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.

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. 

Not So Mad After All?

Back in August I bought a (very cheap!) set of 42 Rainbow Magic books for Cherub and complained that it was madness. Quite how the publishers and the several authors writing under the pseudonym of Daisy Meadows have managed to churn out over one hundred books with essentially the same plot (two girls help assorted fairies to thwart Jack Frost and his nasty goblins) is beyond me. Still, I have gritted my teeth and we have just finished book eighteen (plus a few outliers borrowed from the library by a gleeful Cherub - the highlight being her namesake Naomi the Netball Fairy).

And now? Cherub has made a huge jump in the level of the books she wants me to read to her. For the last three weeks we have been chugging slowly through H.E.Marshall's Kings and Things, a slighter retelling of British history than Our Island Story written for younger children, but still running to 400 pages and with a fair amount of unfamiliar historical vocabulary - I dug it out to read about Guy Fawkes for Bonfire Night, but she insisted we should read the rest of the book. She has started wanting me to read poems to her, thanks to the gift of a poetry book from Grandma, and tonight we launched, full of enthusiasm, into Letters from Father Christmas (yay! Tolkien!) and The Jesse Tree by Geraldine McCaughrean. She wants to read, and discuss, and look in detail at pictures, in a way she didn't three months ago when we started the fairy marathon. Tonight it dawned on me that all that listening to chapter books, albeit simple and repetitive ones, has stretched her comprehension and ability to focus, in the same way that becoming engrossed in an easy reader series often kick starts a child into reading more complex material. And yes, the fairies are still top of her bedtime storytime pile, but the pile is now growing in both quantity and quality.

Now the dilemna. The Book People have 21 more Rainbow Magic books on offer, including Naomi the Netball Fairy. Christmas? Should I?

Madness

... is buying not just one Rainbow Fairy book for Cherub, not just one set of seven, but forty two of the things.

The Book People are selling the entire collection for £20, and given Cherub's prediliction for fairies and fairy books I succumbed. Now I am stuck reading them to her - hopefully she will be reading them to herself well before book forty two! Not that they are terrible books, just easy readers with rather limited vocabulary and plot. I remember Star loving them at around six, but at that time there was just the original Rainbow Fairies set of seven books.
Since then they have multiplied, with Jewel Fairies, Weather Fairies, and all sorts of other fairies. Can I stand the suspense of having to wait until tomorrow to find out how the rainbow fairies get colour back to fairyland after being banished by Jack Frost? Somehow I think I just might!

Another fairy book new to our collection is The Dolls House Fairy by Jane Ray, one of my favourite picture book illustrators. I love her chirpy, crisp eating fairy Thistle, and a Dad who is prepared to believe in fairies. Very high up on Cherub's favourite books list, this one.

10 Boys I'd Let My Daughters Date

Pragmatic Mom is posting a list of the Top 100 boys in Children's Lit You'd Let Your Daughter Date.  Very fun, although she is much more up-to-date with (American?) children's books than I am and I didn't recognise a lot of the boys she has chosen so far. On a smaller scale, here in no particular order are ten boys I would pick for my daughters (or myself in my younger days!):

1. Peter from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I'm afraid I can't get past Edmund's stupidity in being fooled by the White Witch, so it has to be Peter.

2. Dickon from The Secret Garden. The strong, silent, nature-loving Yorkshire type.

3. Charlie from Lauren Child's Charlie and Lola books. He is so sensible and tolerant with his exuberant little sister, you just know he is going to grow up into a wonderful young man.

4. Harry Potter. I could use a wizard around the place. (And as runner-up, Neville Longbottom - not obviously exciting, but reliable, loyal and courageous.)

5. Gilbert Blythe, the boy who eventually marries Anne of Green Gables. Anyone good enough for Anne is good enough for my daughters!

6. Charlie Bucket from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Nothing to do with character - though as it happens he is a nice boy - just think of the endless supply of chocolate.

7. John Walker of Swallows and Amazons. The romance of a sea captain, and it would be reassuring to know my daughter was not dating a duffer.

8. Julian from Enid Blyton's Famous Five. To quote Wikipedia, 'tall, strong and intelligent, as well as caring, responsible and kind'. And let's face it, what British child hasn't wanted to be a member of the Famous Five at some point.

9. Nicholas Fetterlock, the merchant's son who helps to foil a plot against the wool guild in The Wool Pack by Cynthia Harnett (which I have a feeling may have a different title in the US?). A sensible and eminently marriageable young man.

10. John Trenchard from Moonfleet, a classic adventure story and a favourite of mine. A bit hot-headed, but learns from his experiences. I wouldn't want my daughters to have to wait for him as long as Grace did, though.  

And an honorable mention for Francis, the merchant in The Thirteen Days of Christmas by Jenny Overton, who isn't a boy so can't be in my list ... but a young man who buys his beloved a partridge, two turtle doves, three French hens, four calling birds, five gold rings (you can extrapolate the rest) is a truly romantic soul, even if it takes a little prodding. (Very good, very funny book, by the way.)

