books I read because of a book blog

Here we go with another post topic from Book Blogger Appreciation Week (BBAW).

Unfortunately, my pile of unfinished grading is mocking me from the corner, so this one will be a quick pic answer.

What books have I read because I discovered them on a book blog?  Who introduced me to them?

 Courtesy of Matthew Stukus at http://todayiwassoawesome.wordpress.com I was introduced to the amazingness that is Terry Prachett.

I was a Pratchett virgin, but now I'm hooked!

 

“Ulysses” by James Joyce– yes, THAT “Ulysses.”  I was drawn into the idea just in time for Bloomsday by Wandering Rox http://wanderingrox.wordpress.com/

Now I’ve covered two sections for the collective, and we’re making slow but steady progress through one of the most infamous novels in English.

We ain’t afraid of no seminal Modernist text!

Well, that’s it for the moment, but I’m sure there will be more in the future (especially now that I’ve discovered some great new book blogs through BBAW.)

 

BBAW meme

Here’s my next post in our continuing celebration of Book Blogger Appreciation Week.  The instructions were to just pick a few or to answer them all in 5 words or less.  Yeah, not so much with the brevity, but I did my best.  Enjoy learning a bit more about how I read, and please leave comments sharing your own reading habits.  You should also check out the main site for 2009 BBAW: http://bookbloggerappreciationweek.com

Do you snack while you read? If so, favorite reading snack?

I like to eat sweets when I’m reading, especially since most of my reading time these days is on Sunday evenings.  A few Oreos or brownies hit the spot.

 

Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?

Oh, I’m a scribbler, as those of you who have been following my Ulysses graffiti know.  The more “proper Literature” the novel, the more likely it is to get this treatment.  I do, however, draw the line at writing in library books.  That’s just bad manners (ok, I’ve copy-edited one or two, but I couldn’t help myself… really…)

 

How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears?  Laying the book flat open?

I’m rough on my books– dogearring pages left, right, and center; laying books open flat for months at a time until I get back to them; underlining bits I really need to remember.  And yet, for all of my admittedly abusive behavior, I’ve only ever lost the spines on one or two. 

 

Fiction, Non-fiction, or both?

Generally, I’m a Fiction girl through and through, but this summer I’ve strayed into Non-fiction and quite enjoyed ”Julie and Julia.”  

 
Hard copy or audiobooks?

Hard copy is my bread and butter, but I do love a great audio book.  During my winter-time commutes (when I leave in the dark and come home in the dark), a rivoting audio book makes me actually wish for the traffic to be worse, so that I can listen to the end of the chapter.

 

Are you a person who tends to read to the end of chapters, or are you able to put a book down at any point?

I tend to read to the end of the chapter– wait, let’s be truthful here… I promise myself I will just read to the end of the chapter, and then I end up reading 3 more chapters before I absolutely MUST put it down and go and do real work. 

 

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop to look it up right away?

I’m a bit of a word collector, so I try to look them up and then, if I find it interesting, jot it down in my little book.
What are you currently reading?

I nearly always have multiple books going at once.  Currently, I’m reading “Watch Your Back!” by Donald E. Westlake, “The Code of the Woosters” by P. G. Wodehouse, and “A Beautiful Blue Death” by Charles Finch.  All of them are very good in distinctly unique ways.
What is the last book you bought?

“Lust, Loathing, and a Little Lip Gloss” by Kyra Davis– It’s going to be my new bath book when I finish with Wodehouse.
Are you the type of person that only reads one book at a time or can you read more than one at a time?

As you can tell from my currently-reading list above, I’m a multi-book reader.  I have no trouble juggling plots and characters in my head– especially since I tend to have a bunch of very different books going, and pick them up according to the way I’m feeling at the moment.  I like to have a fluffy & fun “bath book,” a serious mystery, and a clever book going at any one time.

 

Do you have a favorite time of day and/or place to read? 

I really like reading a great mystery novel on a late afternoon during a rollicking thunderstorm.
Do you prefer series books or stand alone books?

I tend to really fall in love with characters and stories, so series novels are usually how I roll.     
Is there a specific book or author that you find yourself recommending over and over?

I love recommending Laurie R. King’s work– every single one of them are delicious– to people who like mysteries and strong writing.  Then, of course, I have my sci-fi favorite of Douglas Adams.
How do you organize your books? (By genre, title, author’s last name, etc.?)

