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

 January read — 

Becoming | Michelle Obama

A friend came 'round - back when we still sat on doorsteps & stoops, out in the open air, until it was too cold to remain outside any longer.
She brought with her a bag of books she'd read through her book club and was now clearing out a few. Luckily for me, this was one of them. 
  What an excellent, excellent read; authentic and honest, interesting and engaging. 
  I was certainly interested enough to want to read Michelle's story but I hadn't twigged, daft really, just how engaging it would be.
  From funny insights such as Barack's messy ways to the sheer drive, determination and warmth which has come to define this couple. Their journey shared as well as Michelle's own journey of becoming - from childhood to adulthood.