Stuck-in-a-Book's Weekend Miscellany

My ex-housemate Mel is visiting Oxford this weekend, which will make me very happy.  It's not the same city without her, and we'll paint the town red this weekend (or, more likely, play Scrabble.)   This might mean no post on Monday - forewarned is forearmed, and I'm sure you'll get through the day!  But for now, a link, a blog post, and a whole mound of books.

1.) The link - is a free library!  "The only rule is that there are no rules" - books can be borrowed for any length of time, or even kept.  The man running this, from his home, wisely says "As a book caretaker, you become a full man."  Take note, OV and OVW.   Oh, and it's in one my very favourite cities, Manila in the Philippines.  (WHY didn't I visit when I was there?)  Read more here.  I know a few of you live in Manila - have you ever been?

2.) The book - comes from beautiful Folio Books (thank you!) - a rather lovely edition of The Wind in the Willows, which I haven't read since I was about 12.  I'll probably have a re-read soon, and will post more then, but I promised Ozal a link to Folio's page on the book asap. 

3.) The blog post - is Victoria/Litlove's fascinating discussion-opener on writing blog reviews.  She also includes links to other posts, which will send you off into one of those link-blog-link-blog spirals that could be gloriously unending.  Well, that's what it did for me.  Victoria's post also acts as LitCrit 101 for those who sometimes feel out of their depth in that area - and there's also a really interesting set of comments which are worth reading.

4.) The ebooks - *washes mouth out with soap*  Yes, I'm going to talk about ebooks.  The lovely people at Bloomsbury Reader got in touch to ask whether I'd like one of their Ivy Compton-Burnett ebook reprints (can one reprint an ebook?)  Obviously I couldn't accept, but I did offer to do a 'shout-out'.  So, for those of you who are yet to try Dame Ivy, Bloomsbury Reader have quite a few available as ebooks: A Heritage and Its History, Elders and Betters, Two Worlds and Their Ways, The Present and The Past, The Last and the First, A Family and a Fortune, Men and Wives, Parents and Children and even her first, disowned, novel Dolores.  The only one of those I've read is Parents and Children, which is great - and I imagine all the others are great too!  (Some are available as print-on-demand paperbacks, but at twice the price of the ebooks, and rather more than you can find the books for secondhand.)  Let me know if you try any!

Find a Good Critique Group

by Brenda Remmes

              I’m always surprised at how many people tell me that they don’t want anyone to read what they’re writing until they’re completely finished.  Most agents say they don’t need to read more than five pages to tell whether they’re interested in the rest of the manuscript.  You’re hoping they’ll get through at least the first three chapters.  My thoughts are you might as well get those first five pages out there as soon as possible for some feedback so you don’t make the same mistakes throughout the rest of your writing.

               I was very lucky to fall into an excellent critique group on my first try.  That doesn’t always happen.  Critique groups are different.  Whether you wish to start a group on your own or attend one already in existence, here are my rules of thumb.  1)  Look for some members where at least a few people have already published or have some professional experience in publishing, even if it’s in the local newspaper.  There’s no better educator than experience.  2)  Stay clear of family members and friends.  They tend to be too kind.  You need honesty that is cushioned with respect and appreciation for the work and method involved in writing.  3) Establish the guidelines for participation in the group.  Everyone should be writing something.  Meetings should be regular.   Submission requirements should be consistent.

               Here is the way my critique group works.  Our group has ten members.  Average attendance is about six, which is a good number, because it means each person can submit for every meeting if they wish.  Larger groups allow people to submit only every few months.  We have a coordinator who e-mails reminders before each meeting.  We meet twice a month for two hours.  Anyone who wishes to submit may do so four days prior to the next meeting by e-mailing to every member up to ten pages (double-spaced in submission format) of whatever they are writing.  Participants are asked to critique each piece prior to the meeting.  I stress the word “prior” because this is a point on which a lot of critique groups differ.  Some critique groups read the submissions at the meeting.  We have found it much more effective to individually critique the submission before the meeting and then discuss it at the meeting.

