Fairy Tales

Another assorted mix of Folio Society books.  This blog has reminded me that I really have spent too much money on Folio books over the years!

There are a few fairy tales with beautiful illustrations.  Some of them are surprisingly violent considering you usually think of them as being for children.

The Dan Brown book is an illustrated version of the Davinci Code.  It is interesting to see illustrations of the paintings referred to in the story.  I know people look down on him a bit for being “popular” but he does write a gripping page turner.

I was very lucky with this Thomas Hardy Folio Society boxed set.  I picked it up in a second hand book store for a quarter of the “new” price but it looked as good as new.  As you will have guessed by now, I love Folio books! 

I love the way Thomas Hardy uses language.  My favourite is Tess of the D’Urbervilles.  Life treats her so unfairly and I can never read the ending without getting a lump in my throat as her sister and Angel walk away at the moment when she is being executed.  It is full of missed opportunities.  Angel saw her first before all her troubles began, when she was dancing in white in her village.  He missed that chance and then she is left to her fate.  When she meets Alec Hardy says “where was her guardian angel?”.  Angel eventually marries and then deserts her, returning home too late to save her a second time.

There are a few other assorted Folio books in this picture.  Travels of a Victorian Photographer is an interesting photographic record of England taken by Francis Frith.  All those people and places caught in time. 

Bestiary is an unusual book.  It depicts animals, both real and fictional, from the middle ages with descriptions from the time.  

History, historic fiction and biography

Bit of a mixture here.  History, historic fiction and biography. 

The Forest is a wonderful book.  This is a signed copy.  It tells the story of the New Forest in Hampshire through the lives of fictional families.  Each section takes the next part of history, starting with the start of the forest and ending in the present day.  I have read it several times and have re-visited parts of the forest in which the stories are set.  The characters didn’t actually exist, but you feel as if they may have done.

There are two biographies of Dickens (one rather old with an illegible spine) and one of Hilaire Belloc.  There is also Belloc’s The Four Men.  This is story of four friends who walk across Sussex.  You can tell how much he loved the county.

The history books include two by Chris Hare.  He is a local historian who knows everything about Worthing.  I have been to some of his talks and guided walks.  A very interesting man.

Wonderful weekends, birds and butterflies

The Wonderful Weekend Book by Elspeth Thompson is a treasure trove.  It is all about reclaiming your weekends and reminds you of all the wonderful things that you could be doing.  I liked the way she goes through the seasons, reminding you of the simple pleasures like making marmalade or picking elderflowers to make champagne.  A lot of things she talks about cost nothing: watching the stars, writing proper letters, having picnics.

Also on this shelf are books to help you enjoy the great outdoors.  Lovely as it is to see flowers, birds and butterflies, it is also satisfying to know what you are looking at.  The “easy way” guides are small enough to put in your pocket so you can take them with you on your walk.  The Reader’s Digest books are better but they are too big and heavy to carry around.

Art and Mountains

These are mainly art books but with a few extras thrown in.  I love the colour and detail of the Pre-Raphaelites.  You can see some good examples at the Ashmolean in Oxford as well as at the Tate in London. 

I took the Constable book on holiday once and travelled around finding the places he painted.  The weather was beautiful and the scenery was lovely.  It was a great idea for a themed holiday.

Gombrich’s book Art and Illusion is well worth reading.  It is full of fascinating insights about the history of art and really makes you think about the meaning of artistic representation. 

The National Gallery companion guide is a useful book to take with you on a trip to London.  You can view the paintings and read about them as you walk round the gallery.  I hardly ever go to London but always make a point of visiting the NG if I do.  It’s amazing to think that all that art belongs to all of us.  It is just there waiting for us to go and see it whenever we want to.

Sharing the same shelf as the art books are three books about the Lake District.  My favourite of these is Mountains in the Mind.  It is a blend of poetry, reminiscence, art and walks.  Just the thing to read by the fire on a winter evening.

