The Man of Property by John Galsworthy - This is the first volume in the Forsyte Saga and the third book from my Classics Club list.  I’ve not got very far in it yet, because it’s far too big and its corners are far too sharp to read on the tube without damaging either myself or another commuter, so it has had to shift to being my bedtime book.  I like what I’ve read so far though: I’ve been plunged into the middle of a Forsyte family gathering and it’s exactly like being thrust into a real party of strangers.  It’s all a glittering whirl of social activity, polite conversation and hidden meanings and I’m watching from the sidelines feeling part bemused, part intimidated, but wholly fascinated by the characters in front of me.  I can’t wait to continue.

A Very Great Profession: The Woman’s Novel, 1913-1949 by Nicola Beauman – It’s been a while since I read any non-fiction, so it seemed serendipitous that I had this in my bag when I made my discovery that The Man of Property was too big to read on the train.  Nicola Beauman is well known as the founder of Persephone Books, several of which I have read and enjoyed, and this book seems to be a sort of survey of that forgotten women’s literature that Persephone are republishing.  The chapters are arranged thematically rather than by date or author, and so far I’ve only read the introduction and the chapter on war, but already the inside front cover of my copy is covered in the hastily pencilled details of titles I want to try.  This is the sort of book that is bound to increase my reading list exponentially, as it is not only introducing me to loads of authors I’ve never even heard of, it is also making it very clear from the fascinating background material provided exactly why I should want to read each title and why they are important.  It’s both an invaluable resource as well as interesting reading in its own right.  I’ve really enjoyed finding out about women in wartime, how women’s war narratives differed from those of their male counterparts, and how both of these changed over time with the clarity of hindsight.  A dangerous book for me and my book habit, but a fascinating one nonetheless.

The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness – This one is the second book in Ness’ Chaos Walking trilogy.  It was picked up this morning as my new train book (I tend to fall asleep on trains, which confuses me if I’m reading non-fiction), and it says a lot about it that I’m already nearly a quarter of the way through despite a light snooze.  One of the things I’m enjoying about the young adult books I’ve been reading is how plot driven they are, and although I don’t think this one is shaping up to be quite as good as The Knife of Never Letting Go, it’s still fast paced and gripping.  The first book was all presented from Todd’s perspective, but this one alternates his narration with Viola’s which I don’t find quite so interesting.  The plot is still good and I have no idea where it’s going (always a good sign at this stage in a book) but the writing doesn’t feel quite as innovative the second time around.

The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang – I’ve had this lovely collection of tales on the go since sometime in December, but I’m in no hurry to rush reading such a beautiful volume.  This was one of the books that persuaded me that I needed to join the Folio Society in order to make them mine, and reading through this one makes me so glad I gave in.  It’s illustrated by Charles van Sandwyck with glorious watercolours and little pen and ink drawings so I seem to spend as much time gazing at the pictures as I do actually reading the text.  The stories are a mixture of familiar fairy tales and ones I haven’t heard before, which always makes for interesting reading.  Sometimes I only manage a story or two a week, but I’m quite happy savouring them.

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo – Les Mis has been sadly languishing of late and through no fault of its own.  I started this book and loved it almost immediately, but it’s big and heavy and (like Galsworthy) not a train book.  It also was shunted aside for the less enjoyable more more easily accomplished task of reading Moby Dick.  Now that that burden has been lifted, I’m looking forward to getting back to Les Miserables.  I know I have a particularly good translation (thank you, Julie Rose) and the author’s voice shines through.  Given his subject matters and reputation, I had expected Hugo to be a bit, well, miserable if I’m honest, but it turns out he has a wicked sense of humour and a great wit.  I’d happily read him describing the exact layouts of houses for much longer than he does, which is saying something.

Has anyone read any (or all; these aren’t exactly new titles) of these?  What did you make of them?

As a result, there are few things I love more than compiling lists of books.  I don’t like to plan my reading in a regimented way (“I will read this, then this,  then this”) but I do like thinking about the books that I might read, that I could read if I wanted to.  That is the beauty for me of Jillian’s Classics Club, in which participants agree to read a certain number of classic books (according to their own definition of ‘classic’) over a certain period of time.  It allows me to indulge my delight in bookish planning and list making, but it’s so unrestricted that it’s not going to feel like a chore.  Books which have sat unread on my shelves for years are imbued with a certain allure now that I have placed them on my list, and already I can’t wait to start reading them all.

After much fiddling about with my selections, I’ve come up with the following list of one hundred and one classic books which I’m going to read over the next five years, so by 12th March 2017 (which seems improbably far in the future at the moment; good lord, I’ll be thirty by then).  Despite my best efforts, I haven’t quite managed to create a list which is 50:50 men:women and English:translated fiction, but I’ve come as close as I can.  Here they are, arranged by date.  Titles marked with an asterisk are rereads or partial rereads.

