My Year In Books: 2022

*The Relentless Elimination of Hurry - John Mark Comer

The Sense of an Ending - Julian Barnes

The House With Chicken Legs - Sophie Anderson

Open Water - Caleb Azuma Nelson

Two Across - Jeffrey Bartsch

The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep - H.G. Parry

The Bread Pet: A Sourdough Story - Kate DePalma

The Bad Beekeeper's Club - Bill Turnbull

Flush - Virginia Woolf

Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore - Robin Sloan

Was She Pretty? - Leanne Shapton

The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
The Art of Sourdough Scoring - Brittany Wood

Howards End Is On The Landing - Susan Hill

Dear Fahrenheit 451 - Annie Spence

Virginia Woolf At Home - Hilary Macaskill

Novel Houses: Twenty Famous Fictional Dwellings - Christina Hardyment

Hedwig And The Angry Inch - John Cameron Mitchell & Stephen Trask 

The Dictionary of Lost Words - Pip Williams

There's a Dinosaur in my Bathtub - Catalina Echeverri

Becoming - Michelle Obama

Autumn Round-Up.

October —
Hamnet | Maggie O' Farrell

It's been talked about for years in my friendship circle, it seems. I was always going to get around to it at some point & then a friend left her copy at work so I loaned her one from the library; once returned, she later lent me hers to read. Circuitous but we got there.
I'd heard that it was hugely moving, potentially a tearjerker of an ending. 
- Is the best book to read, when recently bereaved one, given a key theme is bereavement? Mm. Is there a place, a moment in time where the language & lived experience connect & bring comfort? Perhaps. 

- O'Farrell's understated style.
Yes. All the way.
The repetitive nature of pronouns used lending rhythm to speech.

- That Shakespeare, our most famous playwright, goes unnamed; referred to only through nouns: the father, the son, the Latin master, the brother, the husband. 

- His first sighting of, then subsequent meeting with Agnes & the hawk.
- Their partnership; her gifts and their recognition of each other; cleaved unto. 
  Love, sacrifice and compromise; Shakespeare & Agnes' reconciliation [311-321].

- Force of will.

She knows she is meant to have only two children but she will not accept this. She tells herself this ..  She will not let it happen; not tonight, not tomorrow, not any day. She will find that door & slam it shut. [239]

- The journey of the plague from foreign shores to Stratford; a masterpiece  [166-180]. 

- The journey of Agnes & Bartholomew to London, to the playhouse.

Hamnet, the boy.
It takes a while to arrive at the volta, the crux but it's not want of waiting impatiently for the story to begin. There's already plenty underway by then in learning and knowing how the different family members interact, what their characteristics are. 

Death & its accompaniment in that ... they were there, they were just there; only moments, minutes, days prior. A phone call away. (A line from a recent Guardian article -- 

I thought I had more time. We always think we have more time.

- This, exactly. )

Everywhere he looks: Hamnet. Aged two, gripping the edges of the window ledge ... As a baby, tucked with Judith ... Pushing open the front door ... Catching a ball in its hoop ... Lifting his face from his schoolwork to his father to ask about a tense in Greek ... The sound of his voice, calling ... [280]

He will never come again. She would like to spin the wheel backwards, unmake the skein of Hamnet's death, his boyhood, his infancy, his birth, right back until the moment she and her husband cleaved together ... She would like to unspool it all, render it all back down to raw fleece, to find her way back, to that moment, and she would stand up, she would turn her face to the stars, to the heaven, to the moon, and appeal to them...

There will be no going back. No undoing of what was laid out for them. The boy has gone and the husband will leave and she will stay and the pigs will need to be fed.. and time runs only one way. [287] 

Autumn, when it comes, is terrible too. The sharpness on the air, early in the morning. The mist gathering in the yard. The hens fussing and murmuring in their pen.. The leaves crisping at their edges. Here is a season Hamnet has not known or touched. Here is a world moving forward without him. [291]

- Grief, claustrophobia & the theatre:

It is intolerable. All of it. He feels as though he is caught in a web of absence, its strings & tendrils ready to stick and cling to him, whichever way he turns. Here he is, back in this town, in this house, and all of it makes him fearful that he might never get away; this grief, this loss, might keep him here, might destroy all he has made for himself in London. His company will descend into chaos & disorder without him; they will lose all of their money & disband; they  might find another to take his place  [...]   He might lose his hold on all that he has built there. It is so tenuous, so fragile, the life of the playhouses. He often thinks that, more than anything, it is like the embroidery on his father's gloves: only the beautiful shows, only the smallest part, while underneath is a cross-hatching of labour and skill and frustration and sweat. [281-2]

... he must hold himself separate in order to survive. [305] 

__________________________

November —
Two Across | Jeff Bartsch
Open River | Caleb Azumah Nelson

Two Across, courtesy of Annie Spence's suggestion list. 
- A coming-of-age tale involving crossword puzzles. Words were going to play a key part in this one. Sign me up! 
I liked it. I was rooting for the two leads, Stanley & Vera through all their wrong turns & misadventures; moments where they'd connect & yet somehow awkwardly still misalign.