               We are not an “editing” group.  While we may note misspelling or grammatical corrections on our copy of the manuscript that we return to the author, this is not what we come together to discuss.  Our role is to make comment on the character development, plot and background stories.  “What worked for me when I read your piece,” and “What didn’t work so well.”  During this process, I have learned that my weakness is my inability to give enough descriptive detail to a scene.  “I can’t see this scene in my head, yet,” is the critique my group makes.  “What’s in the room with them?  What noises are going on in the background.  Are there certain smells I should be aware of?”  Incorporate all of the senses, not just the visual.  The group will often give me ideas and make suggestions of what might work.

               We remain respectful of each individual’s efforts and their particular genre, recognizing that we don’t have all the answers by a long shot and reminding one another that what one publisher may not like, another might love. One of our members joined another group in addition to ours where they worked specifically with children’s books.  She shares what she learns from them. 

We continue to remind one another that one person’s opinion does not an absolute make, but we suggest that if two or more people raise the same issue, it might be something the author wishes to consider.  In the end, the author always has the final say on whatever they choose to write.

               As for me, there is no doubt in my mind that I would not have made it as far as I have at this point without the insights and recommendations from my critique group.   I would have wasted valuable time submitting one manuscript  after another to agents without understanding why they got rejected.  I now have a contract on a book.  In addition, I have a new group of friends, who remain kind and compassionate in regards to my writing.  More importantly, they’re not afraid to challenge me to do better and continually improve my writing skills.  

Illustrations:   rudall30, Yury Shchipakin/ Shutterstcock.com

Guard Your Daughters - Diana Tutton

41. Guard Your Daughters (1953)

What a heavenly book!  What a glorious find!  It has gone into my 50 Books You Must Read But May Not Have Heard About.  There was never any question that it wouldn't.

Occasionally I started a book and, after a page or two, know that I will hate it *cough* Mary Webb *cough - less frequently, it takes only the first page to tell me that a book is astonishingly brilliant (step forward Patrick Hamilton.)  Rarest of all is the book where, before the end of the second page, I know I will read and re-read it for many years to come.  We all recognise the difference between a book we admire and a book we love.  Often these overlap, but there are very few novels which feel like loved ones, so deeply are we attached to them.  Guard Your Daughters is on that list for me, now.

First off, I have to acknowledge how similar it is to Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle.  I mentioned that the other day, but I don't think I can really write a review without acknowledging it again.  Guard Your Daughters was published five years after I Capture the Castle, and I think Tutton must have been influenced by it - or perhaps there was something in the zeitgeist?  (Disclaimer: I'm going to make two big assumptions - that you've read I Capture the Castle, and that you love it.  I won't give away any significant spoilers, but my references to Dodie Smith's novel might not make complete sense if you've not read it.... ok, disclaimer over!)

Here are some of the similarities: The narrator is a young girl (Morgan Harvey is 19, to Cassandra's 17) who lives with her eccentric family in the middle of rural nowhere.  Her father is a writer (although Morgan's father is a successful and prolific detective novelist, not an avant-garde sufferer from writer's block) and there are posher folk living nearby.  Tutton even seems to make reference to Rose's disastrous attempts to dress up for her neighbours, when Morgan and her sisters are preparing to visit theirs:

Luckily, if you bother to read a few illustrated papers you can always find out what to wear when, so that we didn't make any crashing faux pas, such as wearing long dresses or flowers in our hair.

The most significant similarity is the feel of the novel.  Just as I Capture the Castle has a warm, nostalgic feel to it (don't ask me how), so Guard Your Daughters feels like a novel one read repeatedly throughout childhood, even though I hadn't read a word of it before this week.  Without being like those mawkish Edwardian children's books where everyone Learns A Lesson, Tutton has created a wonderful family of people who love one another and, somehow, make the reader feel included.  'About fifty years out of date', as one sister cheerfully confesses, and 'living in a completely unreal world' as another admits, but this isn't a realist novel.  This is a novel which glories in its own delightful eccentricity - but not without serious undercurrents.

