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.

The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets

The back cover of my copy of The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets says "Eva Rice's novel is an utterly engrossing read, in the tradition of Nancy Mitford and I Capture the Castle".  Now I Capture the Castle was one of my favourite books of my teenage years and Nancy Mitford is just...well words don't describe how amazing I think Nancy is.  I mean talk about a publisher setting expectations high, for this was the description from the publisher rather than a quote from a reader.

Although I might not agree with the description 100%, I do get where it's coming from.  The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets is about upper class people who are simply marvellous darling, some of whom live in a decaying house in the 1950s which doesn't sound too far from the plot of a Smith or Mitford novel.  The story is told by Penelope Wallace, a young student, and starts when a chance meeting with Charlotte turns into a firm friendship which changes Penelope's life.  Charlotte introduces Penelope to her cousin Harry who is hopelessly in love with the engaged American Marina and much of the plot involves Penelope helping Harry to make Marina jealous.  We are also introduced to Penelope's family, her young, beautiful and widowed mother Talitha and her brother Inigo who has hopes of making it in the music business. 

The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets is a great book.  Yes, it's "in the tradition of Nancy Mitford" but I don't think it's as good as The Pursuit of Love because it's just not as funny (I would never normally bring something like that up but the publisher did so I feel like I should address it, you can't throw around comparisons to Nancy lightly).  It's absolutely got all the things you want from a romance novel about the upper classes in the 50s, it's got characters that I care about, decadent parties with beautiful people and stuff happening that I could never imagine happening in my own life and that's what I really want from a book like this. 

If you like books set in a different era, before people had mobiles and the internet but did have telephones and record players, then this is a book for you.  If you're looking for a novel that has a silly, romantic teenager as the heroine but isn't in the YA genre then this could be just your cup of tea.

One sentence back cover quote

A delicious novel full of romance and 'beautiful people'

Buy The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets at Waterstones

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Sometimes I have a good ol' Amazon blitz.  I look through all the reviews, pick out some books I quite fancy reading, and then I order them from the library.  Ordering books from the library is brilliant because there is no pressure.  If I hate a book after 20 pages then I can just throw it to the side and pick up another one, just as I did the other week as I'm sorry but I can not read a book about someone who makes a scrapbook about vintage teacups for her wedding because if I knew that person in real life, I'd throw fruit at them.  It was thanks to this Amazon and library method that I got my hands on The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

The Lit & Pie Soc is written in epistolary form, hey look at me using a fancy word that basically just means the book is a collection of ficticious letters, and is set in the aftermath of the second world war.  It focuses on Juliet Ashton, a writer living in London, who receives a letter from one of the members of the eponymous Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and so begins her fascination with the club.

Guernsey was actually invaded by the Germans during the second world war and so Juliet learns all about life under their rule, first from Dawsey Adams and then from other members of the group.  As she learns more Juliet becomes mesmerised with their story so that it takes up more of her thoughts than her real life does.

The Lit & Pie Soc is a nice book.  It moves along, things happen, there are a couple of twists, but, for me, it never really elevated itself to being a great book, despite the initial promise.  I certianly learnt a lot, and not in a lecture-y 'let me tell you everything I can about the war' way but in a very natural way.  I suppose my biggest concern was that the London lot were made to sound positively fantastic and frightfully clever darling and the gang on Guernsey, at times, came across as quite simple.

I felt like it had promise at the beginning, I like books that are letters and I used to love books about WWII so it had things going for it, but it didn't surprise me and was just a nice, standard, formulaic book with some of the characters morphing into each other.

If you're looking for something that's a bit different, that rocks the boat, that makes you think, then this isn't the book for you.  If you know what you like and you like a love story with a couple of twists but nothing too drastic then I'd suggest you should maybe think about getting this out of your local library.

One sentence back cover quote

OK, formulaic love story that lacks spark

Buy The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society from Waterstones

Bridget Jones is back: Manc Lit Fest with Helen Fielding

I'm an idiot who forgot to bring a camera so
this cover will have to do

Last Thursday was Super Thursday, a day when publishers push out all the books they hope (fingers crossed, make a birthday wish) will be Christmas bestsellers.  There were autobiographies galore - Jennifer Saunders, Mo Farah, Harry Redknapp, Andrew Strauss, Sharon Osborne - and cookbooks from Rachel Khoo and Lorraine Pascale but all anyone could talk about in the lead up to Super Thursday was our favourite granny pants wearing lady, Bridget Jones.

