Sometimes I miss this post off, with the end of the year reading, so getting on top of it this year.
Advent – Gunnar Gunnarsson
This is a gorgeous little hardback reissue of Icelandic writer Gunnarsson who is little known in this country. This is a short story of a man, his dog and his sheep, who go out in the winter to round up lost and reluctant livestock who are out on the mountains. They pack up food and find places to stay, and round up the sheep and horses and then they make it home. There is a lot of snow. It’s a very cold book and they only seem to have hot coffee. So, very little happens but there is a lot of time to think and that’s what’s Gunnarsson packs in here.
A Necessary Evil – Abir Mukherjee
This is the second in the Sam Wyndham series and I thought I really should get round to reading it. I read the first years ago. Set in India, before independence, the books feature Scotland Yard detective Wyndham and his Indian sidekick solving crimes. It’s a good series, and this featured a splendidly lush line up of Maharajahs, glamourous women, diamond mines and dodgy dealings. Ripe for Sunday night TV.
Sense and Sensibility: The screenplay and diaries – Emma Thompson
To carry on my year of Jane Austen, this is the screenplay and filming diaries of the film for Sense and Sensibility, filmed 30 years ago. If you know the film well (I do) you can spot which scenes were written but not included and it’s also interesting to see the words down on the page if you know how they’re delivered so you can get an idea of how actors work too. The diaries are funny, but goodness so many illnesses and ailments – two fainting episodes, lots of pills and xrays and who knows what. I like this sort of thing, I believe some people would refer to it as self indulgent luvvie stuff, but it’s cosy and interesting to me.
Best of Friends – Kamila Shamsie
I really enjoyed Home Fire, Shamsie’s last book, a modern retelling of Antigone so when this was picked for the reading group, I was looking forward to it. I dunno, maybe Home Fire took it out of her. This is tame. Pedestrian, almost. It’s the story of two girls growing up in Karachi and their friendship as they grow up and move to the UK. Nothing really happens. Well, no, things happen but there is nothing hugely serious. I think there’s a school of writing advice that says you should throw all kinds of scenarios at your characters to see how they react and really test them but Shamsie doesn’t do this. Her father, a TV cricket presenter, is visited by a government official who tells him he must be more positive about the dictator on his programme and he doesn’t do this. Instead of there being any consequences, the dictator conveniently dies. A teenage incident where the girls get in a car with a man they don’t know could have been incredibly dangerous and ruinous but it isn’t. And so on. I kept waiting for there to be some consequences but… a disappointment.
Persuasion – Jane Austen
I finished the year with this old favourite. What a joy it is. How well she writes grotesque characters like Anne’s father and sister Elizabeth, and silly characters like Mary. If there was ever a character I would have liked to see more of, it’s Captain Wentworth. I know Austen said she had no idea what men did or said when they were alone and never tried to imagine it on paper, but I do feel I’d like more of him, as he’s a lovely hero but still a little one dimensional. Never mind, he writes a good letter. This summer in Bath, one of the souvenirs I bought at the Jane Austen Centre was a replica letter with a seal on it, but can’t bring myself to break the seal so it sits, unopened on my bookshelf. Unjust he may have been, weak and resentful he has been but never inconstant. Ah, such lovely wording. Anyway, clearly now another rewatch of the Ciaran Hinds adaptation on iplayer beckons.
Mapp and Lucia – EF Benson
I’m trying to read more twentieth century literature and picked this up in a National Trust second hand bookshop, not knowing it was the fourth in the series. To be honest, I don’t think it matters. This is glorious fun. The plot, such as it is, concerns Lucia who moves to another village for a couple of months as a little holiday. She rents her house from Miss Mapp, who in turn rents another house from someone else. The two women embark on a rivalry of frankly insane proportions. I rather enjoyed it for the most part, though after a while the constant passive-aggressive behaviour and overly polite small village society did make me think I was reading the Telegraph’s society pages endlessly.
How Green Was My Valley – Richard Llewellyn
I have no idea what made me reserve this at the library to read but it’s another twentieth century classic so it fits. Anyway, it’s quite a bleak view of the Welsh. His valley does not, in fact, feel that green. written in the late thirties, the almost constant mention of the slagheap and how he expected it to move or collapse was enough to give the whole novel a feeling of doom, let alone the dreadful things that actually happened – public shaming of women, poverty, union busting, declining wages, theft, madness and quite a lot of death or illness. But it was nevertheless quite an engaging read, a glimpse into a hard life for a community.
The Flight of the Falcon – Daphne Du Maurier
Another reading group choice – this time for February’s group – but my library copy arrived early. This is… not Rebecca, by any measure. Overly long, lacking tension or characters to care about, I read on hoping it would get good. It didn’t.
Moments of Pleasure
I hadn’t heard of poet Andrea Gibson until earlier this year when they died, tributes were all over social media and I realised two things: their poems were amazing and they were the same age as me. So the documentary about their illness and last year or so of life on Apple TV, Come See Me in the Good Light, is absorbing, honest, funny, raw and all round splendid. Highly recommended. And now I must find all their poetry.
I was absolutely devastated by the news about Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle. I cannot remember a time when my sister and I didn’t love The Princess Bride and I can quote almost the whole of the When Harry Met Sally script by heart, not to mention his other splendid films. But for some reason, I’d never seen Stand By Me until this month when we sat and watched it as a family. I loved it. What a loss.
Susan E Barsby 