Now that he had found her, the urgency and crippling emptiness of his time alone in Boston had eased away [...]  he was carried along by inertia, doped up with the sedative effect of happiness. So he let the months slip by, the grand gesture not coming in the winter, not coming in the spring, comfortably living a non-life with her, a life without substance, written in ink that fades away. [212] 

Spring was cooked away by the increasingly oppressive afternoons of the impending summer, and then summer itself ripened and rotted and was gently laid to rest. From his place on the bench... he observed these changes while the better part of his mind tried to tell itself that he was living an extraordinary life. [178] 

 Would it have been the same novel if Vera had been up front from the start? Probably not. By stretching the story across a good few decades, both characters could grow the heck up, attempt relationships elsewhere & work out where their priorities lay. The cast of supporting characters also integrated well with their goals as parents and/or career women; their changing habits & alliances with each other.
The storyline retained my interest from the faked wedding, throughout additional scandals; pushed onwards by Vera's propensity to bolt whenever things became overwhelming. 

Vera was done with Stanley. Done. That’s what she told herself and that’s what she believed. She made light of it. [...] She made peace with her own mind and finally found a way to tuck him into one of the pockets where all of the accidental characters we encounter throughout our lives eventually take their places, waiting for the archivist of memory, to come poking around again, coming across one here and another one there, and saying, "Ah, there’s Arnold Grant, the funny red-faced boy from first grade" [...] Stanley’s pocket was a very prominent one, but Vera convinced herself that one day it would become as inconsequential and as seldom touched upon as poor Arnold Grant's. [198]

It was funny too. Firstly, for seeing how far these booksmart people had to go to learn a life lesson as well as their shrewd method of communicating across the country, of signalling intent. But secondly, a witty read just in itself. (Pity the humble, practical butter knife!)

He was as useful and reliable as a butter knife, and just as dull. [271]

There was no avoiding the fact that she missed his body. She was flesh and blood after all. But she wouldn’t say his name, or even let it whisper through her mind. If she felt the "S" coming, she would bend it in to quickly bend it into something else. Sss-standard. Sss-starlight.  [...]  Sss-spaghetti. [228]

 My favourite line, 

She was convinced she could spend the rest of her life without a man. Instead, perhaps she would buy one of those nice Japanese teapots.  [226]

Bartsch, Jeff. Two Across. Grand Central Publishing: NY, 2016.

_________

Open River.

Let's start with the good. 
- A friendly recommendation from an actor shared backstage. A book that would've otherwise escaped me, most probably or I may not have loaned at all. 
- Poetic in style. 
- Highly lauded... That's a neither nor here there though. ("Sally Rooney meets Michaela Coel", NYT -- oh, can we not? Can we not just say what it's like rather than having to fall into lazy mash-up territory?) 
- Is it a book for me though? ('what it means to move through the world whilst Black' - Bolu Babalola.) Maybe. Maybe I'd identify with aspects of it; find commonality or find myself challenged. 

There were elements recognisable, certainly in the love story's dynamics:

'It's easier to do this, to open a box & close it quick, seal it with sharp quips. It's easier to let your bodies do the same...'  [45]

'Honestly,' you said. 'I don't know.'
Except you did know. To give desire a voice is to give it a body through which to breathe & live. [...] It was easier to remain silent & hold the desire to yourself. [65]

- the injustices of Stop & Search; the fatigue [59],

The sirens grow closer. All those present grow more fearful in the presence of the siren because when they, the police, are close, you lose your names & you have all done wrong. [117]

And there were elements which also left me feeling othered. I didn't know many of the Black names that were filtered into the writing but I did like how readily they were included, as part & parcel of the whole.

There were times when the poetry grasped the moment.

Love as a form of meditation; reaching towards a more honest expression of self.  [110]

And there were times when the language felt ... much more languorous. I took a break from it for a few weeks & I wasn't exactly rushing to return. 
Being a tale of two lovers in their early twenties, I found that it navel gazes somewhat. It's about the young man and his experience & understanding of how he fits in his community & within the wider world. Yet as much as he's writing & talking about her, the love interest - it's all about him, and all about him & being Just Friends again & again until ...  I started to find that rather cloying. 

