oandthegang hopes to do a little better this year

Happy New Year Thingers!

Loads of reviews yet to be completed for last year, but as the posts for 2016 are already piling up I thought I should start in. The New Year began in discussion about books with a friend. I find the whole business of lists and targets an anathema, but as a toe in the water I will make some resolutions for this year. Resolution 1: Buy fewer (ideally no) books. Resolution 2: Weed existing books. Resolution 3: Read retained books.

Thinking of this my eye fell upon the nearest piles of books - four of them. Looking down the piles I was pleased to find that I had already read a number of the books, others I would probably never read, some had been pulled out for potential culling, and that left a final pile, approximately 30 cms high, made up of books which I would be annoyed for a variety of reasons not to have read. So there, selected by the fickle finger of fate, is my very short reading list. There will be diversions, including book club reads, but hopefully I will get to the bottom of this pile and at that point shall haul out another 30 cms of books and work down that.

So, in no particular order, I have:-

Katherine Swynford: The story of John of Gaunt and his Scandalous Duchess by Alison Weir
The Proud Highway by Hunter S Thompson
A House In St John's Wood by Matthew Spender (for some reason Touchstone is linking this book to Macbeth!!!)
Trial By Battle by Jonathan Sumption (which I failed miserably to read last September)
Malevolent Muse by Oliver Hilmes
The Greatest Knight by Thomas Asbridge
and
The Mistresses of Cliveden by Natalie Livingstone

In addition I need to finish some interrupted books:
Blade Of Light by Andrea Camilleri
I know there are others and I will come across them

In the meantime I have a very pleasant diversion in reviewing my Wodehouse collection to find the best book or short story to recommend to someone who has never read him but is pretty much guaranteed to hate him.

Reading list notwithstanding, I had promised myself that on 1 January I would finally start reading Doctor Zhivago. The day is here, and I am looking forward to it.

(As a point of clarification I began reading this last Autumn, but got interrupted only a few pages in, so this is a restart)

Happy New Year and best of luck with Doctor Zhivago! :)

>3 saraslibrary: Thank you Sara. And Happy New Year to you.

Having started a list I find I am in danger of adding to it, - seeing books around the house and thinking 'Oh, I should add that one' - and I find nothing so off-putting as an enormous list. So, restricting list candidature to books within close proximity to the initial pile, and including 'Read Or Cull' books:-

A Month In The Country by J L Carr - classic I've always meant to read, and in a pretty cover by Penguin Modern Classics, but Read Or Cull. SUCCESS: Read 4 January

The South Country by Edward Thomas - Read or Cull (as per Ask The Fellows Who Cut The Hay, below)

Parish Church Treasures by John Goodall - this is more of a magazine read, as it is linked to a series of articles in Country Life magazine, but I find it easy to acquire books like this and then never get round to reading them properly. I shall be fierce with myself and make this Read Or Cull.

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante - this author and series are new to me, but since December has been recommended by several people and I was given this for Christmas. Perhaps there is something zeitgeisty about it, so should probably be read soon before the moment passes.

Memoirs by William Rees-Mogg - recent impulse acquisition, so no pressure.

Diana Cooper by Philip Ziegler - I've refused this fence once before, so this year it really is Read Or Cull even though it does fit very well with a lot of my other reading.

H is For Hawk by Helen Macdonald - I was initially captivated by the cover (I confess that many of my selections are made on that basis) and then favourable reviews were everywhere, but from what I have seen in those reviews I think it is not a book to be casually picked up, and I've not yet been in the right frame of mind to start it. With regret I may have to make it a Read Or Cull. CULL. 28 February: I have picked this book up and put it down again barely opened sufficiently often to accept that I shall never read it, or at any rate not for a very long time, so I have culled it.

Ask The Fellows Who Cut The Hay by George Ewart Evans - After reading The Morville Hours and Four Hedges and discovering the very wonderful Little Toller publishing company and their lovely editions I started frequenting a small corner of an independent bookshop which was filled with writing about the British countryside and rural life. The South Country, above, is another book acquired under this influence. Read or Cull (this particular book is Faber & Faber rather than Little Toller)

A Small Circus by Hans Fallada - having read and loved two Falladas I began acquiring more, but a break between Falladas was appropriate, and then inevitably I moved on and this sank in the pile.

Mary Queen Of Scots by Antonia Fraser - I'm not sure when I was given this enormously thick paperback, but the last reprint date given is 1976. The book has had some sort of anniversary re-issue, and I recently started reading Antonia Fraser's My History (don't know why Touchstones has brought up The Hunger Games!) so it really is high time I got this read. Perhaps a fresh edition would get me over the hurdle, as my copy is very yellowed and the glue is failing on the plates, and I feel somewhat daunted whenever I look at it.

Hot Dogs And Cocktails by Peter Conradi - this complements a lot of other books I was reading last year, but I ran out of steam. I think I would enjoy it, but this year it must be Read Or Cull.

Getting To Know The General by Graham Greene - having been sufficiently inspired by a SassyLassy review to have this book printed to order for me I really ought to read it!

Poldark: Demelza by Winston Graham - Inspired by the recent BBC remake of the series I bought the first two volumes. I've read and enjoyed the first, perhaps I need to do some boxset viewing to get me back in the mood for this second one. Low priority.

Marrying Out by Harold Carlton - a nice Slightly Foxed hardback edition bought on a whim. At some point I really should either slip off the wrapper and read it or else pass it on.

As a small reminder to myself, I need to finish the Barchester Chronicles, prune the Wodehouses (as I can seldom remember which book is which I think a judiciously chosen selection is all that is needed for permanent ownership) and perhaps get back to Hornblower.

I'm already feeling somewhat weighed down by this list, and I know I will be reading other things as well (in fact I need to go out and hunt down what I suspect may be a rather large book which I must read for an imminent bookclub meeting) so even though this is a prompt sheet rather than a firm target, I shall stop now.

I loved A Month in the Country, and that Fallada is new to me; I've read several other Falladas.

A Month in the Country is an extraordinary book. It would be shame to discard it without reading it. Likewise, My Brilliant Friend. I think that it will still be being read in twenty or a hundred years. No need to rush into reading it if you don't feel like it.

>6 rebeccanyc: Hi Rebecca. Happy New Year. I've just checked the preface to see if A Small Circus had any other name, but I can't see one. This translation is 2012, its original title was Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben, pub 1931, and it is described in the Foreward as 'one of the best fictional representations of the forces that brought the Weimar Republic to its knees and paved the way for National Socialism', and is apparently based on the author's experiences when working for a newspaper in a small town in Schleswig-Holstein. Looking forward to reading it, he was such a good writer.

>6 rebeccanyc:, >7 RidgewayGirl: Thank you both. A Month In The Country will be moved up the queue to slot in right after Doctor Zhivago, or perhaps even slipped in on an appropriate occasion, being only eighty-five pages long.

I'm glad you're going to give A Month in the Country a try. I agree with Rebecca and Kay--it's a marvelous book.

>6 rebeccanyc:, >7 RidgewayGirl:, >10 cabegley: Woke up this morning in the perfect mood to read A Month In The Country, which I did. Thank you all for the push to get me to read it. I did enjoy it, though I was fighting my anxiety about how it would all end. Definitely one to keep for rereading.



(cover probably not justified as this isn't a proper review, but I've just learnt how to do this!)

>11 Oandthegang: I'm glad you enjoyed A Month in the Country. It was a five star read for me last year.

Just wanted to say that I, too, loved A Month in the Country. A five star read for me a couple of years ago. I ordered two or three other books by Carr, but have yet to read them. If I remember correctly I got them second hand. With the exception of A Month in the Country, I think he's largely out of print.

>7 RidgewayGirl: Seconding RidgewayGirl's comment about My Brilliant Friend - I think it's zeitgeisty because it's been a real slow burn word-of-mouth success, with more people picking it up each time one of the sequels comes out and their friends start raving about it again.

>11 Oandthegang: I'm so glad you enjoyed it!

Well, the list thing is working for me, but only because it is also a physical stack - in fact two stacks - on the chest of drawers in the bedroom, so the first thing I see in the morning is two stacks of unread books, each slightly over 30cms high. (I am good at shutting my mind to the hundreds of other unread books in the rest of the house.) Venturing into a bookshop today to buy a pocket diary I saw a new biography over which I hovered. Not only was I interested, but I had a suspicion that this was the book I was supposed to be reading for my book club, though pressure is off there as I can't make the meeting. As I flicked through and considered the enormous size, which guaranteed I would never get it read in paperback, those two stacks of books came to mind, and the idea of adding over four more centimetres with one book was too awful. So double success within two days: one book read, one book not bought!

>13 theaelizabet: I looked at Carr's other entries on the LT author listing; they make a curious collection. I would be interested to know more about him.

For various reasons I have just recommenced reading Doctor Zhivago, but in a different translation from that which I began last year. I am now reading the Pevear and Volokhonsky 2010 translation (pub Harvill, also Vintage). I know P&V are highly regarded, but, Reader, be warned, there is No Mention of troika harnessing!!

As to the difference in translation, here is the 1958 translation by Max Hayward and Manya Harari, which in a footnote explained the harnessing arrangement which accounted for the different movement of the two horses:-

'But the horses were like horses all the world over, the shaft horse pulling with the innate honesty of a simple soul while the off horse arched its neck like a swan and seemed to the uninitiated to be an inveterate idler who thought of nothing but prancing in time to the jangling of its bell.'

And now the 2010 P&V translation:-

'But the horses pulled like all horses in the world; that is, the shaft horse ran with the innate directness of an artless nature, while the outrunner seemed to the uncomprehending to be an arrant idler, who only knew how to arch its neck like a swan and do a squatting dance to the jingling of the harness bells, which its own leaps set going.'

P&V's translation suggests that the off horse is engaged in some particularly energetic Russian folk dancing - it both squats and leaps. Mindboggling and not an activity I would regard as idling. Furthermore, just to be pedantic, if it were the case that the horses were harnessed in troika style the shaft horse would be trotting, not running, while the off horse cantered, neither squatting nor leaping.

