Cornflower

Book Group thoughts & books to take away

  

 

I've heard from a couple of our stalwart Book Group members that for various reasons they won't be able to take part in the discussion of Old School which we'd planned to have on August 9th. It strikes me that as that is peak holiday time anyway we may be even further reduced in numbers, so I think it would be sensible to postpone that book until 6th. September when we shall hopefully have a better turnout, and then move Kipling's Selected Stories (or whichever collection is most easily come by) to 4th. October.

    I hope that doesn't inconvenience anyone, and we'll all be raring to go with Tobias Wolff in a few weeks' time!

    Meanwhile, I've got to choose books to take away with me on my short trip this week. I doubt I'll have much reading time as such, and with constraints of space in the luggage, big hardbacks - of which I have many to choose from - are out.

What I think will fit in my bag are Daniel Barenboim's Everything Is Connected: The Power Of Music
"a book for the curious mind that wishes to discover the parallels between music and life and the wisdom that becomes audible to the thinking ear", and David Guterson''s famous Snow Falling on Cedars
which no doubt the rest of the world has read but I have not. It's a whodunnit and a "fiercely intelligent and moving" one at that, so the blurb says.

 

I've still got a few more hours to make up my mind so we'll see...

I know where I'm going

   Later this week I'll be away for a few days and I wonder if, from the clues pictured here, anyone can guess where I'm going?

Above are some "Iron-Blue" flies.



Then here they are with a relevant CD

  And next a book  - a classic in its field - by the same man (that's him below with his dog, Gillie).


Any ideas?

 

Game, set and match

 

"A fine sporting-piece for the great, a mere tennis-ball of fortune".
So does the young maidservant Pamela perceive herself having been carried off and confined by her wilful and impetuous master, Mr. B., whose designs on her are nothing if not dishonourable.

And yet, the pert and assertive Pamela in her "sweet simplicity.. honest artlessness...and amiable humility" shows a strength of character and a virtue which will indeed be rewarded in the end.
Richardson's revolutionary novel, written in the epistolary style, features a posturing hero/villain and an educated servant unwilling to settle for the lesser sexual morality expected of her class. As Mr. B. ultimately realises that "..her fine person made me a lover, but it was her mind that made me an husband", so this richly comic, melodramatic but sharply critical tale of the misuse of power, freedom and social status shows the emotional shift from fear and dislike of ill-usage to affection and concern, and from actions initiated by force of will to those motivated by love.

 

All ends happily for Pamela and Mr. B., and ultimately the reader can sigh in relief and rejoice with them at their good fortune, but we're a long time getting there and it's not only Pamela who fears the situation will never be resolved. But it's a happy book with a nicely satisfying ending, and Pamela's spirit is to be admired while Mr. B moves from "I cannot live without you and since the thing is gone so far, I will not!", to "this lovely creature is my doctor as her absence was my disease". Prettily said, sir.

 

Oh, and Pamela thinks "books polish a mind", so she'd no doubt like to stay here (as would I)!

(The paintings are by Joseph Highmore).

Knitting, but not as we know it ...

    Regular readers of the knitting posts may remember that I recently made some mitts and a scarf for a sale of work in aid of Mindroom which is to be held later in the year. My friend Peter suggested they be professionally photographed - and here they are.

My thanks to the beautiful model, Dawn, for making simple things look incredibly glamorous, to Morgana for her skill with the camera and the styling, and to Peter for coming up with the idea and seeing it through. The results speak for themselves!

The Cranford Mitts pattern was designed by Jane and is available from Natalie at The Yarn Yard; the Airy Scarf pattern is from Last-Minute Knitted Gifts. I just put the yarn on the needles and played with it for a bit.

PS Click on the bottom picture to read the title of the book which has sent Dawn into raptures!

 

Gone to seed, slowly

Clematis montana seed heads taken in a refreshingly slow moment in the garden last evening.

Reader's block

  

My thanks to Natalie for alerting me to this article about reader's block. I like the references to the global shortage of bookmarks and "the want of application and total spinelessness that is common in the modern age"! And what about the Basil Boothroyd solution - any books good candidates for that?

