Rereading, rambling & relishing - Part 2

This is the rambling & relishing part of the post (see Part 1 yesterday). The new Persephones arrived late last week & I'm looking forward to reading all three of them. Greengates by R C Sherriff, Gardeners' Choice by Evelyn Dunbar & Charles Mahoney and Maman, what are we called now? by Jacqueline Mesnil-Amar. The new Biannually should be arriving any day now.

I've been a fan of Evelyn Dunbar's work for a while, especially her WWII pictures. I have this lovely book by Gill Clarke on the tbr shelves & as I can't get to either the Persephone shop, where they're displaying some of Dunbar's drawings, or the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, the books will do very nicely.

Have I mentioned that Greyladies, another favourite publisher, have given their website an update? It looks terrific, they've added author photos & organised their titles by subject - school stories, mysteries, Scottish novels - which makes it easy to find what you're looking for if you're in the mood for a particular kind of book. I'm a fan of D E Stevenson & I've been really pleased that Greyladies have been reprinting not only the manuscripts found in the attic but also some of the previously out of print Stevensons. They began with Peter West and The English Air & early next year will be reprinting Five Windows, which I haven't read but was enthusiastically reviewed by The Captive Reader here.

Does anyone else see a nice, round number as a challenge to be achieved? According to Library Thing, I have 2,995 books. Only five books to go to reach 3,000. Now, I have Claire Harman's biography of Charlotte Brontë on the way & the new biography of Josephine Tey by Jennifer Henderson pre-ordered so that will arrive at the end of the month. There'll be another Slightly Foxed edition at the beginning of December so that will take me up to 2,998. The dilemma is - do I buy two more books to make it to 3,000 by the end of the year when I've stopped buying books & haven't ordered a single thing for a month? My plan was not to buy any books until at least the New Year & as I'm doing nothing but rereading at the moment, I've had no temptation to buy anything until I realised I was so close to the magic 3,000. At the moment, I feel that I won't buy those two books, I'll just wait until something (or two somethings) come along that I can't resist.

Rereading books that I first read in the 1980s led me to go back through my reading lists to see what I was reading in 1985. Does anyone else keep lists of what they've read? I've done it since 1979. Until 2007, I just wrote my lists on paper, as you can see,

then I decided to use one of the many lovely notebooks I had received as presents over the years.

At this point, just as I was about to look at my 1985 list, Phoebe decided to sit on the lists & have a wash & then thought she'd have a snooze. Doesn't she realise I'm in the middle of writing a post? Obviously not... When I was able to get to the lists (she's now asleep on my lap), I find that I read 133 books that year. You won't be surprised to learn that I read Jane Eyre (twice! & I see that I also read it in late 1984 as well), The Citadel by A J Cronin, Beginning the World by Karen Armstrong, several of M M Kaye's Death in... series, some of the Brother Cadfael novels by Ellis Peters, Mary Renault's Alexander trilogy, Lynne Reid Banks' L-shaped Room trilogy, Victoria Holt, Cynthia Harrod-Eagles & Sarah Harrison's A Flower that's Free (sequel to The Flowers of the Field, a big soapy WWI saga that I loved), Love in a Cold Climate, Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson & Siegfried Sassoon. I was also studying English Literature at university so I read Madame Bovary, Women in Love & One Hundred Years of Solitude as well as Australian novels - Coonardoo by Katherine Susannah Prichard & Sugar Heaven by Jean Devanny. I'm more surprised by Frank Herbert's Dune novels (I've never been a science fiction fan) & the books I have no memory of at all. What were these about? - A Splendid Defiance by Stella Riley & Nothing to Spare by Jan Carter (actually, I think this was a history of the Great Depression in Australia).

I'm surprised at how little my tastes have changed. I read fewer historical novels & sagas but I still read lots of narrative history, biography, 19th century classics & mysteries. However now I could add so many authors that I've discovered through Persephone, Virago, Greyladies & all the other reprint lists that have added to my tbr shelves over the last 10-15 years. I'd love to know if anyone else keeps lists & how far back your lists go. Have your reading tastes changed?

The alternative was to stop buying books...

... or buy more bookcases & I was never going to stop buying books! The result is two beautiful Tasmanian oak bookcases. They're standing just inside the front door. My living area is open plan so they're in the place a hallway would be if I had a hallway.

