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Almost Two Months Done, What Comes Next?

The 2017 reading project has so far proved to be very interesting. Four novels of various sorts, a double autobiography  and a travel book, with the current one being a volume on etymology. 

There hasn’t been any particular reason any one of these was chosen, apart from perhaps the first week where I was constrained to what was on the Kindle.  For the rest,  I’ve looked at what is both close at hand and appeals to me and have gone from there. As a working model this approach is not really going to change and there’s no grand scheme of what is going be read. But there are a few general ideas, so I decided to jot down a some notes about books I intend to read in the next few months. 

For a start,  there’s going to be at least one Pratchett, probably Night Watch which I regard as amongst the very best of the Discworld books. There will very possibly be another Wodehouse book, but if there is then it will be one I’ve never read before. And I think that it’s well nigh time to reread  Lord of the Rings,  a book I used to read every year. 

My family has been enthusiastic about suggesting books  to read – well they do have four English degrees between them! Thomas Hardy, Haldor Laxness and Maurice Herzog will all make an appearance.

Then there are books around the house that I’ve bought but have not yet read. So expect Owen Jones, Robert MacFarlane, Saint-Exupery and Stephen Hawking to appear. On top of that there are books that I’ve always intended to reread: Mary Beard, Charles Dickens, Jasper Fforde are being lined up, at a minimum. 

What else though? If anyone has suggestions as to what could appear in the next 10 months then I’ll be happy to consider them,  though I make no promises! But give me your best shot.

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Book 7 – Money in the Bank

As I said in my post last year announcing this project of reading a book a week for a year,  some of the books involved would be ones I’d  read before. Money In the Bank  by PG Wodehouse is such a volume. 

Wodehouse is probably best known for the Jeeves and Wooster stories and the Blandings Castle  saga (as he named it). But a significant portion of his books are standalone stories, albeit  sometimes the  same characters occur in different books. 

First published  in 1942 Money in the Bank is one of these, and is in my opinion one of his very finest books. It contains a wonderful character in Lord Uffenham, the hero is the England scrum half and in Anne Benedick has arguably his finest heroine. It can fairly be said that as his writing progressed through the years the young female characters in Wodehouse’s books became more of a lightly drawn sketch, rather than a fully developed character, but Anne is a living woman who leaps out of the page.

One characteristic of Wodehouse books is the recurring theme of The Imposter, something that occurs innumerable times. Almost every Blandings book has at least one person pretending to be someone else. Money in the Bank has four of them, including Jeff Miller, the afore-mentioned England scrum half and Cakebread the butler who for long and complicated reasons is actually George, Viscount Uffenham. 

The book has charm, wit, humour and tells the story well. But it also has a great description of falling in love. An example:

“Anne Benedick gave a sudden laugh,  so silvery, so musical,  that it seemed to Jeff that his great passion, in the truest and deepest sense of the words, really dated from this moment. Ever since she had come in, shimmering across the threshold like the spirit of the June day,  he had known,  of course, in a sort of  general way that the strange emotion she woke in him was love,  but this laugh – hitherto she had merely smiled – seemed to underline the facts and clarify his outlook.  There was all Heaven in Anne  Benedick’s laugh.  It conjured up visions of a cozy home on a winter’s night,  with one’s  slippers on one’s feet,  the dog on one’s lap,  an open fire in the grate and the good old pipe drawing nicely.”

The feelings between Anne and Jeff change through the book before the inevitable happy ending,  and in my opinion it is better described here than in any other Wodehouse – certainly better than in any of the dozens that I have read.

This is a brilliant book.  If you are a Wodehouse fan then you probably know this anyway,  and if not then you are strongly encouraged to give it a go. 

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Book 6 – A Madness of Angels

Another daughter, another book. A Madness of Angels came from Kat as a Christmas present. She’d read it and really enjoyed it, and told me she thought I would too. And I must give credit where credit is due, because enjoy it I did.

Written by Catherine Webb under the name of Kate Griffin, this is her first adult fantasy novel. The publishers say she has written books for young adults as herself, but I’ll admit to never having heard of her before. But after this I will keep an eye out.

A Madness of Angels is another story of magical fantasy set in modern London, though it’s very different in tone from The Hanging Tree (see week 2). It has a truly different hero for a start – but you’ll have to read the book to find out just how different. The magic comes from all life, including the mechanisms invented by man. Suffice it to say that the ghosts of every phone call exist in the phone lines and talk to those who can hear. It’s a story of self discovery and revenge, of gangs, criminals and immensely powerful sorcerers and magicians (and there is a difference between the two).

It explores in greater depth than anything I’ve read since the Witches books of Pratchett’s what magic is and where it comes from, and for that alone I’d recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading modern fantasy. It’s not a great book, but it is a good read.

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Book 5 – The Living Mountain

A couple of weeks ago we went into London to help my daughter and her boyfriend get some fixtures into their new flat. As Marianne was opening boxes to populate the new bookshelves she held out a slim volume, said “Dad, you have to read this book” and handed me The Living Mountain, which is a book about the Cairngorms.

Nan Shepherd was born in Aberdeen in the late 19th century,  graduated from Aberdeen university in 1915 and spent the next 41 years teaching English at what is now the Aberdeen College of Education.  She published three modernist novels between 1928 and 1933, and a book of poetry in 1934. The Living Mountain was written towards the end of the Second World War but was put away in a drawer and was not published until 1977, only four years before Shepherd’s death in 1981.

This book is extraordinary!  But it’s  rather hard to define what it is; easier to say what it isn’t. It isn’t a guidebook, nor a travelogue, and there’s very little of the Wainwright in this book. It only has one map showing the rough layout of the Cairngorns and details no trails, routes or paths.

What it is instead could be described as a prose poem, a paean to the Cairngorms, a celebration of being and place. The Guardian called it “The finest book ever written on nature and landscape in Britain”. The Canongate Books edition that Marianne gave me has an introduction by Robert MacFarlane (a name that will crop up later in the year) who made a documentary about it for BBC Scotland in 2014 – alas not currently on iPlayer or the BBC Store.

Shepherd came to realise that the truest joy of the mountains is not climbing to the highest peaks, but just to be there, as she calls it “in the mountain”.She writes about the plateau that is at the heart of the Cairngorm as well as the peaks.  She talks of views and experiences and weather – wind and rain and ice and snow and sunshine. She describes shapes and colours and sensations and tastes and smells. There is one chapter about snow and ice where three pages are taken up with describing the forms ice takes as running water freezes. I could go on….but honestly, read it yourself and find out. 

There are another 47 books to go as part of this 2017 reading project but I think that when the final reckoning is made The Living Mountain will be right at the top of the list of books that made the greatest impression on me.