I'm sure I have forgotten some favourites there, but I am letting go of my inner perfectionist.

Who would you pick for your daughter?

(HT: Facebook link from Lissa)

Yarn Along: 23rd February

I have been meaning for a while to join Ginny's Yarn Along, which has been popping up at various blogs I read. These are the instructions:

~ Two of my favorite things are knitting and reading, and the evidence of this often shows up in my photographs. I love seeing what other people are knitting and reading as well. So, what are you knitting or crocheting right now? What are you reading? Take a single photo and share it either on your blog or on Flickr. Leave a link below to share your photo with the rest of us! ~

Reading and knitting? What's not to like! For my first yarn along, my mountain view cardigan in beige cotton, and The Secret Diary of a New Mum (age 43 3/4) by Ceri Rosen on my iPad. For some reason I don't understand the cover picture is not showing up, and has been replaced with a stock title / cover page. Odd. The cardigan is making surprisingly good progress for over 300 stitches of 4 ply (fingering), and I have just passed the ribbing at the waist.

"BBC" Top 100 Book List

I have seen this meme on both Facebook and the internet recently. Melanie has done a bit of research and established that the list is an urban legend, but never one to miss a good book meme, I'm going to play anyway ...

The BBC claims (supposedly!) that most people haven't read more than six books on the list. How many of these have you read?

Instructions: Bold those books you've read in their entirety. Italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read an excerpt. (I skipped the tagging bit - play if you want to play!)

1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10.Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18. The Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch – George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy 
32. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens 
33. Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34. Emma – Jane Austen
35. Persuasion – Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Berniere 
39. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41. Animal Farm – George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50. Atonement – Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52. Dune – Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72. Dracula – Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses – James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal – Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession – AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94. Watership Down – Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Favourite Children's Books

In a post about children's books a friend asked "what children's books would you recommend?". I can't resist that question! (She also asked about pet hates and views on Enid Blyton, but I'll leave those questions for separate posts.) (Oh, and do check out her nice new blog at Like Sunshine in the Home.) (And yes, I am a shameless overuser of parentheses.)

Back in my early blogging days I posted a list of 100 favourite children's books from baby board books on up. This time I'm going to stick to chapter books suitable for reading aloud, split into two categories - younger children (roughly 4 to 7, the stage Cherub is just entering), and middling children (roughly 7 to 10). Our favourites, not surprisingly, are very girl oriented.


Read Alouds for 4 to 7 Year Olds

My Naughty Little Sister books (Dorothy Edwards) - these have been a hit with all three girls, and are a good transition to story books rather than picture books as each story is complete in itself. Written in the 1950s, the naughty little sister is very naughty in an old-fashioned way (eats all the trifle at a birthday party, throws her sister's doll out of the window, cuts up things she shouldn't, tries to sweep her own chimney, and even bites Father Christmas). The stories are told in the voice of her scandalised older sister, and have a warm, gentle tone. The naughty little sister isn't always naughty - one title is When My Naughty Little Sister Was Good. Wonderful small girl books.

Milly-Molly-Mandy books (Joyce Lankester Brisley) - written in the 1920s, these stories of a little girl growing up in an English village with her mother, father, grandparents, aunt and uncle are period pieces with a timeless appeal to small girls. I love this illustrated collection of some of the best stories.

Ramona books (Beverley Cleary) - American classics about a funny, cheeky, curious little girl called Ramona. I think Ramona is four in the first book, and maybe ten at the end of the series? Just to prove our reading isn't completely Anglo-centric! 

Sophie books (Dick King-Smith) - yes, yet more books about a small girl. Sophie is a little girl who loves animals and wants to be a farmer when she grows up. Star particularly loved Sophie.

Little Mrs Pepperpot stories (Alf Proysen) - books I remembered from my childhood, about a little old lady who shrinks to the size of a pepperpot at unpredictable times, leading to all sorts of adventures.

Charlotte's Web (E.B.White) - classic about a little girl, a pig and a spider. 

Pippi Longstocking (Astrid Lindgren) - another classic, about - yes! another little girl. Pippi isn't just any little girl, though. She is an orphan, with red hair, freckles, oversized shoes, throwing herself into life with an anarchic joie-de-vivre all her own. If you want to know how to go turnupstuffing, you need to read Pippi.

Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner (A.A.Milne) - hard to know what age to recommend for Winnie-the-Pooh. Children probably need to be around 6 to 8 to really "get" Winnie-the-Pooh, but some love listening the stories at two (like Angel and Bella).


Read Alouds for 7 to 10 Year Olds

Narnia books (C.S.Lewis) - Angel and I adored them; Star wasn't interested, proving that the unmissable (to me) isn't always unmissable. I have high hopes that Cherub will be another Narnia fan, as she fixated on the movie version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

The Borrowers series (Mary Norton) - set in a house that is now a local middle school, the borrowers are tiny people who live by "borrowing" from the "human beans" who live in the house, and whose safety depends on never being seen. Once borrower child Arietty is spotted, they are catapulted into a series of adventures.

