Book haul May 2020

I call myself a bookworm, yet I haven't done as much reading as I could have done over the last two months during lockdown. I'm not really sure why. I've certainly had the time. Oh well. I have, however, thanks to birthday gifts of money and Amazon vouchers, ordered quite a number of books which will keep me occupied for a long while. I've read a few already. The six in the picture above are the only print books I ordered, and all arrived a couple of weeks ago, much to my excitement, and I thought I'd do a little blog post about them.

The Corfu Trilogy - Gerald Durrell
Consisting of "My Family and Other Animals", "Birds, Beasts, and Relatives", and "Garden of the Gods" - the author's memoirs of the five years his family spent living in Corfu in the 1930s. I've just finished reading the first one, and it's just as delightful as the TV series inspired by it.

Diary of a Young Naturalist - Dara McAnulty
I was particularly excited about this book. It's brand new, just published. Dara is a 16 year old autistic Irish naturalist, conservationist, and activist, and the book is a diary over the seasons of one year. It was recommended by Chris Packham, another autistic naturalist, on his daily broadcasts over lockdown, and I pre-ordered it. It arrived a couple of weeks ago, direct from the publisher - an independent, specialising in nature writing and based in a small Dorset village - wrapped in a couple of sheets of glorious bright buttercup-yellow tissue paper which I'm going to put in my 'pretty things' scrapbook. I found "Wild wishes" scrawled on the inside cover as Dara had signed all pre-orders, and also included was a little yellow "Smash Stereotypes" badge. I started reading it a couple of days ago, and it's very good, he's a great writer. I really like how it includes his experiences as an autistic, too, and I admire how he's able to put it all into words, as that's something I struggle with. There are some things I can't relate to, and it's good to get an understanding of those things from someone who experiences them, it's important, but there are some things I can relate to, particularly how being in nature compared to being in cities and in busy places makes him feel. It's nice to know that other people feel those things too. The first chapter covers spring, and in the entry for 31st March I discovered he and I share a birthday, haha!

As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto
Has anyone seen the film Julie & Julia, with Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, and Stanley Tucci? I love it. If not, and if you otherwise don't know - Julia Child was an American cook and TV personality, famous for making French cuisine accessible to the American public with her 1961 cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and a number of subsequent TV shows. She and her husband Paul moved to Paris in 1948 for his work, and Julia became obsessed with the food. She enrolled in the famous Cordon Bleu cookery school, and joined a women's cooking club, where she met the two friends with whom she would work on the cookbook over the course of a decade. I loved her autobiography, My Life in France, and recently found this collection of letters between her and her friend Avis DeVoto. They began corresponding in 1952 when Julia wrote to Avis' husband about a recent magazine column he'd written, and Avis, as his secretary (in addition to being a book reviewer herself) responded. They wrote letters back and forth for two years before finally meeting in 1954, and remained lifelong friends. I love letters, and Julia's personality, so I'm looking forward to reading it.

The Wild Places - Robert Macfarlane
"Are there any wild places left in Britain and Ireland? Or have we tarmacked, farmed and built ourselves out of wildness?" Robert Macfarlane is considered to be one of this country's foremost nature writers, and - other than the wonderful poetry book The Lost Words - this will be the first of his books I've read. It's about his search for any remaining wild places, and how important they, and our connection to them, are.

A Thousand Days in Tuscany - Marlena de Blasi
A memoir, the second written by an American who falls in love with an Italian and moves there to be with him. The first book covers their meeting and early life together in Venice. I haven't read that, only recently found out about it to be honest, but I bought this because it's the one I came across in Waterstones a couple of years ago and it's been on my wishlist since then, and I'm more interested in Tuscany than Venice. De Blasi has been a chef, a food critic, a journalist, and a food and wine consultant, so of course her memoirs (she has written a few more since this was published in 2004) are very much focused on food, as well as life with the locals in the little towns - just my sort of thing. Recipes are dotted throughout, and the writing seems to be as delectable as the food it describes. I look forward to getting stuck in, and have a feeling I will be purchasing the rest of her memoirs eventually.

The Lost Queen - Signe Pike
This is a novel, written by an American writer not widely known in the UK. I know of her because I came across her first book, a memoir called Faery Tale, in the gift shop at Glastonbury's Chalice Well Gardens probably about 10 years ago now. This novel is her first, and the first in a planned trilogy centering around a forgotten historical queen of sixth-century Scotland, sister to a man who inspired the legend of Merlin, and her struggle to preserve the Old Ways during the rise of Christianity. I love epic historical/fantasy novels, and anything related to the Arthurian legends, and anything related to ancient pagan Britain, so I'm very much looking forward to reading this!

Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots - Deborah Feldman
I downloaded this memoir on Kindle after watching the brilliant four-episode Netflix series Unorthodox, which was inspired by it. It was written by a woman who grew up in the extremely strict and insular Satmar community of Hasidic Jews in Williamsburg, NYC, and describes her life up until the time she left aged 23. It's a fascinating and shocking insight into a world so very different from ours. This is the publisher's summary because my attempt was too lengthy - "Deborah grew up under a code of relentlessly enforced customs governing everything from what she could wear and to whom she could speak to what she was allowed to read. It was stolen moments spent with the empowered literary characters of Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott that helped her to imagine an alternative way of life. Trapped as a teenager in a sexually and emotionally dysfunctional marriage to a man she barely knew, the tension between Deborah's desires and her responsibilities as a good Satmar girl grew more explosive until she gave birth at nineteen and realized that, for the sake of herself and her son, she had to escape." I really recommend reading it, or at least watching the Netflix series (which is fictionalised, a slightly different story). Of course, the author is now a feminist and women's rights advocate. One day I'll download and read the followup Exodus, an account of her life following her departure from the community.

