Random Jottings

Bookworm, a Memoir of Childhood Reading - Lucy Mangan

I ordered Bookworm by Lucy Mangan while I was in Australia and so it was waiting for me on my return and as soon as I could find time from the unpacking and washing and tidying up which follows a journey as surely as night follows day, I started to read it. And it was just as well I had done the aforementioned chores else they would have been totally abandoned as I wallowed in this glorious book and spent most of the afternoon shouting "Yes! Yes" as the author talked about a book she had loved, and her reading habits all of which mirrored mine in quite a scary fashion.

"I never deliberately ignored my mother's calls to come to lunch or dinner or to start cleaning my teeth and to get ready for bed. Like every bookworm before and since, I simply and genuinely didn't hear them"

Oh yes.

"People got strangely angry. a certain percentage of adult visitors would greet me with a disapproving 'every time I see you you have got your head in a book' or 'Don't you every go out in the fresh air?' or some variant thereof"

Oh yes.

I am proud to see that I never, and I can put my hand on my heart and swear this is true, uttered these words to my daughters all of whom read in varying degrees. The only time I did haul one of them out was when my youngest was closeted in her room studying for her A Levels and had not been seen for a whole day and had not eaten. I made her come out for half an hour and then let her disappear again. But other than that I have never disapproved of time spent reading.

Lucy Mangan takes us through the various stages of her reading and her favourite authors. Some of them are not mine I freely admit (I have never found Where the Wild Things are the masterpiece it is supposed to be and we will have to differ on Stig of the Dump) but most of the books she has read resonated with me very strongly and it is always a joy to find somebody with whom you feel such sympathy.

A delight to also find that she had her Blyton Years. Didn't we all? She rather disdained Wishing Chairs and the Faraway Tree and Noddy she was in thrall to 'alpha male Julian, dickless Dick (love this description of him), poor Anne, proto-feminist Sapphic role model George and her loyal rabbit loving dog Timmy'.  She read the Adventure series and was thrilled at the thought of finding smugglers in coves, camping on moors and stuffing her face with home grown produce apparently handed out gladly by apple cheeked farmer's wives.

Well yes we all did.

I could never understand the disapproval of teachers and librarians regarding Blyton and their snobbish actions in not stocking her in local libraries. How very dare they? Blyton may not be the greatest writer in the world, but she made reading so enjoyable that even the most book hating child could learn that it was fun to read. And nobody reads Blyton for ever. It is a phase we all go through and then move onto other things.   J  Rowling may be a pretty poor and clunky writer but I admire her enormously for getting children to sit and read a book of over 600 pages and loving it. So more power to her elbow.

I was delighted to see that Lucy read Frances Hodgson Burnett, E Nesbit ('Daddy oh my Daddy' who can forget that cry in the film of the Railway Children. I once went to the station where that was filmed and stood on the platform calling out this line. My children, quite rightly went and hid round the corner), Louisa May Alcott and was seriously taken aback when the author admitted she had not enjoyed Anne of Green Gables on first acquaintance. I was shocked I tell you shocked, but then a page later I breathed a sigh of relief when she said she had tried her again and loved her.

Each page of this wonderful journey through childhood books brings back so many happy memories of when I, too, discovered the joy of reading. Lucy makes the point that 'apart from the pure and simple joy it brings, a love of reading grants you an easy life at school. It please teachers who assume you are  clever and hardworking and it gives you a facility with language ..... and altogether eases your passage through life'

The facility with language is the part of that sentence that is so true - I often find myself using phrases and words that I know I have read somewhere. Not sure where but they are tucked away in the back of my brain and I often surprise myself when I trot them out.  When you read all the content of the book soaks into your psyche and remains there always ready to bring you joy. Like the author I have nearly all my childhood books on my shelves (NOT the Famous Five ones as my mother threw them out on one mad occasion. I have never forgotten how I felt when I discovered that) and looking at my bookcases now I see Enid Blyton, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Lewis Carroll, Kenneth Grahame, Louise May Alcott, L M Montgomery and Elizabeth Enright. I will quite happily re-read them now in my fast approaching old age and find just as much pleasure and enjoyment in the familiar pages as I did years ago.

Do buy this book. I guarantee you will love it.

The Wanderer Returns

Well I am back home and I am freezing. I simply cannot get warm. Since the first week of January I have been in warmth and sunshine and could only be thankful for being so when I read the papers and saw the awful weather the UK was having. Friends and family have told me that it is quite warm at the moment compared to a few weeks ago, but huddled as I am in my leggings, socks and thick sweater I can hardly believe it.

Since I arrived back on Friday I have had a leak in my water tank and a mini-flood and now the shower in my spanking new bathroom does not work. On the plus side I am off to London tomorrow to see my family and my darling grandchildren and cannot wait to see them again. I have been away for three months and it is the longest I have been apart from them all and I have missed them dreadfully.

When I have recovered my equilibrium a bit I will get back into the swing of Random Jottings and start posting again. I was delighted to see as I closed my Cruise blog that I had over 12,000 hits in the few months it was running and I am so grateful to all of you who read it and left comments. I really enjoyed doing it.