To strike out here entirely & draw a line back across my reading past, I think - if I wanted to read poetic prose again - I think I'd return to Jon McGregor. I'm glad to have read it but ... unless his next one were to shake things up, I don't think I'd be rushing to encounter another.

Nelson, Caleb Azumah. Open River. Penguin: UK, 2022. 

Summer | September Stack.

 

September —  

The Bad Beekeepers Club | Bill Turnbull

I placed a reservation with MCCL for TBBC the same week as Bill Turnbull died. I remembered that when he'd retired, articles written had referenced his bees. This happened to coincide with my signing-up to become a beekeeper at work so reading his book just made plain good sense. 

It's very conversational in style, almost chatty to a degree and very self-deprecating from the outset as to how much he got wrong. Sometimes I like this as it can be humble and self-aware; sometimes it'd be nice to hear or learn of a few successes as well. But here, the humour & the storytelling mostly worked. Particularly on thrift,

... If not the mother, then necessity is probably the rather wrinkled & stingy maiden aunt of the Bad Beekeeper's sense of invention. [120]

What was much more valuable was factual background to bee characteristics. I'd started to pick up a fair bit through practical means on my rooftop visits but I was certainly learning here too - not just of 'the girls' but also about males, the drones & how

[a] bee has five eyes. And thanks to what’s called ‘flicker fusion potential’, it can see at the equivalent of three hundred frames a second. If bees went to the cinema, the film would appear to them as a long sequence of still pictures. In other words they could see your hand moving like it’s a slow-motion action replay. [8]

 &

CIVILISATION — What's the smoker for? [...]

Smoke makes the bees think that there’s a fire nearby and they may have to evacuate the hive. They quickly eat some of the honey to prepare for the journey. When the smoke passes, they realise they won’t have to leave after all. By this time though, they’ve had so much to eat that their mood has improved and so they are more placid.

& Waggle Dance —

First of all they match up and down a bit to indicate the position of the Sun. Then they veer off at an angle to indicate the compass bearing of the flowers they are guiding other bees too. They also shake their bodies at a certain frequency to let the others know just how far they have to go. And here’s the really interesting bit: the other bees can’t see them doing it. They feel the dance through their antennae. It’s outstanding when you think about it. [29]

but lastly, mostly:  

FELLOWSHIP — Ultimately, though, it’s all about the union with the bees. Forget about the honey, and the candle making, and the mead and all the other little bits and pieces you can harvest from the hive, like pollen and propolis. The real joy for me is just in keeping the bees, literally. From the moment you lift off the lid on the hive and peer inside, you are entering another world, and leaving your own. [243]

— Amen to that.

Turnbull, Bill. The Bad Beekeeper's Club. Sphere: UK, 2011.

________

August - September —

The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep | H.G. Parry

Millie Radcliffe-Dix:  Would you like some of this sponge cake by the way? I'm having some.  It's important to keep your strength up on adventures.  [217] 

: A borrowed read from some friends I happened to trade books with this summer. I'm not by any measure a straight-up consumer of SFF but there are certain ones which neatly intersect the genre whilst providing something extra elsewhere in keeping with my literary tastes. This particular read does just that, not least from its world inhabited by familiar characters from fiction.

Parry's Acknowledgments calls out a number of names, all bar one I'd knew of, had studied &/or read something by...

... thanks to Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, Mary Shelley, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jane Austen, Margaret Mahy, Roald Dahl, C.S. Lewis, Emily Brontë, and the other authors whose creations grace the pages of this book. You’re wonderful. Your words are wonderful. I’m sorry for what I did to them. 

But it's also more than that. There's a real warmth & a care in how Parry's characters are cultivated & developed from their fictional origins; a love of reading; a world very much shaped by literary analysis (or for me, Lit Crit). Having five different Darcys (one sure nod to CF / BBC included) tickled me no end. And whilst I've never cared much for Dickens, I'm familiar enough with the ins & outs of his works to recognise & understand Copperfield, Uriah, Artful, Satis House, Havisham, Fagin & so on... If anything, the large equivalent dosage of Conan Doyle certainly helped — shout-out here for Henry (Hound Mk. 2), the depiction of Holmes as a righter of wrongs & a lovely bit of plot leading via 'the fly in the ointment' directly to:

“Moriarty,” Charlie said. “The Napoleon of crime.” The woman who wasn't Beth smiled. “Yes. And may I say, Dr. Sutherland, but it is a dangerous habit to finger books in the pockets of one’s dressing gown.” [364]

Well played indeed.  

