Authors to Read Like Angela Carter Shirley Jackson Barbara Comyns

That was a longer break than intended – just don't worry, Covid didn't hitting me all that hard. The fatigue was the worst part, but the whole thing was over within a week. Give thanks goodness for vaccines! Then I went off on holiday for a calendar week to a converted railway station. It was with the same group that went away in early March 2020, in fact, and then it felt like a sign of normality creeping dorsum into our lives.

On the manner there, we stopped off at Astley Book Farm. It's 1 of those bookshops that is more enjoyable for the experience than the stock, necessarily, though the stock is vast and affordable so you're leap to detect something to read. Information technology's a converted farm that is now a lengthy warren of book-filled rooms, and their café is the best I've establish in a bookshop. Soup, toasties, simply enormous pieces of cake.

There were lots of books I'd probably have taken home if I weren't Project 24-ing (only buying 24 books this year), merely two actually stood out…

Business firm Happy by Muriel Resnik

The turnover isn't massive at Astley Book Farm, and I often find myself mulling over books that I reluctantly left backside on my previous trip. I've picked upHouse Happy every time I've been to Astley, over the past five or so years. It was a petty more than I'd ordinarily spend on a volume (though rather less than information technology is selling for online), and Project 24 meant I could afford to splurge a fiddling.

I was drawn in by the lovely, lively embrace – just as well by the description on the jacket flap. 'It all kickoff with an enormous bed. Lucy Butler bought it in a secondhand store on impulse, a force which activated most of her decisions.' Turns out it is too large for her apartment, and so she has to firm hunt (my favourite thing in a novel) – and finds a dream house she tin can't afford.

Murder on the Second Floor by Frank Vosper

I hadn't heard of Vosper, who is more than famous as an actor (Wikipedia tells me), but the opening paragraph cried out to me:

Meet Sylvia Armitage. She is the heroine of this story. Sylvia is not reclining gracefully in a hammock, attired in a simple gown of flowered muslin, beneath a cherry-laden tree in a quaint, former-world garden. Neither is she sitting on a table, swinging her long, slim, svelte legs, with a cocktail in one manus and a cigarette in a long holder in the other, saying shocking things most biological urges to a horrified aunt. She is not fifty-fifty in a notorious nighttime-lodge in New York, standing on a table, attired in less than half a bathing-dress, with a gentleman's silk chapeau at a rakish angle on her wicked little head, drinking her own wellness – in such liberal potations as must seriously impair information technology – surrounded by fifty intoxicated lovers in paper hats, conveying a dozen balloons apiece. No; at the take a chance of opening our story in a drab and disappointing manner, the truth must exist told. Sylvia Armitage is washing-up. Yep, washing-upwardly, in the scullery in the basement of a most ordinary boarding-firm in a about ordinary street in Bloomsbury.

I couldn't go out it at that place, with that paragraph, could I? I'm delighted with all three of my Projection 24 purchases and then far, though have yet to read whatsoever of them. Merely I think I'll remedy that before long – merely which to start with?

Friends, I take Covid. At the time of writing (Friday evening) it isn't too bad – coldy symptoms and exhausted – so hopefully it'll stay that way. Hopefully the days of isolation will help me get through some books, though early on signs propose information technology might be better at tackling the Netflix queue.

Anyhow, whether yous're at habitation or out and about, here is the usual Miscellany to assistance kicking off your weekend….

1.) The link – I am heartbroken thatNeighbours is facing the axe. For those non in the know, information technology's an Australian lather opera – and, except my family, has been the longest constant in my life. I've been watching for 24 years, and love mocking how silly it is, just love it nonetheless. If you fancy signing a petition to keep information technology alive, then what's the worst that can happen?

2.) The book – everyone is talking about the newly rediscoveredTheyby Kay Dick, reprinted past different publishers in the UK and US in recent weeks. I only know Kay Dick for her interviews with Ivy Compton-Burnett and Stevie Smith inIvy and Stevie, only ifThey is fifty-fifty a 10th as good as people are saying, then I'grand sure it's worth seeking out.

3.) The web log post – I was so delighted to see Asha's review ofWhich Manner? by Theodora Benson at her excellently titled blog, A Cat, A Book, and A Loving cup of Tea. And those are exactly the 3 things that are going to occupy the next role of my evening.

As mentioned, I'm simply ownership 24 books this yr. 2 a month. We're near halfway through February, and I take bought my first book – and so I am doing well with my rations!