I will undoubtedly learn more about things like Goethe's neo-Schellingism from the P&V edition, and it may well be the case that their writing is closer to Pasternak's, but it looks like the 1958 translation would be the better read.

(My conviction that I am missing whatever it is that makes people fans of Russian literature grows stronger.)

Personally, all the snippets I've seen of P&V make me loathe to ever pick up anything they've translated, and what I've heard of their attitudes cements that opinion even further.

Translation differences are so interesting. The only P&V translation I've read was The Brothers Karamazov, and frankly, I was engaged with the text so fully (this was my first time through) that I didn't give the translation much thought. Later, I picked up a copy of the Ignat Ivesy translation, published by Oxford World Classics and read some of my favorite moments from the book--quite a difference. Now a reread of BK in that translation is on my to do list. The P&V was less...hmmm, literary, perhaps?

>18 .Monkey.: I know that P&V's luster has diminished a bit. What attitudes? Sounds intriguing!

I once quoted P&V's thoughts on translating, but it would be hopeless for me to try to find it. I believe they wrote that they like to translated almost literally rather than shaping it for an English readership, but I wouldn't swear to it. I think it was from the introduction to their translation of War and Peace, so I could find it again.

>17 Oandthegang: I read the Hayward & Harari translation last year. The translation itself was absolutely fine but I ended up being quite lukewarm on the book as a whole. It didn't seem to me to be much of a love story at all (mine came with "the greatest love story ever told" printed on the cover).

>19 theaelizabet: From what I've seen, they seem to think they're the 2nd coming. Donald Rayfield in Literary Review says that "Pevear and Volokhonsky themselves do not hesitate to denigrate far superior work by their rivals, past and present, just as Nabokov did. Nabokov’s arrogance had to be accepted as an inalienable part of his genius, whereas Pevear and Volokhonsky’s merely exposes them to severe critical backlash." Pretty much every time I see anything about them, they themselves are raving about how absolutely fabulous they are and how much better they are than everyone else because their pairing & method is so original and it's all just brilliant doncha know. Except they're not brilliant, their language is often completely unnatural and stilted and weird and blah. Gary Saul Morson wrote in Commentary that their translations "take glorious works and reduce them to awkward and unsightly muddles." Lmao.

>20 rebeccanyc: Yes, she translates the Russian directly into English as close as possible to the original, and then he goes through and makes it into more properly formatted English. Except it's still not good English. Or good Russian anymore. It's just, wrong.

I have come to like Robert Chandler's translations.

>22 .Monkey.: Well, that is ⎌interesting. Makes me want to make to compare more texts.

>23 rebeccanyc: For a couple of confused seconds there I read that as Raymond Chandler translations!

More generally, I started a thread within Club Read 2014 called 'I'm pickin' up good translations' for discussion of various translations and as a place for people to recommend translations/translators or comment on those they had found unsatisfactory. People did contribute wide ranging recommendations. I contributed a comparison of three different translations of the opening of Crime And Punishment (touchstone seems unable to cope with the permutations on that one). You might be interested to see those, thealizabet.

>21 thebookmagpie: Perhaps the cover could be done for false pretences. The enormously off-putting introduction to the P&V edition says "... in the West when the novel first appeared. It was criticised for not being what it was never meant to be: a good, old-fashioned, nineteenth century historical novel about the Russian revolution, an epic along the lines of War And Peace. It was also praised for being what it was not: a moving love story, or the lyrical biography of a poet, setting the sensitive individual against the grim realities of Soviet life. ...."

I've been thinking about Russian translations a lot over the past few years. I've read two works translated by P&V - Doctor Zhivago and Life and Fate. I had a hard time with both of them, mainly not enjoying or understanding the flow of the dialogue and finding it absurd to say the least. But who's to say that it wasn't written that way - after all it reflects a fairly absurd time in Russian history when most likely no one was saying what they thought because of the dangers of speaking your mind at the time. I will reread Doctor Zhivago some day and will definitely chose a different translation to see if it works better for me.

Currently, I'm rereading War and Peace. I own the Constance Garnett translation which was done in the early 1900s. I checked out the P&V translation from the library to compare. Back to back, I really prefer the Garnett. I have no doubt that P&V is a more literal translation and possibly more scholarly and accurate, but it just doesn't work in English - at least for me. It is choppy and again the dialogue sounds sort of ridiculous. I think some of this is my personal bias that I've read a ton of early 1900s British literature so Garnett's flow really works for me.

In the end, I'm coming to the personal conclusion that the translation I choose should be the one that is the best reading experience for me. After all, no translation is really going to capture the Russian that I will never take the time to learn.

>27 japaul22: Your comments about the dialogue are entirely accurate to what others say about P&V. And there is nothing more scholarly about it, she speaks Russian natively, he speaks English, so she simply reads and translates the Russian words quite literally into English, and then he makes them into more proper English sentences. Except, as you say, they're really not good or natural English, nor are they appropriate to the Russian anymore because it's simply literal and that's not how languages work. While in theory their approach sounds like a good thing, in reality, at least for the two of them, it does not work as intended.

The Danish Girl (film) based on the novel The Danish Girl

I saw the film 'The Danish Girl' last night. I know there is probably as much political discussion of this film as there is standard critical review, and from the information given in The Telegraph (as one site among doubtless many) it seems that events have been considerably simplified for dramatic effect, not that that is unusual, and in any event the film is based on a novel of the same name (which I have not read), being a fictionalized account of the life of Lili Ellbe / Einar Wegenar.

Leaving all that aside, and taking the film just as itself, I found the film interesting for the questions it raised about love as well as identity. The film represents Einar and Gerda Wegenar as being deeply in love before the accidental discovery of Lili. (I gather from the reviews that Lili herself maintained that events were only set in train by the accident of Gerda asking Einar to pose as a woman to stand in for a missing model whom Gerda had been painting.) Lili seems to have become a very different person from Einar: Einar was a painter, Lili refused to paint. It may be that Lili wished to shed Einar entirely and for that reason abandoned Einar's profession. At one point Gerda says to Lili 'I miss my husband', she wants him back, she wants to be able to hug him, and she asks Lili if Lili could contact him, bring him back (I paraphrase, as I have forgotten the exact dialogue). Lili says she cannot. At another point Gerda says that she has promised Einar that she would look after him and keep him from harm. Lili replies that Einar is gone. There are suggestions in the film that Gerda might unconsciously have always recognised a woman within Einar, but, as already noted, Lili is not a female Einar, she is someone else entirely. She works in a department store and at night sits in bed telling Gerda about her hopes to someday marry and have children.

Who is it that Gerda loves?

In a moment of despair Einar tells Gerda that he thinks of killing himself but he is stopped by the knowledge that to do so would mean the death of Lili, yet it seems that Lili needs Einar to disappear - effectively to die - in order that she may live, leaving Gerda as a widow with no body to bury. If Einar understands that Lili, a seemingly separate person, is within him, is Gerda relating to Lili as someone who carries Einer within her?

As mentioned above, the film presents a particular version of events, and Lili's life and relationships were fuller than it represents, and my comments only relate to the film. I would be interested to read the biography Man Into Woman edited by Niels Hoyer.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/the-danish-girl/true-story-lili-elbe-transgender...

>20 rebeccanyc: Maybe it was from the profile the New Yorker wrote on them a while back?
www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/11/07/the-translation-wars

>21 thebookmagpie:, >26 Oandthegang: The best theory that I've heard is that the "love story" is not between the characters, rather it is the love for the country.

>17 Oandthegang:

"(My conviction that I am missing whatever it is that makes people fans of Russian literature grows stronger.)"

This comment caught my attention. I've had some incredible experiences with Russian lit. Good luck O.

>32 dchaikin: Thanks for the encouragement. I have settled into the 1958 translation and am doing my best to read as though it were any old book I'd picked off the shelf.

Oh, heavens!. Read the Hayward!

I am a Russian fiction fan from way back. Oblomov is a book I reread regularly. I am also mad for Turgenev and go to Chekhov when I need to get beyond myself, if that makes any sense? Pasternak is not my favorite.

I'm a Russian fiction fan too, but I understand how it can be tough initially.

I will eventually get to the end of another book, but in the meantime, following on from last year's discussion about the omissions from the Oxford Junior Dictionary, I have just caught up with an article in the National Trust Magazine Autumn 2015 by Robert Macfarlane, the author of, among others, Landmarks, which I haven't read. Macfarlane says the subject of the book "was language's wonderful capacity to enchant the natural world". It seems that Landmarks includes - or possibly consists of - nine glossaries, organised into groups such as Uplands, Grasslands, etc. recording what he calls 'place-words', which he defines as terms for particular features of terrain, elements, weather, and creaturely life' as they exist in the languages and dialects of the UK. He wants to preserve and bring them back into use - to "rewild our language for landscape". Some of the words are excellent - 'smeuse', which is a Sussex word for a gap in the base of a hedgerow made by the regular passage of a small animal', others slightly puzzling - the Hebridean Gaelic phrase 'rionnach maoim' means 'the shadows cast on the moorland by clouds moving across the sky on a bright and windy day' which while very poetic seems to have limited conversational use, and some potentially confusing - 'aftermath' used to describe 'the first fresh growth of grass after a meadow has been cut'. We're potentially back into the question of whether words determine how we think about the world or instead reflect our thinking. Macfarlane had collected 3,000 of these terms before the book was first published, and he invited readers to send in any more words or expressions they knew. It seems he has been overwhelmed and the glossaries will be revised and extended for the paperback edition which is due for publication this year. I'm looking forward to this publication, and the opportunity to use words such as dumberclash and skolder, which he dropped into the article without explanation. In the meantime I shall look for smeuses next time I'm out walking.

