Winter Additions.

“Books are safe.”

Contrary to Whovian—Fahrenheit lore, when turning a page is one of the few activities least likely to exacerbate a shouty shoulder, books do turn somewhat benign. 

Kicking off the New Year with this mixed parcel of reads (‘highbrow’, ‘low-brow’ & ‘eyebrow’, wrote my friend), starting with the most racy & light-hearted of the three; an easy flick-through. 

California Dreamers | Norman Bogner

Being as old than myself, some of Bogner’s attitudes here are certainly contemporaneous (rape games? Mm. Gross.) 

But on the whole, I found I could easily root the most for protagonist Claire, “the jilted small-town beauty who followed [Bobby] West”. 

Her determination to pick herself up, dust herself off & stand her ground in matters of business, romance & love. 

I’m still not entirely convinced of the logical leap from seeing someone sporting camouflage trousers to setting up an entire equivalent Army-&-Navy Store but hey ho, plot must. 

I did appreciate the turn of phrase here,

These were the faces she encountered each day on Rodeo Drive, tough and finicky in stores, but at night their real faces crawled out of the sunlight…” [203-204]

 Bogner, Norman. California Dreamers.
Sphere Books: London, 1982. 

Next up:

Night Side Of The River | Jeanette Winterson

Appropriately enough: 

    What did Albert Camus say? It’s not one thing or the other which leads to madness; it’s the space in between them. 

    I’m living in a space between lives — my past and my future. I’m living in a space between worlds. How could I not feel like a crazy woman. [102]

— Mm. Not so much crazed as caught. 

This was a slow burn read for me. Short story collections aren’t my usual go-to. I’m not sure I’ve actually read a collection since my undergrad years with its Granta broad strokes C.20th (somewhat underwhelming) American anthology (1998 ed.?) 

— All I remember from then is a woman, a girdle & some … turkey fat perhaps? Delightful. 

Give me Uncle Tom’s Cabin over that any day. Although perhaps I should actually be following up on Bill Nighy’s ill advised secondary Percival Everett recommendation of James (second to The Trees); anyway —

I’ve not picked up any Winterson for a while, crammed as the Ws of my bookcase may be. The book was loaned by a former colleague; they’d never quite clicked with her before & yet - this time - the ghost stories paid off. Triumph! 

Favourite chapters include

•  Ghost In The Machine: 

an awkward love triangle between the living, the dead & the avatar. 

•  The Spare Room: 

its nod to Spitalfields, of rooms occupied & not, of bad endings, seeking closure & forging resolution. 

Winterson, Jeanette. Night Side Of The River. 
Vintage: Great Britain, 2023.

The TO READ/RECOMMENDED List:

Sitting On The Shelf —

Nephthys - Rachel Louise Driscoll

Suspicion - Seichō Matsumoto

Arrangements In Blue - Amy Key (G)

What You Are Looking For Is In The Library - Michiko Aoyama

The Odyssey - trans. Emily Wilson

Homer’s Odyssey - Simon Armitage

The Plausibility Problem - Ed Shaw

Sensible Shoes - Sharon Garlough Brown

Vita & Virginia: The Lives & Love of Virginia Woolf 

& Vita Sackville-West - Sarah Gristwood

Just Do Something - DeYoung

She Speaks! - Harriet Walter

MCL —

You Are Not Alone - Cariad Lloyd

The Man Who Pays The Rent - Dame Judi Dench

The House of Fortune - Jessie Burton

No Boys Play Here... - Sally Bayley

Really good, actually - Monica Heisey (G)

Cursed Bread - Sophie Mackintosh

After The Funeral - Tessa Hadley

.  .  .  .  .

Virginia Woolf:

Genius & Ink . Jacob’s Room. 