It'southward e'er interesting (to me, at least) to see which books come up to the fore in a Project 24 twelvemonth. It's an opportunity to buy some of the books that might otherwise not be in my budget, and probably not and then much the year for experimenting on new names – and the first book I bought, by mail service, is by an writer I adore.

In our recent Tea or Books? episode, Claire mentioned thatThe Flowering Thorn is one of her favourite books by Margery Sharp. I do have quite a few unread Sharps, merely I didn't have that one. And when I googled to come across which secondhand copies were available, I came across this one. Well, I couldn't exist expect to resist that cover, could I?

I'1000 very happy with this one every bit a Project 24 championship, and I'm looking forward to diving in earlier too long.

I tin can't retrieve if I've talked about Project 24 in 2022 even so – basically, I'm only going to buy 24 books (for myself) this yr. I've done information technology a few times in the past, and succeeded past the skin of my teeth. I've establish that I buy a lot more books for other people in Project 24 years…

Why? Information technology's not a budget matter – it'due south considering I don't have space. I live in a very minor, very full flat. I too accept well-nigh 1700 books I haven't read, so I exercise realise that I won't run out of things to enjoy.

Because it'due south primarily near infinite, I'chiliad non limiting the number of audiobooks I'm buying. If I read e-books, they'd exist fine too.

It's interesting to get to the end of the year and see which books where deemed important enough to get hold of. So, yep, I will be keeping you up to date with what I buy in 2022, but I idea it would also be fun to look back at 2022 and meet how many of the 24 books I've read.

(Incidentally, I'd read 10 earlier 2022 ended – and so I've got a proficient offset.)

1. Love Andrew by Vita Sackville-West
Aye – I read this collection of messages more or less as presently as I bought information technology.

2. Norman Douglas by H. Tomlinson
No – I collect Dolphin Books whenever I see them, merely this is one of the ones I've not yet read.

3. The Runaway by Claire Wong
Yes – my friend Claire wrote this one, and I read it straightaway. Though have however to read her adjacent novel, and must.

4. The Pleasures of Reading: a Booklovers' Alphabet by Catherine Ross
No – though information technology's been a while since I read a book about reading, so…

v. A Winter Abroad by Elizabeth Fair
Yes – bought this one for a podcast episode, so read information technology pretty quickly.

half dozen. Sunlight in the Garden past Beverley Nichols
Aye – another one I read instantly, considering I had the other 2 in the trilogy and adored them.

seven. The Pelicans by E.M. Delafield
Yep – I really kept pace with ownership and reading in Projection 24, as manifestly I also finished this one earlier 2022 was over.

8. Country Notes by Vita Sackville-West
No – still waiting, still enticing.

9. All the Dogs of My Life past Elizabeth von Arnim
Yes – having accidentally bought a book I already had, I have since read it. Really interesting, and quite troubling.

10. Catchwords and Claptrap by Rose Macaulay
Aye – I think I'd read it earlier I bought it, in the Bodleian, but have re-read information technology since.

xi. The ABC of Authorship by Ursula Bloom
Yes – a wonderfully out-of-touch book about becoming an author – that I quoted in the afterword toTea Is So Exhilarant.

12. Jacob's Room is Full of Books past Susan Hill
Yeah – loved this sequel toHowards Finish is on the Landing.

13. Insomniac Urban center by Bill Hayes
Yes – a lovely memoir by Oliver Sacks' widower.

14. Letters From Klara by Tove Jansson
Yes – I'll e'er buy, and instantly read, any new translation of Jansson's fiction.

xv. ABC of Cats by Beverley Nichols
No – though honestly don't know why, since it combines Nichols and cats, 2 of my favourite things.

16. Stephen Leacock past Margaret McMillan
Aye – and with special memories of visiting Leacock's firm.

17. My Remarkable Uncle by Stephen Leacock
No – I think it'southward a bit different to the other Leacock books I've got, so should experiment.

18. Swamp Angel by Ethel Wilson
Yes – in fact, I finished information technology earlier this calendar week.

nineteen. The Equations of Love by Ethel Wilson
No – but even keener, now that I've read and really appreciatedSwamp Affections.

xx. A Journey Round My Skull by Frigyes Karinthy
No – it's an odd one to exist the right mood for, but its day will come.

21. Letters of Margaret Laurence and Adele Wiseman
No – I used to have a book of letters on the become all the time, but it's been a while.