Five Children and It  (and anything else by E.Nesbit) - classic fantasy in which a family of Victorian children meet a psammead, or sand fairy, which can grant wishes. Unfortunately, working out what to wish for is not as simple as it sounds, as ill-considered wishes have a habit of going wrong. Sequels are The Phoenix and the Carpet and The Story of the Amulet. Not all her books are fantasies -  The Railway Children is another of her unmissable classics.

Ballet Shoes (and anything else by Noel Streatfeild) - almost all Streatfeild's books have some sort of talent theme. In Ballet Shoes three orphan children are adopted by an eccentric explorer who leaves them with his great-niece and disappears off on his travels again. When the money runs out, they find they can help make ends meet by developing their own talents (and yes, one of the girls is a ballet dancer).

Emil and the Detectives (Erich Kastner) - this was Tevye's all time favourite children's book, and he read it more than once to both Angel and Star. An adventure story set in Berlin, in which Emil is robbed while travelling by train, and his friends help him to track the thief. Erich Kastner also wrote Lottie and Lisa, the story on which the film The Parent Trap was based (and yes, we enjoyed that book too).

The Secret Garden and A Little Princess (Frances Hodgson Burnett) - beautiful, gorgeous, unmissable classics. 

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (J.K.Rowling) - yes, we are Harry Potter fans. I read the first book to Angel when she was six, and she loved it. Age is an issue with HP ... the first three books are both simpler and younger than the later books, which are darker and more mature (as well as being very long to read aloud! Best left for older children and teens to read to themselves, IMO). The early ones have a touch of Enid Blyton about them, and are rollicking good stories.

Oh dear, there are many, many more, but I am out of time and this post could get far too long. For more book recommendations (many / mostly children's books), check out Lissa's list of "truly, Maudly, deeply" books, the ones she loves with a passion (be sure to read the comments too). Actually, check out her whole blog and you will never be stuck for something to read, for adults or children.

Hmmm ... I feel a "truly, Maudly, deeply" post of my own coming on.

How Do You Read?

I just picked up a new book - The Africa House, by Christina Lamb - and realised I have a very specific routine when I start a book:

• Read blurb on the back cover
• Read blurb about the author
• Read acknowledgements
• Look through illustrations
• Read introduction
• (Often) Read postscript
• Start main body of the book

I'm thinking of non-fiction here, which is what I read most of these days - though my approach to fiction is not so very different, even down to a tendency to read the beginning, the end, and then the middle. I like to have a sense of where the book is going, where the author is coming from, and - where possible - a visual guide to the people and places. I just started and abandoned Underground London: Travels Beneath the City Streets by Stephen Smith, at least in part because it had no illustrations.

Does anyone else have their own particular way of tackling a book?

4 x 10 Reading Challenge: Year End Update

Oh, what a bad book blogger I am. After a good first six months of reading and reviewing, my 4 x 10 reading challenge fizzled out. I can't remember everything I have read since, but I have patched together an end of year list using my daybook notes. I make it a total of 33 books, spread rather erratically across my 10 categories, together with a fair sized list of books I started but didn't finished. Book titles added since my last post are in blue. Some were reviewed in this holiday reading post.

Autobiography

• Nella Last's War: the Second World War Diaries of Housewife, 49 (ed. Richard Broad)
• Nella Last's Peace: the Post-War Diaries of Houseife, 49
• A Vicarage Family: a Biography of Myself (Noel Streatfeild)
• The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (John-Dominique Bauby)
• Reading Lolita in Tehran (Azar Nafisi)

Biography

• Flora Thompson: the Story of the Lark Rise Writer (Gillian Lindsay)
• Noel Streatfeild: a Biography (Angela Bull)
  

Crafts

• A History of Hand Knitting (Richard Rutt)
• Sensational Knitted Socks (Charlene Schurch)
• Custom Knits (Wendy Bernard)
  

Education

• Teach Me To Do It Myself (Maja Pitamic)
  

Faith

• My Life With the Saints (James Martin, S.J.)
  
