Book 6: F is for Five

Anna of the Five Towns by Arnold Bennett

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The suggested theme for 52 Books in 52 Weeks for this week is Dickens. I am almost there as Arnold Bennett is an author who has been compared to Dickens. I remember reading and enjoying Clayhanger maybe 30 years ago but haven't read anything by Arnold Bennett since until I picked up this free eBook. I had forgotten just how good a writer Bennett was. Like Dickens he was a journalist who also wrote fiction. Like Dickens his work has a very strong and acutely observed sense of place - Victorian London for Dickens, the early 20th century Potteries for Bennett (the Potteries is an area in Staffordshire which was traditionally the centre of - duh! -English pottery making). Bennett's fictional Five Towns based on "Bursley" are in reality Six Towns centred on Burslem.  Like Dickens, Bennett is a master of language. What in a lesser author could be dense and turgid text in Bennett's hands becomes finely crafted description. In some ways very little happens in Anna of the Five Towns, a coming of age story in which the heroine Anna begins to break away from her miserly father and experiences the first stirrings of romance, but I found I couldn't put it down. My one disappointment was in the ending. It seemed to stop very suddenly without any of the subtlety that is characteristic of the rest of the book. Maybe it was because this is one of Bennett's early works.

As a flavour of his style, here is the first sentence:

The yard was all silent and empty under the burning afternoon heat, which had made its asphalt springy like turf, when suddenly the children threw themselves out of the great doors at either end of the Sunday-School - boys from the right, girls from the left - in two howling, impetuous streams, that widened, eddied, intermingled and formed backwaters until the whole quadrangle was full of clamour and movement."

I have a sense that Arnold Bennett's works have fallen out of fashion among the classics. It's a shame as they deserve to be more widely read.

Snow!

After a bitterly cold week we finally got our first (and only?) real snow of the winter, with three inches or so falling overnight. Rose and Marie built a snow-girl. As Rose pointed out, "you should know it is a snow-girl because it has plaits".

Book 5: E is for Eat

Eat Well Spend Less by Sarah Flower

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I don't have much to say about this one. I got serious about eating more healthily last year and thought this book might give my improved diet an extra boost and some new recipes. It was OK, but didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. There were a few useful and reasonably economical recipes I will probably try.

ETA: Coincidentally the topic for week 5 of 52 Books in 52 Weeks is Literary Cookbooks. I love the idea of The Jane Austen Cookbook. 

Book 4: D is for Darkly

A Darkly Hidden Truth by Fletcher Donna

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


The series title "Monastery Murders" and the promise of dashes of medieval history and iconography intrigued me, although I am not generally a murder mystery enthusiast - I enjoy them occasionally, but it is not a genre I read often. The bargain price in Amazon's post-Christmas Kindle sale made me decide this book was worth a try. It turned out to be an easy and reasonably entertaining read, but I'm afraid I found the heroine Felicity rather irritating and the plot required me to suspend disbelief too far and too frequently. I was also bugged by both major and minor inaccuracies - a female ordinand in an Anglo-Catholic Anglican seminary? Sounds odd given that opposition to women priests is a defining characteristic of most Anglo-Catholics. American Felicity lectured by a policeman fo failing to carry her passport and visa while in the UK? Um, no, there is no requirement for anyone in the UK to carry any sort of ID. This is the second book in a series and not knowing what came before made it harder both to get into the book and to identify with the characters (how did the previously non-religious Felicity end up at theological college, I wonder?). There were aapects I enjoyed - the ways she brought in the anchoress Julian of Norwich and eccentric medieval pilgrim Margery Kempe, for example - but I didn't enjoy the book enough to want to go back and read the first one.

Next time I want a monastery murder with a medieval flavour I think I'll stick to Ellis Peters' Cadfael books.

For more reviews visit 52 books in 52 weeks.

The Iron Lady

Tevye and I decided that this year we would try to go to the cinema once a month - really, we should take more advantage of our on-hand babysitters! Our first trip was to see The Iron Lady, with Meryl Streep playing Margaret Thatcher. We had seen mixed reviews. Some (most?) writers felt that the movie dwelt far too much on Maggie's old age and waning faculties; others praised it and felt it was well done.

