a gallimaufry

about a book splurge

I think I may have mentioned, ahem, that recently I finally passed the theory test for my driving licence. If you have ever studied the Belgian Highway Code you will know that it is phenomenonally dull and one of the reasons that it took me so long to take the test was there was always something more interesting to do with my time, even cleaning the loo. However, I cunningly motivated myself by imposing a total book-buying ban until I succeeded in passing. Amazing how this concentrated my mind!

It’s not that I am buying insane amounts of books every day, it’s more the thought that I cannot. I hasten to add.

Inevitably, the moment the ban was lifted, a splurge ensued. Faye rashly asked me what I had bought so, since I am hiding indoors from the beautiful weather because of my hay fever, let me show you.

The very day I passed the test I walked into the local charity shop and found these, 50 cents each, I mean, that is the universe basically ordering me to go on a Ruth Rendall reading spree is it not?

If you can’t read the titles they are: A Dark Adapted Eye, A Fatal Inversion, The House of Stairs, Gallowglass and The Chimney Sweeper’s Boy under the name of Barbara Vine, and A Guilty Thing Surprised, The Face of Trespass and Talking to Strange Men under her own name. Although they represent a tiny proportion of her published works, I’m now thinking of a little Ruth Rendall project, reading them all in chronological order. I might write about them here if I do, though don’t hold your breath, my projects are predisposed to failure.

Then I had a little internet dalliance...

John Banville’s The Sea and J.G. Farrell’s Troubles are both to review for Shiny New Books so actually they are necessary and guilt-free purchases. But the Collected Stories of Walter de la Mare is a lovely treat.

I have loved Lucy Wood’s first two books so couldn’t really wait until this second collection of her stories came out in paperback. (I thought I had written about Weathering here but I haven’t; it is a beautiful rain-soaked story of mothers and daughters and ghosts and new beginnings.)

And I saw Year of Wonder by Clemency Burton-Hill recommended on the Twitter feed of the Secret Barrister. It’s the musical equivalent of A Poem a Day. Burton-Hill has chosen a different – and short – piece of classical music for every day of the year and written about it. It’s aimed at people who want to learn more about classical music but don’t really know where to start. I am one of those people who actually ‘knows’ quite a bit of music if you play it to me, but doesn’t actually know what any of it is called and will stare blankly at you if you start talking about Beethoven 5 or Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 1. So far I’ve listened to music by Handel, Meredith Monk, Vivaldi and Germaine Tailleferre and I’d never even heard of two of them before; I actually wish that each entry was a little longer but this is after all intended as an introduction and in the age of the internet it’s easy to explore further. It’s fun and I recommend it!

Finally, when I was visiting my parents during the Easter holidays, we went to Sutton Hoo (a favourite Parry family spot: even with the (splendid) visitor’s centre it retains a slightly otherworldly air) where there is a second-hand bookshop run by a very nice man. And it was a good second-hand bookshop, being both reasonably priced and full of unusual books that you didn’t know you needed to read. I’ve always wanted to learn more about Tycho Brahe, so Kitty Ferguson’s The Nobleman and his Housedog: Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler: The Strange Partnership that Revolutionised Science looks like an accessible way to do this. And I came across a thin little hardback priced at only £1 called Madame de and written by Louise de Vilmorin; the illustrations were so charming that I felt the book had to come home with me even though I knew nothing about the writer or the book. And I will write more about this anon.

on being ill and reading plans

It has been a little quiet around here, and I am very sorry that I haven’t been to many people’s blogs yet to wish them a happy new year. I hope that everyone enjoyed the holidays and has had a wonderful start to 2018.

We spent a really lovely Christmas with my parents and also saw one of my brothers and his family. It was great! Then we returned home to Belgium and I was Struck Down with a lurgy, some sort of ’flu I suppose, and it wasn’t that bad but dragged on for two whole weeks. Now I am practically never ill, perhaps one cold a year, and I’d always thought that being ill might be quite a nice break – one could lie about fragrantly reading, drinking cups of tea and having Profound Thoughts – but it turns out most disappointingly that it isn’t like that at all and – horrors! – often I felt too bad to do anything except doze! What an appalling waste of an opportunity!

(Mister Puss doing an impression of me with ’flu)

Still, thanks to copious amounts of Paracetamol and Diana Wynne Jones novels – how lucky that Father Christmas had bought me a great stack! – I am now recovered. But I don’t have anything interesting to write about and I feel as if 2018 is only now beginning (since getting better I’ve been in a frenzy of exam preparation and sleep). Thus it’s only now that I’ve decided to think a bit about Reading Plans. I don’t usually make these for the very simple reason that they quickly start to feel like duties, which skims off the pleasure, and then I fail at them and feel grumpy and miserable. But I am very tempted by Dolce Bellezza’s readalong of Portrait of a Lady in February.