Have spent most of today watching cricket - South Africa wiping the floor with Australia and a joy to see that arrogant bunch of dickheads humbled. Steve Smith was booed on and off the pitch and rightly so after the cheating that he deliberately engineered. If proof were needed that some of the Aussie cricketers do not posses a grey cell among them this proves it. 38, yes 38 cameras on the pitch and they thought they could get away with it. Stark staring mad.   The reaction from the Australian public and newspapers is one of total disgust and horror and disappointment so it is not just a case of English Schadenfreude. Of course,some have posited that the reason we lost the Ashes was because the Aussies might have been cheating. Get real folks, we lost the Ashes because we were shite so don't start looking for excuses now.

So my homecoming has certainly been interesting!

Anyway will be back in a day or two on my return from London and will get Random Jottings on the road again.
it is good to be back.

Coming home

Well it is time to come home now. I fly back tomorrow and will probably need a few days to sort myself out and get used to being in my own flat. Three months is the longest I have been away and I have to say that though I have had a wonderful time, I am looking forward to seeing my family and hugging my darling Flo and Bea.

Will probably be a few days before I start posting so near with me!

In Sydney

Just posted over on the Cruise blog. Here is the link: 

http://randomjottings.typepad.com/random_goes_on_a_cruise/2018/03/surry-hills.html

 

Reading update - The Thirst by Joe Nesbo. The latest Harry Hole thriller. He is such a good writer and his plots are so well constructed, but boy they are gory. Onlynread if you have a strong stomach

 

Cruise reading

When on holiday it is totally pointless to try and read weighty tomes. Your mind just cannot cope with anything heavy. Well mine cannot anyway. So if I was thinking of reading A la Recherche de Temps Perdu (yes I am sure I have mispelled it) or a re-read of War and Peace (please note my cunning insertion of the word re-read to show that I have actually read Tolstoy?) then all such thoughts came to naught.

Instead I read books that I could put down at will when gazing out at sea or, what is more likely, falling asleep in the sun and just motored my way through stuff fairly indiscriminately. The ship’s library was a total write off. Columbus was supposed to be a new refurbished ship and had its maiden voyage in June last year but the books in the library looked as if they had been there since the Titanic. (I am sorry I told myself that I would avoid Titanic references when writing about being at sea but I cannot resist) and all behind locked glass doors. I would have liked to have taken a closer look but unless a member of the crew were there, locked they stayed. There were hours when somebody was meant to be on duty but I tried six times and, despite complaining, nobody ever turned up. it was on the English books that were locked up, all other languages were available. Still trying to work that one out...

No matter. Thank the Lord for my Kindle. I had the foresight to dowload loads before I got on board, bearing in mind that the wifi would be a tad dodgy so was well stocked. I was motoring through my endless list that had been on the device for years. I am now going to have a mass deletion as, having atempted to read the latest Jack Reacher book which was same old sameold, have decided that Lee Childs and I are to part company. ditto David Baldacci as there is a sameness about them all that palls.

While on board I read Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain which I suddenly had a fancy for. I sat there on deck snorting with laughter and trying to to make too much noise. I loved it. The description of dancing when the ship was pitching made me hoot out loud, particularly as the Columbus was going through a heavy swell when I read this:

”When the ship rolled to starboad the whole platoon of dancers came charging down to starboard with it, and brought up in a mass at the rail and when it rolled to port they went floundering down to port with the same unanimity of sentiment. Waltzers spun round precariously for a matter of fifteen seconds and then went scurrying down to the rail as if they mean to go overboard. The Virginia reel, as performed on board, had more genuine reel about it that any reel I ever saw before.   We gave up dancing, finally....”

I also revisited Three Men on a Bummel by Jerome K Jerome which also reduced me to mild hysteria. I love Three Men in a Boat and know it is the better known title, but Bummel is well worth reading.

Two other Victorian reads while on board were An Eye for an Eye and Cousin Henry by Anthony Trollope. Both shorter novels. I had not read An Eye for an Eye before and it was a full on Victorian melodrama featuring an innocent maiden seduced by a member of the aristocracy and with a real shock ending. Cousin Henry featured a missing will and the hunting down of its location. Both just so good I love AT.

I have just read The Dreams of Bethany Melmoth by William Boyd, a writers whose work I admire. But, blimey, do not read this if you are feeling low. First half of the book is made up of short stories, witty, superbly written and bang on the money. But, and this is the but, every single character in them is miserable, devious and unpleasant. Roald Dah short stories are exactly the same and it gives a poor view on life. Then we have a full length novella about Bethany and oh my goodness what a winey moany wingey useless person she is.   Again riddled with angst and put me in mind of one of Jean Rhy’s dreary and useless heroines. I read it sitting in the sun on a beach else I may have keeled over with misery.

I have just discovered an author who writes Regency novels all full of Dashing Rakes and Feisty Maidens who bring them to heel...and marriage.

After Bethany I need them.