Cornflower Books

Good words: gallivanting

    "To go around from one place to another in the pursuit of pleasure and entertainment".

    I've been gallivanting - going to London and back in under 24 hours, popping into The London Library and a Wren church, attending a literary party, dining in a jewel of a private members' club in a tiny Georgian house hidden away up a narrow alley, visiting the British Museum (to see some of Mrs. Delany's work), spotting Brian Sewell, Grayson Perry and Andrew Graham-Dixon there, avoiding the cameras filming two of them, and all that in scorching heat the like of which we are not used to in Britain in late September!

    The main purpose of my visit was that party to celebrate Bloomsbury Books' 25th. birthday. I joined Simon and Elaine, we saw Grayson Perry (so that was twice in one day), Raymond Blanc, Paul Hollywood (from the Great British Bake-off!), and were there with many writers, agents and members of the publishing fraternity, not least our delightful hosts.

    My gallivant is over, my carriage has turned back into a pumpkin, and I'm sweeping the kitchen floor again. If anyone finds a glass slipper in that magical marquee in a Bloomsbury square, it'll be mine.  

Cornflower Book Group 2011: Volume 10

 

    I hope we'll have lots of people joining in with our November read because this book sounds like something we can really get our teeth into. Donna Tartt's 1992 bestseller The Secret History has been dubbed 'a modern classic': "compelling and elegant, dramatic and playful". This story of a group of classics students at an elite New England college is "a highly readable murder mystery; a romantic dream of doomed youth and a disquisition on ancient and modern mores"; praise has been heaped on it and it has sold in millions. 

    A thriller, a comedy of manners - so accomplished "it takes my breath away", says Ruth Rendell - while Vanity Fair describes it as " a huge, mesmerizing, galloping read ... gorgeously written, relentlessly erudite."

    I'm glad to hear it's "galloping" as it's quite a long book, over 600 pages in the Penguin paperback shown here, but we're not daunted by long books, are we? Remember South Riding! However, let's give ourselves plenty of time to read it, and set our discussion date for Saturday, 26th. November. There doesn't appear to be an e-book version of the novel, but in paper form it should be widely available in libraries, shops and online retailers, so get your copies now, and let's hope for a cracking good read!

Two things

    Recent comments and emails have raised a couple of points which I thought I ought to clarify. 

1. If you want to search the site for a post on a particular book, the best way is this: look at the right hand sidebar and you'll see the second item from the top is The Reading Map and links to all reviews; if you click on the text under the line you'll find yourself on blog number 3 where there is a list of almost all the books reviewed to date, arranged alphabetically by author, and clicking on any one will take you to the relevant post. (I may well bring that list over to this site if I have to jettison other content to improve loading speed, but for the moment it will stay where it is). If a book hasn't had a review post as such, it won't appear in the list, though if it's been mentioned in passing you could search for it by category - see left hand sidebar.

    Also on the subject of The Reading Map, I'd intended to have another map up long before now, but other things have had to take priority.

2.  Regular readers most likely already know the genesis and raison d'être of Cornflower Books, but a lot of authors and publishers who contact me seem to be under the impression that this is solely a book group site, that everything read and talked about here has been a group read. That is not so! Once a month, the very informal Cornflower Book Group meets on these pages to talk about a book, one that has been announced a few weeks beforehand. Anyone is welcome to join in, and there is no commitment to read all or even most of the books we cover as you can dip in one month and dip out the next as you wish  - by the way, I hope to post our November title later today. Apart from that monthly group discussion, everything else on the site, with the exception of some miscellaneous items, is to do with my own reading, whether that is a book I've taken from my own shelves, one I'm reading for a review or article commissioned by a periodical, or something I've been sent by a publisher or author in the hope that I may care to feature it here.

    If you have a question relating to the above or any other aspect of the site, please ask!

Before I roll up my sleeves ...

    You'll no doubt have read Lynne's recent posts about slow loading time at Dovegreyreader and the changes she's made to solve the problem. Speaking to Lynne about it over the weekend I blithely said that I thought all was well with the Cornflower sites as no one had told me otherwise and I had no problems at all with them myself, but it seems I spoke too soon! I got an email from a reader reporting her frustrating attempts to get on to the sites, and that's despite having a high speed internet connection and helping things along with cache-clearing and the like, so of course while I'm puzzled as to how it can be fast for one person and slow for another (with no obvious differences in equipment or technology to account for that), I must do what I can to improve matters.

