Reread: Cold Comfort Farm

I was compiling my Top Ten list of character names a few weeks ago and was looking through my bookshelf when I came across Cold Comfort Farm.  I last read Cold Comfort Farm probably back in 2005/06 for the very simple reason that it was one of my favourite author, MegCabot's, favourite books.  I guess this is why it's so great for a new author to have a quote from an established author on the front of their book, (not that Stella Gibbons is a new author) because idiots like me will read what our favourite authors tell us to.  So, I read Cold Comfort back then and....I didn't love it.  I just didn't get it really, but I always intended to reread it in later years to see if things had changed.  So, I reread it and....things haven't changed all that much. 

Cold Comfort Farm follows the story of Flora Poste (great name, right?), a respectable girl who is orphaned at nineteen and so goes to live with her cousin Judith Starkadder and her rather uncivilised family at their farm.  Flora hopes to help the family become more respectable but this isn't easy.  All the family members feel bound to the farm because Aunt Ada Doom once saw something "nasty in the woodshed" and tells them all that she will go mad if they ever leave Cold Comfort Farm.  However, with Flora's help, the family members begin to follow their own paths and live lives of their own.

If I hadn't read any reviews or comments about this book then I'd think OK, yeah, it's a book and stuff happens and it's alright I guess but because I have read people's thoughts about this book I feel that I'm missing something.  Lots of comments say that this is a comic novel but I just didn't get it.  I want to find it funny, I'm itching to read funny books, but I just didn't.  Julie Burchill says that it's "Very probably the funniest book ever written" and I'm just sat here scratching my head going "eh, sorry, what?"  For me there were maybe a couple of amusing moments but it's nowhere near being the funniest book ever written.

Last time I read it I felt that I was missing out on something and that maybe I was too young to get it.  Now, after rereading Cold Comfort Farm, I still think that I'm not quite getting something but this time I'm thinking that maybe I'm never going to 'get it'.  That's the great thing about reading, though, that just because I don't get the humour of this book it doesn't mean that it isn't there or that other people won't get it.  So I'd be really interested to know what you think of Cold Comfort Farm if you've read it.  Did you have the same reaction I did?  Or  did you love it and find it hilarious?  And can you explain to me what it is that I'm just not getting?

One sentence back cover quote

Lots of people find Cold Comfort Farm hilarious so maybe you'll be one of them

Buy Cold Comfort Farm at Waterstones

Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy

This particular review contains spoilers so if you don't want the book to be spoiled then look away now.

I was lucky enough to see Helen Fielding talking at the Manchester LiteraryFestival a few weeks ago just after the latest Bridget Jones came out.  I grabbed a copy of Mad About the Boy from the pop up Waterstones outside the venue and started the book as soon as I got home.

Now I'm not all that sentimental about Bridget Jones, I'm from the second wave of readers, current twenty-somethings who've come to the books a bit later.  I wasn't waiting for the columns in The Independent each week because I had different priorities at that time (like whether I set the VCR in time to tape The Spice Girls on whatever TV programme they happened to be on that week).  I even saw the films before I read the books!  I know!  What sort of a person am I?

It's for this reason that I didn't seem as distressed as everyone else on the internet was when they heard that Mark Darcy had died and Bridget would be a single mum in this book.  Yeah, of course, it'll be a little bit sad I thought but it won't be that big a deal.  Boy was I wrong, and I'm not even attached to Mark Darcy.

The book, just like Fielding in person, is funny.  Not just as in an occasional smile here and there but actually laugh out loud funny and I love that.  However, every time Bridget started mentioning how sad she was that Mark wasn't there, I just sort of thought Yeah, I am too.  And I just don't get why it had to happen.  I know that the first couple of Bridget Jones books were about being a single 30 something looking for love but just because that's the main theme of the first 2 books, I don't see why it had to be the main theme of the third one.  It could've been a funny book about Bridget in a happy marriage in her 50s.  I know it's probably harder to come up with fun storylines for that but couldn't that have been part of the challenge?  But it's not my book, they're not my characters and it's up to Helen Fielding what she wants to do with them.

