2009 – My Books of the Year – It’s a Long List!

I tried to do a top 10, but I just couldn’t do it. So many wonderful books that I just couldn’t leave out. Same problem when I tried a top 20. And so what follows is my top 25. And every one is a gem.

THE PICTURES

THE TITLES (& LINKS)

Marraine: A Portrait of my Godmother by Oriel Malet
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
The Red House Mystery by A. A. Milne
The Great Western Beach by Emma Smith
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
Doreen by Barbara Noble
South Riding by Winifred Holtby
The Herring Seller’s Apprentice by L C Tyler
True Murder by Yaba Badoe
The Solitude of Thomas Cave by Georgina Harding
The Doves of Venus by Olivia Manning
The Captain’s Wife by Eilunned Lewis
High Wages by Dorothy Whipple
Among The Mad by Jacqueline Winspear
Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen by Fay Weldon
Paul Ferroll by Caroline Clive
Tales of Terror from the Black Ship by Chris Priestley
The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa
Chess by Stefan Zweig
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Night Thoughts of a Country Landlady: Being the Pacific Experiences of Miss Emma Nightingale in Time of War presented by Edith Olivier and illustrated by Rex Whistler
London War Notes 1939 to 1945 by Mollie Panter-Downes
The Boy with the Cuckoo-clock Heart by Mathias Malzieu
The Girl With Glass Feet by Ali Shaw

No stats – one of my resolutions for the year was no counting and I’m sticking to it.

All I’m going to say is that I’ve had a great reading year!

My Art History Reading Challenge Completed – with a very local book – the final challenge of 2009!

The Art History Reading Challenge asked you to read six books, of any kind, about art.

I wanted to focus on woman artists and local art – and that has taken me on a lovely journey. Here’s the list:

Laura Knight by Caroline Fox

The story of maybe the most famous woman artist to pass through Cornwall. I love her work and I’m looking forward to starting on her two volumes of autobiography before too long.

An Equal Stillness by Francesca Kay

A fictional biography of a 20th century woman artists. It has some quite extraordinary descriptions of art and was a very worthy winner of The Orange Award for new writers earlier this year.

Arthur Rackham: a Life With Illustration by James Hamilton

I have always loved Arthur Rackham’s illustrations from a very early age, and so when I saw this in the library I had to bring it up. A thorough and well-written autobiography and masses of wonderful illustrations. What more could you want?!

Moon Behind Clouds: An Introduction to the life and work of Sir Claude Francis Barry by Katie Campbell

When I look on the library shelves dedicated to local artists I can usually place all of the names. But not this one, and so I picked up the book. I discovered a colourful body of work – and a colourful life.

Norman Garstin: Irishman and Newlyn Artist by Richard Pryke

Who was the man who painted the defining picture of my home town? I found the answer in a wonderful biography and discovered much more of his work.

Drawn Here by Mary Fletcher

This one caught my eye on the new books shelf in the library. And it’s a book that I would probably never have seen or known about if the art collection for the county wasn’t housed in my local library. It’s self-published you see. Number 30 of a limited edition of just 36.

For two weeks in September 2008 during the St Ives Arts Festival Mary Fletcher met with a range of people who came to her to be sketched and to talk about their roots and where and why they had travelled.

A wide range of people: locals, people who had moved to the area from far and wide, visitors from home and abroad who were passing through. The St Ives Arts Festival attracts a remarkable range of people!

They took away the original sketch, while she kept a carbon copy and notes of what had been said.

This book is compiled from those sketches and notes. That’s all. The sketches are just a few lines. The words are equally brief. And yet it’s enough.

It’s book to remind you that publishing doesn’t have to be remote and corporate. It can be small and local. And that art doesn’t have to be grand. It can be quiet and personal. And, maybe most importantly, that everyone has a story to tell.

Thanks are due to Sarah for hosting The Art History Reading Challenge. I’ll definitely be continuing my forays into the library’s art collection.

Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman – and a challenge completed

 

I must confess that a year ago, when I discovered Carrie’s Essay Reading Challenge, one of the first things I thought was that it would be the perfect excuse for ordering a copy of Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman – it had been on my wish list for ages.

I signed up for 20 essays and I placed my order.

The book duly arrived, and I tucked it away so that it would be a treat for Christmas and a conclusion to a challenge.