• The Rosary: Keeping Company With Jesus and Mary (Karen Edmisten)

Fiction

• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Mary Ann Shaffer)
  
• The Uncommon Reader (Alan Bennett)
• The Autobiography of the Queen (Emma Tennant)
• The Friday Night Knitting Club (Kate Jacobs)
• The Independence of Miss Mary Bennett (Colleen McCullough)
• Baking Cakes in Kigali (Gaile Parkin)
• Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (Paul Torday)
• The Amulet of Samarkand (Jonathan Stroud)
  

Geography and Travel

• A Street Without a Name: Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria (Kapka Kassabova)
  

History and Historical Fiction

• Helena (Evelyn Waugh)
  
• The Road to Wigan Pier (George Orwell)
• The Road to Sebastopol (Katherine MacMahon)
• Singled Out (Virginia Nicholson) 
  

Science and Nature

• Electric Universe (David Bodanis)
• The Planets (Dava Sobel)
• About the Size of It: the Common Sense Approach to Measuring Things (Warwick Cairns)
  

Serendipity

• The Morville Hours (Katherine Swift) 
• Confessions of an Eco-Shopper (Kate Lock)
• Julie and Julia (Julie Powell) 
• Spotted Pigs and Green Tomatoes (Rosie Boycott)  
  

Unfinished Business
Alison Uttley, the Life of a Country Child (Denis Judd) - print too small!
Beatrix Potter At Home in the Lake District (Susan Denyer)
Yiddish Civilisatiuon: The Rise and Fall of a Forgotten Nation (Paul Kriwaczek)
A Year in the Country (Alison Uttley)
The Shrines of Our Lady in England (Anne Vail) 
Buried Treasure: Travels Through the Jewel Box (Victoria Finlay)  
The Secret Life of Trees (Colin Tudge)
The Catholic Revival in English Literature 1845-1961 (Ian Ker)
Longitude (Davina Sobel)
Knit Two (Kate Jacobs)
Ripping Things To Do: the Best Games and Ideas from Children's Books (Jane Brocket)

Now I can move on to the next challenge. Watch this space.

Holiday Reading

This is going to be a lazy holiday, with lots of time on the beach - playing with Cherub, swimming, and curled up with a good book (I hope!). Thassos is a small island without much to see or do, which suits us just fine. If you are American and wondering why we would go all the way to Greece just for a beach holiday, there is a simple two word answer ... British weather.

I have been collecting books to take, and after a splurge with the Book People this is my current reading list (still time to add a couple more!) ...

• Baking Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin
  
• Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
  
• Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday
  
• The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet by Colleen McCullough
  
• The Rose of Sebastopol by Katherine McMahon
  
• The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud
  
• Ithaka by Adele Geras
  
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling (re-read)

This is very fiction heavy for me - holidays and reading fiction go together, I think. Funny about the unintentional trend in those first three titles. I'm not sure how many I will get through, but I'm aiming for the lot ... reviews to follow when I get home.

Now please help me choose ... what should I start with?

Book Meme

1. What author do you own the most books by? Over a 25 year period I collected all but one of her sixty book Chalet School, so it would have to be Elinor M. Brent Dyer

2. What book do you own the most copies of? The Bible. Thanks to a great-uncle who was a Methodist minister, an elderly friend who taught theology and a lay-preacher mother, I have a truly impressive selection of Bibles in assorted languages and translations.

3. Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions? Absolutely not.

4. What fictional character are you secretly in love with? None that I can think of.

5. What book have you read the most times in your life? Has to be The Tiger That Came To Tea, over and over and over again to three small girls.

6. Favorite book as a ten year old? The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

7. What is the worst book you’ve read in the past year? The Autobiography of the Queen by Emma Tennant. Truly abysmal. I only finished it because it was short and I was stuck on a train with nothing else to read.

8. What is the best book you’ve read in the past year? I think The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by a squeak.

9. If you could force everyone you know to read one book, what would it be? A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.

10. What book would you most like to see made into a movie? Mmm, difficult one ... I would loved to see an updated version of Moonfleet by J. Meade Falkner. Does that count?

11. What is the most difficult book you’ve ever read? A book on medieval parliaments translated pedantically from French. It was memorably soporific; the title was rather less memorable. I wonder if anyone other than the author has ever finished it?

12. What is your favorite book? If I have to pick just one, then The Lord of the Rings

13. Play? Shadowlands by William Nicholson, the story of C.S.Lewis and Joy Gresham. I saw it with Nigel Hawthorne (aka Sir Humphrey in Yes, Minister, and a superb stage actor) playing Lewis and wept buckets.

14. Poem?I think I'll go for God's Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Ask me another day and I would probably give a different answer.

15. Essay? Anything by G.K.Chesterton

16. Who is the most overrated writer alive today? Dan Brown. Let's just say not my cup of tea.

17. What is your desert island book? A book to read on a desert island, or a book about a desert island? I think I'll go with the latter and say Kensuke's Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo

18. And . . . what are you reading right now?
The Catholic Revival in English Literature 1845-1961 by Ian Ker

HT: Theresa at LaPaz Home Learning (I have seen this meme all over the place, but I read it at Theresa's blog first, so she gets the credit).

Churchill's Astrologer

This is kind of old news, as it was reported in the press a year ago when the relevant files were made public, but I only just discovered it ... did you know that during World War II MI5 (the internal intelligence agency in the UK) employed an astrologer? Partly to pass on intelligence about certain clients who were under investigation, but also to try to predict Hitler's plans on the assumption that he was following astrological advice.

Weird, but if you are into Catholic literature it gets stranger, as there is a high chance you will have come across books written by MI5's official astrologer. So who was he?