Reference books

I love reference books and dictionaries.  I bought this edition of Roget’s Thesaurus when I was at school.  It still contains a bookmark from a school trip to an exhibition in London.  I won the large Collins dictionary in a cryptic crossword competition in the Daily Telegraph in the early 80’s.  My nephew bought me the 1996 film guide.  It contains listings for films going back the 1930’s and is fascinating.  I’m a great fan of old films.

Scarlett Thomas and Sally Vickers

My first Scarlett Thomas book “Popco” attracted my attention because of the interesting cover.  I read the first page in the shop and was hooked.  I don’t know if you ever get that rush when you realise that you have found a brilliant new author?   I read that first book three times and then rushed back to get “The End of Mr Y” the following week.  Popco makes you think a lot about advertising and commercialism and what it does to us.  Interestingly  enough, it also rekindled my interest in maths and code breaking!  The End of Mr Y is a stranger book, less grounded in reality.  Parts of it are bleak, but the ending makes you feel hopeful.  Her latest book, “Our Tragic Universe”, is not as good as Popco but I probably liked it better than The End of Mr Y.  It is not as bleak as Mr Y and the ending is far more satisfying.     

Sharing the shelf with Scarlett is Sally Vickers.  Her gentle books are undemanding but still keep your interest.  “Miss Garnet’s Angel” is the story of a retired school teacher discovering Venice.  She goes for a holiday and just never goes home.  I love the way she decides to stay and immerses herself in her new life.  “Mr Golightly’s Holiday” is a different kind of holiday.  The mysterious Mr G decides to take his holiday in an English village.  Whilst you read the book you start to realise who he really is, as well as learning about the lives of his neighbours.

Jasper Fforde

I am a huge fan of Jasper Fforde.  It started when he was being interviewed on Radio 4 just after he published The Eyre Affair.  The book sounded so intriguing that I went out and bought it the next day.  It was the first to star the literary detective Thursday Next. 

The Thursday Next books are set in an alternative version of the present day.  Almost the same but not.  The Crimean war has never finished, dodo’s and Neanderthals have been recreated using DNA kits.  Oh yes, and fictional characters turn out to be alive.  Fforde drops in lots of literary allusions, which can be fun to spot, and there is a lot of comedy.  I particularly like some of Thursday’s mad uncle’s inventions (translating carbon paper, etc).

Not all of his books feature Thursday.  There are also some set in a world where nursery rhyme characters intrude into real life.  These feature detective Jack Spratt with his assistant Mary Mary.

If you liked the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, if you like classic fiction, you will like Jasper Fforde.

Furry Logic

This is a funny little book which I bought in Melbourne.  It is full of beautifully painted pictures with a motto to go with each one.  The panda sums me up "Happy people are more likely to get what they want - which only makes them even more happy".

Poetry

Here are some of my poetry books.  My favourite poets are Wilfred Owen, Phillip Larkin, Emily Dickinson and Gerard Manly Hopkins.  


I had a bit of a shaky start with Philip Larkin when I had to study him for my A levels, but he has grown on me since.  I love his spring poem "The Trees":
The trees are coming into leaf 
Like something almost being said; 
The recent buds relax and spread, 
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again 
And we grow old? No, they die too, 
Their yearly trick of looking new 
Is written down in rings of grain. 

Yet still the unresting castles thresh 
In fullgrown thickness every May. 
Last year is dead, they seem to say, 
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

Wilfred Owen is, of course, an extremely well known war poet.  Who can forget his wonderful use of imagery in so many poems.  Soldiers mining war to find peace like miners searching for coal.  The machine gun pattering out hasty orisons.


Emily Dickinson spent her life hidden away from the world.  I am not sure if knowing about her life changed the way I view her poetry but, in any case, they are gems.  This is the first part of "Hope": 
Hope is the thing with feathers 
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words, 
And never stops at all,


Gerard Manly Hopkins is not talked about much these days but he wrote some beautiful poetry.  My favourite is "The Windhover" (the kestrel):


I caught this morning morning's minion, king-

  dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
  Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
  As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend the hurl and gliding
  Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird -- the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

John Buchan

And we are back to the Folio Society collection.

