Cornflower Books

What we've been reading

  

     I've been looking again at all the comments on last Friday's post and noting a few things:

a couple of hitherto 'silent visitors' (I like that description better than 'lurker') gave their contribution, which is great and very much appreciated,

a number of our Book Group books have gone down sufficiently well to be listed among people's best books of the year, and that's gratifying,

other books mentioned here have been acquired, read and much enjoyed.

    Certain books cropped up again and again, listed as favourites:

The Help by Kathryn Stockett (I haven't read that one), Rosy Thornton's super new novel The Tapestry of Love (post on it here), of the classics, George Eliot's Middlemarch (I haven't read that, either - must do better, Cornflower), and lastly the recently published The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance by Edmund de Waal* (another one on my tbr list, if not the pile).

    My unplanned blog break (which was a bit like being locked out of your own house) meant some extra reading time which has enabled me to catch up somewhat after a recent slow patch. Posts to come on two good books, but for now I must go and get on with Elizabeth Taylor or there will be nothing but a blank space here on the 20th. Do keep giving us your best reads, though, even if it means (as it does now) that my wishlist is nearing the 500 mark.

*Edited to add: Edmund de Waal won the New Writer of the Year award at last night's Galaxy National Book Awards.

Remote and islanded

 

    I'd had Sarah Orne Jewett's The Country of the Pointed Firs in my sights for a while as so many visitors here had recommended it, and I'm not sure why I chose it as the first book for my Kindle except that it felt as though it would be a lovely way to begin a new reading experience, and so it proved to be.

    Less a novel and more a series of interlinked sketches of a fishing village on the Maine coast in the last years of the nineteenth century, its strengths seem to be in its author's heart and her feeling for what is inside a person: the inner life which may never be obvious but which informs so much. The unnamed narrator is a young woman who spends the summer in Dunnet Landing lodging with Mrs. Almira Todd, "landlady, herbgatherer and rustic philosopher", and through her she comes to know the small, isolated community and begins to hear the rhythms of its people's lives.

    This may sound a bit 'safe' and 'homely', for example, many events are remembered, referred to, not directly experienced within the narrative, so it's a book of recollections and observations, but the pen portraits of the people who feature show every line and mark of a life having been lived, and the stories told are every bit as affecting in their gentle, reminiscent style as if they'd been taking place, starkly, right in front of us.

     So we meet an elderly captain who had "overset his mind with too much reading" [a lesson to us all] whose voyage to the far north gives rise to strange experiences, and a widower fisherman who still mourns his wife but finds solace in his neat-as-a-pin home, and his off-season custom: "I lay in my winter's yarn an' set here where 'tis warm, and knit and take my comfort." There are others, too, who have grown to fit their lives, accepting, adapting and finding the peace that allows a settled existence.

     "In the life of each of us ... there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness; we are each the uncompanioned hermit and recluse of an hour or a day; we understand our fellows of the cell to whatever age of history they may belong."

    Nostalgic, comforting, heartening, this is a book to savour and return to.

K is for ...

      ... Karen's Kindle!

    An unexpected parcel arrived yesterday and it turned out to contain a late birthday present from the super-generous Mr. C. He had heard me enthuse about the Kindle after having a go with a friend's one and then reading what Barbara has to say about hers, and he ordered one for me. I am thrilled!

I haven't had long to play with it yet but I've downloaded my first book and used the bookmarking, highlighting and note-taking features. It is so easy to read (text size, etc. is adjustable) and to operate, and even in its case it is thinner than a paperback, and yet it has enormous capacity.

   I began last night by getting a sample (a lengthy one) of Sarah Orne Jewett's The Country of the Pointed Firs to try, and then having decided I wanted the whole book I pressed a button and it arrived a few seconds later - amazing!

   I'm off to sample a few more things and try out other features, but as you can tell, I am quite delighted with it and look forward to its extending my reading in all directions!

Five a day

 

    If I could read five books a day, think how quickly the piles would dwindle, but failing that I can at least introduce some of those I have waiting.

    From the top, the new novel from Peirene Press (whose Beside the Sea I read recently): Maria Barbal's Stone in a Landslide features a distinctive narrative voice and tells a life story in just over a hundred pages.

    A wee bit longer at a mere 914 pages (excluding introduction and notes) and a change from all the new books is Dickens' Bleak House which I won from Oxford World's Classics via Twitter. The London fog, the endless case of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce ... but truth is stranger than fiction, and I'll digress for a moment to tell you that I saw in the press last week that a case in which I was the instructing solicitor in the very early stages, has finally settled - only some twenty years after advice was first sought (and our client won!).

