Wednesday reading post is BAAAACK

[oursin]

What I read

Finished Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun, which was rather different from Purple Hibiscus in being more diffuse, more located in public events (even if via their impact on individuals), several viewpoints, etc, but still very good, though warning for harrowing episodes during the Biafra period (most characters are Igbo, or else Biafran-sympathisers). Have more of her work loaded to the Kobo.

In lighter vein read Agatha Christie's N or M (1941) - Tommy and Tuppence, too superannuated for other war service, take on fifth-columnists. While possibly not quite as daffy as Nancy Mitford's Pigeon Pie (and have a feeling that there is posthumous unfinished Barbara Pym novel in this rather shortlived date-specific genre?) in the 'bumbling amateurs bring down Nazi plotters' field, it's still pretty unconvincing.

Also read, rather outside my usual purlieu's Lia Silver's Laura's Wolf, because erotic romance with werewolves, usually not my thing, but this is (pseudonymously) by online friend in whose writing I had confidence, and I was not disappointed. Well-written and subversive of the kind of tropes one might expect. I may well go for the sequels.

On the go

Have got stuck into Angela John's bio of Lady Rhondda, which is very good (top marks for getting the technicalties of divorce in 1922 bang on the nose! - so often I have been left wondering, and how exactly did they manage that? enquiring minds who have studied the intricacies of English divorce law pre 1923 would like to know). A bit bogged down by the business section (she inherited huge industrial interests from her father) but the feminism/Time and Tide stuff is fine, though just possibly John is a bit kinder to V Brittain than she deserves - not so much that Lady R was overworking Winifred Holtby when she was really ill, but that she was overworking W when VB wanted her services... or at least, that is what has come over in other accounts. Am just moving into interesting section re Lady R and her (female) domestic companions.

Oh yes, and she was heavily involved in a big scandal which I knew about already because Laura Doan discusses it extensively in Disturbing practices : history, sexuality, and women's experience of modern war but didn't recollect any mention of Rhondda in connection with - must look at this again.

Up next

With moving the book-piles so telephone engineer could get to the cabling, several things which had slid out of view have resurfaced... watch this space.

***

And here is very silly list of 100 books only 6 of which the average person is supposed to have read. I got 65, omitting the ones I'd only read in part, and wish to note that my major lacunae were modern mainstream litfic Waterstones 3 for 2 table type works. If they were replaced with either similar authors from 1950s-70s or middlebrow works of first half of C20th, suspect my score would be a lot higher.

Have also been doing a little light research reading and looking again at Ethel Mannin's Confessions and Impressions (1930) - essays on her encounters with various cultural figures, including several who were well-known at the time, a few of which are familiar to me because that's the way I roll, and others who have completely fallen off the map but were clearly SRS BZNZ then.

Comments

[redbird]

I am never quite sure whether those "most people have only read 6 of these 100 [presumably important] books" are intended to make the reader of the article feel superior because s/he has read more than that, or to make people feel bad that they have only read five or six. Or perhaps to make the list-compilers feel superior, because they get to judge "importance" and be listened to.

What I'm reasonably sure of is that the "average person" has spent less time reading, and more time watching television and movies, than I have; if it was "the average person has only seen six of the most important hundred movies ever," I suspect the only way I would get to six is if they skewed it just right to catch the time in my relative youth when I was watching movies semi-regularly, either in theaters or on TV. The way some people stop reading when they leave school? That's close to my experience of film.

So I wonder, not for the first time, how much of it is "you should read more" and how much is "you should choose your reading differently."

[arkessian]

The link to the silly list is broken.

I have read 69 of them in full -- like you, it's the modern mainstream litfic I have (not) missed...

[oursin]

Fixed now, I think, thanks

[spiralsheep]

Barbara Pym's spy novella was titled So Very Secret and imo its brevity is a mercy. She also began but never finished writing a home front novel, which I suspect would have been a more satisfying read for most Pym fans.

[oursin]

Not really playing to her strengths, I feel. There is also a weird novel ? Across the Frontier by Stevie Smith that I tend to put in this group as well.

I mourn the uncompleted Pym home front novel, though.

[lizvogel]

I got 18, plus a few that I can't remember if I finished or not (mostly assigned for schoolwork, back in the day), and at least one that I started and gave up on out of sheer boredom.

One suspects that neither the author of this journal nor its readers are "average" people by the definition being used for this list.

[rmc28]

I only score 31 on the list, and an awful lot of them read when I was much younger than I am now.

Thank you for the recommendation of the erotic werewolf romance because that is totally my thing, especially if well-written and subversive :-)

[carbonel]

I've read exactly half of the list of 100. There are five or so that I would never have read if they hadn't been required reading; the rest I either read for pleasure on my own, or they were assigned but I enjoyed them. And there's the edge case of Wuthering Heights, which I read on my own for Reasons, but despised.

[oursin]

Quite a lot of mine were either things I had to read for a degree in EngLit, or things that when younger I felt I Ought To Have Read.