The request in the magazine for further words to be contributed made me wonder if I know any such special words, but because I'm seldom in situations where such terms might be used I realised that I had no way of knowing if I have any different words, though having had a largely urban life it is unlikely. Odd to think we might all know words that are dying out but we don't know that we do because we don't use them. The only oddness in my vocabulary I know of is my pronunciation of the word 'buoy' as 'booee', which everyone who pronounces the word as 'boy' finds hilarious. I've been told mine is some sort of regional pronunciation which for no obvious reason I share with people from Cornwall. Which reminds me about a discussion on the radio last week after the death of David Bowie. A number of people who had known and worked with Bowie were discussing him and the presenter commented that despite knowing and working with Bowie they had differing pronunciations of his name, some pronouncing the 'Bow' syllable like something to be worn in the hair, and others like something to be done in front of a curtain. One of the participants said that Bowie himself didn't know. He'd read the word before he'd heard it and therefore wasn't certain of its pronunciation when he took it for his stage name. I don't know if this is true, it seems odd that he wouldn't have settled on one side of the fence or the other, but I like the idea that he so evaded definition that throughout a life of such fame no one was sure if they were getting his name right and he was silent on the matter.

Just to add to the confusion, Bob Dylan refers to a Bowie knife in one of his songs; he pronounces Bowie the same way I pronounce buoy, and it seems Dylan's is a recognised pronunciation of the name of the knife, though I don't know if anyone ever applied it to David Bowie. Apart from me.

>36 Oandthegang: The first time I heard buoy pronounced as 'booee' was in a computer game, where it took me a while to work out what they were talking about. It was American, so I made the assumption it was the standard US pronunciation of the word, but since it's not a word that comes up regularly in conversation I've never really verified that. It never occured to me that it might also be a regional thing.

I always just assumed people who pronounced David Bowie's name in any other way than the "bow tie" pronunciation of the first syllable were wrong, since that's how he pronounced his name himself, and ultimately that's the only source that really matters. But he didn't seem to care if someone used another pronunciation, so people probably just carried on calling him whatever they wanted.

Today I learned a new collective noun: laughter. Its meaning is "the whole number of eggs laid by a fowl before she is ready to sit" (OED) It is used in 2.1.34(Oxford edition) of The Tempest in a quick back and forth about a wager. It would seem to fit in with your/ Macfarlane's "creaturely life" category.

Buoy as booee is also used in parts of the east coast of North America.That it comes from the west coast of England makes sense given the numbers of migrants from that part of the world to the east coast. Bow (as in a ribbon) strikes me as the use in bowie knife. I notice that in Ontario Queen's Quay is Queen's Kway, whereas in the east it would be Queen's Key. And then there's slough.

>36 Oandthegang:, >37 valkyrdeath:, >38 SassyLassy: Buoy - I pronounce it booee and assumed that was the standard American pronunciation though I'm from the south so a lot of non-standard stuff there.

I love the idea of Landmarks. There are so many of these strange and regional phrasings that I find fascinating but particularly enjoy the particulars of the natural world.

I hear "booee" in American TV shows quite a lot, which is where I first encountered it (along with "bay-sil" and "o-reg-in-o").

The inventor of the Bowie knife did pronounce his name Booee, but I've never come across anyone else of that spelling who did so.

>38 SassyLassy: Slough? Is that an 'ow' / 'uff' variation? I'm always hesitant, only certain when I'm referring to the English town, which is an 'ow'.

How very confusing about laughter, as its definition makes it seem to be a number word with a variable value. I initially wondered if a laughter became a clutch once the bird sat, and whether therefore a laughter might exist only briefly, but if laughter is a number it would be fixed as the original size of the clutch (if I've got this right) prior to any accidents or predation reducing the number of eggs in the clutch. It's discussions like this that make me long for a complete printed OED plus supplements, though I have nowhere to put it.

I really must reread The Tempest at some point, although my copy is an illustrated edition with no notes!

Yes, as a northeastern USA'er I can confirm boo-ee for buoy. But I'm fascinated that the Bowie of a Bowie knife was pronounced the same way. I have always heard Bowie knife and Bowie, David pronounced as bow(as in a tied ribbon)-ee.

I pronounce slough as the same as I would a tree bough . . . that is the Cape Cod method.

Interesting. It had never occurred to me that "buoy" could be pronounced any way except boo-ee. I'm from California.

I knew that Bowie knives were a soundalike for my pronunciation of Bowie, but I am more surprised when people say it that way than when they say it the same way as David Bowie, just because as far as I'm aware, it's a fringe case.

Slough for me is sloo, if you're talking about the waterway. If you're talking about sloughing off skin, it's sluff.

>43 ursula: Sloo is new to me.

I found this http://www.thefreedictionary.com/slough which has little icons you can press to hear the word. I love their delivery. Note that at the top they seem to suggest that US and UK pronunciation differs.

Reaching for the Shorter Oxford it is slough to rhyme with how (or bough - good one sibyx) for soft miry ground, swamps, etc, the Slough of Despond, and a ditch, drain, or rut, but pronounced sloo for a body of stagnant water or a side channel of a river (slew is also a word with a similar meaning). This latter definition is identified as North American, suggesting that the sloo pronunciation is reserved for that use. In Scots and in dialect slough (how) can also mean the core of an animal's horn.

Pronounced as sluff, slough is cast off outer skin (snakes and caterpillars), a scab, a feature or habit which is cast off, but also the collapse of soil or rock down a bank or into a hole.

The verb, transitive or intransitive is pronounced (and may also be spelt) sluff unless it is used to mean imprison, lock up, or to be swallowed up or stuck in a swamp, in which case it rhymes with how. (I've been sloughed?)

So reading the Shorter Oxford it seems that the pronunciation depends on the use, not the country.

No wonder I approach the word with trepidation.

Ah yes, and I was thinking of the swampy sort. And slough-sluff for outer skin, yes, I know that and it was tickling the back of my mind. Slough as in the waterway I know as slew. So that is the northeastern usa take on it all. Didn't know of the collapse of soil or rock down a bank or into a hole.

Now it also seems to me I have heard and used an expression meaning, a crowd, "A slew of people were waiting etc. . . " But I'm thinking one uses it with more particularity than one might at first think. "A slew of problems . ." yes, but "A slew of turtles . . " Well, no. It almost implies, I think, something a bit problematical used thus? Anyway, I assume the usage is somehow derived from either the waterway or the swampy area.

Arrggh, yes, 'a slew of... ' Naturally on checking I have discovered lots of slew definitions but the large quantity one has a different root. It's derived from the Irish word for a crowd or multitude. And that Irish word is? Slau(gh) Looks dangerously close to our old friend slough, though of course it isn't.

Fortunately my copy of An Exaltation of Larks is packed away somewhere, so I cannot check to see if there is a noun for a number of turtles.

For a group of turtles I found the following: Bale, Nest, Turn, Dole.

>45 sibylline: I had never thought of the origin of slew. I always use it with whole, as in "a whole slew of people", "a whole slew of things" and always thought it indicated a kind of sufficiency, as in enough people to gang up, or enough problems to overwhelm, in other words, sort of enough to metaphorically slay me, from which we get slew. I suspect this version is wildly erroneous.

>41 Oandthegang: The thing on the side of the road filled with muddy water is a slew in the west, a slow in the east. That Slough of Despond really does slow you down. Sluff only seems to happen with stuff, as in "sluff it off".

>47 RidgewayGirl: Love the idea of a bale or dole of turtles.

>38 SassyLassy: ff.
Ten posts about Slough and no-one's found a pretext to say "Come friendly bombs..." yet?

>49 thorold: Ah the drawbacks of a North American education, at least at the high school level, which I believe would be the paltry excuse of at least several of us! John Betjeman and most post WWI English poets just don't appear on the curriculum here. You have introduced me to an excellent poem though and had I known it, I would certainly have used it! I even found a reading of it to hear how it was pronounced by Tom O'Bedlam. I noticed that he read the title (Slough) and then the word in the poem with different pronunciations. What is one to do?!

>50 SassyLassy: What is one to do?
Tricky. In the old days the accepted solution to the problem of being American was to marry into the English aristocracy, but where are you going to find an English aristocrat who still reads poetry...?
I suspect that American education, whilst a bit light on Larkin and Betjeman, might have other compensations.

If you really want to explore British poets, http://www.poetryarchive.org is a great resource. I can also recommend a gloriously funny anthology called The poetry of sex, which has most of the great and good of British poetry in it, and wasted quite a few hours I was intending to do something useful with this weekend...

Slough always reminds me of this:
https://youtu.be/-935cbXTt_g

>49 thorold: Great laughter at your post. I cannot think of Slough without thinking 'Come friendly bombs..' I'm surprised it hasn't tried to change its name, in the same way that Staines changed its name to Staines On Thames to try to shake its association with Ali G.

The other Betjeman that always comes unbidden to mind is the one about Miss J Hunter Dunn : http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Miss+J+Hunter+Dunn&&view=detail&...

(edited for spelling error)

>48 SassyLassy: Great slogan 'Sluff The Stuff'.

When I was a kid, we had a book called A Gaggle of Geese that was full of collective nouns for animals -- and it had great illustrations too.

Saw The Revenant tonight. Stunning. Utterly utterly stunning. Deserves to sweep the board. Curiously I know someone who was bored by it, but I suspect they saw it on the small screen. This is a movie which really needs to be seen on a big screen.

Thanks for the Betjeman references!

>56 Oandthegang: I saw The Revenant too at the weekend. I haven't yet decided if I liked it or not although you are absolutely right in saying it is utterly stunning! The bear attack was so very realistic. I had very bad dreams that night. I believe it was filmed in Alberta, our neighbouring province. We used to live there and my husband always says I left my heart in Alberta.

>58 VivienneR: It was filmed initially in Alberta but then moved to Argentina when shooting overran and the Canadian snow began to vanish. I heard an interview with Leonardo Di Caprio in which he said that the director filmed in chronological order using only natural light. Having never been to either place I was staring very hard trying to see if I could tell when they made the switch, but I couldn't. I hadn't known that Argentina could, at least in part, look like Alberta. They both looked very beautiful.