I organize my shelves superficially by author and genre, but most of the books are actually gathered into emotional groups– so that I can easily pick a book by what I Feel like reading at the time.  My dvds and cds are actually organized this way as well.

Interview with a fellow Book Blogger

Hi, all–

I’ve been sadly neglecting my poor blog readers for the past several weeks, but I’m back today with a lovely interview with a fellow book blogger.  We, along with many many others, are participating in Book Blogger Appreciation Week.  (You can check out more about it by clicking the button on my sidebar.)

In celebration, I had a chance to interview a fantastic book blogger, Hagelrat.  She is the founder of and a major contributor to the blogzine Un:Bound!   www.unboundblogzine.com

Let’s get to know Hagelrat a bit more, shall we? 

Lizaanne: What inspired you to create Un:bound! and how did your other contributors get involved? What has been the most satisfying thing about the blogzine for you?

Hagelrat: Ok, I was thinking about book journals, you know when you are a kid and the school has you keeping a list of all the books you read and a few comments? I found myself wondering how many books I have read in my lifetime and which books, I remember certain ones but I doubt I could list every book I’ve ever read and I sort of wish I could. I wondered about starting to keep a log of books from that point on and then figured since I was a casual blogger anyway I’d do it that way.
After a few posts I put a call out for contributors because I knew I couldn’t keep it rolling regularly on my own and I realised I wanted it to be a bit more. Chris in America and I had been talking online, commenting on each others blogs for a couple of years and he stepped forward, as did Choochoo who is in Norway, sadly her final year of studies got in the way but she is murmuring about coming back on board.
The Ravenous Romancers came next out of my ongoing online stalking of Dana/Inara and getting involved with their first blog tour. Dana organises the RR gang for me and hosts them but I consider them all an important part of the team and they really bring a lot of fun.
My newest acquisitions are my youngest brother (in law) and a colleagues daughter who are both students and just had such fun reading tastes I pretty much beat them into submission and threatened dire consequences if they didn’t come and play. Turned out I needn’t have beaten them so hard, they were quite willing to join. Finally, on the youth site I kidnapped a friends children in the UK and Pizza answered the call in much the same way as Chris.
The most satisfying thing? Seeing it grow and develop, it’s not the same blog it was just over a year ago when it started and that delights me. Also, the interaction with other bloggers and my team has been a source of tremendous pleasure for me, Harry at TLR stepping in while I went away, getting to post on World in a Satin Bag when SMD was elsewhere, it’s a community I am very proud to be part of.

Lizaanne: Un:Bound! focuses mostly on fantasy, manga, and science-fiction.  What attracts you most to those genres?

Hagelrat: I’ve been trying to remember when my reading made the switch from teen fiction to horror and then to fantasy and other genres and I think I have to credit two authors with that. Clive Barker for Weaveworld, I was about 15 when I first read it and it totally changed my perspective on reading, really blew me away and I started to seek out more of his fantasy leaning novels rather than the strong horror of Damnation Game or the Books of Blood. Also Terry Pratchett who I was introduced to about the same time. His sense of fun and the way he took from all sorts of real religions and philosophies to build Discworld drew me and made me look at sci fi and fantasy differently looking for something more than just escapism. Manga is MangaCat’s world and having enjoyed anime since I was a student I am looking forward to seeing where she takes us.

Lizaanne: I saw a note about the Un:Bound podcast/ author interviews on your site. Tell me more about that.

 

Hagelrat: We have been doing author interviews for a while by email when one of the authors I was interviewing turned out to live only an hour away. We met and I recorded the interview for reference, which is how it has stayed for now, but after that I switched to email interviews for non local authors but anyone within a reasonable distance who is willing I do a face to face with. It allows for more random tangents and is great fun. I am not a professional however so background noise can be an issue. It’s great fun to actually meet people and naturally I take my books for signing and send them off with a stack of bookmarks. 

Lizaanne: What books or authors do you drive everyone nuts trying to get them to read?

