Lost in the Stacks

If you'd like to have a peek at my bookshelves, pop over to Dani's blog, A Work in Progress. I'm very pleased to have been asked to contribute to her ongoing series Lost in the Stacks where she invites bloggers to talk about their collections & reveal their bookshelves.

Evidence of an obsession

I've finally finished putting all my books onto Library Thing. This was a project I started during my holidays after Easter & I've just had a fortnight off so I managed to get all the rest of my books listed. It may seem perverse for a librarian to take holidays & spend time cataloguing her books but that's what I've done. I'm so pleased to have finished that I thought I'd share a few completely useless statistics. Maybe some of you will find this interesting. We're all more or less obsessed with books, aren't we? If not, don't worry, there'll be another book review along soon.

I own 2495 books, including

186 Oxford University Press titles & 412 Penguins.

94 Folio Society books, & 252 books with the tags History, England, Biography.

108 Persephones (all the published titles plus the Classics).

57 books by or about Jane Austen & 60 by or about the Brontё sisters.

146 volumes of poetry, 75 volumes of letters & 41 journals or diaries.

127 Viragos.

As well as 812 biographies, 123 volumes of short stories & 207 mysteries.

Of course, all those totals include books from the tbr shelves as well as books I've read. I have 803 books on the tbr shelves & if you add in the unread books on my e-reader, you might as well round it up to 1000.

I actually thought I had more books than that so maybe that means I don't have enough? There is still a bit of room on the shelves...
I think this post is a good definition of obsession but at least now I can quantify just how obsessed I am which must be a good thing, surely?

Library Latest

So many terrific books have arrived at work all at once that I don’t quite know what to read first. I shared the results of my recent splurge at the Book Depository here just a couple of weeks ago & I also have groaning tbr shelves as you can see below (I took these photos a few months ago. It’s too dull this morning to take a decent photo, but I’m sure you get the general idea!). And, it’s almost November so I’ll be choosing some Remembrance reading from the tbr shelves as I do every year. Luckily I have a week’s holiday coming up in the middle of the month & I’m looking forward to getting lots of reading done then, as well as my Christmas baking & some gardening if the weather is fine. Here’s what I’ve brought home from my library over the past couple of weeks,

The Small Hand – Susan Hill. This is her new ghost story & I always enjoy these. Nothing has ever scared me as much as The Woman in Black but I love a good ghost story.
The Attenbury Emeralds – Jill Paton Walsh. A new Lord Peter Wimsey story is a real treat. Jill Paton Walsh completed a couple of Dorothy L Sayers’s manuscripts some years ago & now she’s written a wholly original story. The theft of the Attenbury emeralds was Wimsey’s first case & there have been recent developments that send Wimsey, his wife Harriet & Bunter off on the hunt again.
The Magnificent Spilsbury and the case of the Brides in the Bath – Jane Robins. Edwardian true crime about the famous forensic scientist & the case that made his name.
All the hopeful lovers – William Nicholson. Dani at A Work In Progress has reviewed another of Nicholson's novels & it sounded enticing so I've now borrowed both of them from the library.
 

A Royal Passion – Katie Whitaker. A biography of Charles I & Henrietta Maria, concentrating on their relationship. The author found a cache of their passionate letters to each other, written when they were separated during the Civil War.
And furthermore – Judi Dench. I started flipping through this the other night & I could hear Dame Judi’s voice as I read. Lots of familiar stories but I love her work & I’m looking forward to more of her stories of stage, screen & famous co-stars.
Romantic Moderns – Alexandra Harris. The subtitle is English writers, artists & the imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper. A beautifully illustrated & produced book from Thames & Hudson about that between the wars period I love.
Revealing King Arthur – Christopher Gidlow. Arthur is another of my passions. This book combines history & archaeology to look at the evidence for Arthur.
Domestic soldiers – Jennifer Purcell. Women on the Home Front during WWII. The book uses the Mass Observation diaries of five women (including Nella Last) to tell the Home Front story in a very personal way.
Margaret Beaufort – Elizabeth Norton. Mother of Henry VII & a woman who led a fascinating life. Married & a mother by the age of 13, Margaret Beaufort was an ambitious woman who spent her whole life scheming to put her son on the throne of England.

At the moment I’m reading Kerry Greenwood’s new Phryne Fisher mystery, Dead Man’s Chest, but, after that, my choices are infinite.

