The Tailor of Gloucester | Beatrix Potter #ALiteraryChristmas

 

Feeling very grateful, right now, that Tarissa @In the Bookcase is hosting A Literary Christmas this year. It made me search my shelves for something Christmassy that I hadn't read yet. It led me straight into the delightful and utterly charming arms of Beatrix Potter.

I confess that I did not read any of the Peter Rabbit stories when I was a child. I had to wait until my early childhood teaching years to discover them. The first time I tried to read one aloud, I stumbled with the phrasing and pacing of Potter's writing. The story has plenty of drama and suspense, but it isn't immediately apparent. You have to read it several times to find the most dramatic way to read it out loud, in a way to keep the attention of twenty, very modern, 4 year olds.

It is twelve years since I taught my last class (I was reminded just yesterday of how that final class has grown, when one of them popped into the bookshop to buy books for her mum for Christmas. She is now in her final year of school, and has matured into a thoughtful, gracious young woman). Which is my long way of saying that it is also twelve years since I last read The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902). 

I now have a beautiful hardcover copy of Beatrix Potter's Complete Tales. It contains a lovely map of Hawkshead and Sawrey, showing where many of the stories take place, including the Tailor of Gloucester sitting next to the road to Gloucester and South Coast, with Pig Robinson. This collection then lists all the stories in chronological order. The Tailor of Gloucester is the third story. To get to it, one has to go past the original Peter Rabbit and The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin (1903).

However, I couldn't skip past so glibly. 

I settled down, with the memories of classes past arrayed in front of me, and read Peter Rabbit, then Squirrel Nutkin out loud. All the old phrasing and pacing came back to me. I knew where to pause for dramatic effect and how to milk the tension. I was transported to another time and place. These two mischievous characters are drawn so sympathetically, it's hard not to love them and their naughty ways. However, Potter was writing these stories for the children of her former governess, so she was careful to give both Peter & Nutkin a proper comeuppance, for after all, bad behaviour should come with natural consequences.

The Tailor of Gloucester is a longer story and was considered by Potter to be her favourite from amongst all her books. It is based on the true story of a tailor in Gloucester, John Prichard, who was commissioned to make a waistcoat for the local Mayor. He had to leave it unfinished on Saturday evening, but when he turned up to work again on Monday, it was finished, except for one buttonhole for which there was 'no more twist'. In real life, it was his two assistants who secretly helped out. In Potter's imagination the helpers turned into little brown mice and the setting became Christmas Eve. 

Our hard working tailor becomes stricken with a fever. In his delirium he keeps muttering about needing 'one more twist', and 'where is my twist'? He is ill for three days, until it was Christmas Eve. Everyone else was buying geese and turkeys and baking Christmas pies, but not our poor tailor. His only company was his mean old cat, Simpkin.

But it is in the old story that all the beasts can talk, in the night between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in the morning (though there are very few folk that can hear them, or know what it is that they say).

Rather like the Grimm's Brothers fairy story, the Elves and the Shoemaker, the tailor's hard work and dedication is rewarded when he needs it most. Even Simpkin, sees the errors of his ways, and does his bit to help out too.

A review appeared in the trade journal, The Tailor and Cutter, on Christmas Eve 1903. One hundred and seventeen years later, it is hard to top!

we think it is by far the prettiest story connected with tailoring we have ever read, and as it is full of that spirit of Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men, we are not ashamed to confess that it brought the moisture to our eyes, as well as the smile to our face. It is got up in choicest style and illustrated by twenty-seven of the prettiest pictures it is possible to imagine.

Epigraph:

• I'll be at charges for a looking-glass; and entertain a score or two of tailors. Richard III

Christmas Eve at Coogee Beach - even the tree is in quarantine this year!

Elizabeth and Her German Garden | Elizabeth Von Armin #NovinNov

It would be very easy to read this lovely novella about a woman called Elizabeth and her love of gardens, as an autobiography in disguise. At least, it was very easy for me to be led down this particular garden path for quite some time. 

At every turn, Elizabeth and Her German Garden felt biographical. From the diary entry dates, to the very personal, confessional tone.

Eventually, though, I had to confront the facts, that the lovely, audacious Elizabeth, had written a very modern story that combined facts and fiction, in a very fast and loose fashion. Just when you thought you had hold of a certain fact, she would skip away down a different path, throwing your certainty back in your face, with what sometimes felt like unseemly joy!

At first I felt a little cheated.

The facts known about the real Mary Annette (May) von Armin née Beauchamp are pretty basic and it can be very, very tempting to read more of her into her stories that actually exists. For a little while, I believed I had made discoveries about the real May that no previous biographer had ever discovered!

That was when I knew I had completely fallen for the charms and wiles of one Elizabeth von Armin.

Elizabeth, the writer, protected the identity and private life of May, yet happily trawled her feelings and
memories for scenes and vignettes that could be woven into her stories. She wrote about what she knew, and happily made up the rest.

For the second half of the book, I sat back and let myself be thoroughly entertained. I gave up all pretence at trying to tease out the fact from the fiction, the bio from the make believe, and I let the magic of Elizabeth's garden wash over me.

Nassenheide, Pomerania c. 1860

The specific garden she wrote about was the von Armin estate, Nassenheide in Pomerania, where Elizabeth lived and wrote from 1896 until 1908 (they had to sell the estate in 1910 to alleviate the Count's financial problems). In 1911, a recently widowed Elizabeth, moved to Switzerland and the newly built, Chalet Soleil. In 1930 she resettled to Mougins in the south of France, in a house she renamed Mas des Roses. At the beginning of WWII in 1939, she moved to the US, to be closer to her daughter, Liebet. She died in 1941 in Charleston, South Carolina. 

Elizabeth obviously loved her garden and the freedom she felt there. There was a wistful, wishful air to many of the passages and a search for belonging.

The garden is the place I go to for refuge and shelter, not the house. In the house are duties and annoyances, servants to exhort and admonish, furniture, and meals; but out there blessings crowd round me at every step-- it is there that I am sorry for the unkindness in me, for those selfish thoughts that are so much worse than they feel; it is there that all my sins and silliness are forgiven, there that I feel protected and at home, and every flower and weed is a friend and every tree a lover.

A nostalgia for a more innocent, carefree childhood appeared at times. Was she remembering her childhood years in Sydney, Australia?