I spent last weekend moving books which was fun but exhausting. I decided to begin my alphabetical sequence of books I've read in the new bookcases & to move my gardening & cookbooks to the bottom shelves so they're closer to the kitchen. This is the beginning,

& this is how it looked when I'd finished. There's room for books to be shelved from the tbr shelves as I read them.

A new home for my books by Jane Austen,

Vera Brittain &

the Brontës.

Moving the alphabetical sequence round was easy. The really difficult part was rearranging the tbr shelves. I have the tbr arranged by imprint or by subject. I like to keep my favourite publishers together - Persephone, Greyladies, Slightly Foxed, Virago, Hesperus, Canongate, Girls Gone By, Vintage, British Library Crime Classics, Folio Society, Oxford & Penguin Classics -  & then I have sections for literary criticism, biographies, letters & diaries & history (in chronological order by country, of course), general fiction & crime fiction.

The shelves had become a bit mixed as I desperately tried to fit a few more books on to already overcrowded shelves. In the end, I had to put some books on the floor in categories to see where I needed to make space.

This is where I left it when I stopped for a cup of coffee & a rethink.

In the end, I had to combine literary biographies, letters & diaries in one chronological sequence which gave me more room for general historical non-fiction & biographies in the bay on the far right. I have bays of fiction on either side of the non-fiction because, quite honestly, I was exhausted by the end of all that & needed a cup of tea. Maybe I'll move all the non-fiction together next weekend...

Here's the end result. It was a relief to go to work on Monday for a bit of a rest.

More collages - books and cats

More collages, mostly books but one of Lucky & Phoebe. The photo of Phoebe on the bonnet of my car was taken a few months ago but the other two were taken just last weekend.

I've bought a few books in the last month. A few were bargains but most of them weren't. I bought some Greyladies & Girls Gone By books from Gill Bilski, a bookseller in the UK who specializes in children's books. The books were on sale but the postage wasn't. Still, by the time I'd chosen the books I wanted, a minor detail like postage wasn't going to stop me. I've also borrowed a lovely stack of books from my library, including the new biography of Queen Victoria by A N Wilson & a biography of Mary Gaunt, whose novel Kirkham's Find I read & loved earlier this year.

If these books were on a shelf rather than piled on my desk, I'd call them my Shelf of Shame. Of course, there isn't a spare shelf in the house so they're sitting on my desk reproaching me every time I look at them. These are the books I took from the tbr shelves to read next because I read a review on a blog or someone in my online bookgroup mentioned one of them. Some of them have been sitting there a very long time but their spot on the tbr shelves has long since been filled by another book so there's no going back. Extra brownie points for anyone who can work out all the titles (except for the Wodehouse on the bottom right, that's too hard. It's The Adventures of Sally).

Speaking of the tbr shelves, I still need to find room for all the books in the recently bought photo. I've already had to resort to stacking books horizontally & I think I need to do some more shuffling.

TBR 999 & 1,000

Here they are, nos 999 & 1,000 on my tbr shelves. Very appropriately, they're two recent books from Greyladies, Parson's Nine by Noel Streatfeild & Gin and Murder by Josephine Pullein-Thompson.

And for my next challenge? Well, according to Library Thing, I have 2,775 books. How long would it take for me to round that up to 3,000? Maybe I should just calm down & read a few of the great unread before I buy any more...

Folio Society splurge

You'd think Phoebe didn't want me to get at those books, wouldn't you?! Well, this was one battle of wills she didn't win.

I'm rushing towards my goal of 1,000 books on the tbr shelves with a vengeance lately. I was tempted by the Folio Society special offer for their new titles & bought these three gorgeous editions. I've always wanted to read William of Malmesbury's Deeds of the English Kings, which was written in the 12th century & tells the story of English history from the coming of the Romans to the reign of Henry I. This is the 1998 translation for OUP but with the usual attention to detail & gorgeous illustrations of Folio editions.

I already own a copy of Desmond Seward's biography of Richard III, first published in the 1980s. The subtitle says it all really : England's Black Legend. Although I'm a member of the Richard III Society, I've always been interested in different interpretations of Richard's life & reputation & Seward has updated the book twice - in 1997 & again this year after the discoveries in Leicester. I'm looking forward to reading it again.

After reading Pushkin's poetry over the last few months, I couldn't resist this volume of his stories, including his most famous, The Queen of Spades.

Another incentive for this little purchase was the inclusion of a free copy (yes, it was free!) of this beautiful edition of A E Housman's A Shropshire Lad. Apart from the poetry, this edition includes the woodcuts by Agnes Miller Parker that were used in the 1924 edition.

