Cornflower Books - The Reading Map

Reading Map 1: from The Country of the Pointed Firs

    I mentioned below that one of the aims of this site was not just to list books but to link them, "perhaps thematically, perhaps tenuously or eccentrically, but in order to show possible reading trails to follow and to illustrate the way one book can lead to another, or to a multitude, depending on which direction the reader may wish to take".

     It's been longer in the making than I'd intended, but here is the first Reading Map, its starting point Sarah Orne Jewett's The Country of the Pointed Firs. From that portrait of a fishing village on the Maine coast at the end of the nineteenth century (there's more on the book here) you might be surprised to find yourself moving on to Arctic exploration with Michelle Paver's gripping ghost story Dark Matter and thence to the same frozen land several centuries earlier with The Solitude of Thomas Cave by Georgina Harding, but Sarh Orne Jewett's Captain Littlepage and his remembered voyage and overwintering occupies much the same literary territory that the later novelists used for their books.

    Staying in America, The Country of the Pointed Firs' setting is Dunnet Landing, surely not so far in distance or spirit from Deer Isle, Maine, of which John Steinbeck writes memorably in Travels with Charley: In Search of America, and it's but a short step from that book to novels such as To Kill A Mockingbird, Peace Like a River by Leif Enger and Carolyn Wall's Sweeping Up Glass.

    With similarities of feel, of theme, of location - albeit in a different period - or just a common key, a register, which somehow connects books and writers, I could site Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping and Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge: A Novel in Stories alongside our starting point. David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars is not so far away, nor is Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome, and for non-fiction, Anne Morrow Lindbergh's  Gift From The Sea and its meditations on a woman's life are much in tune with the thoughts and observations of Sarah Orne Jewett's Mrs. Todd and the unnamed narrator. Also on the map are George Mackay Brown's Hawkfall and Tove Jansson's The Summer Book because they both seem to belong in the company of the others there.

    It goes without saying that I recommend all these books thoroughly, and most of them have appeared on Cornflower or Cornflower Books at some time so there are links to those posts in the list on the right, should you want to read more on them. As I said in my introductory piece below, this is a purely personal, idiosyncratic selection which might give you some literary highways and byways to follow should you be so inclined - it's not definitive or prescriptive in any way.

    One last but important point, the map's illustrations (click to enlarge) are by my daughter Alice - I'm sure you'll agree that they lift the 'flat' titles and give them a whole new dimension.

Welcome!

     Welcome to The Reading Map, an adjunct to Cornflower Books and a way of navigating around that site but a bit more, too. Over on the right you will see a list of books arranged alphabetically by author; click on any one and you should be taken to its review post in the archives. Having been asked often how readers can search for individual posts, cataloguing them in this way seemed the best thing to do.

    I wanted more than just a list of books read, though, and so my intention here is to produce occasional, brief posts which link books in some way, perhaps thematically, perhaps tenuously or eccentrically, but in order to show possible reading trails to follow and to illustrate the way one book can lead to another, or to a multitude, depending on which direction the reader may wish to take.

     This will not in any way be a comprehensive or exhaustive selection of groupings, but more a purely personal, idiosyncratic reading map to take someone from A to Z via C and D, with a detour to E and F and so on, should they wish to go all or part of the way. It will be based on what I've read or come across, so it is very much as the name suggests "Cornflower Books - The Reading Map", and will offer suggestions and list titles which may be obvious or a little more recondite.The point is to have a bit of fun and see where reading might take you!