I grew up in Nova Scotia, but have spent most of my life in England. Perverse as it may seem to people currently digging their way out of sundry blizzards snow is probably what I miss most, so an entire film devoted to huge screen views of deep snow was a treat. (Looking at the snow is also one of the things I love about all those Scandi-crime tv series. Who cares if the plot makes sense, just show me more snow!)

I spent my childhood in Edmonton and then London, ON, so I understand completely about the snow!

(This is like that moment in B-movies when the heroine realises she... is... in a MADHOUSE.)

Traitor's Purse by Margery Allingham

The man lay in a small pool of light in an otherwise darkened hospital room. He was pleased that his mind was beginning to function sufficiently for him to imagine he might be in hospital and to know what a hospital was. He was aware that sometimes in such circumstances one loses the ability to read, but that knowledge puzzled him, as he had no idea what 'such circumstances' might be. He could hear low voices at a distance and concentrated on them hoping to catch some words which might mean anything to him. He heard a man say "Probably he won't even remember what's happened - or he'll say he doesn't until he's seen a lawyer." "They'll hang him, I suppose?" asked a woman. "Bound to, Miss. It was one of us, you see, so there's no way of getting out of it. Once a man slugs an officer of police he's for it."

The man in bed felt that he had known policemen very well and liked them, but why and what on earth had happened to him? The policeman had said he would have no memory, and he didn't, only a great fear that went beyond his personal safety, and a responsibility about fifteen. But what that responsibility might be, and indeed what 'fifteen' signified were mysteries. Filled with a sense of urgency separate from any wish to avoid the noose, the man escaped the hospital, noticing things about himself such as his unthinking ability to pick locks, drive fast, and assume an air of authority. Life becomes more complicated when he is found by people who know him and drive him to a weekend party at a large house where he is an expected guest. There he is given a letter addressed from 'My office. The Yard.', and says "Dear A.C..... For God's sake get busy. Keep your eye on the calendar. The figures 15 turn my belly whenever I see or hear them. .. .. Forced to rely on you only now. Every other line has gone slack and the time is so short. If you fail, for my part I shall wait until the balloon actually does go up and then swim quietly out to sea. .. If this thing happens it is the END. .... Damn you, succeed. S'.

Albert Campion, for it is he, has to figure out what he is being relied upon to do, and by whom, who the other people he encounters are, and which of them are to be trusted. He discovers that his mission has been so secret that his allies neither know nor expect to know what it is, although they have been providing him with assistance. As if this were not enough, he is having to evade capture by police who have circulated his description following his escape from the hospital. Concerned by both the possibility of arrest for murder and the likely reaction of others to the discovery that the man tasked with saving the country has no idea what he is doing and has significantly impaired mental capacity Campion doesn't tell anyone about his time in hospital and his loss of memory.

This device puts the reader to some extent in the same position as Campion. People appear, information is gathered, but what does it mean?

This book was first published in 1941, and the events of the time are reflected in the plot. The need for a hero who puts nation above self, the nature of the villains, etc. The ultimate solution seems a bit of a let down, but that is perhaps because Allingham has plumbed for a scheme which whilst ultimately devastating in its consequences lacks drama in its delivery. A good old school mystery within the Campion series in which the hero reassesses his relationships with those closest to him.

Allingham is yet another author I haven't read, but this does sound like an interesting premise. I do like this sort of book when it is written before the intrusion of electronic detection and surveillance methods. It seems to make us engage more fully with the story in order to work it all out.

Now that is an intriguing review.

Great review O. And interesting that it was published during WWII.

>62 Oandthegang: Nice review! It just landed on my wishlist.

Oh dear. I have just had a good day bagging up books to take to the charity shop, welcoming the cleared space and the relief from the oppression all those unread volumes induced, but then I read Rebecca's review of Have Mercy On Us All and wanted to check something in the Vargas series, couldn't find the books, thought they might be in storage - and then remembered: I had given them away to a friend who reads whodunnits!!!! I was so fond of those characters that I could forgive Vargas the somewhat uneven quality of the books, but I had decided that having the Dorothy Sayers Wimsey series, the Martin Beck series (I hope they're in storage and I haven't given them away too!), all the James Lees-Milne diaries, and innumerable volumes of P G Wodehouse was quite enough in the way of sets for one very small house. (The Wodehouses stick to me like cartoon glue. Their plots are almost indistiguishable - who else would feature a snake mislaid in a hotel in two separate novels? - which means I can't remember which is which, so end up rereading them whenever I try to cull them.) I have been on the verge of giving the same friend my twenty volumes of Andrea Camilleri, despite my fondness for Inspector Montalbano, as they take up a fair bit of space and are also of variable quality, but will I miss them as much as I am currently missing my Vargases?

>67 Oandthegang: Oh, the dilemma. I had given all of my Sayers away, and wound up getting them all on Kindle so that I could reread them last year.

>68 NanaCC: That's the first argument in favour of a Kindle which has had any appeal for me. Hmm...

I've done this. Donated a book and later was hit with a wave of regret. In this case, I ended up finding a nicer, hardcover edition at a booksale. I've been more careful since, but that has meant that there is an extra stack of books in the category of "waiting to see if I need to keep this or not."

>70 RidgewayGirl: Yes, difficult. I've just had a look at Amazon to test the Vargas books on Kindle; (a) Amazon looks more of a muddled nightmare every time I look at it, (b) not all the Vargas books have been Kindled, and (c) there are Vargas paperback books on sale for more than I paid for them in the first place. World gone mad. Now resisting the urge to go out and buy back the Vargas paper books at a real world bookshop. Perhaps it is better to cull unread books that have outstayed their welcome and then I'll never know what I've missed!

>67 Oandthegang:
Yes, I have similar problems. I've been trying to borrow or use ebooks as far as possible, especially for crime fiction that I'm not so likely to want to re-read, but it still seems a lot easier to acquire new books than to decide to give something away. Space is getting short, and something is going to have to go in the not too distant future. Not the two-and-a-half shelves of Wodehouse, obviously: as you point out, that's a basic necessity of life, and I've been building up a collection for over forty years. But do I really need all those Reginald Hills and Terry Pratchetts? Hmmm.

>71 Oandthegang:
I'm reading Vargas in French, and only two or three of the most recent seem to be available as French e-books here, so I'm having to buy them new, unless they pop up in the charity shop.

As someone who abandoned Pratchetts in airports and hotels for years, only to buy them again as ebooks, I'd say yes, you need them.

Has anyone else noticed LT arbitrarily coming up with curious decisions as to the medium for one's books? I have just noticed on my profile that I apparently have a number of e-books, a cassette recording of Ivy Wallace's Gumpa And The Paint Box, various audio books, printed sheet music, and maps. I don't. This arbitrary assignment can't be linked to mistaken choices for book covers, as the covers for books like the paperback edition of The Five Children And It clearly state their pre-decimalization UK prices, and one of the books was a book published in 1906 for which I had uploaded the cover. Most disconcerting to find that one's entries are being edited by some automatic system. Who knows what else it's been up to?

>74 Oandthegang: Does that happen when you choose a member-uploaded cover, or only the amazon ones? Amazon changes their covers and which editions they go with. I try to only use member-uploaded covers.

I try not to pay too much attention to that kind of info. It's almost impossible to get the correct edition when I select a book, since I can only choose from a predefined catalog, usually Amazon's. I change the cover when it doesn't match mine, which changes the ISBN but not the rest of the info. It's a mess, and I have no doubt my behavior makes it even messier, especially if enough people do similar things, which I'm sure they do.

>75 RidgewayGirl: It's happening on member uploaded images, including ones that I've uploaded myself. I try to avoid Amazon covers because of the changes. I view my books by cover and get most disconcerted when there is an image I don't recognise, and also, it's my books that I want recorded, not Amazon's! I'd be surprised if there's a cassette of Gumpa And The Paintbox. (Have just checked Amazon and see that not only was the book re-issued in the 1990s, but it is allegedly selling new in paperback for £1,882.30 and used in hardcover for £26.40! More Amazon madness). When I don't upload myself I try to use Overcat and download from a museum or archive. Of course it's possible that they themselves have taken images from Amazon.

>76 FlorenceArt: Yes I've had to fight with the ISBN numbers, and if there's a dispute between me and the system I usually go for the cover I've got and delete the ISBN and other code numbers.

>74 Oandthegang: I have had that experience with the designations for book type when they were first introduced. At first the idea of "Paper Book", which was the one it seems most of mine were, seemed somewhat redundant, but then I realized there were Kindles, audios and so on. I don't have a Kindle and still have trouble with the idea of an audiobook as a book, so I was a bit slow to catch on there. I do think Paper Book could be dropped as the list also includes "Hardcover" and "Paperback", both paper books in my world.

It does seem to me though, that as I add books, the default has now become "Paperback", which I change when required, so perhaps there is some sort of fuzzy logic in place for each user, and as you add items to your catalogue, the designation is more tailored to your library. Having said that, however, while my selected designations of added books appear on their respective book pages, they don't seem to make it to my profile page. As this is a new field, I am only using it for books I am adding as I go along, or books previously added which I may be looking at. I haven't gone back to edit most of my previously added books.

As to covers and ISBNs, I don't use amazon search to add a book and have very few problems with covers, especially manually added ones, and even fewer with ISBNs for the books that have them. The ISBN problem seems to be resolved by making sure the edition you select is the one you actually have, time consuming when presented with a list that goes on for pages, but worth it if accuracy is the goal.

>74 Oandthegang:, etc. I really wish no one would have drawn my attention to this.

>69 Oandthegang: For me, there have been other advantages to having my Kindle. Having the complete works of Trollope, Dickens, Wharton, Gaskell, the Brontes and others is a plus, given that in most cases the complete works cost less than $3.00 and in some cases were free. I wouldn't have the room for, or be able to afford all of the print books that I have on my Kindle.