Louis de Wohl.

I read and enjoyed a couple of his books a while ago - fictionalised biographies of Thomas Aquinas and Augustine of Hippo - and was searching for the title of his book on St. Helena, thinking it would be an interesting follow up to Evelyn Waugh's book about her ... and what did Google throw up? A whole series of articles about de Wohl's wartime career.

Oh. My. Goodness. Not what I was expecting at all!

Now, I'm not posting this to put anyone off reading his books, but purely out of interest in a rather extraordinary story. So far as I can discern, de Wohl "got religion" after the war, dropped out of astrology (if, in fact, he was ever genuinely into it in the first place) and into writing Catholic fiction. From what I found, he would be a fascinating subject for a full scale biography. I dug around a bit, and patched together this potted version ...

Louis de Wohl was born Ludwig von Wohl in 1903 in Berlin to a Hungarian father from a minor aristocratic family and an Austrian mother. He claimed his family were Catholic, but there is some suspicion that he was Jewish, or part-Jewish, and that his origins were the real reason he left Germany for Britain in 1935. He himself said he left because he could no longer stand Hitler and living in a country whose laws he could not respect. He had a brief career in banking before becoming a writer of popular novels and serials.

When the war broke out in 1939, he volunteered to serve in the British forces, but as a German national was declined. In 1940 he managed to coax MI5 into employing him as an astrologer, with the rank of Captain. His handler described him as "extraordinarily clever" and a "brilliant propagandist"In 1941 he was sent to America by the Special Operations Executive in an attempt to undermine the feeling that Hitler was invincible and to encourage pro-war sentiment. MI5 agents had very mixed feelings about de Wohl and some suspected he was a fake. An MI5 minute written in February 1942 says: "De Wohl is somewhat of a thorn in my side…a complete charlatan with a mysterious, if not murky past…struts about in the uniform of a British Army Captain and gives every reason for believing that he is in some secret employment…he is likely to be guided solely by his vanity…there is no case for interning him…if…left at large it is essential that we should keep a close tag on him…". Another described him as a "bumptious seeker after notoriety". Despite de Wohl's claims that Hitler was receiving astrological advice, it is now known that he was not.

Louis de Wohl's wartime experiences led him to rediscover his early faith. He became a committed Catholic and decided his writing career must change direction. In his own words:

Another seven years would pass before the late Cardinal of Milan, Ildefonso Schuster, would tell me: "Let your writings be good. For your writings you will one day be judged." But already then I knew that I had to undergo a radical change as a writer, and I knew that I had to make up for many years of time lost. I did not vow, like Franz Werfel, to write the life of some special saint if I would get out of the war alive. I just decided to serve God.

He began to write biographies of saints. His claimed his book on St. Thomas Aquinas was written at the direction of Pope Pius XII, who later told him to write about "the history and mission of the Church in the world". Is this true, I wonder? In the 1950s he lived for some time in the United States, married a German novelist, and moved to Switzerland where he died in 1961.

Fellow astrologer Felix Jay knew Louis de Wohl for twenty years and his recollections paint a picture of a charismatic man who combined self-aggrandisement and fantasy with real likeability. Jay strongly doubted that de Wohl was ever a real astrologer, although books he wrote on the subject are still quoted in astrological texts. He also thought his autobiographical snippets were suspect. This is his description of de Wohl in 1938, when they first met:

He occupied a large room in the hotel littered with books, papers in complete confusion, a large desk covered with all sorts of mementoes and framed and signed photographs and the inevitable leather cases of big cigars. Most objects of daily use were engraved with a baronial coat of arms. He was a man of medium height, but appeared to be much taller when sitting like an archduke in a high chair. More often than not he wore a flowing robe or a silken dressing gown. Everything around him oozed baroque or rococo opulence: he loved luxury of the peculiar Michael Arlen brand, and was surrounded by a Sydney Greenstreet aura of questionable taste, this serving not only to impress the visitor but most likely to generate in his own mind an illusion of grandeur ... He behaved initially like a duke giving audience to a petitioner. This attitude underwent a gradual change and another Louis began to emerge: smiling, humourous, sometimes puckish, sparkling. One felt happy in his company. His mind seemed to be receptive to any new fact or idea, and while giving the impression of dispensing his graces freely, he, in fact, drew from others all the time for information, ideas, facts, and useful items.

