Future of Libraries

I watched the Newsnight programme the other evening which included a short article on the future of libraries. Supporting libraries was Tim Lott, while the government representative merely took the view that everything was on the Internet, and that "everyone has a computer now". He gave no facts or figures to back up this argument. The film of Alan Bennet speaking at a meeting to save Kensal Rise Library, in Brent was much more useful, concentrating on use of libraries by children as he did. The local public library is often one of the first places that children can go to on their own, as it is regarded as a safe place to be in. There children can find books to help with homework, use the Internet and also just begin to develop further as an individual being. Tamsin Greig's comments about the effects of closing a libarary in smaller communities was also spot on, which is why people in rural areas whose public libraries are under threat are fighting so hard to keep them open. The Public Libraries News website gives the current situation on possible closures, as well as links to other useful websites on the subject.

One book, two book, three book, four and five

Saw this meme on Random Jottings of A Book and Opera Lover, (and see right)so am following suit.

1.The book I'm reading now: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Although originally published in 1932, after watching a Tv ad (on French TV for a programme called I want to be a porn star), I think that Brave New World is almost becoming reality.

2.The book I've just read: A Week in December by Sebastian Faulks. Some of the financial wheeling and dealing left me a bit behind, but the story and characters kept me turning the pages, and the ending is superb.

3.The next book I'm going to read: Hector and the Secrets of Love by Francois Lelord. Must read something French (although the book I'm going to read is an English translation) as I'm in France at the moment.

4. The last book I bought: Trespass by Rose Tremain. A book with a French setting, about complicated family relationships, together with incest, murder - a thrill of a read, with an amazing twist at the end.


5. The last book I was given: Romantic Moderns:English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper, by Alexandra Harris. I'm not given books very often, but this was a real treat. Not only a very interesting read, but a rather nice production as well.

A balcony with a view

Have been catching up with a bit of reading recently, some of done on this balcony overlooking this view.

I started reading Sarah Dunant's Sacred Hearts before we left for France and finished it there. Set in the convent of Saint Catherine in Ferrara in 1597, the story concerns those women who were sent to convents in lieu of being marrried, as dowries for upper-class females had become so expensive that fathers could only afford to marry off one daughter. The main characters in this story are just such women, without a particular vocation but finding a home and a reasonably dignified life within the convent. When Serafina, daughter of a Milan merchant and a renowed singer, enters the convent she causes much upset with her reaction to her enclosure. Eventually Suora Zuana, the sister in charge of the dispensary, is asked to look after the new arrival. Zuana is the daughter of an apothecary and was encouraged by her father to study herbs and their healing properties and eventually earned herself a place in the dispensary. The story follows the convent's preparations for the season of Lent, including the Carnevale just before, and shows how Zuana and Serafina gradually become companions in the dispensary, as Serafina shows an aptitude for the work. Serafina appears to accept her place in the convent, but as the increasing revelry of carnevale outside is heard within the convent, so life within is increasingly disturbed as well. I really enjoyed this novel, being set in one of my favourite historical periods and places - Renaissance Italy, and have equally enjoyed Sarah Dunant's earlier novels set in the same place and period, The Birth of Venus and In the Company of the Courtesan.

Francesca Kay's novel An Equal Stillness , winner of the 2009 Orange Prize for New Writers, is the story of Yorkshire-born artist Jennet Mallow. Her parents were Lorna, born and raised in Jamaica and Richard a first World War survivor and vicar. Jennet showed her artistic leanings early, drawing on the blank wall behind her bed with a piece of burnt firewood; fortunately her mother then bought her coloured pencils and paper. Jennet goes to Oxford, then London, where she meets David Heaton, a promising artist. Marriage to David follows, and when life in a cramped London home proves difficult, the couple and their young son move to Spain, to a house with a glimpse of the sea. Here Jennet manages to find the time, inclination and will to paint for herself, and begins to taste the success which so far has been David's. Eventually the couple move back to London, Jennet finally managing to buy a neglected old house with a view of the Thames, and also to continue her rise to the heights of artistic success, with commissions and exhibitions over the years. David meanwhle returns to teaching and to success of a somewhat more muted kind as a portrait painter.