>74 Oandthegang:

I was dumbfounded as well when it started labeling my books as things other than books so I turned off the feature entirely. You can do that by doing the following:

1) Go to your profile page
2) Click on "Edit profile and account"
3) On the left side of the page click on "Media Settings"

From there you can choose your desired options for this new feature. I chose to "Disable entirely".

>81 lilisin: Thanks lilisin, I'll have a look.

They Knew Mr Knight - Dorothy Whipple

Perhaps because Mrs Blake's Christian name is Celia, I had the actress Celia Johnson in my mind's eye while reading this book, and although The Knew Mr Knight was published eleven years before the release of 'Brief Encounter' the image seems appropriate, as I’m sure the Blakes were much like the family in the film.

It is clear from the outset that this is a novel about corruption, and it comes close to covering all of the Deadly Sins.

Thomas Blake is employed in an engineering works founded by his grandfather, but sold by his late father just as Thomas was about to join the firm, so now he works ’as a servant where he should have been the master’. The new owner, Simpson, lost his son in the Great War, so looks with bitterness upon Thomas, who came through unscathed. Simpson has taken to telling Thomas he’s going to sell the business, but Thomas, who believes the business is good, can’t decide whether Simpson is just saying this to distress him, knowing that Thomas could never buy it himself. Family finances are tight because Thomas is also supporting his unpleasant widowed mother, his sister, and his ne’er do well brother, who all live in a separate house in a meaner part of town.

Celia is the warm centre of the family. Her background was more affluent than her present circumstances, but she does not resent the change. Perhaps because she has travelled, been to balls, etc., she is not greedy for them, unlike those around her. “She was the wife of Thomas, the mother of Freda, Ruth and Douglas, the mistress of Agnes (the maid) and of No. 17, the Grove, but when she was alone she was herself. When she was alone, another self, ordinarily covered over, walled in by preoccupations of house, husband and children, took the air, as it were, and walked abroad.” It is perhaps that other self which gives her such a firm anchor and her previous experience which gives her a degree of immunity from the temptation which will be put in her way.

Freda, the elder daughter, deplores her surroundings. She is ashamed of her home and family and spends her time studying women in magazines, imaging herself one of them, and is devastated when her father tells her that she will have to stay on at school and study to become a teacher. At a time when the professions were barred to married women a young girl would equate teaching with a life of spinsterhood far from love or pleasure. Whipple allows Freda a vulnerability seen only by Celia.

Mr Knight, a local man made good, has recently returned to town Few people know what he does, but they know he is very rich. Everyone grovels to him, honoured by his slightest acknowledgement. One day, dashing for a departing train, Blake finds himself in Knight’s first class carriage. Though Blake, a regular commuter, has only a third class ticket, the conductor sees he is being spoken to by Knight and doesn’t ask for his ticket. This is Blake’s first direct experience of the world to which Knight can provide access, but at the same time he has committed a small act of dishonesty in travelling first class for which he has not paid, and the corruption has begun. Blake begins to acquire a certain prestige when it becomes known that he is on speaking terms with Mr Knight.

Knight is a speculator, buying and selling shares and companies, able to accumulate great wealth but accepting the risk of losing everything. Money and what it can bring are all that interest him. His faithful wife is kept in style but left at home while he is seen about with a series of glamorous young women. He agrees to help Thomas buy back the family business. Mrs Knight, lonely and childless, takes an interest in Freda, who rejoices in being seen in the Knights’ chauffeur driven car.

Thomas and Freda fall headlong into the slipstream of the Knights, dazzled by the glamour and utterly failing to understand the world they are entering. Douglas, too, is ensnared. Though she tries to keep them away from the Knights, Celia is unable to protect her children from catastrophic loss of innocence. Ultimately the Blakes are ruined by their contact with Mr Knight.

A well written book which I will certainly reread.

An interesting historical social change is thrown up in this novel in that from time to time Celia wrestles with the notion of God, but she does so almost as though it were simply one of the tasks on her daily list. I have noticed Christian faith appearing somewhat surprisingly in a number of books written around this time, even in crime novels, but as is noted in this Persephone edition, it was a time when Christian observance was an accepted part of everyday life, with weekly attendance at church the norm, regardless of the strength of one’s belief, and a degree of religious observance would have been included in school life. In such a world it would not be surprising for someone in difficulty to think about the faith in which they had been raised.

I had not heard of Persephone books before reading your review. More power to their elbow in rediscovering well written mid 20th century books.

My Grandmothers And I by Diana Holman-Hunt

This is an amazing book which I am utterly failing to review adequately. I've just had two goes at dropping in the cover image using the instructions on message board to no avail, and for over a year I have been trying to find a way to write about the book itself.

It is a memoir by the grand-daughter of the Pre-Raphaelite painter, William Holman-Hunt, who died before she was born. The memoir begins on a birthday, one on which Diana could have been no older than five. Her mother dead, her father in India, Diana is living with her maternal grandparents, the Freemans. Grandfather Freeman was a successful barrister who has become blind and now sits at home. Grandmother Freeman, while supervising Diana's upbringing, is not emotionally engaged with her. Diana says of her "I could never describe her looks, the shape of her face or the colour of her eyes; but her expression seemed to cloud and clear like the sky. She demanded perfection. At the wave of her hand or the touch of a bell, some smiling person would appear and quietly remedy a fault; a dead rose in a vase, a smudge on the window, a weed in a flower bed, would provoke her to complain. She would protest at a confusion of plans or even a silence: ' What terrible muddles! How dull; my dear, can't you see, I want to be amused'. We must all, except Fowler, be neat and gay however we were feeling and our hands and tongues must never rest." Grandmother Freeman's affection is reserved for her son, who visits seldom, but when he does the household is rearranged for him. When Diana complains to her grandfather that she is ignored he explains with brutal honesty that she is simply not interesting enough.

Like many children of well-off Edwardian families, Diana seldom sees other children and has only formal exchanges with the adults of her family. She spends her days with the servants and with people she meets in the countryside around the house. She knows the village policeman, and is friends with the old fisherman who lives on the beach. The aforementioned Fowler is one of the servants. Her official role is unclear, but she is definitely top dog and in practical terms comes closest to holding a mother's place to Diana. Diana's relationships either side of the baize door are shown strongly on her birthday. Fowler wakes her with birthday wishes and a teddy bear which she and three other servants have ordered from Selfridges because they knew she would like one. Grandmother Freeman has quite forgotten that it is Diana's birthday and is dismissive of the toy bear. Grandfather Freeman has remembered her birthday and declares she is to be excused piano practice. Her grandparents give her a pearl necklace to grow into, her maternal aunt gives her a silver piano for her doll's house, and her father sends her the skin of a young leopard which he has shot. He also sends her an extraordinary birthday letter ending "I wish you many happy returns and I am your affectionate father. Postscript. It is time you knew that it is all rot about fairies and Father Christmas.” He has also instructed that she is to spend more time with her H-H grandmother, known as Grand.

No one I have read about has made me as angry as Grand. I have worked at making every allowance for her, but however I rationalise her behaviour my anger remains.

Grand lives in London in a dark, filthy, house which she keeps as a shrine to Holman-Hunt's memory. Terrified of burglars, every night before going to bed she nails tripwires to the floor and hangs bells over the doors. She insists on the subjugation of the body, ‘Brother Ass’. Unspeakably bad and meagre food is prepared by Helen, the only servant, whose domain is a damp basement infested with cockroaches and black beetles. Fowler arranges for fresh food to be sent up from the country but Diana never gets to eat it. One feels her despairing rage as fresh eggs are put aside in favour of foul century eggs and a cake is given away to boy scouts. Most of the house is locked up and the few used rooms are dimly lit and badly heated. Diana is made to sleep on a sofa in Grand’s bedroom and to bathe in Grand’s used bathwater.

Grand won't let anyone forget Holman-Hunt. She stands Diana before his paintings in galleries loudly pointing out all the relations who were his models. She spends so long prostrate at his tomb in Westminster Abbey that Diana is terrified that they will be locked in for the night. She sends Diana barefoot to a children’s party dressed as the goddess Diana in a tunic which Grand has embroidered with her own hair. An inveterate name dropper, Grand is always telling stories about the past, coloured by her own prejudices. She has no sense of the ridiculous, even in H-H’s attempt to boil a horse in the garden. Diana repeats all Grand’s stories to visitors, who leave with surprising and somewhat unreliable information about the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

Diana’s father finally returns. Totally unfit to be a father, he takes the young girl to nightclubs where he drinks with the assorted female habituées. These women are Diana's only guides as she struggles towards adulthood. When on the recommendation of one of them Diana has teeth removed Grand deals with the unsightly result by having her wear a yashmak.

This extraordinary memoir is packed with remarkable incidents. Diana Holman-Hunt had a good ear for dialogue and there are some wonderful throwaway lines. She has somehow written a funny book about an appalling life, the kind of life against which Edith Fowler was protesting when she wrote The Young Pretenders, to which this makes the perfect pair.

(people may notice some later correspondence about my inability to paste in covers. Sassylassy got me through this one, though it appears from this retrospective paste that I may need to do something about sizing!)

Wow what a terrible upbringing. Great review

OK I have again tried to put in the cover for My Grandmothers and I by selecting the cover on LT, right clicking on it, copying the bit up at the top with the address, then typing in here something which becomes invisible when I type it in here so can't replicate There seems to be some improvement as now at least I have a question mark whereas before there was nothing. What am I doing wrong?

What you do is
1. enter the less than symbol followed immediately by img src="
2. then right click on the cover image you want and select "Copy image address"
3. Paste the image address after the " in 1 above
4. then add "> after it, making sure you only have the one space between img and src. It is often spacing which trips people up.



Hope this helps.

we are waiting Oandthegang!

I don't get a Copy Image Address option coming up. I right click and nothing happens, so I go back up to Copy in the drop down from Edit.

>88 Oandthegang: That command is directing you to the page for covers, not the actual cover. See PM

..

HURRAH! (and no I'm not going to review it)

Because I've been using a laptop without a separate mouse I wasn't getting the right option. Had a moment of inspiration and hit 'ctrl' at the same time.

