February Books
Mar. 1st, 2008 10:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
slemslempikeFebruary
Counting My Chickens - Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire
Facts and Fancies - Armando Iannunci
Life on the Edge - Judy Horacek
Murder on the Orient Express - Agatha Christie
Playing to the Gallery - Simon Hoggart
Hard Work - Polly Toynbee
Last Curtsey - Fiona McCarthy
Forever Rose - Hilary McKay
Hoo-Hahs and Passing Fancies - Francis Wheen
The Party's Over - Caroline B Cooney
Among Friends - Caroline B Cooney
The Foxglove Saga - Auberon Waugh
Counting My Chickens was very kindly lent to me by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
debodacious, and was just lovely. I thought that the introduction by Tom Stoppard was a little too gushing, as if we needed to have it explained to us that she was easy to love before we could enjoy it.
Facts and Fancies I've been reading over the last couple of months - it's a collection of his various columns. I especially liked the one on "Them" - the people it is who say the things that are reported as "They Say".
Life on the Edge I got after a recommendation from, I think,gair, and the cartoons were just as good as she said they'd be. There's a website here. I especially like the Building Site Fantasy.
I'd not read Murder on the Orient Express before and picked it up while at my parents' with nothing to read. I knew the outcome, but liked how it got there. I almost certainly wouldn't have worked it out on my own, but then I never do, ever.
Playing to the Gallery was from the London bookswap, and it was very good indeed.cangetmad had told me about the description of someone's smile as "like winter sun on a coffin lid", and I also particularly enjoyed the description of Margaret Thatcher (Founder and President for Life of World Institute of Thatcherology) as "insufficiently dead". The index is inspired - "Walmsley, Lady: mistakenly thought to favour nude calendar of parliamentary choir", "Jackson, Glenda: fails to perceive romance of A303 trunk road" and "Tebbit, (Lord) Norman : makes offensive but amusing joke about Michael Portillo, 217; makes slightly less offensive but still amusing joke about Margaret Thatcher's statue, 269" being my favourite entries.
Hard Work was interesting, but frustrating. I think it was aimed at someone far richer than I am, and possibly someone who hasn't ever escaped a middle class bubble - the examples she gives of things that low-paid workers can't afford are things that I wouldn't be able to buy myself, lots of the time. She is good at driving home the relentlessness of poverty, and how difficult it is to even know about the forms of help its possible to get if there is even anything to benefit you. Also about the hideousness of contract workers in the public sector, which I was vaguely aware of but didn't really know how it worked. She is very odd about race - mentioning when people's race is not white, and sometimes including descriptions such as "honey-coloured". There is an utterly bizarre point (which I cannot now fund, so I hope the paraphrase is reasonably accurate) where she says that she does not talk much about race because it wasn't a major factor of low-paid work - it was just because she happened to be in London that there were a large number of black and asian people in this kind of work, and after all, if she'd been somewhere else, it would have been almost entirely white. Which is breathtakingly ignorant and sits very uncomfortably with her sometimes excellent gender analysis.
Last Curtsery was fascinating - written by someone who was one of the debutantes from the last presentations to the Queen in 1958. She's writing about her own recollections, with a certain amount of bemused reflection and seeing it as a very odd, archaic, way of existence, and also how British society was changing. Really interesting.
Forever Rose apparently came out in September, but I didn't realise until Amazon sent me an email about it recently. I panicked a little, because it was for the paperback, and I thought maybe the hardback was long gone and then it wouldn't match. Thankfully this was not the case. It's labelled quite starkly as the FINAL book in the Casson family series, and that made me cry when I finished it. When Permanent Rose came out I was a bit eh because she was not my favourite Casson, but she has grown on me immensely. It was very funny as well - I laughed lots at the school buying 200 new books when Kiran finished the library, and felt very sympathetic for Rose's reading resistance. I thought it was a bit of a cop-out that she suddenly found a book she liked and that was it though. And I'm not sure about the reinstatement of Bill as a happy ending, but Buttercup was quite nice. Oh, it was all very good.
I've been reading Hoo-Hahs and Passing Fancies for several months now, and it's been rather good. I like Francis Wheen's writing anyway, he has lovely turns of phrase. Odd to read something and then see how long ago it was how history repeats itself is there anythng new under the sun etc etc.
I picked up The Party's Over and Among Friends separately as something to read before bed, but should have remembered that one of the reasons that CBC mght well be my favourite YA writer is that she can be qute upsetting. I like that Hallie/Helen finds her salvation through admin, and it's a really great change from everyone going merrily off to college for their brand new lives.
The Foxglove Saga was deeply disturbing and I'm not sure I liked it at all.