He was apparently genuinely affluent, with his writer's income supplemented by wealthy astrological clients (he charged 30 guineas for a horoscope, the equivalent of £800 today) and gambling. He had a talent for making a little knowledge go a long way, and for making full use of his contacts ... he didn't invent the myth that Hitler had an astrologer, but he certainly exploited it in his own interests. Interestingly, Jay thought that de Wohl's claim that his wartime role was as an astrologer was false - "I found it increasingly difficult to believe that the British High Command would consult an enemy-alien astrologer" - but the MI5 files show de Wohl was telling the truth. Jay clearly liked de Wohl as a man, but his verdict on him as an astrologer was damning:

Did Louis de Wohl believe in astrology? Did he regard it as an esoteric or scientific discipline? I must confess that after the end of the War, I began to doubt it: he could talk of his practice in the same superficial and often brilliant manner as of any other matter, be it women, card games, a new fashion or the shortage of cigars. I came to the conclusion that Louis, after his conversion to astrology, had seen in it quite early certain definite material advantages: in the first place it enlarged the already substantial impression he made upon his prospective rich and titled clientele whose company gave an added prop to his ego, and in the second place he saw endless opportunities for, 'selling' expensive horoscopes.

On the other hand, he seems in no doubt that Louis underwent a genuine religious conversion. When he first visited him after the war:

To my surprise, instead of an astrological conversation ... I was submitted to a religious homily, and looking around the room I saw crucifixes and religious prints and other objects. Louis had either been converted to, or had returned to, Roman Catholicism, and his monologues, which in the past had been spiced with the names of the worldly high and mighty, now contained references to bishops, abbots and saints.

Fascinating stuff!

Sources
Independent and Guardian articles describing de Wohl's wartime career
Brief autobiography at CatholicAuthors.com
National Archives
The Louis de Wohl I Knew by astrologer Felix Jay.

4 x 10 Reading Challenge: Update 3

Finished book titles are blue, with those completed since my last post in bold; books in my current reading pile are green. I cheated slightly, and split biography and autobiography into separate categories. I'm not sure yet whether to the abandon the children's historical fiction or serendipity categories from my original list - I will see where the reading muse takes me.

Autobiography

• Nella Last's War: the Second World War Diaries of Housewife, 49 (ed. Richard Broad)
• Nella Last's Peace: the Post-War Diaries of Houseife, 49
• A Vicarage Family: a Biography of Myself (Noel Streatfeild) - a partly fictionalised story of her own childhood as the second of four vicarage children. She was also the most difficult child, and the least happy. Stubborn at home and uncooperative at school, she felt unloved, particularly by her mother. Now I want to read an objective biography of the author to find out how much of the book is accurate, and how much is fiction. I found this for 99 pence in a charity shop, which is just as well as the book met a sad end when I dropped it in the bath.
  

Biography

• Flora Thompson: the Story of the Lark Rise Writer (Gillian Lindsay)

Crafts

• A History of Hand Knitting (Richard Rutt)
• Sensational Knitted Socks (Charlene Schurch) - the sock knitters Bible. Teaches you to knit socks any size, in any yarn, in dozens of different patterns. If you like knitting socks - or have aspirations to knit them - you need this book!

Education

• Teach Me To Do It Myself (Maja Pitamic) - reviewed here.
  

Faith

• The Shrines of Our Lady in England (Anne Vail) - still reading as this is an easy book to pick up, read a snippet, and put down.
• My Life With the Saints (James Martin, S.J.) - three chapters in so far.
• A Pocket Guide to St. Paul (Scott Hahn) - arriving from Amazon any day, thanks to Alicia's review.

Fiction

• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Mary Ann Shaffer)
  
• The Uncommon Reader (Alan Bennett)
  

Geography and Travel

• A Street Without a Name: Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria (Kapka Kassabova) - I picked this up from the new books display in the library because I knew next to nothing about Bulgaria. The author grew up in the capital Sofia during the last years of the Communist regime, before emigrating to New Zealand. In the book she explores both the memories of her childhood and the "new" Bulgaria. The echoes of teenage angst and the author's feelings of rootlessness make for some negativity. I thought at the outset that this was going to bug me, but as I got into the book it was outweighed by her vivid writing and the way she brought her Bulgaria alive.
  

History

• The Road to Wigan Pier (George Orwell)

Science and Nature

• Electric Universe (David Bodanis)
• A Year in the Country (Alison Uttley) - part of that Little Grey Rabbit / Alison Uttley rabbit trail.

Unfinished Business
Alison Uttley, the Life of a Country Child (Denis Judd) - print too small!
Beatrix Potter At Home in the Lake District (Susan Denyer) - started but didn't get far, so returned it to the library as I needed to free up space on my ticket.

March Round Up

From now onwards I'm planning to do a quick post in this format at the end of each month so I can look back at what I have been reading, watching and listening to ...

Books

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer
The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
Sensational Socks by Charlene Schurch
A Street Without a Name: Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria by Kapka Kassabova
A Vicarage Family: a Biography of Myself by Noel Streatfeild

TV

Lark Rise to Candleford (Series 2) - finished
Grand Designs
The Number One Ladies Detective Agency
The Apprenctice

On My iPod

English folk music - Kate Rusby, Seth Lakeman, Steeleye Span
Holst - St. Paul's Suite
Bach - Brandenburg Concertos and other

4 x 10 Reading Challenge: Update 2

Finished book titles are blue, with those completed since my last post in bold; books in my current reading pile are green.