I am also considering another reading plan, and this is related to my Shelving Madness. I used to keep books I hadn’t read on a shelf apart from the rest of my books. But that shelf grew to two shelves. And then a small bookcase. And then a large bookcase. And then started creeping out across the floor of what I laughingly call my study. So in order to hide my shame, I shelved them among the rest of my books (I do reread a lot, so now I just go and look for whatever I feel like reading). And then a year or so ago I went through all my books and reorganised them; the non-fiction by theme (works well!), the fiction, poetry and plays chronologically (FOOL idea! I nearly had a nervous breakdown over it, it took aaaages and I ended up fudging it quite a bit) although I do like the end result), children’s fiction apart – well, basically scattered through the house on any available shelves or flat surfaces.

To the point: I’m going to read one previously unread novel from one decade every month, working backwards. I’ll start with the twenty-teens this month. And to make it a bit more exciting, I’ll ask you to vote on which one I should read (a revival of the short-lived ‘What Shall Helen Read?’). This will continue until we all get bored or forget.

Without further ado, this month’s list – and this is a bit embarrassing since I have very few unread books from this decade. Perhaps this reflects a more disciplined approach to book-buying in my dotage? I’m going to add a book I’ve borrowed from the library. Yes, I know I’m cheating before I’ve even started, but that’s the sort of person I am.

• Muriel Barbery, The Secret Life of Elves
• Lissa Evans, Small Change for Stuart
• Deborah Levy, Hot Milk
• Sarah Perry, After Me Comes the Flood

So, what shall Helen read? Please vote! I’ll make the decision on Sunday evening.

(Clara)

what shall helen read? a new game!

Like many other people at the moment, it seems, I have been attempting a book clearing. Unlike many other people, I have given up (managed to find seven books to give to the charity shop but then started rereading one of them and it’s better than I remembered and I am enjoying it so...). The sticking point is not so much the books I have read as the books I haven’t. Some of them have been hanging around Gallimaufry Towers and its previous incarnations (bedrooms in parental homes, bed-sits, artexy houses on windy hillsides and decaying farms) for lo these twenty-odd years.

Of course, I still can’t quite bring myself to get rid; I pick them up and do you know, they look good and interesting and I do want to read them – just not right now. Later. Another day. A Cunning Plan is needed. And I’ve thought of one! Well, a Plan, anyway, I’m not sure of it really deserves to be called Cunning. It is in fact a game: What Shall Helen Read? And I need you, dear readers, to play along.

(Photograph of me, at home, reading on a winter’s evening – oh all right then, it’s a lie, this is actually a painting by Edward John Poynter, An Evening at Home, oil, 1888; purloined from here. But it is just like that round here you know)

Every month I’ll post a list of novels, plays/poetry and non-fiction here, and I’ll ask you to vote on which ones I should read. (The Plan is one from each list.) Or if you have very strong feelings about something – Don’t read the Dickens! – then I’ll count that as a vote too because that will pique my curiosity. And then I’ll write about them here! The Cunning Plan should, therefore, help rouse me from blogging torpor. And I’ll have handily offloaded any decision-making onto all of you! Hurrah!

(I did mean to write a post about recent developments in the chicken run, but after a very brief cold snap Belgium descended once again into its habitual winter mode, which is Murk, and I can’t take any decent photographs.)

So, without further ado, here are February’s contenders:

Fiction
Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie
Diana of the Crossways, George Meredith
The First Man, Albert Camus

Poetry and plays
The Witch of Edmonton, Dekker, Ford and Rowley
Homage to Mistress Bradstreet, John Berryman
Havelok, edited by G.V. Smithers (have just opened this and quailed somewhat, but onwards!)

Non-fiction
She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth, Helen Castor
Proust and the Squid: The Story of Science and the Reading Brain, Maryanne Wolf
The Knox Brothers, Penelope Fitzgerald

What Shall Helen Read? Over to you...

happy new year!

I hope that 2016 has started joyfully for you all, and that it brings you lots of good things and happiness.

Things are quiet here at Gallimaufry Towers. We enjoyed the holidays (except for Mister Puss, who is still a bit cross about an unfortunate incident involving a cup of cold coffee but it was an accident and he did exact a bloody revenge on me) and of course I did no work to prepare for returning to school and am now regretting that, ah well.

I’m also failing to feel much inspiration about writing here. I rather feel that it’s pointless and I can’t be bothered. Maybe I need to change something? I am thinking. Any suggestions warmly welcomed.

(Sandro Botticelli, Judith Returns to Bethulia, oil on panel, ca 1472; Uffizi Gallery, Florence; found here)

a Very Inspiring Blogger award

A little belatedly I’ve discovered that litlove and Harriet have both very kindly awarded me a Very Inspiring Blogger award. Thank you so much! I am really pleased, and touched, and surprised too. Sadly, I can’t nominate them back: both of them have been very inspirational for me.