Right, the family.  While Cassandra was blessed only with one sister and one brother, Morgan has four sisters.  Dreamy, shy Teresa is the youngest (at 15) - she warmed my heart by her forthright hatred of sports.  Next is Cressida, the only one of the unmarried sisters who craves a normal family environment - she rather blended into the background, but that turns out to be important.  Morgan is the middle sister.  One year older than her, Thisbe is dry, sardonic and loves to make visitors feel awkward - the only thing she takes seriously is her poetry.  Oldest is Pandora, recently married and thus absent from the home.  When she visits, her perspective on life has changed...

"The thing is--" said Pandora.

"What?"

"I realise now - I never did before --" She hunted for words and I turned and stared at her.

"What are you trying to say?"

"I realise now that we're an odd sort of family."

"Well of course we are."

"But I mean - Oh, Morgan, I do want you all to get married too!"

"Five of us?  I doubt if even Mrs. Bennet managed as well as that, unless she fell back on a few parsons to help out.  However, dearest, we'll do our best."

It is obvious that life cannot be normal for these five - but Guard Your Daughters isn't self-consciously wacky or absurd.  The events are entirely plausible - there are very amusing scenes where Morgan and Teresa try to run a Sunday School lesson, or Morgan and Thisbe attempt to negotiate a cocktail party, or the girls try to put together a meal for a visiting young man while subsisting on rations (and finer things illegally given by a nearby farmer.)  The various relationships between sisters aren't unlikely either - except perhaps the standard of their conversation and wit.  What makes the Harvey family eccentric is their detachment from the outside world, and their complete absorption in the feelings and doings of the family unit, to the exclusion of almost everybody else.  (The family unit is completed, incidentally, by their father and mother.  No Mortmain-esque step-parents in sight.  The father is only mildly absent-minded, and the mother... well, she has sensitive nerves... it's not all easy-going in this household or this novel.)

But, despite Pandora's fears, they do manage to meet a couple of young men.  Gregory's car fortuitously breaks down outside their gate (remind you of any novel?) and, later, Patrick offers Morgan and Teresa a lift in his car while they're on their way to a nunnery to learn French... Aside from owning cars, these young man share bewilderment at the Harvey family, and both become objects of desire for one sister or another.  Unlike I Capture the Castle, the romance plot never becomes of overriding importance.  Far more important is the family, their love and rivalry, and definitely their comedy.  There are many very amusing scenes, and a few quite moving and difficult ones, but the main wonder of the novel is the family, and Morgan's voice.  She is not so self-conscious as Cassandra, but has an inviting, charming, slightly wry outlook on her sisters - coloured, of course, by her love for them.  I have no idea how Tutton has created such a lovable character - if I knew, I'd bottle it.

These aren't the sisters in the book, of course... but they could be.
(picture source)

It's so difficult to write about a book when I have simply loved it.  I want to shelve any critical apparatus (not that I usually drag it out on my blog) and substitute rows of exclamation marks and smiley faces.  Guard Your Daughters is so warm, so funny, so lively and delightful.  It's a warm blanket of a novel, but never cloying or sentimental.  Basically, if you have any affection for I Capture the Castle, you'll feel the same about Guard Your Daughters.  I'm going to go one step further.  I think it's better than I Capture the Castle.  There.  Said it.

Bizarrely, unbelievably, criminally, it is out of print.  But I've seen the edition I have (the Reprint Society, 1954) in lots and lots of bookshops - I think they may have overestimated the demand!  I would love people to read it, so I'll probably buy up copies when I see them, and force them on friends and family... if it's languishing on your shelves, then go and grab it asap.  I'm so grateful to my friend Curzon for initially recommending it to me, and later Nicola Humble (author of the absolutely essential The Feminine Middlebrow Novel 1920 to 1950s) for reminding me about it at a conference earlier this year.  It's probably my book of 2012 so far, and if you manage to get a copy, please come and let me know what you thought.

Oh, what a heavenly book!