Ancient World

• The Iliad by Homer (Ancient Greek)
• The Odyssey by Homer (Ancient Greek)*
• If Not, Winter by Sappho (Ancient Greek)
• The Aeneid by Virgil (Latin)*
• Beowulf by Anon. (Anglo-Saxon)*

1000′s

• The Pillow Book by Sei Shonagon (Japanese)
• The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
• The Poetic Edda by Anon. (Old Norse)*

1100′s

• Lais of Marie de France by Marie de France (Anglo-Norman)

1200′s

• The Prose Edda by Snori Sturluson (Old Norse)*

1300′s

• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by Anon.*
• The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio*

1400′s

• The Book of the City of Ladies by Christine de Pizan (Old French)
• The Book of Margery Kempe by Margery Kempe

1500′s

• The Faerie Queen by Edmund Spenser

1600′s

• Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (Spanish)
• Complete English Poems by John Donne*
• The Princess of Cleves by Madame de Lafayette (French)
• Poems, Protest and a Dream by Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (Spanish)

1700′s

• Letters of a Peruvian Woman by Francoise de Graffigny (French)
• Fanny Hill by John Cleland
• Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
• The Female Quixote by Charlotte Lennox
• Candide by Voltaire (French)
• The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German)
• Evelina by Fanny Burney
• Dangerous Liasons by Choderlos de Laclos (French)
• A Simple Story by Elizabeth Inchbald

1800′s

• Belinda by Maria Edgeworth
• Zofloya by Charlotte Dacre
• Corinne, or, Italy by Madame de Stael (French)
• Mansfield Park by Jane Austen*
• Persuasion by Jane Austen*
• Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen*
• Persuasion by Jane Austen*
• Marriage by Susan Ferrier
• The Physiology of Taste by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (French)
• Indiana by George Sand (French)
• The Black Spider by Jeremias Gotthelf (German)
• The Jew’s Beech by Annette von Druste-Hulshoff (German)
• The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (French)
• Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte
• The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte*
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte*
• Shirley by Charlotte Bronte
• Vilette by Charlotte Bronte
• Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
• The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• The Devil’s Elixirs by E. T. A. Hoffman (German)
• North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
• Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell
• Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
• Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
• Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope
• Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope
• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (French)
• East Lynne by Mrs Henry Wood
• No Name by Wilkie Collins
• Armadale by Wilkie Collins
• Aurora Floyd by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
• Felix Holt by George Eliot
• Middlemarch by George Eliot
• Lorna Doone by R. D. Blackmore
• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (Russian)
• The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Russian)
• Short Stories by Guy de Maupassant (French)
• The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde & The Weir of Hermistoun by Robert Louis Stevenson
• Dracula by Bram Stoker
• The Aspen Papers & The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
• The Awakening by Kate Chopin

1900′s

• Poems by Antonia Pozzi (Italian)
• The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
• I Am A Cat by Soseki Natsume (Japanese)
• Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
• The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy
• Kristen Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset (Norwegian)
• The Waste Land and Other Poems by T. S. Eliot
• Passage to India by E. M. Forster
• Mrs Dalloway by Virgina Woolf
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham
• The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
• Passing by Nella Larsen
• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
• Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
• The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir (French)
• The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemmingway
• Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan (French)
• Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
• Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak (Russian)
• Moderato Cantabile by Marguerite Duras (French)
• Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
• Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys*
• The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (Russian)
• Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut
• The Complete Claudine by Colette (French)
• If On A Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino (Italian)
• Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson

1. I enjoy the community aspect and I can’t wait to see other people’s choices and what they think about them
2. I just like making lists

I’ve been happily compiling my list of one hundred titles that I’m going to read, and in doing so I’ve decided on a few parameters for my choices to make myself read a bit more diversely (otherwise I could fill half the list with Anthony Trollope).  I’m trying not to read too many nineteenth century novels, much as I love them.  In the interest of fairness, I want my list to be fifty percent male authors and fifty percent female authors.  In order to challenge myself further I also want only half of the books on my list to be English language classics (although they will all have to be read in English, alas).

Unfortunately, these aims seem to be conflicting.  I have a good selection of nineteenth century female English and American authors, and I have a good selection of classics in other languages written by men, but rarely the twain shall meet.  As today is International Women’s Day, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to ask for suggestions for classic international women writers.  Who is the Jane Austen of India?  The Virginia Woolf of Italy?  The Charlotte Bronte of China?  Where are the female Tolstoys, Flauberts and Molieres?  I assume they must exist.  Please help!

Thanks to a bit of Googling, some wracking my brains and a perusal of the fantastic Alma Classics catalogue (a great place to search for less well known classics, particularly those in translation), I’ve managed to come up with the following ideas, but I would love more recommendations.

• The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir (French)
• The Complete Claudine by Colette (French)
• The Jew’s Beech by Annette von Droste Hülshoff (German)
• The Sailor from Gibraltar and Moderato Cantabile by Marguerite Duras (French)
• Lais by Marie de France (Anglo-Norman)
• The Book of the City of Ladies by Christine de Pizan (Old French)
• Poems by Antonia Pozzi (Italian)
• Poems by Sappho (Ancient Greek)
• The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu (Japanese
• Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset (Norwegian)

This is the best I can do with my limited knowledge.  Any suggestions?