These are the rules for the Very Inspiring Blogger awards:

• Thank and link to the person who nominated you.
• List the rules and display the award.
• Share seven facts about yourself.
• Nominate fifteen other amazing blogs and comment on their posts to let them know they have been.
• Optional: display the award logo on your blog and follow the blogger who nominated you.

Nominating fifteen weblogs was impossible. There are so many inspiring ones to choose from and I should hate any blogger not listed here to suppose that I don’t find his or hers also inspiring (this anxiety about missing someone out and upsetting them is behind my decision not to have a blogroll here, although I’m not always sure it’s a good decision). To try and limit the insane length of my list, I decided not to include anyone whom I believe has already received the award – so no Stefanie, Tom, Hayley, Kaggsy, Annabel, Simon, Dolce Bellezza, Alex,  Jenny, Mary, Vicky, Ana, Danielle, Caroline or Richard. Some people might be surprised to find themselves here since I have never commented on their weblogs, I naturally incline towards lurkerdom, but they are inspiring nonetheless.

And here are nine marvellous and intriguing blogs in no particular order, and if you feel that your weblog should be here too, then you are right, it should be, and I’m very sorry it isn’t.

1. Pieces – Not only has Michelle introduced me to many, many new writers (as so many of you do) but she demonstrates the virtues of slow reading and close reading. She writes as if she’s really marinated in a text; she pays attention at sentence level and remarks on details and textures which can so easily be missed in a single post about a book.
2. Still Life with Books – Violet was a blogger I discovered through the Angela Carter Reading Week. She has an amazing ability to get right to the heart of a book and I aspire to writing the sort of thoughtful and well-structured reviews she seems to dash off effortlessly.
3. Miss Pickering – How can anyone failed to be inspired by the lush flowers and dry wit of Miss Pickering? She brightens up the greyest of Belgian days.
4. Jackie Morris Artist – Jackie Morris is an artist, illustrator and writer and I find her posts about how she works endlessly absorbing and beautiful too.
5. Obooki’s Obloquy – I think of Obooki as the Starship Enterprise of book bloggers, boldly going to some of literature’s furthest and least-trod reaches. Although, truth be told, I’d be scared to bump into him on a dark night...
6. The Age of Uncertainty – Steerforth is a second-hand bookseller, discoverer of oddities and explorer of the world, well  I can’t explain the immense charm and addictiveness of his weblog, it is just lovely, go and read it.
7. Into the Hermitage – It’s not just Rima Staines’ art which draws me here time and time again although I love to look at it; what really fascinates me is the life she has created and chronicles. She depicts all the magic and wonder in the world around her, and it encourages me to seek the same around me.
8. Kiss a Cloud – Claire! Start posting again! We miss you!
9. Discarding Images – A day begun with a dash of mediaeval insanity can only be a good day.

And now seven facts about myself. Friends, there are many facts but most of them are stupendously dull. No birthmarks shaped like Jesus, hidden musical talents or detachable limbs. So this has been tricky.

1. When I was a child, I wanted to be a witch when I grew up; some might say that I have achieved that ambition but my whole adult life has been lived with the faint disappointment that turning people into toads and flying around on broomsticks isn’t actually a valid career option.
2. My mother taught me to read when I was four and instilled in me a slavish addiction to fiction and poetry.
3. I have lived in Ipswich, Florence, Cambridge, London, Makurdi (Nigeria), Dover and Geel (Belgium). I am still in Geel.
4. One morning I encountered a rat looking up out of the loo at me. That was an odd moment.
5. I cannot help believing that everything is alive really. I mean, I know that a pot or a chair or even a book doesn’t really have feelings, but yet... It makes throwing things away really difficult because how will they cope with the rejection?
6. I can load, clean and fire a rifle. My aim is quite good.
7. Cows terrify me.

I am off on a surprise camping trip to the Ardennes tomorrow morning, but will be back later this week. If I haven’t disappeared into a big pit of mud and Pot Noodles and wailing.

oops

(Snowman and snowcatgirl visiting the dolls house; white paint, scarf manufacture and white cat hat* by me, faces, noses, buttons and bossing art direction by my daughter)
(*To make this I used a lovely book called Peg Dolls by Margaret Bloom)

I’m very sorry if you tried to leave a comment to my previous post and were unable to do so. Typepad suddenly got all frosty with me and my paying abilities. Now, magically, all seems fine again. Hurrah!

cheery wibblings

 
(Jonathan Adams Bartlett, ‘Portrait of Harriet’, c. 1840, Terra Foundation for American Art; found here)

