Books read in September 2019

[nou]

Definitely recommend

• Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons (re-read). I love this book so much and have read it at least a dozen times. I will probably read it a dozen more times. If you find deadpan gentle parody absolutely hilarious then you’ll probably love it too.
• Winterglass, Benjanun Sriduangkaew. An interesting choice to end the book before the end of the story, though I believe there’s now going to be a sequel? I liked the gender diversity, but the pronouns did get a bit muddled up sometimes.
• China Court, Rumer Godden. Impeccably structured and written, but with totally unnecessary-to-plot domestic violence and sexual coercion at the end. I'll likely read this again and just stop before I get to that scene. Well worth reading for the structure, pacing, and use of tenses — the ending is such a shame though.

Maybe recommend

• The Yellow Houses, Stella Gibbons. I thought I should read more Gibbons since apparently she was absolutely sick of people loving Cold Comfort Farm and ignoring her other work. Possibly this wasn’t the right one to start with, since it wasn’t published in her lifetime. It was OK, though I didn't see the point of the Japanese parts, and I kept worrying that the mysterious strangers would turn out to be malicious, so I couldn’t relax and enjoy the parts where people were being nice to each other.
• The Breakfast Book, Andrew Dalby. A literary review of breakfasts. It did have a few oddly inaccurate parts — to a baker, “crust and crumb” are parts of the loaf, not anything with “negative implications”, and Earl Grey tea is not flavoured with jasmine. So I wouldn't rely on it as a source of evidenced facts, but it's a good source of inspiration for further research (and, indeed, for breakfast).
• Pachinko, Min Jin Lee. The background about Koreans in Japan was interesting, and perhaps the best part of the book for me. I didn’t particularly love any of the characters, and I wished there had been more supportive relationships between women.
• Island of Ghosts, Gillian Bradshaw. Historical fiction following a Sarmatian brought to Roman Britain. I liked how there was still backstory being revealed almost right up to the end, and I also liked the focus on non-romantic relationships. But I’m not sure there was enough here to unreservedly recommend it, and not sure it’d keep my interest on a re-read either.

Wouldn’t recommend

• The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli translated by W K Marriott (DNF). This is a very old-fashioned translation, and I did not get on with its awkward phrasings and back-to-front sentences.

Written by friends

• The Grave-Digger’s Boy, R R Newman. A “cold case” crime story written by a beer/pub historian.
• Balmy Nectar, Ray Bailey and Jessica Boak. A collection of short pieces on beer and pubs. (NB Ray Bailey and R R Newman are the same person.)

Comments

[oursin]

I might possibly recommend Stella Gibbons' pre-1950 or so non-Cold Comfort Farm fiction over the later works - though she never goes full Angela Thirkell - and those two posthumous ones are definitely odd though do fit in with others of her later works which shade into weird territory.

[nou]

Thanks! I’m thinking of trying The Bachelor next.

[oursin]

I particularly like Nightingale Wood and Westwood and the London/Amy sections of My American (the US/Bob bits are not based on first-hand experience even without the intrusion of gangsters).

[nou]

Thank you! I’ve downloaded Kindle samples of all three.

[booklectica]

I love Cold Comfort Farm SO MUCH.

[nou]

Have you read Conference at Cold Comfort Farm? I’m not quite sure what I think of it.

[selki]

I loved Island of Ghosts and have re-read it several times.

[nou]

Useful info, thanks! I’ve added it to the “try re-reading” category on my Kindle.