A Century of Books: some suggestions

I'm already getting excited about A Century of Books, the anti-challenge reading challenge with very few rules and low expectations(!)  If you missed my original post on it, click here.  I'm especially excited about how excited lots of you are - whether you're joining in wholly or casually or just watching from the sidelines.  It's going to be fun!

I was asked by Jo if I could give some suggestions for books, as I imagine most of us have sections of the twentieth century where we're at a bit of a loss for inspiration.  (For me, it's the 1900s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s...)  Jo's was the kind of question I could not possibly resist - the lure of a list, and of going back through my book-lists from the past ten years, was too wonderful a prospect to delay.

And I have made my list!  I was somewhat astonished that not only had I read a book for every year of the twentieth century already (almost), but I could recommend books I thought were good!  1994 took a while, because I absolutely refused to include the abominable Captain Correli's Mandolin, but thankfully I discovered Sylvia Townsend Warner's Diaries were published that year - hurrah!  That book is one of a few below that I haven't actually *finished*, but have dipped into and can safely recommend.

I haven't duplicated any authors, and there is a mix of fiction and non-fiction.  Unless otherwise stated, the books are novels (and there are evidently some decades where my familiarity with novels is second to children's books or plays!)  Quite a few of these have been reviewed on SiaB - just search in the search box, or scroll through all reviews.  And if they're not there and you're interested, just ask!

Without further ado... my suggestions for 1900-1999.


1900 - The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud (non-fiction)
1901 - Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov (play)
1902 - Just-So Stories by Rudyard Kipling (children's short stories)
1903 - The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin by Beatrix Potter (children's)
1904 - Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie (play)
1905 - The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle (short stories)
1906 - The Railway Children by E. Nesbit (children's)
1907 - The Unlucky Family by Mrs. Henry de la Pasture (children's)
1908 - Love's Shadow by Ada Leverson
1909 - The Caravaners by Elizabeth von Arnim
1910 - Literary Lapses by Stephen Leacock (short stories)
1911 - The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (children's)
1912 - The Unbearable Bassington by Saki
1913 - Old Friends and New Fancies by Sybil G. Brinton (first Austen sequel)
1914 - The Wise Virgins by Leonard Woolf
1915 - Psmith, Journalist by P.G. Wodehouse
1916 - London Revisited by E.V. Lucas (essays)
1917 - Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley
1918 - The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West
1919 - The Young Visiters [sic!] by Daisy Ashford
1920 - Queen Lucia by E.F. Benson
1921 - Dangerous Ages by Rose Macaulay
1922 - Lady Into Fox by David Garnett
1923 - Bliss by Katherine Mansfield (short stories)
1924 - The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
1925 - William by E.H. Young
1926 - As It Was by Helen Thomas (biog./autobiog.)
1927 - The Love Child by Edith Olivier
1928 - Orlando by Virginia Woolf
1929 - David Golder by Irene Nemirovsky
1930 - Diary of a Provincial Lady by E.M. Delafield
1931 - The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
1932 - Cheerful Weather For The Wedding by Julia Strachey
1933 - Hostages to Fortune by Elizabeth Cambridge
1934 - Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers (children's)
1935 - Untouchable by Mulk Raj Anand
1936 - The New House by Lettice Cooper
1937 - They Came Like Swallows by William Maxwell
1938 - Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
1939 - It's Too Late Now by A.A. Milne (autobiog.)
1940 - Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker
1941 - Parents and Children by Ivy Compton-Burnett
1942 - The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie
1943 - The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton (children's)
1944 - A House in the Country by Jocelyn Playfair
1945 - Animal Farm by George Orwell
1946 - Westwood by Stella Gibbons
1947 - The Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton
1948 - The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh
1949 - I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
1950 - Frost at Morning by Richmal Crompton
1951 - The Lagoon by Janet Frame (short stories)
1952 - Make Me An Offer by Wolf Mankowitz
1953 - The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley
1954 - Love of Seven Dolls by Paul Gallico
1955 - Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead by Barbara Comyns
1956 - The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis (children's)
1957 - The Entertainer by John Osborne (play)
1958 - Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce (children's)
1959 - The Caretaker by Harold Pinter (play)
1960 - The L-Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks
1961 - Provincial Daughter by R.M. Dashwood
1962 - We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
1963 - Let's Kill Uncle by Rohan O'Grady
1964 - The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence
1965 - Oxford by Jan Morris (non-fiction)
1966 - Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
1967 - The Death of the Author by Roland Barthes (essay)
1968 - The Real Inspector Hound by Tom Stoppard (play)
1969 - Travels With My Aunt by Graham Greene
1970 - 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff (letters)
1971 - Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor
1972 - The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
1973 - In the Springtime of the Year by Susan Hill
1974 - Enid Blyton: the biography by Barbara Stoney (biog.)
1975 - Danny: The Champion of the World by Roald Dahl (children's)
1976 - Joyce Grenfell Requests the Pleasure by Joyce Grenfell (sketches)
1977 - Abigail's Party by Mike Leigh (play)
1978 - The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald
1979 - The Path Through The Trees by Christopher Milne (autobiog.)
1980 - A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
1981 - Loitering With Intent by Muriel Spark
1982 - Wish Her Safe At Home by Stephen Benatar
1983 - A Very Great Profession by Nicola Beauman (non-fiction)
1984 - Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen by Fay Weldon
1985 - Henrietta's War by Joyce Dennys
1986 - Richmal Crompton: the Woman behind William by Mary Cadogan (biog.)
1987 - Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life by Claire Tomalin (biog.)
1988 - The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
1989 - People Who Say Goodbye by P.Y. Betts (autobiog.)
1990 - Immortality by Milan Kundera
1991 - Forever England by Alison Light (lit. crit.)
1992 - The Christmas Mystery by Jostein Gaarder
1993 - The Matisse Stories by A.S. Byatt (short stories)
1994 - Diaries by Sylvia Townsend Warner (diaries!)
1995 - The Tattooed Map by Barbara Hodgson
1996 - Bridget Jones' Diary by Helen Fielding
1997 - Enduring Love by Ian McEwan
1998 - Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman (essays)
1999 - All Quiet on the Orient Express by Magnus Mills