Hagelrat: Lol, I keep pushing books that people aren’t likely to see face out in Waterstones, so I recently bought copies of Hell Bent on Success by AMP Mills for both my sister and my mother, I want Mum to push it on her book clubs and I keep telling people about it. I also regularly recommend Dana Fredsti’s “Murder for Hire – The Peruvian Pigeon” which is a really fun murder mystery with noir elements and a great sense of humour. I loved Dana’s book so much I followed her across genres into Romance which is new territory for me. At the moment of course I would have to slip in plugs for Steve Savile who writes a lot of tie in fiction and has a thriller called Silver coming out soon, I really enjoy his writing and you get the sense he has fun doing it and finally Mark Charan Newton whose second book cover is all over the genre blogs at the moment as it should be. I could go on all day but I shall leave it there.

Lizaanne:  Have you ever read a book that you subsequently threw across the room? What was it and why?

Hagelrat: Hahahahahhaa yes. Twilight. I eventually gave in and read it and to be fair to Meyer if I’d picked it up at random I probably would have finished it and been “yeah ok, fine, nothing special” about it, but after all the hype I was actually paying attention and not just flying through it as a brief diversion. I found myself wanting James who was the big villain of the piece to drain both Bella and Edward for being such utter drips by the end of it, also the message it sent to me was “if some hot guy stalks you in weird and creepy ways it means he loves you and you should definitely go out with him”. I hurled it across the room scaring the cats and then passed it to a friend to determine whether it was suitable for her daughter who had bene asking for a copy.

Lizaanne: (and for fun…) Favourite fantasy/ sci-fi television shows?

Hagelrat: Oh wonderful! Ok I love what my friend and I call Shiny & Shallow American TV shows so Buffy, Supernatural, Firefly (awesomness squared), I liked Charmed for a while but it sort f got a bit silly when they brought in the school and I tailed off, Angel is in there but only just, I loved Cowboy Be Bop when CNX existed over here and am totally sucked in by TruBlood at the moment, although I want Eric to be hotter sexier and more Nordic.

a sweet treat of a novel

hi, ya’ll!  This was the last book I read during the summer, and the tiny bit of the review I wrote has been sitting here in the draft box and taunting me for weeks to finish it– so here it finally is!

Title: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

Author: Alan Bradley

Pub date: 2009

Series: (the bio at the end of the book promises a sequel)

Summary: In the summer of 1950, Flavia de Luce, an eleven-year-old chemist (specializing in poisons), is living in her expansive but crumbling ancestral home out in the English countryside.  One afternoon, a dead rook with a stamp on its beak is found on the kitchen doorstep.  By the end of the week, there is a dead man in the cucumber patch, her father has been arrested for murder, and Flavia has taken up the job of solving the mystery in her own inemitable way.

What first attracted me to this novel was its perfect size and cover.  It’s just the right size, as a hardback with nice rounded edges, to fit in a purse or a coat pocket.  The cover art is simple but intriguing, and it contains an essential clue to the story’s plot.  (No, I’m not going to tell you what it is.)  It’s also long enough that I couldn’t finish it in one sitting, but it was still a fairly quick read.  Towards the end, I actually slowed myself down to savor it, as the sequel is not yet available, and I wanted to spend more time with Flavia.

Speaking of the heroine/ detective Flavia…I don’t know how Alan Bradley did it, but he somehow went back in time, read my eleven-year-old mind, and then created just the sort of girl I really, really wanted to be!  She rides her bike everywhere, lives in a sprawling, crumbling mansion, is clever, solves mysteries, and is a chemistry prodigy (ok, that last part I didn’t dream about).  She’s a delight to read about, and precocious in just the right amount of way.  I didn’t get sick of her or find her too adult-like, as is often the case with child-heroes.  Spot on, Mr. Bradley!

The mystery itself is quite good, if a bit wrapped up in esoterica, but Bradley gives the reader all of the information they need in simple and natural pieces.  I like learning things from mystery novels, as I’ve said before, and here I learned a bit about rare stamps and British history.  Unlike some authors whose early books contained lessons which are really unnecessary to the plot (yes, Kathy Reichs, I’m talking to you.  You’ve improved now, though, so good job), all of the little lessons here are crucial to the reader’s understanding of the plot– even when they don’t seem to be.  So, pay attention, ladies and gentlemen.

Bradley clearly won the Dagger Award for a reason with this novel.  It’s a good ‘un. 

