Recent reading
Nov. 23rd, 2022 05:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
regshoeSweet Thames Run Softly by Robert Gibbings (1940). An account of a trip made by Gibbings down the Thames by rowing-boat just before the outbreak of the Second World War—or, at least, that forms the basic structure of the book, but Gibbings's writing is as meandering as the Thames itself and he keeps wandering off down side-paths: memories from his childhood in Cork, anecdotes about academic colleagues, bits of natural history of which sightings on the river remind him. As nature writing it's a very good book, detailed and creative; Gibbings observes brilliantly and writes beautifully about the wildlife and scenery of the river. And I did enjoy the rambling style and random tangents. Unfortunately Gibbings is also a straight man from the early twentieth century and very sexist in a particularly skin-crawling sort of way sadly typical of that class of people. The parts of the book that don't involve describing women are genuinely very good, but that did rather let things down.
Worrals on the War-Path by W. E. Johns (1943). The fourth Worrals book, and just as exciting an adventure as ever. In this one the main plot is instigated directly by Worrals, who suggests an ingenious scheme for flying planes from Britain to Malta: the flight is too far to do in one leg and France is occupied by the Nazis, but Worrals—making use of her ever-expanding pre-war backstory, now looking slightly improbable for the eighteen-year-old she apparently was in the first book—suggests making a secret stopover base in the Cévennes, where she once spent a month's holiday, and she and the loyal Frecks go to France and make preparations to receive and refuel the planes. Of course things don't go entirely according to plan, and Worrals and Frecks have to contend with various dastardly foes and cooperate with old friends, some more expected than others. Actually only about three-quarters of the book is taken up with the adventure plot; the rest consists of lovely and detailed descriptions of French geography. I knew very little about the Cévennes before reading this book, but wow, that really is a dramatic landscape, a setting worthy of a Worrals book; there's also an interval in the Camargue, described very memorably, and I now want to go birdwatching there. This book contains 155 instances of the word 'said', or one for every 13 lines of dialogue; for a comparison, the figure for Flight of the Heron is about 1 in 5, which is not actually as dramatic a difference as I was expecting, but does show Johns's style pretty clearly.
The Land of Green Ginger by Winifred Holtby (1927). I always find when I read a new Holtby book that it's very like and yet very unlike the others I've read. This one has a rather different focus from e.g. The Crowded Street: it follows Joanna Burton (huh, I've only just realised she has the same surname as Sarah in South Riding) from her carefree youth through her hasty marriage during the First World War, her husband's illness from a combination of TB and gas attacks and the struggles of their life on a farm in the North Riding after the war, where most of the plot takes place. A forestry camp is set up in the dale with workers from Finland and various eastern European countries, causing various dramas in the local village and for Joanna, especially after the camp's interpreter, a Hungarian named Paul Szermai, moves into Joanna's house as lodger. (She repeatedly compares Szermai to characters from ballads, particularly Tam Lin, which I liked). From here the drama develops. The story is concerned with issues like the interactions between men and women and to what extent they are desirable and/or inevitable and the tension between the forestry workers and the xenophobic locals against the background of post-war European politics, and Holtby shows the insightful understanding towards her characters that's also familiar from her other books. The ending is perhaps a little over-dramatic in a similar way to the ending of Anderby Wold; between that and some off-putting plot elements (squicky in the moment; perhaps seriously dodgy if one thought about them at more length, or perhaps Holtby is making some kind of point about those gender issues), I sort of lost emotional investment in the story. I don't want to revisit that, so I won't be ebooking this one after all. By the way, the street after which it's named is real, which is rather neat; I also like how Holtby uses the same set of fictionalised place names in all her books about theEast South Riding.
And the remainder of The Road Not Taken: How Britain Narrowly Missed A Revolution by Frank McLynn (2012), of which I read the first part earlier this year. The remaining chapters covered the Chartist movement of the 1830s and 40s, and the General Strike of 1926. I did not find these as interesting as the earlier part, especially the General Strike—to which McLynn devotes four chapters, much more than any of his other missed revolutions; political history that recent is too much like how politics still works now, and depressingly reminiscent of the news. But it was good to read the rest of the book and get more of a sense of McLynn's point about the development through history of these failed revolutions, although the high-level political-historical theorising at the end went rather over my head. McLynn goes over various explanations for why Britain, in contrast to other countries, has never had a real revolution—including the hierarchy of society and the place of the monarchy; the avoidance of disruption caused by foreign invasion (including a weird digression about freak waves at sea to explain why invading Britain has historically been so difficult); early industrialisation and the resulting non-survival of a peasant class into the modern era; and various others, and I think ends up at the conclusion that it's complicated. All good context for those Jacobite chapters. McLynn has also written what I believe is regarded as the definitive biography of Charles Edward Stuart, so I may see if I can track that one down at some point.