Why should I not go and see the place where I was born, and where I lived so long; the place where I was so magnificently happy, so exquisitely wretched, so close to heaven, so near to hell, always either up on a cloud of glory, or down in the depths with the waters of despair closing over my head? Cousins live in it now, distant cousins, loved with the exact measure of love usually bestowed on cousins who reign in one's stead; cousins of practical views, who have dug up the flower-beds and planted cabbages where roses grew; and though through all the years since my father's death I have held my head so high that it hurt, and loftily refused to listen to their repeated suggestions that I should revisit my old home, something in the sad listlessness of the November days sent my spirit back to old times with a persistency that would not be set aside, and I woke from my musings surprised to find myself sick with longing.

I went from entranced, to cheated, to utterly delighted in less than a hundred pages. I wanted the story to be completely true, a proper biography. I wanted to think of Elizabeth rambling around her garden, chasing after her April, May and June babies, and rolling her eyes at the Man of Wrath and his conservative ways.

The people round about are persuaded that I am, to put it as kindly as possible, exceedingly
eccentric, for the news has travelled that I spend the day out of doors with a book, and that no mortal eye has ever yet seen me sew or cook.

As one would expect from a novella, Elizabeth and Her German Garden is a story with one simple central theme and very little character development. There is no crisis to be resolved or problem to be solved. It's simply a diary of one woman and her love of nature.

I don't love things that will only bear the garden for three or four months in the year and require coaxing and petting for the rest of it. Give me a garden full of strong, healthy creatures, able to stand roughness and cold without dismally giving in and dying. I never could see that delicacy of constitution is pretty, either in plants or women.

Elizabeth was also very funny, at times sarcastic and a feminist in the making. She obviously baulked at the Prussian way of doing things and found the strict gender roles expected in Germany to be restrictive. (These references in her book may be why she chose not to have the book translated into German!) Yet, it's her lively, playful character that makes this story so captivating, even more so than her descriptions of the garden.

What nonsense it is to talk about the equality of the sexes when the women have the babies!  

"Quite so, my dear," replied the Man of Wrath, smiling condescendingly. 

"You have got to the very root of the matter. Nature, while imposing this agreeable duty on the woman, weakens her and disables her for any serious competition with man. How can a person who is constantly losing a year of the best part of her life compete with a young man who never loses any time at all? He has the brute force, and his last word on any subject could always be his fist."

Elizabeth Jane Howard, in her introduction to the 1985 edition of the book, wrote that while the novella, 'appears to be an ode to nature; within that ode is a determined rebellion.' EvA wanted to do physical work in the garden, she wanted to control the money her writing produced and she wanted to be free from society's desire (as well as her husband's) to produce an heir to the estate.

I wish with all my heart I were a man, for of course the first thing I should do would be to buy a spade and go and garden, and then I should have the delight of doing everything for my flowers with my own hands and need not waste time explaining what I want done to somebody else.

 

I can imagine nothing more uncomfortable than a son-in-law, and besides, I don't think a husband is at all a good thing for a girl to have.

I loved every minute with Elizabeth in her garden.

Three early childhood years does not necessarily make you an Australian (whatever that means) with Australian sensibilities (whatever that means). But Elizabeth and her older siblings were all born in Sydney. As siblings do, they would have constantly retold and shared stories about their Sydney childhood years. The older ones would have talked about their Australian memories over family dinners and in front of their Swiss fire. 

As Gabrielle Carey said in her memoir, Only Happiness Here,

I am not certain that Elizabeth remembered her Australian beginnings but neither am I convinced that she had forgotten them altogether. 

The comments that evolved from that post had a number of bloggers wondering if we could really claim EvA as an Australian and did she even want to be remembered as being Australian. To my mind, she is as Australian, as say, Germaine Greer, Madeleine St John, and Clive James. Their particular feelings about their childhood in Australia are complex and complicated, as are their reasons for leaving, although 'cultural backwater' is a phrase that springs to mind. Elizabeth is also as Australian as J. M. Coetzee, who we now claim as Aussie, since he moved here from South Africa in 2002 (becoming an Australian citizen in 2006). They are all part of the 'Australian, maybe?' team.

Keeping secrets and protecting her privacy was something EvA was well-known for. It would seem that one of her very first secrets was about her place of birth. Perhaps it was this need to keep quiet about her early years in Australia that turned EvA into such a private adult?

Whenever I've travelled overseas (remember when we used to do that?), plaques stating that so-and-so was born here, lived here, died here were everywhere, celebrating their local writers and artists. Australia is not so good at doing this. Even the Sydney Writers Walk around Circular Quay has some rather dubious Sydney connections with the likes of James A Michiner, Charles Darwin and Anthony Trollope, simply because they visited once or wrote a passage in a book about Australia, but no Elizabeth. Why not?

I'm drawing some long bows, when all I really had to do was follow the wikipedia line, that Elizabeth von Armin was an Australian born, British novelist who married a Prussian Count.

My edition of Elizabeth and Her Garden was produced as a Project Gutenberg Australia anniversary edition in 1998.

Biblio File:

• Elizabeth and Her German Garden (1898)
• The Solitary Summer (1899)
• April Baby’s Book of Tunes (1900)
• The Benefactress (1901)
• The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rugen (1904)
• Princess Priscilla’s Fortnight (1905)
• Fräulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther (1907)
• The Caravaners (1909)
• The Pastor’s Wife (1914)
• Christine (1917) (published as Alice Cholmondeley)
• Christopher and Columbus (1919)
• In the Mountains (1920)
• Vera (1921)
• The Enchanted April (1922)
• Love (1925)
• Introduction to Sally (1926)
• Expiation (1929)
• Father (1931)
• The Jasmine Farm (1934)
• All the Dogs of My Life (1936)
• Mr. Skeffington (1940)

#AusReadingMonth2020

#NovellasinNovember

Classics Club Spin #25

It's time for another Classics Club Spin.

The rules are easy: compile your list of 20 books by Sunday 22nd November.

On that day a number will be randomly selected.

That's the book you read.

You have until the 30th January 2021 to finish your book and review it.

Join in the fun by visiting the other players and commenting on their lists.

It's a great way to meet like-minded bloggers and explode your TBR classics wishlist!

In honour of AusReading Month, this spin I am going to focus on the Australian classics lingering on my TBR pile and ipad. 

