I cannot tell you what pleasure it has given me that so many people have taken up the recommendation, bought the book and are getting such pleasure from it. He is a wonderful and very unjustly neglected novelist and I am thrilled that he is gaining some new readers. This is  exactly what makes book blogging so important - not to mention so satisfying. To dig out a writer and a novel from the shelves and somehow waken it again has to be good.

 

And so farewell then, 2006, year when I began to blog. Thank you to everyone who has joined me here. Thank you for your comments, replies to questions, encouragement, jokes, information, book recommendations, arguments, corrections and general friendship.

I was not at all sure when  I began whether I would want to continue and it is you all who have made me have no doubt whatsoever that this blog goes on into 2007 in good heart.

Off to bed early tonight as usual. New Year`s Eve has always plunged me into such awful gloom that I find it best to get under the duvet and wait for it to pass, like migraine.

But may 2007 be for you all peaceful, healthy, happy, prosperous, fortunate and full of good books. I cannot, alas, guarantee any of these things - except the last. That`s what I`m here for.

I will start January 2007 with the first of a series of 'what is happening in the Gloucestershire countryside' posts. I have always kept a diary of the date on which first things appear - snowdrop, crocus, pussy willow, swallow, cuckoo and so on and I plan to do it again this year both in the written journal and on here.

Let us see where climate change is getting us.

 

 

May I remind those of you taking the course that classes begin again on Epiphany and that our module this term is on JACOB`S ROOM. Please make sure that you have read this book from cover to cover by the day as it is difficult for others if you are constantly putting up your hand and asking for the next stage of the plot.

Newcomers are most welcome and can begin the course here though it is highly recommended that you also go back and read the previous two novels and catch up on the lessons (please see the Archive.)

I am dividing pupils up this term into Houses. Let us see what a bit of friendly rivalry will achieve. The Houses are

Bloomsbury. Tavistock. Talland. Monks and Charleston. Those intending to do the course this term please sign up and I will then allocate you to a House. Information about House Colours will be posted later.

Please also make sure that you have a copy of A WRITER`S DIARY  by VW, and the biography by LYNDALL GORDON.  It may be necessary to acquire other books later.

Signed

S.Carrington-Strachey   (Tutor.)

The following appeared in a long blog by the crime writer Peter James, quoted in Bookseller to the Stars and well worth reading.

I’m going to be publishing a more detailed blog in the New Year in which I vent steam at the whole literary establishment culture of literary snobbishness, which I so despise. Book Marketing Limited’s statistics for the past three years show that Crime and Thrillers have over 15% of the total fiction market. Literary fiction has just four percent. I wonder why….!!!! Could it be that, like me, people want their reading to be fun, not like being back at bloody school. Reading is one of the greatest pleasures in my life and it has been since I first picked up a book in early childhood.

I agree with much of what he says. But before I am shot down in flames, let me hasten to add that I do not apply what he says to great literature and I doubt if he does. I don`t have an honours degree in English from King`s for nothing.

It is appropriate that James mention Enid Blyton though because it is of children`s books  that I have been thinking in the context of literary snobbery - and a particular literary snobbery that seems, thank God, to be either dead or breathing its last. And that in turn is thanks largely to J.K.Rowling.

The study of children`s books has long had its scholarly side but a tiresome branch of that was the application of literary snobbery to the genre. There were certain children`s authors who were Taken Seriously and Recommended as Literature not as good, fun reading. It was interesting that more adults seemed to enjoy them than children. At random, I pick out two names of those who were studied, lauded, recommended to the young and generally taken Seriously. Alan Garner. William Mayne. Garner wrote a good series of fantasy stories - you may remember The Weirdstone of Brisingamen - and Mayne`s early books included the fun Swarm in May, about Cathedral choir boys. Nothing wrong with either. But they both had theses and learned articles written about them, especially in the US where Children`s Literature has long been a subject of academic study and where people produce journals like The Horn Book. Something happened to them both. Maybe they believed in the publicity, took themselves too seriously - I`m not sure. But Style and Fine writing took over, especially in Mayne`s case and they were a turn-off for children.

There were more like that and the chidren`s book world became as divided as the adult fiction one, into authors it was OK to read and enjoy and roughly speaking, Enid Blyton. Children were made to feel guilty about loving EB.Mayne, Garner and classic fairy stories were foisted on them and the same children rejected them.

The situation lasted until the day Harry Potter caught fire. Suddenly,  a new generation of children found books they could love and devour as much as the earlier ones had done with EB. The Berlin Wall of Children`s Literary Fiction began to crumble and fall and a whole army of new fun writers surged through to take over the territory.

It has been wonderful to behold.  I really hope adults  have stopped telling children what and what not to read any more. The literary snobbery, if it still exists, has been driven back within the walls of boring places like the Horn Book - if it still exists. I did hear one old-timer banging on about fine children`s literature on Radio 4 the other day but I doubt if a single child was listening.

