Bookish Thoughts as the Year Ends

Try as I might I can’t distill a year of wonderful reading into lists.

But I can answer a few questions from The Perpetual Page Turner …

Best Book of 2011

I have read some wonderful books this year, but if I have to single out just one, the book closest to my heart is The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey.

Worst Book of 2011

Oh dear. It has to be What They do in the Dark by Amanda Coe. It started beautifully, it had so much potential, but good ideas were ruined as things were taken much, much too far.

Most Disappointing Book of 2011

I have loved Susan Hill‘s crime novels in the past but I was disappointed in her most recent, The Betrayal of Trust. The plot and the characters came a very poor second to themes that the author clearly had strong feelings about but pushed much too hard for me.

Most Surprising (in a good way) Book of 2011

The idea of a novel in verse scared me, but Lettice Delmer by Susan Miles was a Persephone Book, it had appeared in a library sale, and so I gave it the benefit of the doubt. And I found a troubling story quite brilliantly told.

Book Recommended Most in 2011

I found Ten Days of Christmas by Gladys Bronwyn Stern in a bargain bin. It had no dust jacket, no synopsis, and so I did a few searches to try to find out more, but I couldn’t find anyone who had written about it. So I read, I wrote , and I’ve noticed a good few people have ordered copies and a couple more reviews have appeared. I really am thrilled.

Best Series You Discovered in 2011

I read and loved The Return of Captain John Emmett last year, and so I was eager to read Elizabeth Speller‘s second novel, The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton. I was surprised, and delighted to meet Lawrence Bartram again, to see his story progress, and to notice some very interesting hints about where his story might go next.

Favourite New Author in 2011

I’ve found a few new authors I want to keep tabs on, but if I’m going to pick out one I think it must be Rachel Hore. I read The Gathering Storm, I fell in love with her writing, and now I have an intriguing backlist to explore.

Most Hilarious Read in 2011

I am not a great lover of comic writing, but there’s something about Molly Keane, Time After Time was dark, sad, grotesque, and yet very, very funny.

Most Thrilling, Unputdownable Book of 2011

I was intrigued and confounded by True Things About Me by Deborah Kay Davies. I just couldn’t work out who this woman was, why she did the things she did.

Book Most Anticipated in 2011

Greenbanks by Dorothy Whipple was surely the most eagerly waited reissue of 2011. And it more than lived up to some very high expectations.

Favourite Cover of a Book in 2011

Most Memorable Character in 2011

Oh, Miss Ranskill! I shall never forget you, and I shall never forget The Carpenter. Barbara Euphan Todd told your story so well in Miss Ranskill Comes Home.

Most Beautifully Written Book in 2011

That would be a book I’m still reading. Vanessa Gebbie’s novel, The Coward’s Tale, uses words – their meanings, their sounds, their rhythms – quite brilliantly. I even find myself reading with a Welsh accent …

Book That Had the Greatest Impact on You in 2011

I was intrigued from the first moment I saw No Surrender by Constance Maud. A suffragette novel! I realised how little I really knew, and this book has inspired me to find out more - The Virago Book of Suffragettes is now sitting on the bedside table.

Book You Can’t Believe You Waited until 2011 to Read

I can remember seeing Mary Stewart‘s books on the library shelves years ago, when I moved up from the junior to the adult library, but it wasn’t until this year that I read one. It was Thunder on the Right, and I loved it …

… a wonderful year of reading … and now it’s time to start another …

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Oh Queen Victoria …

… so many wonderful books were written during your reign. And so many more, both fact and fiction, have been written about these years too.

And so I never can resist a  Victorian Reading Challenge …

The 2012 Victorian Challenge is hosted by Laura of Laura’s Reviews.

This is how it works:

• The Victorian Challenge 2012 will run from January 1st to December 31st, 2012. You can post a review before this date if you wish.
•  You can read a book, watch a movie, or listen to an audiobook, anything Victorian related that you would like. Reading, watching, or listening to a favorite Victorian related item again for the second, third, or more time is also allowed. You can also share items with other challenges.
• The goal will be to read, watch, listen, to 2 to 6 (or beyond) anything Victorian items.

Perfect!

