Cornflower Books

Cornflower Book Group 2011: Volume 6

 

    Apologies for being later than usual in posting the next CBG book, but it is a very short one so we should still have plenty of time to read it within the month.

    I've chosen Babette's Feast by Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen), one of her Anecdotes of Destiny, a mere 54 pages in the Penguin Mini Modern Classics edition. Here's the blurb:

"Babette's Feast is a sublime celebration of eating and drinking and sensual pleasure. In [this] life-affirming story, two elderly sisters living in a remote, god-fearing Norwegian community take in a mysterious refugee from Paris one night - and are rewarded for their kindness with the most decadent, luxurious feast of a lifetime."

   

    What drew me to it was reading the chapter on Karen Blixen and her house at Rungstedlung in Denmark in the lovely Writers' Houses book (post on it here), and specifically the passage on her love of flowers and her pleasure in entertaining:

"On days when she received guests, she rose at five in the morning to go out and gather flowers while they were still moist with dew. Composing bouquets became her passion, an activity from which she derived as much pleasure as painting. Karen loved to elaborate on her gift for entertaining, which required that parquets be polished to a glistening finish, that a fire be crackling in the hearth, that flowers perfume rooms that she had had repainted in different warm and subtle colours. The dinners were delicious: 'That woman is in the process of transforming a dinner at the Café Anglais into a sort of love affair,' says Colonel Galliffet in Babette's Feast."

    I wouldn't anticipate any difficulty getting hold of a copy of the book, but if you want to buy it online, The Book Depository (who also offer free worldwide delivery) have it slightly cheaper than Amazon - when I checked prices just now - and you can get a further 10% off all books there if you enter the code 'May11' at the checkout*.

    I hope this little book will appeal (apart from its literary merit I trust it will yield considerable material on which to base the Books and Cakes post!), and how about we put Saturday, 25th. June in the diary as discussion date?    

*NB If you read this post yesterday you'll have seen that the 'further 10% off everything' offer was originally open until the end of May, well The Book Depository have now extended it until Sunday, 5th. June, but the coupon code is still 'May11'.

Also, BR Wombat has kindly pointed out that the book is available in a Kindle edition.

Mind where you sit

    Reading The Miracle Of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh with its stress on doing things for their own sake and being present in the moment (I oversimplify, of course) has made me consider my reading habits, and specifically where I read and how that situation affects my concentration. I know I do too much at my desk, partly because I'm usually trying to accomplish several things at once anyway, and secondly because I often want to look up pertinent points as I read, so I have the computer on. Of course, this means I'm easily distracted as emails come in or I allow myself to get sidetracked by some other work, and I realise I'd benefit by being disciplined and getting out of harm's way, so today I've moved a couple of chairs and put an extremely comfy one in this spot, and the plan is to go and sit in it and do my reading there - radical, eh?

    Mindful of Mortimer Adler's caution, I'm after quality rather than quantity, that's to say my change of location is meant to help me read more attentively, rather than just read more. I hope it works.

Good lines: on reading

 

    "In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you."

    Mortimer J. Adler

(Has anyone read his How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading?).

Cornflower Book Group - Decline and Fall

 

    It's been years since I read any Waugh and I wasn't sure how Decline and Fall would suit me now, but I did find it very funny indeed and surprisingly interesting in terms of its themes and the way in which it prefigures his later work (says she as if she were currently up to speed with all that). I wonder how well the very black and very British humour travels - do readers abroad 'get' Waugh? He's certainly not politically correct, and I lost count of the number of ethnic or racial groups which were insulted along the way, but then he's quick to lampoon his own class and milieu as well, and generally ridicule the fashions of the period.

    The book is an attractive mix of farce and satire, social commentary and the absurd, the whole thing revolving round the slightly sketchy person of Paul Pennyfeather to whom 'things happen'. This passive/submissive figure, so unremarkable that later "a heavy moustache and his natural diffidence formed a complete disguise", is seemingly subject to the will of others and swept along by events, and is thus a means by which Waugh can give a sort of free-wheeling propulsion to the plot, and expound on so many subjects from modernism (the bizarre house, King's Thursday, and its architect Prof. Silenus) to public schools and prisons, a static/dynamic classification of people and even T.S. Eliot's 'still point of the turning world', before bringing Paul neatly full circle.

    At the time it was first published it must have been quite a debut; so many years later I still thoroughly enjoyed its madness and would like to revisit more of Waugh now. What did you think of it?  

 

    (The cake to go with Decline and Fall is here).