    Before I roll up my sleeves to tackle this, would you all be so kind as to tell me what your experience of accessing the site is - there's an indentical post to this one on Cornflower, and if you typically visit both sites, I'd be much obliged if you'd leave a quick comment on each one as this will help me to know what, if anything, I have to change. Roughly how long does the site take to load? Do you find that images delay it? Are you ever timed-out? Which browser do you use? If things are slow, do you find similar slowness with other sites, or is it just here? Anything else that may be relevant?

    Many thanks in advance for your help.  

Literary links

 

    - Poetry & Printmakers: Faber & Faber's new Romantics poetry series has covers and endpapers designed by printmakers including Angie Lewin.  

 

    

    - Flyleaf: Young artists aged 13-16 may like to enter the competition to design a new cover for William Golding's Lord of the Flies. There's advice from an art director here, and a cover gallery here.

 

 

    - Cry Woolf: Just out is Virginia Woolf, a new biography by Alexandra Harris (whose Romantic Moderns is firmly on my non-fiction favourites list), "a wonderfully perceptive, unpretentious study which is pacy in style, riveting in content and perfectly accessible to the most obdurate Woolf-avoider".

Cornflower Book Group - A Wizard of Earthsea

 

    A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin is the first work of fantasy that the CBG has read, and the first one I have picked up in quite a long time. That I rarely choose that genre is not down to deliberate omission or a dislike for it, though, and after a slowish start I found I was soon wrapped up in the Earthsea world and glad to return to it each day - it was welcome escapism for me.

    I loved the book's setting; a vast archipelago, each island physically different and distinct in nature, its people likewise, and the maritime elements, the boats (have we identified Ged's craft Lookfar?), the weather's influence, all this made a strong impression. Then there was the central theme, Sparrowhawk/Ged's journey along "the way of magery" which seemed at first "a broad, bright road", but then "as a man's real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing, but does only and wholly what he must do ...".

    Ged learns a powerful lesson as he first runs from and then hunts the shadow he inadvertently summoned in a moment of over-reaching pride and hatred - the evil he loosed as a result of his arrogance and ignorance. His quest is a rite of passage, and clearly the foundation for his fate in the rest of The Earthsea Quartet, but I was also taken with Ursula Le Guin's stress on the importance of language and the naming of things, likewise on "Equilibrium" and "the Pattern", and on how "a wizard's power of Changing and of Summoning can shake the balance of the world"; the wisdom of it appealed to me.

    Having now read this first volume of the series, would I read more? Certainly.

    How about you?

A den of one's own

 

    I'm delighted to welcome Helen Moss, author of the Adventure Island mysteries, to Cornflower Books today. As the writer of a series of books which are bound to appeal to anyone who has loved Enid Blyton's Famous Five, it's perhaps no surprise that for this special post for us, Helen has chosen dens as her subject. Speaking as the owner/occupier of many dens in my time (come to think of it, my study is probably the grown-up version), I can certainly relate to what Helen and her characters feel about their special hideaways.

    Over now to our guest author:-

     "The desire to build a den must be an innate childhood instinct. I lived on a farm for much of my childhood, and together with my brother, sister and friends, constructed a never-ending assortment:  excavations under piles of straw bales in the barn, shanties cobbled together from sheets of corrugated iron at the back of the pig-sty, hidey holes under the bridge across the stream, tree-houses of every shape and size, and even a den in the back of a vintage fire engine that had been left in the farmyard (the farm owner had a whim to open a museum of old machinery and had then gone off the idea; hence we had a pony and trap and several threshing machines to play on too).  In the winter we’d build indoor dens in the maze of old attics and cellars.  Even a blanket over the kitchen table would do in a pinch.

    In all cases, the urge was for a special, secret, adult-free zone, that we could kit out with scavenged sticks of furniture, and look-out posts, along with fortifications in case of attack by unnamed enemy forces. The ideal den combined the cosily domestic (we could use this rusty old tin for a teapot!) and the disturbingly savage (if we sharpen these sticks and place them in this hole, it’d make a perfect man-trap!).