I love woodcuts & these are just lovely. Here are a couple of examples. There are full page examples like these as well as little vignettes. One of the joys of the early Persephone Quarterly magazines was the inclusion of woodcuts by artists like Claire Leighton, Gwen Raverat & Tirzah Garwood. This book is so lovely that Sunday Poetry will be featuring Housman for the next little while.

I've also bought a couple of secondhand Folio editions. When I book my car in for a service, I often hop on the train & go to Camberwell, a suburb with a lovely Art Deco cinema (the Rivoli) & an equally lovely secondhand bookshop, Sainsburys Books. I saw a very sweet movie, Begin Again, with Keira Knightley & Mark Ruffalo, had some lunch & browsed around Sainsburys. I've bought some lovely Folio editions there &I wasn't surprised to find two more to add to my collection.

The woodcuts by Peter Reddick were the attraction of this edition of Thomas Hardy's Desperate Remedies.

Also, the lovely endpapers with a map of Wessex. This was Hardy's first published novel & is a bit of an anomaly as it has definite elements of the sensation novel. I've never read it & look forward to seeing what Hardy does with a plot that sounds more Woman in White than Mayor of Casterbridge.

Then, there was the Chevalier de Johnstone's Memoir of the 'Forty-Five. Despite his title, the Chevalier was a Scot who rallied to the cause of Bonnie Prince Charlie. I couldn't resist the lovely binding of this copy which is based on an original binding of the period.

A book lovers idea of Heaven

First, some very exciting news. I mentioned in this post on Pushkin the other week that one of my favourite books when I was young was Mara Kay's The Youngest Lady In Waiting (cover photo from here). It was the book that began my lifelong interest in Russian history. It's the sequel to Masha, the story of a young orphan's life in early 19th century Russia. Both books were published around 1970 & are incredibly hard to get hold of. I read the copies in my school library & have always wanted to reread them. Well, Karoline, who commented on the post, asked if I knew that Margin Notes Books were reprinting both books later this year? Well, I didn't but I'm so excited! There's nothing on the website just yet but I'm so looking forward to ordering these. Hooray for another small publisher bringing back beautiful books. I have the Margin Notes Books edition of Five Farthings by Monica Redlich on the tbr shelves & I'm looking forward to reading it while I wait for the Mara Kays. Also, have a look at the publisher's blog, there's a link on the website. I'll be monitoring both blog & website very closely for the next few months.

I'm not sure if I should be mentioning this next fact as it could be evidence of serious derangement when it comes to book buying. I'm closing in on 1000 books on the tbr shelves (maybe I should have written 1000 books, does that make it seem less obvious?). Should I be whispering with shame or shouting with glee? I'll never be short of a book to read, that's for sure. I'm up to 968 (according to Library Thing) with several more books on the way even now. The trouble is, I'm seeing the magic 1000 books as a challenge that I must complete by the end of the year so there's definitely more glee than shame in my unrepentant attitude! I'll just mention quietly that this is only the number of physical books. The ebooks are also out of control but they're also invisible.

One book I bought recently was Summer's Day by Mary Bell. I'd been reading admiring references about it on Scott's blog, Furrowed Middlebrow, for some time now. From the original review to his search for the real identity of the author, to the most recent mention, when my resistance broke & I searched for a second hand copy (the Greyladies edition is out of print). Searching Abebooks sent me to Anglophile Books, where there were several copies of the Greyladies edition. I've been an occasional customer of Anglophile Books for some years now (unfortunately the postage costs from the US to Australia are quite high but I wasn't going to let that stop me on my quest for this book & may I say, it hasn't stopped me in the past).




Anglophile Books has the most wonderful selection of books for lovers of the middlebrow novel. Lots of my favourite authors - D E Stevenson, Dorothy L Sayers, Barbara Pym, Josephine Tey, Vera Brittain, E M Delafield - & many more. The owner, Laura, is also the convener of the D E Stevenson Yahoo group I've recently joined & she has very kindly linked to my blog on the website. If you have a look here, there are links to any books by my favourite authors that Laura has in stock. I'm not making any money out of the link, I'm just happy to point potential customers in the direction of a great secondhand bookshop.

Edited to add: Laura from Anglophile Books has created that little button which I am thrilled to say I have just successfully added to the post (thanks for the instructions, Laura). So, I'll add the button to my post if Anglophile Books has a copy of a book I'm reviewing (& gradually go back through the archive) & you'll be taken straight to the homepage if you're interested in buying a copy. I feel quite technologically competent all of a sudden!