Well, in a manner of speaking. I sorted out two more cupboards but I suppose that has to go down under Neutral Deeds really. Wrote two more chapters of THE BATTLE FOR GULLYWITH... well, they are short chapters. I count that as a good deed though others mightn`t.  Spoke to Victoria Rothschild about THE RECTOR`S DAUGHTER. (Yes, you do remember, this is the novel originally published by Virginia Woolf at The Hogarth Press which I chose for someone`s blog on TIME magazine as my Best  Non-New Book of 2006 and said that I was going to publish it again under the Long Barn Imprint. Phew. )  I spoke to Victoria because she is the author`s great-niece. She is also married to one of my heroes, Simon Gray, playwright and author of one of the funniest books for many a day, THE SMOKING DIARIES. It was not a Good Deed speaking to Victoria but telling her that the Smoking Diaries is one of the books I reach for if feeling glum as it never fails to cheer so that she could, in turn, tell Simon, probably counts as one. Well, not a bad one anyway.

Cleaning the bath after the younger daughter had washed her hair was a decidedly Good Deed, as was sorting out the Boot Box in the Utility room as both will be for the Benefit of Others as well as for that of me. No, for mine. For me ? Crumbs, I`ve forgotten how to do grammar.

Dull day otherwise. Nice gale, which always reminds me of childhood nights spent in my attic bedroom in Scarborough while the North Sea roared and lashed and the gale  howled round the chimney pots.

There being nothing on the telly, I decided to watch a DVD I got in my stocking. CAPOTE. Do you know, I began to feel I was ageing 10 years between each shot. I mean, Leonardo da Caprio - who is very very good and convincing as Capote - took a few steps into a room and stood there and I could feel my hair actually growing. Maybe I have become one of the Fast Forward generation ? Anyway, I gave up and switched to the film of PERSUASION of C4 but Jane Austen is no better on screen than on the page except the faces are too modern though they are perfectly nice faces and Harriet Walter was terrific. But life is too short.

Back to Our Mutual Friend. Great stuff. Nobody does it better.

I might read a bit of The Smoking Diaries too. That would be a Good Deed though I couldn`t quite explain why.

 

You could read this in  a day by the fire and what a day well spent it would be.

WASHINGTON SQUARE by Henry James.. and if you say you can`t get on with HJ, I entirely understand but the secret with him is to pick and choose and find what suits. If this does not, then don`t try him again. But I bet it does. It`s a wonderful novel and not remotely difficult.

There is a scene of extraordinary and haunting power, which must be one of the finest things he ever wrote. The plain, thoughtful young heiress, Catherine Sloper, has been taken on a year-long European tour by her steely father to break her affection for a young man Dr Sloper sees - rightly - as a gold-digger. His coldness and bullying reach a terrible climax  in a sunless and desolate Alpine valley, where he tries to frighten Catherine into submission. You will never forget it and this novel serves as the perfect introduction to James.

And really, it does need addressing. I am sure plenty of people will but let me make a start.

First, as not everyone sees The Times, here, as Private Eye would say, is that letter in full.

Sir

It is time for the Society of Author to discuss with the Publishers Association the payment of huge sums to celebrities, television reporters, sportsmen and politicians whose books prove to be flops. Advance fees, which should be going to bona fide authors and young literary  people who need financial help as they attempt to enter a difficult profession, are being flushed away. There should be a limit on these advances and earnings should only come from sales.

British publishers appear to be bent on ruining English literature with this profligacy and poor judgment.'

Right.

1. This is not Public Money which is being discussed - nothing to do with the Arts Council. Publishers are private companies - or sometimes, PLCs and they are in BUSINESS. They are in business to make a profit which overall, most of them do. They are not a public service and they are not charitable organisations.

2. Why not say, 'it is time Equity discussed with the Theatre Managers the fact that some actors are paid millions of pounds to appear in  rubbishy films which may fail at the Box Office while poor young talented actors struggle to enter a difficult profession and get any jobs at all and when do are abysmally paid.

3. A publisher, as a private business seeking to make a profit, is not a guardian of English Literature. But in fact most of them DO publish work, fiction, non-fiction and poetry, by new, young, literary authors. They subsidise this work from the proceeds of those large-selling books which make profits.

4. All publishing is a gamble. Some books sell, some sell a lot, some do not sell. That is up to the purchasing public in a free market,

But some gambles pay off... large advances are recouped and in spades. A publisher may and often does recoup a huge advance from Serial rights in newspapers, not from bound books sold in bookshops but profit is profit and some of that money will be ploughed into the publishing of work by unknown authors.

5. Publishing is a business. A book may be many things but it is firstly, a unit of merchandise. It is manufactured at the expense of the publisher and firstly it has to be sold to a bookseller. Then it has to be sold on to the final buyer, the member of the public. You can take a horse to water... many many good books out there in the bookshops will not sell many copies. They will be returned to the publisher by the bookseller and they make a loss.You cannot force anyone to buy a book - whether it is a first novel, a great work of art, or a celebrity memoir.