Five From the Archive (no.9)

I'm still enjoying these jaunts down memory lane - I'm not sure how much longer I'll be able to think of themes which encompass five great books each time, but even with 45 titles down, I have about 300 other reviews to consider... fun!  Do use the Five From the Archive idea and badge, if you so wish.

Five... Books About Holidays

This may be cruel, as the summer quietly dies, but (if it helps) some of these holidays are far from desirable...

1.) The Enchanted April (1922) by Elizabeth von Arnim

In brief: Four seemingly incompatible women join each other for a month in beautiful Italy - which has a powerful effect on them all.

From my review: "The castle is described beautifully, and especially the garden - attention drawn often to the wistaria, which happens to be my favourite plant. Everywhere is brightly sunny, airy, thick with the scent of flowers and bursting with nature. It could have been horribly overdone, but E von A strikes just the right note."

2.) Illyrian Spring (1935) by Ann Bridge

In brief: Another idyllic trip to Italy sets off an intriguing friendship between (Lady) Grace Kilmichael and young artist Nicholas.  Heavy on snobbery, but made up for by being simply beautiful.

From my review: "There are a few, a very few, authors who manage to write about the visual in ways which focus upon characters' emotions and their responses, even if this isn't stated explicitly, and that works for me. I'm thinking the moment when Jude looks out over Christminster in Jude the Obscure, and more or less every moment of Elizabeth von Arnim's The Enchanted April. Ann Bridge joins that select few, for me."

3.) The Great Western Beach (2008) by Emma Smith

In brief: A lovely childhood memoir of visits to Cornwall, which manages to be joyful despite some tough subject matter.

From my review: "I think the most useful way I can write about this book is to describe the style. First person, but neither from the author's current perspective, nor from the child's. It is all written as though she were looking back at the events from a distance of only a couple years - some hindsight and analysis is permitted, but alongside childhood ignorance of certain things, and a child's language."

4.) Straw Without Bricks (1937) by E.M. Delafield

In brief: Not a traditional holiday, perhaps, but here Delafield casts her witty and sensible eye over Soviet Russia, even living in a commune.

From my review: "This is certainly not the 'funny book' that her publisher was hoping for. Delafield's own political leanings were to the left, though not as far as Communism, and she treats the country and its inhabitants seriously. Much of this is with a subdued horror - at the indoctrination, the lack of freedom, the systematic removal of beauty and individualism - but she never makes Communism's adherents appear ridiculous. The humour is often directed towards her fellow tourists, or such quintessentially British anxieties as having to wait around for something to happen, or wondering how to pass someone one is keen not to engage in trivial conversation."


5.) Beside the Sea (2001) by Veronique Olmi

In brief: Easily the darkest of these books, a mother struggles with two young sons while staying in a dingy hotel beside the sea.

From my review: "I was initially thrown by the tone of the novel, being so different from what I expected - and I did worry that it would be like so many other novels, in a 'real' voice which is so jarring and unsatisfying. But Olmi is much cleverer than that - though the reader might think at the start that this is an average mother, it is soon obvious that she is not. Unreliable narrators always make for interesting reading, and this one gives away only so much - and how much of that is true or reasonable is difficult to gauge..."

a gold star if you can spot the pun... ahem.

As always - over to you!  These themes are just to make us think a bit out of the box, or make unusual connections between books we've read, so... holidays in fact or fiction, folk?

Books, Blogs and BFFs: How One Thing Leads to Another

By David Abrams

When I come to the South Carolina Writers’ Workshop on Oct. 19, I’ll be sitting at the front of the room next to four of my best friends I’ve never met.  Lydia, Barbara, Anne, Brenda and I have never met in person, but we are as close as any strangers can be in this connected and wired world.  The five of us have been active members of Book Pregnant—primarily on Facebook, but also collaborating on this blog. 