We both came away with the same opinion, which was that it wasn't the movie we would have liked to see. We were in the "too much old age" camp and felt the movie put too much emphasis on an aspect of her life that ultimately isn't that significant in terms of the whole. While it did tell the story of her life and political career it did so in short flashbacks that never did more than skim the surface of a complex and interesting story. We both wanted more about her life and politics and less of the fictional (or loosely factual) "human interest". Our feeling was that the movie avoided any political subtlety and focused on Maggie the person in order to appeal to the American market. From the British perspective it completely glossed over the strong feelings, both for and against, that the Margaret Thatcher years still evoke.

Having said that, we were glad we saw The Iron Lady. While we would have liked it to take a different angle, Meryl Streep's acting was superb and carried the movie beyond what we felt were its weaknesses. Jim Broadbent as Dennis Thatcher was also excellent.

My Life in Facebook Updates

Haven't posted one of these for a while (apologies to those of you who have already read these on Facebook):


Why is my life like a series of scenes from Outnumbered? The latest one involved the car, toast, crumbs and the frustrations of a 5 year old who can't grasp the concept of lending money.

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Oops! Slight fail. Took Rose to school for the second time since September. Have maintained my 100% record of getting her there late ... Me: "Are you ever late when Daddy takes you?" Her (shocked): "No! Never!!!"

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Just found a Christmas tree bauble in the back garden. Why????

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Just started watching a period drama about a midwife in the East End of London, then realised it was set in the year that Tevye was born, also in the East End. Suddenly "period drama" doesn't seem quite the right description!

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Why do all three of my daughters have to hold conversations with me simultaneously on entirely unrelated subjects. This morning one wanted to know if I had any spare plastic folders, another was trying to work out what clothes she wanted to take to a sleepover, and the third was explaining the difference between digraphs and split digraphs (that was the five year old - she takes her phonics lessons very seriously). *Head explodes*

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And in sequence, the tale of Rose the rabbit-lion-rabbit:

Rose came home from ballet yesterday bursting with excitement about being a toy rabbit in her dance show. She has written down instructions to remind her what she has to do and pinned them up ready to practice before school ... "All the time. Bend down and jump." Not that tricky to remember for a rabbit!

Oh dear. Dance show disappointment. After a week of excitement about being a rabbit, Rose is now a lion. She is decidedly not impressed! Apparently lions do not get to jump.

Update on the Rose dance show casting saga. Sympathetic ballet teacher has reinstated her as a rabbit. Not only that, but she got to try on her costume last night and she is a PINK rabbit. A very happy pink rabbit.

And for those who asked on FB - I will try to provide video, but the show isn't until the end of March / beginning of April so expect a long wait!

Book 3: C is for Cake and Crag

The Tale of Oat Cake Crag by Susan Wittig Albert

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have been chugging gently through this series for a few years now - I see I read the first one back in February 2006 (reviewed here) and the rest at intervals since, getting through both the last two on train journeys up to Scotland. They are light, gentle reads that don't need too much concentration when there is lots of switching trains and hanging around in station cafes in between. The Tale of Oat Cake Crag is the seventh in the series and is essentially more of the same. Real biographical facts about Beatrix Potter's life mixed in with local colour, mostly likeable imaginary characters and anthropomorphic animals. The series has now reached the stage where Beatrix's marriage to solicitor Will Heelis is approaching but is still opposed by her parents. This book also brings in a real life hydroplane being tested on Lake Windermere and a rather less realistic visiting dragon. Occasionally the narrator's voice is irritating, but overall I like the style and the characters enough to be looking forward to the next (last?) book in the series when it becomes available on Kindle at a reasonable price. If you like Beatrix Potter's books and are interested in Beatrix herself in particular and the Lake District in general then this series is fun to read. If you hate anthropomorphic animals or anything a bit twee, avoid!

How appropriate! I just realised my header photo is one I took up in the Lake District a couple of years ago

Next up A Darkly Hidden Truth by Donna Fletcher, described as "a gripping modern mystery enriched by liturgy, iconography, and medieval history". I'm intrigued to see whether it lives up to the description.

Day Zero Project: Catching Up

I started the Day Zero Project back in October 2010 and after six months of enthusiasm mostly forgot about it. In a fit of New Year-ish-ness I decided to see what else I had checked off since I last posted about the project last April and what I would particularly like to do this year.

So, successes over the last few months:

• 11. Fit comfortably into a pair of size 14 jeans. Yay! I am now the proud owner of three pairs of size 14 jeans which I had to buy as every single pair of jeans (and other trousers) I owned had got to large. Pride forces me to add that a UK size 14 is a US size 12!
• 18. Buy a zoo membership and use it at least 4 times a year. Teyve and I took Rose to zoo at the beginning of the month, which I am sure is at least the fourth time we used our zoo passes, and possibly the fifth.
• 30. Swim in the sea - Spain in August.
• 31. Make a sand castle - ditto. 
• 36. Knit myself a sweater - it wasn't the greatest sweater ever, but I finished on in October.
• 54. Watch the entire series of Upstairs, Downstairs. I think we got to the end of Series 5 in July.

