Northanger Abbey

I recently happened to chance across the film on tv, which reminded me this was still one of the two of Austen's I'd not read before. Easily remedied then once I came across the book on the lending bookshelf at work. Having studied Gothic romance in the past, Austen's gentle mocking of her heroine did rather make me smile. It's no Persuasion but it's good to be better acquainted with her earlier work.

.............

‘But now really, do not you think Udolpho the nicest book in the world?’

‘The nicest; – by which I suppose you mean the neatest. That must depend upon the binding.’
‘Henry,’ said Miss Tilney, ‘you are very impertinent. Miss Morland, he is treating you exactly as he does his sister. He is for ever finding fault with me, for some incorrectness of language, and now he is taking the same liberty with you. The word “nicest,” as you used it, did not suit him; and you had better change it as soon as you can, or we shall be overpowered with Johnson and Blair all the rest of the way.’
‘I am sure,’ cried Catherine, ‘I did not mean to say anything wrong; but it is a nice book, and why should not I call it so?’

‘Very true,’ said Henry, ‘and this is a very nice day, and we are taking a very nice walk, and you are two very nice young ladies. Oh! it is a very nice word indeed! – It does for everything. Originally perhaps it was applied only to express neatness, propriety, delicacy, or refinement; – people were nice in their dress, in their sentiments, or their choice. But now every commendation on every subject is comprised in that one word.’
.....

Her passion for ancient edifices was next in degree to her passion for Henry Tilney - and castles and abbies made usually the charm of those reveries which his image did not fill.

I'll Never Be Young Again

    Daphne du Maurier

★★★
The narrator of this one... he didn't win all my favour & sympathies. 
The evolution & breakdown of the relationship between Hesta & Dick was interesting to follow, as well as his efforts to step out of his father's shadow.
______

I resented the idea that when the Hedwig sailed again there would be some strange Norwegian snoring in my cot..,  for places where we have lived intensely become part of ourselves, I always think. However much now Jake and I might resolve to return.., I felt there would be other things claiming us by then and the Hedwig would belong to the past. 
....   

In a flash I can see the progress of that autumn and the coming of winter. [...]I would go on writing and yet be awae of the life that continued aound me, the comfort and the familiarity of little things. There would be Hesta's book lying open on the floor, and her sweater hanging over the back of a chair. On my table were some flowers she had placed there in the morning... Her things and my things, part o each other, part of our life, and the room next door with the one divan in the corner, and my old coat hung on a hook on top of her mackintosh, my shoes lying untidily under the dressing-table, hers beneath a cahir and our tooth-brushes in a jar, and a sponge we shared. All these making up the atmosphere of Hesta and me.. Scraps of conversation..  
....

He was never wrong. I think he always knew what would happen to me. 

Adventure and excitement, sorrow and love were all phases of my life that had to be. 

"Jane Austen Accidents"

Children’s Books.

‘Queens just look out of windows’:
how children’s books are failing to show gender equality

Update: June 2017 / III

Crimson Petal...    ★★★★★

I loved this book. I loved it in the way Time Traveler's Wife got me in 2005. I didn't want it to end even though I full well knew the ending from the tv series. 

But to rewind a little: first there was 2011 & then again onto 2014, where I spotted this copy & seized upon it in the brilliant Oxfam bookshop on Market Street, Nottingham whilst looking for some Long Read literature. 
Having added it to my 'shelf, I started it over Christmas 2016 & soon fell in step with the introductions to different characters as Faber passes you from one character to Caroline to Sugar and so on. 
- As ever, it's good to see the characters fully fleshed out from their tv dimensions; to know their back stories, to understand their foibles better. 
- Fascinating to trace Sugar's transformation from well-read prostitute, mainly out for herself & own interests to the nurturing love she holds for Sophie.
- The meta aspect too: revisiting Agnes through the old diaries.
- The friendship/unspoken love between Henry & Emmeline. 
- The novel's structure in itself which made it perfect for bedtime reading. 
No racing ahead to conquer a chapter before you drop off; short enough to stay with that character, their happenings & then stop at a good point, at your own pace & remember where you left off at the next night. 

I didn't want it to end. I knew whatever was due to follow wouldn't be as strong or powerful a read.
............

Wonder... read December 2016; generously lent by my friend, SB. 
I hadn't been expecting Palacio's variety of narrative voices given how the first chapter started out. I liked it all the more for that. Good to experience Auggie's life from different perspectives & the effect of his life on them. 
I wasn't sure how it would be tied up at the end; how could there be an end to something to mark him out as different throughout his whole life? 