6. No one can predict if a celebrity memoir will sell to the public or not. Many people thought it ridiculous for the publisher to pay 1 million pounds for the memoirs of Sharon Osbourne but it was a mega-bestseller last year. The advance will have earned out and the profits will have subsidised many a small-selling book by an aspiring new writer.

7. No celebrity will give away their memoirs for a low-advance. They want big money. They may earn it out or they may not but they won`t produce the memoir without it. And without it there will be no chance of the big profits that can accrue - as, this year, with Peter Kay`s autobiography. Who predicted that ? Without the big profit, no subsidising the small-seller.

8. Celebrity memoirs and literary novels are chalk and cheese and a publisher may publish one, the other or both, just as Boots sell lipstick, perfume and life-saving medication.

9. It is not only celebritiy actors and politicians who demand large advances. Martin Amis once received half a milion pounds advance. John Murray this autumn paid the same for a first novel by Michael Cox, which will not have recouped a tenth of that advance.

10. To say any publisher with a mixed list is hell-bent on ruining English Literature is pompous rubbish. You might as well say that theatre companies are hell bent on ruining English Drama by putting on SEE HOW THEY RUN instead of KING LEAR - or a play by a new, unknown dramatist trying to break into a difficult profession.

I suggest the author of this ridiculous letter takes a lesson in economics. And that he also goes into any large bookshop and looks along the fiction and poetry shelves. He will find many new titles by young authors of whom he has never heard but who have written fine books. Those will be published by any of the major publishers who have also paid a lot for Celebrity memoirs.

I also suggest that he learns a lesson not only in general market forces but in the economics of publishing.

If a major celebrity in film, pop, sport etc. did allow a publisher to have their Memoir without any advance being paid,  and received monies strictly on actual sales, the chances are that they might sell anything between 5,000 and 500,000 copies, making between a few thousand and a few hundred thousands of pounds for its author.

The first-time literary novelist would sell between 200 and 1,000 copies which would make between a few pounds and a few hundred. This is simply because almost celebrity memoir will sell more than any literary first novel - mainly because the former is bought by people who do not normally buy books and who are interested in the celebrity not in literature.

The Society of Authors and the Publishers Association have absolutely nothing to do with any of this. It is not in their remit.

Publishing is a business and if a publisher spends his money foolishly then he will make losses and eventually go bust. Then he will be in no position to help any authors, young, aspiring, literary or celebrity.

What planet is this man living on ?

 

 

Someone recommended this novel to me years ago but somehow every time I picked it up, it didn`t seem to be what I was wanting to read at that moment, so it has taken me until now to discover a very fine writer and a most moving and intelligent novel about what it is like to live between two cultures.

It is IN THE EYE OF THE SUN by Ahdaf Souief ..an English novel about Egypt and an Egyptian novel about England, and moving seamlessly between the two countries and cultures.  It is set against the turbulent history of the Middle East over thirty odd years from the mid-l960s and tells the story of a middle-class educated Egyptian girl, Asya, and follows her progress as she moves between her home in Egypt and her life and studies in England, from secondary school to PH D and also marriage and beyond. It is remarkably perceptive about relationships, especially married ones,  a story of modern Egypt and Egyptian women and an insight into their social, political and sexual world. An absorbing and eye-opening read for women in any culture but emphatically not ' a woman`s book.'

(Bloomsbury)

AS IT IS IN HEAVEN by Niall Williams

His autobiographical story, O COME YE BACK TO IRELAND, told of his leaving New York for a tumbledown cottage in Co. Clare, long before doing this sort of thing became fashionable. This was unfashionable Ireland, unhurried, wet and wonderful.

The novel is set there too and reflects Ireland`s harsh rugged landscapes, pewter skies and mercurial spirits. Stephen Griffin is a solitary, introverted schoolteacher living with his father - their lives have been scarred by the deaths of Stephen`s mother and sister in a road accident.

Stephen`s life is transformed whe he meets a beautiful Italian violinist and, lured by his memory of Vivaldi, he goes to Venice in the hope of finding her again. This is a novel about love - the unspoken, sad, interdependent love between Stephen and his father and the passion that overturns Stephen`s life. It is beautiful, unbearably sad, moving, and tender. It explores both the pain of loss and a sense of healing, and the strength of endurance.

 

In print, from Picador.

A few unusual books coming in the next days to get stuck into during the post-turkey days.  The first is

INDEPENDENT PEOPLE by Halldor Laxness - a doorstop book, two inches thick and first published in 1934. It is set in Laxness`s native Iceland and begins at the end of the 19th century.After 18 years of hard work and hard saving, Bjartur has finally paid the deposit on the small and suposedly haunted croft, Summerhouses. He takes his new wife home there and so begins his obsessive struggle to maintain himself and hs family as independent people. To this end and through harsh winters and back-breaking labour, Bjartur sacrifices  two wives and several children, but his sheep survive, building up his worth as a man of independence who asks favours of no one.

It sounds bleak and by the end you do feel you have endured everything the elements can throw at you in a remote Icelandic valley. Bjartur is a cold and cruel tyrant, focusing on his own ambition and you cannot possibly like him but to be like this is probably what it takes to survive as he does in such an evironment.