Stuck-in-a-Book on your 'phone...

This new interface that Blogger have got has its ups and downs, but it did bring the Blog-on-your-phone option to my attention.  I don't know if any of you ever do look at my blog on your mobile/cell, but now if you do it looks all attractive and clever, rather than squidged up and confusing.

Go on, test it now... you know you want to...

Stellar Stella?

Just a quick update on my previous post, since a few of you were asking in the comments which Stella Gibbons should you read first...  I wrote in my review that I couldn't choose a better novel between Cold Comfort Farm and Westwood because they were so different, but I do think you should Cold Comfort Farm first.  If you only read one Stella Gibbons' novel, it should be that one - because while Westwood is brilliant, there are lots of similar(ish) novels out there, whereas Cold Comfort Farm really is one of a kind.  Plus hilarious novels are pretty rare.  There you go, that's my dictat on starting reading Stella Gibbons....

Westwood - Stella Gibbons

Why, dear reader, why does it sometimes take me so long to review books?  I read Westwood (1946) by Stella Gibbons whilst on holiday with Colin, thought it was very good, have promised you reviews a dozen times... and only now do I get around to writing about it.

Firstly, many thanks to lovely Vintage books for sending me this copy, and super praise to Pep Montserrat who did the beautiful cover illustration.  Like everyone who has read it, I love Cold Comfort Farm and was excited when I heard that Vintage were hot on Virago's heels, in publishing more of Gibbons' work.  Then I read Lynne Truss' excellent introduction, published in the Guardian (but now not available online) and simply had to read the novel.

In her introduction, Truss writes that 'If Cold Comfort Farm is Stella Gibbons's Pride and Prejudice, then Westwood is her Persuasion.'  Those of you who know my thoughts about the relative merits of Austen's novels may be surprised to learn that this actually encouraged me to read Westwood(!)  Obviously Truss' analogy can only be taken so far, but she has a point - Westwood is not a comic novel (although it has funny moments), rather it is slightly melancholic and very contemplative.

The heroine of the piece is Margaret Steggles, a plain and uncertain type with a thirst for learning and an appetite for adventure which she keeps sensibly subdued.  She is only 23, unhappy with her job as a teacher and with her home life - her father is prone to affairs, and her mother is disappointed that Margaret is not more like her feisty good-time-gal friend Hilda.  But naturally things do not remain thus.  Margaret finds a ration book on Hampstead Heath and, when returning it, becomes embroiled in the lives of self-important playwright Gerald Challis, his spoilt, snobbish daughter Hebe, and her husband, the painter Alexander Niland.  They are an eminently fashionable set, full of ideas of Art and Beauty, and Margaret wants in.  The nearest she can get, to start off with, is the somewhat hysterical Jewish refugee Zita, who lives with the family and is not quite a housekeeper but definitely not one of the family.

"I like you, Miss Steggles."

"Thank you.  I like you too," sais Margaret, who in her present mood would have liked anyone.

