Cornflower Books

Writers' choice

     What do writers read, and which books do they rate highly? Norman Geras has investigated that fascinating topic through his regular 'Writer's Choice' posts, and now into their fifth year, he has provided a comprehensive index to the subject: have a look at it here.

     I'm glad to see some Cornflower favourites on the list including Norm's own choice, the superb Brodeck's Report.

Dangerous women

     A quick glimpse of a selection of the pictures from Women who read are dangerous.

    Click to enlarge and you'll see (top right) Martha Vogeler by Heinrich Vogeler (1872-1942) - don't you love the strength and simplicity of that line drawing?

    On the left is Interior with Girl Reading by Peter Ilsted (1861-1933). The book says of it, "This style of painting appeals to the longing for a cosy corner. Anyone who retreats into such a corner is expressing a wish to melt into the chosen spot, if only for a short time. In an era possessed by a mania for activity, this longing is all too understandable."

    Bottom right is, of course, Marilyn Monroe. She is photographed by Eve Arnold and she is, apparently, reading Joyce's Ulysses. The book relates that she did so episodically, "opening the book at different points and reading in short bursts". A method not to be sniffed at, I learn.

Plum Pie

     Fans of P.G. Wodehouse - or indeed lovers of bookshops of character - may like to visit an exhibition celebrating the life and work of 'Plum' at Heywood Hill in London's Curzon Street. Mr. C. says it is well worth looking in (he can't guarantee meeting Gloria, Empress of Mayfair, though).

Good lines: the chosen few

    

     "Why not me to be beautiful and rich and famous and wooed by tall, handsome men in wonderful long overcoats with fine silver hair that curls against their finely modelled necks? Placido Domingo, that kind of man. Why couldn't I have been the kind of woman Rilke fell for? All furs and a brilliant mind. With a castle."

From Best love, Rosie by Nuala O'Faolain.

Cornflower Book Group - The Tortoise and the Hare

 

     I found this an exquisite book - in all senses of the word.

     Glossing over the cover of the current edition of Elizabeth Jenkins' The Tortoise and the Hare, which despite its charms does not reflect or represent the contents, the novel is elegant, precise, beautifully paced and stiletto-sharp. The story is simple enough: the poised and beautiful -  but uncertain - Imogen is married to barrister Evelyn Gresham; he is some years her senior, highly successful, influential, used to getting his way. While Evelyn is capable and commanding, Imogen is content to be his weaker subordinate and her whole raison d'être is as his wife and mother to their young but emotionally distant son, Gavin, though she permanently fears their joint and several displeasure.

   Imogen gives little thought to their neighbour Blanche Silcox, closer in age to Evelyn, stoutish, awkward, but wealthy, determined and a force to be reckoned with. When Evelyn appears to be developing a closeness to Blanche, Imogen is ready to explain it away on the grounds of shared interests and practicalities, but there is more to it than that and as the unlikely relationship develops, so Imogen's spirit becomes oppressed, buried under the weight of her husband's personality and this new, sustaining, liaison from which he appears to derive so much.

  Watching Evelyn's subtle cruelty drive events is almost painful, and then when Imogen seems to find some sort of haven in the love of her doctor friend Paul ... Of the lesser characters there is the perceptive Cecil, and the boy Tim, friend of Gavin's but happy to spend most of his time out of his own chaotic home, but with or without the leavening, reading this is - as an early line has it - as "a voluptuous pressure on a bruise."

    What did you think?

(Later: here, at last, is this book's 'books and cakes' post.

Making it last

     Where food is concerned, I always save the choicest morsel to last, and I've long loved that line of Robert Browning's, "Grow old along with me/ the best is yet to be"*, but the saving it up or making it last principle can equally be applied to books and I'm reading one now which I am deliberately taking slowly because I don't want its secrets to be revealed too quickly.

    I'm savouring Helen Humphreys' The Lost Garden (and thankyou, Geranium Cat, for writing about this novel, which I hadn't come across before, and thus making me seek it out), and I shan't say any more about it for now than that, except that thus far it is a deeply satisfying read.

    Are there any books that you've spun out because you just didn't want them to end?

*Going off at a tangent, wasn't it offered by Laurence Olivier to Katharine Hepburn in the super film Love Among the Ruins - does anyone remember that? And why isn't it available on DVD?!