I'm not sure I always knew exactly where the storyline was headed. Sometimes there felt to be a lot of signposting around The Coming Of The New World without much development. But there was enough to run with or to keep track of & Parry was meanwhile plugging the gaps of past, present & future. Diary entries neatly breaking up the novel. Helping me thus in turn, as a reader, to better understand how Robert and Charles had been shaped as well as their fraternal relations.

It was the latter part of the book, with the new world's arrival, the showdown which became the most compelling. A particularly TTTW moment such as when the Henrys crossover in time. Yup --

If you have difficulty believing your brother isn’t real, try seeing him dead or dying in two vastly different forms, as two vastly different people, while he’s standing behind you both times as the person you grew up with. And then try to tell yourself it isn’t killing you inside. [390]

Beautiful, beautiful writing & (2) I don't tend to envisage or picture much when I'm reading but this I could see as it took me right back to MIF '19's Atmospheric Memory...  

He was David Copperfield, and Sherlock Holmes, and Charles Dickens. He was Dr. Charles Sutherland, author of the world that was crumbling around us. He was words, and thought, and memory. He was a creature of metaphor and simile, of hopes and autobiography and dead people. And he was my brother. [426]

… Buildings folded over like the pages of a book. Liminal space. The space between two worlds. Where the light was strongest, there were no buildings—at least, none of bricks and mortar. They shone through with words. The city at the edges dissolved into block text, and the ground under my feet were shifting with printed sentences. In places the buildings looked like thinly painted watercolor over newsprint. In others there were holes torn through the walls or across the sky itself, and words teemed from those holes—or out of them, I couldn’t tell. Everything was in motion. And noise. There was so much noise. [425]

… I saw the city, Charley’s London, solid and real, made of words and thoughts and ideas and interpretation, sprawling out as far as I could see. It was disappearing: not to nothing, as Moriarty had feared, but into something I couldn’t begin to understand. It was passing into pure language. In another moment, perhaps, I would disappear with it. [427]

End resolution? Yeah... it wrapped up well. That last scene was particularly cosy after Robert's years of bubbling frustration / irritation with Charley & the company he'd been keeping. 

  Specific elements I enjoyed:

- Parry's writing-up of Wellington & her emphasis on the city's topography

- Charley's bookstrewn house (the Woolfs again!) 

- the dynamic between Millie & Dorian Gray 

- Heathcliff & his 'glorious' necessary death 

- The Street (& five entire cohabiting Darcys)

- different manifestations of David Copperfield 

- Millie & Charley's friendship 

Beastly to discover that Millie was fully fictional though. That's the kind of (plucky heroine & near scrapes) series I would've easily devoured in childhood. Darn! 

Parry, H.G. The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep. Orbit: UK, 2020.

_______________

August - October -  
— The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry | John Mark Comer  (underway)

Flush.

 

' The human nose is practically non-existent. The greatest poets in the world have smelt nothing but roses on the hand, and dung on the other. The infinite gradations that lie between are unrecorded. Yet it was in the world of smell that Flush mostly lived. Love was chiefly smell; form and colour were smell. To him religion itself was smell. To describe his simplest experience with the daily chop or biscuit is beyond our power. [...] Confessing our inadequacy, then, we can but note that to Flush Italy, in these the fullest, the freest, the happiest years if his life, meant mainly a succession of smells. ' [86]

 
Woolf, Virginia. Flush. Penguin Random House. Clays Ltd. St Ives, 2016 

All These Selves.

He is typing something into his computer when he says: “Covid tends to seek out and reawaken old areas of inflammation.” I tell him that, aged 12, I had pleurisy, which left me with scarring in that exact spot; I refrain from mentioning that I sprained that ankle falling off a kerb outside a nightclub in my 20s. He nods as he hits the return on his keyboard. “There you are then,” he says.

This is the spiritual change or undiscovered country of my Covid: the virus has made me at once eight, 12 and 23 years old, all at the moment I am approaching 50, which is almost Clarissa Dalloway’s age. Covid has returned me to all that I grappled with as a child with encephalitis, and the lung infection I contracted as an awkward preteen, and incongruously the blithe twentysomething who stayed out too late and pretended all those things never happened to her at all. As I make my way across the car park, all these selves seem vividly present, within me and alongside me, as if the four of us are an unfolded chain of paper-people, for ever bound together, fluttering in the stiff breeze. But then my body, of course, knew this all along.

Maggie O'Farrell - The Guardian

Orlo.

 

Sacha Dhawan just became even cuter.