Books read in February

This month I have read 17 books, totalling 4,195 pages, giving an average page number of 247.  The low average page count is because of reading lots of tiny penguins in the Great Loves box set, interspersed with young adult and children’s books which weren’t exactly hefty either.  Once I finish Moby Dick I’ll be starting to read larger books again, as I’ve discovered I don’t like having two giant books on the go at once (hence Middlemarch has been set aside for another day and I’ve parted company with the readalong).  The books I read were:

1. Doomed Love by Virgil (3)
2. Forbidden Fruit: The Letters of Abelard and Heloise by Peter Abelard and Heloise (2)
3. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (4)
4. The Eaten Heart: Unlikely Tales of Love by Giovanni Boccaccio (3.5)
5. Of Mistresses, Tigresses and Other Conquests by Giacomo Casanova (2.5)
6. Cures for Love by Stendhal (1)
7. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (4)
8. Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones (4)
9. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (3)
10. The Seducer’s Diary by Søren Kierkegaard (2)
11. First Love by Ivan Turgenev (2.5)
12. Lucy, or, The Delaware Dialogues by Babette Rosmond (4)
13. Diary of a Provincial Lady by E. M. Delafield (3)
14. Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins (2)
15. Endymion Spring by Matthew Skelton (3)
16. The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness (4.5)
17. A Mere Interlude by Thomas Hardy (2.5)

Of the Penguin Great Loves set that I intended to read in February, I got through eight of the twenty.  Sadly, although they’re a very attractive collection of books, I discovered that I wasn’t overly keen on any of the stories inside them and those I did like I already have in other versions.  One of them was even my first one star book of the year.  My attempts to avoid reading them are what caused the explosion of young adult fantasy books onto my reading list.  They may not be the most sophisticated of titles, but my goodness they’re fun to read.

Books acquired in February

Well, I may as well throw out my resolution about aiming for book neutrality right now, as February once more saw an abundance of books come into the house.  Here they all are (minus three which are on loan or being read) lined up on our mantelpiece (yes, we have daleks on our mantelpiece; why do you ask?).  Some of them have already been read, if that makes it any better…

The small stack of books on the left are ones I’m very lucky to have.  Early in February I was contacted by the lovely Maureen Emerson to ask if I would like to review her book about Lady Winifred Fortescue and her friends in Provence.  I adored Lady Winifred’s Perfume from Provence when I read it last year, so I jumped at the chance and was thrilled to receive a copy in the post soon after.  February was a bit fraught with reading commitments, so I decided to save it for March and it will be coming off the shelf soon. 

All the books on top of that are review copies provided by the ever so friendly people at Quercus Books (of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo publishing fame) at their Digital Shindig in February.  I was thrilled to be invited along to the rather fancy bar Mason & Taylor in east London (where they serve Kraken rum; always a good sign!) to meet the team and some of their authors, along with a whole host of other bloggers and reviewers.  It was an excellent evening, one of the best parts of which was being presented with a huge bag of goodies to take home, including bookmarks, chocolate and, of course, books.  I was given copies of (bottom to top) The Cook by Wayne Macauley, Girlchild by Tupelo Hassman, Bereft by Chris Womersley, The Last Man Standing by David Longo, Breathless by Anne Sward and The Folded Earth by Anuradha Roy.  A lot of them aren’t out yet, so I’m going to enjoy the slightly guilty frisson of getting to read something before I should do and write reviews to be posted nearer to their publication dates.  How exciting!

Next to my review stack is an intriguing little box set of books on language.  My interest in words, phrases, idioms and their origins was reawakened earlier this year by reading The Etymologicon by Mark Forsyth, and this set from The Book People, along with the rather more substantial and imposing Chambers Dictionary of Etymology (acquired for pittance as a Folio Society daily deal) next to the blue dalek, caters perfectly to my refreshed obsession.  I’ve lost count of how many things I’ve looked up in the dictionary already, and the little Flavell books are so interesting I could easily read them cover to cover.

You might not think it from looking at this picture, but I’ve actually exercised some restraint this month with book buying.  Whenever I go to the ballet after work (which is quite a lot thanks to their £5 tickets) I have to walk along Charing Cross Road on my way to the Royal Opera House.  On one of the occasions when I went past in February, Any Amount of Books had all the stock in their basement reduced to £1 and somehow I only walked out with one (although I did acquire Memoirs of a Highland Lady from there earlier in the month)!  This was The Love of Seven Dolls by Paul Gallico.  I’ve not heard of this particular title before, but I really enjoyed The Small Miracle and Flowers for Mrs Harris by the same author when I read them last year, so I’m more than willing to give this one a go.

The Persephone snuggled up next to Paul Gallico is Nichola Beauman’s The Other Elizabeth Taylor, which I bought from Amazon Marketplace as an accompaniment to the Taylor centenary readalong of her novels which I’m taking part in on LibraryThing.  Missing from the Virago pile next to that is, in fact, one of Taylor’s novels, Palladian, which was the February read (I had already swiped it for reading purposes by the time I took this photograph).  There are a whole host of other Virago Modern Classics there which have been accumulated from various charity shops and second hand book shops, as I’m unable to walk past a green spine for a few pounds.  This month saw me acquire On the Side of the Angels by Betty Miller, The Fruit of the Tree by Edith Wharton (unexpectedly large compared to her other books I own), One of Ours by Willa Cather (also unexpectedly large), The Squire by Enid Bagnold, The Year Before Last by Kay Boyle, Strangers by Antonia White and The Ice House by Nina Bawden.  I also struck gold on the Winifred Holtby and Vera Brittain front, picking up copies of A Testament of Friendship and Friendship: Vera Brittain’s Dairies of the Thirties for just £1 each.  They’ve reminded me that I really must let myself read another Holtby soon.

 The Postmistress by Sarah Blake was a book that I didn’t intend to buy.  The Old English Thorn and I have been expanding our collection of board games, and I spotted one we didn’t have in a charity shop the other weekend.  As we both spend most of our waking hours in London, it’s rare for us to ever carry cash and so we found ourselves at the till with a £3.75 game and a £5 minimum spend to pay by card.  So I was forced to buy a book as well.  It’s a hard life.

