Cornflower Books

Swans, ducks and a green linnet

    I hope this site gives the impression of swan-like serenity, though if it does it's a wonder because underneath there is frantic paddling going on. In addition to posting here, and keeping up with various other commitments, I'm writing for three periodicals at the moment, so there's much prioritising of reading, and shaping vague thoughts and impressions into coherent, reasonably authoritative commentary, while feeling that I'm really just an ugly duckling and the end result is bound to be more 'waddle and splash' than 'effortless glide'.

    With a lot of work on, I do try to keep my bedtime reading to 'relaxing' books, something I've picked up purely for my own interest and not because I'm expected to write about it. Currently on the bedside table is a delightful memoir of two Scots sisters written by the daughter-in-law of one of them. 'Alicella': A Memoir of Alice King Stewart and Ella Christie by Averil Stewart is about a pair of redoubtable ladies, one of them an intrepid traveller and keen gardener, who lived from the 1860s to the 1940s. A reference to them cropped up in Catherine Horwood's very interesting Gardening Women and I realised then that I'd heard my grandmother mention them when I was a child. She lived close to what had been their castle home - both it and the ladies were long gone by that stage but their memory lingered in the district, and as we drove past the gate lodge and I peered up the drive, imagining the place full of oriental treasures as Granny described it, something stuck in my mind - funny how all these years later and through the book, my curiosity about what had lain behind the high walls of the estate is satisfied - well, partially, as I'd love to go and see what remains of the garden.

    Connected to that in some way that I can't quite put my finger on is a book I thought of when I was answering Simon's questions, specifically the one on childhood reads. I remembered a book called The Green Linnet, written (I now discover because I've looked it up) by Gwyneth Vacher and illustrated by Victor Ambrus. I have no clue now what it was about, or where and when it was set, but I do recall at the time I read it (when I was ten or eleven, I think) that I associated it in some way with what I imagined Miss Christie's house was like. Does anyone know the book, or anything about it? It may not be as I remember it at all and I could be confusing it with something else, but in my mind The Green Linnet and the sisters with their eastern artifacts in the castle hidden from view are forever linked.

My life in books

 

    I'm over at Simon T's today, contributing to the first of his My life in books series - and with a lovely 'mystery' partner! This is a fun idea, and my thanks to Simon for the invitation and for all his hard work in putting it together.

Cornflower Book Group - A Morbid Taste for Bones

 

    "Scatter her bones over the stones, It's only a saint whom nobody owns."

    I don't know the origin of those lines, but they cropped up in a book today, spoken by the Scots writer Andrew Lang by the desecrated tomb of Queen Margaret in Dunfermline Abbey. Maybe they were Lang's own, but wherever they are from, they do nicely to introduce Ellis Peters's A Morbid Taste for Bones, the first of the Brother Cadfael Chronicles, in which the ambitious Prior Robert aims to acquire the bones of St. Winifred and take them from their Welsh resting place back to his Benedictine Abbey at Shrewsbury. The relics have been virtually neglected for years, but now that the villagers of Gwytherin find another party interested in their saint, they become proprietorial, and while some are happy to see the bones go to a new home, others are firecely opposed. While negotiations are proceeding, a local landowner who is a chief opponent to the move is murdered; it falls to Brother Cadfael to find his killer.

    I liked this book for its neatness - it's well-ordered and pleasingly controlled - and for the character of Brother Cadfael, his rich history, his shrewdness, his 'irreverence' based on respect for what warrants reverence. He is described as having "a certain spark in his eye" and "a notoriously worldly past", and so the herbalist monk is the most intriguing part of the story, and no doubt he develops interestingly as the chronicles proceed.

    Fast the book is not! There are a full hundred pages before the murder occurs, so much steady scene-setting, but I found it soothing, undemanding bedtime reading, with quite enough to hold my interest but not so gripping that I felt like rushing straight out to get the second in the series. There's a nice mood to the book, and some good lines - on Rhisiart the murdered man: "He had the voice that might have been expected from him, large, melodious and deep, a voice that sang what it felt, and waited for thought afterwards, to find that the thought had been there already in the feeling."