Kudos. 

Stumble-upon!

 

❤️🧡💛💚💙💜🖤

Penumbra.

I ordered Mr. Penumbra... almost as soon as I'd finished Sourdough. 
A slightly different read, this one but still. so. good.

  Specific elements I enjoyed:

— The combination of quest & tech. It being a bibliophile’s book with ancient texts, dedicated reading rooms, the plot-specific punches that brought the texts together.

Neel takes a sharp breath and I know exactly what it means. It means: I have waited my whole life to walk through a secret passage built into a bookshelf. [143]

(Heck yes.)

But also technology, again, playing a part in throwing down obstacles; subverting...

Also:

— A superb ensemble of characters: Mat, Matcropolis; Mat and Ashley. Neel as patron; fully at home in ‘the nerdiest place in New York’ [159]. Edgar Deckle.

— Brotherhood, as a theme: Clay and Neel, lives linked from boyhood, the cohort of clerks, past & present: Clay, Oliver, Deckle ... Moffat.

‘.. we nod farewell like soldiers — like men who uniquely understand each other’s circumstances.’ [22]

— Googlers in the amphitheatre / the great uncoding.

— Clark Moffat: writer, clerk, scholar, code-maker; savant.

— Geritszoon. Historical (Manutius. Punchcutters.); Reimagined, ubiquitous, unlocking.

— Plot devices which just fit & solving obstacles: GrumbleGear 3000; Con-U’s curious storage; Tabitha Trudeau & Cal Knit. Hacking the Accession Table to track down artefacts.

— Clay’s commitment to, & eventual partnership with, Mr Penumbra. | Friendship: ‘the key to everything.’

. . . . .

A note on the character of Kat,

“It’s not good enough.” — “Don’t call that immorality.” [278]

I didn't love her... I understood the Cute factor, sure. The reason why Clay's really into her. But having come through the twists & turns of the plot alongside the others, to then abandon once the truth was explained & unpacked ... I didn't really get why our hero therefore needed her (nor wanted her, perhaps) back at all.

. . . . .

— This. 

Which made me laugh out loud. 

The build-up.

'If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well.' 

Punctured.

Heh. 

Clay; hero.

You seem resourceful. That’s something I haven’t heard before. I think about the word. Resourceful: full of resources. .. But maybe Deckle is right. Everything I’ve done so far, I’ve done by calling in favors. I do know people with special skills and I know how to put their skills together. And come to think of it, I have just the resource for this. [242]

 

Sloan, Robin. Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore. Atlantic Books: London, 2012

(Loveliness: https://readingmapofpenumbras24hourbookstore.wordpress.com/)

Spring Stack || Books About Books

May — June  
Dear Fahrenheit 451 | Annie Spence

Another, possibly now the last, of the books first spotted in Ripon. I came recently to have a look for a second-hand copy & then thought to check the library first. It makes good sense to be reading a book about library reads having borrowed it from a library after all.

   I'd spent a few sleepless mornings back in the pages of my beloved 'Time Traveler's Wife, having read an article on the new HBO series.

  (NB: Not that I'll be going there with the tv series, having not ventured there when the film was released either. I want my Henry and my Claire to stay uninterpreted & unblemished, without any visuals when it comes to encountering them, time after time.)

From the stacks at the Newberry direct to these - and right back again with 'Finchy' & TTTW both featuring in Spence's top reads.

 

 

 Big Stone Gap Series - 

She was crouched on a stool next to your shelf. She had obviously been browsing and been so taken with you she couldn't stop reading. I knew because she had The Look on her face: the Look people get when their brains are so engrossed that they don't care ... Because they're not out in public anymore, they're in whatever world they're reading about. It's beautiful. [30-31]

Killing - 

We can't open ourselves up to that kind of chaos in the stacks. Next thing you know we're alphabetizing the entire collection by title ... [45]   

(God bless Dewey Decimal.)

Easy Rawlins - 

God, I love wandering down dicey alleys with you, roughing up people if they need it, experiencing two decades of Los Angeles, the '40s through the '60s.. Cruising down the strip when I should be in bed with nothing but my favorite PI, Easy & the desert air on my face. But seriously, I should be in bed. I have to be up by six tomorrow. [46]

Future Book Collection -

For now, you'll have to exist in my mind alone. But I've got you all figured out: a room big enough for all of you to fit but small enough to feel cozy & hidden from the rest of the world. Leather couches that are also comfortable, piled with ratty homemade blankets   [...]    A locked door will lead into the room. This will be essential. There will be a doorbell; however, entry is denied unless visitor-candidates answer a series of question posed  [...]  