Biography

• Nella Last's War: the Second World War Diaries of Housewife, 49 (ed. Richard Broad)
• Nella Last's Peace: the Post-War Diaries of Houseife, 49 - interesting, but I didn't like it as much as the first book. The sense that although the war was over, things were getting worse rather than better, was depressing.
• Flora Thompson: the Story of the Lark Rise Writer (Gillian Lindsay) - I enjoyed getting to know Flora / "Laura" as she really was, and what happened to her after she left Lark Rise and Candleford (which I discovered was based largely on Buckingham, a town I know well). The biggest disappointment of the book was the discovery that in real life Laura's father was not the conscientious family man shown in the TV series of Lark Rise to Candleford, but an increasingly embittered man who spent much of the family income on drink.
• Alison Uttley, the Life of a Country Child (Denis Judd) - following my own rabbit trail after reading Little Grey Rabbit's Pancake Day to Little Cherub.

Crafts

• A History of Hand Knitting (Richard Rutt)
• Sensational Knitted Socks (Charlene Schurch) - also in my Amazon package, thanks to the enthusiasm of Elizabeth de Hority (a homeschooling mother suffering from breast cancer ... please say a prayer for her).
  

Faith

• The Shrines of Our Lady in England (Anne Vail) - still reading as this is an easy book to pick up, read a snippet, and put down.
• My Life With the Saints (James Martin, S.J.) - three chapters in so far.
• A Pocket Guide to St. Paul (Scott Hahn) - arriving from Amazon any day, thanks to Alicia's review.

Fiction

• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Mary Ann Shaffer) - set in 1946, the novel is framed as correspondence between English writer Juliet Ashton and members of a literary society on the Channel Island of Guernsey. Juliet gradually uncovers details of life on the island during the German occupation while simultaneously developing a relationship with her new friends that leads her to travel to Guernsey. Written with a light touch and easy to read, but includes serious themes of wartime suffering and loss.
  
• The Uncommon Reader (Alan Bennett) - a witty and clever short novel (120 pages). The Queen borrows a book from the Westminster travelling library, and begins a literary journey that accelerates until books begin to outweigh duty in her estimation, and her courtiers feel obliged to try to deflect her. Excellent.
  

Geography and Travel

• Beatrix Potter At Home in the Lake District (Susan Denyer) - started but stalled. Hoping to get back to it.

History

• The Road to Wigan Pier (George Orwell)

Science and Nature

• Electric Universe (David Bodanis)
• A Year in the Country (Alison Uttley) - part of that Little Grey Rabbit / Alison Uttley rabbit trail.
  

7 Quick Takes

____________________

1. I am vindicated. After years of torturous maths lessons, Angel has finally admitted that yes, she accepts that she really can do maths, as evidenced by being moved up to the top maths set.

___________________

2. One reason I'm glad to be British ... a senior government minister can have green custard thrown in his face and the protestor responsible doesn't even get arrested. And all credit to Peter Mandelson for taking it with rather more good humour than John Prescott did during the egg-throwing incident.

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3. The older I get, the more my reading skews towards non-fiction, but I have just thoroughly enjoyed two pieces of fiction: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer, and The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett, recommended by Shari and Lissa respectively.

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4. Getting into Grandma's car after lunch, Little Cherub asked if I was going to "push" the car. I think she meant drive.

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5. How to find easy-to-pull-down trousers or leggings for a newly potty-trained but very tiny 2.75yo? Ones that pull down as opposed to fall down? The best fit seem to be ... gulp ... Gap, which is sadly out of my budget. I know they fit as she has one pair from an outfit that was a gift, and I found another pair in their sale. But £20 for a pair of toddler jeans, anyone? Dresses are not working for the time being as she can't manage tights yet.

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6. Mister Linky has reappeared as mysteriously as he disappeared from my computer. Joy! I can now find other people's Quick Takes and Day Books.

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7. Little Cherub is taking a nap for the first time this week. Even more joy!

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Read more quick takes at Jen's Conversion Diary.

4 x 10 Reading Challenge: Update

My reading so far, which has already mutated a bit from the original list. Books I have finished are in blue, books in my current reading pile are green.

Biography

Nella Last's War: the Second World War Diaries of Housewife, 49 (ed. Richard Broad) - this book had me mesmerised. It is a series of extracts from the diaries kept by a middle-aged north country housewife during WW2 for "Mass Observation", a social research organisation for which a wide cross-section of people kept diaries from the 1930s to the 1950s. Nella Last had a writer's gift which gave her Mass Observation diary vivid immediacy. Imagine reading a detailed blog written during the war, if such a thing had existed then. Riveting. The sequel, Nella Last's Peace, is on my reading list.

Flora Thompson: the Story of the Lark Rise Writer (Gillian Lindsay) - waiting to be collected from the library. I have been loving the TV series of Lark Rise to Candleford, and I'm intrigued to see just how autobiographical the Lark Rise books are.