    My in-depth research (aka asking my friends) reveals that I’m not alone. Almost everyone recalls their childhood den with dreamy nostalgia. The abandoned building site/dead tree near the quarry/shed in the back garden of the empty house next door/derelict  caravan...they are all remembered in loving detail.

     And nothing much has changed. My sons and their friends have spent years constructing (and destroying) a sequence of ever more ambitious and complicated dens in the fields near our house. Here an ash tree undergoes a total makeover, transforming into a delightful home-from-home-slash-military-base.

    In the Adventure Island series, I’ve tried to capture this primordial desire by bestowing upon Emily, Jack and Scott, some great dens (although they refer to them as hideouts or Headquarters for the various investigations they are conducting). In The Mystery of the Whistling Caves, the HQ is in one of the towers of the ruined castle. In later books in the series, dens include the branches of a huge oak tree in the park, and an old tree house, hidden and forgotten about for a generation, until rediscovered by Jack.

    As a child I always longed for a den inside a hollow tree. This was partly inspired by an Enid Blyton book called Hollow Tree House, in which two children run away from their mean aunt’s house to live alone in a hollow tree.  It all sounded so enticing! If my parents were ever cruel enough to make me eat fried liver again, or forced me to tidy my bedroom one more time, I was so ready to run away – if only I could find the perfect hollow tree. It’s probably a good thing I never did. At least, not until many years later; I found it in a forest in Shropshire just a few months ago.  Surely this enormous old tree is crying out for a runaway child to take up residence. Or maybe even a runaway Mum!

    And then I thought, I bet Jack, Scott and Emily would like a den  (sorry, HQ) in a hollow tree too. So, in Book Eight (which I’ve just written, and will be out next Spring), I gave them one of their own.

    Here is a sneak preview!

A lightning strike had split the ancient tree down the middle, but over the years the two halves had fused together to form a perfect circular room...rustling leaves formed a canopy over the open roof, dappling the light inside like leopard skin. The bulges on the inner wall of the gnarled tree trunk made perfect seats – all covered in bright green moss, as soft and springy as velvet cushions.

‘Cool,’ Scott said, climbing up inside the hollow to a hole that came out on a wide branch. ‘You can see right across the moor to the causeway here.’

     And then, to my joy, the wonderful Adventure Island illustrator, Leo Hartas, captured the magic of the hollow tree den in a beautiful line drawing.

    Doesn’t this just make you want to leave home and move in!

    Being able to invent the hollow tree den of my dreams is just one of the many reasons I love writing children’s books!"

 

    Very many thanks to Helen for her lovely piece and photographs, and for reminding me of the dens of my youth (the first of which was in a hollow-centred shrub of some kind on the spit of headland overlooking the rocks and sea here - what fun I had!).

    Did you have a den when you were younger, or perhaps you have one even now?

Books in brief

    A new P.D. James novel is something to look forward to, and her next one will be published on 3rd. November, but this book marks something of a departure for her: Death Comes to Pemberley recreates the world of Pride and Prejudice but sets a murder at its heart! "Brilliant" in idea and execution, "elegant, intelligent and moving" - full details here.

    I for one can't wait.

                                ~~~~~

    Whether or not there's a body in it, the library at Pemberley must house many beautifully bound books with marbled endpapers and fine gold tooling - a gentleman of means would have had nothing less. The craft of bookbinding is of course alive and well today, but have a look at the site of Master Bookbinder David Lalubin to see bespoke pieces (click the silver 'edge of the page' there to continue) which are works of art in themselves. Mr. Darcy would have had nothing like them!

Slim volumes

 

    Here's my reading over the next week or so, four slim volumes beginning with Jonathan Lee's Who is Mr Satoshi? - a "uniquely inventive story" combining several interlocking mysteries which span a sixty year period, all set in train by a package addressed to a Mr. Satoshi found by reclusive photographer Rob Fossick among his mother's possessions on the day she dies. So begins a quest ...