Fiction uncovered - a little more

   

    A few days ago I wrote a bit about the Fiction uncovered promotion, and today I've been discovering more about the books and authors featured there thanks to their new free app. Including interviews with the writers themselves and the judging panel behind the iniative, extracts from the books, and short essays such as 'Raising writers above the parapet' by Sarah Crown of The Guardian website's books pages and 'Nurturing a writer's career' by literary agent Hannah Westland, this is a useful additional resource.

Cornflower readers recommend: 2

    

    Over on Cornflower today there's a post by which people can swap recommendations and suggestions of 'good things' - all manner of things, in theory. Here, of course, it's books we do, but let's keep to that theme and offer each other any particularly good reads we've recently enjoyed.

    My recommendation today is Anthony Quinn's Half of the Human Race, a beautifully modulated and moving novel set in the early years of the twentieth century. Its main characters are a county cricketer, Will Maitland, a man of means whose background and upbringing leave him with certain expectations regarding a woman's place in the world, and Connie Callaway, an independent, intelligent young lady whose ambitions to become a doctor have been thwarted by her family's financial difficulties. Caught up in the increasingly militant suffragette movement, Connie has misgivings about the efficacy and morality of the tactics her colleagues employ, but nonetheless her own actions will test her principles and the strength of her attachment to Will. Then war breaks out, and Connie and Will are drawn even further apart...

    The novel evokes the period quite expertly, and while I knew something of the suffragettes and suffragists, there was detail here which both set the movement in context and showed its various facets to illuminating effect. What was also fascinating, I thought, was the county cricket setting, and one plotline connected with that which I shan't give away but which gave the book another dimension. All told, it's a very readable novel with a steady, even pace and a thoroughly engrossing story, and as such it's one of my favourites so far this year.

    That's my recommendation for the day - how about yours?

Books in the wild - seen or heard

    Have you ever discovered a book by eavesdropping - either unavoidably or perhaps more deliberately - on a conversation?

     Mr. C. was dining alone in London last week and couldn't help but hear a very animated discussion at a neighbouring table about the book On Guerrilla Gardening: A Handbook for Gardening without Boundaries by Richard Reynolds. He hadn't come across it before, but was quite intrigued by all he was inadvertently hearing about it from the couple opposite, so there's an idea, book publicists - go out and about in pairs and discuss the latest releases over coffee or a drink, with a copy of the book prominently on the table in front of you; you never know who may pick up the chat and pass it on!

    At the end of this post you'll find an overheard exchange about a book (yes, it was a book - the man himself wasn't in evidence!), but as to catching sight of books 'in the wild', I can't pass someone reading without surreptitiously trying to see the title or author. One instance I remember particularly was when the man I was sitting next to on a plane was reading The Da Vinci Code and making copious notes in the margins and marking lots of passages. The book hadn't been out very long then and I was only vaguely aware of it, but seeing how engrossed the chap obviously was - and it was all the annotating that did it - made me go and look it up at the first opportunity (I haven't read it yet, though).

Here again, Hare again

    Thankyou so much for all the Bill Bryson comments; one thing I love about having this blog is that no matter which author or book I mention, the extremely well-read Cornflower readership will have an informed opinion!

    I've had a very busy few days and they've been non-reading ones (apart from a page or two last thing at night) so I'm not back up to speed with things here, nor have I caught up with my email (apologies if you've written and not yet had a response). It's odd being out of my usual quite immersive reading routine and feeling a bit detached, but I shall work my way back to normal soon, I hope, although the first thing that must be tackled is the state of my desk as a recent huge influx of books have left it far from the uncluttered space it was quite recently, and like it, I'm 'all throughother', to use a good phrase.

    In book news, though, I see that the wonderful 'Hare'* has won another prize, and also on that shortlist was Patrick Barkham's The Butterfly Isles: A Summer In Search Of Our Emperors And Admirals which I have waiting and am very keen to read. I love that the Ondaatje Prize is for a distinguished work (fiction, non-fiction or poetry) which "evokes the spirit of a place" - there's something quite refreshing and very appealing about that as a criterion.

*If you haven't already seen it you may like to read Saturday's World of Edmund de Waal.

Have you read ... Bill Bryson?

 

    I see that Bill Bryson's At Home: A short history of private life will be out in paperback this week, and as he's a writer I've never read but have long intended to get to know, I wondered if I might start with that book. Notes From A Small Island - Bryson's view of Britain and the British - also appeals, as does Mother Tongue: The Story of the English Language.

    According to 'my sources', he is eclectic, wide-ranging, perceptive and very entertaining. Have you read him?

