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todayiamadaisy) wrote2016-04-30 01:05 pm
todayiamadaisy) wrote2016-04-30 01:05 pm
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Saved by an Angel
Last night I went to see a performance of Wuthering Heights as a play. The actor playing Edgar Linton had the worst haircut in the world. The. Worst. I can't find a photo of it online, so you'll just have to take my word for it.
April books read
As per my New Year's resolution, I have now read ten books that I already own. And although I went on buy and read a new one immediately after, I then went back to reading ones already on my shelf. I am feeling so smugly self-righteous right now, let me tell you.
* Daphne - Justine Picardie (2008) ★ ★ ★
Someone on my f-list once mentioned this, and it sounded interesting enough for me to seek out and put on my bookshelf for years. Daphne is Daphne du Maurier, and this is a fictionalised account of a few years of her life in the late 1950s. It's told in three alternating viewpoints. The first is Daphne herself. She is in her 50s; her husband is having an affair and a breakdown; Daphne decides to write a serious biography of Branwell Brontë. Second is JA Symington, the Branwell Brontë expert she contacts to do her research; he's an older man, thrilled that someone as famous as Daphne is taking an interest in Branwell, but also possessive of his (ill-gotten) manuscripts. If the book only had these sections, I'd have considered giving it four stars. (Maybe three-and-a-half. The exposition was a bit clunky.)
However, there's a third section, which is set in the present day, about a nameless, gormless PhD student married to a much older man, who constantly feels herself pale in comparison to his ex-wife. She is researching the correspondence between Daphne and Symington, but she never uncovers anything to add to what they tell us themselves in their sections. She eventually gets lost and emotional while visiting Daphne's house in Cornwall; the next Daphne chapter suggests that Daphne sees her back in 1959, as a sort of ghost. She feels like she should be in a different book.
As well as references to Daphne's work and the Brontë oeuvre, there's also a lot of stuff about JM Barrie and Peter Pan (because Daphne was the cousin of the Llewellyn Davis boys who inspired him, and they are also characters here) and the Snow Queen. Oh, and Henry James. So it's all over the place and two-thirds enjoyable.
* Foxglove Summer - Ben Aaronovitch (2014) ★ ★ ★ ★
This is the book I went out and bought as soon as I was freed from my self-imposed reading list. It's the fifth book in the Rivers of London/supernatural policemen series, and I thought I should read it while the previous one was fresh in my mind.
I thought this was the best of the series after the first one. Perhaps because the story gets out of London right at the start, and stays there, so everyone is permanently out of routine. While the continuing arc of the series bubbles along in the background, this is a standalone story. On the downside, there's not nearly enough Inspector Nightingale, whom I find much more interesting than his apprentice. Also, the pop culture references are beginning to get a little heavy-handed. Still, if you have a burning desire to read one of these books without starting at the start, this is the book for you!
* The Good Mayor - Andrew Nicholl (2008) (abandoned)
This book is aggressively whimsical. It is narrated by the ghost and/or statue of a bearded nun. It is set in a Baltic town called Dot, with a nearby town called Dash and a river called the Ampersand. It is about a good mayor, who is in love with his married secretary, who turns into a talking dog. And they may have rowed away and lived happily ever after. I don't know. I read for what felt like AGES, then realised I was only up to page 43 of 465. Then I read the last couple of pages to see what happened, and that's where I came across the talking dog and the rowing. Then I gave up.
Included in the 43 pages I read was a scene in which the married secretary attempts to revive her failing marriage by putting on some lacy lingerie and seducing her husband by saying the least seductive sentence I've ever encountered: "But I don't blame you [for looking at her lingerie]. It's such pretty stuff and quite good value when you think about it. The lady in the shop told me that fairies make it from bits of cotton they steal from aspirin bottles on the night of the full moon so that must make it very precious..."
The fairies. Make lingerie. Out of cotton from aspirin bottles. Whatever floats your boat.
* The Chalet School Reunion - EM Brent-Dyer (1963) ★ ★ ★ ★
I had a lot (most?) of the Chalet School books as a youngster. Not this one. I don't know if it was even included in the 1980s paperbacks. I don't have them any more, but when I came across this one last year, I snapped it up. If you've not read a Chalet School book before, this is not the place to start. This comes towards the end of the series and only involves the school tangentially.
If you have read the series, this does what it says on the tin: as a special treat for book #50, it's a reunion of the original students from the school's Austrian years, now middle-aged women visiting the school in Switzerland. The lead in this book is Grizel, always one my favourites for being believably spiky in a world of goody-two-shoes. (And, I mean, her name is Grizel. You'd be miserable too.) Happily, this book gives her a happy ending. Unhappily, that happy ending is the patent Chalet School happy ending of marrying a doctor and living next to her old school for the rest of her life. The Chalet School is very much like the Hotel California in some ways. Also: despite the fact she is now twenty and no longer at school, but not nearly old enough to be one of the original students, Mary-Lou is still in it, bearing up bravely in tragic circumstances. Truly, she is an Inspiration To Us All.