Books are my BFFs

When we finally rendezvous in Myrtle Beach, there will be hugs, cheek kisses, and exclamations like, “Ohmigod, so that’s what you sound like!”  We’ll have some catching up to do, but not much…because by that point, we’ve pretty much spilled everything about our lives to each other within the confines of our private Facebook group.  Well, almost everything.  These ladies still don’t know all my secrets—like my vasectomy or my teenage obsession with Captain and Tennille (which, OOPS!, now they do if they’re reading this blog). 

Though we all started as strangers, we came together as fellow writers through the Great Mosh Pit known as the Blog-o-sphere.  And that’s what I’ll be talking about when I come to the SCWW in Myrtle Beach: how to network with your fellow authors via a blog. 

Blogs are as diverse at the authors who write them.  That’s probably the most “duh” thing I’ll write all day.  But it’s true.  And here’s another trite truism: blogs are like snowflakes—no two are exactly alike.  When you start a blog, it’s your blog; it will have your personal stamp on it; you’ll maintain control on how often you post; you’ll be steering the direction of the conversation, the tone, and the personality of the blog. 

What may not be as obvious is how a blog can enrich your life as a writer (if you let it, it can also become a ball and chain dragging you down and pulling you away from other writing projects….but that’s a whole other topic of discussion [“Paxil Popping Bloggers Who Overcommit and Other Tales From the Psychiatrist’s Couch”]).  For me, the most rewarding benefit of starting a blog—especially a books blog—is that you’ll get to meet kindred spirits on-line and sometimes—if you’re lucky like I’ll be in South Carolina—in person. 

One of the things I’ll be focusing on during my presentation at the conference is how a blog can serve a bridge between you and the unseen writing community on the web. 

I’ll use my own blog as an example simply because it’s the one I know the most about.  Besides, it’s always easier to discuss parenting techniques by using your own kids as examples rather than those urchins belonging to the grubby, beer-swilling, lottery-playing couple who lives in the trailer down the road from you, right?  I know my blog like I know my own children. 

I started The Quivering Pen on May 2, 2010 full of spunk and hope.  In that first, now-embarrassing post, I wrote: “I am standing on the threshold of the first draft of my second novel.  I am days away from typing the final period of Fobbit: a Novel.”  As you can see, The Quivering Pen was founded on the idea that everyone on the Internetz would be fascinated by watching me, The Writer, at work.  It would be like I was sitting in a glass booth with a typewriter on the corner of 4th and Main. 

In those first few days, the blog was like a jalopy with a loose steering wheel as it careened without brakes down a mountain pass.  My initial blog posts consisted of a quote from Tobias Wolff (something about writing taking “stamina and self-mastery and faith”), a brief examination of palindromes, and a silly little sermon about my reading habits called “The Island of Readers, Population: 1 (Me).”  Those early days of The Quivering Pen basically consisted of me sending short telegrams to the rest of the world, saying, “Is anybody else out there?” 

You’ll probably do the same when you start a blog, and that’s perfectly okay.  It takes time to get your sea legs, to point the compass in the right direction, to build a following.  Your blog will probably grow slowly and will be all arms and legs and bumping into things at first.  Be patient with it.  Make those mistakes (which, at the time, will seem like the most brilliant things you’ve ever written) and find your readership. 

The day I think The Quivering Pen really grew up—put away its tricycle and Legos and started talking in a deeper voice—was when I started a weekly series which continues to this day: My First Time.  (Yeah, it’s all about attracting readers with the tease of sex.)  On the blog, I say My First Time is something “in which writers talk about virgin experiences in their writing and publishing careers, ranging from their first rejection to the moment of holding their first published book in their hands.”  The first My First Time appeared about 10 months after I started the blog and it was a guest post by Caroline Leavitt called “My First Humiliation.”  To this day, Caroline and I have never met, though we’ve been on-line acquaintances for years—even before I started the blog.  I can’t remember who suggested the idea of  “My First Time,” whether it was Caroline or me, but whoever came up with it was brilliant (so I sort of think it was ME).  I thought this might be something that readers would be interested in—hearing about the beginnings of writers, how they came to be who they are. 