 

For more, check out the website below:

http://www.flaviadeluce.com/

a beginner’s guide to Douglas Adams

 Monty Python, Eddie Izzard, Bill Cosby, Mel Brooks, Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who …

You know that favorite thing you have– the one that you are zealously delighted to introduce to everyone around you?  That one that you can’t remember not loving?  That one that you quote from pretty constantly and crack in-jokes about with the two other people you know who are as nutty about it as you are?

For me, that thing is Douglas Adams, and I know I’m not alone. 

In fact, at this very moment, you may be sitting next to an Adams-addict.  One might be your teacher [Hi, kids.  See you all on the 24th]. One might live upstairs.   One might be your boss.  You are surrounded by Adams-addicts everyday.  How can you tell, you ask?  Do you need a magic decoder ring?  Is there a litmus test?  Do we all wear tee-shirts?

  I want this shirt.

 Here’s the test; are you ready?  Turn to any person you happen to meet, and simply ask him or her, “What is the meaning of life?”  If the answer comes back, “Forty-two,” then you, my friend, have found yourself an Adams-addict.

So he’s got a lot of fans.  Big deal– so does professional wrestling , and that’s just dumb [sorry, Jerry ] 

Well, do you remember when you first read Shakespeare and Greek mythology in high school, and then you started to see quotations and references to them everywhere?  Then you figured out that they had been there all along, but you’d never noticed, because you just didn’t know?  Adams is like that.   In fact, in science-fiction writing, there is such a thing as the “obligatory Hitchhiker’s reference.”  It appears in nearly every work of sci-fi written post-1980.  Go ahead– Google the phrase– you’ll see.

Why do we all love Douglas Adams so much?  Because the man looked at the world in an incredibly unique, intelligent, positive, and humorous way.  Then, he wrote it down. 

I could go on at length about his technique, perspective, and utterly original spirit, but I think that would spoil it for you.  Part of what draws Adams-addicts in is discovering for ourselves something new and precious every time we read his books, listen to his radio shows, watch his films, play his video games, use his towels [yes, you read that correctly-- towels].

I’ll tell you how I got into Adams, but we have to go back a bit:  My father was in the Air Force in the mid-seventies, and he was stationed in England.  My mom, after their wedding, went to live with him.  Now, she didn’t have a car, didn’t know anyone, and had a husband who worked 24 hour shifts– so she spent a good deal of time listening to the radio and watching television.  She saw and enjoyed Doctor Who and Hitchhiker’s on tv.  Flash forward to about 1992 or so.  We were all living in South Florida.  My sister and I were hooked on Sci-Fi Saturday Nights on our local PBS station [WXEL].  Hitchhiker’s came on.  My mom said, “Oh, I remember this.  It was funny.  Let’s watch it.” 

I distinctly remember sitting on the cool tile floor and leaning against the couch, as the three of us watched the mini-series.  Yes, it was super cheesy in many places, but gosh, it was brilliant!  Then, my sister and I discovered the books, then his other novels… and in college, I began reading his non-fiction.  “Last Chance to See” is a wonderfully powerful book.  I found copies of his radio play scripts, watched his Doctor Who episodes, read his obituary with a deep sense of loss, and now I love “The Salmon of Doubt,” a collection of all sorts of writing that his friends rescued from his hard drive.  I have a particular fondness for the audiobook, to which many of his closest friends contributed.Ask any Adams-addict, and he or she will have a similarly personal story about discovering the brilliance that is Douglas Adams.

So, I will leave you with just a few examples of why I love Adams:

“The ships hung in the air in much the same way that bricks don’t.” 

“Scarcely pausing for breath, Vroomfondel shouted, ‘We don’t demand solid facts!  What we demand is a total absence of solid facts.  I demand that I may or may not be Vroomfondel!’”

 

“‘And I am Dr. Desiato’s bodyguard,’ it went, ‘and I am responsible for his body, and I am not responsible for yours, so take it away before it gets damaged.’”

“One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of acidentally becoming your own father or mother.  There is no problem involved in becoming your own father or mother that a broad-minded and well-adjusted family can’t cope with.  There is no problem about changing the course of history– the course of history does not change because it all fits together like a jigsaw.  All the important changes have happened before the things they were supposed to change and it all sorts itself out in the end.  The major problem is quite simply one of grammar…”

 

“In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn’t cope with, and that terrible listlessness that starts to set in about 2:55, when you know you’ve taken all the baths you can usefully take that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the newspaper you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o’clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul.”