    So for me, not an outstanding book, but a pleasant enough one. What did you think of it? 

(ETA: The 'Books and Cakes' post for Brother Cadfael is here).

Friday reads, and I have a choice!

 

    I've reached one of those rare moments in the month when I don't have to read a book to meet a deadline and I'm free to choose what to read next. In theory, I could pick up any book I like, in practice it will be something from the mountaineous piles which have arrived recently, and as there lots of good things there I'm having a bit of a swither: will it be Sarah Moss's Night Waking (and I'll admit that's a strong contender as it's relevant to something else I'm doing), or perhaps Rebecca Hunt's much talked about Mr Chartwell, or maybe Sam Leith's intriguing-sounding The Coincidence Engine? 

    We've spoken about Night Waking before (there's a short mention here), and Adèle referred to Sarah Moss in her comment on Wednesday's post*. Mr. Chartwell features a large black dog - though no ordinary one - and is "an utterly inventive, moving, funny and exuberant novel"; with Winston Churchill and "shades of magical realism in the vein of Mikhail Bulgakov" [Dark Puss, this one may interest you], it's a debut which has had great reviews. Meanwhile, The Coincidence Engine involves The Directorate of the Extremely Improbable, "an organisation so secret that many of its operatives aren't 100% sure it exists", an eccentric mathematician investigating the physics of free will, and thuggish operatives closing in on a harmless Cambridge postgraduate...Mystified? Doubtless all will be become clear in due course!

    While I choose what to read next, please tell us what you are reading this Friday.

                                    ~~~~~~~~~

*One last thing, re. our A letter to the author post, I have so enjoyed reading all the comments, and it's great to hear of so many writers who really put themselves out to reply to their readers. I loved Mike's story about the couple making a special trip across the Lough to get his signature, and Julie, I take it you'll be having a stern word with Mr. Enger on my behalf! Peter, how lovely that your early experience with Philip Ziegler has made you such a diligent correspondent where all your readers are concerned. Great stories, all, and thankyou to everyone who commented.

Feast your eyes

    Another example of pretty, witty cover design from Penguin Books and Coralie Bickford-Smith, this is the Great Food series, to be published on 7th. April. More details here.

A letter to the author

   

    Have you ever written to an author - or in these days of instant communication, emailed one about their work, and if so, did you get a reply?

     Over at The Blue Cabin Blog, Mike's post today about the correspondence between Mark Twain and the twelve-year-old D.W. Bowser brought the question to mind, and I remembered a young friend of ours who, in connection with a school project, wrote to her near neighbour Maeve Binchy, asking various questions about her books and writing methods. Melissa was thrilled to get a lovely personal letter in return.

    With writers nowadays so often having a presence on Twitter or Facebook, a website or blog, they are much more accessible, at least in principle, so maybe you've left a comment for them or exchanged tweets?

     Ages ago I sent two letters, one (via his publisher) to Leif Enger, because I loved Peace Like a River - he didn't reply, but I don't hold it against him as his book was a huge bestseller at the time and he was much in demand; the other was to Elizabeth Jane Howard as I'd enjoyed many of her novels and most recently then her memoir Slipstream - she sent a charming handwritten note in response.

    If any of the authors who pop in here are reading this I'd love to know whether you get fan mail or questions from readers in the old-fashioned way, or is it all done electronically, and whatever the method, is it ever burdensome or unduly intrusive?

The lady vanishes

 

    Two years ago I went into raptures over D.J. Taylor's novel Ask Alice (that post is here) and I said then I'd be reading more of his work. It has taken me a long time to get back to him but at last I've done so with the very involving and enjoyable Kept: A Victorian Mystery. Before I go on I must say that I'm surprised by the divergence of opinion on both these books as shown in Amazon's customer reviews; of course there will always be those who love a book and others who find it's not for them, but to say, for example, that Kept is "badly written", as one person does, is to invite doubt as to whether they'd been reading something else entirely. To my mind it's superbly written, clever, convincing, most thoroughly researched, and more!

