Noah's Compass (Tyler)

I am a big fan of Anne Tyler's books so I was very excited when I eventually managed to get a copy of her latest book, Noah's compass, from the library this week. This is her 18th novel and it didn't disappoint me.

In the first chapter we meet Liam, who is in the process of downsizing into a new apartment after being made redundant from his job as a teacher. He unpacks, has some dinner, and goes to bed. At the start of the next chapter, he wakes up in hospital, and has no memory of how he got there. It turns out that he failed to lock one of the doors to his new apartment and was attacked by an intruder. Liam is hugely traumatised by the fact that he can't remember the incident and sets out to try to come to terms with it whilst struggling to make sense of his life until the incident and his relationships with his children and ex wife. One of my favourite parts of the book was that when Liam spends time with his grandson who has been given a heavily Christian upbringing by his daughter; Liam helps with biblical colouring books and struggles to answer questions such as how Noah steered the ark (hence the title of the book).

What I love about Anne Tyler's books is the gentle story telling which actually cleverly deals with lots of serious issues. There is always a strong cast of characters and the books give insight into small town American life in a way that is easily accessible for a British reader.

Overall, it wasn't quite my favourite Tyler novel, as it felt a bit "slighter" than some of her other novels; if you haven't read any Tyler before then I'd start with Digging to America or Back when we were grownups. I'd be interested to hear which other Tyler novels people have read and which are you favourites.

Book buying update #6

Who can believe that it has been SIX weeks since I bought a book for myself? When you start doing this, it is hard, but it gets easier, particularly once you have got out of the habit of looking for 1p copies of books on Amazon, and once you try to avoid the charity shops (I did make the mistake of going into Oxfam books this week and found it very hard to leave the lovely green Virago modern classics copies of four of Rosamund Lehmann's novels behind).

On the plus side, I have made good inroads into my TBR bookcase, which now stands at 48 books, plus 25 Virago modern classics. Despite continuing to get library books at a rate of knots, I hope to get that down to 40+20 before I go on my holidays (and packing holiday reading should deplete it a little futher); the only thing that stops me from reading more things from it is that there are books on it which I will eventually want to read but now is not quite the right time. Frustrating for someone who likes to keep things tidy!

I am hoping that there will be a new Susan Scarlett title from Greyladies for Christmas; if so, this will be the book that breaks the book-ban. But back to the ban in 2010 I think, certainly for Lent if not before.

Non essential spending has gone less well this week as I succombed to some Nativity shaped cookie cutters so that I can make a nativity out of shortbread. Watch this space...

Jane Gardam

One of the things about blogging and having spent far more time reading in 2009 than ever before, is that I have been able to pursue authors. I have found new authors who I like, such as Hilary Mantel , Anita Brookner, and Margaret Drabble and have gained a lot of pleasure from reading as many of their works as possible. Another author who I have encountered and liked enough to do this for is Jane Gardam.

I thought it was time to flag her up after enjoying A long way from Verona last week. Many of her books are written for a crossover/teenage audience, and this fitted into that category. Two other teenage novels are Bilgewater (a story about a girl growing up in a school where her father is housemaster) and The summer after the funeral (about a girl sent off to relations the summer after her father has died). A long way from Verona is a wonderful story about Jessica, an 11 year old girl who aspires to be a writer. It's set during the Second World War, but the war is very much in the background - deprivations are mentioned (both food and clothes)

I have not yet read many of her adult novels, with the exception of The flight of the maidens which is the story of 3 schoolgirls, set in Yorkshire, as they hit adulthood (I guess that one of the reasons I like her work so much is that she does write a very good coming of age story). Jane Gardam is probably most famous for her novel Old filth which was shortlisted for the Orange prize a few years ago. I wasn't sure that I would enjoy this, but picked it up last weekend after drafting this post and LOVED it - I am now desperate to read her latest, The man with the wooden hat which tells the same story from the protagonist's wife's point of view. I also own copies of her novels Faith Fox, God on the rocks (which was her first adult novel), and The Queen of the tambourine. I am definitely looking forward to working my way through these.

She's also written a number of short story collections, including The people of Privilege Hill.

There is an interesting feature written by the Guardian in 2005 about her here.