“‘My name,’ said the mattress, ‘is Zem.  We could discuss the weather a little.’  Marvin paused again in his weary circular plod.  ‘The dew,’ he observed, ‘has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning.’”

 

Are you intrigued?  Good.  Go down to your library and pick up your copy today.  Then come back and leave your favorite quotation in the comments!  Till then, my hoopy froods, Don’t Panic!

the last saturday of summer

It’s Saturday again, and you all know what that means… it’s Library Day!

Best snags today– newest Dorothy Cannell mystery; “The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie”; and “The Hound of the Baskervilles” with Jeremy Brett as Holmes.  (What is that I smell?  A comparison post?  Yummo!)

Check out my sidebar for the rest of my lovely swag.

And yes, coming this evening to a blog near you– Douglas Adams appreciation.  Watch this space.

tea with Douglas

 A nice cozy chat about Douglas Adams is long overdue, my dears.  It is coming tomorrow, but until then, brew yourself a nice cup of tea (if you don’t know how to do it properly, see Douglas’s words on the matter.) and then nibble on these tasty treats from “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency.”

“Professor Urban Chronotis, the Regius Professor of Chronology, or ‘Reg’ as he insisted on being called, had a memory that he himself had once been compared to the Queen Alexandria Butterfly, in that it was colorful, flitted prettily hither and thither, and was now, alas, almost completely extinct.” (11)

“Sunlight played along the River Cam.  People in punts happily shouted at each other to fuck off.  Thin natural scientists who had spent months locked away in their rooms growing white and fishlike, emerged blinking into the light.  Couples walking along the bank got so excited about the general wonderfulness of it all that they had to pop inside for an hour.” (13)

 ”Michael ususally referred to his mother as an old battle-ax, but if she was fairly to be compared to a battle-ax it could only be to an exquisitely crafted, beautifully balanced battle-ax, with an elegant minimum of fine engraving which stopped just short of its gleaming razored edge.  One swipe from such an instrument and you wouldn’t even know you’d been hit until you tried to look at your watch a bit later and discovered that your arm wasn’t on.” (98)

  

Lovely, were they not?  But we don’t want to over-indulge.  More tomorrow.

 

P.G. Wodehouse Insult Generator

Thanks to a commenter from half-way around the world, ya’ll have this beauty of a widget to enjoy. 

Indulge your love of all things Wodehousian, courtesy of Osama Lali.  Thanks, dude!

Plum wonderful

 

Plum Wodehouse at his typewriter

All right, folks, it is time we had a serious chat about the stunning and wonderful brilliance that is P. G. Wodehouse.  If you have never read his books (why not?!), you have deprived yourself of some of the most magnificent work in the English language.  Not only that, but he also had both a truely astonishing output and staying power.  Wodehouse wrote and was published continuously from 1903 to his death in 1975.  What other author can say such a thing?  In addition, Wodehouse was an absolute favorite of another brilliant (and deeply-missed) writer, Douglas Adams.  Adams once called him “a genius of the English language” and then proceeded to compare his writing to a Bach fugue [introduction to Sunset at Blandings].  Well, I mean, what higher praise is there?

“Yes, yes,” I can hear you cry, “But how can this be true? If this P. G. fellow is so brilliant, then why is he not taught in schools along with Shakespeare and Milton?” 

Ah– I have an answer for you, but you’re not going to like it.  Unlike Shakespeare and Milton, P. G. has never written a boring word in his life– thus he has been disqualified from the canon.  In all seriousness, Wodehouse wrote comedy, which is tragically undervalued in so-called “educational” literature.  {please note– I am a teacher and an English major.  I have read my share of truly mind-numbing “literature.”}  Plum, as he was called by his friends, was not interested one wit in changing society, or giving a grand message, or exposing the dark-underbelly of our tragic lives, or mourning the stark futility of our existential existences. 

He, instead, simply wrote the most fun, intelligent, and clever prose to make people laugh.  Yes– all of this just for the sheer joy of it.

I dare you to finish an entire Wodehouse novel and feel not happy with the world.