Once the riffraff is sorted through, serious visitors will only be allowed inside if they agree to speak only about books   [...]   I'll also have a Reading Room Wardrobe, full of clothing Anjelica Houston would wear, which is to say something dramatic & stylish that says "I'm not fucking around." Drapey shit. Lots of otherwise beautiful pieces marred with cigarette burns. Sinister hats. That kind of thing.

But, I mean, obviously, it'll all be about you - the books. You'll all be wrapped in thick pastel marbleized paper, with your titles and authors embossed in gold lettering on the spine. ...  You'll be placed on shelves and in artfully haphazard piles around the room.  [168-9]

.  .  .  .  .

Dear Fahrenheit 451

I'm really glad we met. Reading you has helped kick off my holiday in a most relaxing manner, even reading you in the bath. (I'm so glad you've got that reassuringly waterproof cover.)  I'm enjoying meeting the different books mentioned in you & I'm glad to see we've got a few favourites in common. 

You're certainly making me laugh out loud (Fancy Bookshelf drunken antics!) as well as appreciating having a library service more than ever. It's pretty sweet that because of you I got to visit the one in Didsbury for the first time. 

Thanks for keeping me company over this last week or two. I'd definitely file you in the Fuck It, I'm Just Going To Read Instead of Do What I Need To Do Today section.

Best wishes, 

NW

PS: About that question you posed of keeping notes "& now you have a gabazillion books on your list?" [240]   Aye...  Thanks for that: my MCC Saved List is now even longer & where that stops short, my eBay watch list picks up the slack. That's another couple of months sorted then.   

Spence, Annie. Dear Fahrenheit 451. Icon Books: London, 2019.

____________

April — May

Virginia Woolf at Home | Hilary Macaskill

Another gem spotted in Ripon...  If I hold a sheepish, as opposed to a properly a Woolfish, hand up from having watched The Hours a time or two too many, I must admit I hadn't realised how much Virginia had moved around or changed homes beyond the slightly seismic shift from London to Richmond.

 I enjoyed the insight it gave; learning how much stock was set by regular reading as much as time spent writing; marrying up which books were written in which particular eras & respective house & home of the time.

Tactics around the writing of Flush: 

-- 'she continued to work on it as light relief from the early emergence of her next book, already brewing, already agonising' [135]

&,

-- The Years.. took four years. At her best, she was simply frustrated & longed to be rid of it, to get onto her next project... [135]

... I've certainly been there: desiring to swap to something a little friendlier & a less little foreboding, ready for a change & a chance to Move On.

- Knole again, mentioned - 'the extraordinary mansion that held such sway over Vita', with a glorious double-page illustration that helped me appreciate its magnificent self.

- My laugh out loud moment of houses for sale (inflation overlooked but): 

-- 'And it was cheap, just £300 for the freehold' 

-- 'they made the successful bid, obtaining it for just £700 ... 

on 16 July, they sold the Round House - .. a profit of £20.'

Ach. Ah well.  Interesting too to learn of Woolf's own interest in furnishings & textiles - supporting her sister & Duncan through the purchase or commission of artworks - as well as her bread baking.  :)  Plus Leonard's thoughts - linking in with house as character - the inherited history of a place & what would be their eventual final home together at Monk's House, with books piled high & overflowing from room to room.

Macaskill, Hilary. Virginia Woolf at Home. Pimpernel Press Ltd, 2019.

____________

March — April

Novel Houses: Twenty Famous Fictional Dwellings | Christina Hardyment

There's been a lot of houses with character recently. My reading of this happened to coincide with both a staged version of The House With Chicken Legs & a first viewing of Encanto.

I found the provided Context helpful in Hardyment's desire 

To prompt memories and tempt new readers, I sketch plots, always emphasizing settings. I also explore the lives of the authors in order to establish why they were inspired to create such dwellings.

I enjoyed re-visiting familiar houses & homes I'd known from fiction:  
Castle of Otranto / 221B Baker Street / Knole, Orlando / The Sorceror's Tower - I Capture The Castle / Uncle Tom's Cabin / Manderley, Rebecca / Cold Comfort Farm / Howards End / Wuthering Heights  

Kinship too due to Hardyment's understanding as to 'literary geography' linked to the delight I'd had a young reader. Seeing the village maps of Fern Hollow or Milly Molly Mandy as well as domestic interiors displayed in each book of The Secret Book of the Gnomes series. 

Stacks, Shelves | Howards End Is On The Landing

It seems somehow winningly appropriate that a day after my completing 
Howards End Is On The Landing, the excellent Brian Bilston then posted this: 

'Today’s poem is called ‘Tsondoku’ after the Japanese word for 

allowing books to pile up in your house without reading them.'