Now what have I done with my quill?

Pasting in covers has highlighted how few reviews I've done. Time to get back to work!

Congrats. Now we all anticipate lots of pictures and covers. I like the fact that you backloaded the covers for your earlier reviews.

Your quill may be next to the parchment supplies.

Virtue rewarded! I took two large carrier bags full of books to the Oxfam bookshop, where I found a copy of the seventh edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations still in its plastic sealed wrapper. It is a chunky book, but obviously less volume than the books I've shed. I'm trying not to have the shine taken off by the discovery that there is an eighth edition which is already some years old. It's always worth having earlier editions anyway to preserve what has been shed. I'm sure the difference between this and the copy I was given for my twenty-first birthday back at the dawn of time will be huge.

A very nicely presented book with an interesting history of the editorial approaches to the different editions of the years.

(Now that I know how to put in pictures there will be no stopping me!)

>85 Oandthegang: What an extraordinary story! Your review was tantalizing.

And once I learned how to add covers (and other pictures) I illustrated everything.

>85 Oandthegang: I agree with Kay, that does sound like an extraordinary story.

Glad Sassy set you straight on the covers. I still haven't figured out how to add other pictures, but covers I've mastered. (Not on my iPad though).

Golly! My Grandmothers and I. Great write-up of an appalling story. Not sure if I do want to read it or not, probably I do.

>102 sibylline: I do recommend it. It's one of the books I now give people (a) because it's such a good read and (b) because I want to be able to swap outrageous anecdotes from it with other people.

John Macnab by John Buchan

Argghh. Have just done a review and it has vanished. Must be a reversal of fortunes. Previously I could do reviews but not pictures. Now it seems I can do pictures but not reviews!

Off for tea and to stretch legs before coming back to compose a new review.

Grrhh.

John Macnab by John Buchan

"GLENRADEN CASTLE
STRATHLARRIG
Aug____ 19 ___

SIR,

I have received your insolent letter. I do not know what kind of rascal you may be, except that you have the morals of a bandit and the assurance of a halfpenny journalist. But since you seem in your perverted way to be a sportsman, I am not the man to refuse your challenge. My reply is, sir, damn your eyes and have a try. I defy you to kill a stag in my forest between midnight on the 28th of August and midnight of the 30th. I will give instructions to my men to guard my marches, and if you should be roughly handled by them you have only to blame yourself.

Yours faithfully,
ALASTAIR RADEN."

Three friends in their early forties, one a former Attorney-General now a successful barrister, one the head of an eminent banking firm, and one the Secretary of State for the Dominions, meet by co-incidence at their club. Two of them, Sir Edward Leithen and John Palliser-Yeates, have that day visited the same doctor complaining of acute lethargy, of taedium vitae, and the third, Lord Lamancha, is described by his younger friend, Sir Archie Roylance, to be 'glum as an owl', declaring everything to be worthless. As Lamancha puts it, "the light has gone out of the landscape". The doctor told Leithen that his problem was that he had become too comfortable, too successful, that he should put either his life or his reputation at risk, and Palliser-Yeates received similar advice. Archie, younger and just setting out on his career, is appalled, and says they should be ashamed of themselves. Thinking further on the matter, he tells them of Jim Tarras, who was driven by boredom to write to the owners of deer forests putting them on notice of his intention to kill a stag on their property between certain dates, and that if he were successful the body would be presented to its owner. Archie knows it to be true, because Tarras' man Wattie Lithgow now works for Archie at his property, Craske, up in the highlands. The unsuspecting Archie is quizzed about Craske, and when his friends learn that his Craske neighbours have between them two deer parks and a salmon river the game is on. Letters are sent to Colonel Raden (a Highland grandee, poor but of a family as old as the Flood), Mr Bandicott (a newly arrived American renting the house with the salmon fishing), and the Rt Hon Lord Claybody (whose money has come from trade and who is therefore presumably of recent title). Each of the letters is signed 'John Macnab'.

This is a lightly comic novel, and the seemingly straightforward challenge of outwitting the landowners and their staff in order to make the kill and return the trophy is soon complicated by bright-haired girls, strange dogs, sharp-eyed locals, and an exponentially increasing cast of extras. Beneath the comedy is the shadow of the Great War. The novel was first published in 1924, and therefore these men are all of an age to have fought in it. Leithen when describing his unshakable dissatisfaction to his doctor says "I tell you there's nothing at this moment that has the slightest charm for me. I'm bored with my work and I can't think of anything else of any kind for which I would cross the street. I don't even want to go into the country and sleep. It's been coming on for a long time - I dare say it's due somehow to the war... ... Now there's nothing for me to do except earn an enormous income, which I haven't any need for." Elsewhere there are references to people's war service, the physical and mental damage, and the differing attitudes of combatants and noncombatants to those who have been in the thick of it.

Tarras/Macnab is based on Captain James Brander Dunbar, a contemporary of Buchan's, described by Andrew Grieg in his introduction to this edition as "an upper-class, ex-Boer War eccentric, spy, crack shot and terrific fisherman, flouter of convention (and) Tory to the core." Dunbar successfully wagered Lord Abingdon that he could poach a stag from his estate.

Like many people I had read The Thirty-Nine Steps a few times many years ago, and Greenmantle once more recently, but I had not really given much further thought to Buchan. I bought two other books by him at the same time as this, and reading the various introductions I see that Buchan tended to write from what he knew, frequently from identifiable models. On that basis the choice of professions for his John Macnabs is interesting, as I read that Buchan himself had been a barrister, soldier, journalist, politician, and finally Governor-General for Canada, being created the first Lord Tweedsmuir of Elsfield in 1935, five years before his death. Also interesting, and somewhat surprising, I read that Archie Roylance is a staple of the Hannay novels, while Leithen has his own series of novels. Archie is almost Wodehousian in John Macnab, so I will be interested to see if he keeps that quality in the Hannay books. Although the characters were not of any great complexity, after I finished the book I found that I missed them.

Perfect light reading for a train journey through the Highlands and Islands.

The edition I read was published by Polygon Books, who seem to have had a major Buchan push in 2010-2012, which may have been as Buchan was going out of copyright. Some of the novels are already once again out of print. I gather another publisher, House of Stratus, has also published a number of Buchan's works.

>105 Oandthegang: very nice review. The book sounds like a good one.

Excellent review. I enjoyed reading it.

Catching up. Terrific reviews of They Knew Mr. Right (>83 Oandthegang:), The Grandmothers and I (>85 Oandthegang:) - poor Diana! - and of John Macnab.

I think you are right about John Buchan going out of copyright as there are a few of his titles free at Project Gutenberg. Enjoyed your review.

>105 Oandthegang: That does sound fun.

John Buchan is fun to read - read Macnab a couple of years ago.

A House In St John's Wood - Matthew Spender

I had looked forward to reading this book, subtitled In Search Of My Parents, as the parents in question were Stephen Spender and his pianist wife Natasha, nee Litvin. Somewhere I had formed the idea that Natasha had given up a concert career in order to become one of those wives who give themselves over entirely to organising and protecting a creative husband so that the husband need have no concerns or distractions from pursuit of his muse. This is of course a very broad characterisation as Stephen Spender was involved in much more than his writing.

The first chapter, Natasha's Last Wishes, seemed initially to reinforce that idea. Natasha had survived Stephen by five years, and when Matthew flew in from Italy on learning of her death he found by her bed documents designed to exclude him from his father's literary inheritance. She had been planning to sign them in the presence of her solicitor a few days later. She had been threatening to do this for years as she and Matthew differed in their interpretations of Stephen's life. "To her, he'd always been a pillar of integrity, and anyone who questioned this was despicable." Matthew always agreed about the integrity, but believed her pure idea of him needed to be qualified by reality. Not only was Natasha haunted by the idea that after Stephen's death 'bad books' would be written about Stephen, but she also, somewhat bizarrely, spent huge sums of money suppressing any suggestion that she had had an affair with Raymond Chandler, yet there, neatly packaged together, were his love letters to her. While it seems questionable whether Natasha could have had a true career as a pianist - she did concert tours but 'played on her nerves' without following up on teaching that could have cured this - she certainly made a curious choice in marrying Stephen, who was always going to be an unsatisfactory husband.

Matthew says that his father "thought that literature should tell the truth" and in politics the truth meant "one must never tell likes in the name of a higher cause, or sacrifice the rights of an individual in the name of the collective good".

On the other hand, there is Auden's assessment of Stephen in 1929, that his 'innocence' was the opposite of what it pretended to be. As retold by Matthew, Auden said that "Stephen projected an image of himself as someone who was timid, considerate, over-generous and unsure. This was a result of his refusal to accept himself as he really was: ruthless, selfish and domineering. His generosity was purposefully asphyxiating. He forced people to reject him, so as to avoid the guilt he'd feel if he rejected them. He wrote self-confessional letters to his friends, apparently throwing the whole of his life at the recipient's head in order to disguise the fact that he always kept something back."

Despite the fact that this book is simply packed with the great and the good, touches on Cold War intrigue, and is concerned with a marriage which somehow survived against all the odds, it failed to hold my interest. The author may have been in an odd position because, as he says of one particular period of tension between his parents, their lives were well documented, even in their own lifetimes, and he may have felt that there was no need to flesh out what had already been examined so often. He does have a unique angle in seeing the domestic arrangements, particularly with his father's lovers, from a child's point of view, at what point does what one has grown up with become perceived as out of the ordinary. I kept dipping into later bits thinking perhaps I would be drawn in by something further on, but ultimately it's a pass. I cannot bring myself to carry on for the sake of some good anecdotes when I have other books backed up that I want to read.

>29 Oandthegang: - catching up a bit, thanks for your thoughts on The Danish Girl. I saw the film this year. I think I may once have read some of her diary as some seemed familiar. I have the book the film was based on to look forward to.