Good fiction uncovered

 

    I was very pleased to see that three books I've recently read and enjoyed enormously are among the eight announced today as those to be promoted under the Fiction uncovered initiative. You'll find the full list here, but 'my' three are Night Waking by Sarah Moss (post here), The Proof of Love by Catherine Hall (post on it here), and Disputed Land by Tim Pears (I've reviewed it elsewhere, but it did get a mention on Cornflower the other day due to its culinary content!). Of the other five books on the list, I have Lindsay Clarke's The Water Theatre waiting on the tbr pile, and it is certainly one I'm looking forward to. Let's hope that this promotion helps these books get the wide readership they deserve.

Mischievous thought for the day

    Does Virago founder Carmen Callil's resignation from the Man Booker International judging panel mean Philip Roth is 'below the Whipple line'?

Where are you?

 

    Where am I? As usual, I'm at home in Edinburgh.

    But where am I bookwise? I'm fifty miles to the west, in the Glasgow of 1888, attending the International Exhibition of Science, Art and Industry with a young lady named Harriet Baxter, and meeting the artist Ned Gillespie.

    How did I get to this site beside the River Kelvin, with its Doulton Fountain, Van Houten's Cocoa House, Dynamo Shed and display of the Queen's Jubilee Gifts? Through the pages of Gillespie and I* by Jane Harris which I'm enjoying enormously.

 

    Where are you (bookwise or otherwise)?

 

    *The book's lovely jacket was designed by Petra Börner, by the way.

Stories to savour

 

    When I posted that beautiful passage from Sue Gee's new collection of short stories the other day, Margaret commented that she favoured novels over short fiction as there's more 'to get your teeth into'. I know exactly what Margaret means, and hers is a common preference, but I've been thinking about that bias as I've reflected on the stories which make up Last Fling. If a novel is the equivalent of a full meal, a short story - a good one - is a perfect canapé or appetiser: a single mouthful that displays all the chef's skill in terms of balance of flavours and textures; and so it follows that reading a collection such as Sue Gee's is like choosing the menu de dégustation at a starred restaurant - each individual part which makes up the whole has its own distinct integrity, and taken together they not only satisfy but successively delight.

    Sue Gee's prose is marked by its clarity, and her new book exhibits that to fine effect. Every story is somehow turned to the light so that its characters' past, present and future are shown or reflected, and the internal weather of the lives we glimpse is subtly evident. Often, the subjects are artists, or the settings rural, and the mind's eye is given vivid images to take in; elsewhere, it's emotional insight and empathy which bring a scene to life and take our focus. Common themes are what was lost, or how and why happiness is always just out of reach, but there's also humour, and a typical delicacy to the writing which gives the collection resonance.

    As is obvious from the above, I loved the book, but whether or not you're already a fan of Sue Gee's novels, don't wait for her next one, The Tiger of Tulsipore (due in 2012), read her here in concentrated form and savour the experience.

Castaways' choice

        Musing just now on what would be our choice of book if we were to be the 'castaway' on Desert Island Discs (the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare are provided, you'll remember), Mr. C. said he'd most likely take some poetry, either Larkin or Auden, or if going for novels then perhaps Trollope.

    To see how popular those choices are among the castaways in the archive, I found you can search the programme's website (see the yellow box on the right there) by ticking 'Books and authors' and entering a name of a book or a writer and up will come all those who have chosen them - endless hours of fun!

    I searched for Nancy Mitford as I am a fan, and interestingly she comes up only twice, but chosen by just one person, as Susan Hill went for The Pursuit of Love when she was the guest in 1974 and 1996. I was amused at the book choice of Nancy's sister Deborah when she was on with her husband some years ago (click here and scroll down to the bottom and you'll see Debo's book listed first).

    What would I choose for my desert island reading? I don't know - I'd have to give it a lot more thought. How about you?   

Good lines: Wodehouse on the literary life

 

    "Bingo sat down and wrote a story about a little girl called Gwendoline and her cat Tibby. The idea being, of course, to publish it in Wee Tots and clean up.

    It was no easy task. Until he started on it he had no notion what blood, sweat and tears are demanded from the poor sap who takes a pop at the literary life, and a new admiration for Mrs Bingo awoke in him. Mrs Bingo, he knew, did her three thousand words a day without ricking a muscle, and to complete this Tibby number, though it ran only to about fifteen hundred, took him over a week, during which period he on several occasions as near as a toucher went off his onion."

From 'The Word in Season' in A Few Quick Ones.

    "One of those ghastly literary lunches. I don't know why I go to them ... This one was to honour Emma Lucille Agee who wrote that dirty novel that's been selling millions in America ... The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required ..."

