Thursday Bookshelf - CA-DO

Cather to Donne this week. I've been rediscovering Willa Cather over the last year. I've just finished reading her Selected Letters & I have several more novels on the tbr shelves to read. I read O Pioneers! & My Àntonia over 30 years ago & only came back to her recently. I've been reading about more American women writers in Elaine Showalter's A Jury of Her Peers so I'm glad I have books on the tbr shelves by Sarah Orne Jewett, Louisa May Alcott & Dorothy Canfield Fisher. There's also The Worst Journey in the World by  Apsley Cherry-Garrard, one of the most devastating books I've ever read as well as some Agatha Christies (Joan Hickson covers) that I saved from my Dad's bookshelves when we emptied his house after he died.

More Christies, Christmas books (stories & carols) & the beginning of the Wilkie Collins collection, one of my favourite writers.

The rest of the Wilkies, a few Edmund Crispins, one of my favourite mystery writers, & Eleanor Dark's Timeless Land trilogy. I read these many years ago when the TV series was made. It's a story of early colonial Australia & I remember how much I enjoyed it. Also Eve Curie's biography of  her mother (the green book 11 from the right), another old favourite.

A shelf that displays my bad habit of collecting copies of favourite books. Three copies of The Diary of a Provincial Lady (I also have the Persephone edition but that's shelved with the Persephones) & several duplicate Dickens. Also To Serve Them All My Days by R F Delderfield (much faded TV tie-in edition with John Duttine on the spine, loved that series & read the book at least three times) & the Henrietta books by Joyce Dennys.

More Dickens, Emily Dickinson & John Donne, a very high-powered literary shelf! I do hope you're all noticing the spaces I'm leaving for the books from the tbr shelves as I read them. It would probably be useful if I stopped buying tbr books for a while, at least until I've filled some of these gaps, but I haven't quite managed that yet.

Next week, Dostoevsky to Gibbons.

Edited to add : I've just realised that the photos are too long for the screen, so you'll need to click on the photos to see the whole thing. They looked fine when I wrote the post so I must try something different with the photos next week. It's difficult to strike the balance between the photos fitting on the screen & being large enough so that you can see the titles.

Thursday Bookshelf - BR-CA

A few more Brontë books & the Brownings, Robert & Elizabeth Barrett. By the way, any books you see with library spine labels on them have been legally deaccessioned (weeded) from various libraries I've worked in & brought home to be properly appreciated. I try to remove all the labels (ie getting rid of the evidence) but the spine label on The Brownings : Letters and Poetry is under the covering of the book which has been rebound. We don't rebind books any more, we replace or withdraw, which is quite a contentious topic in library land which I'm going to leave very much alone.

I remember reading the Women's Press edition of Aurora Leigh on the porch of my friend P's house at Daylesford over 30 years ago. I stayed there for a winter week on my own. The house was right on the lake & this was years before Daylesford became a New Age tourist destination. As well as Aurora Leigh, I read a book on Shakespeare's sonnets (which we'll be seeing later on the G shelf) & Byron's Don Juan, which is just below.

John Buchan & Fanny Burney on this shelf as well as Marilyn Butler's terrific books about Jane Austen & her times. I've also read her biography of Maria Edgeworth.

My Byron collection is here (including Don Juan) & A S Byatt. Possession is one of my favourite books, so, of course I have two copies. One of them is a Folio Society edition, so I feel it's completely justified.

Another Folio Society edition of another favourite book, A Month in the Country by J L Carr. Also my childhood copy of Alice & the books by Mary Cadogan & Patricia Craig about girls' school stories and women & detective fiction. I often dip into these & they're great fun if you have any interest in early-mid 20th century fiction. Archaeology is another of my interests & there are two classics there - Martin Carver's book on Sutton Hoo & a facsimile of Howard Carter's book on the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb.

Next week, CAther-DOnne.

Thursday Bookshelf - BI-BR

Week 3 of the great bookshelf project. Enid Blyton's Tales of Great Adventure (the green book sixth from the right) was one of my favourite books when I was a child. It's a retelling of the stories of King Arthur & Robin Hood & it's the way I always think of them, no matter how many books I read about the origins & maybe real people behind the myths. Ronald Blythe is one of the first authors I reviewed on the blog & I still have several of his books on the tbr shelves.

One of my favourite Sensation authors is featured here, Mary Elizabeth Braddon as well as Ann Bridge. I loved her Julia Probyn series although, as I read them all as ebooks, they have no presence on the shelves. Green for Danger by Christianna Brand is one of the most famous (& best) Golden Age mystery novels. Set in a hospital during WWII, it's an atmospheric book with a great twist in the plot. It was also made into a movie with Alistair Sim, Trevor Howard & Leo Genn.

