September books

[callmemadam]

Six in a Family, Eleanor Graham. I thought I hadn’t read this and then realised after two chapters that I had. It is not a patch on The Children Who Lived in a Barn, as absolutely nothing happens and I can’t stand Mummy. Of all the spoiled creatures!!!
The Closed Circle, Jonathan Coe. Brilliant. This is the further adventures of the characters in The Rotters’ Club and thank goodness some of the mysteries from that book are solved. Coe gets in so many sharp observations on modern life that it’s hard to believe he hasn’t actually been a Fleet Street journalist, an MP or a trade union official. Positively Dickensian.
Anne’s House of Dreams, L M Montgomery
Persuasion, Jane Austen
The Flower Patch among the Hills, Flora Klickmann. Plotting a whole post on Klickmann sometime.
The Queen and I, Sue Townsend. Alan Bennet’s The Uncommon Reader has been comprehensively reviewed and read on the radio but as I can’t get my mitts on it at the moment I turned instead to Sue Townsend’s fantasy, which I’d read at least twice before. I suppose both books are an extension of the dreams which so many people are said to have about the Queen. The interesting thing is that, as with Helen Mirren’s portrayal, the fictional queen just makes you admire the real one more.
Pilgrim’s Rest, Patricia Wentworth. A Miss Silver novel, first published 1948.
Ladies’ Bane, Patricia Wentworth
The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous, Jilly Cooper. One I’d missed and picked up for 50p. It is so much better than Wicked! The ending is positively nailbiting.
Anne of Ingleside, L M Montgomery

I’m finding Anne rather a pain and keep comparing her with Joey Bettany/Maynard. Both lively children with literary ambitions. Both marry doctors who are apparently inexhaustible, also perfect husbands and fathers and yet become very, very dull. Both always have help around when they need it. It’s the peripheral characters that make the Anne books fun to read. What would they be without Mrs Lynde, Rebecca Dew and Susan-at-the-helm?

Comments

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

I think Anne is wonderful in the first three books, and then stops existing at all after she gets married. The rest of the books are about how wonderful other people think she is, rather than the experiences and feelings that she has. Even the baby dying, which ought to be about her, somehow isn't.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

stops existing at all after she gets married

I think you hit the nail right on the head, there. And Gilbert turns out such a disappointment. All through the first two books you're wanting Anne to treat him better and then when it happens, it's dull. How he put up with all those soppy letters she wrote him and her 'poetic' goings-on when they are together, is quite beyond me. Any normal man would say, 'Shut up, Anne, and give us a kiss.' But what normal man would call his wife 'Anne girl' and get away with it?

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

I am irresistibly reminded of this post in a friend's journal.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

Ho! And though she be but little she is fierce, if I'm quoting correctly.

[minniemoll.livejournal.com]

It's ages since I read an Anne book, but I picked up House of Dreams last week whilst I was away, and read it - I remembered it being sad in parts, but I'd forgotten just how much of a tear-jerker it is, I was in tears about five times. I think that's the last one that works for Anne as a character, I never liked Anne of Ingleside, although I can't remember much about it now. Rainbow Valley wasn't a favourite either, but I loved Rilla when I was younger, I had my mum's old copy and cried over it regularly - they are very weepy books, come to think of it.

There's a few Flower Patch books on my shelves, but I haven't read them yet (it's the story of my life) although I have read some of her stuff in the GOP, which presumably was reworked into the books, so I may have read some of them without realising. They are very pretty.

How do you get on with Miss Silver? I like some better than others - I don't like the ones where it's obvious from the first whodunit, and we get to watch Miss Silver prove it, but I enjoy some of them a lot, more than Miss Marple.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

Nothing in LMM has ever made me cry except for The Dog: you know what I mean.

I have all the Flower Patch books and all but one of Klickmann's self-help books. I admire her enormously: her hard work, her nervous breakdowns, her common sense, her still writing in her eighties. I love all the detail in the books about the house and garden and as for her hats!

The first two Miss Silver books I read disappointed me after they'd been so highly praised by people who usually like the same books I do. I think I prefer ones written in the 1940s and I enjoyed both this month's. I'd never realised there were so many of them; picked up another half dozen at the local book fair on Saturday.

Just about to mail you, BTW.

[minniemoll.livejournal.com]

Whereas I wail my way through them, although I think that HoD is the worst - the wedding at the beginning, with memories of Matthew, the baby's death, Captain Jim crossing the bar, assorted other bits, all set me off. Oh, and leaving the house at the end, that gets me too. Call me sentimental.

I know nothing about FK beyond the fact that she edited the GOP for a long time, but she sounds fascinating.

[pinkhebe.livejournal.com]

See if you can get The Man Who Made on tape, read by Samuel West (not to be listened to while driving).
~x~

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

not to be listened to while driving

Too sexy? I'm afraid I'm in love with Arfur, not Lysander.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

It has been pointed out to me :-) but I declined the offer of having it recorded. You've tempted me with the clothes and hair, now.

[dorianegray.livejournal.com]

I went off the Anne books some years back. Anne just became so boring. I much prefer the Emily trilogy, "The Blue Castle", "Jane of Lantern Hill", and "A Tangled Web".

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

I've read and own all those except A Tangled Web. I like the Emily trilogy, too, although I find parts of it creepy. I also like the two Pat books. Have you read those?

[dorianegray.livejournal.com]

I've read the Pat books, but Pat's determined resistance to change really bugs me. I keep wanting to thump her.

(I fished up "A Tangled Web" off one of the Project Gutenberg sites, btw.)

[minniemoll.livejournal.com]

I loved Emily as a child, but when I tried to reread them a couple of years ago, I couldn't get into them at all - I struggled through the first one, and managed a couple of chapters of the next before I gave up. Which was a shame.

The Blue Castle, on the other hand, would be one of my desert island books, and Jane would have a good chance too.