August Books
Sep. 1st, 2009 10:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
slemslempikeA Question of Courage - Marjorie Darke
The Lower Fourth Excels Itself - Nancy Breary
Juniors Will Be Juniors - Nancy Breary
Mainly About the Fourth - Nancy Breary
The Spell - Alan Hollinghurst
Summer's Day - Mary Bell
London Pride - Joanna Cannan
Clothes-Pegs - Susan Scarlett
Murder While You Work - Susan Scarlett
At Lady Molly's - Anthony Powell
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim - David Sedaris
Persepolis - Marianne Satrapi
Black Hearts in Battersea - Joan Aiken
Love Poems - Brian Patten
The Ice Cream Army - Jessica Gregson
Sex and the British - Paul Ferris
Casanova's Chinese Restaurant - Anthony Powell
Ken & Em: The Biograpy of Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson - Ian Shuttleworth
The Kindly Ones - Anthony Powell
That Was Satire That Was: The Satire Boom of the 1960s - Humphrey Carpenter
A Question of Courage turned out to be a children's book I'd been trying to remember where a suffragette is imprisoned, undergoes forcefeeing but can't bear it more than once. She is given a medal on her release, but feels guilty that she doesn't really deserve it. Then another suffragette helps her. It was rather this-is-history, but good. Now I have to hope I accidentally stumble across the book I once read where a girl is campaigining to get her school renamed after a suffragette.
Nancy Breary still brilliant. I think it's in the Encyclopaedia of Girls' School Stories where someone (poss Sue Sims) points out that Jean Ure's Peter High books have pretty much lifted the characters of Dorcas and The Remnant for Barge and Bozzy, and I shall probably reread those now I've run out of Cathcart Towers. One of the things I think about researching is the condemnation of certain kinds of femininity in girls' school stories - especially things that are seen as artifice. Auriol in these books puts on a sweet ickle voice and pretends to be scared when she isn't really, and the form tries to cure her by pretending to go to sleep and snoring loudly every time she talks. Gwendolyn Mary in Malory Towers is similarly despised.
It takes me a while to get into Alan Hollinghurst books because of the way they are written. I start off thinking "over-written", but within a chapter or so switch to "richly described".
When I was in Edinburgh at the start of the month I went to the Old Children's Bookshelf and bought some of the Greyladies books. Summer's Day is an adult school story, but rather than that meaning menstruation and "playing horses", it's just that it's told mostly from the point of view of the staff, and a few older girls. Pleasantly quiet, mostly. The two Susan Scarletts were also very good. I especially liked Clothes-Pegs, which is mainly a description of being a model in the 1930s, the clothes (and underthings) they had to wear, and the poses they had to strike. I must get round to reading Away from / Beyond the Vicarage, as I think a lot of it is drawn from her own life. Hopefully Murder While You Work isn't too much, as being billeted to live with a murderer might be a bit much even for an aspiring novelist.
I got a four volume set of A Dance to The Music of Time at a bookswap years ago and have now got around to working my way through them (except I think I missed one of the Spring set). I think I'll have to keep going through because otherwise I forget who I've met before (except Widmerpool).
I wasn't overly taken with David Sedaris, in a sort of "would read fairly happily if I came across more but won't seek it out" sort of way. Persepolis I read at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
irrtum's, not realising that she hadn't read it yet herself, so sorry about that again. It was wonderful and I should get the sequel as soon as I can. Black Hearts in Battersea I also read at Rachel's, something I apparently also did two years ago and forgot until nearly the end. It was still very good though.
The blurb on the back of the Brian Patten collection described him as "perhaps the most accessible and popular" of the modern poets, which even though I like both of those attributes still sounds rather sniffy. I especially liked 'The Stolen Orange', 'I Caught a Train that Passed the Town Where You Lived', and 'Sometimes it Happens', which starts:
"And sometimes it happens that you are friends and then
You are not friends,
And friendship has passed."
Like possibly isn't quite the right word for that.
The Ice Cream Army is really good - immigrants to Australia just before the first world war, and how they build their own communities and how these relate to existing communities in Australia. And how it all goes wrong.