I came up with a list of every writer I “knew” (in the Facebook sense of the word) and wrote a standard email to all of them which very politely and earnestly begged them to send me tales of their “virgin experiences.”  The response was overwhelming and soon I had a steady flow of guest blogs coming in to me. 

This was the catalyst which started a more intense dialogue with my fellow writers.  Having the fellowship of other writers (to borrow a word from my father, the Baptist preacher) was like gold in the bank.  As we all know, there can be inspiration, encouragement and intense networking whenever two or more writers get together.  Blogs can easily be the pivot point for those relationships.

And that’s exactly what we’ll be doing when we all come together in South Carolina.  I can’t wait to share the rest of my blogging tips with you.  And the best part is, I’ll be surrounded by my new writing BFFs Lydia, Barbara, Anne and Brenda. 

David Abrams is the author of Fobbit (Grove/Atlantic), a comedy about the Iraq War. His short stories have appeared in Esquire, Narrative, Salamander, The Connecticut Review, and several other publications. He lives with his wife in Butte, Montana.

All The Books of My Life - Sheila Kaye-Smith

I recently read one of my favourite ever author autobiographies, Sheila Kaye-Smith's All The Books of My Life (1956) without having read any of her novels.  I have read two volumes about Jane Austen which Sheila Kaye-Smith co-authored, and now I have read her autobiography (of sorts) - but I have still yet to read any of her fiction.  Should I?  Being 'rural novels', I have an unreasoning terror that they will be exclusively in cod-dialect, and feature sturdy (but honest) young men and flighty (but honest) young women.  Everything, in fact, that Stella Gibbons warns there might be, in Cold Comfort Farm.  My experience with Mary Webb has done nothing to assuage these fears.

Most of us turn to author's biographies or autobiographies to elucidate their novels, or simply because we want to learn a bit more.  My way of doing things seems a bit contrary, but I happened to flick through All The Books of My Life in the Bodleian the other day (somehow it has found its way to the high-use open shelf collection - who could possibly have been reading it?) and I knew I'd have to get myself a copy.  As the account of writing and living as a novelist, it is deeply interesting.  As the perspective of a reader in the first half of the twentieth century, it is a joy.

Kaye-Smith apparently wrote an earlier autobiography about 'my marriage, my home and my religion', and decided that, turning seventy, it was time to dedicate an autobiography to the books she has read.  It's like My Life in Books, I suppose.  From the book about Charles which taught infant Sheila to read, to the latest developments in her reading taste, Kaye-Smith threads the narrative of her life with the books which have influenced her.  Naturally, perhaps, the quotations I have jotted down are those which deal with the books, rather than the life.  Her life is interesting, but I found myself nodding in agreement so enthusiastically at her readerly opinions that I couldn't help but mark them down.  Excuse a torrent of quotations... beginning (let's keep this chronological, shall we?) with her early affection for Lewis Carroll's Alice:

My delight in Alice in Wonderland, which I feel with increasing strength every time I read it, dates from the very dawn of understanding.  It is surely a wonderful achievement to have written a book that does not lose a spark of its magic in the re-reading of sixty years.  As I grew up I came to prefer Through the Looking-Glass - the adventures and characters are more significant and I am increasingly amazed at the brilliance of its construction - but my first introduction was to Wonderland, by means of a version specially prepared for small children and called The Nursery Alice.  This had the Tenniel illustrations, but they were all in colour, and the book must have been an expensive one for it was always kept in the drawing-room.  I remember the panic with which I saw my mother lock the drawing-room door when a thief was supposed to be about, for I felt sure that his main design was to steal my Alice.

There is something rather adorable about that, isn't there?  I love how Kaye-Smith is able to recall the perspectives she held at various stages of her life.  Not only does she remember the books she read, but how she felt about them and the impact they had.  She covers all manner of obscure novels and esoteric books, but my next two excerpts concern well-known writers, and I've selected them purely because I agree with them so whole-heartedly...