Later:
You can read Norm's response to the article here, and I'm with him on Ishiguro, Whipple and Trevor  (can't comment on the others as I haven't read them!).

And even later:
Here's Edith Sitwell's view - "A great many people now reading and writing would be better employed keeping rabbits".

Friday flowers: garden fragments

  

     Friday poems are really Lindsay's province whereas Friday flowers are more mine, but why not combine the two with a couple of fragments on the theme of gardens.

First is from Stephen Hawes's love poem, "The Passetyme of Pleasure, or the history of graunde amoure amd la bell Pucel"
(those with stamina can read the whole thing here):

Than in we went, to the garden gloryous
Lyke to a place, of pleasure most solacious
With flora paynted, and wrought curyously
In divers knottes, of marveylous greatnes....
Amiddes the garden, so much delectable
There was an harber, fayre and quadrant
To Paradyse, right well comparable
Sette all about, with floures flagraunt...


   The next excerpt is from Wordsworth's "Composed by the Seashore". You'll see no mention of flowers or gardens there, but Thomas Mawson, whose work I admire, chose the last four lines to end his autobiographical book "The Life and Work of an English Landscape Architect", thus:-

A garden...the place
Where good men disappointed in the quest
Of wealth and power and honours, long for rest;
Or having known the splendours of success,
Sigh for the obscurities of happiness.

  

Don't look now

     You'd be forgiven for thinking that lately I've been talking more about books to be read than ones I actually have read - though the quiet but steady progress from "Current reading" to "2008" (over there on the left) shows I am making headway - but as if to prove the point I have another to add to the TBR pile.
     As soon as I heard about Justine Picardie's novel Daphne I knew it was one for me, and in advance of Justine's appearance at next month's Edinburgh International Book Festival I can't wait to read it. It has been much talked about on bookish websites, but in case you're not familiar with it, here's the gist, cribbed from the flyleaf:

"1957. Daphne du Maurier despairs as her marriage falls apart....  She is haunted by regret and by her own creations - namely Rebecca, the heroine of her most famous novel. Seeking distraction, Daphne becomes passionately interested in Branwell, the reprobate brother of the Bronte sisters, and begins a correspondence with the enigmatic scholar Alex Symington as she researches a biography. But....soon truth and fiction have become indistinguishable.

"In present-day London, a young woman struggles with her thesis on du Maurier and the Brontes. Her husband, still seemingly in thrall to his brilliant, charismatic first wife, is frequently distant and mysterious... Retreating into the comfort of her library, she becomes absorbed into a fifty-year-old literary mystery".

I made the mistake of looking at the book this morning and now a chapter in I don't want to put it down - though I must for now - but doesn't it sound intriguing?   

Out of the box

    I wrote a bit about this workbox ages ago and promised a follow-up post with the rest of the story; now thanks to Carol's gentle prompting, here it is.

 

I bought the box in an antiques shop in Ballater, on Deeside, and I was intrigued by the inscription on the lid: it had come from Oldmeldrum (not far from Ballater) but who was Elizabeth MacPherson and why was there a school prize, and a handsome one at that, awarded in her memory?

 

 I got in touch with the village through their website and asked if anyone knew anything at all about Maggie Innes or Elizabeth MacPherson. They were eventually able to tell me that Maggie's niece had recently sold the box, but that was all they knew. However, it seems I started something as the Meldrum and Bourtie Heritage Society got involved, and coincidentally a dilapidated seat bearing the following inscription was discovered on the outskirts of the village just after my inquiry: "Elizabeth MacPherson Memorial, gifted to the town of Oldmeldrum, 1906, by her husband and children in Manchester".