[ironed_orchid]

A lot of mine were from high school or Lit degree reading lists.

[pameladean]

Hee, yes, 62 here, but really, I too got a degree in English literature, so it's hardly surprising. If I'd gotten the degree a bit later or earlier, I'd have different books, maybe more. I also avoided modern works assiduously until I was in my forties.

P.

[antisoppist]

45 but a lot were at school, or local book group, which has fits of "modern books people seem to be reading" or "books from the past that we think we ought to have read" before we give up and go back to "things we have actually read and would recommend" again. I am not claiming half of Les Miserables (I have got past Waterloo now so I am doing better than last time) or The Shadow of the Bloody Wind, which, when the book group host cancelled the meeting, resulted in 6 people, including me, e-mailing to say "oh good, I don't have to read any more of the blasted thing".

I have never read any Dickens.

Thank you for the Lady Rhondda biography summary/rec.

[wordweaverlynn]

Bizarre list of books. Some I read for pleasure (Austen, the Brontes, Hardy, Gone with the Wind, lots of others), books I read for school (the dystopian novels of Orwell, Huxley, and Golding were all required reading for tenth grade, when I was 15), and books I wouldn't read on a bet (The Five People You Meet in Heaven).

[redbird]

Now that I look at it, I see the usual weirdness of what does and doesn't get grouped together—e.g., full credit for Narnia based on just the first book, but all of Shakespeare is shown as one thing, presumably meaning that the BBC or someone is feeling superior because I haven't read Venus and Adonis and have only seen Cymbelline and Twelfth Night on stage, not read them. OK, fine, their list, but why is Hamlet also listed separately? Did they read their own list?

[hunningham]

It is an incredibly silly list. Looking at it, I'd guess that someone nabbed random members of the public (probably while they were sitting on the Clapham Omnibus and thinking about what to get for their tea) and asked them to name the bestest book of all time. And a lot of people were really stuck and just went "... erh, Bible, or maybe Shakespeare". And one person said Folk of the Faraway Tree, by Enid Blyton. Bless.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

I like this idea.

[tree_and_leaf]

This list, or a similar one with the same claim that it's a BBC list, has been doing the rounds for ages, and I can't work out where it came from - but I wonder if it originated in the BBC Big Read poll, which was done in 2003 to find the British public's favourite book. The list isn't identical, but there are some obscure overlaps, which makes me wonder if the meme list isn't an edited version of the Big Read one.

[kore]

'And one person said Folk of the Faraway Tree, by Enid Blyton. Bless.'

That is a grand idea.

[heyokish]

It's a ridiculous list. But 96. Huh. (Not time traveller's wife. five people you meet in heaven, lovely bones, or complete shakes--I never made it through cymbelline and missed a couple of the histories.)

[ironed_orchid]

I remember that "BBC Believes You Only Read 6 of These Books" list doing the rounds back when I updated to lj, so at least 5 years ago.

[kore]

I knew I'd seen it before! Do you remember it having the same weird two duplications too?

[ironed_orchid]

Yes! I remember people commenting on those then.

Time to sift through my tag and archives.

[kore]

....time for me to regret blowing up at least 2 LJ accounts. God, self-of-six-years-or-so-ago, that was stupid.

[ironed_orchid]

Shh, you.

[kore]

Aww. (self-care means not calling yourself names! someday I will get that, yes yes I will)

[ironed_orchid]

I FOUND IT

Since then I have finished Persuasion and The Wasp Factory, and am working on Moby Dick.

[kore]

YOU = _ROCKSTAR_

Three separate people gave me Captain Correlli's Twanging Heartstrings, I don't even fucking know. I read Persuasion a couple of weeks ago! I really liked it but God, it was sad. Altho then parts of the humour seemed very Dickensian, the sort of rosy jolly seafaring family tumbling about.

[ironed_orchid]

Thanks to the power of archives and extrapolation, I just found oursin's post about the list from 2008.

[kore]

It's like a time machine!....aww, now I'm super nostalgic.

[sara]

Alas, I have only read forty-six of them. And of those I regret at least four.

[kore]

I dunno which I hated more, Lovely Bones or Time Traveller's Wife. The only way I would read Five People blahblah is if it were offered as the only alternative to a waterboarding.

[kore]

'And here is very silly list of 100 books only 6 of which the average person is supposed to have read'

OMG now I can feel smart and smug instead of despairing about my advanced degree! //cracks knickles

.....do they realize that the 'Chronicles of Narnia' and 'The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe' are both on there? ....ditto Shakespeare and 'Hamlet,' whoops. In fact I think I have seen this list before, with those errors, but now can't remember when.

I got 70! //punches the air

'my major lacunae were modern mainstream litfic Waterstones 3 for 2 table type works'

Yeah, I....am probably just never going to read Life of Pi. It's just not me.

[kore]

oh wait, THEY DO

'Also, Narnia and Shakespeare are on the list twice but, they can be a freebie if you prefer :)'

...WTF? Why not just fix it? and why the smiley face? //loathes the smiley face