From The Girl in Blue.

As found in Wodehouse Nuggets: An Anthology edited by Richard Usborne, a collection of nearly two thousand "nifty one-liners ... celebrating Wodehouse's inimitable style".

Associations

    When I was about ten years old, I used to sit on the window seat of my bedroom, looking out to sea, reading pony books and eating Caramac. So strong is the association of that phase of my reading life with that particular confectionery (it's not chocolate) that the two things are inextricably linked.

    Books by Ruby Ferguson (whose lovely Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary I've enjoyed in more recent years - there's a post on Lynne's and my 'tea' for the book here), the Pullein-Thompson sisters (their mother's Princes in the Land makes good but sobering reading) and Pat Smythe (did you ever read her Three Jays books?) - these were my staples at the time, devoured quickly, a new one being bought just as soon as my pocket money would stretch to it.

    I haven't tasted Caramac for years and years, but I'm about to broach the bar you see there and try it - it's not quite Proust's madeleine, but still. Meanwhile, here's the blurb on the back of my copy of A Stable for Jill: "During her summer holiday, Jill makes friends with two boys and a girl, and together they set up a hacking stable at the vicarage, using their own and borrowed ponies" - simple, straightforward, no hype, no puffs! (Glad to see there's a new edition).

    Anyone else have strong food/book associations?   

Histori-ography

 

 

    Through the letterbox yesterday, all the way from America, came something I'd long heard of but had never actually seen before - The Historical Novels Review, published twice yearly by The Historical Novel Society. This contains an impressive number of reviews of new historical fiction (arranged by period) and some non-fiction, and I anticipate many additions to my wishlist on the basis of its contents.

    But it was its companion publication, Solander - the magazine of the HNS, which I opened first because this issue includes an article by me! When I was asked, a couple of months ago, to write a profile of novelist D.J. Taylor I jumped at the chance because I love his books and relished the opportunity to find out more about the background to them and the person behind them.

    This turned out to be a very interesting piece to do, not least because, having the luxury of four pages to fill, there was scope for depth and detail that the blog and my other reviewing don't usually afford. David was a most helpful and co-operative subject, and deserves special thanks for the extra trouble he went to on my behalf to ensure I met my deadline!

    If you're a member of the society and have the magazine I hope you'll enjoy the article, From Seed-Corn to Harvest ..., otherwise, let me commend to you novels such as Kept: A Victorian Mystery, Ask Alice and At the Chime of a City Clock, and draw your attention to Derby Day which comes out next month.

This week, I shall mostly be reading ...

... all these:

Half of the Human Race by Anthony Quinn. I'm half way through this novel of cricket and suffragettes, and it's very good indeed.

The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party by Alexander McCall Smith. Book 12 in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender. A girl who can 'taste' the emotions with which food is imbued - interesting.

Disputed Land by Tim Pears. A family Christmas in the Welsh Marches and a question of inheritance arises.

The Sentimentalists by Johanna Skibsrud. This debut novel won Canada's Giller Prize last year.

I'd better go and get on.

Good lines: on marriage

 

    "In the great, enduring marriages, there is passion and also partnership and peace. This is how I imagine it to be. There is a to and fro of kindness and consideration which goes deep. I compare such marriages to great houses: with time to spare, you can wander from room to quiet room, follow cool corridors to spacious kitchens, lofty dining rooms, with a place at the table for everyone. There is a study where you can be by yourself, there are doors which lead out to the graceful garden, and paths to the contemplation of water. They wind past a shrubbery, through a rose garden, back to the house, where fires are lit in the evenings. The house holds its history; there is a future ahead of it; much care goes into its preservation.

    Great houses are rare, and few people live in them. Beyond their graceful gardens are wild, empty, uncultivated places, lonely and sometimes dangerous. The solid gate swings shut, keeping the fortunate safe. Those who are left outside it, with darkness falling, look about them fearfully."   

Outside the House, from the short story collection Last Fling by Sue Gee.

What the postie brought: 2

    I must be the only person in the world who has not read any Scandinavian crime, but when I saw this interview (part 1, 2 & 3) with Jussi Adler-Olsen the other day, something about his engaging manner made me want to correct that omission with his prize-winning novel Mercy.

    A politician went missing five years ago; everyone assumes she is dead, and searching for her is a waste of time, but Carl Mørck, head of the newly-created Department Q which deals with 'cases of special focus', thinks otherwise.

    This book has had massive sales in its native Denmark and in Germany and has now been translated into English for the first time. I'm looking forward to it.

(What the postie brought: 1 is here).