I was lucky enough to see Helen Fielding on one of her promotional stops, at the Manchester Literature Festival, talking all about the world of Bridget.  The stage of the Royal Exchange was still set for their current production of All My Sons and Fielding, along with Miranda Sawyer who was "in conversation with her" (hey, that's the way they word it on the website), was sat on the front porch, chatting in front of a packed out crowd.

Fielding told us that she was quite surprised by all the uproar surrounding the fact that she'd killed off Mark Darcy, she couldn't believe that she was sat in her pyjamas watching the news where they were reporting on the crisis in Syria and then the death of Mark Darcy suddenly popped up.  It was also weird for her to see her own face staring up at her from the front page of the newspaper all because she'd killed off a fictional character, especially as she used to be a freelance journalist who had to follow up with The Guardian to make sure that they had got her article on car alarms.

Sawyer asked Fielding about the killing off of Darcy and Fielding told us how she had wanted to tell Colin Firth about it in person but they'd not found time to meet up and so she had to phone him up and make sure that he was sitting down so she could tell him of the death of this person who has never even existed.

Another reason that Bridget had been in the news recently was because of the publishing error that meant that 40 pages of David Jason's autobiography had found their way into some copies of Bridget Jones.  Did Fielding mind?  Did she heck, she thought it was "perfectly Bridget" and hopes to get her hands on some of the copies.  She thought the whole thing was funny and hoped that no one got into trouble for the mistake.

Had she based the character of Daniel Cleaver on anyone?  Well the characters in the book are often based on bits of various different people although she did divulge that one of the characters was named after a real life person.  Mr Wallaker in the book was actually named after a real life Mr Wallaker at Fielding's son's school.  The surname was just so perfect that Fielding used it as a placeholder name for the character and tried to come up with another, equally appropriate surname (Mr Walloper etc) but nothing seemed to fit.  By the time she was two weeks away from the deadline, Fielding decided that she had to phone up the headmaster of the school to check that it was OK to go ahead with the name.  The head thought it was hilarious and didn't see a problem with it but thought that she should check with Mr Wallaker himself and so Fielding put a call through.  The real Mr Wallaker was bug hunting in the New Forest when he got the call and also thought that it was excellent, he didn't mind one bit, and so Mr Wallaker it remained.

Some more questions from the audience also provided some interesting information.  One lady had lived in the same halls at uni as Fielding (St Anne's College, Oxford) and remembered her acting performances including her Marlene Dietrich.  Would Fielding ever consider acting, she was so funny (the audience was constantly laughing during this talk) and we often see that there aren't enough funny women on our screens?  Fielding, sadly, would not.  She remembered that she used to get given parts in the University Revues which would then gradually be taken away from her until all she ended up with was the role of mute milkmaid.  She'd much rather write than act.

"How did you feel about some of the negative reaction towards Bridget Jones and do you feel protective of her?" asked one of my fellow festival attendees.  Fielding told us that she did feel protective of Bridget and that she couldn't believe some of the comments, especially given that the characters are all essentially kind people.  People can be mean about Bridget but she's someone who is nice and is kind to her friends and Fielding obviously feels that's important.  She also told us that, as a general rule, she doesn't like conflict and so has found it hard to write dramas in the past. 

And then there was probably my favourite question.  What sort of books did Helen Fielding like to read herself?  I loved this question because it tells you a lot about someone.  What does the person whose books you like reading like to read themselves?  And the answer is that Fielding (who read English at university) mainly likes to read 19th Century novels.  She likes to read novels from before there was such a great split between literary and popular fiction, novelists such as Thomas Hardy, Charles Dicken and Edith Wharton, and of course she loves Jane Austen.

And then our time was up (Fielding obviously said a lot more, but my brain's only so big and I can't remember it all).  Fielding made her way outside the theatre where a stand had been set up for her to sign copies of her books and the queue of audience members snaked its way round to almost the other side of the circular theatre whilst Royal Exchange staff prepared for their next event, a talk with Roddy Doyle.  I'll post a review once I've finished the book but if you've beaten me to it, let me know what you think.  Did you attend the talk?  Or any other Manchester Literature Festival events? 

Buy Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy at Waterstones

Check out the Manchester Literature Festival

Check out the Royal Exchange