    This Victorian mystery, as the subtitle has it, begins with reports of the deaths by misadventure of two men in East Anglia, three years apart. It turns out that the men are connected, the widow of the younger one being the ward of the elder, the celebrated naturalist Mr. Dixey. Mrs. Ireland's dependent state is down to mental instability following the death of her child, but quite why she is 'detained' at her guardian's gloomy and neglected country house, and why those inquiring about her are denied knowledge of her precise whereabouts and welfare, is a puzzle.

    "Gloriously detailed and richly imagined" is how I described Ask Alice, and the same is true of this book, with a similar mixture of real people and events acting as background to the intricate fretwork overlay of the fictitious ones. The plot takes us from the Highlands of Scotland to the flat land of Norfolk, from the wilderness of Canada to the over-populated streets of London, all these locations linked somehow by associates of the reclusive and impecunious Mr. Dixey (keeper of a tame mouse and a chained wolf), or those concerned in his ward's curious disappearance and in an audacious robbery.

    I should think D.J. Taylor had enormous fun in writing this book. He acknowledges the influence of the likes of Dickens, George Eliot, Trollope, and so on, and that is easily discernible. He plays with his material - employing different styles, introducing characters major and minor - as he toys with the reader, here laying a trail, there taking us to a dead end. Whether you call it a pastiche, an episodic narrative which apes its many progenitors, a grand old yarn in the best Victorian manner - no matter, it's a great read.

Cornflower Book Group 2011: Volume 4

 

     This coming Saturday the Cornflower Book Group will be discussing the first of Ellis Peters's Brother Cadfael series, A Morbid Taste for Bones, but for our April book we shall be moving far away from a 1970s depiction of twelfth century monks, going instead to late Victorian England, the aesthetic movement, and the scandalous Oscar Wilde, with his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.

     "Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears the traces of his decadence."

   

    A Faustian pact, hedonism, gothic horror clad in silken draperies ... there will be lots here to interest us, I should think! I've chosen the Penguin Classics edition pictured above as it comes with two introductions - one of them by Peter Ackroyd - and contemporary reviews, but any copy you can get hold of will be fine. The novel should be widely available (though in case of difficulty, The Book Depository will send it anywhere in the world, post-free), and at just over 200 pages, it shouldn't take us very long to get through, so how about we set our discussion date for Saturday, 23rd. April.

    I say this every month, but the group is open to all who care to read the book and give us the benefit of their thoughts on it, on or after the set date. A few words will suffice, or a much longer analysis - regardless of length, your contribution will be welcome, so I hope Mr. Wilde and his Mr. Gray will not disappoint.

To do

 

    I said on Friday that I was keen to test The Eisenhower Matrix, or How To Work More Efficiently, as outlined in The Decision Book. This takes its name from President Eisenhower who was a master of time management and who apparently said that the most urgent decisions are rarely the most important ones.

All you do is draw a box, divide it into four and label the areas as follows: 

top right - Urgent & Important - put here things you must do immediately

top left - Important but Not Urgent - assign dates to whatever you put here and try to ensure these tasks are dealt with before they become urgent

bottom left - Not Important, Not Urgent - do the things in this box later

bottom right - Urgent, but Not Important - delegate these things (I have nothing in that box - telling?)

    The book gives slightly more information, but that's the basis of it, and I've now organised my work 'to do' list as described, simple prioritising helping me to feel I have everything in hand. The book then goes on to refine the model with a method attributed to financier Warren Buffett: "make a list of everything you want to get done today. Begin with the task at the top and continue only when you have completed it." That may sound obvious, but if you tend to flit from one thing to another, it's probably a good discipline to adopt.

    By the way, near the top of my list was 'choose next CBG book'. I'm glad to say I have ticked that one off and I hope to post the title here tomorrow.

Those were the days

     We have talked often here about the typographical (and other) errors which seem to crop up all too frequently in contemporary books. As an example of higher standards in bygone days, here is a biography published by John Murray in 1955, an erratum slip inserted, the single mistake pointed out. 

