June Books
Jul. 1st, 2009 09:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
slemslempikeJune
Say Please - Virginia Graham
The Laurie Taylor Guide to Higher Education
Lanscape for a Good Woman - Carolyn Steedman
The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters - Charlotte Mosley
The Animal, The Vegetable and John D. Jones - Betsy Byars
Gossip - Andrew Barrow
Get a Life - Jenny Pausacker
The Right St Johns - Christine Chaundler
The Young Pretenders - Edith Henrietta Fowler
Audrey, a New Girl - Joanna Lloyd
Mummy's Legs - Kate Bingham
A Particular Place - Mary Hocking
Making Conversation - Christine Longford
Cathine, Head of the House - Joanna Lloyd
Miss Buncle's Book - DE Stevenson
Time and Tide Wait for No Man - Dale Spender
Is that you, Miss Blue? - M.E. Kerr
I saw reference to Say Please on someone's blog, and since I had really enjoyed her collection of poems Consider the Years (published by Persephone, but really very funny and cheerful!), I thought I would give this a go. It is a collection of short chapters on Ettiquette, with a foreword reading:
This is a book on Etiquette for Ladies, neither of which or whom now exists, as everybody knows; so the whole thing, both from my point of view and from yours, is the most shocking waste of time, and I have really no idea how it happened. The only thing that can be said for it is that it will not help you in the least to be a lady, which is all to the good as I believe it is not a desirable status, but it may make you laugh, which is always nice, even if this, also, is a waste of time. It may, of course, do nothing of the kind, which will be an enormous pity.
It did indeed make me laugh, quite a lot.
"Now, although it is not possible to love people who use serviettes, napkin users can like them very much indeed, and can even, if they are sufficiently rich, accept their hospitality."
"In society it is etiquette for ladies to have the best chairs and get handed things. In the home the reverse is the case. That is why ladies are more sociable than gentlemne."
It also contains some BRILLIANT advice, namely:
"On the love of all you hold most dear; on your homour as a Brown Owl; on your integrity as a Committee member for Queen Charlotte's Ball, or simply on your life as a Drone, SWEAR, here and now, you will not TALK during a performance. [...] Information on anything, unless perhaps it be incipient appendicitis, should be kept for the entr'actes."
"Cliques, by which are meant small groups of people who telephone to one another every morning, talking in a very special private language in which most of the consonants are missing, are absolutely delightful except at a party, when they are absolutely not."
Here I think we can substitute "comment to each other constantly" for "telephone to one another every morning" without a significant change in applicability.
The Laurie Taylor Guide to Higher Education is a collection of columns from the THES about the fictional university of Poppleton, and as it's mostly about how awful everything in universities is becoming, and pointing out the absurditites of the requirements at the expense of education, it was largely rather depressing instead of amusing.
Landscape for a Good Woman is about Carolyn Steedman's working class mother. She wrote the book as a sort of response to a lot of academic writing about class (mostly by male academics) that valourised the working class mother, harking back to "a simpler time". She uses hre mother, and her experience of growing up with her mother, to write about how class might work specifically for women, and especially for mothers, showing her life of accepting that having children was a burden and that in return for ruining her mother's life, she was expected to show good behaviour and high achievements. Time and Tide Wait for No Man is a collection of articles from the 1920s, from Time and Tide magazine, with some short chapters about the founding and the main contributors. It was wonderful to find out about it, and utterly depressing that a lot of the arguments still need to be made today. Also, I didn't know that some medical schools stopped admitting women again for a short time, even though I know the linear narrative of progress is largely bollocks.
I predictably loved Letters Between Six Sisters, but it was so sad at the end. Everyone is dead, and Debo is all alone.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
debodacious, I think it was, said that the book made her think that Debo had had an affair with JFK, and I very much agree. Other people said that the book made them more sympathetic to Diana, which is not surprising, I think, though for me I loved Pamela so very much by the end of it. I read Gossip immediately afterwards, which is a collection of newspaper gossip snippets about high society, and lots of the people in the Mitfords unsurprisingly showed up there too. It was rather startling all taken in at once. There's a lord someone who spent some time walking across rivers, and several with private train stations, and a picture of Mandy Rice-Davis and Christine Keeler that's one of the prettiest things I've ever seen.
I've been reading Mummy's Legs off and on for quite a few months now, so it's rather disjointed in my head. It was given away to the readers of She magazine, but since I am not among their number, I expect I bought it in a charity shop. It is sad, and about daughters relationships with their mothers, and adults carrying the scars of childhood with them. A Particular Place has a new vicar come to a village and not really fit in, though his excellent aunt has a nice line in sarcasm.
The YA books I read this month - The Animal, the Vegetable, and John D Jones, Get a Life and Is That You, Miss Blue? were all rather sad in various ways. Is That You, Miss Blue? especially, with a teacher who is a laughing stock, and then sacked because she thinks that Jesus is talking o her (which is apparently unacceptable in a religious school). It also contains the entirely innocent line: "[The headmistress] began rubbing her diamond and moaning."