There are two main love interests in the book, Roxster and Mr Wallaker.  Roxster is a 29 year old who Bridget meets over Twitter and begins to fall in love with him.  He's sweet and charming but also ends up being confused by this relationship with an older woman though their relationship does take up most of the book.  

Mr Wallaker is totally different to Roxster.  He's a teacher at Bridget's son's school and it very proper and British and stiff upper lip and barely any of the book is spent on his and Bridget's relationship.  It's just sort of plopped on right at the end with Bridget realising that she's madly in love with him during the Christmas carol concert, even though they've barely spoken to each other and haven't been on a single date.  In fact, such little time is spent with Mr Wallaker that I'm probably more invested in Bridget's relationship with Roxster.  

All in all the book is a nice enough read.  It's not the same as the earlier ones because the ghost of Mark Darcy is present throughout and so I felt that Bridget is only ever going to be looking for a replacement.  However, it is a good read, I enjoyed it and it's funny.  I do think that perhaps I might not have enjoyed it as much as the other ones because I'm not yet at the point in my life that Bridget's at.  There are doubtless moments in the book where mums up and down the country will be nodding and laughing along and saying "Yes, that is exactly what it's like at the school gates/at the annual concert/at Barbara and Gavin's Christmas parties".

So maybe I'll re-read this book when I'm a bit older, but I'm still glad that I read it.  I love it when a book can make you laugh and Bridget's done just that yet again.

One sentence back cover quote

Bridget's back and funny as ever but life's changed an awful lot.

Buy Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy at Waterstones

A novel idea for wallpaper

Have you seen this Penguin Library Wallpaper from Osborne & Little?  What do you think of it?  I love it though I think I'd feel like a proper fraud if I bought it as I've only read two out of the twenty books featured on it (Nineteen Eighty-Four and Wuthering Heights).

  

It'd be perfect for booklovers who have that one pesky wall that they don't know what to do with because it doesn't support the weight of bookshelves.  Even friends and family who don't love books have to admit that the design of the old Penguin bookcovers is fantastic, it's bright, striking and iconic.  And I'm also all for unusual ways of promoting books and getting money into the publishing industry.

The Penguin design isn't the only one though, check out this lovely print of paperback spines from Tracy Kendall.

You can use it to decorate a whole room or just for one little area.  Pretty snazzy, ey?  I know we'd all much rather our walls were sinking under the weight of real, physical books but there's just some places you can't stick books, like the wall alongside the stairs, and this gives a beautiful alternative. 

I'm much too unorganised to actually get any of this wallpaper, but a girl can dream, right?  Has anyone else out there got any?  I'd love to see some real life examples of book wallpaper.

The Penguin Library Wallpaper from Osborne & Little can be bought at John Lewis (amongst other places)

Visit Tracy Kendall's website and check out a list of her stockists

Images via Osborne & Little and Tracy Kendall

What Alice Forgot

Aren't we all just searching for authors we can fall in love with?  Sure, we also want to fall in love with books but if you fall in love with an author you can go off and have a lovely harmless affair with all of their back catalogue.  You can snuggle up on the sofa with Book Number 4 and have a nice relaxing bath with Book Number 7, it's really rather good.  The latest author to fit into this category for me is Liane Moriarty.

I picked What Alice Forgot up from the library shelf as I had enjoyed Moriarty's most recent book, The Husband's Secret, and was hoping that I would love this book as well.  I did.

What Alice Forgot follows the story of Alice Love, a woman who trips over at a Step class and gives herself such an almighty bang on the head that she forgets the past ten years of her life.  Her mind's right back in 1998 when Twitter was just a sound that birds made.  We learn about Alice's missing ten years at the same time that she does as she tries to piece together what people tell her and fragments of memories that suddenly come rushing back.

Both of Moriarty's books that I've read so far have been so great because they make you think about the situation hypothetically happening to you.  What would you think of your life now if you'd forgotten the past ten years?  You'd be rather unlucky for it to happen to you but it could.  Would old you be happy with current you?  Would they be surprised at the choices you've made?  The relationships and friendships you've had and have? 

There's also something about Moriarty's writing that makes her work so readable.  You feel like you've barely been reading for any time at all and yet you've sailed through to page 102 and you've missed the beginning of your favourite TV programme but, oh well, let's keep on reading.  Also, it's lovely to have an Aussie setting for a change and be in the land of fairy bread, gum boots and flip flops being called thongs.

