Cornflower

Open books

    

     I love to know what other people are reading, especially all the visitors to this site who have varied and interesting tastes, and whose recommendations have increased the size of my books wishlist and my TBR pile considerably. So I'll tell you what is currently on the bedside tables chez Cornflower and I hope you'll tell me what you're reading now and whether you're getting on with it or not  - we've done this before but it's been a while and it's always fun to swap titles.
     I'm well on with something a little off the beaten track and enjoying it greatly and that's the autobiographical  Myself and Michael Innes by J.I.M.Stewart. As for the rest of the family, one has just polished off Moby Dick, another is revisiting John Updike's Rabbit Angstrom: A Tetralogy, the third is reading Pat Reid's Colditz: The Full Story while the fourth was keen to pick up Tears of the Giraffe straight after finishing The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency.
How about you?
 

Volume 12

     Our Book Group is almost a year old and it's time to choose the twelfth title for us to read. I've given some thought to this, looking to achieve a balance of sorts, keen to have something good but not a book that might turn our enthusiasm down to a gentle simmer, as some have done! We haven't had any crime or thrillers yet, so I've gone for what is often referred to as a masterpiece from the Golden Age of crime writing, a book by an author I haven't read before, Margery Allingham's The Tiger in the Smoke.

     You can read about the writer here, where you'll see the best of her work described as "among the most distinguished in the genre - vivacious, stylish, observant, shapely, intricate and witty... unfailingly intelligent and imaginative....", while this book is "more than an outstanding thriller. In her intense depiction of character, place and event, Margery Allingham has created a major novel." 

    The book should be readily available, but as ever, the Book Depository offers free worldwide delivery if local sources don't have it, and if I set the discussion date for Saturday, 13th. December there should be plenty of time for us to read it. Anyone who wants to read along with us is very welcome - the group is open to all - and I hope we'll enjoy this novel very much.

Chain reaction

    Lindsay and Peter may be pulling my (third) leg about my birthplace, but I ought to mention that I was born in the Jane Crookall Maternity Home, Douglas, I.o.M., whose most famous babies (until me) were the Bee Gees. And I couldn't not give a link to them, could I, so here's a song whose modulations are 'key'!

Coming through

When all about it is dying back, this solitary cyclamen is flowering. Did you know it has medicinal properties?

Searching questions

  

  

    I'm often amused by the searches which bring people to this site as it's clear that many of those seeking something have ended up in the wrong place. Take what I imagine to be a school pupil doing their physics homework: "You are told that a sample of matter gives off energy as it changes. Can you conclude what type of change occurred? Why or why not?". I'm no scientist and I don't recall any of my posts ever touching on a subject like that, so how did they get here, I wonder.

    Then there are the ones who've misspelled the subject of their search such as "when water hits cornflower what happens?". I'm tempted to say, "she gets wet!"

    Next, a student of English literature: "how does Seamus Heaney introduce the subject of his poem Blackberry Picking?". When that one came up my response was "read the poem and find out!", but I'm kind really and if I could help them I would.

    There's usually a mixed bag like these recent ones: "Hugh Laurie's favourite whisky" (don't know), "spells for tidying up" (I could do with them), "all passions spent in Edinburgh story" (what is that about?), and "Beware of Agapanthus" - is that a kind of 'cave canem' alternative for non-botanically literate intruders?                                                                          

     Then there are the ones where I wish I could contact the searchers because I can actually answer their questions such as "what does Manx-born mean?" I know this because I am, and in case they are still searching, it means being born here.

    And lastly, "what is cornflower?", which for some reason brought to mind Shakespeare's "Who is Sylvia, what is she that all our swains commend her...."

Domestic service

    

The latest Persephone catalogue and Biannually have just come out, and caused comment in the press today. This passage caught my eye:
"The strain of fiction championed by Persephone has been the victim of outrageous literary snobbery. It is domestic fiction - of course, as the authors had no choice but to lead very domestic lives - in which, critics say "nothing" happens."
Given that most of the books were written in a century divided and defined by two world wars, one can scarcely say that "nothing" happens, but even in wartime, domestic lives go on as best they can, and that apart, who amongst us does not have some element of domesticity in their existence, as a background for their working life, if not as the centre of their individual universe?



The article goes on:
 "All that happens is the riveting, day-to-day, quiet, heartbreaking stuff of middle-class lives..."
That's to generalise of course, but even so, if you record only that by fine writing, keen observation, acute perception of character and situation to create books which engage and entertain, is that not valid and good? As C.S. Lewis said, "We read to know we are not alone", and in discovering through these books what our mothers and grandmothers read, thought and experienced, many of us have found that the 'spirit' of Persephone - if one can put it that way - is indeed a kindred one.

 

Geeing up

   

I don't mean to pre-empt our discussion of The Mysteries of Glass which is set for Saturday 8th. November, and "caveat lector" should perhaps be invoked here, but 100 pages in I am very taken with this book and looking to see how it proceeds and what else - apart from the excellent Reading in Bed - Sue Gee has written. (You can watch a short interview with her here).

And one more thing....

    

I see Yarnstorm is talking about comments today, and that's a subject that's been bothering me for a while. I used to answer every single comment by a personal email as soon as I possibly could. I have got terribly behind with that because of other commitments, and I get frustrated, too, when a reply and is bounced back because the commenter has given a non-functioning email address. So what's the answer? I really do welcome the comments as they add so much to the site, and I try always to follow any links, etc. given, but as I feel proper acknowledgement is required where possible I may just start doing as other bloggers do and "commenting on the comments".