I wondered about that idea of needing to kill Einar. Maybe when faced with such opposition she had to be very determined in insisting on Lili, to prevent confusion, to get her way. There may have been an element of being cruel to be kind to Gerda. I really felt for Gerda in the film, what love. But in some ways I also wonder if you may be right in some way. I wondered if there was a suggestion that Einar's art came from unhappiness (which many artists and writers seem to think) and as Lili was happy she had no need to paint, sadly we don't know if she would ever have gone back to it. Of course she was also busy being born, lots to discover. Gerda seems to develop as an artist and if i pushed this line I'd wonder if that came with unhappiness...one of the good things about this film I thought was how gentle it was, it would not have insisted such.

edit - I'm hoping that hasn't sounded critical, what you said makes me think. It may be that such a fire in her led her to act too quickly later. So I'm not dismissing it at all. Of course she had no one to learn from.

Barkskins by Annie Proulx

I picked this up on impulse, having not seen any reviews, or even being aware that it had been published. It was in a shop window, and I'd not read any Proulx for some time.

I was surprised at its size - over 700 pages. Proulx is not someone I associate with epic novels. Judging by this effort they are not her forte. I confess I gave up somewhere probably a couple of hundred pages in.

A promising premise, the novel starts with two indentured Frenchmen of markedly different temperaments arriving up river from Trois-Rivieres in 1693, and being taken by their new master, M. Trepagny, deep into the forest to clear land for him. The men are opposites. Rene Sel is fit, honest, hard-working, a skilled forester come from chopping trees in the Moravian highlands and loath to become an indoor servant. His surname identifies him as belonging to the 'salt of the earth'. The other man, Charles Duquet, is "a scrawny engagé from the ship, a weakling from the Paris slums who during the voyage often folded up in a corner like a broken stick". Duquet has a whinging treble voice and is scarcely larger than a child. He also has a mouth full of abscessed teeth. Unsurprising the healthy Rene is an inherently good man, albeit unsophisticated, who serves out his time and meets a sticky end. The unhealthy, repulsive, but clever, Duquet runs away, surviving against extraordinary odds to become a canny but unpleasant merchant and international exploiter of natural resources.

Rene, on order from Trepagny, married a Mi'kmaq woman, Mari, with whom Trepagny had been living until he could afford a French wife, and although involuntary, it became a loving and successful marriage. Mari was an expert in traditional medicine and schooled her children in her people's traditions. After the death of Rene and Mari, Mari's children travel to Mi'kma'ki, the wonderful homeland their mother had so often described, only to find the land and its people considerably decimated. Initially settling in an area which seems to be in what is now Nova Scotia, they variously adapt, trying to keep to traditional ways, but the men must go away in search of work, hiring themselves out as loggers, destroying the forests that have given their people their way of life, and in due course working for businesses run by Duquet.

The rest of the book will be given over to the descendants of Sel and Duquet, as all the way down to 2013 people carry on chopping down trees. But really, I didn't care.

Reading this I had in the back of my mind World's End by T Coraghessan Boyle, a really good book about the descendants of three families over probably a roughly similar time (can't lay hands on my copy), but with a good story and vivid characters. Proulx's characters never come off the page. Having just this evening come across a review, I read that Proulx had wanted this enormous book to be even longer, as her editors made her leave out something like 170 pages about logging in Indonesia.

Yes, deforestation is bad and we should all care about it, but this enormous book is not going to help. It is ironic that she has chosen to use so much paper to bring the evil of deforestation to our attention. Other people have written better family sagas, other people have written better books about the environment. I only wish I'd seen the reviews before I bought Barkskins.

Pity the book about Spender isn't really delivering. Memoirs by authors' children often seem to have great promise, but somehow fall flat. I did really like Saul Bellow's heart. A son's memoir by Greg Bellow although the author seemed troubled by the relationship with his father and did seem to have a chip on his shoulder. I did not like Swimming in a sea of death. A son's memoir, David Rieff's memoir about his mother, Susan Sontag.

Instead of a memoir, I did enjoy the correspondance between Alan Ginsberg and his father, Family business. Selected letters between a father and son, but it is a lot of reading to find a few tid-bits of interest.

>115 edwinbcn: I recently read another disappointing memoir, Slipstream by Elizabeth Jane Howard. I haven't read any of her books, which are highly regarded, and her death in 2014 had had a lot of coverage. Rather like the Spender book it ought to have been interesting, if only for the time and the people, but it really really wasn't. It was largely a factual recitation of her life, much like a diary - though definitely not a 'Dear Diary' one. Her life was unhappy, and seems to have been blighted from the outset by an appalling mother and a father who was great fun, but whose attentions became inappropriate once she hit puberty. Young and naive she married Peter Scott, much older than her and with a truly frighteningly vicious mother. Both Peter and his mother seem to have regarded her primarily as a brood mare, and shortly after she had produced a daughter, but not the looked for son, she escaped, leaving her daughter behind. From there her life seems to have been fairly consistent with the time and her class. Hard up but glamorous, living in shared accommodation, having many affairs, and lots of little jobs like acting, modelling, working for publishers, etc. At the end I was just left wondering what all the famous men with whom she had unsatisfactory relationships had in common, and puzzled that despite all the revelations about her life she had failed (deliberately or otherwise) to reveal anything about herself.

(The men in her life included the naturalist Peter Scott, Robert Aickman, Cecil Day-Lewis, Arthur Koestler, Laurie Lee, and Kingsley Amis)

I've ditched the book, but here's a link to some obituaries.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/elizabeth-jane-howard-writer-903810...
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jan/02/elizabeth-jane-howard-dies-90
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/10548019/Elizabeth-Jane-Howard-obitua...

Time I reviewed something. This has been done elsewhere, but here's my take as the lectrice sauvage:



Framley Parsonage Anthony Trollope

I am having an uneven time of it in Barsetshire. One false start for The Warden before plowing ahead and really enjoying it, a small interval then Barchester Towers which I enjoyed after an initial disappointment that there was to be such a shift in characters. Then a much longer interval to Dr Thorne, which I enjoyed hugely and must review. I was therefore looking forward to Framley Parsonage which turned out to be quite a different sort of beast. Perhaps, thinking about it, the problem for me is that Dr Thorne was the odd one out, being little concerned with clerical life. With Framley Parsonage we are firmly back in issues relating to the Church of England, and it being some time since I had last read about them I was struggling somewhat to remember the nuances of the power struggles and relationships of people whom I had last encountered in Barchester Towers. Dr Thorne at times felt like a cross between Austen and Dickens, in Framley Parsonage we are heading more into Dickens territory. From Austen we still have the difficulties of relationships across various social divides, from the near starving children of Mr Crawley "a strict, stern, unpleasant man, and one who feared God and his own conscience", a cleric made bitter by poverty and ill fortune, through to the Duke of Omnium, so grand that he is rarely seen and even more rarely heard.

Comfortably off, but still considerably below the half way point in this heap is Mark Robarts, who owes his living to the accident of having been placed for his education as a private pupil of a clergyman who was a friend of his father's. This clergyman had only one other pupil, the young Lord Lufton (it is not clear why he should have been there, but there he was). The boys became friends, and when Lady Lufton came to visit she would observe what she felt to be the good influence of Mark upon her son and commented to his father, a gentleman physician of no private means, that she hoped the boys would stay together throughout their education. Dr Robarts duly sent his son to Harrow and then to Oxford. Mark would frequently stay at Framley Court at the invitation of Lady Lufton, who continued to view him with affection as well as expecting him to continue to act for good on her son. On Mark's graduation, Lady Lufton conferred with Dr Robarts, and a decision was made that the Church would be good, and in a surprisingly short time Mark Robarts, still in his early twenties, became Vicar of Framley, the living of Framley being in the gift of Lady Lufton. Continuing her gentle but inexorable arranging of everything for the best, Lady Lufton, believing that a parson should have a wife, put in Mark's path a woman she felt would be suitable, a friend of her married daughter's, and, without either knowing their roles had been cast, the two fell in love and married.

It will be seen from this that Robarts and his wife, though not entirely Lady Lufton's creatures, had attained their good fortune through her; they were aware of it, and thankful to her for it, and Lady Lufton for her part, though kind and genuinely fond of both Mark and his wife, would subtly ensure that that awareness remained. Robarts was not given the Framley living simply out of affection, or even to keep him near as a brake on her son, but also because Lady Lufton had very particular views on church matters and wanted to ensure that the Vicar of Framley would not take a line with which she did not agree.

Temptation has already been set in Robarts' path by his upbringing - a boy and then a young man of no independent means spending much of his time in the company of a young baron and his, and his mother's circle, on the edge of, and familiar with, a life he cannot afford. If Lady Lufton loved Mark as a second son, it is not surprising that Mark should occasionally feel a son's rebelliousness at her rule.

Lady Lufton is particularly opposed to the Duke of Omnium and his followers, not only for their politics, but for their fast ways. The Duke is seen as a corrupter, and all within his circle tainted. One of that circle is Tom Sowerby, MP. "Mr Sowerby was one of those men who are known to be very poor - as poor as debt can make a man, but who, nevertheless, enjoy all the luxuries which money can give. It was believed that he could not live in England out of jail but for his protection as a member of Parliament, and yet it seemed that there was no end to his horses and carriages, his servants and retinue. He had been at this work for a great many years, and practice, they say makes perfect. Such companions are very dangerous. There is no cholera, no yellow fever, no small-pox, more contagious than debt. If one lives habitually among embarrassed men, one catches it to a certainty. No one had injured the community in this way more fatally than Mr Sowerby. But still he carried on the game himself; and now on this morning, carriages and horses thronged at his gate, as though he were as substantially rich as his friend the Duke of Omnium."