    Next comes The Water Theatre by Lindsay Clarke (have you read his Whitbread-winning novel The Chymical Wedding? I haven't, but it sounds intriguing). The new book is set in Umbria, where war reporter Martin Crowther returns to the small village of Fontanalba to track down two friends from his past, and where events will "shake the ground of Martin's life".

    The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli is "a tremendously evocative debut novel" about a photojournalist covering the Vietnam war; it's a love story, too, and a book with relevance to contemporary wars. "Quietly mesmerising" was how the New York Times described it.

  Lastly today is The Obscure Logic of the Heart by Priya Basil, a novel whose characters must choose between following their religion and the dictates of their heart, family ties and romantic leanings: "a devoted Muslim daughter, a secret relationship, an impossible dilemma...".

    I look forward to reading all of them.

In short

   

     It so happens that I have two collections of short stories on the go just now, Arthur Conan Doyle's The Complete Sherlock Holmes (you get plenty pages for your money with that one!) and The Pleasant Light of Day by Philip Ó Ceallaigh.

     I'm finding Holmes and Watson perfect bedtime reading, each story thoroughly engaging, of a straightforward but ingenious complexity, and each one neatly and satisfactorily complete. You might expect that Conan Doyle would need the scope of a novel to set out and solve his mysteries, and while there are much longer pieces in the collection, it is the 'small but perfectly formed' shorter ones I've begun with and have been reading with great pleasure.

    I'm not far enough on with Philip Ó Ceallaigh's book to make any definitive judgements - it might be fair to say he takes a bit of 'reading in' - but so far there has been a mixture of moods and settings, black humour and parody, though themes are already apparent. He's not nearly as gentle, as understated, as delicate even as Simon Van Booy in his short story collection  Love Begins in Winter (which I wrote about recently), so thus far is less appealing to me, but as with food, we must taste and see, and each story here is a strong, new flavour, a different class of 'bite'! 

Good lines: job description

 

     "My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people don't know."

From The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Cornflower Book Group - The Diary of a Nobody

    

    "I left the room with silent dignity, but caught my foot in the mat."

     How typical of Mr. Pooter, the subject of George and Weedon Grossmith's The Diary of a Nobody: prone to minor mishaps, so often the butt of the joke while yet taking himself so seriously. Self-righteous, self-important, his diary is caught on the coat-hook of social standing, the niceties and minutiae of an 'ordinary' life.

    We laugh at him, not at his attempts at wit and the situations from which he derives so much amusement, but at the fact that he acts as he does, and from that level we cringe also as he is put down yet again, but so often, despite his vulnerability, he has brought it all on himself.

    How modern the book is, though, with its account of the daily doings of a suburban everyman ("it's the diary that makes the man"), like the blog or Twitter of its day. Recognisable too are the Pooters' concerns over their son, Lupin, and the trials of living with that feckless young adult and all the generational differences - slang included - which that throws up; it has a relevance, a familiarity, which makes it bang up to date.

    Amidst the farce and slapstick and the running jokes there is considerable subtlety, social commentary and history, so it's an interesting read on many counts. Stylistically it's beautifully distinct - the Pooter voice -, though naming a character "Mr. Murray Posh" seemed almost a McCall Smith touch!

     Cultural icon, English archetype (as it says on the back of the book!), or pain in the neck? What did you think?

Current and future reading

     There's a space just now in the 'Current reading' list over there on the left as while I'm still enjoying Monty Don who is perfect for a slow page or two before sleep, I have no novel on the go because I've been waiting for this one to turn up (to meet a review deadline) and due to the postal strikes it still hasn't arrived. I can't pick up anything else meanwhile - if you see what I mean.

     But looking ahead a bit, it will soon be time to choose something for the Book Group to read over the end of the year to talk about in January. Our November and December books are here, but what shall we do next? I have a master list of suggested titles and things I've seen here and there which look as though they'd suit, so there's plenty to choose from, but I was thinking we might do something like a Wilkie Collins or a Dorothy L. Sayers (we haven't had detective fiction for a while) or maybe Raymond Chandler. What do you think?

Later: and on a different topic, have you read Amanda Craig's post on literary festivals from the author's point of view? Quite an eye-opener!

Derring-do

   

     I'm reading Rider Haggard's 1887 novel Allan Quatermain and greatly enjoying it! Quatermain is said to have been the basis for Indiana Jones, and here our hero and his companions are searching for a lost East African kingdom and facing all sorts of perils along the way. But there is plenty of stiff upper lip in evidence as they keep intact the English gentleman's fine reputation of honour and fearlessness. I've reached the point where the company must rescue a very plucky damsel in distress so I must go and read on!

Have you read any ripping yarns lately?