 The Folio Society books on the far end are partially the result of end of sale stock being discounted even further to a level at which I am unable to resist (not that I put up much of a fight) and one second hand acquisition.  Unusually for me, both of the new books, The Physiology of Taste and The Gentleman’s Daughter by Amanda Vickery, are non-fiction.  Hopefully having such attractive copies to read will encourage me to be better at reading factual books.  North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell is a copy that I bought from ebay to add to my growing collection of Gaskell books as she promises to become a favourite author.

Last but not least, all the remaining books were part of my (re)discovery of young adult and children’s fiction.  Daddy Long Legs by Jean Webster is considered a classic by many but isn’t a book I’ve ever read so I look forward to this one.  Eva Ibbotsen was a favourite author when I was younger, but this title isn’t one I’ve ever read.  It’s beautifully designed though.  The Crestomanci books by Diana Wynne Jones were definitely ones I read.  However, I only remember the first book in the series so I need to rectify that by reading them all again.  The Patrick Ness books were recommended to me when I bought The Hunger Games and, serendipitously, The Book People had the whole set for sale for £6.99.  I’ve already read book one and thoroughly enjoyed it, so I’ll be diving into the rest in March.  Although the first two Hunger Games books aren’t pictured here as they’re already on loan to a friend, I bought and read through the whole trilogy in February, which is what sparked my interest in young adult books.  Although I thought they decreased in quality (and integrity) as the books progressed, on the whole I enjoyed them and I’m grateful that they’ve led me onto other books that I may not otherwise have discovered.

Book Neutrality Report

Books read: 17

Books acquired: 43 (At least it’s fewer than January)

Book neutrality for February: +30

Overall book neutrality: +68

Plans for March

Reading The Hunger Games, The Knife of Never Letting Go and Charmed Life has reminded me of how much I enjoy reading books with a good plot.  I love engaging characters and beautiful writing, but I also like a good plot.  This has filled me with the urge to read more fantasy books, the most plotty of the books I read, as it’s been a fair while since I last attacked one (with the exception of a few Terry Pratchetts, and he’s a genre all by himself).  I’m behind on the Elizabeth Taylor read along and have Palladian still to read in addition to March’s book, A View of the Harbour, so I want to get caught up there.  I also want to read Maureen Emerson’s book and at least one from Quercus.  Other than that, I’m going to continue to read what I fancy, when I fancy.

Books read in January

This month I have read 13 books, totalling 3,703 pages, giving an average page number of 285.  I’ve been reading shorter than average books in an attempt to counterbalance the leviathan (there’s that word again; Ishmael would be proud) waiting for me on the bedside table, but it’s been a good decision as it’s prevented me from feeling too bogged down in ongoing books.  I did pick up Barchester Towers mid way through the month, but put it back after about twenty pages as I realised that it was the wrong book for now.  I’m looking forward to coming back to it in February.  The books I read were:

1. Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier (3)
2. The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett (2.5)
3. Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch (4.5)
4. The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll Through the Hidden Connections of the English Language by Mark Forsyth (5)
5. At Mrs Lippincote’s by Elizabeth Taylor (3)
6. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (3.5)
7. Corduroy by Adrian Bell (3)
8. Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett* (5)
9. The Phoenix and the Carpet by E. Nesbitt (4)
10. Tamara Drewe by Posy Simmonds (4.5)
11. Our Spoons Came from Woolworths by Barbara Comyns (3)
12. The Other Queen by Philippa Gregory (2)
13. Dancing Girls by Margaret Atwood (3)

Two five star books and two four and a halfs indicates a very good month in my book (no pun intended).  Nearly all of the other books that I’ve read have been four or three star reads too, so even the less stellar books have still been good, satisfying reads.  Long may it continue!

Books acquired in January

At the beginning of 2012 I stated that one of my aims for this year is to end it book neutral, and from that point of view the year is off to a terrible start!  And you know what?  I don’t care.  Buying and owning books makes me happy.  I love unearthing hidden treasures in charity shops, receiving parcels of well-loved volumes from other readers on BookMooch, unwrapping pristine new Folio Society volumes in all their gorgeous glory and spotting a deal on a long sought-after book that I just can’t pass up.  As long as it still makes me happy and I have the disposable income to do so, I will continue to buy books.  That said, this has been an unusually excessive month in terms of book acquisition, largely due to dangerous January sales from The Book People and the Folio Society supplementing my usual charity and second hand shop finds.  So I’m going to revel in them, enjoy cataloguing and shelving them and resolve to be more circumspect next month.  I’m certainly not going to feel guilty about it.

 From new bookshops I bought four books.  Jamrach’s Menagerie by Carol Birch and Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch were both acquired at Edinburgh Airport in a flurry of panic when we found out that our plane home had miraculously become a coach, meaning I would need much more to read to pass the time than I had anticipated.  Of course, I promptly fell asleep on the bus so neither were read, but at least I was covered for all eventualities.  The Twelve Poems of Christmas by Candlestick Press was bought for 99p in the Waterstones sale, and The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan came along with it because I had no change and felt bad putting through a card transaction for less than £1.