Conan Doyle, 

revisited over January & into February. As Gatiss & Moffat led us through The Six Thatchers into The Final Problem, I happened across the Baker Street Babes - helpfully tweeting which threads linked back to which ACD stories. I devoured a fair few in appreciating the old against the new whilst maintaining the faintest hope of outsolving the mysteries of the detective ahead of The Final Problem. Unlikely but still. 

New York Trilogy, 

this text was due to cross over into my work life as a stage play. It'd been sitting on my Goodreads list for six years, having been recommended to me one summer at a party. One of those where you find yourself inevitably in conversation with other book nerds & start recommending your favourites.

- Of City of Glass - I was not a fan. Clever, certainly - possibly too clever for itself at times though. I would be reading the novel whilst thinking of how it was an exam board delight to pose post-modernist questions out of the text or what the essay title on that particular section might be. I finished the story & threw it to the floor. Deeply unsatisfying. 
- The Locked Room proved better as an exploration of relationships; of tensions in dating, of secrecy in married life, the obsessive nature of quests. 

- Ghosts was clever & funny. The colours for characters. The watching-him-watching-you drama to pull the reader in. Yup, Ghosts was probably my favourite of three.

All this created an exquisite tension. As the evening progressed, the most casual remarks became tinged with erotic overtones. Words were no longer simply words but a curious code of silences, a way of speaking that continually moved around the thing that was being said. As long as we avoided the real subject, the spell would not be broken. We both slipped naturally into this kind of banter, and it became all the more powerful because neither one o of us abandoned the charade. We knew what we were doing, but at the same time we pretended not to. Thus my courtship of Sophie began - slowly, decorously, building by the smallest of incitements. 
                                                                                                 The Locked Room: Paul Auster


I skipped through The Bridges of Madison County too. 

We'd had stacks upon stacks of books on set for a play & I was tasked (with much self-restraint!) to box them on closing. This one caught my eye; can't remember why. Perhaps the mention of intense passion; of chance encounters which alter your life forever. 
It served as my lunchtime read over a few weeks. I enjoyed it relatively well enough until the love-making scene. After those superfluous metaphors, I lost much respect for it but continued for closure. By the end with the children's response to their mother's letter. - Ugh; complete lack of realism.

The Library of Shadows

April - June 2016; another lunch-hour read.

Taken from another bookish struck set, post-run. 

Judging by Goodreads, I was not the first to scan the blurb, note mention of a bookshop & hope for something of Zafon's calibre. Nor was I the first to be disappointed that it did not manage to deliver.

A mixed bag. Perhaps I'm outwith its targeted demographic as it seemed somewhat YA.

I found it:

- shallow in some places (Katherina's damsel qualities; Pau's transparent villainy)
- sluggish in others (possibly due to the strictures of translation into English?) 
and weakly & unsatisfactorily resolved.
However, there were still flashes of goodness, such as:
- the early stages of the thread where the friends turned detective;
- the supernatural premise underpinning the plot was fairly interesting.


Stancliffe's Hotel, 

a present from Christmas 2016.  ★★★
First of all, it's a joy to know that these, Penguin's Little Black Classics, have been published. 
I knew of the stories from Angria from visits to Brontë Parsonage & habitual mention in Brontë biographies but had not known I could actually read one.   
It's by no means of the mature standard one finds with Jane Eyre or Villette but why should it be, being an early work? Although very well-peopled for a fairly short read, it made me laugh on many occasion with its wit & sharp, satirical eye. Definitely worth a read. 

There was the great man in his usual attire of a gingham jacket & canvas trousers of more than Dutch capacity. Stock he disdained, & waistcoat: the most fastidious lady might have beheld with admiration that muscular chest & neck bristled with heroic hair.

- Haven't we all been there?

It took me a full half hour to dress, and another half hour to view myself over from head to foot in the splendid full-length mirror with which my chamber was furnished. Really, when I saw the neat figure therein reflected, genteelly attired [...]   I thought 'there are worse men in the world than Charles Townshend'.

Lastly, Persuasion: 
a fond re-visit of my favourite Austen novel prior to watching a stage play of the same next week.  It will be a very loose re-working in a modern setting but nonetheless, I wanted to refresh my memory as to the characters & nuances of the plot. Persuasion: so real with its memories of love lost, of awkward reunions & one's best intentions gone awry. 

 

@ Crazy Pedro's, awaiting friends

Credit.

MBH.

 

Bravo!

Reason #6 as to why I'll probably never swap to a Kindle: 

Opening up the Complete Sherlock Holmes & finding the foil coin bookmark 

from the very first time I bought the book still marking pages 

~ Swiss Holidays, 2003