Great British Baking!

Some people were there when Dylan first went electric.  Some knew about Harry Potter before he hit the mainstream.  I, dear reader, was with The Great British Bake Off from series one, episode one. Indeed, the whole first series watched without much comment - I loved it, and even toyed with entering the second series.  But then it suddenly became much better known, attracting higher ratings and being a heated topic of conversation in the Bodleian tea room.  I was even inspired to hold my own cake party.  I'm much enjoying series...

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Am I My Brother's Reader?

I've been very ruthless over the past couple days, and weeded out over 100 books which have gone to Barrington (a local National Trust property with a book barn) or The Honeypot (an even more local secondhand book seller - my Mum in our garage, for the church!)  I haven't been quite as ruthless as Rachel, but I've been stern with myself and certainly managed to make a bit of room... and then immediately filled it with the books I sent home with Mum and Dad when I moved house.  But, whereas I'd usually keep books I've read unless I hated them, now...

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The Warden - Anthony Trollope

In 2004, when I first joined the online book group which became dovegreybooks, and which I still love, everyone was talking about Anthony Trollope.  Over the course of the year, I managed to acquire all of the Barchester Chronicles & Palliser novels.  Fast forward eight years, and... I finally read something by Trollope!  And it wasn't even one of the actual books I bought in 2004, although it was a duplicate of one of them - Penguin sent me their new edition of The Warden (1855) a few months ago, and I decided that was a good excuse...

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A Review Round-up

It's one of those posts where I post teeny tiny reviews of some titles for A Century of Books which (for whatever reason) don't warrant full reviews.  It's really just so I have somewhere to link from the main list, but do jump in with your thoughts nonetheless!The Westminster Alice (1902) by SakiIt's Lewis Carroll's Alice, but re-imagined with various political figures from the turn of the century!  A fun idea, and some bits I found amusing, but mostly it went right over my head.  I'd heard of most of the people - Chamberlain, Balfour, Cecil etc. - but I don't know the ins...

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Song for a Sunday

Have I ever pointed you in the direction of Lindsey Butler's beautiful take on 'I Don't Want To Talk About It' before?   No?  Well, it's on Soundcloud here (no video available, as far as I'm aware, of the whole son...

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Stuck-in-a-Book's Weekend Miscellany

Happy Weekend!  I'm off home for a week and a bit - next Saturday is a party for Mum and Dad's anniversary, and I thought I'd take the opportunity to enjoy a week at home with Sherpa.  Mum promises me that Sherpa is looking forward to me coming... I'm going to fool myself into believing it.I'll try to keep posting while I'm at home, but it might be a bit more sporadic.1.) The blog post - is Alice's lovely post about the prospect of reading Ivy Compton-Burnett - including a quotation from Virginia Woolf on ICB which somehow I had never read before.2.)...

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Happy 30th Anniversary, Our Vicar & Our Vicar's Wife

I've posted this photo before, but I loved it - and it seems appropriate, because today is the 30th anniversary for my Dad and Mum, a.k.a Our Vicar and Our Vicar's Wife.  Join with me in wishing them a hearty congratulations!(l-r) Colin, Anne, Peter, me (playing outside: Sherpa)And perhaps we can cheer them on their day by recommending our favourite married couples in fiction?  Mine are either Ian and Felicity from Denis Mackail's Greenery Street or Dahlia and the narrator in A.A. Milne's early sketches, collected in Those Were The Days.(Incidentally,...

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Five From the Archive (no.7)

I was thinking about doing a FFTA about unmarried women, because I've read a lot of those in the past year or so, and I imagine that one day I will - but I thought it might be more interesting, and more unusual, to select books about pairs of women.  Because there turned out to be a few in my reviews archive.  None of these are about romantic pairings (well... one could be, but it's not overtly) but instead female friendships (and, er, unfriendships.)  It's a surprisingly rich and varied vein of the books I've read - well, five of them at...

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'A Household Book' - A.A. Milne

As promised yesterday, here is the essay 'A Household Book' from A.A. Milne's Not That It Matters.  It might come with some surprises - unless you happened to read Peter's comments yesterday...Once on a time I discovered Samuel Butler; not the other two, but the one who wrote The Way of All Flesh, the second-best novel in the English language.  I say the second-best, so that, if you remind me of Tom Jones or The Mayor of Casterbridge or any other that you fancy, I can say that, of course, that one is the best.  Well, I discovered him, just as Voltaire discovered Habakkuk,...

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Not That It Matters - A.A. Milne

It's been about a decade since I blitzed most of A.A. Milne's very many books, and now I'm enjoying revisiting them.  I thought a trip down Milne Memory Lane would be a handy way to cross off 1919 on A Century of Books, so I picked up his collection of humorous essays from that year, Not That It Matters.The first piece (although they are not in chronological order) starts 'Sometimes when the printer is waiting for an article which really should have been sent to him the day before, I sit at my desk and wonder if there is any possible subject in the...

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Song for a Sunday

Jewel is pretty well known in the US, I think - indeed, her first (and, to my mind, worst) album is one of the biggest sellers ever there - but she's not made much of a splash in the UK.  I first heard her song 'Hands' in 2004, when my friend Hannah played it to me, and have loved it ever since.  Enj...

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Very definitely Gone to Earth

From the 1950 film (photo source)I don't give up on books very often, although I do it more now than I would have done before I started blogging.  I still feel a bit ungrateful towards the author, who has put months or years into writing a book, if I can't be bothered to spend a week on it - but I'm coming round to the too-many-books-too-little-time argument.  (Giving up is distinct from putting it to one side and forgetting about it - it has to be a decisive action.)When I do give up, it's usually because I think the writing is too bad, or (occasionally)...

