January Books

[slemslempike]

These are the books I read in January:

January Books
Girls, Visions and Everything - Sarah Schulman
Pippa in Switzerland - E E Ohlson
That Aggravating Schoolgirl - Grace Stebbing
The Willoughby Captains - Talbot Baines Reed
Adrienne and the Chalet School - Elinor M. Brent-Dyer
Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K Jerome
Sally Scatterbrain - Dorita Fairlie Bruce
A Great and Terrible Beauty - Libba Bray
Little Boy Lost - Marghanita Laski
The Circus is Coming - Noel Streatfeild
The Bronte Girls - Garry Kilworth
Vice Versa - F Anstey
The Team - K M Peyton
Brother Jacob - George Eliot
Flashman - George Macdonald Fraser
Citizen Girl - Nicola Kraus and Emma McLoughlin
Far From the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
Afterwards - Claire Hennessy
The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets - Eva Rice
Hilda Annersley, Headmistress - Lesley Green
A Chalet School Librarian - Pat Willimott

That's four rereads, and also two of my new year's reading resolutions - I wanted to read Three Men in a Boat and some Thomas Hardy, which I have. Sadly, one of my other resolutions was to use the library more, and I only got one book out. Of these, I really liked The Willoughby Captains and Flashman. The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets I did really enjoy. I might have enjoyed it more had it not been compared to Mitford, but it was still a lovely read. Little Boy Lost was terribly sad but awfully good. I'm afraid I didn't like the two Chalet fill-ins very much. They were an okay read, but for starters they were very badly edited, and in some cases completely OOC, and rather stilted.

Comments

[edithmatilda.livejournal.com]

Fine Thomas Hardy choice. There's a lot to be said for a book you can finish without having to saw off your head and scream a lot, in that order.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I am planning to find more to read, but now I am strangely put off.

[edithmatilda.livejournal.com]

Jude the Obscure. *gibbers a bit*

This is not to say they aren't smashing. Some are good sanitywise as they make you cross rather than gloomy. Traditionally, Hardy's characters are better off dead at the end than alive and living with what he's done to their heads, so I find that helps.

[percyprune.livejournal.com]

The later Flashmans are even better.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I'd read a few of the later ones, but hadn't read the first one before. I do really like them as an antidote to the manly, British boysown.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

Just wondering: how do you define 'boysown'? I'm not sure whether I've read any or not...

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Like girlsown only for boys! Boys' school stories, boys' adventure stories and the like. Very heroic (and British) Upstanding Young Men fighting/learning for King, Country and SCHOOL.

[sangerin.livejournal.com]

I am overly loyal to GGBP, and plus I had inside information on both of the fill-ins, so I have no intention of reading those two.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that seems a wise choice! I don't mind having read them, and I'd have probably quite liked them as online fic, but it's having it there in a book somehow makes me feel resentful.

[the_antichris.livejournal.com]

What did you think of Vice Versa? I managed to hear about and read it without knowing about the body-swap thing (don't know what I thought the title meant), but once I tidied up the bits of my exploded head I enjoyed it.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

It was okayish - glad to have read it, but almost certainly won't read it again. It felt just ratehr relentless in the plot, somehow. I can't really explain it better than that!