August Books

[slemslempike]

August
I'm Charlotte Simmons - Tom Wolfe
Love's Shadow - Ada Leverson
Tenterhooks - Ada Leverson
Love at Second Sight - Ada Leverson
Madam Mary-Mary - Joan G. Robinson
The Cricket Term - Antonia Forest
Nobody's Perfect - Jacqueline Wilson
Mostly Mary - Gwynedd Rae
Two Fair Plaits - Malcolm Saville
Gladys Reunited - Sandi Toksvig
Including Alice - Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
The More the Merrier - Anne Fine
Lucky Jim - Kingsley Amis
Mapp and Lucia - EF Benson
Lucia's Progress - EF Benson
Trouble for Lucia - EF Benson
The Eyre Affair - Jasper Fforde
Judy and Punch - Ethel Turner
Little Mother Meg - Ethel Turner
The Ruby in the Smoke - Philip Pullman
A Fine Old Conflict - Jessica Mitford
Caddy Ever After - Hilary McKay
Phyllida in Form III - Evelyn Smith

I was looking to see what I read last year, and last year was my in-between-employment month, and week of holiday with my family, so I read loads. This year I went to Berlin for a week, but that was seeing people I wanted to, not hiding from people I didn't.

I didn't think very much of I'm Charlotte Simmons. Tom Wolfe kept putting in "the way that girls do" whenever he clearly didn't know what girls did. And it was clearly about how Charlotte functioned for other people, and I was interested in her journey, which got shunted to one side. The Ada Leverson trilogy was excellent. They're about a family where the wife is clever and the husband thinks he is but is actually rather silly, and how she has to manage this. Very funny. They were a softer bit of the Lucia books in places - and now I am terribly sad that I've come to the end of them, although I still have Miss Mapp which I haven't read. Pity the Tom Holt sequels aren't easy to come by. I liked The Eyre Affair, though found Thursday rather remote and not quite believable, but not enough to matter.

My sister made me read The Ruby in the Smoke, which I really enjoyed. She said she'd liked it much more than the Northern Lights trilogy, which I wasn't overly impressed with, so I thought I'd try it. According to Amazon, Caddy Ever After wasn't due out until the end of September, but I found it in a Borders at the very end of August and squeaked. I felt cheated that Rose's Flying Feeling was included - I want new Cassons, not recycled. I also wasn't very taken with the first person narrative, but I think that's just because it wasn't the same. It was still excellent, and I want more and more and more. The Ethel Turners I'd borrowed from wonderlanded ages ago, and not got around to reading. I read Family at Misrule a few months back, and missed Judy from the family, and wasn't very taken with it. But Judy and Punch was a wonderful school story (if a little too much of the honourable schoolgirl in a scrape because she won't tell tales that aren't even tales), and rather devastating at the end. And then in Little Mother Meg Poppet wanted to take care of Meg, and gave her vegetables, and then Bunty bought Poppet a bike. Pip was rightfully ashamed, the selfish £20 bike boy.

I picked up A Fine Old Conflict almost accidentally in London, for not much at all, and in addition to being a cracking read, has one of my professors from Santa Cruz listed in the acknowledgements. She'd talked about growing up in a communist household and knowing that the phones were monitored, but I hadn't twigged that she might have known Decca. Plus, this professor wrote that it was a pleasure to work with me, and was effusive about my paper, and I am now claiming this as practically being BFF with the Mitfords in my head.