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With The Hunted - Sylvia Townsend Warner

Do you ever wish a book had been published a bit earlier?  I imagine a few people lamented that the first dictionary was issued just weeks after they'd struggled with spelling 'sincerely' at the end of a letter, or mourned that British Birds and How To Spot Them came out mere days after that flock of yellow-crested (or was it crested-yellow?) hornspippets descended. Well, I'm feeling that way about With The Hunted - the selected non-fiction writings of Sylvia Townsend Warner, recently published by Black Dog Books (their website here.)  If...

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Five From the Archive (no.6)

This week I wanted my Five From The Archive (where I revisit old reviews from my blog - it's been a while, so some of you might not know about it!) to be novels about families.  Obviously that encompasses many, many novels - so I decided to be a little more specific, and insist that they have a relative of some sort in the title.  Makes it more fun to pick them!  Here are my five - as always, let me know which you'd suggest...Five... Books about Family1.) Sisters By A River (1947) by Barbara ComynsIn short: The surreal account of Barbara Comyns'...

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The Lizzie Bennet Diaries

I think I might have been the last person to watch The Lizzie Bennet Diaries - I was certainly the last person in my nuclear family to do so - but perhaps some of you are new to electricity, and I was second last.  Penultimate, if you will.  And so I'll tell you about it.I imagine a good 95% of people who stumble across my blog will have read Pride and Prejudice (got my eye on you, Simon S.), and a fairly high percentage will also have seen an adaptation of some variety.  By my count, I've seen two films, one TV series, one Bollywood adaptation, and one play - and that's...

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A Bristolian Weekend

I've just come back from a lovely weekend with my brother - and, very to my surprise, and the surprise of everyone who heard me moaning for the past seven years, I actually got a little into the Olympics, and was genuinely chuffed when Mo won the running thingummy.  Who'd have thought?  It'll fade, no doubt.More importantly, I also bought some books in Bristol... and here they are, taken (rather obviously) on my bed, I'm afraid:(Clockwise, starting top left)Two Worlds and Their Ways - Ivy Compton-BurnettI do already have this; I bought it...

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Song for a Sunday

When you see this, I'll be in Bristol with Colin - he might be talking to me, or he might be watching the Olympics - I hope you're all having lovely weekends too!Goldfrapp are (I think) best known for up-tempo, disco-type songs (are they?) but this track, A&E, is wonderfully calming and very appropriate for a Sunday Song.  Enj...

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Art in Nature - Tove Jansson

I’ve probably mentioned before my envy of those readers who can eagerly await the latest novels from their favourite writers, doubtless following them on Twitter and keeping an eye out for their appearances on late-night BBC programmes, etc. etc.  Well, I don’t have any of that.  All the authors I love are dead.  But one thing I do look forward to with joy is Sort Of Books commissioning more translations of Tove Jansson’s books, mostly under the excellent translating skills of one Thomas Teal.  These are slowly and steadily emerging,...

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Here's an odd question...

How do you all fancy being my Research Assistants for the afternoon?!For my next chapter, I need to quote a 1920s middlebrow novel or two where a character talks about sex, and says 'We're all just animals, really', or anything like that.  The sort of sentence I've read dozens of times in novels of the period, but now can't remember any at all.If you can think of one off the top of your head, that would be amazing - otherwise perhaps you could keep your eyes open, and let me know??  Anything published around the 1920s (shortly before or after is fine) which isn't high modernist - oh,...

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Mrs. Harris Goes To Paris - Paul Gallico

The Bloomsbury Group set of reprints remains, I believe, the best selection of reprints out there.  It doesn't have the range of Penguin or OUP Classics; it doesn't have quite the unifying ethos of Persephone or Virago, but there simply are no duds in their number.  Miss Hargreaves is obviously their finest publication, in my eyes, but as I work my way through the few I haven't read, I continue to marvel at the treats they've brought back to a new audience.For some reason, Mrs. Harris has been sitting on my shelf for two years without me getting...

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Mrs. Harris - the winners!

Thanks so much for all your entries to the Paul Gallico giveaway - what a wonderful mix of destinations we want to visit between us!  Sorry not to hear the ideas of non-UK readers - perhaps one day I'll ask the question again, without a giveaway, so we can hear from everyone.I've done the draw now, and the eight sets of Mrs. Harris MP and Mrs. Harris Goes To Moscow will be going to... (drumroll, if you please):Estelle / A Bookish Space Margaret /  Books PleaseAgnieszkaSakura / Chasing BawaAnn PDavid H / Follow the ThreadMysticaDaphne (who entered by email)Congratulations, one and all! ...

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Jane Marcus on the non-canonical

  I don't currently have the internet at home, so I'm popping up scheduled posts when I can - so this is something to ponder on over the weekend.  The painting is Woman Reading in an Interior (1915) by Vaclav Vytlacil, which isn't remotely related to the quotation I wanted to post (except that both intrigue me.)  It's a potentially controversial, but interesting, excerpt I read by Jane Marcus (feminist theorist)... I would caution against fundamentalist feminists’ over-literal reading of texts without the radical unsettling processes which...

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Ivy Compton-Burnett: A Memoir - Cicely Greig

My favourite thing in the blogosphere in 2012 has been Claire discovering, and loving, A.A. Milne.  Every time one of her AAM reviews come out, I more or less burst with glee that somebody else has found out how funny and delightful his many and various books are.  Most of my AAM reading happened before I started blogging (I've read about 25 books by him) so you haven't witnessed my love of his books as much as you would have done had you engaged me in conversation in 2002, but - it is there! So, that's one favourite author off the list.  Back...

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