_____________________________

I'd clocked this title in 2017 whilst searching the library database for a copy of Howards End. Something in the lyrical nature of this title appealed to me so it went onto my saved list for a time. 

  I’ve known of Susan Hill, the novelist since reading The Woman In Black in Year 9, I think. I wasn’t much taken by it at the time but perhaps that was more to do with the nature of enforced group study than anything else. I know I'd now love to see its acclaimed staged version sometime if it ever tours this way again. 

  Reading around the book before starting it myself, I found some of its past readers were a bit sniffy about the number of names Hill mentions. But I didn't really interpret that as a vainglorious name-dropping exercise of hers. If anything, it felt as much to do with the respect and awe she had as a young student, & later as a novelist, to be encountering any one of those Greats whom she so admired in the flesh & off, away from their written pages. Fair play to her, I reckon.

  I enjoyed how she broke her book up into themed sections, the titles of which I could certainly identify from my own bookshelves & reading habits.

Things That Fall Out Of Books | Writing In Books | 

A Book By Its Cover |  Never Got Round To It |  

The Dregs:

Non-books do, though. Small hardbacked books bought in the run-up to Christmas or Valentine's or Mother's Day are non-books.   [...]   Non-books breed, too. Books about Everything Being Rubbish breed others the same or, contrariwise, books about Everything Being Wonderful...  they come in handy for Boxing Day, when people lie idly... After Christmas, their place is the charity shop but, as such books are often rather small in stature, they manage to hide themselves in the cracks between normal books and so go unnoticed...  [135]  

I appreciated her insights and asides about the nature of reading.

And here, at last, I find what I am looking for - a book to read.

If ever I am in this restless and unsettled book-reading state, I know

what will always satisfy me, always interest me, always welcome me into

the depths of its being. [80]

Fast reading will not get us cadence and complexities of style and language... It will not allow the book to burrow down into our memory and become part of ourselves, the accumulation of knowledge and wisdom and vicarious experience which helps form us as complete human beings.  [172]  

and of revisiting,  

none of these fade over time, meeting them again is always a pleasure  [108]

____ 

Memory is like a long, dark street, illuminated at intervals in a light so bright that it shows up every detail. Then one plunges into the dark stretch again. [106] 

A whole chapter on Woolf which brought me joy,  

[On A Writer's Diary]  I was enthralled by this extraordinary woman & her work & I have been ever since. She was unique, a genius, a rare & strange artist as well as an ordinary, thinking, feeling human being  [...]   all of it was revelatory to me as a beginner. It still is. [128]

On the whole, I prefer to keep a writer out of their work. [...]  But with Virginia Woolf, it is different. I am drawn to her, though I think it probable that we would have found nothing to say to one another.  [129]

whilst extending my 'To Read' list further still by her various recommendations. 

I think I'm ready for some fiction now, following several non-fiction reads, but I'm still glad I took the time to read this one. And that I bought the one with the prettiest cover too. 

Time to pass it along to another book-loving friend who'll appreciate it.

Hill, Susan. Howards End Is On The Landing. Profile Books: London, 2010.

Lovely Didsbury Library.

 
What a gem.

Spring Stack || DLW.

It took a while for this book to take hold & it seems now, in retrospect, I'm not alone in this. That said, I came to absolutely love it & - yes - I'd been in tears more than once by the end.

I had come across an advertisement for the novel, was struck by its name - read a brief synopsis & looked it up at the library. A popular choice; I had to wait for my reservation to take hold.

.  .  .  .

'PART ONE: Batten - Distrustful'
The jump from Esme's schooldays back to the grounds of the Scriptorium jarred & I wasn't sure why Williams was glossing over that part of events.  We'd been with Esme each step prior so it seemed odd to have that era of her life so closed off.  I suppose, for Williams as much as us readers, the drama was centred around the Scriptorium & in this respect, Scotland was now a closed book. 

But as Esme's involvement in being hands-on in the Scriptorium developed so too grew a rich array of new characters around her & with them, greater plot development.
Tilda and Bill and the stage for starters: 

   ‘I have ten minutes’, I said. ‘I wanted to see them in their costumes.'
   It was a dress rehearsal. Opening night was just three days away.
   ‘Why do you come every day?’ asked Bill.
   I had to think. ‘It’s about seeing something before it’s fully formed.