Now I love making lists of what I might read, and so I have made lists …

Six Victorian Novels

The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens (1841)
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackery (1848)
The Warden by Anthony Trollope (1855)
Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell (1866)
The Odd Women by George Gissing (1893)
Liza of Lambeth by W Somerset Maugham (1897)

Six works of non fiction set during the reign of Queen Victoria:

Mr Briggs’ Hat by Kate Coloquon
The Invention of Murder by Judith Flanders
A London Child of the 1870s by Molly Hughes
Magnificent Obsession by Helen Rappaport
Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace by Kate Summerscale
Becoming Queen by Kate Williams

And six novels set in the Victoria era:

Girl in a Blue Dress by Gaynor Arnold
The Whores’ Asylum by Kate Darby
The Seance by John Harwood
The Journal of Dora Damage by Belinda Starling
The Painted Bridge by Wendy Wallace
The Pleasures of Men by Kate Williams

And I notice that Essie Fox has a new book coming to be published next autumn, which I am sure will be Victorian …

Now I should be very surprised if I read all of those books before the end of next year.

And I may well find other Victorian reading material.

But isn’t it nice to have such wonderful possibilities to ponder … ?

The Trouble With Alice by Olivia Glazebrook

The Trouble With Alice opens with a moment that changes lives. A moment caught with perfect precision and crystal clarity.

“Through the yellow air the car fell, and then out of the sunlight and into the shade of the mountain. In the air it turned over, catching the light with a glint and a flash before – bang – it hit the ground and careered the rest of the way down the stony hill on its roof.”

Kit and Alice were on holiday in Jordan. They hadn’t been away together before, and they wanted to go before Alice was “too pregnant to enjoy herself.” Before their lives were changed by a baby.

They both survived that terrible accident without major injuries. Except one. Alice lost her baby.

That could have drawn the couple together or it could have pulled them apart.

It seemed that it would pull them apart. As she mourned the loss of he child Alice withdrew from the world, and then she became anorexic. Kit didn’t know how to cope. He had moments of anger. Moments of guilt. Moments of confusion.

The portrayal of the emotional journey that followed the miscarriage is vivid, and moving.

The story moves between past and present, and it become evident that differences that hadn’t mattered in happy days of early romance and future planning mattered a great deal.

But life had to go on. And life did go on. I saw two their different characters, and how they were formed by very different backgrounds, I came to understand both Kit and Alice a little better. Neither was a hero and neither a villain. They were both flawed, fallible humans trying to cope.

The storytelling was clever, and it balanced honest and restraint beautifully.

And please note – both.

This is the story of both Kit and Alice, setting out their relationship. How it blossomed. How it was jolted. How it fractured. Maybe irreparably …

It is a story very well told.

This is not a comfortable read, but it is compelling.

And a very promising debut.

Those Unfinished Books Lying About the House …

There are far, far too many of them.

I don’t mean the  books I’ve picked up and then put down because the moment wasn’t quite right. Or the books that I’ve not got on with and didn’t want to finish.

These are the books that I had made progress with, that I wanted to finish, and yet for some reason I didn’t.

And so I must thank Jillian, at A Room of One’s Own, for hosting The 2012 – Books I Started But Didn’t Finish – Challenge.

It’s exactly what I need!

This is how it works:

The goal:

• Commit to finish some or all of the books you began to read in 2011 (or before) and never completed.

Prizes:

• I will not give away prizes or otherwise motivate people to complete their goals for this challenge.
• Instead, I encourage you to self-motivate.
• Keep your list central on your blog (or elsewhere) and commit to buy yourself some sort of reward when you finish the task. (A book? A bookmark? Whatever you know will inspire YOU.)

The rules:

• Post a list of the books you began reading in 2011 (or at some point in your life) and never finished reading. (Maybe even say why you stopped reading!)
• You can list as few or as many titles as you intend to complete in 2012. One or twenty or a hundred – it’s YOUR challenge.
• You can include whatever genres you please in this challenge.
• It doesn’t matter how you go about finishing these books. You can combine them with any other challenges.
• You do not need a blog to participate. You can simply list the books you want to finish in the comments below.
• List the prize you will gift yourself when you complete this challenge in your challenge post (to make it official.)
• Write yourself a little manifesto about how you intend to approach these left-over books.
• Commit to finish your list by the end of 2012.
• You are NOT allowed to stress if it takes longer than 2012 to finish your list! Just commit again in 2013!!