 

Sugared almonds

 I had a very special guest here for lunch yesterday.

It was Simon, otherwise known as Stuck in a book, up in Edinburgh for a few days and kindly paying me a visit. We have met before, but that was a brief hello in Oxford when he was working for his finals and I was attending a 'do', so it was lovely to have a proper chin-wag and then go book-shopping with him.

But look what he kindly brought me: a set of Bloomsbury Group bookmarks to mark my place in these lovely books.

Several of these books have already appeared on these pages, most notably Henrietta's War of course, but I think Simon is due hearty congratulations for helping to bring Miss Hargreaves back from relative obscurity, and in doing so for giving those of us who have read it great entertainment.

As to 'sugared almonds', well the bookmarks (and their respective book covers) have quite a sugared almond feel to them in real life, and for pudding at lunch yesterday I made Simon a sweetly tart almond-based cake!

Good lines: rubicund

   "Aunt Dahlia's face grew darker. Hunting, if indulged in regularly over a period of years, is a pastime that seldom fails to lend a fairly deepish tinge to the patient's complexion, and her best friends could not have denied that even at normal times the relative's map tended a little towards the crushed strawberry. But never had I seen it take on so pronounced a richness as now. She looked like a tomato struggling for self-expression."

From Right Ho, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse.

Just acquired - 2

 

     Stories of "a vanished England" are the stuff of Louis de Bernières' new collection Notwithstanding:

"The English village was a place where a lady might dress as a man in plus fours and spend her time shooting squirrels with a twelve bore, or keep a vast menagerie in her house. A retired general might give up wearing clothes, a spiritualist might live in a cottage with her sister and the ghost of her husband, and people might think it quite natural to confide in a spider that lives in a potting shed."

    With characters who roam in and out of each others' stories - much as they might have done in one another's houses - this is a portrait of a community, and a very British one by the sound of it. I'm looking forward to becoming acquainted with it.

(Just acquired - 1 is here).

Have you read ... P.G. Wodehouse?

     I feel as though I have read lots of P.G. Wodehouse, having had so many lines quoted to me over the years. My husband is, you see, a big fan, and he regularly re-reads his favourites from the canon, shaking with laughter the while. I invariably ask him to tell me what has tickled him so much, hence my familiarity by proxy with the work of the master. But I have never actually read him for myself - until now.

    Feeling at something of a loss as to what to read next - I don't lack good books, there just wasn't anything which quite matched my mood - I thought I wanted something very British, very funny and with a character all its own. I could have picked up a favourite Nancy Mitford, but 'Plum' seemed to be calling me, so I asked Mr. C. to choose a corker and he duly produced Right Ho, Jeeves. Now half way through I am chuckling as I knew I would be, amazed by the sparkling sharpness of the narrative and the consummate stylist that Wodehouse is.

     The story is a lot of stuff and nonsense and the plot need not detain us, suffice to say that it is all froth and frivolity, but fun! I can't help but see Messrs. Fry & Laurie as the inimitable Jeeves And Wooster, and there are so many good lines worth quoting that it's hard to choose one or two, but here's a quick passage just to give a flavour:

"I mean to say, when you leave a girl and a man, each of whom has admitted in set terms that she and he loves him and her, in close juxtaposition in the twilight, there doesn't seem much more to do but start pricing fish slices."

    I was interested to read in coverage of the newly published William Shawcross biography of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother that that lady's favourite books were the novels of P. G. Wodehouse, because they were "so realistic"! But someone else said that to criticise PGW was "the equivalent of taking a spade to a soufflé", and I rather agree with them.

Good lines: unwelcome guests

     "He was still in his shirtsleeves and, bending forwards under the lamplight, with his knees stuck wide apart and the book in his hand, and his whole figure absorbed in the rather strenuous business of reading, he gave Banford's sitting room the look of a lumber camp. She resented this. For on her sitting room floor she had a red Turkey rug and dark stain round, the fireplace had fashionable green tiles, the piano stood open with the latest dance music ... and on the walls were March's hand-painted swans and water lilies. Moreover, with the logs nicely, tremulously burning in the grate, the thick curtains drawn, the doors all shut and the pine trees hissing and shuddering in the wind outside, it was cosy, refined and nice. She resented the big, raw, long-legged youth sticking his khaki knees out and sitting there with his soldier's shirt cuffs buttoned on his thick red wrists. From time to time he turned a page, and from time to time he gave a sharp look at the fire, settling the logs. Then he immersed himself again in the intense and isolated business of reading."