You feel you have lived there, know the people and the harsh physical life they endure. Whether to be independent is a worthwhile Sole Aim is a question you ask more than once at the end of the book.

It is published in English translation by Harvill, as a paperback.

 

Not psoriasis.. or rather, if it is, then that isn`t the link I meant. And not The Unquiet Grave, that is Non-fiction.

Have some more.

1 P.D.James crime novel set in a nurses' home

2. In which town was it 'starless' and 'Bible-Black.'

3. What kind of journey did O`Neill have into it ?

4. What job did Dogbery do ?

5. Robert Frost says that he has been one.

 

Medium hard, I`d say.

1.  At which sport did Joan Hunter Dunn excel ? TENNIS (  Betjeman.)

2. What did Wilkie Colllins and Dennis Potter have in common ?  BOTH WROTE A NOVEL CALLED HIDE AND SEEK.
3. Upon which school was the one in TOM BROWN`S SCHOOLDAYS based ?

4. What was the Maltese cat ?

5. What is the title of Cyril Connolly`s only novel ? THE ROCK POOL

6.  What did Holden Caulfield leave on the subway ? FENCING EQUIPMENT.. Foils, masks and etc.

7. Whose loneliness did Alan Sillitoe write about ? THE LONG DISTANCE RUNNER

8. Who taunted whom with a gift of tennis balls ?  HENRY V. THE DAUPHIN (SHAKESPEARE)

9. Whose said that his only outdoor sport was playing dominoes in French cafes ?

10.Which sport features in the novel THIS SPORTING LIFE and who wrote it ? RUGBY. DAVID STOREY

 

Quite hard.  Good start but more please. ONLY  4 AND 9 STILL UNANSWERED.   9.. if you don`t know it, think of the sort of person who WOULD have said that...

1. TWO operas by Benjamin Britten from Henry James ghost stories. THE TURN OF THE SCREW and OWEN WINGRAVE

2. Novel by the author of MOONFLEET featuring the same instrument as a novel by Patrick Leigh Fermor.

3.Season group by Barbara Pym  QUARTET IN AUTUMN

4. Wordsworths were from the steep - giving the title of a volume of memoirs by Lady Diana Cooper and a novel by Thomas Hardy. TRUMPETS and THE TRUMPET MAJOR

5.Musical group, novel by Trollope.. Yes, THE CHOIR. JOANNA TROLLOPE

6.Was potent to Noel Coward.. CHEAP MUSIC

7. Coleridge`s damsel played on this. DULCIMER

8. Name of the bellows-mender  FLUTE

9. Eliot`s was unheard - and where was it hidden ?

10. Mr Turveydrop`s profession. DANCING MASTER

11. What everybody suddenly did. 'BURST OUT SINGING' (SASSOON)

12. What the minstrel boy had slung behind him. HARP

13. They were the dreamers of dreams. THE MUSIC MAKERS (SHAUGHNESSY)

14. Powell`s  novel sequence. DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME

15. Gunther Grass`s was made of tin. D RUM

What do you mean, you don`t have time  ?

CORRECT ANSWERS SO FAR NOW FILLED IN.  ONLY A FEW TO GO.. COME ON, YOU CAN DO IT.

2 and 9 LEFT. SEVERAL PEOPLE HAVE NEARLY GOT THEM - BUT NEARLY IS NOT GOT, AS IT WERE.

 

I have now put up all the authors.. I think. Hope you enjoyed it. More brain -teasers on the way.

You have until tomorrow morning.

Those who were expecting to have a copy of either HOTEL SAVOY or THE RADETZKY MARCH tucked into the stocking will be disappointed. They only arrived from the wholesaler yesterday - or rather, Hotel S arrived - apparently they are awaiting stock of Radetzky. I will post out what I have when the postmen move from their firesides again and The Radetzky March will follow at some point.

Whenever I say I will give books away they go out of stock.

See if you can get them all before Christmas. I have filled in the authors guessed in the other posts but there are still quite a few gaps.

THE NEW LIFE....Orham Pamuk

THE DOLL.... Boleslaw Prus

TOO LOUD A SOLITUDE....Bohumil Hrabal

THE REPUBLIC OF WHORES....Joseph Svcorecky

LA REGENTA...Leopoldo Alas

THE PATH TO THE SPIDER`S NEST....Italo Calvino

EPITAPH OF A SMALL WINNER.....Machado de Assis

THEY WERE COUNTED...Miklos. Banffy

Hardest lot of all.

THE LOST HONOUR OF KATHARINA BLUM....Henrich Boll

WE...Zamyatin

PETERSBURG....Andrei Bly

THE BLACK TULIP ...Dumas

THE TRIAL.. Franz Kafka

THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS. Georgio Bassani

THE PLAGUE... Camus

DR ZHIVAGO.. Boris Pasternak

A RUSSIAN TRILOGY.....Sergei Aksakov

THE NAME OF THE ROSE.. Umberto Eco

 

 

I knew it would be out there somewhere and of course I am led to it a moment ago by Michael Mayne in THE ENDURING MELODY. He quotes Italo Calvino`s definition of a classic as " a book which has never finished saying what it has to say."

