Cornflower Books

Daft but fun

     I saw this on both Danielle's and Barbara's sites and thought I'd try it. You must answer the questions using only the titles of books you've read this year and without repeating one.

Describe yourself: The Gourmet (Muriel Barbery)

How do you feel? No fond return of love (Barbara Pym)

Describe where you currently live: Corduroy Mansions (Alexander McCall Smith)

If you could go anywhere, where would you go? A month in the country (J.L. Carr)

Your favourite form of transportation? Footsteps (Katharine McMahon)

Your best friend is: An expert in murder (Nicola Upson)

You and your friends are: All the nice girls (Joan Bakewell)

What's the weather like? Their finest hour and a half (Lissa Evans)

You fear: Second Sight (Neil Gunn)

What is the best advice you have to give? Ask Alice (D.J. Taylor)

Thought for the day: Journey into the past (Stefan Zweig)

How would you like to die? Beachcombing (Maggie Dana)

Your soul's present condition? An equal stillness (Francesca Kay)

Anyone else want to have a go?

Cornflower Book Group - The Nice and the Good

     Am I alone in thinking the dog was the nicest and best character in this book? Thank heavens for poor old Mingo!

   I remember enjoying my previous two Murdochs considerably more than I did The Nice and the Good, but while this book wasn't all 'the nasty and the bad', I'm hard put to it to express much enthusiasm.

   I started off with high hopes: a mysterious death in a Whitehall ministry, the involvement of a senior civil servant who lives an apparently idyllic, hedonistic life in his home on the Dorset coast, but then you look at the strange group of characters Murdoch has assembled, their tangled webs of blackmail and the bizarre, their Shakespearean pairings, separations, swappings and pairings again, and it all becomes too much and seems to stretch credulity too far. Perhaps it's a book of its time (1968) in that it describes an almost urgent loosening of the bonds tying people to societal conventions, and a kind of psychedic pattern of behaviour, and it feels dated now; perhaps it didn't even work perfectly in those heady days?

    Ducane was by far the most interesting character, I thought, while some of the others (e.g. the detestable Pierce) tried my patience. There were scenes and passages which were sticky and stuffy and tedious, while there were others in which the honeyed prose just dripped off the page, so the writing was of mixed quality and read as though the author was not on form. On the positive side, Iris Murdoch can insert a jagger of glass into what appears to be a smoothly comfortable, predictable scene: you cannot coast along relying on the expected to unfold, as she's wont to prick her characters and her readers, too. And still on the subject of glass - though literally rather than metaphorically - what was the significance of the giving of pieces of glass and stone and shells which occurs frequently throughout the story?

  I'm wondering how many people will have read the book, how many will have looked at it and thought better of it, how many will have a higher opinion of it than I have! Let's see.

Two libraries

   Many of us covet a library of our own - a room dedicated to books, lined floor to ceiling with shelves, with perhaps a desk, a comfy chair, a fire .... The house pictured above has not one but two libraries, very much as I describe, and each with views out onto the tranquil Tweed Valley.

   I couldn't take any pictures inside the house, but you can see some interior shots on the Traquair website itself. The older of the two libraries has a 'reverse reading chair' rather like this one which strikes me as being good for the back! Books are catalogued according to their position on the shelves in relation to the portraits of philosophers and poets painted on the cornice (see here and scroll down a bit), so the volume you seek may be marked something like "Plato 4/23" or "Terence 9/17".

   Ah well, if you had this much space, think of the scope for the TBR piles....

Misc. - 2

Why not ...

... have a go at Guy's book quiz?

... judge a book by its 'montage' cover?

    or its classic design? (and how about this boxful of them?)

... make every effort to 'avoid' these books? (see the final paragraph). My children loved the original series!

Misc.

   I do envy President Obama's holiday reading rate (puts mine to shame).

   I'm delighted that Julia Child is topping the bestseller list, just 'a few' years after her masterwork was originally published.

   I'm astonished at the cost of this book (but then the buyer gets a bit extra thrown in). Slàinte!