Two themed reading weeks are coming up in the next few months that I'm very excited about. Anbolyn at Gudrun's Tights is hosting a Mary Stewart reading week from September 14th to 21st in honour of the novelist who died earlier this year. I've been planning to reread Mary Stewart ever since the last lot of reprints were published but I haven't gotten very far. However, I have lots of her novels on my shelves (no excuse there for buying more books), & I plan to read at least one for that week.

Margaret Kennedy is an author who has been on the periphery of my reading world for quite some time. I've only read The Constant Nymph but I have a couple of others on the tbr shelves & I've ordered a few of the Vintage reprints that are to be published soon. Fleur Fisher is hosting the reading week from October 6th to 12th. You'll find a comprehensive reading list on her blog. I'm leaning towards Lucy Carmichael, which seems to be a universal favourite but there are several others that look interesting. Kennedy was one of the group of novelists who went to Somerville College, Oxford in the 1920s. Vera Brittain, Winifred Holtby & Dorothy L Sayers are the most famous names but maybe Margaret Kennedy is about to join them? It won't be for want of trying if Fleur has anything to do with it.

I'm a big fan of Delphi Classics who produce complete collections of the work of out of copyright authors as very reasonably priced ebooks. They're beautifully formatted & always include some rare gems or additional material about the author. Series Five has just been announced. These titles will be published in coming months & I'm especially excited about Margaret Oliphant & Frances Hodgson Burnett. As I said above, at least they're invisible...

Giving in to temptation

It probably won't surprise anyone who reads this blog to know that I bought Margot Asquith's Great War Diary. After writing about it here, it was only a matter of time, really. I bought it at an end of financial year sale at Bookworld, so it was 15% off plus free postage - a bargain! I'm glad I have it now because I've just watched an excellent three part drama series called 37 Days, about the weeks leading up to the beginning of WWI from the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand & his wife until the declaration of war.
Sinead Cusack plays Margot, &, as a segue into the post that's coming up on Thursday, I've just been watching Cusack's husband, Jeremy Irons, play Frank Tregear in The Pallisers 40 years ago. I hadn't realised that Irons & Anthony Andrews had acted together before their famous roles in Brideshead Revisited but, here they are as best friends seven years earlier as Andrews plays Lord Silverbridge in The Pallisers.

Phoebe chilling out

Have a lovely, relaxing weekend everyone. Phoebe is always completely relaxed, no matter where she finds herself.

Edited to add: I was sitting in the study a little while ago & turned around to get Moby Dick off the tbr shelves (it's a long story which involves buying another copy of MD even though I haven't read the copy I already have) & noticed how beautiful the shelves looked in the late afternoon autumn sunshine. I grabbed the iPad to take this photo & then noticed that

Lucky was sitting on the window sill looking gorgeous although puzzled as to why I was so excited to see her in a good spot for a photo where she couldn't immediately wind herself around my legs to avoid the camera. Just a completely normal Saturday afternoon at our house.

The joy & the curse of the tbr shelves

I love my tbr shelves. I'm a very lucky woman, as well as a very undisciplined one when it comes to buying books. I blame the internet & ebooks for the explosion of my tbr shelves over the last few years - it couldn't possibly be my fault. I'm also very easily led when it comes to ideas for what to read next &, as my mother would have said, my eyes are bigger than my stomach (or whatever the bookish equivalent is). So, the curse of the tbr shelves is that I often have a copy of whatever book has been reviewed in the blog post I just read or podcast I just listened to, especially as I read blogs that often focus on older books, & I want to read that book right now. Or as soon as I finish the three books I'm reading at the moment. But then, definitely, before the next inspiration strikes. So, the book moves from the shelves to the pile on my desk & sometimes sits there so long that I've forgotten what the original inspiration was. These are the books I've pulled off the shelves in the last few weeks & the reasons why they're there.

I read a list of the best WWI novels. I can't find the website now but it was on my Facebook timeline. It was an interesting list & I'd read several of the books already. One that I hadn't read but do own is Rose Macaulay's Non-Combatants and Others. Another book was Mrs Humphry Ward's Missing. This was free to download to my Kindle so I did that, knowing that I will never remember why I downloaded it when I finally get around to reading it. However, I was also reminded of John Sutherland's biography of Mary Ward. My Oxford paperback edition has some of the most laudatory quotes from respected biographers that I've ever read. "A major biography... it deserves a fanfare" Claire Tomalin, "John Sutherland's... account of her life is clearly the best yet." Julia Briggs, "gripping... a story that unfolds with the fascination of high tragedy." Margaret Drabble. So, why has it been on the tbr shelves since 1995? Maybe it's the very small print...