Have you read anything by Gardam, and if so which are your favourites?

Heirlooms

Although mostly it is the content of books that I value and that interests me, my work in the field of rare books has also given me an interest in books as objects. I have become aware of the aesthetic appeal of the binding of a book and the value that this can add to the object. Another element in the concept of book as object is its provenance or ownership.

Whilst I have a number of second hand books, many inscribed with the names of the previous owners, the provenance of my books is not an especially interesting facet of my book collection. I have inherited a few of the books which my mother had as a child (it seems to be children's books that are most often passed on between generations); my father has hung onto his as he still likes to reread his Jennings books.

However, this summer I was given a wonderful heirloom by my godmother - a bible which has been passed down the female line of her family. As she has not had any children, she decided to pass it on to me.

As you can see, it has been inscribed by those giving the book, and now includes an dedication to myself.

I think this is a wonderful thing to own, and it took me to a whole new level of receiving books as gifts.

Bake of the week: cherry and almond marble cake

An absolute favourite which I discovered earlier this year on the Waitrose website - this is an almondy cake, filled with cherry jam before baking and swirled with a fork to distribute cherry jam throughout the mixture. Mine doesn't look quite like Waitrose' picture, but it was extremely tasty and earned full marks from my boyfriend.

Something beginning with (Salway)

As part of my rather successful attempt to buy less books, I have been making a heroic onslaught on my TBR bookcase - I have removed a couple of titles which I really don't think I will read, and I am trying to get through some of the backlog. My goal is to go into 2010 with only two shelves of TBR books - one for Virago Modern Classics, and one for everything else. I think this will be possible, certainly once I have packed some books for my skiing holiday! The trouble with the TBR is often I can't remember quite why I bought a certain book.



It wasn't until I looked properly at Something beginning with by Sarah Salway that I realised the only reason I had picked it up in the charity shop was because the principal character had the same name as me, Verity. Verity is an unusual name, and I've not met very many others in my life. I've not seen many in fiction either, with the exception of Verity-Ann in the Chalet School series.

However, although that might seem to have been a somewhat strange reason for buying the book, it turned out to be a little gem. The story itself could easily be dismissed as "chick-lit" - it is predominantly about the lovelife and affairs of Verity and her best friend, but the way it was told built up a beautiful picture of a slightly naieve girl, struggling to work out her place in the world. Something beginning with has a very unusual fragmentary structure where the story is told through an A-Z glossary; so as Verity shares her thoughts on "ambition", "baked beans", "friends", we learn more about her and her friends. This could have been a very annoying device, but Salway used it to good effect and I found myself intrigued by the words that she was choosing and interested to see how the story would develop in this way.

I am going to seek out some more of Salway's work (from the library!), and remain on the hunt for books with Verity's in them.

Reaktion Books Animal Series

I'm not quite sure how I encountered the Animal series published by Reaktion books, but it is one that I have been meaning to write about for sometime.

According to Reaktion books the series is "the first of its kind to explore the historical significance and impact on humans of a wide range of animals...each book in the series takes a different animal and examines its role in history around the world. The importance of mythology, religion and science are described as is the history of food, the trade in animals and their products, pets, exhibition, film and photography and their roles in the artistic and literary imaginations"

I own the two titles relating to my two favourite animals, The duck, and as I'm sure regular readers can guess, The penguin, which only arrived a few weeks ago despite having been on order for 6 months.

What I love about these books is their wonderfully eclectic take on a single subject. The Penguin, by Steven Martin, describes the natural history of the Penguin, including information about the different species (the smallest is the wonderfully named Little Bee Penguin), and how they live. But what I found most fascinating is the cultural history of the penguin and Martin draws on an impressive range of examples - the film Happy Feet, Pingu (sadly, my favourite children's book, Lost and Found did not get a mention), and of course the Penguins in Mary Poppins. The book is lavishly illustrated with photographs of real penguins and images of penguins from the media - not just English examples but Russian too.

The Duck by Victoria De Rijke is similarly fascinating. I wasn't too sure about the section on duck as food (even before I became vegetarian I could never eat duck) but I loved reading about all of the references to ducks in popular culture, toilet duck for example, which I used to insist that my mum bought when I was little.