School stories are always very comforting. The two Bramber Manor books were great - I love the politely sardonic housemistress as well as the slightly insane girls, and new to me this month was The Right St Johns, which is a similar plot to The Wrong Chalet School. There are two St Johns schools for girls in this one small town. The one at which Jacqueline arrives is rather soft, with individual bedrooms, luxurious food and lax regulations, though the new headmistress wants to make them competitive at academic work and games, much to their cribbing, lazy disgust. The other St Johns is austere but successful. Jacqueline completely changes the ethos of the school in her short time there, winning over even her enemies, but alas alack, it turns out her grumpy great-uncle intended to send her to the other St Johns, and he is adamant that this shall happen. Fortunately he arrives to remove her in the middle of an exciting hockey game, where Jacqueline is playing up for The School, and is won over by this and all her chums telling him how wonderful she is.
My Persephone books arrived, and despite Jen's predictions that at least someone would die in each one, they were mostly rather lovely. The Young Pretenders is a little sad in places, as Babs tells someone that she doesn't much like living in London, because in London it matters if you're pretty, and in the country she hadn't known she wasn't. But her parents come home from India, and her mother loves her even though she isn't pretty, so it's okay. Making Conversation I also liked, though predictably I would have liked more about the school. Martha wonders how people who aren't at school cope with the featureless lengths of time when they aren't broken up into terms and lessons, and I fully agree. Miss Buncle's Book was rather more cheerful, and thanks toalltheleaves for recommending it.
Say Please - Virginia Graham
The Laurie Taylor Guide to Higher Education
Lanscape for a Good Woman - Carolyn Steedman
The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters - Charlotte Mosley
The Animal, The Vegetable and John D. Jones - Betsy Byars
Gossip - Andrew Barrow
Get a Life - Jenny Pausacker
The Right St Johns - Christine Chaundler
The Young Pretenders - Edith Henrietta Fowler
Audrey, a New Girl - Joanna Lloyd
Mummy's Legs - Kate Bingham
A Particular Place - Mary Hocking
Making Conversation - Christine Longford
Cathine, Head of the House - Joanna Lloyd
Miss Buncle's Book - DE Stevenson
Time and Tide Wait for No Man - Dale Spender
Is that you, Miss Blue? - M.E. Kerr
I saw reference to Say Please on someone's blog, and since I had really enjoyed her collection of poems Consider the Years (published by Persephone, but really very funny and cheerful!), I thought I would give this a go. It is a collection of short chapters on Ettiquette, with a foreword reading:
This is a book on Etiquette for Ladies, neither of which or whom now exists, as everybody knows; so the whole thing, both from my point of view and from yours, is the most shocking waste of time, and I have really no idea how it happened. The only thing that can be said for it is that it will not help you in the least to be a lady, which is all to the good as I believe it is not a desirable status, but it may make you laugh, which is always nice, even if this, also, is a waste of time. It may, of course, do nothing of the kind, which will be an enormous pity.
It did indeed make me laugh, quite a lot.
"Now, although it is not possible to love people who use serviettes, napkin users can like them very much indeed, and can even, if they are sufficiently rich, accept their hospitality."
"In society it is etiquette for ladies to have the best chairs and get handed things. In the home the reverse is the case. That is why ladies are more sociable than gentlemne."
It also contains some BRILLIANT advice, namely:
"On the love of all you hold most dear; on your homour as a Brown Owl; on your integrity as a Committee member for Queen Charlotte's Ball, or simply on your life as a Drone, SWEAR, here and now, you will not TALK during a performance. [...] Information on anything, unless perhaps it be incipient appendicitis, should be kept for the entr'actes."
"Cliques, by which are meant small groups of people who telephone to one another every morning, talking in a very special private language in which most of the consonants are missing, are absolutely delightful except at a party, when they are absolutely not."
Here I think we can substitute "comment to each other constantly" for "telephone to one another every morning" without a significant change in applicability.
The Laurie Taylor Guide to Higher Education is a collection of columns from the THES about the fictional university of Poppleton, and as it's mostly about how awful everything in universities is becoming, and pointing out the absurditites of the requirements at the expense of education, it was largely rather depressing instead of amusing.
Landscape for a Good Woman is about Carolyn Steedman's working class mother. She wrote the book as a sort of response to a lot of academic writing about class (mostly by male academics) that valourised the working class mother, harking back to "a simpler time". She uses hre mother, and her experience of growing up with her mother, to write about how class might work specifically for women, and especially for mothers, showing her life of accepting that having children was a burden and that in return for ruining her mother's life, she was expected to show good behaviour and high achievements. Time and Tide Wait for No Man is a collection of articles from the 1920s, from Time and Tide magazine, with some short chapters about the founding and the main contributors. It was wonderful to find out about it, and utterly depressing that a lot of the arguments still need to be made today. Also, I didn't know that some medical schools stopped admitting women again for a short time, even though I know the linear narrative of progress is largely bollocks.