CC Spin #25

1. The Timeless land | Elenor Dark
2. An Australian Girl by Catherine Martin
3. My Brilliant Career | Miles Franklin
4. It's Raining in Mango | Thea Astley
5. A Little Bush Maid | Mary Grant Bruce
6. The Pea-Pickers | Eve Langley
7. Maurice Guest | Henry Handel Richardson
8. Policy and Passion | Rosa Praed
9. The Slow Natives | Thea Astley
10. We of the Never-Never | Jeannie Gunn
11. Voss | Patrick White
12. Myself When Young | Henry Handel Richardson
13. A Woman's Experiences in the Great War | Louise Mack
14. My Love Must Wait | Ernestine Hill
15. The Battlers | Kylie Tennant
16. A Mere Chance by Ada Cambridge
17. Uncle Piper of Piper's Hill | Tasma
18. A Sydney Sovereign and Other Tales | Tasma
19. Coonaroo by Katharine Susannah Prichard
20. 1788 by Watkin Tench

My Previous 24 Spin Results:

Happy Spinning!

A Journal of the Plague Year | Daniel Defoe #Classic

For the first half of this year, I was avoiding plague literature, like the plague! 

But since reading Camus' The Plague during August, I seem to be verging on obsession. What are the signs, I hear you ask? First up, how many people do you know, who take plague literature with them on a holiday to the beach?

I did.

For a week at the beach in September, I packed Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year, Emma Donoghue's The Pull of the Stars, Katherine Anne Porter's short story collection Pale Horse Pale Rider and Barbara Tuckman's A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century. Enough said!

I think if I had read A Journal of the Plague Year prior to 2020, I may have found the story a bit difficult to follow and maybe even a bit dull with its attention to detail, death lists. laws and regulations. (See Nick @One Catholic Life who read this in 2017 and said, 'Not a bad read, but not something that I plan on rereading again'). However, reading it whilst in the middle of an actual pandemic, has been another experience entirely!

Like my reading of Camus, I was particularly fascinated by the thoughts and feelings and actions of other people throughout history, in coping with plague events.

Once again, it is all there, for us to see (and learn from), if only we would look. 

Everything we are going through right now, has been gone through before. The people just wore different clothes!

With all our wonderful advances in technology and science, we still make the same erroneous assumptions, the same mistakes are made and we go through the same psychological trauma. 

Happily, the same causes for celebration and hope also reoccur with every plague. The hero helpers, the medical staff, and the carers. The law makers who take the time to get it right, who regulate for the common good yet find a way to act humanely and kindly to individuals, the regular folk who do they right things and make personal sacrifices for the greater good. Every time, there are more of these than of the others who rebel, deny or ignore.

My reading of A Journal of the Plague Year was about finding the common experiences.

The rather shambolic structure of the book, can be seen to reflect the chaotic nature of the plague. The fears, the rumours and the disbelief that spread, as the plague approached, the changing laws and (dis)information as the first cases were diagnosed, the grief, loss and suffering that ebbed and flowed with hope and relief at different times. Defoe describes it all, in great detail, several times!

A lot of the rambling style is taken up with the numbers game. 

Just as we watch the daily news and listen to regular updates about how many people were tested today, how many positive cases, how many deaths, how do we compare to other states and other countries, in 1665, they had the Parish Bills posted on the local church board and Bills of Mortality. Defoe tracked the Plague through the various boroughs and counties of England and he also listed the various trades and jobs adversely affected by the Plague. 

The city of London is a central player in this story. Defoe did a lot of research to accurately recall the layouts of streets and shops during this time. His character walks the streets and describes what he sees. This was not an easy thing to do. The streets of the city were crowded, confusing and dirty. And everything changed, the following year, in 1666, when the Great Fire of London gutted most of central London. Defoe had to work on memory and old reference books to bring pre-1666 London to life again. 

Below, I've included a number of quotes, that show the progression and common experiences, as I saw it, during my read.

• We had no such thing as printed News Papers in those Days, to spread Rumours and Reports of Things...handed about by word of mouth only; so that things did not spread instantly over the whole nation, as they do now. But it seems that the Government had a true Account of it, and several Counsels were held about Ways to prevent its coming over; but it was all very private.
• it was rumour'd that an order of the Government was to be issued out, to place Turn-pikes and Barriers on the Road, to prevent Peoples travelling; and that the Towns on the Road, would not suffer People from London to pass.
• that the best Preparation for the Plague was to run away from it.
• I enclin'd to stay and take my Lot in that Station in which God had plac'd me.
• Sorrow and Sadness sat upon every Face.
• the shriecks of Women and Children at the Windows, and Doors of their Houses.
• already People had, as it were by a general Consent, taken up the Custom of not going out of Doors after Sun-set.
• It was a very ill Time to be sick in, for if any one complain'd, it was immediately said he had the Plague.
• it was most surprising thing, to see those Streets, which were usually so thronged, now grown desolate, and so few People to be seen in them.
• The Apprehensions of the People, were likewise strangely encreas'd by the Error of the times...the People...were more adicted to Prophesies, and Astrological Conjurations, Dreams, and old Wives Tales.
• These Terrors and Apprehensions of the People, led them into a Thousand weak, foolish, and wicked Things.
• the people, whose Confusions fitted them to be impos'd upon by all Sorts of Pretenders, and by every Mountebank.
• the Physicians...to their Praise, that they ventured their Lives so far as even to lose them in the Service of Mankind; They endeavoured to do good, and to save the Lives of others.
• Every visited House to be...marked with a red Cross.
• Every visited House to be watched...the shutting up to be for the space of four Weeks after all be whole.
• That no Hogs, Dogs, or Cats, or Tame Pigeons, or Conies, be suffered to be kept within any part of the City.
• no wandring Begger be suffered in the Streets of this City, in any fashion or manner, whatsoever.
• That all Plays, Bear-Baitings, Games, singing of Ballads, Buckler-play, or suck like Causes of Assemblies of People, be utterly prohibited.
• That all publick Feasting...and Dinners at Taverns, Alehouses, and other Places of common Entertainment be forborn till further Order and Allowance.
• This shutting up of houses was at first counted a very cruel and Unchristian Method, and the poor People so confin'd made bitter Lamentations.
• But it was a publick Good that justified the private Mischief.
• many Families foreseeing the Approach of the Distemper, laid up Stores of Provisions, sufficient for their whole Families, and shut themselves up.
• this Necessity of going out of our Houses to buy Provisions, was in a great Measure the Ruin of the whole City.
• the Misery of that Time lay upon the Poor.
• the Danger of immediate Death to ourselves, took away all Bowels of Love, all Concern for one another.
• I must acknowledge that this time was Terrible, that I was sometimes at the End of all my Resolutions.
• Perfumes...Aromaticks, Balsamicks, and Variety of Drugs, and Herbs; in another Salts and Spirits, as every one was furnish'd for their own Preservation.
• the danger of Relapse upon the whole City, and telling them how such a Relapse might be more fatal and dangerous than the whole Visitation that had been already.
• in what manner to purge the Houses and Goods, where the Plague had been.