I found this book intriguing with its descriptions of places and paintings, but couldn't quite make up my mind as to how the paintings "looked". The main mystery is who is the narrator, as the book starts off from one point of view, but then switches to a different one. For a first novel, it is a very accomplished one.

April doings

Another month past. This year seems to be flying along as we are planning our first visit of the year to the house in France. Meanwhile a short break in the Lake District was very enjoyable and the weather just right. The fisrt day f our visit was fairly typical Lakes weather, rainy, cool and cloudy and was spent visiting friends up there, but the remaing few days were lovely, warm and generally sunny, ideal for walking, which we did for a couple of days. The day we left for home , the lake was like glass , reflecting the boats perfectly.

While there I did a little reading, mainly during the evening after dinner ( not prepared by me, thank goodness) and got well into Antonia Fraser's Must You Go, about her affair with and marriage to Harold Pinter. I enjoyed this very much, although I'm not a great biography reader. The life these two writers eventually settled into sounds at once slightly bohemian but well-orderd at the same time, although thinking back, her description of her early life at home in north Oxford, before her father Lord Longford inherited his title, perhaps life wasn't always as well-ordered as we like to think. The book is sometimes described as a love letter to Harold Pinter, but there is no trace of sentimentality in it, not that any would be expected from Antonia Fraser's pen. It is a wonderful description of the life of two writers, both supportive of each others work. Although Harold Pinter is described elsewhere as being an angry man, here he comes across as passionate in his opinions, sometimes angry but more often vehement in his arguments. His moods seem completely normal to me, the moods of a man who cares deeply about things and is unafraid of others opinions.

March reads

I seemed to have a bit of catching up to do, although as we have been finishing off decorating a bedroom and de-cluttering two others, replacing beds and so on, there hasn't been quite as much time for reading as Iwould like.



One book I enjoyed was Downhill All The Way:walking with donkeys on the Stevenson trail. (here's a sort of review ) An amusing tale by two women friends who decided to follow Robert Louis Stevenson's footsteps in his journey in the Cevennes with the donkey Modestine. The writers, Hilary Macaskill and Molly Wood hired donkeys, and the personalities and foibles of these animals, as well as the attitudes some have to the accompanying dog, Whiskey, make for some hilarious moments in the tale. The journey is spread out over a few years, and the weather and some of the places the little group stay at during their travels add to the amusement, although they are careful not to make fun of the French people they meet ( one of the writers lives in France, in the Cevennes) I don't think it is meant as a serious guide to the route, although the writers do give signposts to more detailed guides.

Michael Frayn's Spies was a Reading Group read and an interesting one: Stephen Wheatley, now an old man, returns to the street where he spent his childhood, and reminiscences about his life then. The period he returns to in his mind is during the last World War, when his friend and playmate Kevin Hayward became convinced that his mother was a German spy. The two young boys begin following Mrs Hayward whenever she leaves the house, and aslo start investigating her desk at home. They have a den in the garden surrounded by a privet hedge, a place which Keith calles private, but, spelling not being one of his accomplishments, ends up being called "privet". Various secrets of adult life slowly come to light, the two boys not really understanding what it is their activities have revealed , although Barbara Berrill, another child from the street is much more aware of what is going in the adults lives, and tries to enlighten Stephen when she finds her way into into the secret den. Part mystery, part war story and part coming-of-age story, this is a good read, with a beautiful twist at the end.