1. Hurrah! I passed my final set of exams and am now a fully qualified teacher. No teenager in the land is now safe from an English lesson from me. I have also lost a stone in weight from sheer terror and am covered in boils, and am thus an adornment to any Belgian classroom.
2. Another hurrah! I was offered another evening of teaching English at the adult education centre where for the last year I’ve been giving English lessons.
3. However, now that I can, I’m not sure that I want to teach English. I like teaching, but I don’t really enjoy teaching language – not least because I don’t know the proper grammatical rules and have to learn them in a hurry before lessons, and then in the panic of standing up before the class I forget them all. I am going to make an effort to teach myself grammar over the holidays, yes I am o yes.
4. So once again I am thinking of studying for a PhD (I was just setting about the paperwork for one when we emigrated). I won’t be able to study my original subject and in fact if I’m to have any chance of a job teaching undergraduates I believe I’ll have to study twentieth-century or contemporary literature. But that will be no hardship!
5. Although I have a nasty feeling that, this being Belgium, I’ll have to study for another Master’s first. I love studying, but yet another year might just push this out of the category ‘Taking realistic steps towards full-time employment’ and into the category ‘Massive self-indulgence’.
6. But I have time to think about all this…
7. I also have time to start writing here more regularly. Looking around, I see all the usual Helenish schemes which never quite came to anything. Writing about De aanslag? Working my way through great works of Modernism? Discussing the Grimms’ fairy tales one story at a time? Oops. I’m still excited about these reading plans although somewhat daunted about posting about them in public, you might think that after childbirth (a while ago now!) and a year of teacher training I’d have no shame left but weirdly I do still feel very self-conscious about what I write here.
8. At the moment, however, I am really, really tired. I am so sorry I haven’t replied to comments earlier, I just don’t have the energy usually. It’s getting better though. However, I need your help... While I’m full of plans and dreams, at the moment I’m still reading children’s books (just indulging in a Joan Aiken binge). But I’m almost at the end of what I own, and still in need of comfort reading. Dear readers, can you recommend me some good but light fiction? For children or adults, I love both. Thank you, and a happy Saturday to you!

In a Shoreham Garden, by Samuel Palmer

(Samuel Palmer, ‘In a Shoreham Garden’, watercolour ca. 1830; from the Victoria and Albert Museum collection)

I was a leetle over-optimistic the other day when I thought that I would again have time for writing here. During the last couple of weeks I have been entirely occupied with work for my teacher-training course. I do believe that I am almost at the end of the busiest part... I don’t have time even to write about fairy tales at the moment, but I didn’t want to neglect this place as I did before. Therefore I’m just putting up cheaty quick posts, so you know I’m still here... And who knows, maybe you will enjoy them?

Charlotte Mew’s poem ‘I Have Been Through the Gates’ is one I love very much and it never fails to give me the chills. And I am also very fond of this painting by Samuel Palmer. Spring is finally touching Belgium and while we don’t yet have any beautiful blossom like that Palmer painted, daffodils and buds of new leaves are pricking the browns and greys of our surroundings with brighter colours.

oops!

(Book cover from here)

A thousand apologies, but there won’t be a fairy-tale post from me this week. I had lots and lots of homework from my course last week, but rather than sitting down sensibly in the freezing, poky little hole we call a study and getting on with it, I frittered away three valuable evenings lounging on the sofa by the fire in the belief that I really could learn about Belgian educational policy and prepare a lesson while watching Hitchcock films. I was wrong! And now I cannot afford to sleep between now and Thursday morning! Bother.

Grimm challenges

(Errol le Cain, cover illustration for Thorne Rose, or the Sleeping Beauty (Faber, 1975); found here)

September is looming and causing utter terror here at a gallimaufry, because as a first step to re-joining the ranks of the gainfully employed I will be starting a teacher-training course – bad enough, but it’s in Flemish. !!! Every time I think of it, and my crappy language skills, I feel a bit cold and have to eat some cheese. Just to make life a little more hellish, I will be teaching English once a week – yes, it’s to adults, and adults are easier to deal with than teenagers, so everyone tells me, but I have never given a lesson before. There is planning involved! And imagination! And talking to strangers!

As a result, I’ve been thinking about what will happen with this web-log. I’m assuming the worst, because then any surprises will be pleasant ones, and that after a day of straining to understand the psychology of learning or didactic methods or how to cane small children, or whatever else they teach on the course, and consistently turning up in the wrong place at the wrong time, I won’t have the mental energy to write much here. So I have a plan! As part of my fairy-tale reading project, I will read and write about one of the Grimms’ fairy tales each week. I have the Oxford World’s Classics edition of the selected tales (edited by Joyce Crick) and I was planning, with staggering originality, to start with the first and progress on to the eighty-second. Eighty-two weeks! That is rather a long project. Why not though?

(I hope to post about other things too.)

Would anyone else like to join in? Let me know in the comments if you would. If you don’t fancy committing to eighty-two weeks, you could just join in with the ones you fancy... Go on, it’ll be fun!