Decisions, decisions

 

    Now, here's something a little bit different - not just a post about a book, but the beginnings of an experiment, too. Profile Books have kindly sent me a copy of The Decision Book: Fifty Models for Strategic Thinking by Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschäppeler, and the idea is that I'm going to use it as a workbook to help with daily decision-making on big issues and small ones - whatever happens to crop up - because 'what to do?' and 'how to do it?' are questions which we all have to answer, and anything that can help make that process easier is worth looking at.

    I am an indecisive person and I think there are two reasons behind that: one is that I want to avoid mistakes if I possibly can and get things right (impossible to do all the time, but I'm an idealist so I try...) and the other is that usually I am good at seeing both sides of an argument or at weighing the pros and cons, but when those two are more or less in balance, how do you decide what to do? So I'm a perfectionist who can grasp all the issues, but then I'm not as skilled at moving on to a definite course of action, either because there's no clear path to choose, or because it might turn out to be the 'wrong' one.

    So that's a bit about me as the guinea pig, now a little bit about the book's structure. There are four sections, 'How to improve yourself', 'How to understand yourself better', How to understand others better' and 'How to improve others'. In each of these are some of the fifty decision-making models, the first of which is The Eisenhower Matrix, or How To Work More Efficiently. That's something I would love to know how to do, so I shall start there and see how I get on - stay tuned for progress reports.

     One more thing for now, Profile are offering a 10% discount on the book (the net price is inclusive of post and packing to UK addresses only, and is available up to the end of April). All you have to do is email [email protected] and quote 'Bloggers' Challenge special offer'.

    I don't think we've had a book of this type on the blog before so it will be interesting to see what you all make of it as well as how I get on working through it. Here we go...   

For readers and writers

-  Over on Cornflower the post today is on a cookery book with a difference: what you get if you gather fifty authors, ask them about how they work, who influenced them, what they like to read and what part food plays in their books. If you haven't already seen it, do pop across and take a look at Table of Contents.

-  From bestselling writers to those yet to get into print: aspiring authors may like to know about the forthcoming London Book Fair Masterclass (9th. April). This 'how to get published' event features big name novelists Peter James and Lesley Pearse, agent Luigi Bonomi and publisher Jon Wood (Orion Books), so if you're a writer who is hoping to get that first break and you're looking for a steer in the right direction, get your ticket here.

- There are literary festivals, and then there's Laugharne! The village made famous by Dylan Thomas now has its own festival of literature and more besides: the Laugharne Weekend, on this year from 15th. to 17th. April, full details and tickets here. Notable names representing the poetry side of things include Carol Ann Duffy and Owen Sheers, but getting back to Dylan Thomas himself, if you want to know what life in Laugharne was like for him and his family, you might read his daughter Aeronwy's memoir My Father's Places (more on it here).

Good lines: in Victorian London

 

    "Outside in Tite Street the evening draws on. Lights go on in upstairs windows, smoke rises from the ancient chimneys to mingle with the darkening air. The faint melodious clatter of a pianoforte can be heard somewhere, as if to say, 'Why, d---, despite it all we can still be comfortable.' Cats begin to appear around the area steps and athwart the chimney pots, their eyes full of nocturnal purpose. Meek papas, thither conveyed from clerking offices in High Holborn and Fleet Street, are met at their front doors, relieved of their gloves and clerkly appurtenances, regaled with mutton chops brought in hot and hot and given babies to dandle while their supper beer is fetching. Such is the press of servant girls and stout matrons around the door of the Tite Arms and Refreshment Emporium that Little Sills, the celebrated comic tenor, engaged that evening to delight the company with the ballad of Villikins and his Dinah, and arriving early in a tall hat and a sateen waistcoat, grows suddenly sanguine of his prospects and imagines a roseate future in which he is summoned to Windsor, appears before the Lord Mayor's banquet and can introduce Mrs. Sills (at present with the children in Hoxton) to, as he puts it, 'the kind of society that a woman of her refinement, sir, demands.'"

From Kept: A Victorian Mystery by D.J. Taylor.

Novel material?

    Have you read this lovely story about the 200-year-old love letter discovered by an upholsterer in the arm of a chair? There's material for a novel in that, don't you think?