Well, that will do for me. 

Bookseller to the stars says a Classic is only a classic in the opinion of someone at Penguin or OUP. That may, or may not, be so. I do not have a definitinion of a Classic apart from 'has stood the test of time...' but then, so has Woolworths.  Quality. But then, there is Street and Time.  Appeal to many different ages and nationalities ? So does Macdonalds.  Great prose. Define. Adds to the richness of life. Stimulates the imagination.  Provides a moral philosophy by which to live well. Er.. you can see I am struggling here.

My point, being made in a rather ponderous and roundabout manner through which any decent sun would score his red pencil, is that whatever a Classic is, we all know one when we see one. Or think we do. Or Penguin and OUP do.

So, here are ten Classics. Not Top Ten. Just Ten. Later, I will suggest ten Classics which ae not yet recognised as such by Penguin and OUP.

No surprises here and in no particular order.

Charles Dickens. BLEAK HOUSE

Jonathan Swift. GULLIVER`S TRAVELS

Dostoevsky. CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

Homer. THE ODYSSEY

Jane Austen. PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

Mark Twain TOM SAWYER

Cervantes. DON QUIXOTE

Tolstoy. WAR AND PEACE

George Eliot MIDDLEMARCH

Lewis Carroll ALICE IN WONDERLAND

 

 

 

THE LEOPARD.  Lampedusa

AUGUST 1914.. Solzhenitsyn

THE TIN DRUM .. Gunther Grass

WIND, SAND AND STARS ... Saint-Exupery

JOURNEY TO THE END OF NIGHT....Louis-Ferdinand Celine

FROM THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD....Dostoevsky

FATHERS AND SONS.Turgenev

ALEXANDERPLATZ..Doblin

THE OTHER SIDE.....Alfred Kubin

Some easy-peasy, some well-nigh impossible.  Get stuck in.

There has been a bit of a dust-up in the Meeja about the squillions paid by publishers for Memoirs by Celebs which then do not sell many copies - though note they sell a heck of a lot more copies than most first novels, a goodly number of thirty first novels and many decent non-fiction titles. The problem only comes about because to recoup their advances they would have to sell far, far more. Scott Pack said the rule of thumb about them when he was Buying Manager at Waterstone`s, was 1. Do we like them (the Celeb..)  If we do, chances are the books will do well and if we do not, not. So, we like Sharon Osbourne = best seller. We loathe most politicians = worst seller.

But I have been wondering about the memoirs we will almost certainly never get to read. Now these are the ones that would sell but for many reasons, they are never going to be published.

1. J.K. Rowling. My Life with Harry. Why would she bother?

2. H.M.The Queen. My Family and about 28 Prime Ministers. The Truth. We love her, we love her, we`d buy it in shedloads.

3. Sean Connery. He keeps being given a million  pounds to have someone like Hunter Davies write it, Hunter says no go unless it contains the whole truth and nothing but so Sean gives back the money. I never realised he had anything to hide but there you go.

4. Lord Snowdon. Margaret.  He`s been offered the moon and turned it down because he`s a Gent.

5. Jack the Ripper. My Identity Disclosed (from Beyond the Grave.)

The truth is probably boring but it would shut them up once and for all before they bore us to death.

Anyone else anyone ?

 

And I will add the correct authors guessed to the first titles.

THE CONFESSIONS OF ZENO....Italo Svevo

ON THE MARBLE CLIFFS....Ernest Juenger

LA CHARTREUSE DE PARME.. STENDHAL

LES LIASONS DANGEREUSES  Laclos

THERE RAQUIN.. Emile Zola.

I`M NOT STILLER Max Frusch

THE DEMONS ..Heimito von Doderer

 

.. and yes, I know I have missed off accents. I can`t find out how to insert them.

TWO CORRECT  GIVEN BY COMMENTERS INSERTED.

 

Which I am not this year, as any fule Kno, is that I have loads and loads of time. So I am blogging a lot and writing a lot an dreading a lot. And I thought I`d glance away from the left where the fog rubs its back against the windowpane, (source please) to the right and the books  and stuff on my bedside table.  No pattern to it. Never is.

1. A notepad and pen

2. A block of multi-coloured post-it notes so I can jot things down at 3.a.m. and stick them somewhere. The top one says RADIATOR KEY.

The next days FLU JAB.

3. a large and powerful torch. Well, we live in remotest Gloucestershire and though we have a generator for use in our many and lengthy power cuts, one has to light one`s way downstairs and out to the barn to turn it on.

4. Mobile phone in its charger.

5. Box of paper tissues.

6. Bottle of favourite scene - Givenchy, Amarige.

7.Emergency life-saving medical kit (wasps crawl into odd places, even in winter.)

8. Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend .. am in mid-re-read

The Bible.. always as above.