Worrals on the War-Path by W. E. Johns (1943). The fourth Worrals book, and just as exciting an adventure as ever. In this one the main plot is instigated directly by Worrals, who suggests an ingenious scheme for flying planes from Britain to Malta: the flight is too far to do in one leg and France is occupied by the Nazis, but Worrals—making use of her ever-expanding pre-war backstory, now looking slightly improbable for the eighteen-year-old she apparently was in the first book—suggests making a secret stopover base in the Cévennes, where she once spent a month's holiday, and she and the loyal Frecks go to France and make preparations to receive and refuel the planes. Of course things don't go entirely according to plan, and Worrals and Frecks have to contend with various dastardly foes and cooperate with old friends, some more expected than others. Actually only about three-quarters of the book is taken up with the adventure plot; the rest consists of lovely and detailed descriptions of French geography. I knew very little about the Cévennes before reading this book, but wow, that really is a dramatic landscape, a setting worthy of a Worrals book; there's also an interval in the Camargue, described very memorably, and I now want to go birdwatching there. This book contains 155 instances of the word 'said', or one for every 13 lines of dialogue; for a comparison, the figure for Flight of the Heron is about 1 in 5, which is not actually as dramatic a difference as I was expecting, but does show Johns's style pretty clearly.
The Land of Green Ginger by Winifred Holtby (1927). I always find when I read a new Holtby book that it's very like and yet very unlike the others I've read. This one has a rather different focus from e.g. The Crowded Street: it follows Joanna Burton (huh, I've only just realised she has the same surname as Sarah in South Riding) from her carefree youth through her hasty marriage during the First World War, her husband's illness from a combination of TB and gas attacks and the struggles of their life on a farm in the North Riding after the war, where most of the plot takes place. A forestry camp is set up in the dale with workers from Finland and various eastern European countries, causing various dramas in the local village and for Joanna, especially after the camp's interpreter, a Hungarian named Paul Szermai, moves into Joanna's house as lodger. (She repeatedly compares Szermai to characters from ballads, particularly Tam Lin, which I liked). From here the drama develops. The story is concerned with issues like the interactions between men and women and to what extent they are desirable and/or inevitable and the tension between the forestry workers and the xenophobic locals against the background of post-war European politics, and Holtby shows the insightful understanding towards her characters that's also familiar from her other books. The ending is perhaps a little over-dramatic in a similar way to the ending of Anderby Wold; between that and some off-putting plot elements (squicky in the moment; perhaps seriously dodgy if one thought about them at more length, or perhaps Holtby is making some kind of point about those gender issues), I sort of lost emotional investment in the story. I don't want to revisit that, so I won't be ebooking this one after all. By the way, the street after which it's named is real, which is rather neat; I also like how Holtby uses the same set of fictionalised place names in all her books about the
And the remainder of The Road Not Taken: How Britain Narrowly Missed A Revolution by Frank McLynn (2012), of which I read the first part earlier this year. The remaining chapters covered the Chartist movement of the 1830s and 40s, and the General Strike of 1926. I did not find these as interesting as the earlier part, especially the General Strike—to which McLynn devotes four chapters, much more than any of his other missed revolutions; political history that recent is too much like how politics still works now, and depressingly reminiscent of the news. But it was good to read the rest of the book and get more of a sense of McLynn's point about the development through history of these failed revolutions, although the high-level political-historical theorising at the end went rather over my head. McLynn goes over various explanations for why Britain, in contrast to other countries, has never had a real revolution—including the hierarchy of society and the place of the monarchy; the avoidance of disruption caused by foreign invasion (including a weird digression about freak waves at sea to explain why invading Britain has historically been so difficult); early industrialisation and the resulting non-survival of a peasant class into the modern era; and various others, and I think ends up at the conclusion that it's complicated. All good context for those Jacobite chapters. McLynn has also written what I believe is regarded as the definitive biography of Charles Edward Stuart, so I may see if I can track that one down at some point.
no subject
Date: Nov. 23rd, 2022 07:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Nov. 23rd, 2022 07:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Nov. 24th, 2022 04:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Nov. 23rd, 2022 07:12 pm (UTC)I know its name from a 1973 Play for Today which I have never actually managed to see! I found it years ago through the Watersons. I'm sorry the ending of the novel craters as badly as it does, since the setup sounds attractive.
no subject
Date: Nov. 24th, 2022 04:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Nov. 23rd, 2022 07:37 pm (UTC)In my head I have quietly aged Worrals up to her late twenties to account for all her pre-war backstory. Clearly she spent those years roving the land in search of Adventure!
no subject
Date: Nov. 24th, 2022 04:57 pm (UTC)In my head I have quietly aged Worrals up to her late twenties to account for all her pre-war backstory.
That's a very sensible idea—I think I will adopt it too.
no subject
Date: Nov. 24th, 2022 06:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Nov. 24th, 2022 04:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Nov. 25th, 2022 08:32 am (UTC)Perhaps I should try a Worrals book! : )
McLynn has also written what I believe is regarded as the definitive biography of Charles Edward Stuart, so I may see if I can track that one down at some point.
I feel it is inevitable that I will someday read this...
no subject
Date: Nov. 26th, 2022 01:08 pm (UTC)Yes, you should totally try a Worrals book :D
I feel it is inevitable that I will someday read this...
I have the same feeling! Hmm, next time I'm in the mood for a nice dense history book...