In the appendix of my 2003 Penguin Classics edition, I was reminded that the plague bacillus was not discovered by science until 1894 during the Hongkong epidemic of that year. Until then, the plague was believed to be an airborne disease. 

We now know that the plague was spread by the fleas found on black rats. The bacillus can actually survive in textiles and faeces for up to a year in warm, damp places. 

There are three types of plague - bubonic, pneumonic (or pulmonary) and septicaemic.

The note is made that 'people rarely communicated the disease to each other (except through the coughing of those with pneumonic plague), but in a flea and rat ridden culture, that is almost beside the point.'

Defoe did a brilliant job of bringing to life this time in history. The despair and fear was palpable, the confusion and hopelessness felt real, almost too real, during this time. The people of London were brought low and wondered what they had done to deserve this fate. Yet, Defoe was determined to show us, that it is, in fact, our community, and our desire to live a good collective life, that can save us all in the end.  

One can only imagine what was felt, by the good citizens of London, to have their year of plague followed by a cataclysmic fire. We can take heart from the fact, that those before us, have survived and thrived much worse that a year of coronavirus. This too shall pass.

Previous Plague/Pandemic Reads: 

• The Plague | Albert Camus
• The Stand | Stephen King
• Oryx and Crake | Margaret Atwood
• Year of Wonders | Geraldine Brooks
• The Pull of the Stars | Emma Donoghue
• A Journal of the Plague Year | Daniel Defoe

Current Plague Reads:

• A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century | Barbara Tuchman (non-fiction)

Up Next:

• Intimations | Zadie Smith (non-fiction)
• Pale Horse, Pale Rider | Katherine Anne Porter

Plague/Pandemic Books On My Radar:

• Station Eleven | Emily St John Mandel
• Blindness | José Saramago
• The Last Man | Mary Shelley
• The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic—and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World | Steven Johnson (non-fiction)
• Nemesis | Philip Roth
• Love in the Time of Cholera | Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• The Years of Rice and Salt | Kim Stanley Robinson
• The Dog Stars | Peter Heller
• The Children’s Hospital | Chris Adrian
• Severance | Ling Ma
• The White Plague | Frank Herbert
• The Passage | Justin Cronin

A Study in Scarlet | Arthur Conan Doyle #CCSpin

 

I've been wanting to read a Sherlock Holmes story for a long time now. I purchased my lovely Knickerbocker classic editions about five years ago with the good intentions of reading them in chronological order. Ever since then, I have been putting A Study in Scarlet on my CC Spin list, in the hope it would give me the good excuse I obviously needed to finally get started. 

Last month, CC Spin #24 was the charm!

And I am now a convert to the Victorian world of Sherlock Holmes. I may be a little influenced by certain images from recent movie versions though, as in my head, Holmes looks rather like Robert Downey Jr and Watson looks quite a bit like Jude Law.

My edition has an Introduction by Roger Boylan, who helped me to understand that it was in fact, Watson, who was more like Doyle, in personality, than Holmes.

Sherlock Holmes is surely the one fictional character who is not only more famous than his creator, but whose personality, attitudes and interests are so completely his own, so different from those of his creator.

 

A Study in Scarlet is a quick, easy read. Many reports have suggested that this is not the best Holmes story by any means, which gives me high hopes for what comes next, as I thoroughly enjoyed this gentle, rather charming, 'consulting detective' story.

Narrated by Dr John Watson and set in 1881, we see Holmes through the eyes and opinions of others. Watson, of course, is our main source, but we also hear from the friend of the friend "Holmes is a little too scientific for my tastes - it approaches to cold-bloodedness", and even Holmes himself, "I get in the dumps at times, and don't open my mouth for days on end."

I really enjoyed seeing how Holmes and Watson met for the first time, and part of the pleasure of this story, is watching Watson, watching Holmes, as he experiences for the first time how Holmes likes to solve cases.

This one begins with a dead American, a message scrawled in blood across the wall and a ring. Holmes describes this case as,

the finest study I ever came across: a study in scarlet....There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it.

Act two of the story is a bit clunky albeit fascinating as we unexpectedly get a back story about the Mormon's arrival in Utah (which was new to me and therefore very interesting. So much of US history seems to be tied up with religious fanatics and separatists, discord and intolerance). 

Part way through this back story, some of the names start becoming familiar and we, the reader, realise we are getting the motive for the murders.

This section of the story caused Doyle some problems in later years. The Mormons were unhappy about how they had been depicted, especially the influence and behaviour of the Danite Band, who he described as being controlling, secretive, murderous thugs. At one point he came out and said, 

all I said about the Danite Band and the murders is historical so I cannot withdraw that, though it is likely that in a work of fiction it is stated more luridly than in a work of history. It's best to let the matter rest.

Rather like an Agatha Christie whodunnit, the secret to discovering the who, why, when and how, with Holmes, is about understanding motivations and learning to see what is a clue and what is red herring. Holmes appears to be particularly skilled in this area.

A Study is Scarlet was thoroughly entertaining, and I will be back for more.

Facts:

• Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 Edinburgh, Scotland – 7 July 1930 Crowborough, East Sussex) 
• Conan is one of his middle names (after his godfather, Michael Conan), not a part of his surname.
• That is, he should be shelved under the 'D's not the 'C's!
• Graduated with a Bachelor of Medicine and Master of Surgery from the University of Edinburgh in 1881.
• Holmes was based on one of Doyle's university lecturers, Joseph Bell, 'round the centre of deduction and inference and observation which I have heard you inculcate I have tried to build up a man.'
• Written in three weeks in 1886.
• Original title: A Tangled Skein.
• Published in 1887 in Beeton's Christmas Annual & illustrated by David Henry Friston.
• First book published in July 1888 by Ward, Lock & Co & illustrated by ACD's father, Charles Doyle.
• Doyle had five children with two wives. But no grandchildren. 