Watching it evolve. I imagine sitting here on opening night and
appreciating every scene all the more because I understand what has
led to it.’
   Bill laughed.
   ‘What’s so funny?’
   ‘Nothing. It’s just that you don’t speak often, but when you do it’s perfect.’
   I looked down and rubbed my hands together.
   ‘And I love that you never talk about hats’, Bill said.  [149]

.  .  .  .

‘But I’m not going to get married. 'Well, not right away.' 'If I get married, I can’t be an assistant', I said. 'What makes you think that?' 'Because I’ll have to look after babies and cook all day.' Da was silenced. He looked Mr Sweatman for some support. 'If you’re not going to get married, then why not aim to become an editor?' Mr Sweatman asked. 'I’m a girl', I said, annoyed at his teasing. 'Should that matter?' I blushed and didn’t answer. Mr Sweatman cocked his head and raised his eyebrows as if to say, 'Well?' ‘Quite right, Fred’, said Da … [85]

.  .  .  .  

It was a surrender, but not to him. Like an alchemist, Bill had turned Mabel's vulgarities & Tilda's practicalities into something beautiful. I was grateful, but I was not in love. It was Tilda I missed the most; her absence that left a misboding sorrow. She had ideas I wanted to understand and she said things I could not. She cared more for what mattered and less for what didn’t. When I was with her I felt I might do something extraordinary. With her gone, I feared I never would. [175]

 .  .  .  .  

'I don’t love him, though. And I don’t want to be married.' She stiffened slightly, and I felt her take a breath. Then she pulled a chair close to mine and sat opposite, our hands clasped. 'Every woman wants to be married, Essymay.' 'If that’s true, then why is Ditte not married, or her sister? Why not Elsie or Rosfrith or Eleanor Bradley? Why not you?' 'Not all women get the chance. And some… well, some have so many books and too many ideas and they can’t settle to it.' 'I don’t think I could settle to it, Lizzie.' 'You'd get used to it.' 'But I don’t want to get used to it.' 'What do you want?' 'I want things to stay as they are. I want to keep sorting words and understand what they mean. I want to get better at it and to be given more responsibility, and want to keep earning my own money. I feel as though I’ve only begun to understand who I am. Being a wife or a mother just doesn’t fit.' It all came out in a rush and ended in sobbing. [187-8]

 .  .  .  .  

The Old Ashmolean was as grand as the Scriptorium was humble. It was stone instead of tin, and the entrance was flanked by the busts of men who had achieved something – I don’t know what.

(This part made me laugh out loud. 

- Quite.) 

When I'd first seen them, I'd felt small and out of place, but after a while they encouraged me a defiant ambition, and I'd imagined walking into that place and taking my seat at the Editor’s desk. But if women could be barred from a public budget meeting, I had no right to that ambition.

I thought about Tilda, her hunger for the fight. And I thought about the women who had gone to gaol. Can I starve myself? I wondered. If I thought it would help me become an editor? [259]

 .  .  .  .  

Bondmaid. It came back to me then, and I realised the words most often used to define us are the words that described our function in relation to others. Even the most benign words – maiden, wife, mother – told the world whether we were virgins or not. What was the male equivalent of maiden? I could not think of it. What was the male equivalent of Mrs, of whore, of common scold? [266]

I did so want for Esme to become an editor. Not knowing the history of the OED, I held out hope a fair while. That said, perhaps the care & love which went into creating the dictionary (best engagement ring alternative ever) & the deliciousness of it joining the shelves with the other works...  That's not a bad shot. 

Other elements I loved: 

On names & naming 
(that very Winterson bend & bias of mine): 

- from being the man with the violet eyes to becoming Gareth: friend, suitor, husband
- the significance of the shift from being 'Mrs Lloyd' to Lizzie then adopting first name terms , in friendship, for each other
- Gareth's acknowledgment that Essymay, Lizzie's given nickname, is not his to use
- how Esme's daughter remains Her even after we learn her name

- Words & language:
Bertie at the Radcliffe; Esperanto returned, with purpose.

- Characters & Class:
Female friendship ~ Lizzie, Ditte, Beth.
Meeting Mabel in the Covered Market.

- Historical landscape:
how Williams locates her narrative within the greater evolving narrative of WW1.

_________

To Read:  Lynda Mugglestone - Lost for Words
                   Peter Gilliver - The Making of the OED

_________

I found the slips for bondmaid: that beautiful troubling word ...

But there was no sign of top-slip.. - it really had been lost. [407]

I know I'll definitely return to this read again in the future. The characters lived on inside of me for days after finishing.

Brilliant, beautiful, powerful book.

Williams, Pip. The Dictionary of Lost Words. Penguin Random House: UK, 2021