Vera Brittain & the beginning of the Brontës.

The end of the Brontës. I wish I had the first volume of The Letters of Charlotte Brontë. I bought Vols 2 & 3 but borrowed Vol 1 from the library. It's very expensive & OUP have never reprinted it in paperback. I don't need it, of course, but I'd like to have it.

Next week, BR-CA.

Thursday Bookshelf - BA-BE

Week 2 of the great bookshelf project. Yacker & Yacker 2 are books of interviews with Australian writers by Candida Baker. Published in the 1980s, she interviewed Helen Garner, Thomas Keneally, David Williamson & David Malouf as well as a previous generation of authors now gone - Ray Lawler, Sumner Locke Elliott, Marjorie Barnard & Christina Stead. Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker is there thanks to Simon from Stuck In A Book. No book has every had a champion as passionate as Simon so I had to buy a copy.

I loved the L-shaped Room trilogy by Lynne Reid Banks, as well as her two novels about the Brontës. I remember getting the phone call from the bookshop when Juliet Barker's monumental biography, The Brontës, was published. This was the early 1990s & pre-internet for me so I had ordered a copy from the local bookshop in the shopping centre near my library & I could hardly wait to rush over & pick up the book. Thank goodness it was a Thursday & I could whip out in my meal break (I worked the 1-9pm shift on Thursday in those days). I'm not sure how much work I did that evening, I may have been dipping in to the Introduction & looking at the plates...

Unique to Australia by Beatty (about flora & fauna) was a school prize I won for a spelling bee in Grade 5 in 1973. There's also my original Virago copy of Nicola Beauman's A Very Great Profession, the book that began the Persephone phenomenon. Also Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. I read this before I went to the UK in 1999 & it sparked my interest in the Anglo-Saxons. I recently discovered a beautiful blog by A Clerk of Oxford, about the Anglo-Saxons. It's a fascinating mix of poetry, history & stories of the Anglo-Saxons & Scandinavians illustrated with manuscripts of the period. The blog won the History Today award for digital history this year.

I picked up the ancient copy of The Search for Bridey Murphy by Morey Bernstein in a second-hand shop. I'd been fascinated by the Bridey Murphy story ever since I read about it in a Reader's Digest collection. It's a classic reincarnation story (made into a film starring Teresa Wright) about an American woman who regresses under hypnosis to another life in 19th century Ireland. It's been pretty well debunked now, I think, but I love reincarnation stories.

Next week, BI-BR.

Thursday Bookshelf - A

After unveiling my new bookcases last week, Rose & Lory asked for some close-up photos of the contents. I've also been inspired by Sue, who blogs at My Quiet Life in Suffolk. She posted pictures of all her bookshelves earlier this year & it prompted memories & stories of where she bought the books & when she read them. I'm sure many of us can remember the books we were reading at significant times of our lives when the details of what we did last Tuesday are irretrievable.

So, as a good librarian should, I'm going to begin at A & post a shelf each Thursday. (I hope the pictures are big enough for you to read the titles. I didn't want to make them any bigger because the page then takes too long to load).

I read this copy of By the Sword Divided by John Adair many years before I finally saw the TV series that was partly based on the book. Among Friends was my school reader. My favourite story was about two children who get to know an old lady living in a tumbledown house. They'd always thought she was a witch but, when she lets them pick the peaches from her tree & gives them lemonade, they become friends. I love it because it's set at Christmas, a hot Australian Christmas. I could always smell the warm peaches as I read. I don't read a lot of Australian history but Robyn Annear's books are always well-written & enjoyable. Bearbrass was one of the early names for Melbourne.

Lots of English history here. When I was a child, Mum took me into the city once a year to see an eye specialist in Collins St. There was a bookshop that I always had to go into & Dulcie M Ashdown's Ladies in Waiting was the book I always took off the shelf & coveted. I couldn't afford the book until some years later. I'm not sure how I managed to be seeing a Collins St specialist (Melbourne equivalent of Harley St) as we weren't well-off but I was & I always wanted this book which I finally bought. Theo Aronson was another favourite Royal biographer from around the same period. Also, Karen Armstrong's memoirs of being a nun & afterwards - stories about nuns have always fascinated me.

The beginning of the Austen collection,

& the end of the Austen collection. As you can see, I have no problem owning multiple copies of the same book. The Folio Society set have lovely woodcut illustrations by Joan Hassall & I am a fan of the Penguin Deluxe editions.

Another shelf next Thursday.