And so to my list.

There are eight books, and many of them are very lengthy, so I know that I won’t finish them all in 2012.

I am listing them all so that I can choose the right book at the right moment.

My aim is to finish at least four books, and to finish any that remain in 2013.

Vilette by Charlotte Bronte
Hostages to Fortune by Elizabeth Cambridge
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer
The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
Kristin Lavransdattir by Sigrid Undset

And if I hit my target at the end of the year I will give myself a bonus Green Metropolis top-up to spend on out-of-print titles.

Wish me luck!

The Ghost of Lily Painter by Caitlin Davies

It begins as a contemporary story.

Annie and Ben are looking for a new home in London. When they visit 43 Stanley Road Annie knows it is “the one.” Their offer is accepted and they move in.

But things go wrong. Ben leaves Annie for his secretary. Annie is determined to hang on to her home, for herself and for her daughter Molly. Because the house speaks to her as no other has.

And so she begins to research the history of her home …

The 1901 census – the first since the house was built – revealed the names of the first residents of 43 Stanley Road. Among them were William George, a police inspector, and Lily Painter, a rising music hall star.

Lily intrigued Annie, and she continued to dig.

She found that Lily had been the victim of baby farmers – two women who had long been forgotten but who were notorious in their day – and that William George had been investigating them.

And she found that strange things, things she really couldn’t explain were happening in her home.

The story moves between four narrators – Annie, William, Lily, and another of whom I should not speak.

The shifts in narrator and period were handled very well. Each story was engaging, and I had no trouble keeping track of what was going on.

But I had a problem: the balance was off.

The history was extraordinary.

Baby farmers placed discreet advertisements. They offered care for expectant mothers. Midwives to help with the birth. A place to recover after the birth. Good homes for children whose mothers could not keep them.

Imagine what a godsend they must have seemed to young women who had no means to support themselves and their child. Who had been abandoned by the father. Who had families who could, or would, not accept the social stigma of an illegitimate child.

Some baby farmers were good people who did exactly what they promised. But others were not. They made money from taking in desperate women and then taking away, and killing, their new-born children.

It was disturbing to read.

I just wish that story had been expanded, maybe to take in other women’s stories, and the contemporary story cut back.

I didn’t need to know quite so much about Annie’s and Mollie’s lives. It was a distraction.

I didn’t need the ghost story, which never quite took off.

And I didn’t need the contrived ending that brought all of the strands of the story together.

That there were links between different occupants of the house, that the history of one house was explored was wonderful.

But there was too much going on, and a little more contrivance than I was prepared to accept.

This is still a very readable, very well researched novel.

But I can’t help feeling that there was the potential for so much more in the material.

A Year in First Lines

I was writing a serious end of year post about books, but then I was distracted by a rather nice meme.

“Take the first line of each month’s post over the past year and see what it tells you about your blogging year.”

I spotted it at Reading, Fuelled by Tea, and I believe it started with The Indextrious Reader.

Now, here goes …

December

“You may recall that a few weeks ago I was reorganising shelves and boxes of books, and bringing my LibraryThing records up to date.”

from I have been up into the attic …

November

“I keep meaning to write posts, to answer comments and emails, to visit other blogs, but life keeps distracting me.”

from An A to Z, Looking Behind and Ahead

October

“I didn’t mean to disappear for so long, but I’ve been up in the attic.”

from Of Attics and Rediscovering Books

September

“Summer is fading, the temperature is dropping, and the evenings are drawing in.”

from As Summer Ends, RIP VI Begins …

August

“I wondered for a while what to give to Verity and Ken on this, the day of their marriage.”

from A Gift for Verity and Ken on their Wedding Day: The Virago Book of Weddings and Marriage

July

“Last year I was both charmed and moved by Elizabeth Speller’s first novel, The Return of Captain John Emmett.”

from The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton by Elizabeth Speller

June

“The self-service mailing machine was out of order – again.”

from A Journey Begins in the Post Office Queue

May

“It appeals greatly to the logical side of my mind that the book I am writing about for P in my Crime Fiction Alphabet was published as a green Penguin.”

from Crime Fiction Alphabet: P is for Potts

April

“I am a little disorientated.”

from True Things About Me by Deborah Kay Davies

March

It’s Been a Strange Week.

from Still Aiming to Clear the Decks

February

“When Katherine of Gaskell Blog extended an invitation to a group read of The Moorland Cottage I was delighted and, I must confess, a little surprised.”

from Visiting The Moorland Cottage

January

“I was going to be terribly organised today and write a reading resolutions post, but my brain is saying no, it really doesn’t want to think that hard.”

from Clearing The Decks: Round 4

I think I have to conclude that I am maybe a little preoccupied with attics and reorganisation. Revealing my inner accountant maybe!