Earlier this year I read 6 lovely essays by Virginia Woolf in The London Scene. And then I listened to 5 authors’ essays about Edgar Allen Poe, courtesy of BBC Radio 4. So now I have read 18 in Ex Libris I have a total of 29. Target exceeded!

And Ex Libris was a joy!

Writings about books and closely related subjects. Written with love and joy. And with wit and erudition.

I was smitten from the very first essay, It’s a lovely account of the writer and her husband finally deciding to combine their separate libraries – the ultimate proof of true love.

It soon becomes clear that all of the family love books, and that brings a wonderful warmth to many of the essays

Like the one that really hooked me. How do you a page? Do you mark it with a bookmark? What sort? Or do you simply leave the book face down? What does that say about what kind of person, what kind of reader you are? I do both – what does that say about me I wonder?!

Then there’s ‘Odd Shelf’. The books that seem unconnected to the rest of your reading and that maybe say a lot about you – I have to think about that one!

Wonderful words about inscriptions – I love them – and so much more.

Anne Fadiman is clearly much more educated than me and she reads very different books, but that matter not at all. Her  love of books and reading carry the day, and they make this volume a sheer delight.

I’ve loved all of my essays this year and I’ll definitely be reading more next year – another volume of Anne Fadiman’s writing is already on order.

Thank you Carrie !

2009: A Year in the Library … and a Year in the Pub

Let’s start in the library.

J. Kaye from J. Kaye’s Book Blog hosted the 2009 Support Your Local Library Challenge.

You could commit to reading 12, 25 or 50 library books in 2009. I went for the maximum, and I knew it wouldn’t be a problem.

Here are a few reasons why I love  libraries:

• I am lucky to have a good public library service – I can order any book in the county or in a large reserve stock for just 50p.
• I also belong to the wonderful Morrab Library. There are only 19 private subscription libraries in the UK and this one is just a few minutes walk from home.
• I can still visualise where my favourite books were in the library when I was a child.
• Without libraries I wouldn’t be able to read anything like as widely as I do.
• I pass the library as I walk home from work. A little look around the shelves after a difficult day is wonderfully theraputic!
• I like to think I can influence what the library stocks by ordering and borrowing books. I have been known to borrow under-borrowed books that I own to help their statistics.
• Don’t book lovers have a duty to support libraries? If we don’t we can’t assume they will still be there and then how will people who can’t afford to buy books read and how will other people discover books?
• I first met my fiancé in the library!

I’ve  read 106 library books this year.

Some wonderful new authors and a few books that I hadn’t heard of until I saw them on the shelves.

I’ve added some to my shelves since, there are more I’d like to.

And I’ve uncovered a few put of print gems.

The full  list is here.

And so to the pub

The 2009 Pub Challenge was hosted by Michelle at 1morechapter.com.

Read at least nine books published for the first time in your country in 2009. I’ve done 3 rounds – 27 books.

Here they are:

ROUND 1

• The Island at the end of the World by Sam Taylor
• The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry
• The Paris Enigma by Pablo de Santis
• The Girl Who Played With Fire by Steig Larsson
• Henry: Virtuous Prince by David Starkey
• True Murder by Yaba Badoe *
• A Very Persistent Illusion by L C Tyler
• The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
• Leaving The World by Douglas Kennedy

ROUND 2

• Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro
• The Spy Game by Georgina Harding *
• The Alchemy of Murder by Carol McCleary
• Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
• Ten Little Herrings by L C Tyler *
• Hammer by Sara Stockridge
• Angels With Two Faces by Nicola Upson
• The Best of Men by Claire Letemendia
• Among The Mad by Jacqueline Winspear *

ROUND 3

• The Owl Killers by Karen Maitland
• Kisses on a Postcard by Terence Frisby *
• The Rapture by Liz Jensen
• The Finest Type of English Womanhood by Rachel Heath
• Stone’s Fall by Ian Pears
• The Boy with the Cuckoo-clock Heart by Mathias Malzieu *
• The Girl With Glass Feet by Ali Shaw *
• Dancing With Mr Darcy: stories inspired by Jane Austen & Chawton House *
• Thaw by Fiona Robyn

(There are a few more I’ve read but not written about yet and, I suspect, a couple I’ve missed.)

Some great books – the ones I’ve starred are la creme de la creme!

I Will Not Serve by Eveline Mahyère – and a challenge completed

Virago Modern Classic #142

In 1957 Eveline Mahyère died by her own hand. The was thirty-two and she he left behind this, her only novel.