From charity shops I have acquired three books.  I was delighted to find a pristine copy of The Flavour Thesaurus for a mere £2, as it is both useful and witty.  So much so that I think I’m going to have to read it cover to cover.  The other two I picked up are for the Virago Modern Classics Collection: Our Spoons Came from Woolworths by Barbara Comyns and The Winged Horse by Pamela Frankau. 

I acquired a second Barbara Comyns title, Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead, in one of my favourite second hand book shops on Charing Cross Road.  At the same time, I pounced on a copy of The Clear Stream by Marion Shaw, a biography of Winifred Holtby which I’ve been wanting to read ever since we discussed it at the Virago Book Group.  The Cambridge Guide to Women’s Writing in English edited by Lorna Sage also wandered into my possession to provide brief backgrounds for all the other interesting female writers that I’m discovering through Virago.

Another VMC came to me by way of Amazon Marketplace when I bought At Mrs Lippincote’s by Elizabeth Taylor for the VMC LibraryThing group read.  Blue Remembered Hills, a memoir by Rosemary Sutcliffe in a beautiful Slightly Foxed edition also found its way to my gleeful hands from there.  Slightly Foxed editions are each limited to 2000 copies and this one was out of print long before I discovered them, so when I saw a copy available in my price range I couldn’t resist.

Not much from my wishlist has come up on BookMooch recently, but I did manage to mooch two books that I’ve been after for ages.  Prince of Dogs adds to my collection of Kate Elliott’s Crown of Stars series, which I’m going to start sometime this year.  From the same user I also mooched a hardback copy of Tamara Drewe by Posy Simmonds, a graphic novel based on Far from the Madding Crowd.  I read it instantly and liked it so much that the next day I ordered a copy of Pick of Posy, some of her older work, from Ebay.

Ebay also provided four new additions to my Folio Society collection (someday I’m going to have to take a picture of the bookcase that houses them; it is a glorious sight).   I bought North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell as I loved Cranford so much and want to read more of her, then from the same seller I also acquired The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius (I wrote my MA dissertation on this and an Anglo-Norman translation of it, so it holds a special place in my heart), Diary of a Provincial Lady by E. M. Delafield because I’ve heard so much good about it, and Folk Tales of Great Britian by Kevin Crossley-Holland.

Without doubt my biggest book purchase in terms of numbers came from The Book People’s January sale.  Many of their books come in sets with others, and often they’re such good value that it’s cheaper to buy a whole set (even if it contains books I don’t particularly want) than it is to buy the individual books that I do want on Amazon.  I bought their Antonia Fraser set of histories which comprises ten books for £3!  Then there was the set of Maya Angelou books that I’d been eyeing up elsewhere but which were £4 for all six.  Other sale bargains were Foundation by Peter Ackroyd, the amusing sounding Household Tips of the Great Writers by Mark Crick, Ripping Things to Do by Jane Brocket and Foyle’s Further Philavery by Christopher Foyle.

The biggest purchase in terms of finances was, hands down, my Folio Society sale order.  But, if books from the Book People are great because they’re cheap, books from Folio are great because they are gorgeous.  They may not look like much in their slipcases, but take them out and they are things of beauty that beg to be read and appreciated or just stroked occasionally.  All of these were discounted by at least 50%, so I was powerless to refuse.

Book neutrality report

Books read: 13

Books acquired: 48 (I swear it didn’t feel like that many at the time!)

Book neutrality: +35

Plans for February

Usually I’m not one for planning ahead as I find great joy in spontaneity when it comes to reading.  However, I feel that I owe it to Barchester Towers to give it the chance it deserves when I’m not already weighted down with too many other Victorian tomes.

Additionally, I’ve decied that in February I’m going to read my way through the Penguin Great Loves box set that I succumbed to from The Book People in October last year.  As you might have noticed from my incoming books, I’m unable to resist their ridiculous deals, and this lovely set for £8.99 was just too much for my (admittedly limited) willpower.  As it’s impossible to walk into a shop at the moment without being assaulted by a profusion of red and pink hearts, novelty chocolates, cuddly toys and cards of varying degrees of taste, I thought that February with its celebration of flowers and chocolates ahem, love would be an appropriate time to read though these books celebrating love in all its many forms.  At a set of twenty books it may sound like a lot of reading, but they’re all slim volumes.  I’ve added up the page count and it comes to a rather modest 2,410 which is perfectly manageable.  It also may at first appear repetetive, but with authors as diverse as Anais Nin, Boccaccio and Thomas Hardy in the collection I doubt that a shared theme is going to make the books at all the same.  It will also provide me with a short and manageable introduction to many famous authors that I haven’t got round to reading yet: of the twenty authors included in the box set, Kierkegaard, Thomas Hardy, Sigmund Freud, Virgil and Tolstoy are the only ones that I’ve read before.  Bring on the month of Great Loves!

It may have escaped the notice of any readers of this blog, although certainly not mine, that I am rather behind in reviewing books.  In fact, I’m still writing reviews for books that I read in June of 2011.  I recently counted up the number of books read last year that I have left to review.  The total comes to more than seventy, meaning that even if I posted one a day it would be two and a half months before I actually started reviewing the books I’ve read in 2012, by which point I would of course be even further behind. 

This seems a bit silly so, after much wrestling with my desire for neatness and linearity, I’ve come to the conclusion that it makes far more sense to start afresh with 2012 reviews, and fit in some of the older ones when I don’t have a current book to write about.  Even though breaking out of my timeline goes against the grain somewhat, I feel much happier having made this decision.