Kindle e-books:
The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (Loved it! Wish I'd read it when I was younger.)
Black Beauty - Anna Sewell
Heidi - Johanna Spyri
Sky Dance - John Burns
The Victory Garden - Rhys Bowen
The Complete Works of Virginia Woolf
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
Paradise Lost - John Milton
The Natural History of Selborne - Gilbert White
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Mary Woolstonecraft
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Moby Dick - Herman Melville
...plus a number of samples to read to decide if I want to buy and read the whole thing.

I'm keeping a list of all the books I read this year - if you're interested, just click on the "My reading list" tab at the top of the page :)

Some favourite books

A little while ago there was a "challenge" doing the rounds on Facebook, in which, each day for seven days, someone posts a picture of the front cover of a book that's meaningful or influential for them (no words or explanation, just the picture), tags a friend in each post and then the friend has to do it. I wasn't nominated, thankfully, but I do love reading and I thought it would be a nice idea for a shortish blog post. But I can only think of a few books that I could maybe consider influential to me personally, so I'm just going to list some of my favourites (those "influential" ones among them), and I will put a little explanation. And I'm not sticking to just seven, that's far too difficult, haha. So here you go, in no particular order!

Non-fiction:

• Seasons of the Sacred Earth: Following the Old Ways on an Enchanted Homestead, Cliff Seruntine. The author lives with his wife and daughters on a secluded homestead in Nova Scotia, and the book is a series of beautiful accounts of daily life through the seasons. They make a point to live gently on the land and honour the spirits of nature, and have a deep understanding of, connection with, and respect for the natural world. I love it, it's wonderful, and I want their life.
• The New Good Life, John Robbins. An examination of the prevailing money-centred and consumerist culture, and an alternative better life. Written by the son of an American millionaire, who refused his father's fortune and went off to build a tiny wooden cabin and grow his own food, and live a simple life based around values of connection to nature and people.
• Utopia for Realists, Rutger Bregman. A proposal for reconstructing modern society to promote a more productive and equitable life for everybody, with practical ideas and examples of where they are or have been already trialed in places across the world. The core ideas are introducing Universal Basic Income, a 15-hour work week, and open borders.
• Feral, George Monbiot. About rewilding, and how letting nature take its course in some of our landscapes (rather than heavily manage it as we do now) - and, crucially, reintroducing predators we have lost - would be beneficial to the land, wildlife, and humans. Written by an environmentalist and journalist I admire greatly.
• Goddesses in Everywoman, Jean Shinoda Bolen. A classic book on female psychology, which uses seven Greek goddesses as archetypes to explain patterns of behaviour and personality traits in women. Basically every woman has one she identifies most strongly with, and it helps you understand yourself and others more. For me it was Hestia, and it was a sort of 'eureka' moment where it was the first time I felt it was okay to be a quiet, introverted, homely person and that there are others out there like me. There's also a Gods in Everyman.

Fiction:

• The Famous Five series, Enid Blyton. I haven't read these for many years, but I absolutely loved them when I was younger; basically it's a group of kids running round the countryside having adventures.
• Circle of Three series, Isobel Bird. A series of 13 books aimed at teens, about three American high school girls from different social cliques who go through a year and a day study in Wicca, or modern witchcraft. I came across them when I was 12, and they gave me a word to encompass everything I'd loved since childhood, and started my fascination with and love of paganism.
• The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame. I didn't read this till I was 19, which is a shame; it's a classic for good reason. It's just lovely, full of idyllic pastoral English scenes and animal-characters having adventures.
• Anne of Green Gables (and sequels Anne of Avonlea, Anne of the Island, and Anne of Windy Poplars), Lucy Maud Montgomery. Another set of stories I wish I'd known when I was younger; I didn't read these till I was 21. Lovely, idyllic, country/village-life stories of a very imaginative and spirited girl in rural Canada. The 1980s TV-films starring Megan Follows, and the recent Netflix series "Anne with an E", are great adaptations.
• The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley. A fantasy novel, kind of epic; a feminist and pagan retelling of the Arthurian legends, from the point of view of the women.
• Persuasion, Jane Austen. This has grown on me each time I've read it and is now my favourite Austen novel. I don't really have the words to explain why. It's her most moving work. The protagonist Anne Elliot is the eldest of Austen's heroines at 27, the age I am at the moment, and the novel has a more mature feel to it than the others. Many of the literary techniques used were unusual or new for the time, and tell the story in a more internal way, through thoughts and feelings and subtle wordless interactions, rather than through action, and the ending is one of the most romantic in English literature.
• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. Just utterly delightful and charming and funny and lovely, written as letters between the characters.

Of course there are so many books I've read that I've loved or found fascinating and haven't included. Maybe I'll think of some other post to write about some of them one day. But for now, I hope this has sparked some interest, and some of you will go out and give one or two of these books a read yourself :)

Currently reading: The Night Angel Trilogy, Brent Weeks