Sex and the British I have been reading for ages as my "I don't want to do actual work, so I will pretend this is relevant enough for me to read instead" book. Mostly what I took from this book was his utter disdain for feminists, losing no opportunity to snipe pointlessly. He used feminists mostly to mean "woman I don't agree with", and almost invariably as frigid and man-hating, which made his prose a little more tricky to follow when he was having to write about feminists who were not-anti porn.
Ken & Em I saw in a charity shop in Edinburgh, thought snotty thoughts about, and then bought it mostly because it had a beautiful picture of Emma Thompson in it. Also, it was published in 1994, one year before their marriage ended, the last picture page has a large still of Helena Bonham-Carter in Kenneth Branagh's arms, and there are several paragraphs about how it's probably not true that Ken is cheating on Em. Shuttleworth didn't have cooperation from K&E themselves, though several friends comment, but there's a lot of "it's worth mentioning" about things that really, really aren't, especially before the couple meet. "It's worth mentioning that Emma once had a cup of tea from a mug, even before she met Branagh". However, I don't understand this, and if anyone could explain it to me I'd be most grateful:
"Not that Ken himself had any kind of camp reputation - another anonymous RSC actor remarked, 'He'd put his where you wouldn't put your umbrella, I tell you.'"
What? Putting his where you wouldn't put your umbrella is meant NOT to be camp, so is "normal" heterosexual practice (since the author seems to be using camp to mean gay). I admit without any reservation whatsoever that I would indeed not put my umbrella in my vagina. But I also wouldn't put it in any other orifice, so I don't know that that necessarily clears it up.
That Was Satire That Was is a really interesting account of the emergence of Satire in UK comedy, starting with Beyond the Fringe, then taking in Private Eye, the Establishment Club, That Was the Week That Was and others. This, by the way, is from the Observer's review of Private Eye from February 1962:
"It is run by a disorganized staff just down from Oxbridge, helped by eight pretty girls."
The Lower Fourth Excels Itself - Nancy Breary
Juniors Will Be Juniors - Nancy Breary
Mainly About the Fourth - Nancy Breary
The Spell - Alan Hollinghurst
Summer's Day - Mary Bell
London Pride - Joanna Cannan
Clothes-Pegs - Susan Scarlett
Murder While You Work - Susan Scarlett
At Lady Molly's - Anthony Powell
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim - David Sedaris
Persepolis - Marianne Satrapi
Black Hearts in Battersea - Joan Aiken
Love Poems - Brian Patten
The Ice Cream Army - Jessica Gregson
Sex and the British - Paul Ferris
Casanova's Chinese Restaurant - Anthony Powell
Ken & Em: The Biograpy of Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson - Ian Shuttleworth
The Kindly Ones - Anthony Powell
That Was Satire That Was: The Satire Boom of the 1960s - Humphrey Carpenter
A Question of Courage turned out to be a children's book I'd been trying to remember where a suffragette is imprisoned, undergoes forcefeeing but can't bear it more than once. She is given a medal on her release, but feels guilty that she doesn't really deserve it. Then another suffragette helps her. It was rather this-is-history, but good. Now I have to hope I accidentally stumble across the book I once read where a girl is campaigining to get her school renamed after a suffragette.
Nancy Breary still brilliant. I think it's in the Encyclopaedia of Girls' School Stories where someone (poss Sue Sims) points out that Jean Ure's Peter High books have pretty much lifted the characters of Dorcas and The Remnant for Barge and Bozzy, and I shall probably reread those now I've run out of Cathcart Towers. One of the things I think about researching is the condemnation of certain kinds of femininity in girls' school stories - especially things that are seen as artifice. Auriol in these books puts on a sweet ickle voice and pretends to be scared when she isn't really, and the form tries to cure her by pretending to go to sleep and snoring loudly every time she talks. Gwendolyn Mary in Malory Towers is similarly despised.
It takes me a while to get into Alan Hollinghurst books because of the way they are written. I start off thinking "over-written", but within a chapter or so switch to "richly described".