 2 issues of Books and Company (see earlier blog.)

Watching the English. The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour by Kate Fox. Looking forward to reading.

 The Smelly Dog. The latest Social Stereotypes by Victoria Mather and Sue McCartney Snape. Well, one simply must.

Silence of the Grave by Arnaldur Indridason.Icelandic thriller. Cold killers. Can`t wait.

Margery Allingham. Flowers for the Judge. Kindly sent to me by Vintage who are republishing her best detective novels. (Tiger in the Smoke absolutely the best, by the way, a must-read if you haven`t.)

Question. When did the Detective Story turn into the Crime Novel ?

A book about Venice called VENICES by Paul Morand. A Pushkin Press book so it`s bound to be good.

Two books about AMERICAN POLITICS for the Younger D.

Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse in the new Everyman Wodehouse.

and Michael Mayne. The Eternal Melody. Long, slow, deep, careful reading and re-reading.

It`ll all change tomorrow. My favourite quote about on your bedside table comes from that little spud-faced genius Wayne Rooney. He reads a lot. He was asked what was on his bedside table. Harry Potter he said. What was on Colleen`s side ?

The Phone.

 

Regular visitors here may remember that I put up the first four chapters of a children`s novel I am writing and asked for comments and suggestions. I got quite a few, thank you. I can now tell you that the book will be published by BLOOMSBURY, probably on 2008.

I am also asked rather often what is happening to Simon Serrailler. He is fine, thanks and has been promoted to Detective Chief Superintendent. He will be appearing in a new adventure. But I am also writing the first of a crime novel series about another detective. His name is Rick Bradshaw, he is a DC with the Met and a bit of a maverick. And the first book about him is called CORRUPTION.

Yesterday I received a sweet e-mail asking when I was going to feature a gay Detective. Apparently the writer had been hoping that Serrailler would turn out to be - but I had to scotch that one.

I did vaguely suggest that there ought to be a gay Detective but was shot down in flames by publishers. Apparently 99% of crime novel readers are women and they emphatically do not want their detective heroes to be gay, they want them to heterosexual and available.

So that`s that then.

 

So here are some fiendish  and not so fiendish but all bookish questions.

1. Who created the characters of Ethel Monticue and Mr Salteena ?...Daisy Ashford. The Young Visiters

2. 'Highbury bore me.' What did Richmond and Kew do ?

3. Where did Leo Colston and Marian Maudsley go shopping to buy him summer clothes ?

and b.  What is the famous opening line of the novel and 'The past is another country. They do things differently there,'  The Go-Between

c. Who played those characters in the 1970s film ? Alan Bates and Julie Christie

4.On which city did Thomas Hardy base his Melchester ?

5 Who wrote 1. The Napoleon of Notting Hill and 2. The Ballad of Peckham Rye .(MURIEL SPARK )and 3. A Far Cry from Kensington. 

6. What is the connection between London, Paris and a river in Suffolk ? ORWELL

7. Which poet`s train stopped at Adlestrop ? EDWARD THOMAS

8 Who wrote Beyond the Mexique Bay ?

Answers later. More quiz questions too.

 

Answers filled in to those correctly guessed by commenters.

Try these.

FONTAMARA..... Ignazio Silone

THE WALNUT TREES OF ALTENBURG...Andre Malraux

THE CITY BEYOND THE RIVER....Hermann Kasack

THE MAN  WITHOUT QUALITIES. Robert Musil

AUTO DA FE Elias Canetti

THE CONFESSIONS OF ZENO..Italo Svevo

(Well done Tim.)

 

This will make a nice change from mince pies.  I have been digging out copies of the small magazine I edited and  published for a few years, BOOKS AND COMPANY. It was fun while it lasted and there are quite a few things in it which I will put up on the blog in the next few months, as they deserve a new life. The first is just a list. A list by Alex Paton, of

50 FAVOURITE EUROPEAN AND RUSSIAN CLASSICS.

But as 50 is a lot to digest at once, here are the first 10. The rest to follow. It is satisfying to tick off those already read and the list of to-be-reads will make a good New Year Resolution - because we will be into those before we can say turkey. Oh, I know, let`s make the brains work even harder. Here are just the TITLES. Can you supply the authors ? Depends on whether you have started on the cherry brandy I suppose.

THE GLASS BEAD GAME.Hermann Hesse

DEATH OF VERGIL....Hermann Broch

WHEN THE MOUNTAIN FELL....Ramuz

THE COUNTERFEITERS..Andre Gide

JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS.  Thomas Mann

 

As I said in the last entry, Room to Read. com is this blog`s Charity of the Year and I should have made it clear that this means for 2007... so it will be ongoing through the year and I will be putting up all sorts of wheezes and schemes and ideas for helping them. But the first is a poll. If you go to their website, you will see that they need both money for the general pot, but that they also have special schemes whereby someone can sponsor a particular thing... so there are scholarships to send GIRLS to school, you can sponsor a whole room in which to put books, and then the books to put in it and so on. Please will you go to the website and read through these carefully and then let me know which project you think this blog should aim to support. e.g. General Funds, Scholarships for girls, a reading room, books for a library etc etc.