I do not think a full-grown sense of humour is required to appreciate Dickens, but it is advisable to read him as I did for drama and pathos.  He is primarily a comic writer.  His character-drawing - and no one more signally then Dickens has given honorary members to the human race - is the drawing of a humorist, that is of a caricaturist, who can often show more of his model's essential quality than a 'straight' artist, but certainly requires a mature mind to appreciate him at his full value.  I read Dickens not to laugh but to cry, for in those days I wanted most of a novel was the gift of tears.

And how could I resist this account of her experiences reading Ivy Compton-Burnett?  Not only do I agree with her assessment of Dame Ivy, but it shows that a false-start with her needn't be the end of the story... encouraging words for any of you who have tried and failed to enjoy ICB!

For many years I found her unreadable, and the praise of her admirers was as the meaningless clamour of those who worship strange gods.  I myself bore all the marks of the Philistine - I complained that her novels were only dialogue, that the characters all talked alike, that they did not belong to the story and so on.  When J.B. Priestley in one of the Sunday papers investigated her cultus and found it more of a craze, I murmured 'the Emperor's clothes...'

Then came what can only be called my conversion.  It was one of those mental switch-overs in which a pattern that had seemed meaningless as black on white is suddenly filled with meaning by the discovery that it is really white on black.  I. Compton-Burnett's novels are not pictures, they are designs, and bear the same relation to life as the stylized rose on the wallpaper bears to the realistic illustrations in Flowers of the Field. One does not quarrel with the wallpaper flower because it has a symmetry and formality which the model lacks.  We obtain both from the book and from the wallpaper the essential meaning of a rose - indeed there may be more abstract meaning in the wallpaper design than in the naturalistic picture.  I. Compton-Burnett is definitely an abstract novelist.
[...]
When with a deep sigh of satisfaction I closed Mother and Son I did not at once, as I should have in the case of any other author who had so delighted me, rush to order more books by the same hand.  I shall doubtless read them all in time, but they must be spaced out - probably as far apart as their actual dates of publication.  To sit down and read, say, six I. Compton-Burnett novels in succession would be like sitting down to a six-course dinner consisting entirely of caviare.  The addict would find that bad for the palate as well as the digestion - time must pass and other food be eaten if he is to recapture the original savour.  So promising myself a treat in the future not too far away, I open a novel by Monica Dickens.

Sheila Kaye-Smith (photo source)

I shouldn't be giving the impression that All The Books of My Life is simply a collection of reviews tacked together.  When Kaye-Smith subtitles the book 'an autobiographical excursion', she means just that - the books really do frame an autobiography and, especially in the second half, anecdotes and reflections prompt or are prompted by comments on the reading Kaye-Smith undertook at any point in her life.  For example, there is a fascinating account of a friend in early adulthood who suffered a psychiatric-disorder which made her believe in her own false double-life.  Details of fan letters and increasing literary celebrity will appeal to anybody intrigued by the status of authors in the mid-century.  Towards the end of the book, there is quite a bit about Kaye-Smith's Catholicism and various theological and spiritual books, which will appeal to some readers (although mostly went a bit over my head, as her spiritual reading seems rather more learned than mine.)  And any well-known admirer of Jane Austen could hardly craft a book without humour - it is a subtle wit, found chiefly in the turns of phrase Kaye-Smith uses, or wry conclusions to paragraphs...

Love and violence also swelled the sales of another spinster novelist, E.M. Hull, author of The Sheik, whose remarkable picture of desert life started a public demand for sheiks that was fostered by the cinema until it died of its own absurdity.

We all love reading the words of bibliophiles, otherwise we wouldn't be reading blogs.  All The Books of My Life demonstrates that you don't need to have the remotest interest in an author's work to find their autobiography engaging, and I found herein the dual pleasures of agreement and discovery.  For all the head-nodding passages, there were two or three about books and authors I have yet to encounter.  It is perhaps surprising that more authors do not choose this bookish format for their autobiographies, and I wish more would, but I am delighted to have found (entirely by good fortune) so sublime an example.  But I still won't be throwing my hat into the ring and trying one of her bain't-youm-be-alost rural novels.