22. David of Kings by E.F. Benson
No – and it is definitely besides long since I read an EFB.

23. Aspects of E.K. Forster past Rose Macaulay
No – if I'm honest, this felt more like one for the shelves, to dip into, than one I'd necessarily read cover to cover.

24. E.M. Delafield by Maurice McCullen
No – and why not? This study seems so up my street. I'grand non entirely certain where I put it…

So, I've read 13 – just over half, merely only 3 of those were between 2022 and today…

Have I learned annihilation from this exercise? Sadly, no. But it was fun.

My first Project 24 volume of 2022 has been bought online, and I'll share what it is when it arrives. Wish me luck!

I'1000 going to exercise a slightly different weekend miscellany this calendar week, largely because I had and then many contenders for the web log post that I wanted to include. So this is but a circular-up of reviews that I wanted to depict your attention to…

• I read Neeru's review of Denis Mackail'southwardThe Royal Mystery ages ago, merely didn't get around to mentioning it. Information technology follows the dominion that every novelist in the 1920s and 30s had to write at least ONE detective novel, and Mackail's is very entertaining. I listened to the audiobook, which is much easier to find than a paper re-create.

• So pleased that Barb is back blogging at Leaves and Pages, and particularly since she has read and lovedMiss Married man Simon by Mollie Panter-Downes – though, while you're at that place, scroll through the other recent reviews.

• Radhika's review of Elizabeth Taylor'sA View of the Harbour is one of the best reviews I've read recently, and it reminds me of why I love Taylor (when I'm in the right frame of mind). I accept read this novel and don't remember much about information technology, and Radhika's writing and analysis make me want to become back asap.

• Let'south stop with Lil's video near F. Tennyson Jesse'sA Pin To See The Peepshow – I love when Lil covers the British Library Women Writers series, and she has lovely things to say about this one likewise…

D.East. Stevenson, Margery Sharp – and a special guest!

In this episode, we have a special guest in the form of Claire – y'all'll know her blog The Captive Reader. We were delighted to take her equally a invitee, peculiarly as she also came upwardly with our topics.

In the first half, we discuss books nearly grief – and whether or non nosotros are drawn to them. In the second half, we compare two novels with like premises:V Windows by D.E. Stevenson and4 Gardens by Margery Sharp. Both, thankfully, accept recently been republished by Dean Street Press.

Go episodes a couple of days early on at Patreon, and listen to the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or your podcast app of pick. Your ratings and reviews make a big deviation, and we'd really appreciate them.

Make it touch at teaorbooks@gmail.com with any suggestions or feedback – we love hearing from you.

The books and authors we mention in this episode are:

Maeve Kerrigan serial past Jane Casey
The Good Companions by J.B. Priestley
Let's Go Concrete by Danielle Friedman
Ghosts: A Cultural History by Susan Owens
Un Noel de Maigret by Georges Simenon
Miss Buncle's Book by D.Due east. Stevenson
Dishonoured Basic by John Trench
John Buchan
Swamp Angelby Ethel Wilson
Hetty Dorval by Ethel Wilson
Margaret Atwood
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
A Niggling Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Little Women by Louisa M. Alcott
Anne of Green Gables series past L.M. Montgomery
Enid Blyton
The Summertime Bookby Tove Jansson
In the Springtime of the Twelvemonth by Susan Hill
Making Toastby Roger Rosenblatt
Let Not The Waves of the Seapast Simon Stephenson
Wavepast Sonali Deraniyagala
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
All The Lives Nosotros Always Lived by Katharine Smyth
To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Wildby Cheryl Strayed
H is for Hawk past Helen Macdonald
A One-half-Baked Idea by Olivia Potts
Wives and Daughtersby Elizabeth Gaskell
Anthony Trollope
A Magnificent Obsession past Helen Rappaport
Afterward the Romanovs by Helen Rappaport
These For Remembrance by John Buchan
Attestation of Youth past Vera Brittain
In the Mountains past Elizabeth von Arnim
Mrs Tim of the Regiment by D.E. Stevenson
The Rock of Chastity by Margery Precipitous
Diary of a Provincial Ladypast Eastward.G. Delafield
Cluny Brown by Margery Precipitous
The Gipsy in the Parlour by Margery Sharp
Britannia Mews by Margery Sharp
The English Airby D.E. Stevenson
Green Money by D.East. Stevenson
Listening Valley by D.E. Stevenson
Miss Read
Moon Tiger past Penelope Tiger
The Divinerspast Margaret Laurence

I don't seem to be finishing many paper books at the moment, but I am tearing through audiobooks. If I continue at this rate, I might stop up listening to every bit many books this year as physically reading them. Thanks Aural Plus! (Not a sponsor, but I'thousand open to offers.)