   "A triptych of beautifully crafted novellas make up Anita Desai's exquisite new book" The Artist of Disappearance. Set in modern India, the stories "move beyond the cities to places still haunted by the past, and to characters who are [...] masters of self-effacement." I've not read Anita Desai before and I'm particularly looking forward to this book.

    Next comes The Cold Eye of Heaven by Christine Dwyer Hickey, a story of Dublin and of a Dubliner, Farley, who has lived in the city all his seventy five years. Collapsed and barely able to move one snowy day, Farley's mind begins to rove and he recalls his past in this novel which is "epic in scope, rich in detail and shot through with black humour".

    Lastly, The Forgotten Affairs of Youth by Alexander McCall Smith, and though I've yet to read this, a quick flick through is enough for me to be able to commend Isabel Dalhousie's choice of professional advisers, especially the practitioner of "the dark arts" who first appears in the middle of chapter 5; he is not unknown to me...

A library

 

 

    "To add a library to a house is to give that house a soul."  Cicero.

 

    Pictured is Vita Sackville-West's tower library at Sissinghurst.

 

    (Readers who go a long way back may remember that it was a Vita Sackville-West novel with which we inaugurated the Cornflower Book Group; given its date, it's possible that Vita wrote All Passion Spent* in that room.

*(I like the pretty new cover).

And the winners are ...

 

    Thankyou to everyone who entered our recent draws and gave us so many animal books and favourite childhood books in the comments on those posts. I've pulled a couple of names out of the hat (I use the random number generator, having listed and numbered all the comments as they come in), and the winners of the two novels I had to give away are ....

    ... Jade, who gets Carol Birch's Booker contender Jamrach's Menagerie,

    and Catherine, who has won a signed copy of the outstanding The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. 

    The prizes will be in the post shortly, and I hope the recipients will enjoy them.

                                       ~~~~~

    In other news, and speaking of enjoying things, I had the great pleasure of meeting Sara Sheridan today. We had a lengthy and fascinating discussion about historical fiction in general and Sara's books - The Secret Mandarin and Secret of the Sands in particular, and when I've organised my notes in a more coherent fashion, I'll be able to tell you more. Judging by the many things she does in addition to writing novels (of which she has several in progress at different stages), Sara must have access to more than 24 hours every day, or to a source of limitless energy. Whatever her secret, she is quite inspiring!

Here's where I get it from

     

    "A real escapist treat of a book" - Cornflower.

    "I couldn't put it down!" - Cornflower's mum.

    I pass on to my mum a lot of the books I've enjoyed as she's an avid reader, and I can usually judge pretty well what will be to her taste. Recently I gave her The Kashmir Shawl by Rosie Thomas (post on it here), and she handed it back to me today with the above comment. She loved it and she says it made her want to follow the main characters' trail to India and Kashmir and see Srinagar for herself.

    I'm always glad when something I've liked gets Mum's seal of approval because apart from the fact that it's good when a book has that cross-generational appeal, she has a keen critical eye - and she's the one who sparked my passion for books.

    What drew you to books in the first place? Was it being read to by a parent or grandparent? A teacher who inspired you? A single book, perhaps, that so appealed that a whole world then opened up for you?

Mantel piece

 

    Hilary Mantel on the act of writing:

    "I never take for granted that anything is going to come right, so every day I'm writing I feel like a beginner. There are absolutely no guarantees that because you could do it yesterday you can do it today. You can always write something, but sometimes you have to endure barren days when you're just plodding across the terrain going 'subject, verb, object, subject, verb, object' - it will actually carry you there and give you something to work on, but at the time it can feel like the end of the world because you're going so slowly, as if you've forgotten everything you've ever learned. I do have faith though that given enough input, just given enough graft, eventually it will take off and you will see that fleeting shape of a section in front of you and you'll be able to grab it - get it onto the page; that's very like chasing a ghost. It already exists, you see, it's like the sculpture in the marble, the ideal shape and form of the chapter exists; you've just got to be there to grab it quickly."

From The Culture Show Special, produced and directed by James Runcie.

Friday reads

 

    We haven't had a Friday reads post for quite a while so let's have one today - just tell us what you're currently reading, and if you like, how you're getting on with it.