When Joey explains who's who in the Bettany/Russell/Maynard family tree, this book is like those lengthy bits of the Bible wherein Arpachshad begat Shelah and Shelah begat Eber. When her triplets show the reunion participants around, it's like a Swiss tourism promotion for wood carvings, cheese soup and mountains people could fall off. It also contains: improbably large families, phonetically rendered bad American accents, random German words, reminiscing about some "hilarious" japes from previous stories, long hospital stays and massive coincidences. And, of course, more than one instance of people nearly or actually falling off mountains. So if you like any of those things and you've read the previous 49 books in the series, this is the book for you!
(I gave this four stars because it was a fun read for an old Chalet fan who hadn't read one in a while. On its own merits or for anyone who hasn't read the other books, it's probably only one star, if that.)
* Adventures in Stationery: A Journey Through Your Pencil Case - James Ward (2014) ★ ★ ★ ★
This was also fun. This is a book for stationery nerds written by a stationery nerd, giving a potted history of various things you've got on your desk. It reveals that John Steinbeck was also a stationery nerd, to the extent that he wrote lengthy letters to his friends about his favourite type of pencil and the wonders of his electric pencil sharpener. This endears him to me.
It is also satisfyingly gory, with details of an unfortunate woman who ate a pork pie and vomited blood for three days before finally "passing a drawing pin". Ouch. Also, back in the day, there were no erasers to rub out pen lines; you had to use a special razor to shave the pen mark off the page; one poor man was grabbed by a gang of co-workers wanting to kiss him for his birthday, only to press the pen-erasing razor in his breast pocket into his chest and stab him to death. So, you know, sexual harassment in the workplace is never okay.
This book has everything: vicious pencil-making rivalry, eraser patent theft, the genuinely shocking fact that the Bostik factory in Leicester produces one hundred tonnes of Blu-Tack every week. Who is using that much Blu-Tack? I've had half a packet in a drawer for years. I most enjoyed the centuries-long rivalry between German pencil-makers Friedrich Staedtler and Kaspar Faber. I could have read a whole book on that. I would watch a film about it.
As a journey, this is a jaunt, not a major expedition. I'd have liked more, but even as it was, it was a delight.
April books read
As per my New Year's resolution, I have now read ten books that I already own. And although I went on buy and read a new one immediately after, I then went back to reading ones already on my shelf. I am feeling so smugly self-righteous right now, let me tell you.
* Daphne - Justine Picardie (2008) ★ ★ ★
Someone on my f-list once mentioned this, and it sounded interesting enough for me to seek out and put on my bookshelf for years. Daphne is Daphne du Maurier, and this is a fictionalised account of a few years of her life in the late 1950s. It's told in three alternating viewpoints. The first is Daphne herself. She is in her 50s; her husband is having an affair and a breakdown; Daphne decides to write a serious biography of Branwell Brontë. Second is JA Symington, the Branwell Brontë expert she contacts to do her research; he's an older man, thrilled that someone as famous as Daphne is taking an interest in Branwell, but also possessive of his (ill-gotten) manuscripts. If the book only had these sections, I'd have considered giving it four stars. (Maybe three-and-a-half. The exposition was a bit clunky.)
However, there's a third section, which is set in the present day, about a nameless, gormless PhD student married to a much older man, who constantly feels herself pale in comparison to his ex-wife. She is researching the correspondence between Daphne and Symington, but she never uncovers anything to add to what they tell us themselves in their sections. She eventually gets lost and emotional while visiting Daphne's house in Cornwall; the next Daphne chapter suggests that Daphne sees her back in 1959, as a sort of ghost. She feels like she should be in a different book.
As well as references to Daphne's work and the Brontë oeuvre, there's also a lot of stuff about JM Barrie and Peter Pan (because Daphne was the cousin of the Llewellyn Davis boys who inspired him, and they are also characters here) and the Snow Queen. Oh, and Henry James. So it's all over the place and two-thirds enjoyable.
* Foxglove Summer - Ben Aaronovitch (2014) ★ ★ ★ ★
This is the book I went out and bought as soon as I was freed from my self-imposed reading list. It's the fifth book in the Rivers of London/supernatural policemen series, and I thought I should read it while the previous one was fresh in my mind.