      The seat and its immediate site were then restored and the Heritage Society set about discovering the identity of this lady who had left her mark on the community. Research has revealed that Elizabeth was born in Oldmeldrum in 1860, and in 1886 she married Evan MacPherson who later became a cotton manufacturer in Manchester. She died there in 1904 leaving her husband and two children. Apart from one or two other facts, little else had been discovered about the family, though research was continuing when I was last in touch with Oldmeldrum, but I'm happy that my curiosity prompted a bit of delving and the unearthing of some facts of local interest, and I continue to use the workbox with great pleasure.

Book trailer

    

I didn't know that there were such things as trailers for books, but there are, and why not? Last week I raved about this book - one of the best reads of the year so far -, and you can see its trailer here.

The dark side

     When I saw Claire Macdonald's recipe for Frozen Raspberries with Hot Chocolate Sauce in a newspaper at the weekend, I earmarked it to try a.s.a.p. Then a friend gave us a punnet of rasps from her garden, and despite our miserable weather they are tartly sweet and delicious, so there was our pudding.

I can't find an exact copy of the recipe but here's one that's pretty close - just omit the coffee.

I froze the berries in a single layer for an hour or two, then put them straight into bowls and poured the hot sauce over them. The contrast between the unctuous, warm, dark liquid and the sharp but yielding fruit is wonderful.

Lost boy

  
     As is the way of these things, you go to read one article and another catches your eye, and before you know it you're saying "eleven o'clock and not a dish washed". But at the risk of detaining you from whatever you should be doing just now, here's another link worth following: a fascinating article by Justine Picardie about J.M. Barrie.
The striking portrait of Barrie is by Sir William Nicholson and is in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

Watching the detective

     I mentioned that Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: Or the Murder at Road Hill House is on my book mountain just now and I hope to be moving it nearer the summit as soon as I can. Having just won the Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction, it is featured in this article in today's paper, and as it is about not just one notorious crime but the beginnings of criminal detection and the man - written about by Dickens and Wilkie Collins - who became the model for detective fiction, I think it will be jumping my reading queue.

Not Provence...

.... the Scottish Borders! I can't claim that rolling fields of lavender are a common sight around here (how lovely if they were) and yet the plant does well despite our cool, damp climate and no summer to speak of so far. The top picture is from a friend's garden, overlooking the Eildon Hills, while the other two are here at home.

Interestingly, I read in Suki Urquhart's envy-inducing book The Scottish Gardener, that in the largest roof garden in Europe (which is very close to here), the Mediterranean-type plants such as lavender do very well, despite Edinburgh's arctic winds.

Does anyone happen to know what my pale variety (above) is? Although you can't tell from the picture, it is a single plant which has grown to be the most enormous lavender bush I've seen anywhere.

Later: as Peter has asked for a picture of the foliage, here it is-

It's wonderful...

   

     As a dog's coat is to burrs from the plants it rubs against, so is my brain to the tunes it hears - it hooks them in the musical memory and they remain firmly stuck.

Years ago I was taken by the catchy song used to back an advertisement for investment trusts but I didn't know what it was. Earlier this week I heard it again, in a restaurant, and now thanks to Youtube, I've tracked it down. And for your delectation, ladies and gentlemen, here is a true renaissance man: poet, painter, musician and lawyer (yes!), it's Paolo Conte, performing his wonderful Come away with me (the rest of the world probably knew this, but I didn't). Go and listen, and don't tell me you didn't tap your feet to that!

Unenamoured by my musical taste, my children thrust headphones at me, pointedly shut doors and caution me not to snap my fingers in time to the music even. Huh! They're used to the pattern, you see - Mum gets a craze and listens ad infinitum. They don't understand my capacity to hear the same piece over and over again (the youth of today have no staying power...). We had it last summer with Astor Piazzolla's Libertango (first heard on a programme about physics, then rediscovered on Tower of Goo the computer game) now here it is 'for real' with YoYo Ma. Then there was Music for a Found Harmonium (Terry Wogan chat show, Irish seaweed piece in the series Coast), and previously The Divine Comedy's Songs of Love (Father Ted - of course -  and accompanying a Gary Rhodes dish involving cabbage, as I recall).

But now I have the rest of Paolo Conte's oeuvres to discover (and I feel a CD purchase coming on...)