Hmm. Not that many, but it makes a total of 33 out of my original 101 ideas so far. I have also made progress on a number of others. I never imagined there was any chance of doing them all, but it is a fun way of recording ideas for things I would like to do and to at least occasionally encourage me out of my comfort zone.

This year I would like to achieve some of my fitness, reading and decluttering goals. Tevye and I are planning to try to go to the cinema once a month this year, I'm aiming to knit twelve pairs of socks (you can never knit too many socks, and I only made it to seven last year) and I am truly optimistic that I can reach my goal of losing 20 pounds, as I think I have already lost about 12 to 15. You can see my whole list here. 

Thirty Five

I haven't been doing Jen's 7 Quick Takes for a while but always enjoy reading hers (and others). This week she celebrates her thirty fifth birthday and asks ... "if you are older than 35, tell me about what you were doing at this age. How do you feel about that time of your life? Anything you'd do differently?"

I remember 35 as a particularly happy time. Helen (oh dear! I can't get used to this! I may yet simply revert to using their real names) was seven months old and I was still technically on a maternity break from working on my doctorate on medieval knights. In fact by that stage I was back to doing quite a bit of research but was not under any pressure to get a particular amount done, making it an enjoyable and leisurely process. I was able to work from home most of the time as a lot of the source material for the period I was working on is in print. The London Library's mail order service was a godsend at this time.  Tevye had spent nearly a year at home after taking redundancy from his previous job so took on a large share of the baby care. I think at this point he had just started doing some freelance work writing exam questions for a couple of days each week. I may have been teaching in London one evening a week, but I can't remember for sure.

I don't think I am looking back through rose-tinted glasses, but I honestly can't think of anything I would do differently. We were very fortunate to have a wonderful work-life balance where we both got to spend lots of time with Helen but also to do other mentally stimulating things. Rather to my surprise I had discovered I loved having a baby - with no small relatives or close friends with babies I had no experience of them before having my own, and had rather expected that I would find the baby stage boring. In fact, I adored it. Thirty five was good!

Book 2: B is for Beasts and Belfrys

Beasts in my Belfry by Gerald Durrell

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I went through a phase of reading Gerald Durrell's books many years (decades!) ago. I picked this one to re-read for local interest as it describes Durrell's time as a trainee keeper at nearby Whipsnade Zoo where we have annual passes. It isn't the best of his books - not in the league of My Family and Other Animals - but was an easy, light read with his usual humorous touch. I enjoyed it more for being able to picture both the locations and the animals. Although the zoo has obviously changed since Durrell was there in the late 1940s, it still has many of the same types of animal, with at least some in the same locations.  I imagine some of the animals we see today must be the direct descendants of those Durrell worked with as the zoo has breeding herds. I read the Kindle edition, which has a few minor issues I presume are down to character recognition problems ("rn" turned into "m", odd punctuation and so on). These happened just enough to be a minor irritation, but not enough to outweigh the convenience of instant download and reading on the Kindle.

Next up for 52 books in 52 weeks ... The Tale of Oat Cake Crag by Susan Wittig Albert (C is for Crag. And Cake)

Two-Seaters

I want to get back to posting here more regularly, so expect some random off-the-top-of-my-head rambling. I'm not sure what it says about me that the first topic that tripped into my mind was toilets. I blame Bill Bryson, who commented in his bathroom chapter on the communal nature of such things in past centuries ... which reminded me that my childhood home had a two-seater! That put us in good company as, according to Bryson, so did Thomas Jefferson. Admittedly our two-seater was in a shed at the bottom of the garden and no longer functional. By the time we lived there it was used for storing garden tools rather than its intended purpose, but I imagine though that even in the 1960s there were probably few still surviving - if there were ever many around in the first place. Strangely, I can still picture it quite clearly ... a small brick-built building with a wooden door, with a wooden box-like structure running across the full width at the back with two suitably sized holes in the top. There was no plumbing, so I presume it was an earth closet. Why a two-seater I have no idea. It was a farm, so maybe a combination of family and workers meant it was in high demand. Unfortunately we lived there long before digital photography, and nobody ever thought to waste photographic film and record it for posterity.