The Years . The Waves

A Writer’s Diary . The Common Reader

Still Life - A.S. Byatt 

At The Hive Entrance - H. Storch

The War of Wars: The Epic Struggle Between Britain & France - Robert Harvey

Sandra Newman - The Heavens | Julia 

Good Omens - Pratchett & Gaiman

Mr Vertigo - Paul Auster

Jeanette Winterson:

Sexing the Cherry | Tanglewreck | The Gap In Time

Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch

Mansfield Park - Jane Austen

The Magus - John Fowles

Christ Stopped at Eboli - Carlo Levi

Good Morning, Midnight - Jean Rhys

Speak, Memory - Vladimir Nabokov

The Luminaries - Eleanor Catton

The House of Silk - Anthony Horowitz

Hag Seed - Margaret Atwood

Ragnarok - A.S. Byatt

Little Faith - Nickolas Butler

Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

The Labrador Pact; The Last Family In England - Matt Haig

Fen; Everything Under - Daisy Johnson

The Silence of the Girls - Pat Barker

Dusty Answer - Rosamond Lehmann

Worn: A People’s History of Clothing - Sofi Thanhauser

Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life - Julia Briggs

Virginia Woolf & Her World - John Lehman

Gilead - Marilyn Robinson

.  .  .  .  .

Annie Spence recommends 

Endless Love - Scott Spencer

Fates & Furies - Lauren Groff

Home Land - Sam Lipsyte

Love in Lowercase - Francesc Miralles

Mayumi & the Sea of Happiness - Jennifer Tseng

The Gold Bug Variations - Richard Powers

The Intimates - Ralph Sassone

When Tito Loved Clara - Jon Michaud

Women in Clothes - Shelia B Heti 

.  .  .  .  .

Romantic Comedy - Curtis Sittenfeld

Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk - Kathleen Rooney

Where the Wild Winds Are - Nick Hunt

Harrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut

A Good Man Is Hard To Find - Flannery O'Connor

Everything That Rises Must Converge - Flannery O'Connor

Milestones of the Master - Warren W. Wierbse

Time Lived, Without Its Flow - Denise Riley

A Very Easy Death - Simone de Beauvoir

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 

The Mezzanine - Nicholson Baker

The Bees - Laline Paul

Farewell My Lovely - Raymond Chandler

The Reckoning - Charles Nicholl

Sleeping On Islands - Andrew Motion

My Year In Books: 2025

 The Night After Christmas - Kes Gray
*Night Side Of The River - Jeanette Winterson
The Blue-Footed Booby - Rob Biddulph
Hotel World - Ali Smith
The Penguin Lessons - Tom Michell
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Pageboy - Elliot Page 
The Dead - James Joyce

This happy find,

 

Winter Stack.

February —
The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald 

A happy revisit to one of my old favourites, prompted by R4's re-imagining by Roy Williams; also brilliantly conceived. 

I was curious as to how much still stemmed from the original & how much had been adapted to suit the Harlem renaissance. 
Returning to it some twenty years later, I was struck by Jay's blind faith & naïve optimism; 'you can't repeat the past'.
Aye, agreed. 

January —
Pageboy | Elliot Page

Insightful.
Vulnerable.
Compelling. 

I was glad to have encountered Page's book; to better educate myself as a trans ally & to pass it along to someone else seeking to do similar. 

'At this point in my life, it didn’t really feel like a choice, there was no other option. I had to choose to engage as my authentic self, or die not trying.' [199]

'There was a spark, a seed, something getting stirred up. My body leaned in, knowing not to stop there, sensing it before my mind did. This flesh vessel, always vastly smarter than me, if only I’d managed to listen.' [237]

Page, Elliot. Pageboy. Doubleday | imprint of Transworld Publishers | Penguin Random House: London, 2023.

My Year In Books: 2024

Shadow Reader - Imtiaz Dharker

*Hotel World - Ali Smith

The Marble Collector - Cecelia Ahern

Postman Pat And The Pet Show - John Cunliffe    

Kindness Is Magic - Duba Kolanovic    

The Magic Crayon - Amy Sparkes & Ali Pye        

Cave Baby - Julia Donaldson & Emily Gravett

You Must Bring A Hat - Simon Phillip & Kate Hindley        

Mouse's Wood - Alice Melvin        

Too Much Stuff - Emily Gravett        

LOVE - Corinne Averiss & Kristi Beautyman        

A Day That's Ours - Blake Nuto & Vyara Boyadjieva                 

Sunny Side Up - Clare Helen Welsh & Ana Sanfelippo        

The Who's Whonicorn of Unicorns - Kes Gray & Garry Parsons

From Crimea With Love - Jason Salkey 

.  .  .  .  . 
 

