe what has happened. He has become more of a movement, a worldwide club for the dissemination of gentle wisdom and good cheer. Letters pour in from people to say they have found his books inspiring, enlightening, amusing, comforting. They are read to the sick and the dying. They make a splash of colour in a drab world and provide a genial buffer against the disappointments of life."
His books are read to the sick and the dying  - yes, I can see why.
    I called this post 'Comfort' not in order to talk about what we often call 'comfort reading', the equivalent of the cosy sweater, or the mug of hot chocolate, but to highlight this much deeper more literal form of comfort  - relief or consolation - which we can get from books. I am glad Mary found it when it was needed through J.L. Carr's beautiful novel, and I shall look out for it in my own reading. As always, if you can suggest a book that you know to be comforting, please do.

Later: do go and read Barbara's post on the subject.

Open Book

Barbara's comment on Friday's post alerted me to last week's edition of the Radio 4 programme, Open Book, which I'd missed. I was able to get it on 'Listen Again' (click on the title for the link) and caught the interview with Joan Bakewell about her novel All the Nice Girls, which I finished over the weekend and enjoyed very much; hearing her talk about the book did add to my reading of it.
     The story begins in 1942 when the war was going badly for Britain and the battle of the Atlantic was being directed from Liverpool's Derby House. It was not just Royal Navy ships which faced the enemy at sea; the merchant marine braved U-boat patrols to bring essential supplies to these islands, and their part in the conflict is less well known than that of their service colleagues. To boost morale and help the war effort, schools took part in the Ship Adoption Scheme, forging links with a particular vessel, writing to their crew, keeping them in touch with home, and it's one such school's relationship with the captain and crew of a merchantman which forms the basis for this wartime romance which ends in the present day.
     Apart from the love story, the book highlights the turbulence of war - not just death and displacement, but the shift in political, moral and social attitudes, and the changing role of women. For all these things, it's an involving read.
     Next on the programme came P.D. James (of whom I am a fan) talking about the Golden Age crime writer Cyril Hare and his novel Tragedy at Law. Another addition to my very long wishlist, I think, as Baroness James made an excellent case for reading it. Does anyone know his work?
    That linked neatly to a piece on lawyers who write crime fiction, and Martin Edwards was one of those mentioned. There were, of course, slightly derogatory references to the legal profession (shame!), but much more importantly, due mention of the knowledge and insight which a lawyer as writer brings to the genre.

Cornflower Book Group - A Month in the Country

     What a beautiful book this is, poignant and touching without being sentimental, matter-of-fact while yet laying bare the author's love of a place and its people, and a character's emotional depth. Its straightforwardness and its economy are striking, but those qualities cost it nothing, and on the contrary, its self-contained, simple and perfectly realised story is enhanced by them.
    J. L. Carr's A Month in the Country is about just that: a summer month spent in rural Yorkshire shortly after the First World War. Tom Birkin, damaged by both his wartime experiences and his wife's faithlessness, comes to Oxgodby to restore a medieval mural in the church. His work absorbs him, going some way to occlude his painful memories (though what's referred to is never laboured), but contrary to expectations he is taken up by the village, finding friends among the local people, and more than the easy feelings of friendship for a young woman.
    Yes, in a way there's an elegiac quality to Tom's remembering - he's looking back from a distance of around sixty years - and the theme of uncovering/discovery finds its statement, exposition and resolution very adeptly played throughout, but there's an appealing self-awareness to Tom and to his story, and the following passage seems to be its key:
"If I'd stayed there, would I always have been happy? No, I suppose not. People move away, grow older, die, and the bright belief that there will be another marvellous thing around the corner fades. It is now or never; we must snatch at happiness as it flies."
    I could read the book all over again now, to savour what I loved, to delight in the foil which the Ellerbecks, Mr. Jagger, Mr. Dowthwaite and their like provide for Alice, Mr. Keach and Moon, to regret Tom's failure of spirit at the crucial moment, and to agree with him that "perhaps you did well to leave early; it may not have lasted".
   There are echoes of Hardy, Housman (and see the epigraphs), H. E. Bates, L.P. Hartley; there's nostalgia and the bruise-ache of recollection. The final passage is saddest of all:
"All this happened so long ago....So, in memory, it stays as I left it, a sealed room furnished by the past, airless, still, ink long dry on a put-down pen.
But this was something I knew nothing of as I closed the gate and set off across the meadow."

                                                   **********

What did you think of it?

ETA: Barbara's excellent suggestion of music to go with the book can be found here.

The coming week's reading

    Here's my reading matter for the next few days, and a good mixed bag it is.

I'm starting with Joan Bakewell's first novel All the Nice Girls, which is set during the Second World War when a girls' grammar school joins the Merchant Navy's Ship Adoption Scheme. All is well until Captain Percival and his officers pay a visit to the school, then "the choices that follow will disrupt all their lives, reverberating even to the next generation, when, decades later, life and love are on the line again".