Now, being the perpetually stubborn optimist that I am (my college classmates may remember that I prefer the term “anti-utopia” to “dystopia” because I adamantly maintain that utopias are possible and that most people are inherently good-hearted), I find nearly all Literature (note the capital letter there), especially those that win the prizes, appallingly dark, grim, and horrible.  There is enough of that hideousness in real life!  I, like Plum, have no interest in glum navel-gazing when I’m reading.  Give me young Bertie Wooster and his bumbling escapades any day! 

And so, to that end, I submit for your reading entertainment, what I consider one of P. G. Wodehouse’s masterpieces of prose and plot: The Code of the Woosters (1938). 

You need this book.  Everyone who can read English needs this book.  Don’t worry; it’s definitely still in print.  Your copy is awaiting you at the bookstore as we speak.

“But, why oh why do I need to own this?  I already have bookshelves teetering to dangerous levels with my to-be-read pile.  My cats are huddling for cover under the bed.  What makes this book, which you have already clearly said does not have a deep and dark message, worth space in my house?”

Thank you for asking this, dear readers.  You need this book because every sentence in it is perfect.  To take just the teeniest of samples from pages 1 & 2 {it helps if you read it aloud.  All of Wodehouse is better when read aloud.}:

“He [Jeeves] shimmered out, and I sat up in bed with that rather unpleasant feeling you get sometimes that you’re going to die in about five minutes.  On the previous night, I had given a little dinner at the Drones to Gussie Fink-Nottle as a friendly send-off before his approaching nuptials with Madeline, only daughter of Sir Watkin Bassett, CBE, and these things take their toll.  Indeed, just before Jeeves came in, I had been dreaming that some bounder was driving spikes through my head– not just ordinary spikes, as used by Jael the wife of Heber, but red-hot ones.

He returned with the tissue-restorer.  I loosed it down the hatch, and after undergoing the passing discomfort, unavoidable when you drink Jeeves’s patent morning revivers, of having the top of the skull fly up to the ceiling and the eyes shoot out of their sockets and rebound from the opposite wall like racquet balls, felt better.  It would have been overstating it to say that even now Bertram was back again in mid-season form, but I had at least slid into the convalescent class and was equal to a spot of conversation.”

Enjoyed that, did you?  Good.  Now, close your eyes and imagine that there was an entire book written in exactly this way. Next, imagine that its plot revolved around a silver cow creamer, a bit of friendly blackmail,a good many engagements (intentional and otherwise), and the most perfect butler in all of literature, all with plot so hopelessly muddled by the end that only a cove of Jeeves’s marvelous intellect is able to unravel it and to conduct us all to the happy ending.  You would need to own such a book, would you not?   You may now open your eyes.  Thus,  The Code of the Woosters needs to come and live at your house.   

I should probably warn you at this point that once you have read one of Wodehouse’s novels, you will fall deeply in love with his prose.  Not to worry, though.  Unlike those irritating modern authors who only write one or two books and then bow out of the field, our Plum published over ninety books and musical plays.  All are frothing over with his wonderful words. 

There is no other way to end this but with Plum’s words from the end of this novel:

“Jeeves was right, I felt.  The snail was on the wing and the lark was on the thorn– or, rather, the other way round– and God was in His heaven and all was right with the world” (285-86).

With a Wodehouse book in your hand, all IS right with the world. 

 

p.s.  the only way to magnify the perfection of Wodehouse would be to combine him with Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie.  Such a thing was done between 1990 and 1993:  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098833/

84, Charing Cross Road– a love letter

I wish my copy had this lovely cover.

Title: 84, Charing Cross Road

Author: Helene Hanff

Series: She wrote a follow-up book called “The Duchess of Boomsbury Street.”

Pub: 1970

Randomly interesting thing: Helene Hanff wrote many scripts for “Ellery Queen” on television.

Summary: The book contains Helene’s correspondance with the booksellers of Marks & Co (especially Frank Doel) between 1949 and 1969. 

Oh, but it’s so much more than that, isn’t it?!  I’m not going to do a sensible review here because I just can’t.  Instead, I’m simply going to tell you how much I love this book.  My only complaint is that there are letters left out, and I want more!  I reread it once a year or so, and I really wish I could own a copy of this book as beautifully-bound as some of the tomes she describes.  Instead, I make do with a rubbish-looking Book Club edition from the library– but the words it holds, oh my. 