A Gift for Christmas …

“These are the Christmas joys I wish for you:
Sacrament, first, to greet the new-born Word;
Red sky and robins; noon an egg-shell blue;
At least one moment, when the air is stirred
By angels’ wings; at least tuthree gifts …
But these, like bulbs one plants and does not say,
Whose stems stand hidden, in the frozen drifts,
Shall be my secret, love, till Christmas Day.”

“Poem for Christmas Day” by Kathleen Norcross

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

A Christmas Carol.

A Victorian classic that has been told and retold so many times. You don’t even have to have read it. There have been countless adaptations for stage and screen. For stage and screen. Even for the Muppets.

I can understand why.

It’s the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, an old man whose only concern is his money and his business. Nothing else matters.

On Christmas Eve Scrooge is visited by the ghost of the man who, in life was his business partner. Jacob Marley. Since his death Marley has been doomed to wander the earth, weighed down by heavy chains of his own making. And now he has come to warn Scrooge that he must mend his ways if he is to avoid the same fate.

During the night Scrooge is visited by three more spirits: the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present, and The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. They show him scenes from his past. Scenes from the world around him. And scenes of a future that will come to pass if Scrooge carries on as he has in the past.

Scrooge realises that he must change his life. That he wants to change his life …

A Christmas Carol is a very short book, and that it is very, very readable. I read it from start to finish late last night.

I loved it when I first read it, years ago, and I still love it now.

And it is well worth reading, no matter how many adaptations you have seen, no matter how well you know the story.

Dickens tells the story perfectly. His prose is so rich and evocative, and the narrator held me from start to finish. There was always a lovely image, a wonderful turn of phrase to appreciate.

Many things were so very familiar and could have felt like clichés, but they didn’t. Because they were so completely right.

The story draws out emotions without ever becoming sentimental. It teeters on the brink sometimes but, for me, Dickens gets away with it because his heart is in the right place.

I understood Scrooge’s journey.

And I loved visiting Victorian London at Christmas time.

I suspect I’ll be going back again this time next year …

A Book and a Song

The wonderful celebration that was Advent With Austen has inspired me. Time to do some rereading! And after reading some wonderful short stories inspired by Persuasion I think that must come first. Not straight away, because I’ve realised that, for me at least Dickens is for autumn and winter.

And now a lovely song, also named Persuasion, has come back into my head ….

Virago Secret Santa

I love the Secret Santa that happens every year in the Virago Modern Classics Group on LibraryThing.

It’s lovely to choose books and send them off to a distant location, it’s lovely to watch so much bookish joy as those parcels land and are opened, and of course it is lovely to receive new books.

I opened my packages tonight, and I am more moved than I can tell you by my santa’s thoughtfulness and generosity.

Here are the wonderful gifts she sent me, temporarily lodging on the Virago bookcase before being catalogued and found new homes:

From the top:

A lovely Persephone Book : The World That Was Ours by Hilda Bernstein. I have read so many words of praise for this book, and I have long wanted to add it to my shelves.

Possibly the biggest Virago Modern Classic in the world – Cecilia by Fanny Burney in a green VMC edition. I have wanted this book for so long.

The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley in a quite beautiful edition. I’m reading a library copy of The Rose Garden at the moment and I am smitten, so it is wonderful to have another, unread title to hand.

Sing Sorrow Sorrow edited by Gwen Davies. An anthology of dark tales by Welsh women writers that has been on my wishlist forever and a day.

Love You Forever, a charming little book that I know nothing at all about.

And bookmarks too!

No Santa could have done better, and I have been wonderfully lucky.

Thank you so much Belva!

(Still waiting for the parcel I sent to be opened …)