So, onwards to 2012!

This month’s prompt asks about the author of the classic that you’re reading at the moment.  Because of the various readalongs in which I’m participating at the moment, I actually have three other classics on the go, Middlemarch, Les Miserables and Moby Dick, in addition to the one that I’m going to focus on today.  I’ve chosen this book because the author is much less well-known, at least on this side of the pond, and finding out more about her might help me to understand her work a bit more.

The book that I’m reading right now is The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett.

Sarah Orne Jewett was born in South Berwick, Maine on 3rd September 1849.  She died in the same town aged 59 on 24th June 1909. 

As a child, she developed arthritis and so was often sent for long country walks to try to ease the symptoms.  She also frequently accompanied her father, a country doctor, on his visits to his patients and it is probably from this background that she developed her keen interest in rural domestic  life on the Eastern Seaboard.  She was educated at the local school, but expanded her knowledge through her family’s library and correspondence with other learned figures.

Sarah Orne Jewett never married.  She did have a deep and long lasting friendship with Anne Fields, the wife of the editor of Atlantic Monthly.  After his death, Sarah and Anne lived together, giving rise to the speculation that she may have been a lesbian, but it is equally plausible that the two were merely friends and companions.

Jewett had her first short story published when she was 19 in the Atlantic Monthly magazine.  She didn’t write novels, preferring sketches, short stories and poems, and was at times quite apologetic about her own writing:

It seems to me I can furnish the theatre, and show you the actors, and the scenery, and the audience, but there never is any play!. . . I seem to get very bewildered when I try to make these come in for secondary parts. . .I am certain I could not write one of the usual magazine stories. If the editors will take the sketchy kind and people like to read them, is not it as well to do that and do it successfully as to make hopeless efforts to achieve something in another line which runs much higher?

Her writing was often dismissed as the chatterings of an old maid, because they aren’t driven by plot, and for a long time it wasn’t considered to be worthy of criticism.  However, Willa Cather considered The Country of the Pointed Firs to be one of three American works (along with Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) to be most likely to achieve permanent remembrance.

Jewett’s writing career was brought to an abrupt and untimely end when she and her sister were involved in a carriage accident when their horse stumbled on a loose rock.  Both sisters were thrown from the carriage and, though Jewett’s sister was largely unharmed, Jewett herself suffered from concussion and spinal damage.  Afterwards, she experienced frequent dizzy spells, memory loss, pain and lack of ability to concentrate which lasted until her death seven years later.

Jewett clearly wrote about the life she knew and held dear to her heart.  Her depictions of Dunnet Landing, the fictional Maine town that provides the setting for The Country of the Pointed Firs, is full of local colour, affection and understanding.  It reads almost more like a memoir than a work of fiction, which seems testament to how well Jewett has captured a time and a place and the people who inhabit that in her writing.

1. I will finally get up to date with all my reviews and I will stay there!  As I don’t plan on getting married or moving house this year this should be doable, although I do have a backlog of 73 reviews to get through before I even start on 2012!

2. Comment more.  Where I’ve been so busy, I’ve been dashing through everyone’s lovely blog posts on my feed reader and I rarely manage to stop and leave a comment.  I really do enjoy the bookish chat that goes on in the comments of blog posts, so I’m going to make an effort to join in a bit more this year.

 3. End the year book-neutral.  Although the Old English Thorn and I may have a shiny new flat, I appreciate that its primary purpose is as a dwelling place and not a book storage unit (although this is undoubtedly its secondary purpose).  Consequently, I’m going to attempt to limit myself to only buying as many books as I read.  Ideally I’d like to read more books than I acquire, but knowing how well I respond to limits on my book purchasing I think I’m best to aim a bit lower and see how it goes.

4. Join in with some readalongs.  I have a lot of intimidating-looking books sat on my shelves waiting for my attention, and reading them with other people seems the best way to attack them.  I’m going to try it with three books this year.

I joined Team Middlemarch with dovegreyreader on 1st December 2011.  The plan is to read what is widely considered to be George Eliot’s greatest novel following its original publication schedule:

Miss Brooke – 1st December 1871

I’ll be posting about each installment when I begin the next one, so look out for a post on Miss Brooke on 1st February.

I’m also joining in with Kate’s readalong of Les Miserables which runs throughout the year.  I adore the musical and I bought myself a lovely hardback copy of the Julie Rose translation from a discount bookshop by the British Library but it’s huge and appears to be printed on Bible paper, making it even longer than it appears.  Kate’s wonderful schedule makes it seem so manageable, breaking the huge tome down into bitesize morsels, so I’m hoping to be able to stick to it and discover this story as it was originally written.  I may even reward myself with a trip to the theatre to see the musical again after I’ve finished.  Once again, the plan is to post at the end of each section.

I’ve also joined the much shorter January readalong of Moby Dick hosted at The Blue Bookcase.  As I studied a literature course at university which focused exclusively on English literature it’s not a book I ever studied, but it’s one I’m curious about (helped by the recent and fortuitous purchase of a lovely edition of the book shortly before the readalong was announced).  I’ll be posting according to the schedule on the Blue Bookcase.

Jan 12: Chapters 1-28

So, there are my plans for 2012.  Above all, my plan is to continue to enjoy my reading and to discover many more favourite books.