It is an extraordinarily vivid piece of work.

Sylvie is seventeen years old. She is bright, but she is also rebellious and impetuous. And she has been expelled from her convent school just three months before she is due to take her Baccalaureate.

Why? Because Sylvie has fallen passionately and obsessively in love with Julienne. A nun, and her teacher.

“I shall only discover my life through you Julienne, and thanks to you. It’s been said only too often that love is the main preoccupation of women. But, for me, love is you.”

Set adrift, Sylvies’ feelings for Julienne grow. The love of God that was encouraged in the convent has come to life in Sylvie. Not though as love for God. As love for Julienne. Sylvie veers between ecstacy and despair.

“What could a passer-by do – come to her aid, take her to hospital? No charitable sould could have understood the absence of Julienne. People pity a man who falls from scaffolding, a woman who loses her husband. Because they suffer? No, because they have the right to suffer.”

And Julienne? How does she respond? First she follows the counsel of herconvent and remains silent. But as Sylvie persists she reaches out to her and tries to help. But does she really understand? Can she really help Sylvie?

It seems not.

Sylvie’s story is evocative and oh so moving. It is told by omniscient narrator and brought to life by interjections from Sylvie. Her journal. Her letters – to Julienne and to her cousin Claude.

So much is said to about love, religion, obsession, compassion and understanding.

It works wonderfully. Because the writing is lovely and Sylvie’s voice is so true.

I suspect that she will continue to haunt me.

Translated by Antonia White

*****

And the completed challenge?

Lost In Translation – six books in translation.

My original plan was six books in six languages, but I changed direction. I found a few French books I wanted to read and so I decided to go for six in that one language, but six different translators. 

I did it!

Here’s the list:

• The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery (translated by Alison Anderson)
• The Girl from the Chartreuse by Pierre Péju (translated by Ina Rilke)
• Chez Moi by  by Agnes Desarthe (translated by Adriana Hunter)
• The Boy With The Cuckoo-clock Heart by Mathias Malzieu (translated by Sarah Ardizzone )
• Rock Crystal by Adalbert Stifter (translated by Elizabeth Mayer and Marianne Moore)
• I Will Not Serve by Eveline Mahyère (translated by Antonia White)

I can’t pick one favourite – they are fairly diverse and each has its own virtues.

And this is the rest of my reading in translation:

• Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson (Norwegian – translated by Anne Born)
• The Ice Princess by Camilla Läckberg (Swedish – translated by Steven T Murray)
• The Paris Enigma by Pablo de Santis (Portugese - translated by Mara Lethem)
• The Preacher by Camilla Läckberg (Swedish – translated by Steven T Murray)
• The Girl Who Played With Fire by Steig Larsson (Swedish – translated by Reg Keeland)
• Unseen by Mari Jungstedt (Swedish – translated by Tiina Nunnally)
• The Pyramid by Henning Mankell (Swedish – translated by Ebba Segerberg with Laurie Thompson)
• The Reunion by Simone van der Vlugt (Dutch – translated by Michelle Hutchison)
• Almost Blue by Carlo Lucarelli (Italian – translated by Oonagh Stransky)
• Chess by Stefan Zweig (German – translated by Anthea Bell)
• Little Indiscretions by Carmen Posadas (Portugese – translated by Christopher Andrews)

There are some wonderful books in there!

Thank you to Frances for hosting!

Reading Challenge Confessions

I’ve wound up a good number of challenges over the last couple of weeks and I’ll be finishing a few more before the end of the year. I’ve done the reading, now I just need to do a bit of writing. But there are four that I have to admit now that I have failed:

Hosted by Michelle.

It should have been simple – 10 books from the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die lists. But I only got to 2:

• Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
• The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

I was seduced by another list.

*****

Hosted by Jennie.

Back on 17th January the first installment of 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read arrived in our house in the form of a supplement with the daily paper. It was great fun to go through the list picking out the books I’d read, the books I wanted to read, the books I’d never heard of and weighing up the rights and wrongs.

