World Book Day 2013

So.... I don't seem to have kept my pledge to blog more books....

But my intentions, they were so very intent! I took pics and highlighted quotes in preparation and all. ....and shall continue to pretend that I will eventually work those up into future blogposts. So in the meantime, some short notes about shorts:

Richard Adams, The Iron Wolf-- retellings of various folk 'n' fairytales from various traditions, that really flag up the meta telling process bit. Which can be a bit jarring when the (usually fairly arch and consciously old-fashioned) narratorial tone clashes with the kind of story that needs more ingenuity to sell. I was doomed to disappointment anyway, having so much of Watership Down (especially the El-ahrairah myths) by heart.
Diana Athill, Midsummer Night in the Workhouse--my first fictional Athill and definitely not my last. Uneven like all short story collections, but her prose is gorgeously limpid and unpretentious and her insights no less pointed for being gentle.
Sarah Hall, The Beautiful Indifference -- pretty much maintained my 50:50 experience with SH. Half the stories left me cold (like The Electric Michaelangelo), the other half(including the title story) is still haunting me (like The Carhullan Army); she is never boring.
Stella Gibbons, Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm-- like pretty much every non-Cold Comfort Gibbons I've read, fun and readable enough but very forgettable. The title story is of course the highlight, and it's got a few genuinely LOL gems -- truer to the spirit than Conference at Cold Comfort Farm, at any rate [which I also quite enjoyed, unlike the majority of the fandom :P]
Edith Wharton, Roman Fever and Other Stories -- I love Wharton and shorts show off her strengths (stings) to best advantage.
Giles Gordon and David Hughes ed., The Minerva Book of Short Stories I and Angela Carter ed., Wayward Girls and Wicked Women both collect stories from women writers. I much preferred Angela Carter's collection, dancing around the ideas of feminine subversion from about a hundred years mid C19th-mid C20th. There are a range of styles and genres but my favourite stories were all on the witchier/fabulist side: AC's own 'The Loves of Lady Purple', Leonora Carrington's 'The Debutante', Suniti Najimoshi's 'Three Feminist Fables' and Djuna Barnes' 'The Earth'. [Also, go check out Barnes' Book of Repulsive Women if unfamiliar :D]


Robin Robertson, The Wrecking Light-- technically brilliant, and conceptually meaty but a bit relentlessly austere like so much good modern poetry. Any recommendations?
Richard Bean, England People Very Nice -- revisiting a play I saw a few years back. Turns out? Still dreck.
Good Evening Mrs Craven, The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter Downes -- I can't help liking MPD despite her oh so cushy middle class cosiness. These were nice; her journalism offers a bit more kick.
Katherine Mansfield, The Garden Party and Other Stories -- more kick still, and overall my favourite of all these collections. Read it online here.


Muriel Spark, The Ballad of Peckham Rye -- predictably snide but surprisingly unmalicious for Spark. Also not terribly funny -- maybe her kind of wit needs that cruelty to work.
Julia Strachey, Cheerful Weather for the Wedding-- one of those slight but HIGHLY PORTENSHUS volumes that reinforce all my emperor's new clothes biases about literary fiction.