    I have three books on the go at present: A Wizard of Earthsea, this month's CBG book, and although I'm still in the early stages I'm finding it good bedtime reading; on the Kindle there is Lyndall Gordon's Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds (which is also available in paperback) and which again I'm not very far into, and lastly The Secret Mandarin, another excellent historical novel by Sara Sheridan whose Secret of the Sands I read earlier in the year and greatly enjoyed.

    So, what are you reading this Friday?

Cornflower in conversation with Madeline Miller

    I mentioned yesterday that Madeline Miller, author of the acclaimed The Song of Achilles, was to be in Edinburgh briefly for a bookshop event. Although this is a flying visit for her, I got the chance to meet her this morning for a private chat over coffee, and I'm so glad I did because what a delight she is!

   We talked of many bookish things including what has influenced her writing and, fascinatingly, her book's gestation. An interest in Ancient Greek culture stemming from childhood visits to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, and an ear for the epic tales of Homer, read to her by her mother at bedtime, sowed the seeds of her love of the classics, seeds which have flowered by way of a teaching career and now a major work of fiction - a re-telling of the story of Achilles, Patroclus and the Trojan War.

    Ten years in the making, Madeline's book is testament to a philosophy of rigorous refinement. She says she spent the first eight years 'essaying': writing and rejecting much of what she wrote, constantly editing, eventually finding her voice, and then from the material she had so patiently assembled, producing the novel as such in two years. She pays tribute to the friends who were trustworthy, sensitive critics at that time, and she says that enforced breaks away from her work to concentrate on her teaching commitments meant that she would come back to the page with a fresh eye, able to spot flaws and cut or polish as necessary.

    Madeline is a great admirer of Ann Patchett's work, and we discussed her essay/memoir on writing, The Getaway Car, in which, among many pieces of sound advice to the aspiring writer, she says "Art stands on the shoulders of craft, which means that to get to the art, you must master the craft. If you want to write, practise writing ..." [this post made a similar point], and "Novel writing is like channel swimming: a slow and steady stroke over a long distance in a cold, dark sea. If I thought too much about how far I'd come or the distance I still had to cover, I'd sink." Madeline herself had read somewhere that a novelist has to get ten million words down on the page before they can really start writing (she says the exact quotation may be ten thousand words, but in her case it was more like ten million!).

    We went on to talk about the influences on her writing, and these were not just favourite books but works from which she had learned 'how it's done', writers whose mastery of craft produced art. Virgil's The Aeneid was an early example, then on to Richard Adams' Watership Down; David Mitchell is there as is Ann Patchett, as I've said, and Barbara Kingsolver. Donna Tartt's The Secret History makes this list for its "authority and audacity", as does John Updike's Gertrude And Claudius, the book which shows the power of a literary re-telling. For practical advice on writing and the publishing business, Madeline highly recommends The Forest for the Trees: An Editor's Advice to Writers by Betsy Lerner.

    As to current reading, Madeline's very much enjoying George Eliot's Middlemarch  and A.S. Byatt's latest book Ragnarok: the End of the Gods while under 'current writing', let's just say that she's looking at Homer, but with a view to putting a female character centre stage this time.

    Before I left Madeline, she kindly signed a copy of her novel (see above) and I have it here to give away. I can post it anywhere in the world - American readers may like to note that it won't be published in the US until next March, so here's your chance to get it ahead of time - and all you have to do to put your name in the hat is leave a comment on this post giving the name of one of your own favourite childhood books, something of which you have particularly fond memories.

    One last thing, and this is specially for you, Sandy - I told Madeline that you'd said in your comment that there was something you'd like to have asked her had you had the chance, and she said she'd be delighted to hear from you, so by all means contact her via her website.

    I was sorry to have to say goodbye to Madeline who was just a joy to meet, but I hope she'll come back to Scotland before long, and if she's appearing anywhere near you over the next few months, do take the chance to go and hear her talk about her work. Meanwhile, please enter the draw to win that signed copy of The Song of Achilles (about which there's more here). 

Meet the author

    If you read this post of three weeks ago, you'll know that I found The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller quite breathtaking. 