Crafts

A History of Hand Knitting (Richard Rutt) - nearly finished with this one, so I am counting it as read. The author, the former Anglican bishop of Leicester (somehow I have never imagined a knitting bishop!), treats his subject seriously, with lots of technical detail. A light and easy read it is not. It is informative and often interesting, but I skipped some sections rather than get bogged down.

Faith

The Shrines of Our Lady in England (Anne Vail) - our library system rarely holds recent Catholic publications so I was delighted to spot this on the shelf. About a quarter of the way through and loving it. Part history and part travel guide.

Geography and Travel

Beatrix Potter At Home in the Lake District (Susan Denyer) - waiting to be read. I was hoping to see Beatrix Potter's home when we visited the Lakes but it was still closed for the winter, so I will have to content myself with the book.

History

The Road to Wigan Pier (George Orwell) - a book of two parts. The first part is a series of descriptions of the conditions suffered by the poor and unemployed in northern England during the 1930s; the second is a long and rather tedious essay on the iniquities of the English middle classes and the necessity for the inevitable victory of socialism. Part one was an interesting piece of social history; looking back from the perspective of a world in which communism has been seen to have failed, part two was a curiosity, but I confess I gave up a chapter or two before the end.

Science and Nature

Electric Universe (David Bodanis) - a survey of the history of scientific discoveries in the field of electricity (ouch! bad pun!). I found the book a mixed bag. The historical aspect was intriguing, but the scientific explanations were frustratingly limited. Or maybe my understanding was frustratingly limited. Whichever, I felt I should have finished the book understanding more about how the various electrical discoveries worked than I did.

4 x 10 Book Challenge - Reading List

After trawling through my bookshelves and the library catalogue, I have put together my 4 x 10 Challenge reading list. I gave myself one rule ... everything on the list had to be available from the library or already on my shelves. I'm not planning to be dogmatic about sticking to the list - if something better comes along, I'll adjust as I go. The categories are rather eclectic, including "serendipity" for books that didn't fit anywhere else. (Yes, I know that's a cheat!)

Biography

William Wilberforce (William Hague)
The Last Man Who Knew Everything (Andrew Robinson)
Hildegard of Bingen: the Woman of Her Age (Fiona Maddocks)
Nella Last's War: the Second World War Diaries of Housewife 49 (ed. Richard Broad)

Children's Historical Fiction

Stars of Fortune (Cynthia Harnett)
The Marsh King (C. Walter Hodges)
Puck of Pook's Hill (Rudyard Kipling)
Knight Crusader (Ronald Welch)

Crafts

A History of Hand Knitting (Richard Rutt)
Two-At-A-Time Socks (Melissa Morgan Oakes)
The Complete Guide to Scrapbooking (Sarah Beaman)
Out-of-Bounds: Scrapbooking Without Boundaries (Jodi Amidei and Torrey Scott)

Education

All Must Have Prizes (Melanie Phillips)
Teach Me To Do It Myself (Maja Pitamic)
How To Foster Creativity in Young Children (Mary Mayesky)
How Children Learn: From Montessori to Vygotsky (Linda Pound)

Faith

The Saints' Guide to Happiness: Everyday Wisdom From the Lives of the Saints (Robert Ellsberg)
There is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind (Anthony Flew)
The Fathers of the Church (Mike Aquilina)
Three Cardinals: Newman, Wiseman, Manning (E.E.Reynolds)

Fiction

Napoleon of Notting Hill (G.K.Chesterton)
The Friday Night Knitting Club (Kate Jacobs)
The Spear (Louis de Wohl)
Mansfield Park (Jane Austen)

Geography and Travel

A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History's Greatest Traveller (Jason Roberts)
Shadow of the Silk Road (Colin Thubron)
The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek (Barry Cunliffe)
Beatrix Potter At Home in the Lake District (Susan Denyer)

History

Paris: Biography of a City (Colin Jones)
Yiddish Civilisation: the Rise and Fall of a Forgotten Nation (Paul Kriwaczek)
The Road to Wigan Pier (George Orwell)
How We Built Britain (David Dimbleby)

Science and Nature

Electric Universe, David Bodanis
The Chemical Choir: a History of Alchemy, P. G. Maxwell-Stuart
The Planets (Dava Sobel)
The Secret Life of Trees (Colin Tudge)

Serendipity

Saints in the Landscape (Graham Jones)
Tales from Chaucer (Eleanor Farjeon)
The Thrift Book: Live Well and Spend Less (India Knight)
How to Talk So Kids Will Listen (Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish)

4 x 10 Book Challenge

I have been inspired by Meredith at Sweetness and Light (who got the idea from Painted Rainbows and Chamomile Tea) to take up this challenge - read forty books, four in each of ten different subject areas. The aim is supposed to be to read them in a year, but I'm looking for a fun way of structuring a reading list and not to put myself under pressure, so I'm not going to give myself a target. They will get read when they get read.

I'm working on my list of books, and will post it later.