Six more supplements, each with a different theme, arrived over the course of the week. The full set was:

17th January – Love
18th January – Crime
19th January – Comedy
20th January – Family and Self
21st January – State of the Nation
22nd January – Science Fiction & Fanatasy
23rd January – War & Travel

It was a great list and the challenge of 10 books should have been easy. There are lots I want to read but right now I’ve only made it to five:

• Invitation to the Waltz by Rosamond Lehmann
• South Riding by Winifred Holtby
• The Case of the Gilded Fly by Edmond Crispin
• The Victorian Chaise-Longue by Marghanita Laski
• Loitering With Intent by Muriel Spark

I was distractred by too many great new books and too many other challenges.

*****

Hosted by Jenn.

12 books from a fixed list. I did read a lot of books from my TBR, just not the ones I’d listed.

I  read five from the list:

• Invitation to the Waltz, by Rosalind Lehmann
• The Dancers Dancing, by Ellis Ni Dhuibhne
• South Riding, by Winifred Holtby
• How I Live Now, by Meg Rosoff
• A Time of Angels, by Patricia Schonstein

And I ditched two that I didn’t think were ever going to speak to me:

• Descent, by Sabrina Broadbent
• Labyrinth, by Kate Mosse

The others are still waiting on the shelves.

 *****

Hosted by Gina.

A book for each season was a lovely idea. I picked a list and decided to read each one in its own season. But it just didn’t happen. I missed the first one and I never really got going.

*****

So what have I learned?

That I need to be just a little bit selective.

That I must remember that I will want to read some books that don’t fit any of my challenges.

That other events and challenges will present themselves as the years goes along.

AND THAT I LOVE READING CHALLENGES !!!

18th & 19th Century Women Writers Challenge – Complete

 

Becky from Becky’s Book Reviews has been hosting  the 18th and 19th Century Women Writers Reading Challenge for 2009.

Pparticipants are asked to read no fewer than four and no more than twelve books written by a woman who lived and wrote from 1700 to 1900.

I’ve read six:

• Behind a Mask by Louisa May Alcott
• Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
• Paul Ferroll by Caroline Clive
• Brother Jacob by George Eliot
• The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
• Love and Friendship by Jane Austen

All good but The Yellow Wallpaper has to be my favourite, with Paul Ferroll and Behind a Mask not to far behind.

A lovely challenge!

Norman Garstin: Irishman and Newlyn Artist by Richard Pryke

What reminds you of home when you are away?

For me – and I suspect for most natives of Penzance – it is a painting.

This painting:

The Rain It Raineth by Norman Garstin

When the Royal Academy rejected Norman Garstin’s 1889 painting of Penzance promenade in the rain the artist presented it to the town council. Today it hangs in the town’s Penlee Museum.

You’ll probably find a copy of some sort, a print maybe or a postcard, in most homes in the town and, I’m sure, most who leave takes The Rain It Raineth with them in one form or another. I took a mounted card away to university with me and these days we have a framed print. And the observant will have noticed by now that I borrowed a detail from the painting for my avatar.

Well we do live on the promenade – in one of the small cottages obscured by the wave!

And it isn’t just locals who love the painting. The Penlee Museum is very popular and we often bump into visitors on the prom who, having seen the painting, want to take a photograph from the same angle.

Here’s what it looks like today: 

You’ll find Briar and I taking a walk there most days.

But enough rambling, and back to the book and the artist.

I have loved The Rain It Raineth for as long as I can remember. But I knew little about the artist. The Penlee Museum held an exhibition of his work a few years ago. Nothing in quite the same class as The Rain It Raineth, but it left me curious to find out a little more about the Irishman who painted the definitive picture of a Cornish town.

And so, eventually, this book came home from the library.

A detailed and lavishly illustrated biography.

Norman Garstin was born in County Limerick in 1847. As a young man he was not drawn to painting and trained first as an engineer and later, when his skill at drawing and draughtsmanship came to light, he trained as an architect.But when he heard news of the fortunes to be made in the South African diamond fields he travelled there and dug for diamonds for four years. Clearly a man of many talents!

A fall from a horse, causing him to lose the sight in his right eye, finally drew him towards art. He studied under Charles Verlat in Antwerp and Carolus Duran in Paris. And is Paris he crossed paths with Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas, two artists who influences him hugely.

After travelling extensively in Europe Garstin settled in Newlyn and became one of the founders of the Newlyn School. He spent the rest of his life in Newlyn and, just along the coast, in Penzance and it was in those two towns that he would produce his finest work, balancing the realist ethos of the Newlyn school with the influence of the masters he encountered in Paris.