Pearls before swine

    

     My 'books of the year' list has increased in length as Jane Gardam's new novel has taken its place among my best reads. The Man in the Wooden Hat is a welcome return for Sir Edward Feathers Q.C. (Old Filth) and his arch-rival - both in life and in court - Terry Veneering, but the story's main character is Filth's wife Elisabeth, and it is their marriage, seen through her eyes, which is at the book's heart.

  I'm trying to analyse Jane Gardam's technique in producing a memorable novel, one of spirit and of strong emotion expressed with a lightness of touch, which passes almost as a confection, and I'm finding it hard to fix exactly how she does it. It's not a soufflé as it has a seriously solid heart, but at the same time it's sketchy (in the best sense) and vivacious, hinting at details rather than labouring them, alluding to events and building on recollections but never lingering too long, and the result is crisp and powerful, quaintly comic, moving and surprising.

   The reader follows the couple from Hong Kong to London, then back to the colony and finally to Dorset, but Elisabeth's loving nature informs their story, and her relationships with her husband, Veneering, and one other person whose name I shan't mention, punctuate it and bring meaning to her life as her other pursuits provide mere diversions. With twists as fine and carefully graduated as its heroine's two ropes of pearls (tokens of the love of two men), it leaves the reader wanting more, or - at the very least - to begin it all over again.

    

Nodding off

    In Alexander McCall Smith's The Lost Art of Gratitude, Isabel Dalhousie muses on the sleep-inducing powers of Longfellow's Hiawatha, whose metre is guaranteed to send her infant son Charlie to the Land of Nod within fifty lines. Isabel toys with the idea of suggesting to a publisher that they bring out a book for insomniacs containing passages which could be relied upon to cause the reader to slumber: "Hiawatha would be there, but so would, for quite different reasons, excerpts from Caesar's De Bello Gallico, and from one or two modern political memoirs."

   If I ever have trouble sleeping I get Mr. C. to read to me from the ghost stories of M.R. James - half a page does the trick and I'm out like a light, so I never get the chance to be frightened! (One day I must try reading them for myself when not in bed and see how I get on). Have you discovered any similarly effective anti-insomnia reading?

Good lines: prevailing winds

     "That, thought Isabel, is the trouble: I live a life in which caution simply cannot be thrown to the winds: the winds in Edinburgh would throw it right back in one's face. It was just that sort of place, and that is what its winds were like."

From The Lost Art of Gratitude by Alexander McCall Smith.

Cornflower Book Group 2009: Volume 9

   

     "A subtle and beautiful book .... Very few authors combine her acute psychological insight with her grace and style. There is plenty of life in the modern novel, plenty of authors who will shock, amuse, amaze you - but who will put on the page a beautiful sentence, a sentence you will want to read twice?"

So writes Hilary Mantel of Elizabeth Jenkins' 1954 novel The Tortoise and the Hare and it was that comment together with Amanda Craig's review (scroll down to almost the bottom of that linked page to see it) which made me feel I must read this book and that the Book Group might welcome it, too.

     It is the portrait of a marriage and of a particular period and social milieu, but done with "descriptive grace and narrative pulse, dry humour and moral discrimination, tempered elegance and emotional force" - Hilary Mantel again. The poised and beautiful Imogen is married to Evelyn Gresham, a successful barrister, but her place in his affections is under threat due to their neighbour Blanche Silcox, middle-aged, ungainly, competent countrywoman - the very opposite of the soignée wife. What will be the outcome?

    For those unfamiliar with Elizabeth Jenkins, this article makes interesting reading. The book is currently available in a recent Virago edition, and my checks suggest that libraries may have that or an older version. Both Amazon US and UK stock it, as does The Book Depository (with free delivery worldwide).

     Next Saturday (the 29th. ) we shall be talking about The Nice and the Good, but let's come back to discuss The Tortoise and the Hare on Saturday, 26th. September. I hope we'll have a large turnout!

New arrivals - 3

     Today, two new books from Bloomsbury:

     William Boyd really needs no introduction, and Mr. C. is a great fan of his, but I have yet to read him. Here, to start me off, is his latest novel, Ordinary Thunderstorms, a gripping thriller set in contemporary London. After a series of malign accidents, a young man loses everything and finds that both the police and a ruthless hit man are after him. He goes underground and embarks on an extraordinary, revelatory journey through the city.