"Good.  Den we are friends," announced Zita, putting out her hand while her eyes overflowed.  Margaret took it and they exchanged a solemn clasp.  "Oh, Miss Steggles - what iss your name?" she demanded, interrupting herself.

"Margaret."

"Zo.  I shall call you Margaret.  You will call me Zita?"

"I'd love to, Zita."

"Margaret, I haf a many sadness.  I tell you about it."

Margaret was so inexperienced as a confidante that no feeling of dismay overcame her on hearing this threat; indeed she hardly heard what Zita said, so overjoyed was she at the prospect of frequent visits to Westwood as Zita's friend.

As you can see from the 'iss' and 'Zo' used so liberally, Zita does border a little on stereotype - but she is the liveliest inclusion to the novel, and that which most demonstrates Gibbons' comic touch.  I am guilty of that which Truss does in the introduction, presumably as inadvertently as I am, of quoting the sections which amused me most.  For, as I said, this isn't, broadly, a comic novel.  At its heart is Margaret's awkward attempts to become part of a society which only tolerates her.  There is a desperately sad moment where Margaret overhears Hebe's opinion of her - it's in the same area as 'consciously naive' and 'you will be limited as to number - only three at once.'  (Ten points if you recognise those references!)

She especially wants to be involved in Challis' life, and falls rather in love with him - although from the reader's perspective it is a trifle difficult to see why.  He is pompous, with high-blown ideas about Beauty which would make Keats seem like a materialist.

"A landscape without hills," he suddenly pronounced, "is like a woman without mystery."

There simply was not any answer to this, especially as his unhappy audience realized that whatever she said would be wrong, so she replied feebly:

"Oh - do you think so?"

"The monotony of an endless plain," continued Mr. Challis disparagingly surveying the mild meadows on every side, "drives men mad."

But Challis' Achilles' heel (and one of the other funny threads through the novel - although funniness laced with tragedy) is his belief in the Beauty of the common innocent girl, provided she be physically attractive, of course.  And the one he sets his eye on is Hilda - remember her?  Margaret's feisty friend who would, in contemporary soap parlance, undoubtedly be described as a tart with a heart.  Challis bumps into her walking home from the train ("I have been sent by Providence especially to escort you") and he decides to call himself Marcus Antonius, and she Daphne.  Hilda's good-natured willingness to put up with him until she is bored, and his slavish (would-be adulterous) devotion to a girl whose nature he has so completely misunderstood, is both farcical and saddening.

Indeed (sweeping generalisation alert) that is how Gibbons treats a lot of the material in Westwood.  It is the kind of plot and the (large) cast of characters which could easily be tragic or comic, and Gibbons treads a path between the two - lingering, perhaps, on the tragic, but never fully abandoning the comic.  Being asked to empathise with Margaret, rather than laugh at or with her, takes Westwood away from the hilarious tour de force of Cold Comfort Farm, but also creates a more thoughtful, thought-provoking work.  Both novels introduce a whirlwind of characters, but while Cold Comfort Farm can rely upon the witty epithet to describe someone, Westwood delves deeper - which does, at times, make the novel feel a bit overcrowded and perhaps overlong - but is also ultimately perhaps more satisfying.  If I were one of these novels to reread next, I must admit it would be Cold Comfort Farm - for an uproarious escapade - but I doubt I would gain as much, and I certainly wouldn't think as much.  The novels are so different that it is nigh on impossible to say one is better than the other, but what is obvious is that Westwood should never have gone out of print, and Vintage are to be commended for rectifying whosever oversight that was.

Others who got Stuck into this...
I'm going to copy Jackie's lovely idea of quoting other bloggers who have reviewed the book, and point you in the direction of their reviews.  I think it's a great addition to Jackie's blogposts - I'm all about the blogging community.  I'll just pick two or three each time, so as to feel more like I'm including people in a selective list rather than accidentally excluding people from an exhaustive list!

"[...Margaret] is a masterpiece and definitely earns Gibbons the right to be compared with Austen.[...]" - Hayley, Desperate Reader

"[...] do read this if you love a warm, witty, beautifully written and leisurely novel [...]" - Hilary, Vulpes Libris

Song for a Sunday

This suggestion for a Sunday Song comes at least third-hand - Carly told Clare; Clare told me; I'm telling you.  I suspect soon a lot of us will have heard of Lana Del Rey, who (quite accurately) describes herself as "a gangster Nancy Sinatra" - this song took a couple of listens before I loved it, and now I'm addicted.  Over to you, Lana, and 'Video Games':

Stuck-in-a-Book's Weekend Miscellany

Happy weekend folks!  And happy October too.  I suspect a lot of us in Britain are enjoying the unseasonably hot weather - personally, I'm retreating to the shade with paracetamol, but I'll try not to begrudge heat-seekers their (literal) day in the sun.  I shall even add to their bounty with a book, a blog post, and a link.


