September Books
Oct. 1st, 2006 10:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
slemslempikeFamily Fan Club - Jean Ure
SVU 48: No Rules - Francine Pascal (Laurie Johns)
SVU 49: Stranded - Francine Pascal (Laurie Johns)
SVU 50: Summer of Love - Francine Pascal (Laurie Johns)
SVU 53: Living Together - Francine Pascal (Laurie Johns)
Mediator 4: Staying Alive - Meg Cabot
Swallow the Star - KM Peyton
Alex in Winter - Tessa Duder
Gollum: How We Made Movie Magic - Andy Serkis
Alex in Rome - Tessa Duder
Songs for Alex - Tessa Duder
Three Men on the Bummel - Jerome K Jerome
The Water Beetle - Nancy Mitford
Noblesse Oblige - Nancy Mitford
The Letters of a Nobody - Keith Waterhouse
Between the Acts - Virginia Woolf
David Blaize - EF Benson
The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Wintersmith - Terry Pratchett
The Wives of Bath - Susan Swan
Elizabeth 1: University, Interrupted - Francine Pascal (Laurie Johns)
I'm afraid I didn't much like Between the Acts, though it started promisingly. Three Men on the Bummel was much better, especially the rants about how organised the Germans were. I had been wanting to read The Charioteer for ages, and then Amazon finally sent it to me after delaying the shipment for weeks upon end. I liked it very much, especially Laurie at school, but found it rather unpleasant in places. Same for The Wives of Bath, which I read after someone mentioned it on the girlsown list, and it wasn't at all what I was expecting. I thought the frustration of the Paulie/Lewis was really well done, and the desperation at being caught out.
Oh, Sweet Valley, how I return to your perfect size six bosom and revel in your ocean-coloured eyes. The road trip books were good. The Elizabeth book was great. Elizabeth has got a creative writing fellowship at the University of London. Aged 19/20, and without having completed her undergraduate degree. But no matter! She wasn't sure whether or not to go, and finds herself at the airport after Jessica steals her man (actually, Jessica had caught Sam with another girl, and staged the whole stealing to reveal this to Elizabeth, but it backfired more than slightly), with a small duffle bag of summer clothes and a credit card. She is surprised when the one way flight to London costs $1199 same day. She has only got $1200 on her credit card and a little bit of American cash. Nonetheless she boards the plane, and is off to London. On the way she meets a frightfully proper Oxford chap who tells her that at the University of London she will be in a castle like halls. Obviously. She is a monumental fool. She's turned up two months early (and the admin staff amazingly don't tell her to fuck right off, but say that's fine) and also she has forgotten to accept her fellowship, so there's no place for her. She tries to get an interview at a very posh temping agency, but she has no papers. Eventually she wanders across a park in the fog and finds a stately home that she assumes is a B&B and gets work as a scullery maid. It turns out that the house is the home of Lords, and they are preparing for a wedding next year. I have to find the rest of the sequels.
The Alex books were wonderful. I desperately wanted to know what was going to happen in Rome, and when she came back from the Olympics. David Blaize was brilliant. For a book where one of the main thrusts is the suppression of beastliness, there is an awful lot of love and not a little group nudity. I recommend it to anyone who likes boys who like boys, or boys' school stories in general, or school stories in general, or EF Benson, though it's not terribly Benson-like.
I will leave you with an extract from the sequel to David Blaize, which I am reading at the moment, and is called David at King's. David has gone up to Cambridge, and while he is still three years behind Maddox, Maddox has thoughtfully elected to do a second tripos, just so that he can be near David again, as far as I can make out. Maddox (Frank) is in David's room, and they are talking about Gurls. David is not too keen on them.
"But O Lord, how I love my friends: isn't that enough for a chap till he falls in love in the regular way? If I'd got to kiss somebody I'd kiss one of them. You for choice, because I'm much fonder of you than the rest of them."
Frank burst out laughing at these surprising philosophies.
"Oh, David," he said, "there's no one like you. You always make me feel as if I had just had a bath with plenty of soap."
SVU 48: No Rules - Francine Pascal (Laurie Johns)
SVU 49: Stranded - Francine Pascal (Laurie Johns)
SVU 50: Summer of Love - Francine Pascal (Laurie Johns)
SVU 53: Living Together - Francine Pascal (Laurie Johns)
Mediator 4: Staying Alive - Meg Cabot
Swallow the Star - KM Peyton
Alex in Winter - Tessa Duder
Gollum: How We Made Movie Magic - Andy Serkis
Alex in Rome - Tessa Duder
Songs for Alex - Tessa Duder
Three Men on the Bummel - Jerome K Jerome
The Water Beetle - Nancy Mitford
Noblesse Oblige - Nancy Mitford
The Letters of a Nobody - Keith Waterhouse
Between the Acts - Virginia Woolf
David Blaize - EF Benson
The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Wintersmith - Terry Pratchett
The Wives of Bath - Susan Swan
Elizabeth 1: University, Interrupted - Francine Pascal (Laurie Johns)
I'm afraid I didn't much like Between the Acts, though it started promisingly. Three Men on the Bummel was much better, especially the rants about how organised the Germans were. I had been wanting to read The Charioteer for ages, and then Amazon finally sent it to me after delaying the shipment for weeks upon end. I liked it very much, especially Laurie at school, but found it rather unpleasant in places. Same for The Wives of Bath, which I read after someone mentioned it on the girlsown list, and it wasn't at all what I was expecting. I thought the frustration of the Paulie/Lewis was really well done, and the desperation at being caught out.