Favourite or Forget:

• My very first Sherlock Holmes story & I'm in!
• Will definitely read more.
• I love a good origin story & this, the first meeting of Holmes and Watson is memorable for it's ordinariness. The age-old 'friend of a friend' introduction for two people in need of a room mate.
• The Mormon back story may suffer from some historical inaccuracies or exaggerations, but it is memorable nonetheless.

Other books by Arthur Conan Doyle, read and reviewed by me:

• The Tragedy of the Korosko

CC Spin #24

The Plague | Albert Camus #ReadtheNobels

What does one read during a pandemic that has changed the way we all live our lives? 

The Plague (La Peste) by Albert Camus of course! 

This existentialist (or absurdist, depending on who you talk to) classic from 1947 presents us with the day to day changes that occurred in a small city in Algeria when the plague suddenly turned up out of the blue.

The French Algerian town of Oran experienced real life plague events in 1556, 1678 as well as three lesser outbreaks in the early 1900's. Camus wrote his fictional version of The Plague during and after WWII. Since then many have drawn parallels between the coming of the plague in his book and the Nazi's. I'll leave that for students of English and Philosophy to mull over, but for today, this review will focus more on the parallels between what we're all experiencing now with Covid-19 and what the imaginary characters of this real town experienced during their fictional plague.

But first a little reminder about the definition of existentialist literature. 

Existentialism is all about the experience of the individual - the thinking, feeling, acting, living human being - as they navigate an absurd, meaningless world with a sense of confusion, angst, anxiety and disorientation. It is the individuals responsibility to make sense of the world, not society or religion.

While Absurdism is the conflict between the human tendency to seek some kind of inherent value and meaning in life with our inability to actually find any in a purposeless, meaningless, chaotic and irrational universe! Camus was an Absurdist and believed we should live a life rich in 'purposeful experience' in spite of the 'psychological tension of the Absurd'.

The fictional plague in Oran began with the sighting of one dead rat by Dr Bernard Rieux on the 16th April. It was considered to be 'odd' by the doctor and 'a practical joke' by the concierge. The next day there were three dead rats. The doctor was now 'intrigued' while the concierge hung around the doorstep waiting to catch the 'jokers'. However on his rounds, the doctor realised that the dead rats were everywhere and that 'the whole district was talking about the rats.' Most people agreed that it was 'peculiar, but it will pass.'

By the next day the papers had picked up the story and the authorities started to talk about 'emergencies measures.'

In the population, some people complained, some were disconcerted, some felt threatened or anxious. People began to accuse the authorities of inaction and others escaped town completely. Rumours spread along with a sense of foreboding. 'Surprise gradually gave way to panic.'

Mistaken ideas had to be readjusted as new information about the rats and the plague were learnt the hard way...with people dying. Old habits and daily routines had to change and fear set in. 

Dr Rieux was keen to prepare and take precautions, whilst the authorities tried not to upset public opinion. However, hygiene posters popped up around town, gas was injected into the sewers to kill the rats and the water supply was strictly supervised. Hospital wards were 'suitably equipped' and relatives of patients were urged to get tested.

Some people began to suggest the whole thing was exaggerated and refused to change their ways. Trams were still packed and the theatres and restaurants were full each night as many chose to defy the odds and thought that somehow the plague would not affect them.

As things worsened, the ports were closed and guards were set on the town gates. The people blamed the authorities and prioritised 'their personal concerns.' Discussions raged about whether everyone was actually dying of the plague or of other causes instead or even whether this number of deaths was within the normal range for the month.

A sense of unreality crept in. Some bewailed their fate, while others 'accepted with good humour'. Monotony and indifference became factors as the 'dreary struggle between the happiness of each individual and the abstractions of the plague' set in.

Summer arrived and the heat served only to exaggerate the fear and anxiety. 'The plague sun extinguished all colours and drove away all joy.' Yet for some 'a sort of crazed excitement, an uneasy freedom' bubbled up, sending them out into the streets, craving pleasure and company, despite the risks.

A vaccination was talked about, with very few understanding the 'industrial quantities' that would be required to actually inoculate the general population. 

Our good doctor believed that most people were more often good than bad and that the main vice was ignorance, especially 'ignorance that thinks it knows everything.' 

There were no longer any individual destinies, but a collective history that was the plague, and feelings shared by all.

As more people became sick and died, exhaustion and indifference set in. People began to neglect the good hygiene practices of before and mass burials became the norm. Irrational superstitions and old prophecies and predictions emerged. At this point, Camus, via his characters went into a lengthy discussion about the nature of good and evil, the meaning of life and death and the lessons that could be learnt from history, yet never seem to be learnt.

As the course and nature of the plague changed, ebbed and flowed and eventaully eased, people reacted with a curious mix of excitement and depression. The uncertainty was the hardest thing to live with, yet saved up reserves of hope were always close to the surface. People began to wonder what life would be look like after the plague. Would it return to 'normal'? What had been changed irrevocably?

'The plague would leave its mark, at least on people's hearts.'

'All that a man could win in the game of plague and life was knowledge and memory.'

Camus leaves the ending open. Deliberately, I suspect. 

We don't get to see the end of the plague in Oran, yet reading this 70 years later, we know that this fictional plague and all the earlier historical plagues did in fact, eventually disappear. So much so, that when another one appears in 2020, we have no knowledge or memory to help us work out what to do! 

It's like each generation has to learn everything anew all over again, ad nauseam, instead of learning from history. One gets a sense that every generation thinks it is somehow immune, separate, different or special compared to any previous generations and that there is nothing that those older times could possibly teach us now. Our refusal to not see the repeating patterns of history is nothing but wilful ignorance. 

I'm only part of the way into Absurdism with Camus, as I believe it IS possible to find some meaning in the chaos if you only pay attention to the history.

Facts:

• Born 7th November 1913 in French Algeria
• Died 4th January 1960 
• Was living in Paris when the Germans invaded during WWII. 
• Unable to join the army due to his earlier tuberculosis diagnosis, so fled to Lyon, then Oran with his wife, where they taught in the local primary school.
• On medical advice he moved to the French Alps to help his tuberculosis. Started writing La Peste.
• In 1943 returned to Paris and joined the French Resistance. 
• Became friends with Jean-Paul Sartre. 
• Greatly influenced by Simone Weil. He saw her writings as an antidote to nihilism.
• Camus wrote in cycles - each cycle being a novel, an essay and a play. 
• The first cycle, Sysyphus was about the absurd (L'Étranger, Le Mythe de Sysiphe, and Caligula). 
• The second cycle, Prometheus, was revolt (La Peste (The Plague), L'Homme révolté (The Rebel), and Les Justes (The Just Assassins) 
• The third cycle was love, Nemesis (Le Premier homme (The First Man)
• My Popular Penguin Classic was translated by Robin Buss.
• Introduction by Tony Judt.
• Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957.
• He asks: Is it possible for humans to act in an ethical and meaningful manner, in a silent universe?
• In his notebooks, Camus suggested that the book ‘may be read in three different ways’:
• It is at the same time a tale about an epidemic; a symbol of Nazi occupation (and incidentally the prefiguration of any totalitarian regime, no matter where), and thirdly, the concrete illustration of a metaphysical problem, that of evil.