Tea and sympathy

 

    To mark the paperback publication later this week of David Mitchell's marvellous novel The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet, a Japanese teahouse is being erected in London's Spitalfields. Designed as an "immersive reading room" and open from tomorrow until Friday, with a special appearance by David Mitchell on Wednesday at 1.00pm, all the details are here.

    When the tea-house was planned, no-one could have foreseen what the Japanese people would be enduring now, but it seems very fitting that something which represents Japanese history, life and culture - and the novel does that in fine form, too - should be there, perhaps acting as a focal point or a place to gather in sympathy, given what that nation is facing.

From the tbr pile - 2

    Three more from the pile, beginning at the top there with The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht, another book which is one of Waterstone's 11 best literary debuts. Described by T.C. Boyle as "a novel of surpassing beauty, exquisitely wrought and magical", and by Ann Patchett as "a marvel of beauty and imagination", here's the beginning:

"In my earliest memory, my grandfather is as bald as a stone and he takes me to see the tigers. He puts on his hat, his big-buttoned raincoat, and I wear my lacquered shoes and velvet dress. It is autumn, and I am four years old. The certainty of this process: my grandfather's hand, the bright hiss of the trolley, the dampness of the morning, the crowded walk up the hill to the citadel park. Always in my grandfather's breast pocket: The Jungle Book, with its gold-leaf cover and old yellow pages. I am not allowed to hold it, but it will stay open on his knee all afternoon while he recites the passages to me."

    Esther Freud (and excuse the digression, but those of us who watched the recent television adaptation of South Riding may like to know, if they don't already, that she is married to David Morrissey, who played Robert Carne ...) has a new book out soon: Lucky Break draws on her time at drama school, before she became a novelist. Billed as "a modern day Cinderella story with a twist [that] is an absolute joy to read", this is about a group of young actors in pursuit of success, and struck Michael Holroyd as being "completely authentic and enthralling."

    Also coming out soon is The Proof of Love by Catherine Hall who made her debut last year with Days of Grace. The new book is set in the Lake District during the sweltering summer of 1976, when Spencer Little, a shy and awkward Cambridge mathematician, takes a job as a farm labourer. He makes friends with ten-year-old Alice, and when he has to come to her rescue, he begins to feel accepted by the community, but deeper intimacy leads to too much knowledge, perhaps, and as the heatwave intensifies "a web of complicity tightens around him, and Spencer will be forced to choose: between passion and logic, between loyalty and truth."

From the tbr pile

     Three books to introduce today, the first My Natural History: The Animal Kingdom and How it Shaped Me by Simon Barnes, which, according to The Times, "fizzes with verve, romance and delight." It's the story of the author's life told via the animals and natural encounters which have shaped it, and like a contemporary Gerald Durrell, Simon Barnes - who is an award-winning sportswriter, novelist and keen horseman - reaches his readers through humour and infectious enthusiasm for his subject.

     The Report by Jessica Francis Kane is a novel based on a real event, the worst civilian tragedy of World War II. In March 1943, the residents of London's Bethnal Green responded to the air-raid siren by heading, as usual, for the shelter of the Tube station. At the entrance steps, something went wrong, there was panic and 173 people lost their lives in the crush. An enquiry was held and the local magistrate, Laurence Dunne, heard evidence, but the more questions he asked the more difficult he found it to separate truth from rumour. "Decades later, when the case is re-opened by one of the children who survived, the facts can finally be brought to light..."

    Heralded as the new Jodi Picoult for her debut novel The Weight of Silence, Heather Gudenkauf's second book These Things Hidden looks as though it's set to confirm that reputation. "Imprisoned for a heinous crime when she was just a teenager, Allison Glenn is now free. Shunned by those who once loved her, Allison is desperate to make contact with her sister, but Brynn is trapped in her own world of torment and regret. Their legacy of secrets is focused on one little boy, and if the truth is revealed, the consequences will be unimaginable for the adoptive mother who loves him, the girl who tried to protect him and the two sisters who hold the key to all that is hidden....". A powerful page-turner, by the sound of it.

Edited to add: Jessica Francis Kane is to be discussing The Report on this afternoon's edition of Open Book (Radio 4).