84, Charing Cross Road contains so many of my passions: really beautifully bound books, good literature, well-written letters (a dead art, really), and England.  As Helene and Frank become friends, their letters become more about their lives and their families, which gives us a lovely glimpse back in time.  I don’t know about you, but 1949 might as well be a different world for me.  When Helene first begins writing, looking to buy a few out-of-print books, England is still under severe rationing (can you imagine?), and the dollar to the pound exchange rate must have been something truly spectacular– at one point, she is offered a 100-year-0ld first edition for $6!  Frank’s England is also one of tiny, dusty bookshops with tall shelves and twisting ladders where beautiful, classical books wait to be discovered .  How gorgeous!

 

the Marks & Co shop at 84, Charing Cross Road-- sadly, they have long been out of business.

Yes, there is a movie.  No, it’s not as good (despite having Judi Dench, Anne Bancroft, and Anthony Hopkins in it); how could it be?  The whole point of the book is their letters, which can’t be replicated in film-form.  There were also, according to wiki, radio plays.  These I have not heard.

Here, for just a taste, is one of my favorite letters from Helene to Frank:

sunday night and a hell of a way to start 1960

i don’t know, frankie–

Somebody gave me this book for Christmas.  It’s a Giant Modern Library book.  Did you ever see one of those?  It’s less attractively bound than the Proceedings of the New York State Assembly and it weighs more.  It was given to me by a gent who knows I’m fond of John Donne.  The title of this book is:

The Complete Poetry

&

Selected Prose

of

JOHN DONNE

&

The Complete Poetry

of

WILLIAM BLAKE?

The question mark is mine.  Will you please tell me what those two boys have in common?– except that they were both English and they both Wrote?  I tried reading the Introduction figuring that might explain it.  The Introduction is in four parts.  Parts I and II include a Professor’s life of Donne mit-illustrations-from-the-author’s-works-also-criticism.  Part III begins– and God knows I quote–:

     When as a little boy, William Blake saw the prophet Ezekiel under a tree amid a summer field, he was soundly trounced by his mother.

I’m with his mother.  I mean, the back of the Lord God or the face of the Virgin Mary, all right– but why the hell would anybody want to see the prophet Ezekiel?

I don’t like Blake anyway, he swoons too much, it’s Donne I’m writing about, I’m being driven clear up the wall, Frankie, you have GOT to help me.

Here I was, curled up in my armchair so at peace with the world, with something old and serene on the radio– Corelli or somebody– and this thing on the table.  This Giant Modern Library thing.  So I thought:

     “I will read the three standard passages from Sermon XV aloud,”  You have to read Donne aloud, it’s like a Bach fugue. 

Would you like to know what I went through in an innocent attempt to read three contiguous uncut passages from Sermon XV aloud?

You start with the Giant Modern Library version, you locate Sermon XV and there they are: Excerpts I, II, and III,– only when you get to the end of Excerpt I you discover they have deleted Jezebel off it.  So you get down Donne’s Sermons, Selected Passages (Logan Pearsall Smith) where you spend twenty minutes locating Sermons XV, Excerpt I, because by Logan Pearsall Smith it isn’t Sermon XV, Excerpt I, it’s Passage 126. All Must Die.  Now that you’ve found it, you find he also deleted Jezebel so you get down the Complete Poetry & Selected Prose (Nonesuch Press) but they didn’t happen to select Jezebel either, so you get down the Oxford Book of English Prose where you spend another twenty minutes locating it because in the Oxford English Prose it isn’t Sermon XV, Excerpt I nor yet 126. All Must Die, it’s Passage 113. Death the Leveller.  Jezebel is there, and you read it aloud but when you get to the end you find it doesn’t have either Excerpt II or III so you have to switch to one of the other three books provided you had the wit to leave all three open at the right pages which I didn’t.

So, break it to me gently: how hard is it going to be to find me John Donne’s Complete Sermons and how much is it going to cost?

i am going to bed.  i will have hideous nightmares involving huge monsters in academic robes carrying long bloody butcher knives labelled Excerpt, Selection, Passage and Abridged,

      yrs,

h.ffffffffffffff

Do you see why this is a brilliant book and why you need to own it immediately?  Go.  Go straight to your independent bookstore (or B & N if you must) and buy it now.  You may thank me later.  After you have read it, come back and tell me your favorite bits.

 

p.s.  and have a box of tissues ready for the end, all right?