Thankfully, I have the day off today to recover, providing me with the ideal opportunity to reflect on the year gone by before launching myself into the new one tomorrow.

In 2011, I met (exactly!) my goal of reading 150 books totalling 40,659 pages.  I slowed down an awful lot after getting married and halving my commute time, so I’m pleased I still managed to get to 150.  The full list with links to my reviews can be found here.

I discovered some fantastic new authors, including E. F. Benson, Winifred Holtby, D. E. Stevenson, Margery Sharp and Michel Faber who I know I’m going to enjoy reading more of in 2012.  There were so many of them, not to mention old authors that I revisited, that it has been difficult to select the top ten books that I read in 2011, but these would be the ones that I would most heartily recommend.  In the interests of fairness, I haven’t included rereads, or two of these spots would be occupied by the ever wonderful Miss Austen.

South Riding by Winifred Holtby (1936)

I read this book quite early on in the year, but it’s stuck in my mind ever since. I was instantly drawn into the world of the fictional Yorkshire constituency and its inhabitants, utterly entranced by its impressive combination of detail and breadth.  Winifred Holtby introduces such a range of characters from all walks of life, but they are each described so well, however briefly, that I felt I knew each and every one of them.  It’s a rare talent for an author to be able to make me care so deeply about so many characters but Holtby manages it with consummate skill.  I was reluctant to finish the book and I’m treasuring up the rest of Holtby’s work to read when I need to treat myself.  Review

Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell (1851)

Although Cranford is less than half the size of South Riding, it is in many ways a similar type of book, focusing as it does on the mundane issues of a small community and yet somehow making them utterly fascinating.  With each episode I found myself becoming more and more involved in town life as though the book were gossip being related directly to me.  As with South Riding, I wanted to move to Cranford and live there with its community of brave, humorous, kind and gentle ladies.  It made me smile even when it made me cry.  It’s a delightful little read, surprisingly touching and highly recommended.

The Foolish Gentlewoman by Margery Sharp (1948)

Margery Sharp was one of my discoveries this year.  She writes the sort of humorous, gentle novels which seem to fit into the Persephone canon perfectly.  While this particular novel displayed the same wit, charm and light touch that I expected, it was nowhere near as breezy and flippant as The Nutmeg Tree which was my introduction to the author.  It had a wistfulness and sadness about it which I thought actually made it even better.  The humour was set off by the seriousness and I liked the way that everything couldn’t be wrapped up perfectly and sorted out in a fairy tale ending.  I was impressed that Sharp was brave enough to do that, and it’s made me look forward even more to discovering the rest of her work.

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (1998)

This remarkable book got 2011 off to a fantastic start for me.  The story of a misguided missionary who moves his family to Africa during the 1950′s but utterly fails to connect with the locals on any level was something of a departure from my usual reading fare, but I was completely drawn in by the narrative style.  The voices of the four daughters and their mother as they tell the story of their struggles are engaging both intellectually and emotionally, weaving a rich tapestry of opinions, viewpoints and voices.  My heart ached for each and every one of them as they tried their best to survive and to integrate in spite of the preacher’s inability to understand either the natives or his family.  Exceptionally written.  Review

The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber (2002)

If it weren’t for the rather risque subject matter of this book about a prostitute’s attempts to make her way in the world, it would almost be possible to believe that it were actually a Victorian novel rather than a novel about the Victorians.  The writing is elegant and mesmerising; it even made me appreciate the advantages of present tense narration and books which address the reader directly, both of which I usually dislike intensely.  Faber writes brilliant, diverse female characters and Sugar, Agnes, Sophie and Mrs Fox are some of the best that I’ve encountered this year.  I’m not convinced about the rest of Faber’s work as it looks to be mostly modern in its setting, but I have two of his other books sitting on the shelf and 2012 is the year to give them a try.  Review

Before They Are Hanged by Joe Abercrombie (2007)

This is the second book in a trilogy, so it feels rather odd to have this one on my top ten list and not the first one.  Often the middle book can fall into the trap of being mediocre filler between the interesting exposition in book one and exciting denouement in book three.  Not so in this trilogy.  I liked the first book well enough, but in Before They Are Hanged the trilogy really comes into its own.  Start with The Blade Itself and discover an exciting, bloody fantasy novel.  I can’t wait to finish the series.  It’s also reminded me that I used to read a lot more fantasy than I have done recently.  I must rectify this if it’s all going to be this good.

Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson (1997)

If a book were ever to be written specifically for me, it would be an awful lot like Human Croquet.  This book was bizarre, but very definitely my kind of bizarre.  It had all the elements that I love in a book: word play, humour, clever time shifts and twisted fairy tale tropes.  I doubt it will appeal to everyone because of its odd structure and peculiar style, but it’s definitely worth a try because there’s every possibility that you’ll love it as much as I did.  Read it and discover that Atkinson writes more than just the detective fiction for which she seems to be best known.  Review

The Wedding by Dorothy West (1995)

The Wedding is possibly the most thorough and insightful explorations of racism in America that I’ve read since I first encountered Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor when I was twelve.  It surprised me by how different it was to what I had expected.  There were no lynchings, violence or hate crimes, just assumptions, opinions and social conventions which are insidious and pervasive.  In many ways it’s like reading an Austen novel, but here people are discriminated against ever so politely based on the shade of their skin rather than their class.  It also shows how complicated the issue is, with people who consider themselves coloured but have pale skin being looked down on by some as not black enough and by others as all too black and indeed vice versa.  It’s a very interesting and thoughtful book.