Long Barn Books will be making Room to Read its charity of the year too so I hope we can do something really useful overall.

I can`t put up one of those polls with buttons to vote on this blog - or rather, if I can I have not yet discovered how, so a vote via the comments seems to be the way forward. THANK YOU. Votes by January 2nd please so a start can be made at once.

My website has often highlighted a charity and I have always tried to make it a lesser-known and relatively small one. Now it is the turn of the Blog to host a Charity of the Year and out of the millions, it was actually not difficult to choose ROOM TO READ. ( I was reminded of it again by Tim Coates's link on the Good Library Blog.)

In 1998 a man from Colorado, John Wood who was working for Microsoft went for a trek in Nepal. There he came upon a school where no individual child had books - the school itself had just 20 and they were kept locked up as they were so precious. John Wood decided to do something about it... and now, 8 years later, ROOM TO READ has provided thousands of books and, always in partnership with local communities, library rooms in schools and even library buildings, in many countries of the developing world, as well as Nepal.  They are also involved in providing funding to send children to school - and in particular to send girls, who so often do not receive any education.

The link is www.roomtoread.org. and it makes both interesting, encouraging and very humbling reading. We who read books, love books, buy books so easily, cannot imagine life without them - and we can help those children to books, both for education and for lifelong delight.  What has been done already is heartening but of course there is always so much more.

Meanwhile, of course, libraries in the UK are closing and heads of libraries, people who have actually made libraries their career, are saying that the book is dead, that there is no call for the book or for the borrowing of books any longer and wanting to turn libraries into Discovery Centres, Community Centres, coffee shops, meeting halls  - anything rather than allow them to continue being libraries where books are valued. I would like to make the Room to Read website enforced reading for every single one of them and then send them on a trip to India or Cambodia or Nepal to see just what books mean to the children and young people there, how valued and precious a resource they are. No talk of closure there, only talk of building new libraries, buying new books to stock them, giving books to everyone.

Every time I glance at my well-stocked shelves now I will think of those 20 precious books locked away for fear they might become damaged or stolen, handled only occasionally by the children as a special privilege.

The link is www.roomtoread.org and it is this Blog`s Charity of the Year.

 

 

Scott Pack`s great game CULTURAL CONFESSIONS has whizzed round the blogs in a nano-second but someone signing him/herself 'anonymous' on the Crockatt and Powell  blog has accused it of being about intellectual snobbery. I replied that a. that was silly and b. I had never really known what intellectual snobbery was anyway.

I lied. Of course  I know but it has nothing to do with confessing that you have never finished reading Proust. Intellectual snobs say things like..

"We don`t have television.... well, no, that isn`t strictly true, there is an old black and white one in a cupboard - we just get it out to watch the Test Match."

"I wouldn`t even know where you would BUY a lottery ticket."

"I couldn`t for the life of me tell you the name of a single pop musician I`m afraid."

"If you are going to talk about Big Brother/The X-Factor/I`m a Celebrity get me out of here/Strictly Come Dancing... please go and do it in the garden."

"The Americans have never understood European Film." (note the singular.)

"I was always taught to discard the dust wrappers from books."

"I really do dislike these jazzy new covers for Penguin Books. What was wrong with the old Orange for a Penguin and Blue for a Puffin ? '

 

You just don`t seem in the mood.

A nice man over on the TIME magazine blog asked me to contribute to it with my suggestion for the Best old Book of 2006 - i.e. anything published prior to this year and either read for the first time or re-read and selected as a best book.

Here is the link.

http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/12/old_books_of_th.html

I have chosen a masterpiece of a novel, first published by Virginia and Leonard Woolf at their Hogarth Press in 1924. I have been gunning for it for about 25 years but it is out of print again so I am going to re-publish it under the Long Barn Books imprint. It must not be allowed to slip out of sight, it is too good.

What is it ? Let your fingers do the walking. Click on the link to the TIME blog and find out.

Vanity Fair

Madame Bovary

Don Quixote

Dante

.. and more to follow sometime.

 

People seem to want to take me in hand so I had better elaborate. I dislike Brahms and Beehoven and 90% of other classical composers and all  symphonic music and all chamber music.  I only really like Bach and Britten and Handel  and otherwise English church music composers. And being a pathetic groupie, I dislike Brahms because Ben Britten told me I should- you should have heard him on the subject. Your hair would have caught fire.

This game courtesy of Scott Pack over on Me and My Big Mouth. He confesses to, for eg. never having read Jane Austen or seen a Monty Python film. So here goes. I confess I have never

1. Read a novel by Flaubert or Stendhal. Got the on the shelves, yes, read them no.

2. Been to America.

3. Owned a copy of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, The Koran,  or The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Not even on the shelves.

4. Owned an album by The Rolling Stones or Brahms. Heard quite enough never to want to hear a note more thank you.

5. Seen a film starring Orson Welles. Got several. Keep meaning to. Keep being told I should. But, sort of, don`t ever feel the moment is right when it`s a choice between OW and another re-run of Ocean`s Eleven.