For every season there is a book

 

     "The author of Ecclesiastes and Pete Seeger have taught us that for everything there is a season; likewise, I might add, for every season there is a book. But readers have learned that not just any book is suited to any occasion. Pity the soul who finds itself with the wrong book in the wrong place, like poor Roald Amundsen, discoverer of the South Pole, whose book bag sank under the ice, so that he was constrained to read, night after freezing night, the only surviving volume: Dr. John Gauden's indigestible Portraiture of His Sacred Majesty in His Solitudes and Sufferings. Readers know that there are books for reading after lovemaking and books for waiting in the airport lounge, books for the breakfast table and books for the bathroom, books for sleepless nights at home and books for sleepless days in the hospital. No one, not even the best of readers, can fully explain why certain books are right for certain occasions and why others are not. In some ineffable way, like human beings, occasions and books mysteriously agree or clash with one another."

From A Reader on Reading by Alberto Manguel.

    I wonder why Amundsen had that Portraiture book with him in the first place, and what do modern polar explorers take to read when the going gets tough? Which books might sustain one in extremis? It's no wonder, though, that there are books for times and places and circumstances, because by nature of their own character and personality, their emotional pitch and their pace or relative stillness, books will suit the mood and the moment (or not) just as people do. They too are companions of our joys and sorrows.

The long and winding road

 

    Early on in Frank Delaney's lovely new novel The Matchmaker of Kenmare the narrator, Ben McCarthy, asks for forgiveness from his audience for the digressions which will be a feature of the tale he is about to tell:

"It's a habit I picked up on the road. I spent most of my life listening to people telling me stories by their firesides, and those storytellers loved to digress; they wanted us to see not just the trees in the forest but the leaves on each tree."

Well, as the book progresses there is plenty of detail, but Frank Delaney is such a consummate storyteller that he never loses his way, never veers off, but keeps to his winding narrative highway, and delivers his characters - and his readers - to their destination in fine style. It's a story of journeying - both in the physical world and through the internal landscape of its central character - and its theme is neutrality, whether there really is such a thing (and particularly where relationships between men and women are concerned), or whether it's a cover for indecision or even cowardice.

    Ben travels round Ireland collecting stories for the Irish Folklore Commission and in the course of his work he meets the comely Kate Begley, known as The Matchmaker of Kenmare. Charged with recording her modus operandi, Ben observes Miss Begley as she makes suitable matches for the single people of the district, but his interest in her is more than just academic, and when she finds her own soulmate in the shape of an American army officer - for this is wartime, and though Ireland is neutral, it has its part to play - Ben is drawn into Miss Begley's future in a way he would never have imagined.

    Following on from the events of Venetia Kelly's Travelling Show, though you need not have read that book to pick up the threads of this one, it's a beautifully pitched, fluent story of charm, humour and some inspired - and even Homeric - touches. There's too much to it to go into fully here, but as I read, the image which came to mind was of the twinkly-eyed, alchemist-like Delaney, combining ingredients and elements in balanced measure to create this thoroughly involving, thought-provoking entertainment. At times whimsical and escapist, elsewhere painfully real and true to life, it is, as I said before, lovely stuff, and from the way it ends it would appear that there's a sequel in the offing. I do hope so.

The writer revealed

 

    Yesterday's mystery writer is none other than Sir Walter Scott, and the description with which I teased you came from Scott-land: The Man Who Invented A Nation by Stuart Kelly. Thanks to those who offered a guess, and now that you know who it is, are you surprised? It was an interesting combination.

    A few Scott-ish facts from the book before we leave the subject:

- Sir Walter received the first advance in literary history, 1,000 guineas for Marmion.

- He wrote 27 novels in 18 years (compared to Dickens' 16 in 34 years - slacker).

- Wherever he went he cut a piece of branch from a tree (he called this his log-book) and intended to have a set of chessmen made from them, "but this whimsical design design I never carried into execution".

- His influence in terms of the names of things extends to a football team - Edinburgh's Heart of Midlothian, a rose (R. Eglanteria) Anne of Geierstein, and the Waverley Camisole, as worn by Sienna Miller.