When I was in Edinburgh at the start of the month I went to the Old Children's Bookshelf and bought some of the Greyladies books. Summer's Day is an adult school story, but rather than that meaning menstruation and "playing horses", it's just that it's told mostly from the point of view of the staff, and a few older girls. Pleasantly quiet, mostly. The two Susan Scarletts were also very good. I especially liked Clothes-Pegs, which is mainly a description of being a model in the 1930s, the clothes (and underthings) they had to wear, and the poses they had to strike. I must get round to reading Away from / Beyond the Vicarage, as I think a lot of it is drawn from her own life. Hopefully Murder While You Work isn't too much, as being billeted to live with a murderer might be a bit much even for an aspiring novelist.
I got a four volume set of A Dance to The Music of Time at a bookswap years ago and have now got around to working my way through them (except I think I missed one of the Spring set). I think I'll have to keep going through because otherwise I forget who I've met before (except Widmerpool).
I wasn't overly taken with David Sedaris, in a sort of "would read fairly happily if I came across more but won't seek it out" sort of way. Persepolis I read at
irrtum's, not realising that she hadn't read it yet herself, so sorry about that again. It was wonderful and I should get the sequel as soon as I can. Black Hearts in Battersea I also read at Rachel's, something I apparently also did two years ago and forgot until nearly the end. It was still very good though. The blurb on the back of the Brian Patten collection described him as "perhaps the most accessible and popular" of the modern poets, which even though I like both of those attributes still sounds rather sniffy. I especially liked 'The Stolen Orange', 'I Caught a Train that Passed the Town Where You Lived', and 'Sometimes it Happens', which starts:
"And sometimes it happens that you are friends and then
You are not friends,
And friendship has passed."
Like possibly isn't quite the right word for that.
The Ice Cream Army is really good - immigrants to Australia just before the first world war, and how they build their own communities and how these relate to existing communities in Australia. And how it all goes wrong.
Sex and the British I have been reading for ages as my "I don't want to do actual work, so I will pretend this is relevant enough for me to read instead" book. Mostly what I took from this book was his utter disdain for feminists, losing no opportunity to snipe pointlessly. He used feminists mostly to mean "woman I don't agree with", and almost invariably as frigid and man-hating, which made his prose a little more tricky to follow when he was having to write about feminists who were not-anti porn.
Ken & Em I saw in a charity shop in Edinburgh, thought snotty thoughts about, and then bought it mostly because it had a beautiful picture of Emma Thompson in it. Also, it was published in 1994, one year before their marriage ended, the last picture page has a large still of Helena Bonham-Carter in Kenneth Branagh's arms, and there are several paragraphs about how it's probably not true that Ken is cheating on Em. Shuttleworth didn't have cooperation from K&E themselves, though several friends comment, but there's a lot of "it's worth mentioning" about things that really, really aren't, especially before the couple meet. "It's worth mentioning that Emma once had a cup of tea from a mug, even before she met Branagh". However, I don't understand this, and if anyone could explain it to me I'd be most grateful:
"Not that Ken himself had any kind of camp reputation - another anonymous RSC actor remarked, 'He'd put his where you wouldn't put your umbrella, I tell you.'"
What? Putting his where you wouldn't put your umbrella is meant NOT to be camp, so is "normal" heterosexual practice (since the author seems to be using camp to mean gay). I admit without any reservation whatsoever that I would indeed not put my umbrella in my vagina. But I also wouldn't put it in any other orifice, so I don't know that that necessarily clears it up.
That Was Satire That Was is a really interesting account of the emergence of Satire in UK comedy, starting with Beyond the Fringe, then taking in Private Eye, the Establishment Club, That Was the Week That Was and others. This, by the way, is from the Observer's review of Private Eye from February 1962:
"It is run by a disorganized staff just down from Oxbridge, helped by eight pretty girls."
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no subject
Date: 2009-09-01 12:27 pm (UTC)Persepolis, on the other hand, is brilliant, and if you'd like, I have an extra copy of the complete edition that was in the free pile at my old office. I'd be happy to send it to you.
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Date: 2009-09-01 01:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-01 04:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-01 04:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-01 10:25 pm (UTC)