I've also enjoyed Katie Ffordes's A Perfect Proposal, a nice, cheerful, story with an eventual happy ending as required by a romantic novel. Sophie Apperly is hard-working, practical and very unacademic in a family who are all the complete opposite, and who undervalue Sophie's skills, and Sophie herself. She is invited to New York by her old schoolfriend Millie, now working there. Sophie manages to save up for the journey, and finds herself a job, which unfortunately falls through at the last minute. Sophie stays on for a holiday, during which she accompanies Millie to an evening event and meets Matilda, a rich elderly lady who invites Sophie to her home in Connecticut for Thanksgiving. Sophie is first vetted by Matilda's grandson Luke, extremely arrogant but very attractive and who is also one of the Thanksgiving party. A delicious tale of mistunderstandings and eventual making up follows, making this a lovely comfort read for me.
Another sort of comfort read, although of a very differnt type was Susan Hill's The Shadows on the Street, although to call a story concerning the murder of prostitutes a comfort read is a bit odd. I, like many other readers, enjoy crime stories because they follow a pattern in which evil deeds are committeed, but the perpetrator is eventually found out and punished. In this story Simon Serrailler is on holiday on a Scottish isle, while back in Lafferton his sister Cat is gradually coming to term with the death of her husband. Simon returns home to find that two prostitutes have been murdered and their bodies dumped in a canal. The story lets us into the lives of these girls and those who try to help them. Another girl is attacked but manages to escape. Meanwhile the Cathedral has a new Dean whose wife is busily trying to set up a committee to help the local prostitues, involving Cat somewhat against her wishes.

Belonging

At a recent reading group meeting, we discussed Peter Ho Davies The Welsh Girl., which is the story of Esther and her life in a Welsh village, fiercely nationalistic in its attitude, at a time towards the end of the Second World War. There are English sappers nearby, building something (which turns out to be a prison camp), one of whom becomes Esther's friend. The German prisoners captured after the D-Day landings, eventually occupy the camp and are taunted by the village boys, including the evacuee living with Esther and her father. on their small farm. One of the prisoners, a young German who surrendered because he could speak a little English, learnt from visitors to his mothers pension in a tourist area, escapes and spends a little of the time he is free on the farm and builds a relationship with Esther. Some of us found this easy to get into, but then found their interest waning a bit, while others enjoyed the whole story. We had a fascinating discussion about the question of identity and "belonging", which are important themes in the story, as several members of the group had had childhoods in which they moved around a lot, so felt quite keenly the problem of belonging somewhere. I thought Esther was a well drawn character and seemed in some ways more mature than her actual age , perhaps because she had had to take on the housewifely duties of her mother after her death. Her reluctance to marry Rhys, is I feel quite understandable, as she had dreams of a life away from the village that were encouraged by her mother, yet failed to be realised because of changing circumstances.

Free books

Not World Book Night books, but a passed on present from my mother-in-law. She was given Nigella Lawson's Kitchen for Christmas but as she now does very little cooking (she will be 90 later this year) and wasn't very interested, she passed it on to me. I've got Nigella's How to Eat: the Pleasures and Principles of Good Food and her How to be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking, both of which I have cooked several recipes from. Although I've dipped into the other titles she's produced, I wasn't tempted to buy them. I was interested to see this latest title but have found it a little disappointing, as it has quite a lot of cake recipes, which I'm now not so interested in cooking. However if I were setting up a kitchen for the first time, the section at the beginning which tells the reader how to just that would be very helpful. One thing I dislike about modern cookery books is their sheer size and weight, which makes them impossible to read in bed. One very useful aspect of this book, however, is the notes which tell you if the dish can be made ahead or frozen, and the what to do with leftovers sections for some dishes are also excellent.

The other free book I received yesterday was Antonia Fraser's Must You Go, the story of her marriage to Harold Pinter. I've read an extract of this in NewBooks magazine and various reviews, so am looking forward to reading one of the great love stories of our age.

I was given a World book Night book - Seamus Heaney's New Selected Poems, 1966-1987- by a friend who was giving them out at her local library. I'm not familiar with his poetry, so am looking forward to becoming acquainted with it.