Moriarty's remaining books are on my 'to be ordered from the library' list that I keep in my head, I'm much too unorganised to actually write the list down, and so I would absolutely recommend that they make their way over to yours too.  There's humour and heart in What Alice Forgot (but not so much heart you'll start blubbing on your morning commute) and I wanted to know what happened next, both ten years ago and in the present day.

One sentence back cover quote

Moriarty writes with humour and heart, I gobbled it up.

Buy What Alice Forgot at Waterstones

Top Ten character names

OK, I'm fairly new to book blogging and so here I am taking part in my first meme, how exciting.  It's Top Ten Tuesday which was created by The Broke and The Bookish and this week's list is......

Top Ten Character Names I Love/Unusual Character Names

Sigismond

in The Blessing by Nancy Mitford

I understand that this is probably quite a hard name to love for a lot of people, but I'm not one of those people.  I love unusual boys names in books that have some history behind them, rather than being recently made up, as I think that we have so many male characters with names like Michael, David, Max etc that it's nice to have something a little different.  Unfortunately the Sigismond in this book isn't the most lovely of characters, but he's not so terrible that it's put me off the name.

Penelope

in Penelope by Rebecca Harrington and in The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets by Eva Rice

Isn't it always the way, you wait forever for a Penelope in a book and then two come along at once.  I really used to hate the name Penelope (I honestly thought "why have you chosen that name Tina Fey?" when she had her second daughter) but thanks to Harrington's novel I don't mind it too much now.  I used to think it gave off quite a snooty vibe, but not so much anymore, and I guess that's the power of books, that a character can change your perception of a name.

Flora Poste

in Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

You don't hear the name Flora all that much so that's why it's such a great name for a character, literature isn't inundated with them. 

Mia Thermopolis

in The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot

Maybe it's because I loved the books so much but this name is just perfect.  If someone says the name "Mia" I automatically think of Mia Thermopolis and the character is just so alive to me.  Although I should probably be respectful of royalty and give her her full name, Amelia Mignonette Grimaldi Thermopolis Renaldo, Princess of Genovia.

Katniss/Peeta/Gale

in The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

What I love about these names is that they're not a million miles away from real names that we have now (Kat, Peter, Gail) and so they give this impression of the world having changed from how we live now but not so much that it's totally and utterly unrecognisable, much like the books do.

Inigo

in The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets by Eva Rice

I'd never heard of this name before I'd read the book but Wikipedia tells me it's a proper, historical name and I love it.  I'm going to be honest and say that I'm not 100% sure how you say it (I think it's In-e-go) but it's so unusual that I'm sure I'll remember it.  Basically, I'm just a sucker for a boy's name that's a bit different.

Margo Pike

in The BabySitters Club books by Ann M. Martin

I'm afraid I don't really remember Margo Pike other than the fact that she was Mallory's sister and was called Margo but what I do remember was that this was the first time I'd ever seen the name Margo anywhere and I thought it was such an unusual name.  I couldn't believe it when my mum told me she'd heard of the name and it wasn't that odd.  The BabySitter Club books were probably some of the first American books I read and so the names in them were quite different to 12 year old me - Dawn, Claudia, Margo, Logan (I've still to meet a British Logan, actually)

Every name in Harry Potter

by JK Rowling

Harry Potter is choc-full of amazing names.  Rowena Ravenclaw (my favourite), Cornelius Fudge, Horace Slughorn, Severus Snape.  They're often names that would stick out like a sore thumb in the real world, but in the magical world of Hogwarts they all fit perfectly.

Scarlett O'Hara

in Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

I'm not sure that I can say anything new and exciting about the name Scarlett O'Hara.  It just fits the character so perfectly and that's what makes it such a good name.

The second Mrs de Winter

in Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

You only really realise how much power a name has once you take it away (I think Dumbledore said something similar but way more eloquent in one of the Harry Potters).  I spent the whole of Rebecca just thinking "Yes, but what is your name, Mrs de Winter?" and it still drives me mad that I don't know it now.  Similar characters have included Piggy from Lord of The Flies and The Saxophone teacher from The Rehearsal.