1.) The link - is a rather amusing video from an old TV programme What's My Line?  For those not in the know, this ran in the 50s and 60s, where panellists had to deduce the occupations of guests, and then the identity of a mystery famous guest.  In this case the guest is Salvador Dali, and his self-belief makes the exchange especially funny.  The video is below and, if that doesn't work, the link is here.





2.) The book - is slightly unusual territory for me.  I don't think I've ever read a graphic novel, but I am very captivated by what I've seen of Brecht Evens' The Wrong Place, kindly sent to me by Jonathan Cape.  Besides Evens' astonishingly good name, I love the style of his artistry.  At the moment that is all I know about this book... perhaps the cover and an illustration from inside will be enough to captivate you too.  (The illustration is taken from Evens' own flickr set for The Wrong Place here.)  It's not published until Oct0ber 20th, and I will report back further in the future...

3.) The blog post - has to be Sakura's review of We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson - how lovely that she is reading some of my favourite books this year, and even lovelier that she's enjoying them so much!  But do also keep up with Darlene's wonderful travel-log (travelogue?) of her time in London.  I think I'm going to be in the next instalment, so there's an incentive ;) 

Happy 25th, Bloomsbury!

Firstly, I'm so pleased by your enthusiasm for my A Century of Books project!  It really is the anti-challenge challenge - in that I shan't be making a list beforehand, I shan't make many rules, I shan't really even pick books for it, it'll just quietly fill up as the year goes by... I hope!  I'll certainly be including re-reads and multiple books by the same authors, etc. etc., but I think it should be really fun.  I'm really excited about those of you who want to join in, and feel free to do so over the course of one, two, however many years - or maybe just keep a closer eye on the publication years of the books you read?

Jo asks whether I could give some suggestions for books to read from the first half of the 20th century - oh, Jo, I am going to have the MOST fun doing that!  I'll try and compile something, and post it soon - but for some ideas, there are really, really wonderful lists by Lizzy and Every Book and Cranny (sorry, can't find your name!) 

So I'll try and work out a list of ones I already have read, but not a list for what I will read.  And then I'll be probably keep quiet on the topic until the end of the year...

And now for something completely different.  Have I mentioned how much I love Bloomsbury publishers?  Well, I really do.  Not only have they printed the wonderful Bloomsbury Group series, thus bringing Miss Hargreaves back into print (there you go, Dad, a mention of it!) and the upcoming Bloomsbury Reader e-reprints (more on those uber-soon, promise) but they happen to be the most friendly publishing company in the world.  I've met lots of lovely publishing folk, and (besides being universally impossibly glamorous) they've all been very nice - but Bloomsbury go the extra mile.  Alice, my 'contact' there, sends me the catalogue with her own inscriptions and suggestions - as well as exchanging emails about cats and baking disasters etc.

Well, today (yesterday by now, I suppose) I went to Bloomsbury's 25th Birthday Party!  I had arranged to meet up with Elaine (Random Jottings) and Karen (Cornflower) both of whom I've met a fair few times before, and both of whom it is always an utter delight to see.  There they are above; apologies for the blurry photo.  And how glad I was to be with them when we arrived at a huge party in Bedford Square - actually in the square, or rather the garden in the middle.  Big marquee, lots and lots of people - and us, staring at name-tags to try and find our Bloomsbury friends.  In the meantime, we celeb-spotted, and all got in a bit of a tizzy about seeing Paul Hollywood from The Great British Bake-Off.  Goodness!  Also spotted Grayson Perry, Raymond Blanc, Heston Blumenthal, and (I think) P.D. James.

But we were most excited about meeting Stephanie and Alice, the two people at Bloomsbury who have been so lovely to all three of us for the past four or so years.  And of course both of them are totally lovely in person too - we hugged, we were introduced as the most important bloggers in the country (doubtless not true, but how nice to be introduced thus!) and I even managed to whisper how nice it would be to have a copy of the latest Magnus Mills novel. 

I am much worse than many bloggers at reading review copies - I tend to squirrel myself off to the 1930s and ignore a lot of what's going on in the 2010s - because I want my blog to reflect my reading tastes, and I think that's why the people who do read my blog are here (yes? :)) so I'm very grateful to Bloomsbury and other publishers for still keeping me in mind, and being so friendly.  I was so surprised to be invited to this shindig, and delighted to accept - it was good fun, and even worth the horribly hot, overcrowded train journey I had home....!