Library stack

I’m afraid I’ve given up on Bill Bryson’s At Home. His scattergun approach, piling detail on detail, & moving from one continent & historical period to another, exhausted me. I wanted more depth & I know that’s not the object of the exercise here. He’s roaming far & wide yet staying close to home. So, what’s next, I ask myself? Well, I’m still reading a collection of Daphne Du Maurier’s short stories & I’m about to start reading Peter Pan by J M Barrie, the novel that was the basis for the incredibly popular stage play & many subsequent adaptations. I also have a terrific stack of library books to choose from which you can see above.

The mills of God – Deryn Lake. This author is best known for her series of historical mysteries starring John Rawlings. I haven’t read those but this new book intrigued me. Vicar Nick Lawrence has just moved to the Sussex village of Lakehurst & becomes involved in the investigation of a series of serial killings by someone calling themselves The Acting Light of the World. I only hope it’s not too gruesome as I’m a wimp when it comes to explicit violence in books - & real life too, I should say.

The importance of being seven – Alexander McCall Smith. The latest in his wonderful 44 Scotland Street series. I can’t wait to see what Bertie, dreadful Irene, Big Lou & co are up to.

The betrayal – Helen Dunmore. The sequel to The Siege, which was set during the siege of Leningrad in WWII. This book is set during the 50s & revisits the characters from the earlier book, which I loved.

Macbeth – Fiona Watson. Macbeth is my favourite Shakespeare play & I’m fascinated by the difference between the myth & the reality. Rather like my fascination with Richard III. Dark Age Scotland is a murky place & Watson aims to put Macbeth into his true context as a ruler & dispel the myth of the haunted murderer of the Scottish play.

Contested Will – James Shapiro. Speaking of Shakespeare, this is an examination of the authorship controversy. James Shapiro wrote 1599, one of the best books I’ve ever read about Shakespeare. It took one year in Shakespeare’s life & used the events of that year to tell his story. In this new book, Shapiro looks at the reasons for the controversy about the authorship of the plays, the candidates & his own theory about Shakespeare & the plays.

Courtiers – Lucy Worsley. I’ve become more interested in the 18th century in recent years & this book is a look at the lives of the servants & courtiers at the Georgian Court at Kensington Palace. Lots of scandal, a dysfunctional royal family & some great stories, I’m sure. Reading Fanny Burney’s diary of her time as lady in waiting to Queen Charlotte gave me some idea of the politics, backbiting & sheer boredom of Court life. I’m looking forward to discovering more.

Not sure what I’ll read first. I may just work my way down from the top!

Reading resolutions

I’ve made New Year reading resolutions in the past. Some I’ve kept – in 2008 I decided to reread four of my favourite historical biographies, books I read over & over again in my teenage years but hadn’t read since although I’d read a lot more about the subjects of them all. The books were Richard III by Paul Murray Kendall, Elizabeth I by J E Neale, Mary Queen of Scots by Antonia Fraser & Nicholas & Alexandra by Robert K Massie. I’d bought beautiful Folio Press editions of all these over the years & I read these at home, taking my battered old original paperbacks to work for lunchtime reading. I loved it. All of these books were like old friends, I’d read them so often & I enjoyed so much reading them again. So, that was one resolution I kept. Last year, I was going to read several books on the English countryside that had languished on my tbr shelves for too long. I didn’t pick up any of them. I’ve just read two of them, both by Ronald Blythe, & I’ll blog about them soon. I think the problem with this resolution was that much of what I read is English so these books didn’t stand out as enough of a challenge. I just forgot about them. This year, in common with a number of bloggers, I’m going to try to read some of the books on the tbr shelves before I buy any more. I do have some pre-orders from the Book Depository which will arrive over the next few months but I don’t want to buy any books for a while. I also work for a regional library service so I plan to try waiting for books to arrive at work before racing off to the Book Depository & buying something that I’ve just read about or had recommended to me by the members of a wonderful online reading group I’ve belonged to for the last five years. Cornflower is asking whether we plan to be slow readers (as recommended by Susan Hill in her book, Howards End is on the Landing) or fast readers this year. I’ve always been a pretty fast reader & I don’t think I can slow down the amount of reading I do as there are just so many books I want to read & reread. But, I’d definitely like to slow down my buying this year & savour what I already own. Hopefully writing this blog will also lead to a slowing down & an appreciation of what I read.