I predictably loved Letters Between Six Sisters, but it was so sad at the end. Everyone is dead, and Debo is all alone.
debodacious, I think it was, said that the book made her think that Debo had had an affair with JFK, and I very much agree. Other people said that the book made them more sympathetic to Diana, which is not surprising, I think, though for me I loved Pamela so very much by the end of it. I read Gossip immediately afterwards, which is a collection of newspaper gossip snippets about high society, and lots of the people in the Mitfords unsurprisingly showed up there too. It was rather startling all taken in at once. There's a lord someone who spent some time walking across rivers, and several with private train stations, and a picture of Mandy Rice-Davis and Christine Keeler that's one of the prettiest things I've ever seen.I've been reading Mummy's Legs off and on for quite a few months now, so it's rather disjointed in my head. It was given away to the readers of She magazine, but since I am not among their number, I expect I bought it in a charity shop. It is sad, and about daughters relationships with their mothers, and adults carrying the scars of childhood with them. A Particular Place has a new vicar come to a village and not really fit in, though his excellent aunt has a nice line in sarcasm.
The YA books I read this month - The Animal, the Vegetable, and John D Jones, Get a Life and Is That You, Miss Blue? were all rather sad in various ways. Is That You, Miss Blue? especially, with a teacher who is a laughing stock, and then sacked because she thinks that Jesus is talking o her (which is apparently unacceptable in a religious school). It also contains the entirely innocent line: "[The headmistress] began rubbing her diamond and moaning."
School stories are always very comforting. The two Bramber Manor books were great - I love the politely sardonic housemistress as well as the slightly insane girls, and new to me this month was The Right St Johns, which is a similar plot to The Wrong Chalet School. There are two St Johns schools for girls in this one small town. The one at which Jacqueline arrives is rather soft, with individual bedrooms, luxurious food and lax regulations, though the new headmistress wants to make them competitive at academic work and games, much to their cribbing, lazy disgust. The other St Johns is austere but successful. Jacqueline completely changes the ethos of the school in her short time there, winning over even her enemies, but alas alack, it turns out her grumpy great-uncle intended to send her to the other St Johns, and he is adamant that this shall happen. Fortunately he arrives to remove her in the middle of an exciting hockey game, where Jacqueline is playing up for The School, and is won over by this and all her chums telling him how wonderful she is.
My Persephone books arrived, and despite Jen's predictions that at least someone would die in each one, they were mostly rather lovely. The Young Pretenders is a little sad in places, as Babs tells someone that she doesn't much like living in London, because in London it matters if you're pretty, and in the country she hadn't known she wasn't. But her parents come home from India, and her mother loves her even though she isn't pretty, so it's okay. Making Conversation I also liked, though predictably I would have liked more about the school. Martha wonders how people who aren't at school cope with the featureless lengths of time when they aren't broken up into terms and lessons, and I fully agree. Miss Buncle's Book was rather more cheerful, and thanks to
alltheleaves for recommending it.
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no subject
Date: 2009-07-01 01:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-01 02:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-01 10:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-01 02:39 pm (UTC)The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters I was quite interested to read the biography of Diana M recently. The biographer was obviously quite fascinated and charmed by her, but emphasised how you totally could not get a sensible answer from her on the subject of hubby Mosley (who could do no wrong) or Nazi Germany (death camps surely not true and/or Hitler not aware of them).
no subject
Date: 2009-07-01 02:42 pm (UTC)Say Please is lovely!
no subject
Date: 2009-07-01 06:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-01 06:51 pm (UTC)I think that I would have suspected about JFK/Debo even without your having suggested it, but I think it's quite plausible.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-01 07:29 pm (UTC)Say Please sounds fabulous; and tell me more about Persephone (or possibly don't, because I have no money)...
no subject
Date: 2009-07-01 09:27 pm (UTC)I haven't read The Cartoonist - I skimmed over TATVAJDJ here, but I did really like it. I can't remember the girls' names! I thought the bit in the car at the start where she's trying to get her father's attention was great, and the gradual weakening of John D.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-03 05:34 am (UTC)I loved Miss Buncle's Book, too. It's the best kind of happy reading.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-05 05:54 pm (UTC)Do you like the EF Benson Lucia books? I've been watching the TV series, and thinking of you for some reason.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-06 08:16 am (UTC)I love the Lucia/Mapp books! (Although I do hope they made you think of me in a general sense, and not because I'm a frightful snob with social pretensions and a deplorable habit of dropping crap Italian into conversation) :) I didn't know they had made a TV series from the books...will have to see if I can find those on Netflix.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-06 06:55 pm (UTC)In a general sense! Just because it seemed like something that you would like a lot.