New territory for me, but a writer whose reputation makes me willing to venture into it with him.

    As I have a dodgy back I shan't be trying to copy the pose on the cover of this book (click to make it bigger and just feel your spine seizing up!) but Colum McCann's  Let the Great World Spin comes very highly recommended so I shall just content myself with reading it. This has New York in 1974 as its setting, and with its themes of love, loss, belonging, duty and human striving, it "celebrates the effervescent spirit of an age and the small beauties of everyday life." I read it is "intimate and magnificent, elegant and astonishing", so that's enough to make me take it off the shelf, even if I don't attempt the contortions.

New arrivals - 2

   

     Two new arrivals from Gallic Books: first, by Muriel Barbery, and winner of the Prix du Meilleur Livre de Littérature Gourmande 2000, The Gourmet sounds very appealing indeed. France's greatest food critic is dying "after a lifetime in single-minded pursuit of sensual delights. But as Pierre Arthens lies on his deathbed, he is tormented by an inability to recall the most delicious food ever to pass his lips, which he last ate long before becoming a critic. Desperate to taste it one more time, he looks back over the years to see if he can pin down the elusive dish."

Paris Match says of it, "An ode to the pleasure of good food ... mouth-watering from beginning to end".

 

     Did M. Arthens ever shop for food at a supermarket? Food critics apart perhaps, most of us do, at least some of the time, and some of us are hardly ever away from the places! But while we may know what it's like to shop in a supermarket, we may not be quite au fait with working in one. Anna Sam is, however. A literature graduate, she worked "on the tills" for eight years and recounts her experiences as a beepeuse in the book Checkout. Spilling the beans?! I'll let you know.

New arrivals - 1

 

    There's a malfunction behind the scenes in the sidebars at the moment which means I can't add anything new to the booklists, but 'Current Reading' should include Rachel Cusk's The Bradshaw Variations along with Sue Gee's Earth and Heaven (which I am enjoying very much). I've finished I Never Knew That About the Scottish and have indeed learned much about my fellow countrymen and their exploits, including the origins of the blackboard, the term 'sweetheart' and the fashion for twinset and pearls!

But I digress. It's too early for me to pronounce on the Rachel Cusk and I haven't read her before (I've had Arlington Park on the wishlist but that bird on the cover is a bit off-putting, don't you think?) but have you read her?

     Next on the pile is something a world away from the middle-class angst of The Bradshaw Variations: Marlon James' The Book of Night Women has been described as "both beautifully written and devastating", "...a book to love... hard to pick up, even harder to put down". It's a novel about Jamaican slavery set in 1785 and at its centre are the Night Women, a clandestine council of fierce slave women plotting an island-wide revolt. Just a page of this shows its unique voice and tells of a sense of purpose and power in the writing - it looks to be very strong indeed.

A tale of two trials

     Hello, this is one of Mr C's guest posts. I'm currently reading Anthony Trollope's great saga of mid-Victorian politics and high society, the Palliser novels, but just as restaurants used to refresh the palate half way through a rich meal with a refreshing, astringent sorbet, I have taken a break by devouring at top speed and with great enthusiasm Michael Connelly's The Brass Verdict, a Los Angeles crime novel in which he brings together his two great protagonists, lawyer Mickey Haller and detective Harry (christened Hieronymus) Bosch. There are some interesting points of contact and contrast between these two very different worlds. Both Phineas Redux and The Brass Verdict have dramatic murder trials at their narrative heart, and here are two passages in which the defence lawyer prepares to do his work:

"Mr Chaffanbrass smiled at his victim, and for a moment was quite soft with him - as a cat is soft with a mouse..."

"A trial is a contest of lies[...]The trick if you are waiting at the defense table is to be patient. To wait. Not for just any lie. But for the one you can grab on to and forge like hot iron into a sharpened blade. You then use that blade to rip the case open and spill its guts out on to the floor..."