    Madeline is currently on tour, and happily for us she is coming to Edinburgh where she will be reading at the George Street branch of Waterstone's tomorrow evening (the 14th.) at 6.30 - details here - so go and hear her if you can. London readers can meet her on Thursday, 15th. September at Clerkenwell Tales, Exmouth Market (very handy for the scrumptious Moro!).

Libraries, lists and a whisper of a Whipple

    Nutkin, my squirrel letter rack or 'to do' list holder which has come all the way from Australia (thankyou, Kirsty), is shown here with two Persephone bookmarks for books which will be out next month - one of them is Greenbanks by Dorothy Whipple!

    I don't know whether Alan Bennett is a fan of Mrs. Whipple's - I wouldn't be surprised to hear he is - but this morning I've been reading his recent article on libraries which is very much worth a look if you have a few minutes to spare. The bit about Cecil Woodham-Smith tickled me particularly.

    From libraries to lists of books, and you may be interested to see the top 100 titles nominated for next year's World Book Night; I'm pleased that one of my absolute favourites is right up there. Nominations aren't closed, though, and if you click here you can see the interactive list and follow the link to suggest your own favourites.  

If the title fits ...

    A bit of fun and silliness to start the week in the shape of a meme from Simon, the idea being that you complete the sentences below using titles of books you've read this year. Do have a go, either on your own blog or here in comments if you have any especially fitting ones.

  One time on holiday: Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

 

Weekends at my house are: Behind Closed Doors

My neighbour is: My Friend Monica

My boss is: The Old Romantic

My superhero secret identity is: A Vision of Loveliness

You wouldn't like me when I'm angry because: I am the Blade

I'd win a gold medal in: Night Waking

 
I'd pay good money for: The Kashmir Shawl

If I were Prime Minister I would: (be) Getting Things Done

When I don't have good books, I: Decline and Fall

Loud talkers at the cinema should be: Civil to Strangers

A date for your diary

 

 

    If, like me, you're a fan of Hilary Mantel's work, then I'm sure you'll want to watch a BBC Culture Show Special of which she is the subject, to be broadcast next Saturday, 17th. September on BBC2 at 8.00pm - more details here. I wonder if we'll get an indication of the publication date for the Wolf Hall sequel.

Bedside manner

 

    Last month I read Louise Levene's first novel A Vision of Loveliness, and I thought it was extremely well done, though I do agree with Litlove's comment (on this post) about the overall tone grating after a while. However, neither that nor the relative lack of plot put me off picking up the author's second book, and this one, Ghastly Business, is superb!

    It's set in London in 1929 when young Dora Strang, denied the chance of becoming a doctor by her Harley Street physician father who considers medicine an unsuitable career for a woman, and - it must be said - by a lack of ability on her part, takes a job as secretary to the eminent pathologist Dr. Alfred Kemble. As she types up the notes of his post mortem findings, sits in on his morbid anatomy lectures and assists with his forensic enquiries, she finds her strong stomach and all her early reading of her father's medical textbooks standing her in good stead. She's resourceful, professional, and having won the school cup for "Good Manners under Difficult Circumstances", is rarely thrown by the somewhat peculiar nature of the work she is called upon to do.

    Kemble himself is quite the boss. The Big White Chief of the hospital, he is something of a celebrity as far as the newspapers are concerned as his appearances as expert witness in so many murder trials have raised his profile far beyond the laboratory. He is dashing, handsome, distinguished, and having a rather unconventional bedside manner, shall we say, is an embodiment of Dora's colourful fantasies, but when even his wife describes him as "ghastly", this cannot bode well.

    If you don't mind the fairly grisly subject-matter (you'll learn a lot about 1920s medical procedures here) then there is much to love about this book. It's stylish, witty, written with brio, and there are so many good lines which show off Louise Levene's flair for a well-turned phrase or a gimlet-eyed observation, while characters, even minor ones, are pinned to the page in mercilessly exact fashion, rather like butterflies preserved in a specimen drawer. In addition, there's the research - beautifully placed detail setting the book firmly in time and place and social milieu (a very strong feature of A Vision of Loveliness, too), so all in all it's a seamless, perfectly paced piece of work, highly accomplished and great fun!