I'll try to come up with a more delicate topic next time! Back to my Kindle now. I finished the Bill Bryson book and am about to start book 2 - Beasts in my Belfry by Gerald Durrell.

Book 1: A is for At Home

At Home by Bill Bryson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I rather stupidly chose a "chunker" of over 600 pages for the first of my 52 Books in 52 Weeks. I have only managed to get through two-thirds of the book so far, though I'm quite pleased to have got that far given that I also had to submit final assignments for last term's archive course module by Friday (including an essay I didn't start writing until Monday!) . I am going to post a review not despite not having finished the book as I don't want to get behind and I am determined to get to the end this weekend.

At Home is more of Bill Bryson doing what Bill Bryson does. Mostly I enjoy his easy-reading style, but this is not my favourite of his books. It is a history of domestic life which he hangs on a room by room tour of his home. In fact, the connections with the rooms are often pretty tenuous and he flits from topic to topic with an almost frantic speed, skimming over the surface of each. Often I found that just as he had aroused my interest in something he skipped on to something else. Still, I learned a little about a whole raft of subjects I knew nothing about before - why it does not work to build a house with iron or concrete, Capability Brown's landscape design, bedbugs, candlelight and the spice trade are a few that come to mind. Overall, though I quite enjoyed the book I also found it a bit too diverse and overlong.

52 Books in 52 Weeks

To encourage myself to read more this year and get plenty of use out of my Kindle I am copying Faith and taking part in the 52 Books in 52 Weeks reading challenge. The rules are:

• The challenge will run from January 1, 2012 through December 31, 2012

• Our book weeks begin on Sunday.

• Participants may join at any time.

• All books are acceptable except children books.

• All forms of books are acceptable including e-books, audio books, etc.

• Re-reads are acceptable as long as they are read after January 1, 2012.

• Books may overlap other challenges.

• Create an entry post linking to this blog.

• Sign up with Mr. Linky in the "I'm participating post" below this post.

• You don't have a blog to participate. Post your weekly book in the comments section of each weekly post.

• Mr. Linky will be added to the bottom of the weekly post for you to link to reviews of your most current reads.

To add a little spice I am going to add in the A to Z mini challenge:

Challenge yourself to read books alphabetically by Title and/or by Author.  Have fun searching out those difficult letters. For titles, the letter doesn't have to be the starting word. It can be any word in the title, but to make it more challenging try to find one that starts with the letter. This year I am making a bit more challenging by discounting any book that started with THE. For authors, it can be their first name or last name. Have fun with it and be creative.
A to Z by Title - Commit to 26 Books
A to Z by Author - Commit to 26 Books
A to Z by Title and Author - Commit to 52 Books

I don't want to be over ambitious so I am going to go for the 26 books by title option, with the word anywhere in the title.  I looked through the books I have already downloaded to my Kindle or have on my wishlist and can already cover most of the alphabet. This extra challenge will help me with the potentially paralysing choice of deciding which book to read next by narrowing it right down for me.

First up ... A is for At Home by Bill Bryson.

New Names for a New Year

I have been thinking for a while that Angel and Star are both outgrowing their blog names. I want to stick to pseudonyms for the sake of the girls' privacy, so I have decided I am going to switch to using their real-life middle names. The New Year seems like a good time for a change, so meet:

Helen (Angel)

Marie (Star)

And Rose (Cherub)

Tevye and myself will stay Tevye and the Bookworm. Whether or not I will remember I have changed the girls' names is an open question!

Taking Stock

I haven't blogged enough to look back at posts over the past years, so I am doing a little family stock taking  instead. Littlest first.

Cherub - has had a good year. She is still loving school, maybe even more so now she is in Year 1. She likes learning and likes rules, so school is a good fit for her. She is much more confident than a year ago, though still extremely cautious about anything new and reluctant to confront anything that might be even the slightest bit scary. Reading and writing are coming along nicely. She isn't ready to read on her own yet, but I can see the skills slotting into place. Her spelling is pretty much entirely phonetic - mostly legible but entertainingly wrong.

Star - loves her new school. Long may it last! Star and school are in some ways not a natural fit (rules? what rules?) so feeling positive makes it easier for her to deal with the constraints. She has made two new close friends, as well as keeping up most of her old friendships. It's hard to believe she will be starting her GCSE courses next summer. She has to choose her options next term and is thinking of French, Art, Child Development and possibly Business Studies (in addition to compulsory English language and literature, maths and science).