Oh, Sweet Valley, how I return to your perfect size six bosom and revel in your ocean-coloured eyes. The road trip books were good. The Elizabeth book was great. Elizabeth has got a creative writing fellowship at the University of London. Aged 19/20, and without having completed her undergraduate degree. But no matter! She wasn't sure whether or not to go, and finds herself at the airport after Jessica steals her man (actually, Jessica had caught Sam with another girl, and staged the whole stealing to reveal this to Elizabeth, but it backfired more than slightly), with a small duffle bag of summer clothes and a credit card. She is surprised when the one way flight to London costs $1199 same day. She has only got $1200 on her credit card and a little bit of American cash. Nonetheless she boards the plane, and is off to London. On the way she meets a frightfully proper Oxford chap who tells her that at the University of London she will be in a castle like halls. Obviously. She is a monumental fool. She's turned up two months early (and the admin staff amazingly don't tell her to fuck right off, but say that's fine) and also she has forgotten to accept her fellowship, so there's no place for her. She tries to get an interview at a very posh temping agency, but she has no papers. Eventually she wanders across a park in the fog and finds a stately home that she assumes is a B&B and gets work as a scullery maid. It turns out that the house is the home of Lords, and they are preparing for a wedding next year. I have to find the rest of the sequels.
The Alex books were wonderful. I desperately wanted to know what was going to happen in Rome, and when she came back from the Olympics. David Blaize was brilliant. For a book where one of the main thrusts is the suppression of beastliness, there is an awful lot of love and not a little group nudity. I recommend it to anyone who likes boys who like boys, or boys' school stories in general, or school stories in general, or EF Benson, though it's not terribly Benson-like.
I will leave you with an extract from the sequel to David Blaize, which I am reading at the moment, and is called David at King's. David has gone up to Cambridge, and while he is still three years behind Maddox, Maddox has thoughtfully elected to do a second tripos, just so that he can be near David again, as far as I can make out. Maddox (Frank) is in David's room, and they are talking about Gurls. David is not too keen on them.
"But O Lord, how I love my friends: isn't that enough for a chap till he falls in love in the regular way? If I'd got to kiss somebody I'd kiss one of them. You for choice, because I'm much fonder of you than the rest of them."
Frank burst out laughing at these surprising philosophies.
"Oh, David," he said, "there's no one like you. You always make me feel as if I had just had a bath with plenty of soap."
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Date: 2006-10-01 10:30 am (UTC)~uses Joan ikon icon~
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Date: 2006-10-01 11:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-01 10:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-01 11:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-01 12:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-01 03:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-01 07:06 pm (UTC)Sadly, Find in a Library says the nearest copy is New York (clearly they don't know about yours!).
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Date: 2006-10-01 02:49 pm (UTC)Also, very glad you like the Alex books - I love them with a burning fiery passion.
Also, the quote from the David Blaize sequel makes me feel as if I had just had a bath with plenty of soap.
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Date: 2006-10-01 03:38 pm (UTC)Alex is wonderful. I liked reading her biography bit at the end of Songs for Alex. Was she based on a real person?
You should defintiely read both Blaize books. There are even better quotes in the first book. Where I am in the sequel, David is angsting because there's a tennis match between him and Frank to decide who plays first string for the university, and he desperately wants Frank to win.
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Date: 2006-10-01 08:10 pm (UTC)I've seen bits of this book quoted in a serious analysis of how the ethos of the British public school influenced the young men who volunteered in WW1. Like Horace Vachell's The Hill ("A Romance of Friendship, but nevertheless fine, wholesome and thoroughly manly", we are assured by the publishers!), the homo-emotionalism is too strong to even think of being called subtext, even if it never openly amounts to homo-eroticism.
Vachell casts the relationship between his two lead characters in spiritual terms, in order to duck around this problem. From what I've read of it, David Blaize seems to be a great deal more brazen about what it is trying to hint. Have you read The Hill, and how do you think they compare?
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Date: 2006-10-02 01:05 am (UTC)Also, clearly I need to read David Blaize.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-02 09:03 am (UTC)