That`s my 5.  Shameful.

Tim Coates got the answer to yesterday`s - why does Father Christmas have 3 Gardens ?'  To Ho-Ho-Ho (Hoe Hoe Hoe.. geddit ?)

Today`s Christmas cracker joke.

What is Father Christmas`s favourite Carol ?

 

I`m not a party girl and I never ever have launch parties for my own books - sort of think it puts a jinx on them. But as a publisher they are fun to give and we have had two terrific ones recently. The latest was today, when we launched the re-publication - if you follow- of two  wonderful children`s book by the late Hester Knight, ESCAPE TO THE DOWNS and THE DONKEY DERBY. Faber originally published them in the 1960s but they are very deserving of  new lease of life and I have done them under the Long Barn Books imprint as facsimiles of the originals.  Hester was the mother of the racehorse trainer Henrietta Knight, whose horse BEST MATE  won the Cheltenham Gold Cup three times, and other daughter, Celia, is now Lady Vestey. It was the Vesteys who  generously gave today`s party and a terrific do it was. The ballroom was decorated not only for Christmas but with pictures of Hester Knight and her horses and the girls and their ponies and animals when they were young, and also of the places on the Berkshire downs which form the settings for the books. They have not changed much and you can still walk or ride the routes taken by the escaping animals in the stories. There was good wine and delicious food and 80- some people enjoyed themselves well into the afternoon - and blind pianist Derek Paravacini added to the joy, playing everything from The Covebtry Carol to  The Entertainer and Fats Waller numbers.It was a crisp, bright, frosty day and Stowell Park and its surrounding countryside was looking beautiful. Lots of books were sold and everyone had a merry, cheerful festive time. And if you hurry hurry hurry, you can still buy the books for Christmas... go to the Long Barn Books website, or e-mail me, a snip at £10 each and ideal for children of 6-86.

 

 

The elf-abet of course.

Joke a day from now on, as I feel like that.

But as this is the first day, we`ll have two.

Why does Father Christmas have three gardens ?

What do elves learn at school ?

(answer will be posted this afternoon..)

 

Painting. Among so many wonderful, glowing, gold and dark paintings of the Nativity - especially the ones lit by candlelight from within so that the light both illuminates the group in the stable and sheds its light out to the viewer, in some miracle of the painter`s art - I will choose one by Cranach the elder, a 16th century, strange painting with the faces all slightly odd, the light on the shepherds outside shining out of a deep patch of blue, the shepherd separately lit and looking so solemn and humble, and the baby surrounded by angels of his own size, all crammed round the manger. It is haunting and it seems extraoordinarily contemporary though clearly of its time too. Once studied, never forgotten but you do not see it often.

I can`t put pictures up on the blog but here is a link. Do look.

http://www.merry-christmas.com/famous.paintings/painting11.htm

Oh difficult. We don`t hear enough of GOOD KING WENCESLAS..nor of WE THREE KINGS, both favourites of mine to sing, though I got a good many detentions for singing different words to the latter ..(..'two in a taxi, one in a car..')

I would be happy never to hear SILENT NIGHT or AWAY IN A MANGER AGAIN.

If I choose one set, as it were, then it has to be Britten`s A CEREMONY OF CAROLS - marvellous tunes, wonderful harp. 'I sing of a Maiden that is makeless' is like an intricate dance for voices.

One carol ? Easy. IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER. Beauty. Grace. And just the right touch of melancholy, as a reminder.

 

Apart from a great many other things, he is so funny. The SP tells the story - too often - of how he sat behind the sofa as a boy of 9 chortling aloud at The Pickwick Papers. That is the only Dickens I have never taken to but I have been laughing aloud again at odd lines in OUR MUTUAL FRIEND, which is not, overall, a remotely funny book but one of Dickens`s darkest. Still, there are rich moments of hilarious dialogue. Last night I came upon the first exchange between Mr Boffin and Silas Wegg. Mr Boffin cannot read or write but wishes to improve himself, so asks Silas Wegg to come and read to him every evening in exchange for payment. Silas Wegg is not the world`s most educated man to say the least but he can read. The negotiation, however, is not without its tricky moments.

"As to the amount of strain upon the intellect now. Was you thinking at all of poetry ?'  Mr Wegg inquired, musing.

'Would it come dearer ?' Mr Boffin asked.

'It would come dearer,' Mr Wegg returned. 'For when a person comes to grind off poetry night after night it is but right that he should expect to be paid for its weakening effect on his mind.'

But Charles Causley`s poetry would never weaken anyone`s mind. It has strengthened mine for many a long year. Listen to this.

Who is that child I see wandering, wandering
Down by the side of the quivering stream?
Why does he seem not to hear, though I call to him?
Where does he come from, and what is his name?

Why does he move like a wraith by the water,
Soft as the thistledown on the breeze blown?
When I draw near him so that I may hear him,
Why does he say that his name is my own?