On the Sharpe Series:  

If I was to recommend a reading order to others, I would say to start with either Eagle or perhaps Rifles, read in publication order up to the end of the India Trilogy in 1999, & then stop. One can make a case for the later-published books if one just wants to know more about the battles, but from the perspective of making sense of Sharpe, they should be put on the same level as Lois Lane’s ‘imaginary stories’ from 1960s Superman comics. Discount them from your reading order altogether.

— https://www.sealionpress.co.uk/post/prequel-problems-sharpe-s-reading-order

My Year In Books: 2023

Ghosts: The Button House Archives - Them There
How to Buy a House - Kirstie Allsopp & Phil Spencer 
*The Relentless Elimination of Hurry - John Mark Comer
I Dreamed I Met Vermeer - Carol Hill Marks
The Grinny Granny Donkey - Richard Curtis
Four Weddings & a Funeral: The Screenplay - Craig Smith & Katz Cowley
Go Set A Watchman - Harper Lee  
A Thousand Mornings - Mary Oliver
Mr Peacock’s Possessions - Lydia Syson
The Art Of The Tea Towel - Marnie Fogg
Breadsong: How Baking Changed Our Lives - Al Tait & Kitty Tait
The Same But Different Too - Karl Newson
Attachments - Rainbow Rowell
Song From Faraway  -  Simon Stephens
My Name Is Lucy Barton - Elizabeth Strout
The Philosophy of Beer - Jane Peyton
Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist - David Levithan & Rachel Cohn

Quest.

Oh, you Pretty.

I had very much planned for this visit during my time in Chicago.
First glimpse giddy.

Some online reading prior had made me realise I wouldn't get so lucky as to be in town on a regular day, complete with library tour as a book fair was scheduled but still... a fair & proper way to enjoy a library nonetheless.

Hence this fan girl left happy after time amongst the stacks.

Right proper placement amongst the stalls  ღ

[Thank you Niffenegger!]

_____________

On so many levels. 
I drafted this poem's finer details into a letter
but didn't keep stock of those for myself.

Word On The Water, LDN

book nook!

Spring Extracts.

May —

Attachments |  Rainbow Rowell

from the 'Annie Spence Recommends' list.
I liked it; it grew on me. And, importantly, the one-sided origin of the attachment was addressed outright, otherwise the snooping would've felt even more awkward. 

Lincoln still thought about Beth. All the time, at first.

He subscribed to the newspaper so that he could read her reviews at breakfast and again at lunch. He tried to figure out how she was doing through her writing. Did she seem happy? Was she being too hard on romantic comedies? Or too generous?

Reading her reviews kept his memory of her alive in a way he probably shouldn’t want. Like a pilot light inside of him. It made him make sometimes, when she was being especially funny or insightful, or when he could read past her words to something true that he knew about her. But the aching faded, too. Things get better — hurt less — over time. If you let them.  [339]

Rowell, Rainbow. Attachments. 
Orion Books: London, 2012

 _____________

February —

My Name Is Lucy Barton|  Elizabeth Strout

This, I read after talk of a staging so I thought I'd best acquaint myself with the text.

It was ... okay. 
In a nutshell, the quote below encapsulates the shifting narrator that put me in mind of Ishiguro. Strout's fragmentary style and narration meant I didn't warm to the childlike Lucy.  

I am still not sure it’s a true memory, except I do know it, I think.
I mean: It is true. Ask anyone who knew us.  [119]

I began to feel like the novel had hit its stride in the plot around the workshop with Sarah Payne. A shift came in the storytelling with the directive: 'go to the page'  being followed through & a declaration now of 'abuse', putting a wholly different slant on the childhood detailed thus far [120 / 135].

Other elements recalled Plath's Esther Greenwood: 
the clinical recovery setting post-breakdown; talk of trash & awards  [112]. 

______

... as though they were silently saying You are not one of us, as though I had betrayed them by leaving them. I suppose I had.  [162]

Strout, Elizabeth. My Name Is Lucy Barton
Penguin | Random House: London, 2016.