From The Fox by D.H. Lawrence.

The dog who came in from the cold

    Monday sees the welcome return of Freddie de la Hay and his companions from Alexander McCall Smith's Corduroy Mansions, appearing as before on a daily basis here on the Telegraph website.

    I shall be following their exploits with great interest and have even been allowed a privileged preview of the opening chapters of this new series of the episodical novel - which has an excellent title! - but for now you may be interested to read this interview with its indefatigable author (or even the one which appeared on this site earlier in the year).

 

Stuck-on-a-book

    I detest stickers on books, especially those that are apparently stuck down with super-glue.

    A copy of Julia Child's My Life in France arrived with a silvered exhortation to "Read the Book" - yes, I intend to, that's why I got it! - and the legend "Now a Major Motion Picture" - what does that mean? 'You can tell this book is good because it's been made into a film, otherwise I wouldn't bother if I were you'?!!

As you can see, I'm in full Basil Fawlty mode at this disfiguring of books, all the more so as it took me twenty minutes to rid the cover of its nasty badge. Twenty minutes of carefully pushing, peeling, rubbing and buffing to remove all trace of the unnecessary. Why bother, you may ask; I like my books to be just so - no creases, dog-ears, marks, scuffs or things on them, and I know I'm not the only one!

 

    Here at last is the cover without the sticker, and fortunately no harm was done to the book during the removal process.

    I feel better now!

   

Testing times

    The gremlins are in the works today, it seems, and while I can draft a post I can't access the published site either in the normal way or through my preview function, so this is a test post to see what's happening

    I hope normal service will resume soon, but meanwhile if you can read this, would you be so good as to leave a comment just so that I can tell things are working again? Say whatever you like, from a simple hello to listing whatever you are reading - apart from Monty Don, I'm greatly enjoying Rosy Thornton's Crossed Wires.

Cornflower Book Group 2009: Volume 10

    

     As the Book Group's first departure from the novel or short stories, here is some poetry.

     When I suggested we might read A. E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad, there was a gentle susurration of approval, so I've gone for it. The edition I've got is from Penguin's English Journeys series (there are many other little books on that list I'd like, too - wouldn't you?) but there's no need for any particular copy, just get whatever is available either at the library or a shop (and if you live abroad and you want the Penguin, The Book Depository can supply it post-free).

First published in 1896, "this magical and poignant evocation of coming of age in the countryside describes lovers in secluded lanes, cricket and church bells, cherry trees hung with 'snow' and woods full of bluebells. Yet ... the fields and hills are also places of loss and sorrow, where men die young or are sent away to fight in foreign wars. Aching with longing for a vanished world, these exquisite verses are a meditation on the fleeting nature of love, youth and happiness."

     I wonder just how many famous lines we're going to find in this pocket-sized book - from the "blue-remembered hills" to "on Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble...", many of them familiar as references in other works (scroll down on this page to discover them).

     Despite its apparent richness, it's a short collection so shouldn't be too taxing to read over the next few weeks. We're doing Elizabeth Jenkins' The Tortoise and the Hare (the introductory post is here) on September 26th., so let's come back to talk about A Shropshire Lad on 24th. October, and as always, everyone is welcome to join in.

    

Just acquired - 2

   Women who read are dangerous.

   Are they?!

   This is a beautiful book of portraits - do you know it?

  

Keeping track of the piles

     This is the birthday card my parents sent me last week, and they couldn't have chosen anything more apt as it does indeed resemble my TBR pile!

     The picture is entitled "Been to the Library" and it's by the artist Irene George, but while most of my books don't come from the library, I do have something approaching that number waiting to be read.

     I know that many of the visitors to this website would, if they could, come home from the library with a haul like the one shown, or - now here's a thought - they'd like nothing better than a 'trolley dash' round a book shop: all you can grab in two minutes flat!