Favourite Quotes:

• There have been as many plagues in the worlds as there have been wars, yet plagues and wars always find people equally unprepared.
• "This rotten bastard of a disease! Even those who don'y have it, carry it in their hearts."
• "What is true of the ills of this world is also true of the plague. It may serve to make some people great. However, when you see the suffering and the pain that it brings, you have to be mad, blind or a coward to resign yourself to the plague."
• "I have decided to reject everything that, directly or indirectly, makes people die or justifies others in making them die."
• He knew what those jubilant crowds did not know but could have learned from books: that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen-chests; that it bides its time in bedrooms, cellars, trunks, and bookshelves; and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city.

Book 9 of 20 Books of Summer Winter

My Favourite & Best Classics

When the Classics Club originally asked this question in August 2012, I waffled on a bit about my love for all things Jane Austen, but eventually I came to the conclusion that my favourite classic of all time was Persuasion by Jane Austen.

Eight years later, it is hard to top this.

Persuasion is a story that bears repeated readings, never gets tired, constantly provides solace and comfort and still amazes me every time with its exquisite writing and plotting. Oh! and the dramatic irony, the social satire that cuts deep but sweet like a cake knife, the on point dialogue and the so, so satisfying relationship arcs. And if by some weird quirk of fate this is not quite the right thing for my mood, then one of Austen's other books will be for sure! She delights me at every turn, every page, every book. Austen is the only author that I have read so consistently and so often throughout my adult life. 

However in the eight years since I last answered this Classic Club question, I've read so many more classic titles and authors, from a far more diverse range of genres, regions and cultures. None of them have had the pleasure of multiple rereads, like my Austens. But some of the titles listed below are classics I do plan on rereading one day. 

My Best of Classics List

In Translation:

• French - Germinal by Emile Zola
• Russian - Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
• I have read many more foreign classics, from all around the world, but these are the two books I really want to reread and delve into deeper...so far! 
• Both these books packed an emotional punch that still reverberates years later. They are both set in radical, rapidly changing times - times that the authors also lived through. The personal, the facts and the fiction are interwoven into a seamless, satisfying, epic whole.

Short Stories:

• Katherine Mansfield - I'm still making my way through her short stories. Each and every one is like peeling an onion in reverse. Each story adds another layer of understanding and insight into Mansfield's mind and heart.

Australian:

• The Fortunes of Richard Mahony by (Ethel) Henry Handel Richardson - how on earth this book is not required reading for anyone serious in their English studies at high school, is beyond me. Yes, all three volumes together are HUGE, but the insights into colonial Australia, wrapped up as they are, in the story of Richardson's own childhood, are exceptional.

English:

• North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell - this list is for the books discovered by me in the last eight years. If I was to include an all-time reading list, then Jane Eyre, David Copperfield and Middlemarch would also have to be listed here.

American:

• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston - Janie has an astounding voice. She keeps whispering my name hoping to tempt me back into her world again soon.
• Moby-Dick by Herman Melville - the effort required to read this book is worth it if you have the time and patience to do so.

Sci-fi:

• Absolutely anything by John Wyndham. Yes, I'm pretty tame when it comes to sci-fi. 

Fantasy:

• My recent reread of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J R R Tolkien only confirmed how magnificent these books are. For pure escapism, detailed world building and characters to love (and hate), they are hard to bet.

Biography:

• Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain. If you haven't read this extraordinary account of WWI yet, you really should stop everything and source a copy now.

Children's:

• I've loved Ethel Turner's Seven Little Australians my whole life, but only recently have I explored her other young fiction titles. The Wonder Child and In the Mists of the Mountains have been the stand-out titles so far.

Ancient World:

• Herodotus' The Histories - what a wonderful old gossip he was! One day I will write a post about my own history with Herodotus....

Honourable Mentions: (For those classics from my pre-blogging days that couldn't quite beat out Jane Austen):

• The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
• Anne of Green Gables by L M Montgomery
• Diary of Young Girl by Anne Frank
• The Color Purple by Alice Walker
• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
• Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
• Dangerous Liaison by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
• Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
• The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy

Each and everyone of these stories is now a part of my story.

They helped to form my view of the world.

They have given me a sense of belonging and connection and fellowship.

They have satisfied my soul and slaked my cravings.

They have asked impossible questions and answered many more.

They have taken me out of myself, to another place, another time, another possibility.

They have inspired me to do better, be better, live life more fully, deeply, kindly and whole-heartedly. 

They have given me hope in dark times, lifted me up when I was down and been a friend to lean on when I thought I was all alone.

I'm sure there are sub-categories and genres that I've over-looked (like modern-day classics), but for now, these are my favourite and best classics.

Moving Among Strangers by Gabrielle Carey

Writing regularly blog posts seems to be something quite beyond right now. But thanks to Karen @Booker Talk I've be revisiting some of my older posts to find fresh inspiration. This post about the rather silent author, Randolph Stow, was originally published on the 29th August 2015.

I've been thinking about Gabrielle Carey a lot, over the past 24 hrs, after learning that she has a new book coming out in October with University of Queensland Press about Elizabeth von Armin called Only Happiness Here. 

Her website explains that von Armin has been one of her literary passions for quite some time, and like me, Carey is amazed that this Australian born writer (along with her cousin, Katherine Mansfield) is so little known and appreciated here. 

New Zealander's have done a much better job of being loud and proud about Mansfield. Admittedly, von Armin only lived in Australia for the first three years of her life (whereas Mansfield grew up in NZ before moving permanently to Europe). But given our tendency to claim famous folk with far less tenuous links than that, it's curious that we have been so silent on our relationship with von Armin.

I want to know more about the friendship and authorial support that existed between von Armin and Mansfield and how they influenced each other. And I'm keen to find out why Carey is so fascinated by von Armin. Weaving together the biography of an author with her own personal reflections was one of the things I really enjoyed about her Randolph Stow book. 