Next is non-fiction, Linda Grant's The Thoughtful Dresser. This is "the thinking woman's guide to our relationship with what we wear: why we want to look our best and why it matters". Based on the premise that our clothes tell a story, this sounds a fascinating combination of history, anecdote and insight. I shan't be adopting the leopard skin handbag on the cover, but I shall read the book with interest.

Then a welcome return to Barbara Pym. I read several of her novels many years ago but am glad of the chance to reacquaint myself with her writing through No Fond Return of Love. Dulcie and Viola have both rather fallen for the alluring Dr. Aylwin Forbes, but he is smitten with Dulcie's pretty young niece. "Once life's little humiliations are played out, maybe love will be returned, and fondly, after all...." Maybe!

  Here's a beautifully illustrated beginner's guide to becoming more self-sufficient. Written by Clarissa Dickson Wright and Johnny Scott, A Greener Life contains heaps of information on growing and raising your own food, and as you'd expect, many tempting recipes from Clarissa to make good use of your produce, but there are also chapters on spinning, weaving and knitting, quilting, soap-making, and keeping a greener home.

Last but not least, a welcome return to the No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency with Alexander McCall Smith's Tea Time for the Traditionally Built. Mma Ramotswe is having trouble with her tiny white van while Mma Makutsi experiences a crisis in her engagement to Phuti Radiphuti. But, "calm reflection, and frequent cups of redbush tea will be enough to solve even the most trying of problems..." A treat in store.

Books and dogs

    Have a look at So Many Books' post about reading to dogs - what a wonderful idea! I hadn't heard of dogs being used for that form of assistance before but it makes perfect sense, and it has started in this country, too, I discover (see Scotts the greyhound and his young reading companions in this clip).

   As to dogs in books, there are many examples given in the interview/article The Dog and the Novel, one of which is Richard Adams' The Plague Dogs. I took my copy off the shelf to photograph Rowf there on the cover and discovered inside notes my seventeen-year-old self took when The Book Programme featured Adams many years ago (I'd forgotten just how keen I was).

   Do you have any favourite 'literary dogs'? I have to approach books featuring dogs with great care as I can't bear it when they are in danger or come to harm, and the latest version of Lassie (though filmed in my homeland) was all too much for Harriet and me!

Compare and contrast

     By coincidence, our Book Group titles for this month and next are both published in the Penguin Modern Classics series. What leads me to put them side by side today is not their content but their looks. Call me superficial, but I was struck by the difference in physical quality between the two books. 
    J. L. Carr's A Month in the Country has small print, but why, as it's such a short book? The text could have been set over a few more pages and it would have been much clearer. Then its cover: an attractive image, but not matched by the quality of the paper, and the same charge of inferiority can be laid on the interior pages.
On the other hand, Fifth Business by Robertson Davies feels lovely! I don't like the cover picture (and I can't see its relevance to the story) but the paper both inside and out is a pleasure to handle, and the weight and 'heft' of the book made me want to keep on picking it up (I'm doing so now, playing with it as it's so tactile). Further, you can read it easily without risking spine-cracking.
     We've touched on some of this before with the post on a book's condition (some great comments there!), but I thought it worth highlighting here, as surely in these straitened times everything which helps or hinders a book's sales should be taken account of.
     I must make some mention of content, and though we'll be talking about the Carr on Saturday, we've got a month and more until we do the Davies. All I'll say for now is, if you can possibly get hold of either or preferably both of these books and read them soon, do.

A sight for sore eyes

    In Simon's post on Persephone Books' 10th birthday he asks how we all discovered that publisher, which are our favourites of their books and which we'd like to read next. I thought it was worth answering Simon's question here, at greater length, as it is quite a significant subject for me. Books first though, and favourites would be the short stories of Mollie Panter Downes, the novels of Dorothy Whipple, and The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher, while of the ones I've yet to read, Fidelity by Susan Glaspell and Miss Buncle's Book by D. E. Stevenson would come high up the list.
    As to how I came upon them in the first place, in May 2001 I was suffering with an extremely painful eye. It turned out that I had ulcers on the cornea - potentially serious - and I was lucky to have had it treated in time. Apart from having to administer drops hourly (yes, through the night as well!) over two or three days, I paid several visits to the eye hospital to be monitored and it was during one of those that I picked up a magazine and read  - with the good eye - an article about women who'd set up their own businesses, one of them being Nicola Beauman of Persephone Books. That led me to get their catalogue, start buying their books and crucially to read their fortnightly newsletter which was how I discovered the world of blogs. I followed the Persephone links to Dovegreyreader and Jane Brocket, and as a direct result for the last two and a half years I have been "Cornflower" with two websites to my name and countless other benefits of all kinds. So as you see, that article resulted in a lot more than 'just' a few good reads, and was, literally and metaphorically, a sight for sore eyes!