     But how do you keep track of what you have in your pile? I use a spreadsheet because I need to record quite a lot of information, and then I have a simple notebook for jotting things I want to remember about a book as I read it. I rather fancy something like this, (there's more on it here) which is 'organised' and has space for storing cuttings and reviews, but a really comprehensive system of whatever nature would be welcome.

     How about you? - that is everyone bar Dark Puss, who famously has no TBR pile of which to keep track (strange cat!).

   

Good lines: the power of conversation

    " 'You can have no idea - no man ever has - the amount of good a little talk does a woman.' She picked up her tapestry frame and regarded it critically. 'I think now I can risk a slightly brighter shade of red.' "

From Second Sight by Neil Gunn.

The passionate gardener

     I'm reading some very elegant fiction just now, and alongside that some equally beautifully written non-fiction. But regarding the latter, while there's no doubt that Monty Don is a wordsmith, what is every bit as obvious is his absolute passion for his subject: for making and tending and re-making and living in and with a garden.

     The Ivington Diaries is his record of creating his own garden from a two-acre field. Using diary entries spanning the years from the early days up to the present he recounts every step and stage, every pleasure, pain and preoccupation associated with having a garden. This is not a manual, a how-to book or a set of seasonal reminders - though the reader will learn much - more than all those things, it's one man's acccount of his relationship with the soil and what grows from it, and above all with his own 'place'. He is very clear on that, saying "... it is not an idea or technique or any particular plant combination that makes a garden lovely but that sense of place - the indefinable quality that makes you want to be here - which the gardener falls in love with. And this book, above anything else, is a love story."

    It certainly is that, and as intimate and personal as any love story is. As a lover does, he notices things - not just the obvious, but the details such as the play of frosty moonlight on topiary yews or the simple beauty in a hazel hurdle. As much an idealist as a realist, he is very honest about his own shortcomings and about showing things as they are, so many of the book's photographs (all his own, too) reveal the working side of the garden, the business end, the way things get done. But there's passion on every page, whether he is discussing the efficacy of a mulch of mushroom compost, or describing "the full curve of hip and buttock with the tuck of waist" on tulips: "decorously beautiful while being outrageously sexy", you can sense the quickening of the pulse. Isn't that what writing is all about?

    

Stuck at random, possums

    Two new arrivals from Bloomsbury, the latest in the Bloomsbury Group collection of twentieth century gems (I covered the first two here and here). But what has my curious post title got to do with Frank Baker's Miss Hargreaves or Ada Leverson's Love's Shadow? Well, these two books are firm favourites of the equally excellent Stuck-in-a-book and Random Jottings, respectively, and they have the honour to be quoted on the back covers. Simon shares billing with an unnamed reviewer from The Sunday Times, but Elaine has none other than Barry Humphries for company (and he is - I read - a bibliomaniac with a collection of books 25,000 strong, so they would get on well!).

    Love's Shadow is "a wry, sparkling comedy of manners", first published in 1908, and I look forward to reading it, but Miss Hargreaves I have read, and I am very pleased it's back in print. Here are my impressions from two years ago:

This is a curious novel but an absolutely delightful one. It is part Ealing comedy and Whitehall farce, part E.M. Delafield's The Diary of a Provincial Lady, with overtones of E.F.Benson's Mapp and Lucia, and a Trollopian setting, and it is the only book I've read which includes descriptions of organ-playing exciting enough to make me want to find the nearest loft and learn to play! ("The Doctor, warmly improvising in B major....enriched the firm prose of the Diapasons with the drama of the Full Swell" - and there's more in quite visceral mode, too long to quote here).

     The story turns on a character 'invented' by two friends on the spur of the moment in order to enliven a tedious encounter with the sexton of an Irish church. Little did they appreciate as they wove a plausible and well-plenished history for 'Miss Hargreaves' that "creative thought creates" and they would soon be encountering the redoubtable lady in real life. What happens then is both very funny and very moving, slightly batty and anything but commonplace (which Miss H. "abominates", by the way, along with "fuss"), and with its picture of life in and around Cornford Cathedral Close - "She was a very large woman, Mrs. Auty, whose great ambition in life was to run Cornford....Canon Auty, it was said, had first met his wife on a mountain in Switzerland, where he found her presiding over an impending avalanche" - it explores big ideas on a small, contained stage. I have a feeling it's going to linger in the mind.

It did!