I was introduced to John Buchan by a teacher at school when I was ten.  We had to copy out a passage from "The Thirty Nine Steps" in our handwriting class.  It was so interesting that I decided to read the rest of the book.  I don't know why so many people have filmed that book but none of the others.  They are all solid adventure tales with firm jawed heroes and dastardly villains.

Alexander McCall Smith and Kate Atkinson

Who could resist Alexander McCall Smith?  Whilst I enjoy the Ladies' No 1 Detective Agency, I reserve my real soft spot for Bertie and co at 44 Scotland Street.  Nothing too astonishing every happens but you get caught up in the comings and goings of the local residents.  Bertie, with his strangely named class mates, never gets much older and his mother continues to be awful.  China may or may not have been misappropriated, Cyril (the dog with a gold tooth) is cleared of biting and real people (like Jack Rankin) sometimes stroll across the pages.

A book in a similar spirit is The Marriage Bureau for Rich People by Farahad Zama.  Anyone who likes McCall Smith will enjoy this gentle book about an Indian marriage bureau.

Kate Atkinson's books are very different from the gentle worlds of McCall Smith and Zama.  They are an unusual kind of detective fiction with different threads of stories being returned to in turn before coming together in the end.  

Tracy Chevalier

The first book I read by Tracy Chevalier was Girl With a Pearl Earring.  I loved it and was worried when I heard that they were making it into a film.  I needn't have been concerned because the finished film was perfect.  Every shot was like a Vermeer painting.  It remains my favourite of her books, with The Virgin Blue coming a close second.  That one interweaves the story of a girl from the 16th century with that of one of her descendants in the present day.

Jane Austin

Here is my Folio Society boxed set of Jane Austin.  You have probably guessed by now that I once had a seriously expensive Folio Society habit!  I cut myself off and now immediately bin any of their letters so that I'm not tempted to spend all my money on their beautiful books.

The Bronte's are worthy, moral tales but Austin is fun.  Her characters suffer set backs and heartache, but you know that all will be well in the end.  The Bennet girls will not be left destitute, Emma will marry her Mr Woodhouse and even the awful Mr Collins manages to marry a suitable girl.

Pride and Prejudice, in particular, has been used in several films and TV adaptations across the years.  One on my favourites was the Anglo/Bollywood film Bride and Prejudice.  The Bennets become an Indian family called Bakshi living in Amritsar.  Very funny with some good song & dance numbers.

P G Wodehouse

I love PGW and can happily read the books, listen to radio productions or watch it on the TV.  Stephen Fry played Jeeves to perfection.

There is something about this world of goofy young men, formidable aunts and the inimitable Jeeves that is very comforting.  The way he uses language is a joy and the stories still make me chuckle even though I've read them all several times.

Adventures with Rosalind and Norgy in Littleland

These are two books which are quite a bit older than I am.  They were in the family before me and I have fond memories of them being read to me as a child.

Adventures with Rosalind is the story of a little boy who breaks his leg and has to stay in bed.  He doesn't have a father so his mother has to go out to work and leave him at home on his own.  She buys him a book to read whilst she is away each day.  This turns out to be a magical book so he can dive in and share adventures with Rosalind.

Norgy in Littleland is also about a little boy.  He finds himself magically made tiny enough to live in a model village.  His toy dog becomes alive and the two of them have adventures.

Gilbert & Sullivan

The complete lyrics to of all the Gilbert & Sullivan operas.  I wish I could think of rhymes as clever as good old Gilbert!  I was brought up on the Savoy operas and have seen most of them, both by professionals in London and by the local am/drams.

Enchanted April is an enchanting book.  It was captured beautifully in a film a few years ago and tells the story of two brow beaten ladies who are transported from dreary, wet London to the Italian sunshine.