Counting My Chickens - Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire
Facts and Fancies - Armando Iannunci
Life on the Edge - Judy Horacek
Murder on the Orient Express - Agatha Christie
Playing to the Gallery - Simon Hoggart
Hard Work - Polly Toynbee
Last Curtsey - Fiona McCarthy
Forever Rose - Hilary McKay
Hoo-Hahs and Passing Fancies - Francis Wheen
The Party's Over - Caroline B Cooney
Among Friends - Caroline B Cooney
The Foxglove Saga - Auberon Waugh
Counting My Chickens was very kindly lent to me by
debodacious, and was just lovely. I thought that the introduction by Tom Stoppard was a little too gushing, as if we needed to have it explained to us that she was easy to love before we could enjoy it. Facts and Fancies I've been reading over the last couple of months - it's a collection of his various columns. I especially liked the one on "Them" - the people it is who say the things that are reported as "They Say".
Life on the Edge I got after a recommendation from, I think,
gair, and the cartoons were just as good as she said they'd be. There's a website here. I especially like the Building Site Fantasy.I'd not read Murder on the Orient Express before and picked it up while at my parents' with nothing to read. I knew the outcome, but liked how it got there. I almost certainly wouldn't have worked it out on my own, but then I never do, ever.
Playing to the Gallery was from the London bookswap, and it was very good indeed.
cangetmad had told me about the description of someone's smile as "like winter sun on a coffin lid", and I also particularly enjoyed the description of Margaret Thatcher (Founder and President for Life of World Institute of Thatcherology) as "insufficiently dead". The index is inspired - "Walmsley, Lady: mistakenly thought to favour nude calendar of parliamentary choir", "Jackson, Glenda: fails to perceive romance of A303 trunk road" and "Tebbit, (Lord) Norman : makes offensive but amusing joke about Michael Portillo, 217; makes slightly less offensive but still amusing joke about Margaret Thatcher's statue, 269" being my favourite entries.Hard Work was interesting, but frustrating. I think it was aimed at someone far richer than I am, and possibly someone who hasn't ever escaped a middle class bubble - the examples she gives of things that low-paid workers can't afford are things that I wouldn't be able to buy myself, lots of the time. She is good at driving home the relentlessness of poverty, and how difficult it is to even know about the forms of help its possible to get if there is even anything to benefit you. Also about the hideousness of contract workers in the public sector, which I was vaguely aware of but didn't really know how it worked. She is very odd about race - mentioning when people's race is not white, and sometimes including descriptions such as "honey-coloured". There is an utterly bizarre point (which I cannot now fund, so I hope the paraphrase is reasonably accurate) where she says that she does not talk much about race because it wasn't a major factor of low-paid work - it was just because she happened to be in London that there were a large number of black and asian people in this kind of work, and after all, if she'd been somewhere else, it would have been almost entirely white. Which is breathtakingly ignorant and sits very uncomfortably with her sometimes excellent gender analysis.
Last Curtsery was fascinating - written by someone who was one of the debutantes from the last presentations to the Queen in 1958. She's writing about her own recollections, with a certain amount of bemused reflection and seeing it as a very odd, archaic, way of existence, and also how British society was changing. Really interesting.
Forever Rose apparently came out in September, but I didn't realise until Amazon sent me an email about it recently. I panicked a little, because it was for the paperback, and I thought maybe the hardback was long gone and then it wouldn't match. Thankfully this was not the case. It's labelled quite starkly as the FINAL book in the Casson family series, and that made me cry when I finished it. When Permanent Rose came out I was a bit eh because she was not my favourite Casson, but she has grown on me immensely. It was very funny as well - I laughed lots at the school buying 200 new books when Kiran finished the library, and felt very sympathetic for Rose's reading resistance. I thought it was a bit of a cop-out that she suddenly found a book she liked and that was it though. And I'm not sure about the reinstatement of Bill as a happy ending, but Buttercup was quite nice. Oh, it was all very good.
I've been reading Hoo-Hahs and Passing Fancies for several months now, and it's been rather good. I like Francis Wheen's writing anyway, he has lovely turns of phrase. Odd to read something and then see how long ago it was how history repeats itself is there anythng new under the sun etc etc.
I picked up The Party's Over and Among Friends separately as something to read before bed, but should have remembered that one of the reasons that CBC mght well be my favourite YA writer is that she can be qute upsetting. I like that Hallie/Helen finds her salvation through admin, and it's a really great change from everyone going merrily off to college for their brand new lives.
The Foxglove Saga was deeply disturbing and I'm not sure I liked it at all.
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no subject
Date: 2008-03-01 10:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-01 11:01 am (UTC)I agree about the too traditionally happy an ending - why should he get to swan back in? And is he going to be more supportive of Eve's work? Hmm.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-01 11:05 am (UTC)I'm not the only one who mentally sees Bill as Bill Nighy, then!
no subject
Date: 2008-03-01 12:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-01 10:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-01 11:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-01 03:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-02 07:50 pm (UTC)