Here are 3 more that I've listened to recently…

Surprised by Joy (1955) by C.South. Lewis

I've actually got the book on my shelves, but I decided to listen instead. I thought it was nigh his encounter with Jesus and decision to become a Christian – and it is, only just at the finish of what is really a memoir of his childhood and early adulthood. With accent on babyhood. It takes us through his days at various different schools, and really delves into what makes these positive or negative experiences. Nobody has improve expressed how awful P.Due east. is, and what a blessing it is not to have to do it anymore.

I actually enjoyed this volume, and Lewis's gentle thoughtfulness. The only downside with the audiobook is that I think it would have been ameliorate in Lewis's (presumably) Northern Irish accent. The fact that the narrator was English was particularly odd when Lewis was talking about feeling out of kilter in England, as an outsider.

Come Again (2020) by Robert Webb

One could inappreciably inquire for a better narrator than Olivia Colman, and inCome up Again she oftentimes juggles three or four distinct accents in conversation with each other. She is brilliant, simply sadly the volume isn't. Information technology's nigh a middle-aged woman called Kate whose life has fallen autonomously in the wake of her husband's expiry from a brain tumour that had been growing for decades – but with almost no symptoms. She wishes she could get back to when they met at academy, and warn him. And one forenoon she wakes upwards to find out that her wish has come up true – she is waking up on the day she met him, as a 19-year-one-time.

This part of the novel is bright. Kate is snarky, funny, and a complex emotional character. The book is often very poignant, as well as delightfully funny (though some tangents on Brexit and Donald Trump, while I wholeheartedly hold with Webb's/Kate'south stance, don't really cohere). The trouble is that it doesn't work at all with the rest of the novel – which is about gangsters trying to track downward a memory stick that exposes the secrets of a powerful human being. The terminal quarter of the novel, particularly, is very weak – machine chases, fights, and all sorts of nonsense that lets down all the emotionally sophisticated narrative that preceded it. If only an editor had spoken to Webb about not putting ALL his ideas in ane novel.

The Adventures of Sally (1922) past P.1000. Wodehouse

Oh, inject Wodehouse straight into my veins. What a delightful feel. The plot scarcely matters – information technology includes a surprise inheritance, various actresses, a theatre impresario, battle, jaunts across the Atlantic, broken engagements, irritating brothers, love at start sight and all the other usual Wodehouse ingredients. Sally is funny, spirited, and with a lovely dryness. Every bit usual, information technology is Wodehouse'southward mastery of the humorous sentence that, fourth dimension and once again, makes this novel a hoot. I particular loved Ginger and his inability to translate his own make of slang.

He glanced over his shoulder warily. "Has that blighter pipped?"

"Pipped?"

"Popped," explained Ginger.

Every bit before, anything you lot'd recommend from the Audible Plus catalogue? Do allow me know! (I remember I paid £3 for Webb's book, simply the other 2 were free.)

This is part of an ongoing series where I write about a dissimilar author for each letter of the alphabet. You can come across them all hither.

Some of the letters of the alphabet, in this ongoing project, are no-brainers. I already know who 'M' is going to be, and I doubtable yous do too if you read this weblog. And I knew who would footstep forward for 50 – it had to exist my boy Stephen Leacock. Look at that towering pile of Canada's finest.

How many books practice I have past Stephen Leacock?

There are Twenty-SEVEN Leacock books there, though that does include a couple of 'all-time ofs' that I recall replicate content institute in the others. I've no idea how many books Leacock wrote, and I've only actively sought out one of these books –My Discovery of England – relying on serendipity to find the others. He is i of those authors who turns up often, near always (in this state) in 1910s-30s editions that speak to a popularity he once had.

How many of these take I read?

I have almost no idea. Because and then many of them are collections of essays/sketches, the titles don't e'er clue y'all in to their contents. According to my LibraryThing, where I mark whether or non I've read a book, I have read 14 of them. But the bulk of my Leacock reading was pre-blog, around 2004-6, so I don't accept a firm recollection of how accurate that is. I still read i every yr or ii, then I can keep going for a fleck.

How did I start reading Stephen Leacock?