By the way

In an attempt to get the site to load more quickly, I've moved some of the books as well as the music and the films to the hitherto sparsely furnished About page. I'm still trying to work out how to re-arrange what's there and whether any more biographical details are required - some people have screeds of information about themselves, but my entry is decidedly succinct!

Picture house

   

     How about an evening in front of the fire watching a film? I've mentioned Il Postino already, and since then we've had another two excellent ones, a favourite Powell and Pressburger - A Matter Of Life And Death - starring David Niven and Roger Livesey, which I've seen many times and always love, and then this weekend the bittersweet Cinema Paradiso, so funny and so sad.

 I have a few more films lined up (I think it's time to give Brief Encounter another airing, for instance), so we can forget the television and have our very own picture house instead - all that and toasting crumpets, too!

From the top

   

Here's the view the residents of Ramsay Garden enjoy, and here's the passage from The Comfort of Saturdays which describes it better than the photographs (by the way, yesterday's storm has passed and I would go up there again for some clearer pictures to show you but I have to give a dog a bath!):
 "...Isabel was gazing downwards, to where the flanks of the Castle Rock descended almost vertically to the douce order of Princes Street Gardens, the railway line, the floral clock.....Her gaze drifted beyond that, over the tops of the buildings,....the stately stone pediments, to Trinity in the distance, and then the silver band of the Forth. The heart of a country, she thought, the heart of this place."  

These are the rain-dashed pillars of the National Gallery, and below is the Scott Monument. Sir Walter is sheltering within (and while I go off to put Mollie in the tub, here's a piece about that noted dog-lover).

The things we do for love

     I've just been reading Alexander McCall Smith's latest Isabel Dalhousie novel The Comfort of Saturdays in which Isabel pays several visits to Edinburgh's Ramsay Garden. Thinking that you might like a sight of the very distinctive and interesting buildings which make up that prestigious address, I took a walk up there this morning. Now, the weather here is bad today. We have very high winds and lashing rain and no-one but a fool would venture out unless they had to; call me 'fond' if you like, I don't mind getting wet and a gale just adds to the excitement so off I went with the camera. I got some shots and headed home, only to have to clutch the wall of Lakeland Plastics to stay on my feet - the woman ahead of me was blown round the corner to a part of George Street she had not intended to visit - it really was very wild!



But here is the place itself (click to enlarge), hard by the Castle, looking down over Princes Street and beyond the Forth to Fife (though no view to be had today).


Edinburgh (Pevsner Buildings of Scotland) gives the details: mostly late nineteenth century, designed as "a Town-and-Gown" hall of residence and block of flats, these now command huge prices. I love the description of one section - "a cluster of gabled towers, the largest laden with a doubly jettied oriel and clasped by a battlemented stair-turret ..." Above is, I think, "the dizzy round tower with circular balcony and conical roof".


This must be Dark Puss on the prowl...

While I enjoy my own comfortable Saturday back home in my warm house (and wearing dry clothes now), later on I'll put up a few pictures of the city taken from this morning's destination.

Recent acquisitions - 5

 

     The image of Queen Victoria as Queen-Empress, the elderly widow, disapproving and formidable, tends to be the one we associate with her more than any other. But what of the young Victoria, the girl who became Queen at just eighteen, by what route did she reach the throne and what shaped her reign? That is the subject of Kate Williams' book Becoming Queen which combines a novelist's flair with a scholar's attention to detail to tell Victoria's extraordinary story.      
     Kate recently presented a BBC programme on Victoria's early years and if you missed it you can catch it here. I did see it (and on a frivolous note, Kate must be the best-dressed historian to appear on television) and I shall read the book  - described as "an absorbingly dramatic tale of secrets, sexual repression and endless conflict" - with great interest.

Negatively positive

     

Donnafugata was right, yesterday's picture was of Elinor Glyn. Fear not, dear friends and readers, in my desire to break out a bit I don't expect to sin on a tiger skin, nor even err on some other fur; in fact, my sole transgression thus far consisted of putting an empty juice carton in the dustbin rather than the recycling box, a minor blow for freedom in our prescriptive world - you can tell I walk on the wild side!  However, the advice Harriet and Carole gave in the comments is worth heeding, and as for what Rhys got up to in Bude, I think we have to hear about it!
     The portrait of Mrs. Glyn was by de Laszlo, of course, and you can see many of his works here, while the lady herself features in Anne de Courcy's excellent book The Viceroy's Daughters: The Lives of the Curzon Sisters, and I didn't know that Three Weeks was still in print, but I find it is.
     More later, if other commitments permit. ("Ignore the other commitments and do as you please", I hear you cry. We'll see....)

Positively negative

 

      

I recently came upon a book I had as a child. It's called something along the lines of "The Bumper Book of Fun" and it consists of activities to while away a rainy afternoon - puzzles, games and the like. I must have been in an unusually peevish or contrary mood when resorting to it one day because I'd written in the margin of each page. For example, a drawing with the instruction, "Colour this in", had "Why should I?" beside it in my juvenile hand. "Join the dots to make a picture" got the stark response "No!" To use a good Scots word, the normally highly compliant child was demonstrating she could be 'thrawn'.
    Nowadays as a sober adult with responsibilities I don't often do the unexpected, let alone anything remotely naughty (what a prig she is!) but maybe a bit of kicking over the traces would be liberating and do me some good. What do you think, or what would you recommend?!
And can anyone identify the subject of the picture who is vaguely relevant to this post?