Conference Called

What We Didn't Quite Look Like (except in spirit)
(photo source)

A few of you asked if I'd feed back on the conference I attended last week, and I'm more than happy to do so.  It was called Space and Place in Middlebrow: 1900-1950, mostly organised by Kate Macdonald whom you may know from the podcasts Why I Really Like This Book.  When you see that her most recent podcast is about E.F. Benson's Queen Lucia, you'll sense that we were in the right hands to enjoy a wonderfully middlebrow conference...

I didn't speak at this conference (although had given my first proper conference paper at the equivalent conference last September, on Sylvia Townsend Warner's Lolly Willowes and Edith Olivier's The Love-Child.)  This was a mixed blessing - I enjoyed being able to sit back and relax, and just listen to the fascinating papers, but I also got to the end of the two days wishing I'd contributed something more.  But when the call for papers came out I couldn't think of anything to submit, since I was busy writing up what I'd spoken on in 2011.  Oh well - I certainly had a really amazing couple of days.  If all academia was like this, then I would jump on board wholeheartedly.

I think different specialities attract people akin to their topics.  I've heard that conferences on the 18th century have banquets and are a bit formal.  People studying the middlebrow seem to be so relieved that other people know what the middlebrow is, and have read some of the same authors, that we bond delightedly over tea and cake.  It was lovely to see people I knew from last year, including blogger Tanya/20th Century Vox who gave a brilliant paper on E.M. Delafield's The Suburban Young Man, and it was an especially fun surprise to meet Nick of A Pile of Leaves, since neither of us knew the other would be there.  Amusingly, he came over and asked if I were Stuck-in-a-Book (as it were) entirely based on someone pointing me out as a Simon who owned too many books.

The papers were deliciously middlebrow, of course, and great fun to listen too - as well as thought-provoking and scholarly.  Finally, after three years, I have got enough confidence to ask questions and join in conversations - a shame it didn't come at the beginning of my DPhil, but better late than never!  It was a very positive experience to feel like I might have things to contribute to discussions, and some knowledge about the subject.  Last year people were really supportive of and interested in my paper, but I was a blur of nerves for a lot of it.  This year I could hear the papers without worrying about my upcoming contribution.

I shan't reveal much about people's arguments in their papers, because of intellectual property etc., but I imagine a few of you will be drooling enviously at the knowledge that topics covered included: views of the English Riviera in Rebecca; women writers in Elizabeth Cambridge's Hostages to Fortune and Angela Thirkell's High Rising; national identity in Agatha Christie's novels; the middlebrowness of Woolf's literary pilgrimages; bedrooms in Jeeves and Wooster novels; alternative rooms of one's own in Lettice Cooper's The New House and Stella Gibbons' Bassett; middle-class uncanny in Marghanita Laski's Little Boy Lost; Elizabeth Bowen and the suburbs... and that's only a selection of the papers I thought most interesting! Last year's conference had quite a few topics which were really only on the peripheries of the middlebrow, so it was joyous to have so many papers slap-bang in the middle of the middlebrow.  Can you imagine people not only having read these novels, but having original, exciting arguments to put forward about them? I was on cloud nine!

There was also a very entertaining discussion by always-hilarious Erica Brown and Chris Hopkins about a new venture at Sheffield Hallam University called Readerships and Literary Cultures 1900-1950.  They've collected together nearly 1000 books (of various 'brows', but lots of middlebrow titles) from those fifty years, and as part of the project have got book groups reading their way through them and producing reports.  It all sounds very like something the blogosphere could support - watch this space to see if things open up to the wider world.  In fact, watch this space, because that is their blog, and has more info etc.  They're also looking for further donations (in the form of books) to the collection, so if you have anything going spare... well, check out that blog or this website.

All in all, a wonderful couple of days!  In November I'm speaking at a conference on The Marginalised Mainstream, which seems to have a somewhat wider remit, but will hopefully be as interesting.  Oh, if only this conference could have gone on for months and months!