Ithink I was lent some by my aunt, only it'southward also possible that I discovered him in the aforementioned place I discovered East.Yard. Delafield – a 1940 volume of sketches calledModernistic Humour. As I say higher up, I was on a bit of a rush of reading him 15 or so years ago, and whenever I pick one up I'm reminded why I savour him so much.

General impressions…

What a joyful author Leacock is. His essays and sketches tend to be ironic or dry, or sometimes openly pastiching some well-known writing of the day, and he has a sense of taste for the surreal that nigh always lands on the correct side of likewise far. He is an exemplary judge of that – of being careful with the absurdities to make them still enjoyable. Among the books in that pile are some more than serious things, I think, but I've simply dabbled in them.

When I went to Canada in 2017, I was keen to fill some Leacock gaps – and to visit his house, which was a wonderful feel. It was a novelty to see editions of his works that were printed in the past 70 years, and a couple of the paperbacks up the summit of the pile came from that trip. I don't call up Leacock is much read anymore, even in Canada, merely he should be.

I had a little blogging absence because I had a nasty cold – which I presumed might exist Covid, given how everyone seems to have it at the moment, only a zillion tests turned out negative. Just a normal common cold! Back to normal wintertime life!

Anyway, if you're anything similar me then feeling under the weather ways you plow to very like shooting fish in a barrel reading. I didn't have the energy for books where fine writing or depth of character were the focus. So I turned to murder mysteries.

That'south probably unfair, because murder mysteries tin can certainly have bang-up writing and characters, but it felt similar a safe bet for an enjoyable, pacy plot. And the beginning one up was The Murder of My Aunt (1934) past Richard Hull, which I think I got as a review copy from the British Library in 2018. I was picking more than or less at random from my piles of yet-to-be-read British Library Crime Classics, though I exercise also dimly recall someone recommending this one. If that were you, many thanks.

The novel is told by Edward Powell, a grown man who lives with his Aunt Mildred on the outskirts of a tiny boondocks in Wales. Information technology sounds idyllic, to exist honest, merely Edward is not a human being who appreciates the countryside – still less does he appreciate having his freedoms curtailed by his aunt's watchful eye, and his finances falling far short of his dreams for himself. Towards the outset of the novel, they are in a boxing over whether or non he will drive into town – which involves his aunt cutting off his petrol supply, and Edward concocting a lie about how he successfully got at that place withal.

There is something of the Ealing One-act about this – the stakes are high, but it is all affably ridiculous enough that they don'tseem high. Early on, Edward has decided he should kill his aunt – and the reader goes along for the ride. Murder feels like it's rather playful hither.

And does the aunt deserve it? Well, here'southward an example of what annoys Edward and so much:

My aunt, later studying the ordnance map with great care, tells me that you have to go upward just on six hundred anxiety, and apparently it is a good deal. I tin well believe her, but these figures mean little to me. It is, even so, typical of my aunt that she not but possesses many maps showing this revolting land-side in the greatest detail for miles circular, merely that she can apparently find some pleasure in staring at them for hours on cease, 'reading' them as she is pleased to say, and producing from retentiveness figures as to the meridian of every hillock about past.

Frankly, as someone who loathes maps and being forced to wait at them, I was fully on Edward's side at this betoken.

From here on, he develops various ruses for offing his aunt, and shares them in the novel – which is really a diary of his attempts. Keeping a diary of your murder attempts probably isn't the wisest motility, only nosotros'll forgive it. Equally yous can tell past the plural 'attempts', he isn't very good at achieving his goal. I shan't spoil whether or not he was successful, but I will say thatThe Murder of My Aunt was a delight throughout. Edward reminded me a flake of Ignatius J. Reilly inA Confederacy of Dunces, in that he considers himself vastly superior to the people around him – and reveals himself, through his ain self-portrait, to be rather more ridiculous than he would similar.

Information technology's not the sort of murder mystery where you are drastic to detect out whodunnit – indeed, there is no mystery at all. Simply it'south a great reading experience, and Hull'due south dry touch is perfect.

I made my listing, I checked it twice – and Rick has washed the spin.

As you'll have seen in that video, there are two numbers – the 2d for those who really want to get for it. I haven't decided yet, merely I'll definitely be picking upwardThe Magic Apple tree Treepast Susan Hill (which a couple of you recommended) with the choice ofThe Twisted Treeby Frank Baker. I judge the spin Actually wanted me to read about trees.

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Source: https://www.stuckinabook.com/

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