Wild Swans by Jung Chang (1991)

I’m a little bit surprised that this is the only non-fiction book to make it onto my 2011 list, as I’ve read a few excellent memoirs this year.  However, Jung Chang’s story of her grandmother, her mother and herself growing up over a period of huge change in China wins in scope, in detail and in the sheer remarkable nature of the story being told.  Through Chang and her family, we see China change from a land of imperial warlords and their concubines to one in the iron grip of Mao’s dictatorship. It provided a compelling insight into a world that is completely alien to me and I found it utterly fascinating.  Review

The Uxbridge English Dictionary by Jon Nasmith et al (2005)

Ever since I was first introduced to it by my parents while listening to the radio on a long car journey, I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue has been one of my favourite comedy shows.  I enjoy every round, however silly, but I particularly love listening to the ludicrous yet ever so clever new definitions for words that the teams come up with in the round called Uxbridge English Dictionary.  This book is a compendium of the best of those definitions and it had me crying with laughter on every page.  If you like the radio show, you’ll love this book.  If you’ve never heard it, I insist you go forth and do so immediately, but anyone with an appreciation for the peculiarities of language should enjoy this regardless.

So, 2011 was a really good reading year for me.  I’ll be looking at tmy plans for 2012 tomorrow.  I’m excited already!

The challenge had four different levels of participation:

Sense and Sensibility: 1-4 books.
Great Expectations: 5-9 books.
Hard Times: 10-14 books.
Desperate Remedies: 15+ books

I said in my initial post that I was aiming for the Hard Times level, with the intention of reading one book each month.  In fact, I’ve managed to achieve the dizzy heights of Desperate Remedies, reading a grand total of sixteen Victorian books, including short stories, novels and poetry.

Because of my increasingly enormous review backlog, many of these books are ones that I haven’t written about here yet (although I fully intend to eventually).  To give an idea of what I thought about the books I read, the list below is ranked in order of preference and includes the star rating that I gave each book on LibraryThing (5 = I loved it; 4 = I really liked it; 3 = I liked it; 2 = It was ok; 1 = I didn’t like it).  All the links are to my reviews, where they exist.

1. Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell (5)
2. The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot (4.5)
3. Cautionary Tales by Hilaire Belloc (4.5)
4. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (4.5)
5. Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (4)
6. Elizabeth and her German Garden by Elizabeth von Arnim (4)
7. The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope (4)
8. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (4)
9. More English Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs (4)
10. The Warden by Anthony Trollope (3.5)
11. The Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith (3)
12. Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens (3)
13. Wessex Tales by Thomas Hardy (3)
14. The Monk and the Hangman’s Daughter by Ambrose Bierce (3)
15. The Professor by Charlotte Bronte (2.5)
16. Liza of Lambeth by W. Somerset Maugham (2)

As you can see, I really enjoyed most of these books, and all of them proved an interesting reading experience even if I didn’t like them as much.  All of the books that I read were by different authors, which was one of my aims when I set out, and as a result I ended up discovering lots of new-to-me Victorian authors which I might not have done without this challenge.  Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Elizabeth von Arnim, Anthony Hope, Joseph Jacobs, Anthony Trollope and Geroge and Weedon Grossmith were all authors I hadn’t read before, but I already have second books by all of them (except George and Weedon Grossmith who apparently only wrote The Diary of a Nobody).

In addition to discovering some new favourites, I also had fun encountering some familiar faces.  I made it through a Thomas Hardy book for the first time ever!  While The Wessex Tales did nothing to alter my opinion that Hardy is all doom and gloom, it did prove to me that I can get through it and even enjoy it (albeit in small doses).  I think it will still be a while before I attempt Jude the Obscure, but I might perhaps be tempted to try Far from the Madding Crowd in 2012. 

Reading Nicholas Nickleby was exactly the experience that I had expected, filled with deserving poor, miserly uncles and charitable rich men.  I was disappointed because of the lack of decent female characters and the overall predictability, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I should stop hoping that Dickens will do anything other than what I know he’s going to do and appreciate him for what he does, if that makes any sense at all.  There’s a new BBC adaptation of Great Expectations coming this Christmas, so I may reread that book as I know Miss Havisham bucks the trend of insipid women quite spectacularly.  Now that I’ve reminded myself that Dickens does exist outside of the classroom, I’m also going to devote a bit more of my reading time to him next year in honour of the Dickens Centenary.

My favourite book by far was Cranford which I had read in part before the challenge.  I started reading it shortly after watching the BBC adaptation, but I must have misplaced the book when I moved back home after university and somehow never picked it up again until now.  I’m glad I did, because I fell in love instantly with its cast of brave, kind ladies.  It’s easily one of my favourite books from 2011.

Although not my favourite book from this challenge by a long way, perhaps the most interesting to read from a critical point of view was The Professor by Charlotte Bronte.  I consider Jane Eyre to be one of my favourite books of all time and I really wanted Charlotte Bronte to be like Jane Austen, whose books I find all equally fantastic.  However, I was surprised by how indifferent I was towards this particular book.  It wasn’t bad (this is, after all, Charlotte Bronte) but it didn’t capture my heart or my mind and I can see why it was only published after the successes of her other novels.

So, all in all, a really good challenge.  I’m glad that I participated and thank you once again to Bethany for hosting!