     In one the menace is suggested but veiled, in the other it is brutal and open, but the trials of Phineas Finn and Walter Elliott (a sly Austen reference perhaps) share the same compelling, page-turning power. I'm now on the home straight with Trollope but when I have finished I will be eager to read Connelly's latest, The Scarecrow.

Have you read ... anything lately?

     Not much, I have to confess! I've been away on holiday (you can see the view from my bedroom window here) and although I had three books with me all I did was finish the one I was already half way through and start the next (which is very promising so far).
     I am, I find, a hopeless holiday reader. I read a few pages on the plane, but was more interested in looking out at the landscape we were passing over. I read a bit when we weren't 'doing something' (it was quite an active holiday), but spent more time looking out at the landscape that surrounded us. I was too sleepy from all the fresh air and exercise, taking advantage of that landscape, to read much at night, and breakfast (with landscape backdrop) was so good that I was not inclined to linger in bed in the morning, so reading barely featured. And yet other people get through several volumes when they are away - how do they do it?

    Anyway, I now have lots to read, having come home to find a pile of books waiting for me - and more on them soon - but nothing that I've actually read to talk about. So it's over to you? Do you read much on holiday? And have you read anything good lately, at home or away?

Have you read ... Under this Unbroken Sky?

    

     Though I'm asking whether anyone has read Shandi Mitchell's Under this Unbroken Sky, it's unlikely that many will be able to say yes to that as it's not quite out yet (though maybe in its native Canada?). However, look out for it when it is released as it sounds like a very strong book indeed.

    It's the story of an immigrant family on the Canadian prairies, "survival, love and betrayal", and has been described as "a magnificent novel .... a powerhouse of a debut that grips from start to finish."

Have you read ... On the Side of the Angels?

      Betty Miller is the mother of the polymath Jonathan and author of the Persephone-published Farewell Leicester Square (which I haven't read), but I saw her novel On the Side of the Angels in smart green Virago livery in a charity shop the other day and I thought I'd give it a go.

     "First published in 1945, this exploration of the crushing psychological effects of war is 'a sensitively and beautifully told story' ".

Does anyone know it?

Have you read ... An Instance of the Fingerpost?

   

     Iain Pears' Stone's Fall was such a great read (here's my effusive post) that I wanted more of the same a.s.a.p. So here is his An Instance of the Fingerpost, set in seventeenth century Oxford, "a deep, scholarly thriller" which combines "erudition with mystery". There's more on it here, and it sounds like cracking stuff! Have you read it?

Have you read ... The Leaping Hare?

     It's all very well adding titles to a wishlist so you don't forget them, but that doesn't help you recall where you saw the book in the first place. Here's a book which I noted because of a very high recommendation from, I think, Rosie (and apologies if I'm mis-remembering): The Leaping Hare by George Ewart Evans and David Thomson is a study of every aspect of the life and legend of the wild hare - poetry, myth, countryman's lore, art, too. It sounds like perfect contemplative reading.

Have you read ... Paris After the Liberation?

  

    We have a few Antony Beevor books (which I haven't read) and one by Artemis Cooper (her biography of Elizabeth David - Writing at the Kitchen Table - which I recommend), but here the husband and wife are collaborating on a study of Paris in the years 1944 - 1949. Unpublished material used as a source for the book include the private diaries of Duff Cooper, Britain's first post-war ambassador to Paris and Artemis Cooper's grandfather.

   Mr. C. will be reading this, but in the light of the reviews quoted on the book I may be wresting it from his grasp: "Spellbinding, often frightening and funny", "A dashing, multi-dimensional story .... a lovely tapestry, threaded with facts and figures." 

Have you read ... When the Wind Blows?

    

     When the Book Group read Tragedy at Law, I was very taken with Cyril Hare's style and was keen to read more, so here is another of his, this time with a musical setting. When the Wind Blows features Francis Pettigrew again (good!), this time assisting with the investigation into the strangling of a famous violinist part way through a recital with a provincial orchestra.

Quoted here is the promising comment: "A plot compounded of musical knowledge, a Dickens allusion, and a subtle point of law, and related with delightfully unobtrusive wit, warmth and style."