Angel - this has been the year when she has become a young adult. She passed her GCSEs with creditable grades, is tackling A levels with her usual competence, loves being a sixth former and being at her new school, has proved herself working in an adult's job, and has managed to juggle school, work and a social life. Oh, and has acquired a boyfriend! She is stretching her wings and getting ready to fly, and though it is a little bittersweet to see her moving away from us into the adult world I am very proud of the capable, independent young woman she is becoming.

Tevye - mostly more of the same. Overall he has a good work-life balance which makes up for the frustrations that sometimes go along with his work, and the recession hasn't had any noticeable impact on his company. His eyes have been up and down - he has a condition affecting the cornea which is not degenerative but fluctuates in severity and gives him some vision problems. A separate pair of occupational glasses for computer work and reading has helped, and glasses with a new prescription he collected this month seem to have improved his vision significantly.

Bookworm - lots of changes for me! This time last year I was about to start my archive course and now I am already half way through. Getting a job has been a big change, but I am absolutely loving it. I find it hard to imagine anything I would enjoy more. The content of the documents I am working with is fascinating, the working conditions are good and I like the people. It has been quite hard fitting in an extra day of work each week over the last couple of months while still trying to fit in my study time, but I have enjoyed the variety of doing something different and getting to learn more about how the archive ticks. I will probably be doing it for another month or so, after which I will be back to working my usual mornings only routine - which is now going to seem beautifully easy! The other big positive from this year has been that I have managed to get into much better eating habits, which have had the nice side effect of causing me to effortlessly lose weight. I have no idea how much as I have no scales, but I am a size smaller and have had to throw out clothes that got too big. I have been eating lots of fruit and veggies, sticking to wholemeal and wholegrain as much as possible and mostly avoiding sugar and junk, which I compensate for with a couple of squares of dark chocolate and a small glass of wine most days.

My New Toy!

Look what Father Christmas - or maybe it would be more accurate to say the Hannukah Elf - brought me.

I have been coveting a Kindle for a while but couldn't quite justify it at the price. Once Amazon brought out this smaller, cheaper keyboard-less model it went to the top of my Christmas list. I have to say, I am loving it! After a conversation with my Apple loving neighbour about why I would want a Kindle when I already have an iPad I did some thinking about the reasons, wondering whether there was really a justification other than gadget mania. And yes, there are reasons. The Kindle is significantly smaller and lighter, particularly good for throwing into my bag to read on the train, but the main reason - which I think I sub-consciously expected, but only pinned down in the light of experience - is that the Kindle gets out of the way. Reading on the iPad I am always at least a little aware of the machine, thanks to the brighter, backlit screen (great for video, but not quite the right contrast for a book), and its built in distractions (too easy to flip over to Facebook, or Google something unconnected that has flashed across my brain). With the Kindle, it is easier to get lost in the book. The liquid ink screen is easy on the eyes, and the neat page turning buttons on the sides flip onto the next page at a touch. For someone like me who usually knits while reading it is a big improvement on printed books, which are not always amenable to hands-off reading and once propped in the right position are liable to dislodge themselves during page turns.

I already had about 30 Kindle books downloaded but had already read most of them on the iPad, so I have been having fun stocking the Kindle. Amazon UK has a 12 Days of Kindle promotion on throughout the 12 Days of Christmas (duh!) with a whole new batch of books added each day, mostly reduced to 99 pence. I have been taking advantage of this and now have the following stacked in my reading queue:

•  The Eagle of the Ninth (Rosemary Sutcliff)
• Ghosts of Spain (Giles Tremlett) - a combination of travelogue and history
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (modern translation by Simon Armitage)
• Map of a Nation (Rachel Hewitt) - about the making of the original Ordnance Survey maps of the British Isles
• Salt: a World History (Mark Kurlansky)
• The Little White Horse (Elizabeth Goudge)
• Yesterday Morning: a Very English Childhood (Diana Athill)
• A Darkly Hidden Truth (Donna Fletcher) - the description "a gripping modern mystery enriched by liturgy, iconography, and medieval history" sounded intriguing
• The Magical Maze: Seeing the World Through Mathematical Eyes (Ian Stewart)
• The Help (Kathryn Stockett)
• The Tale of Oat Cake Crag (Susan Albert) - one of her Beatrix Potter mysteries 

So far I have finished Austenland (Shannon Hale) and I am three-quarters of the way through The Secret Life of France (Lucy Wadham). Reviews to follow.