Mark is aware that Lord Lufton has mixed with Sowerby and run up considerable debts through his influence. Mark is invited to Chaldicotes, Sowerby's home, for a weekend, convinces himself that it would be a good thing to go,particularly as he knows that some more elevated clerics will be there, and that it is time he stopped following Lady Lufton's wishes in everything, even if his living is in her hands. His courage falls short of facing his patroness however, and he tells his wife to break the news of his absence. During the weekend Mark is told that the Duke of Omnium expects him to join the party at Gartherum Castle. Despite knowing how great a transgression this would be in the eyes of Lady Lufton, Mark writes home, asking his wife to send him some money and to once again break the news to Lady Lufton. Thus set up the naive vicar is an easy target for Sowerby, who asks him to sign a note to cover a debt. At this point the whole novel seemed to be too deterministically taking Mark Robarts down the road to ruin to make the book seem worth reading. The very splendid Miss Dunstable, a clever independently minded heiress introduced in Dr Thorne, appears, though there is not enough of her. There is a love story, which kept this going for me, though I read that Trollope said there was a love story only because there had to be one, and there is an awful lot of space given over to clumsy and tedious (though perhaps thought witty at the time) commentary on Parliamentary politics - elections, reversals of fortunes, and changes of government, with matters being referred to as battle between the gods and the giants, references to changes in social habits and attitudes of the time (the new fashion for dining a la russe, opinions on clergy riding to hounds, etc.) and a lot of stuff about how signing promissory notes can get one in big trouble.

Ultimately, I just wanted to get to the end of this book. I am surprised it was his first commercial success, as I enjoyed the earlier ones better, but perhaps it fitted better into its time. Also, I read that Trollope was writing this at the same time as another, gloomier novel, that it was being published in instalments and that as they were to be of a set length some instalments suffered from padding, which led to some peculiarities. (I read the Penguin Classics version, which reprints the work as it originally appeared in the Cornhill Magazine.)

Having got this far I will attempt The Small House At Allingham but already I have had to recover with a couple of quick injections of Simenon and a le Carré novel, the name of which escapes me, but it was In Which We Are Introduced To George Smiley. I think I might extend my break from the 19th Century a little longer.

As is my habit, after posting my own review I skimmed down others, and was intrigued to find from one that Tooth And Claw, by Jo Walton is a retelling of Framley Parsonage using dragons. The mind boggles. I think I may have to track that one down!

>118 Oandthegang: It's a terrific read (although I haven't read Framley Parsonage).

>117 Oandthegang: I felt much the same way as you about the second half of Framley Parsonage - too much inevitability, not enough Miss Dunstable :-)
The small house at Allingham is better - it also has a section where the Young Hero is Exposed to Temptation, but it doesn't hijack the plot to the same extent. And Last chronicle is definitely worth the wait.

>120 thorold: "Too much inevitability, not enough Miss Dunstable" sounds so good I would love to be able to drop it in to various conversations, but I fear it would be met with bewilderment. Pearls before swine, eh?

>117 Oandthegang: I think I might extend my break from the 19th Century a little longer.

Maybe it's not a break from the 19th century you need, but a break from Trollope. There are far more compelling writers out there and as a bonus, their books are often shorter.

Now warding off bricks and bats from Trollope lovers.

>122 SassyLassy: Thanks to the convenience of my dearly beloved Collector's Library editions (soon to be suppressed by Macmillan. Boo!) I have just started Tom Brown's Schooldays, so back in the 19th century. Have so far only read the first chapter, with his lovely description of the Vale of the White Horse, a place I love. It may become more grim, but it is illustrated by Hugh Thomson, whom I know principally for his Austen illustrations, so am feeling optimistic. (I know that's not logical, but there we are.)

>123 Oandthegang: Tom Brown's Schooldays is on my pile of potential 19th century reads and rereads for this year, but having read the Flashman books since last reading Tom Brown, it may take a while to adopt the proper approach.

Just checked out Macmillan Collectors' Library (they seem to have it as Macmillan Collector's Library, but surely there in more than one collector out there). Anyway, they claim the only thing changed is the dustjackets, which still make a set. https://www.panmacmillan.com/blogs/macmillan-collectors-library/welcome-to-macmi...

Having seen Cruickshank's drawing of Fagin in one of Sassy's posts, I looked at others, and was struck by this drawing of Nancy - very far from the fetching slim young thing we have become accustomed to thanks to the likes of 'Oliver'.

A Literary Christmas, an anthology - The British Library

A quick review for the benefit of anyone casting about for a good Christmas present for someone who enjoys books.

A Literary Christmas is a well presented hardback anthology published by The British Library. The contents are divided into Before Christmas, The Nativity, Christmas Day, Christmas Fare, Christmas At War, A Child's Christmas, Seasonal Snow and Ice, and New Year. Starting - where else? - with Clement Clarke Moore's 'A Visit From St Nicholas', the book includes poetry from John Donne to Benjamin Zephaniah, and stories and prose excerpts from an equally diverse range of writers, including John Evelyn, Henry James, George Mackay Brown, Saki, Wodehouse, Dickens, Jane Austen, and D H Lawrence. The book is generously illustrated in colour and in black and white with illustrations from books in the British Library's collection.

It was a Christmas present to me last year, but I am getting the pleasure from it this year, dipping in and out to get myself in proper winter/Christmas spirit. I do recommend it

>126 Oandthegang: - ooo I like the sound of that, thanks

Christmas At Thompson Hall and other Christmas Stories Anthony Trollope

Another recommendation for Christmas (yes, I'm working through the Christmas books I received last year). Opening with Christmas at Thompson Hall, a much anthologized comic tale about an Englishwoman's late night quest for mustard in a Parisian hotel, the book also includes Christmas Day At Kirkby Cottage, The Mistletoe Bough, The Two Generals, and Not If I Know It (Touchstones doesn't recognise these last two titles and gives some very bizarre alternatives). The first three stories are really enjoyable light reading. I'm impressed by how well and affectionately he wrote about young women, though they amaze even themselves by their perversity in lying to their suitors. The last two are of a different nature. The Two Generals is subtitled 'A Christmas Story of the War In Kentucky' and deals with two brothers of differing temperament, divided by the Civil War, and in love with the same woman. The characters are not well developed and never really come off the page. The story appears to have been written for publication near Christmas 1863 and its primary purpose to express a hope for an end to the bloodshed and to slavery. Not If I Know it is weaker yet, dealing with two brothers-in-law quarrelling on Christmas Eve and making their peace after going to church on Christmas Day.

One of a set of prettily presented little hardbacks published for Christmas last year by Penguin.

The Night Before Christmas - Nikolai Gogol (transl.Anna Summers)

Another of the Penguin Christmas Classics. I hadn't heard of this Night Before Christmas before, and very different it is from the 'Twas The Night Before... . This is a night when a witch gathers stars in her sleeve, a devil steals the moon, a number of prominent men are carried about in coal sacks, and the Tsarina gives away a pair of shoes. I found the tale so foreign and bewildering that I shall have to read it again. Best done on Orthodox Christmas Eve perhaps. The book includes some slightly muddy black and white reproductions of illustrations presumably from old Russian editions.

Christmas Stories - edited by Diana Secker Tesdell

This collection of twenty Christmas stories is one of the Everyman Pocket Classics series, excellently produced books, though in this case perhaps requiring a fatter pocket than usual. Beginning with Dickens' The Story Of The Goblins Who Stole A Sexton from The Pickwick Papers, the collection also includes Christmas At Thompson Hall and Gogol's Night Before Christmas, this time translated by Pevear and Volokhonsky, whose work I don't generally favour, but I look forward to reading this translation for my second attempt at this story. (Obviously my difficulty with Russian literature continues). Other writers include Conan Doyle (The Blue Carbuncle), Alice Munro, John Updike, Muriel Spark, and Vladimir Nabakov. I have been working pleasantly towards Christmas reading one story each morning. As a small quibble I think the Blue Carbuncle should have appeared later in the book, as the story begins "I had called upon my friend Sherlock Holmes on the second morning after Christmas, with the intention of wishing him the compliments of the season". Clearly a story to be read on the 27th of December. I can't tell what determined the order of the stories in this collection, and the surprisingly unhelpful listing of works from which the stories were taken does not include original publication dates of the stories themselves, which might have resolved the question of whether it was simply chronology (which I'm not going to research myself).

Christmas Stories - edited by Diana Secker Tesdell

This collection of twenty Christmas stories is one of the Everyman Pocket Classics series, excellently produced books, though in this case perhaps requiring a fatter pocket than usual. Beginning with Dickens' The Story Of The Goblins Who Stole A Sexton from The Pickwick Papers, the collection also includes Christmas At Thompson Hall and Gogol's Night Before Christmas, this time translated by Pevear and Volokhonsky, whose work I don't generally favour, but I look forward to reading this translation for my second attempt at this story. (Obviously my difficulty with Russian literature continues). Other writers include Conan Doyle (The Blue Carbuncle), Alice Munro, John Updike, Muriel Spark, and Vladimir Nabakov. I have been working pleasantly towards Christmas reading one story each morning. As a small quibble I think the Blue Carbuncle should have appeared later in the book, as the story begins "I had called upon my friend Sherlock Holmes on the second morning after Christmas, with the intention of wishing him the compliments of the season". Clearly a story to be read on the 27th of December. I can't tell what determined the order of the stories in this collection, and the surprisingly unhelpful listing of works from which the stories were taken does not include original publication dates of the stories themselves, which might have resolved the question of whether it was simply chronology (which I'm not going to research myself).

(not sure why that review appears twice, and can't figure out how to delete the second one)

>128 Oandthegang: and following: What fun reads to undertake at this time of year. It's amazing how many authors have chosen this as a theme. I wonder if such books are as popular in warmer climates where the need for a cozy read in front of the fire just isn't there!

I have fallen behind in my Christmas reading and I note looking back at the seasonal books thread Sassy's reminder last year that the story of Hercule Poirot's Christmas begins on 22 December. Tomorrow is tree decorating day, but after that it will be nose to the page again. I'm looking forward to my annual reread of The Nine Tailors for New Year's Eve, but lots of new ground to cover before then.

I have just looked up to the top of my thread where I tried listing some books to be read. Although I've read some very good books this year I have made almost no dent in the list. It's been a rather curious year which has thrown out my reviewing even more than my reading, but I think, lesson learned, I shan't be bothering with lists in future.