He was not as prolific as many of the artists of the period and supplemented his income by teaching art and drawing. But the book’s many illustrations clearly illustrate that he left behind a wonderful body of work.

The picture that emerges is of a talented, intelligent and well loved man. And a devoted family man. One son was killed in the war, a second son became a respected writer and a daughter became an artist too. A fine legacy.

And yes, still the rain it raineth. Very often but not today!

Loitering With Intent by Muriel Spark – and a challenge completed

Virago Modern Classic #537

“When I recall what happened to me and what I did in 1949, it strikes me how much easier it is with characters in a novel than in real life. In a novel an author invents characters and arranges them in convenient order. Now that I come to write biographically I have to tell of whatever actually happened and whoever naturally turns up. The story of a life is a very informal party; there are no rules of precedence and hospitality, no invitations.”

So says Fleur Talbot, intrepid heroine and narrator of Muriel Spark’s Loitering With Intent.

She’s a captivating heroine – clever, witty, vivacious and perceptive.  You’d love to have her as a friend.

And she’s a book-lover and an aspiring writer.

“I always desired books; nearly all of my bills were for books. I possessed one very rare book which I traded for part of my bill with another bookshop, for I wasn’t a bibliophile of any kind; rare books didn’t interest me for their rarity but their content. I borrowed frequently from the public library, but often I would go into a bookshop and in my longing to possess, let us say, the Collected Poems of Arthur Clough  and a new Collected Chaucer, I would get into conversation with the bookseller and run up another bill.”

(It wasn’t this Fleur’s name that inspired mine, but after reading that paragraph I wished that it was!)

The story begins with Fleur living in a bedsit in south-west London and working on her first novel, Warrender Chase. She need a job to get by, and a friend points her in the direction of a job that sounds perfect for her: secretary to the Autobiographical Association.

The Autobiographical Association? It’s the brainchild  on the supremely pompous Sir Quentin Oliver; a society that will support and assist people in  writing their biographies and preserving them until all of those mentioned are dead so that they can be safely  published. Because, of course, they will be of interest to the historians of the future!

It’s a wonderful concept, and it gives Muriel Spark a free rein to create a wonderful gallery of characters. She uses it quite brilliantly!

Fleur gets the job, and so she finds herself writing memoirs – which may be more fiction than fact – by day, and working on her novel. And gradually the boundaries get blurred. Are Fleur’s characters growing to resemble her authors. Or are her authors turning into characters? Just where is the line between fiction and fact?

The story is intricate, clever, and not one that I can easily sum up. Fleur carries you along with her, and it is a wonderful journey.

Loitering With Intent is the kind of book that the more you think the more you realise is there. And it may just be my favourite Muriel Spark – praise indeed!

*****

And the completed challenge?

 The Decades Challenge – 9 books from consecutive decades in 2009.

Here’s the list:

• The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford (1915)
• The Red House Mystery by A. A. Milne (1922)
• Invitation to the Waltz by Rosamond Lehmann (1932)
• Doreen by Barbara Noble (1946)
• The Doves of Venus by Olivia Manning (1955)
• We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (1966)
• The Affair of the Bloodstained Egg Cosy by James Anderson (1975)
• Loitering With Intent by Muriel Spark (1981)
• The Dancers Dancing by Éilis Ni Dhuibhne (1999)

I’m not going to pick out one favourite – I loved every one!

Thank you Michelle for hosting!

Rock Crystal by Adalbert Stifter – A Story for Christmas

“One of the most beautiful of Church festivals comes in midwinter when nights are long and days are short, when the sun slants towards earth obliquely and snow mantles the fields: Christmas.”

This is a wonderful story, pitched perfectly on the line between magic and reality.

On Christmas Eve two young children set out from their home in a village high in the Alps to visit their grandparents in the next valley. As they make their way home again the light begins to fade and the snow begins to fall. How will they find their way?

The story is lovely, and to say any more than that would spoil it. And this is a story that you really want to live through with Conrad and his little sister Sanna.

It unravels in such lovely prose, simple and utterly beautiful, and it paints quite wonderful pictures of the mountains, of the snow and ice.

Rock Crystal is a quiet and moving story, about nature and community, presenting truths that are so simple and so profound.

I am so glad that I saved it to read at Christmas. It was just right.

Translated by Elizabeth Mayer and Marianne Moore

MERRY CHRISTMAS!