I thought this was the best of the series after the first one. Perhaps because the story gets out of London right at the start, and stays there, so everyone is permanently out of routine. While the continuing arc of the series bubbles along in the background, this is a standalone story. On the downside, there's not nearly enough Inspector Nightingale, whom I find much more interesting than his apprentice. Also, the pop culture references are beginning to get a little heavy-handed. Still, if you have a burning desire to read one of these books without starting at the start, this is the book for you!
* The Good Mayor - Andrew Nicholl (2008) (abandoned)
This book is aggressively whimsical. It is narrated by the ghost and/or statue of a bearded nun. It is set in a Baltic town called Dot, with a nearby town called Dash and a river called the Ampersand. It is about a good mayor, who is in love with his married secretary, who turns into a talking dog. And they may have rowed away and lived happily ever after. I don't know. I read for what felt like AGES, then realised I was only up to page 43 of 465. Then I read the last couple of pages to see what happened, and that's where I came across the talking dog and the rowing. Then I gave up.
Included in the 43 pages I read was a scene in which the married secretary attempts to revive her failing marriage by putting on some lacy lingerie and seducing her husband by saying the least seductive sentence I've ever encountered: "But I don't blame you [for looking at her lingerie]. It's such pretty stuff and quite good value when you think about it. The lady in the shop told me that fairies make it from bits of cotton they steal from aspirin bottles on the night of the full moon so that must make it very precious..."
The fairies. Make lingerie. Out of cotton from aspirin bottles. Whatever floats your boat.
* The Chalet School Reunion - EM Brent-Dyer (1963) ★ ★ ★ ★
I had a lot (most?) of the Chalet School books as a youngster. Not this one. I don't know if it was even included in the 1980s paperbacks. I don't have them any more, but when I came across this one last year, I snapped it up. If you've not read a Chalet School book before, this is not the place to start. This comes towards the end of the series and only involves the school tangentially.
If you have read the series, this does what it says on the tin: as a special treat for book #50, it's a reunion of the original students from the school's Austrian years, now middle-aged women visiting the school in Switzerland. The lead in this book is Grizel, always one my favourites for being believably spiky in a world of goody-two-shoes. (And, I mean, her name is Grizel. You'd be miserable too.) Happily, this book gives her a happy ending. Unhappily, that happy ending is the patent Chalet School happy ending of marrying a doctor and living next to her old school for the rest of her life. The Chalet School is very much like the Hotel California in some ways. Also: despite the fact she is now twenty and no longer at school, but not nearly old enough to be one of the original students, Mary-Lou is still in it, bearing up bravely in tragic circumstances. Truly, she is an Inspiration To Us All.
When Joey explains who's who in the Bettany/Russell/Maynard family tree, this book is like those lengthy bits of the Bible wherein Arpachshad begat Shelah and Shelah begat Eber. When her triplets show the reunion participants around, it's like a Swiss tourism promotion for wood carvings, cheese soup and mountains people could fall off. It also contains: improbably large families, phonetically rendered bad American accents, random German words, reminiscing about some "hilarious" japes from previous stories, long hospital stays and massive coincidences. And, of course, more than one instance of people nearly or actually falling off mountains. So if you like any of those things and you've read the previous 49 books in the series, this is the book for you!
(I gave this four stars because it was a fun read for an old Chalet fan who hadn't read one in a while. On its own merits or for anyone who hasn't read the other books, it's probably only one star, if that.)
* Adventures in Stationery: A Journey Through Your Pencil Case - James Ward (2014) ★ ★ ★ ★
This was also fun. This is a book for stationery nerds written by a stationery nerd, giving a potted history of various things you've got on your desk. It reveals that John Steinbeck was also a stationery nerd, to the extent that he wrote lengthy letters to his friends about his favourite type of pencil and the wonders of his electric pencil sharpener. This endears him to me.
It is also satisfyingly gory, with details of an unfortunate woman who ate a pork pie and vomited blood for three days before finally "passing a drawing pin". Ouch. Also, back in the day, there were no erasers to rub out pen lines; you had to use a special razor to shave the pen mark off the page; one poor man was grabbed by a gang of co-workers wanting to kiss him for his birthday, only to press the pen-erasing razor in his breast pocket into his chest and stab him to death. So, you know, sexual harassment in the workplace is never okay.
This book has everything: vicious pencil-making rivalry, eraser patent theft, the genuinely shocking fact that the Bostik factory in Leicester produces one hundred tonnes of Blu-Tack every week. Who is using that much Blu-Tack? I've had half a packet in a drawer for years. I most enjoyed the centuries-long rivalry between German pencil-makers Friedrich Staedtler and Kaspar Faber. I could have read a whole book on that. I would watch a film about it.
As a journey, this is a jaunt, not a major expedition. I'd have liked more, but even as it was, it was a delight.