I'm not sure I would be interested in reading the other titles about animals which I am not so interested in, but I am sure there would be at least one title that would appeal to anyone, and they could make interesting Christmas presents.

The woman in black (Hill)

I wanted to read The woman in black for a Halloween read, but unfortunately the copy sent by Vintage got lost in the post. In the end, I ended up reading another Susan Hill, The mist in the mirror, which was quite chilling and wet my appetite to read the replacement copy sent by Vintage.

The woman in black was worth waiting for.

The book tells the story of Arthur Kipps, a young solicitor, who is sent to a small town on the east coast called Crythin Gifford to attend the funeral, and to deal with the estate, of a lady called Mrs Alice Drablow, who lived in a house just off the coast that is cut off each day by the tide.

At the funeral, Kipps spots a strange woman, dressed in black, with a pale, wasting face:

"She was dressed in deepest black, in the style of mournoing that had rather gone out of fashion...it had clearly been dug out of some old wardrobe, for its blackness was a little rusty-looking. A bonnet-type hat covered her head and shaded her face, but although I did not stare, even the swift glance I took of the woman showed me enough to recognise that she was suffering from some terrible wasting disease, for not only was she extremely pale, even more than a contrast with the blackness of her garments could account for, but the skin, and, it seemed, only the thinnest layer of flesh was tautly stretched and strained across her bones, so that it gleamed with a curious blue-white sheen"

In the days that follow, he travels over to the house to sort things out and finds himself the victim of a series of hauntings, strange noises and mysterious disturbances. He again sights the woman in black. Kipps attemps to find out what is going on, but the inhabitants of the town are reluctant to reveal any information and try to dissuade him from being involved.

I won't give any more of the plot away, suffice to say that Kipps discovers the story behind the woman. And in a chilling conclusion himself becomes victimised.

This is the only book that I have read in adulthood which has given me nightmares - I woke up two nights later and had to wake up my boyfriend to reassure me that the wardrobe hadn't become a woman wearing a black veil. He wasn't too impressed and had gone back to sleep by the time I returned from getting a drink of water which led to me scurrying back into bed and hiding under the pillows.

Bake of the week: Nigella's Lemon Gems

Nigella's lemon gems have been on my to-bake list for quite sometime - they are very attractively pictured in her book How to be a domestic goddess and they sounded like quite a different sort of biscuit to the ones that I normally make. They are little ball-shaped biscuits, which are flattened slightly so that they can be filled with lemon curd (Nigella says that her children call them fried egg biscuits). I was a little disappointed by the results - they needed far more lemon curd, so I should have made much bigger indents for filling them with, and the base turned out a bit dry and wasn't really sweet enough (in fact I had wondered about the amount of sugar in the recipe when I baked it).

Ex Libris (Anne Fadiman)

It was a busy weekend reading-wise - I think I read a total of 10 books. So it seems to appropriate that I write about the book which I read which was about books and reading.


I came across Ex Libris on Stuck-in-a-book 6 months ago, when I first found Simon's blog, and added it to my wishlist. It was also recommended to me by a colleague when he discovered my blog. After the disappointment of Howards End is on the landing, I was keen to read a bookish book to comfort me in my addiction to books and to make me feel that I could justify my reading. So it was time to reserve it at the library and indulge in the thoughts of another book-lover.

It is a little book of essays (I won't pretend that the 10 books I read this weekend were all chunksters!), subtitled "The confessions of a common reader". And I identified with so many of the confessions!

In the essay, My ancestral castles, Fadiman describes how "other people's walls looked naked to me". She grew up with parents who owned over 7000 books and required 1/4 mile of shelving to be put into every house they moved to. As a child I often wondered why the houses I visited didn't have many books and was always glad to return home to my bungalow where there was not space to fit in another bookshelf.

I particularly loved Fadiman's discussions of childhood reading and reading with her children. Reading was incredibly important to me as a child and I think it is crucial that parents spend time reading with their children. In the essay, Sharing the mayhem, she describes coming down for breakfast to find her daughter eating rice crispies while her father reads to her from Dahl's Boy:
"Had I been a better mother I would have said "After breakfast". Instead I joined the audience."

Full of little gems, I really would recommend this book to all book-lovers - another wonderful Christmas present I think.