Continuing the WWI theme, I listened to a fascinating podcast from BBC Women's Hour the other day. It was an interview from the 1960s with Baroness de T'Serclaes, who began life as Elsie Knocker, one of the courageous women who set up ambulance posts & nursed during WWI, usually with very little help or encouragement from the establishment. I remember telling my self to order the paperback because I was never going to have time to read the hardback. Well, I did, & that was four years ago.

Simon Savidge recently reviewed Kate Colquhoun's new book about the Maybrick murder case, Did She Kill Him? Simon also interviewed Kate on his podcast, You Wrote The Book! I've read other books about Florence Maybrick & I love a good Victorian poisoning murder so I'm keen to read this soon. At least this is from the library so it's in the library tbr pile instead of my own personal tbr pile. Is there a difference, except that the library books have to go back eventually?

Then, I read Desperate Reader's review of Somerset Maugham's The Painted Veil. I have this lovely Vintage edition & I seem to be collecting Vintage editions of Maugham but not actually reading any of them.

I've also just read an interview at Nerdalicious with Elizabeth Norton, author of many historical biographies, including The Anne Boleyn Papers. This is a bit different though, as it's a biography told almost entirely through the contemporary sources for Anne's life. However, it reminded me that I have this beautiful Folio edition of one of the major sources for Anne's life, George Cavendish's Thomas Wolsey : His Life and Death. Somehow, I've also managed to order Elizabeth Norton's book as well... How does that happen?

Then, there was Heavenali's review of Sheridan Le Fanu's Uncle Silas & Cosy Books' purchase of the Virago edition of Charlotte Yonge's The Daisy Chain, which reminded me that I still haven't read the sequel, The Trial, which I downloaded a long time ago. I could also mention the new Persephones & the Slightly Foxed editions that I'm determined to read as they arrive & not let them be overtaken by other books - but I won't because this post is long enough as it is.
There you have it, my latest list of good reading intentions. Only time will tell how many of them I actually read. I have no idea what's coming up next because my brain is hurting.

Collecting but not reading

I have a habit of collecting books by an author but not actually reading any of them. It's on the rainy day principle. If a long out of print author is suddenly in print again, I rush to buy their books because they may not stay in print very long & I'd hate to miss out on that little window of opportunity when they're available. Elizabeth Goudge is the latest author that I'm stockpiling against the day when I'm in the mood for one of her books.

I remember reading several of her books when I was much younger. I especially remember The White Witch, set during the English Civil War. Capuchin began by reprinting Green Dolphin Country a few years ago & now Hendrickson in the US have started reprinting her books, including The Scent of Water, of which I read an enticing review here,

and the Eliot Family trilogy, also known as the Damerosehay series. So far they've reprinted Volumes 1 & 2 so no 3 can't be far away.

Then there's Angela Thirkell who has many devoted fans in the blogosphere. Since Virago reprinted High Rising & Wild Strawberries (with Pomfret Towers to come later this year), there have been many appreciative reviews of her work. I have the Virago reprints as well as an omnibus I bought in a secondhand bookshop years ago which contains The Brandons, Cheerfulness Breaks In & Before Lunch.

I have read some Somerset Maugham - The Razor's Edge, some of the short stories - but it was many years ago.

I'm afraid I can always be seduced by a beautiful cover & these Vintage editions are gorgeous.

I've also just bought these two lovely Vintage US editions of Up At The Villa & The Painted Veil (now I can't decide which of the Vintage covers I like best...) from my favourite remainders bookshop, Clouston & Hall in Canberra. I've been buying books from them by mail order for over 30 years now. I must have bought hundreds of books from them over that time & they have the most wonderful bargains. Most of my collection of Wodehouse came from them when the Arrow reprints were remaindered. The links are to reviews of the Maugham books by Simon at Stuck In A Book & Dani at A Work in Progress.

Maybe one day, when I actually get around to reading their books, I'll be inspired to join the Elizabeth Goudge Society & the Angela Thirkell Society (there doesn't seem to be a Maugham Society). If anyone is a passionate advocate of any of these books, let me know in the comments. I just need a gentle shove in the right direction, I'm sure, & I'll be off!