It has stayed with me for five years now. 

Given how many books pass through my hands each year, for one to stick in my memory so clearly, says something about the strength of the story within, as well as it's ability to get under my skin.

So I give you a slightly revised and updated look at my 2015 post for Moving Among Strangers.

Today I had the pleasure of attending the Honouring Randolph Stow event at the NSW Library.

The Honouring series is the brainchild of my friend Julia Tsalis, the Program Manager at the NSW Writers Centre. 

On their website she says:

Sometimes we forget about the great when revelling in the new. In its annual Honouring Australian Writers series, the NSW Writers’ Centre pays tribute to writers who have made an important contribution to our literary culture.  

In 2015 we turn to the West Australian writer Randolph Stow. Perhaps best known for The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea and To The Islands, which won the Miles Franklin Award, Australian Literary Society Gold Medal and the Melbourne Book Fair Award in 1958. He was also awarded the ALS Gold Medal for his poetry in 1957 and won the Patrick White Award in 1979.  

A writer fond of silence, known for the metaphysical and existential qualities of his writing but also a master at evoking the Australian landscape, Randolph Stow embodied contradictions. Geordie Williamson, says of him in The Burning Library, ‘In him, as in no other non-indigenous writer in our literature, landscape and mindscape are one.’  

Honouring: Randolph Stow brings together Gabrielle Carey, author of Moving Among Strangers a memoir about her family’s connection to Stow, Suzanne Falkiner whose biography will be released in 2016, Richard Tipping a poet and producer of a documentary on Stow, and West Australian author Alice Nelson (The Last Sky) whose career has been inspired by him.

In preparation for the event, I read Gabrielle Carey's Moving Among Strangers: Randolph Stow and My Family.

Carey's award winning book is a curious, but very pleasing mix of family memoir and grief journal as well as a homage to little known Australian author and poet, Randolph 'Mick' Stow.

I say little known, because when I told family, friends and colleagues (yes, even colleagues!) where I was going today. Only a couple of them had heard of Stow.

My relationship with Stow is not much better. I've only read one of his books and that was his children's story about Midnite, the not-so-bright bushranger and his talking cat. The talking cat put me off too much to ever really enjoy it properly though!

But, like Carey, I do seem to have this fascination for Australia's long lost, forgotten authors.

I'm curious about why we, as a nation, do not seem to celebrate, embrace or cherish our award winning, highly acclaimed authors.

Their childhood homes do not become museums.

No "so and so was born here" plaques pop up on suburban streets and rarely do they have university or school wings named after them. They're lucky to have a street named in their honour!

Carey echoes my concerns in her book when she reminds us that:

Other countries seem to be able to preserve significant writers' houses - why are there so few in Australia?

However, after the Honouring Randolph Stow event today, I wonder if part of this lack of recognition starts with the authors themselves.

All four panelists spoke of Stow's famous silence.

Suzanne called it his "authorial invisibility". 

Richard told us how Stow had said, "writers are writers because they're not talkers." 

And Alice quoted poet Louise Gluck's "eloquent deliberate silence" to describe Stow's personality.

Meanwhile Carey's tender memoir is an endless parade of Stow's reticence and quietness which she sums up towards the end by saying,

Stow's silence doesn't appear to have been an unfriendly one. His temperament and philosophical bent both point towards a faith in silence and deep doubt about language.

 

This is not someone searching for the limelight or to have his name forever blazoned across the skies. His story writing and poetry were personal, they were part of his search for home. Home, for Stow, was not one house or place either.

Maybe we don't need to make a fuss about his childhood home or where he went to school, except of course, there is no denying, that it is these things, these places of our childhoods that shape us is so many ways, consciously and unconsciously.

Stow himself also said (in reference to Joseph Conrad) that "I think one does need to know a great deal - well, a certain amount, anyway, about an author's life...and not only what he chooses to have known."
(my highlight).

So, what have I learnt about Stow in the past week?

He could speak and read about five languages, he was fascinated by the Batavia wreck (so much so that he taught himself to read Old Dutch so he could research the source materials), he loved to read Conrad and Joyce and he 'wrote' his books in his head whilst walking and only physically wrote them down once he had it complete in his head. Sadly, he had two such books in his head when he died. 

Stow also had an incredibly mellifluous voice (not unlike Princes Charles but with an Australian undertone) that we heard thanks to the resurrecting of Richard Tipping's interview with Stow from the 1988 film A Country of Islands. More than preserving old homes and the placing of plaques, we need to ensure that archival films and interviews like this are conserved for future reference. The 8 minute excerpt we heard today was one of the highlights of a stimulating afternoon.

I look forward to reading one of Stow's adult novels (now republished by Text Publishing) or seeing one on the big screen soon. I also highly recommend Carey's memoir for those who love their family memoirs and author biographies entwined in a happy embrace.

• The 2020 Honouring Event will be for Katherine Susannah Prichard on the 22nd August.
• Carey also has a biography about Ivan Southall called Falling Out of Love With Ivan Southall that sounds intriguing.

The Cardboard Crown | Martin Boyd #CCspin

This remarkable novel, first published to a chorus of acclaim in 1952, is one of the lost classics of Australian literature. Martin Boyd is a deeply humane novelist, a writer of family sagas without peer.

Set in Australia and England in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, The Cardboard Crown presents an unforgettable portrait of an upper middle-class family who love both countries but are not quite at home in either.

At the centre of this scintillating and immensely readable novel is Alice Verso, whose unexpected marriage to Austin Langton not only brings financial stability to the Langtons but founds an Anglo-Australian dynasty. But when her grandson finds her diaries and begins to uncover her story he chances on an intricate web of deception and reveals the complex fate of his family over three generations.

I don't often start with a blurb about the book I've just read, but I figured that many of my readers may never have heard of The Cardboard Crown or Martin Boyd. 

The Langton Quartet (there are three more books in the series) have been compared to the Forsyte Saga, and Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time as an Australian example of a family epic across time and place.

Boyd (10th June 1893 – 3rd June 1972 - how frustrating to get so close to one's 80th birthday and just miss out!) was part of the well-known à Beckett-Boyd family of Melbourne. Various members of the family made their names in the judiciary, art, literary and publishing worlds. To name a few of this creative extended family we have Merric Boyd, Helen à Beckett Read, Arthur Boyd, Guy Boyd, David Boyd, Mary Nolan, Robin Boyd and Joan Lindsay.

Martin actually spent most of his adult life in Europe, but The Cardboard Crown and it's follow up books A Difficult Young Man (1955), Outbreak of Love (1957) and When Blackbirds Sing (1962) were written thanks to a brief period of his life when he returned to Australia with a dream to restore the old family home. 

During this time (1948-1951), he rediscovered his grandmother's diaries where he read about her previously unknown convict heritage. Her father, John Mills, the founder of Melbourne Brewery, was an ex-convict. It was his money that had funded the extended family for several generations. In 1950's Australia though, a convict past was decidedly frowned upon. So Boyd changed the family scandal in his books to that of an adulterous affair, or as Brenda Niall says in her Introduction, he 'reinterpreted a century of family history'.

Boyd had a brief stint in a seminary (followed by a lifelong search for the place of religion in his life) before enlisting in the Royal East Kent Regiment during WWI. After the war, he returned to Melbourne, but no longer felt like he fitted in there. He returned to Europe, wandering around from place to place. After his final stay in Australia, he moved to Rome to write. He converted to Catholicism in his dying days and is buried in the Rome Protestant English Cemetery near Keats and Shelley.

Like the characters in his semi-biographical quartet, Boyd never felt at home in Australia or England. Throughout The Cardboard Crown the tension between being English and being Australian is a constant pull. As is the sad and slow decline of a once well-off, well-connected family moving down the social ladder. 

It did not occur to anyone until after the 1914 war that there was any obligation to work unless it was necessary.

I can see why this book may have fallen out of favour for a while. Aristocrats, inherited money and gentlemen of leisure don't really hold much truck with the average Australian. Ignoring our convict heritage may have been de rigueur in the early part of the nineteenth century, but by the 1970's, with its sudden surge in family history research, having a convict or two in your past, became not only acceptable but something to be proud of, especially if you could claim a First Fleeter on your tree. It's a shame that Boyd didn't feel that he could tell that story.

They had brought out with them their English style of living, but it was tempered by a pleasant colonial informality. They had to satisfy no one but themselves. They did not follow the social pattern, they set it.

The story of Alice Langton, is told by her grandson Guy de Teba Langton. We see her as he remembers her, but we also get a more first hand, personal account of her life through her own diaries. Boyd/Langton enjoys the disparity between the two and spends many musing moments comparing these two women, these two images of the same woman. 

It did not seem only to contain the ghosts of the dead from whom we spring, but also the ghosts of the living, of the child I was.

She was quite an extraordinary woman - self-made, strong and capable. She spent her life searching for home and for love, constantly juggling and handing over money to prevent the entire family from going under. 

Alice only wanted to fill properly the position in which circumstances had placed her, and to see that her children had and used all the opportunities available to people of their kind.

But Guy/Martin also explored class consciousness and the workings of democracy. He compares the two countries, he compares East St Kilda and Toorak, he compares town and country and he compares Europe and England. There's a snobbish attitude towards the middle class, but a curious link is made between the landed gentry and the rural working classes,

The aristocracy lives from the land, the peasant lives from the land - they are akin. Their blood is nourished red from nature, and the flesh and the spirit are one.

The colonial emigrant experience is a big part of this story. The disconnect and confusion about belonging and home reflected the reality of many nineteenth century Australians who still called England 'home'. It was an odd situation to be in. In England, where their hearts lay, they were small fish in a very old pond. In Australia they had the opportunity to be big fish with a lot of political and social clout, but it was only in Australia, on the other side of the world from where all the important stuff was actually happening. It almost felt like play-acting at being important. Living in the now, and being happy where you are, was not something that these Australians found easy to do. Their eyes were always on the horizon and they were constantly trying to superimpose an English way of life onto this alien Australian environment.

Needless to say, the story was filled with a curious mix of nostalgia, pride and divided loyalties.

My one difficulty with this book was the large paragraphs written in French. I spent one Sunday afternoon typing them all into my google translate app, to only discover that most of the sentiment within these paragraphs was conveyed, by Boyd, in the sections around them. But I needed to know for sure. Once upon a time, Boyd's readers would have been schooled in basic French, but no longer. All I could do was pick out random words I knew.

I was thoroughly engaged with this multi-generational story, seeing an older Melbourne through nostalgic eyes and a Europe still innocent of two world wars. When I finished I wasn't sure if I would continue the journey with the other three books. But as time has gone by, between reading and reviewing, I now also feel a sense of nostalgia for this time and this place and this family and I'm very curious to see what happens next.

I guess I'll be adding A Difficult Young Man to my next CC Spin!

The Classics Club Spin #23

The rules are easy: compile your list of 20 books by Sunday 19th April.

On that day a number will be randomly selected.

That's the book you read.

You have until the 1st June 2020 to finish your book and review it.

Join in the fun by visiting the other players and commenting on their lists.

It's a great way to meet like-minded bloggers and explode your TBR classics wishlist!

I do like to read my CC Spin with another if I can, although it's getting harder to find common titles as many of us move onto our second or even third Spin Lists.

If you spot a book match or author match with your list, please let me know before the magic number is selected on Sunday, I can then tweek my list to suit.

CC Spin #23

1. A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle                      shared author with Joseph @The Once Lost Wanderer
2. The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather                               shared read with Fanda @ClassicLit
3. The Annotated Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen & David M Shapard           shared with Jessica @Bookworm Chronicles
4. Alexander's Bridge by Willa Cather                                   shared author with Mary @Notes in the Margin
5. The Dead Secret by Wilkie Collins                                     shared author with Fanda @ClassicLit
6. The Cardboard Crown by Martin Boyd
7. Hiroshima by John Hersey
8. The Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura                                
9. The Mabinogion translated by Sioned Davies
10. The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima
11. Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens                                          shared read with Margaret @Books Please
12. Virginia Woolf by Hermione Lee                                         shared author with Reese @Typings
13. Red Sky at Sunrise (trilogy) by Laurie Lee                          shared read with Hopewell's Library of Life            
14. The Key by Junichiro Tanizaki                   
15. Coonaroo by Katharine Susannah Prichard                                  
16. A Dance to the Music of Time: Spring by Anthony Powell
17. A Mere Chance by Ada Cambridge
18. Lives of the Caesars by Suetonius                              
19. Laura: A Journey into the Crystal by George Sand
20. Night and Day by Virginia Woolf                                         shared author with Laila @Big Reading Life

My Previous 22 Spin Results:

Happy Spinning!