London Belongs to Me is Incredibly Long But Worth It

I love a big fat book. I love to sink into the story and get completely engrossed in the characters. I also love British books, and books set during World War II. I especially love books about the War at Home -- I'm far more interested about how the war affected people's everyday lives than battles and military maneuvers. In short, Norman Collins' London Belongs to Me basically ticks off every box for my literary love. It took me almost a month to finish it since I was reading other books as well, but I loved every minute of it.

First published in 1945, this story starts in 1938 and spans about two years in the lives of the residents of #10, Dulcimer Street, in Kennington, London, a working-class neighborhood south of the Thames river (not to be confused with the much posher Kensington). The story begins just before Christmas, when one of the residents, Mr. Jossor, leaves his last day of work at an accounting firm upon his retirement and returns home to his flat. Mr. Josser lives with his wife and adult daughter Doris, who's ready to fly the nest and share a flat with another girl, much to her mother's chagrin. Other residents of the building include Connie, a failed middle-aged actress who's barely scraping by as a coat-check girl; the adenoidal Mr. Puddy, who can hardly hold down a job as a night watchman and is hoarding canned goods for the onset of war; Mrs. Boon and her son Percy, a mechanic who's tempted by a life of crime; the widowed landlady Mrs. Vizzard; and the mysterious new lodger Mr. Squales.

This is a novel in which for most of the characters, not much happens and yet everything happens. Over 738 pages, we follow the lives of the residents as they fall in and out of love, find jobs, have dreams and aspirations, and sometimes even land in jail. They're a disparate group but ultimately, they're like a family. I love books in which a lot of personalities are thrown together and this is exactly that sort of group. It reminded me a little bit of Patrick Hamilton's The Slaves of Solitude which I read and loved a few years ago.

This book is long and sprawling, with very thin pages and tiny print, yet I was sorry that it ended. The writing isn't particularly flowery or descriptive, but Collins made me feel as though I were right there, living in the same building, and all the characters were incredibly real. There's a short epilogue that takes place at Christmas 1940 which gives a quick update, but I can only imagine what happened to all the characters during and after the war. I wish there were a sequel, but sadly, there isn't. However, thanks to Rachel at Book Snob (who raved about this book), I discovered that it was made into a film which you can watch online at YouTube (though I cannot imagine how they condensed this doorstopper into a film less than two hours long.)

Collins also wrote several other books and I've already got Bond Street Story which is also available from Penguin, though it's surprisingly expensive for a paperback (luckily I received a copy as a Mother's Day gift). It's also quite long, but not as long as London Belongs to Me. This book is my idea of perfect summer reading and I'm sure it will be on my list of favorites at the end of the year.

Challenge Link-Up Post: Final Wrap-Up

Have you finished the Back to the Classics Challenge?  Congratulations!  This is where you'll link up to your Challenge Wrap-Up Post, after you've completed a minimum of six different categories from the original challenge post.  This post is only for Challenge-Wrap Up Posts.  If you do not have a blog, or anywhere you post publicly, please write up your post-challenge thoughts/suggestions/etc in the comments section below.  Please read the directions carefully. 

By linking or commenting here, you are declaring that you have completed the challenge; that each book reviewed fits the correct definition of the category, and was published before 1967 (except for posthumous publications); and that your reviews for each category are linked to the correct post. If I cannot find links to your reviews, I cannot give you credit and thus enter you into the drawing.  THIS is where I will look at the end of the year and randomly choose the winner for the bookish prize. 

Please remember to indicate the following within THIS POST, linked below, or in the comments section below if you do not have your own blog:

1. Which book corresponds to each category;
2. The number of entries you have earned for the prize drawing; 
3. Links to your reviews. 

If you do NOT include links to your original reviews IN THIS POST, I CANNOT ENTER YOU INTO THE DRAWING.

Remember:

If you've completed six categories and you get one entry.

Complete nine categories, and you get two entries.

Complete all twelve categories, and your name is entered into the drawing three times!

UPDATED, VERY IMPORTANT: 

Please be sure and include some kind of contact for me within your final wrap-up post. This year, I will be contacting the winner privately BEFORE posting their name publicly on this blog. If I cannot contact you, I cannot award your prize. If there is no contact on your blog post, please email me at karenlibrarian13 [at] yahoo [dot] com. 


Congratulations, and thanks again for participating in the Back to the Classics Challenge!

A Roundup of Victorian Mini-Reviews

Or more precisely, a round up of mini-reviews of Victorian and Victorian-related works. (I like my title better). Anyway, I'm making really great progress on my Victorian Reading Challenge -- so far I've finished 16 of the 31 categories I want to complete and written reviews for nearly all of them. However, I've gotten behind on posts for the past few weeks and since three of them seem to go together, I thought I'd write up some mini-reviews and get on with it. 

Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K. Jerome. This sequel to the beloved Three Men in a Boat has J and his friends George and Harris reunited for a summer bicycling tour through Germany. A good chunk of the book is devoted to the preparations for the trip (made more complicated by the wives and children of the three, who are not joining the party) and the usual funny asides when an incident reminds J of a funny story. Though not quite as fun as the original, this book has some great moments. It's pointless to describe them, so I'll just include one of my favorite passages. Sadly, the dog Montmorency isn't included in this story, but I had to include this bit which does include dogs.

This quote is a bit long, but it's one of my favorites from the whole book:

. . . in Germany most human faults and follies sink into comparative insignificance beside the enormity of walking on the grass.  Nowhere, and under no circumstances, may you at any time in Germany walk on the grass.  Grass in Germany is quite a fetish.  To put your foot on German grass would be as great a sacrilege as to dance a hornpipe on a Mohammedan’s praying-mat.  The very dogs respect German grass; no German dog would dream of putting a paw on it.  If you see a dog scampering across the grass in Germany, you may know for certain that it is the dog of some unholy foreigner.  

In England, when we want to keep dogs out of places, we put up wire netting, six feet high, supported by buttresses, and defended on the top by spikes.  In Germany, they put a notice-board in the middle of the place, “Hunden verboten,” and a dog that has German blood in its veins looks at that notice-board and walks away.  In a German park I have seen a gardener step gingerly with felt boots on to grass-plot, and removing therefrom a beetle, place it gravely but firmly on the gravel; which done, he stood sternly watching the beetle, to see that it did not try to get back on the grass; and the beetle, looking utterly ashamed of itself, walked hurriedly down the gutter, and turned up the path marked “Ausgang.”

As I'm currently living in Germany, I found this very amusing. Germany is a nation that takes rules and regulations extremely seriously. 

I'm counting this as my New To You Book by a Favorite Author.

Victoria: The Queen by Julia Baird. I was inspired to read this after finally watching the new Masterpiece production of Victoria, which had a lot of comments on one of my favorite non-book blogs, Frock Flicks, at which historical costume experts discuss (and sometimes destroy) historical film and TV adaptations. Yes, Lord Melbourne wasn't nearly as dishy as Rufus Sewell, but Queen Victoria was a little bit in love with him. Overall the book is well-written and engrossing, but I got a little bored with Victoria's life towards the end, but maybe there really wasn't that much to say; at that point I think the lives of her children are more interesting -- I recommend Victoria's Daughters by Jerrold M. Packer, which I reviewed a few years ago.

I'm counting this as my Book About Queen Victoria (fiction or non-fiction).

A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde. Another drawing room comedy, but with more dramatic elements. Taking place over just a couple of days at a country house party, young George Arbuthnot has just landed a plum job with the worldly and sophisticated Lord Illingworth. His mother is dead set against him taking the job, because she has a Deep Dark Secret. The third play I've read by Wilde,  and though it has some witty moments, it's my least favorite so far. Here are a few of his trademark bons mots:

“One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that, would tell one anything.”

“After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relations.”

“To get into the best society, nowadays, one has either to feed people, amuse people, or shock people - that is all!”

I'm counting this as my Play or Book of Short Stories for the Victorian Reading Challenge.

Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope. Third in the Barchester Chronicles, it's the story of Mary Thorne, the relatively poor niece of a country village doctor, and Frank Gresham, eldest son of the local squire whose family is pressuring him to marry for money. I was looking for a good audiobook and realized I could get Doctor Thorne (probably my favorite Trollope novel) via digital download from my library; also, I got my hands on a copy of the Andrew Davies TV adaptation and wanted to refresh my memory before watching the DVD -- I hope that wasn't a mistake! Nevertheless, I loved it nearly as much as when I read it the first time -- I did get a little disgusted by the snobbery and hypocrisy of the Greshams and their wealthy cousins, the DeCourcys, who believe that family connections are everything until they need a massive infusion of cash. A great story, though.

I'm counting this as my Victorian Re-Read.

So -- four more Victorians crossed off the list, only 15 left to go!

10 Random Books From My Shelves

Stolen from Simon at Stuck in a Book, here are ten random books taken from my shelves. Maybe they will give readers an insight about me. Most of them are still unread; last year we made the big move to Germany and I decided to bring mostly unread books with me, imagining that it would behoove me to make a dent in the owned-and-unread pile. (I've hardly read any -- curse you, San Antonio Public Library Digital Downloads!)

Since I used to be a librarian, they're alphabetized by author, naturally.

1. Stolz und Vorurteil by Jane Austen. I found this pretty German edition of Pride and Prejudice at Thalia, the bookstore chain that's in practically every German city. They do have an English language section but just for fun I decided to check out what classics they had translated into German. And no, I can't really read the German, but I know the novel so well that I can pretty much open any random page and figure out what's happening based on the character names and locations.

2. More Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin. I love food writing and the late Laurie Colwin is one of my favorites. More Home Cooking is a collection of her essays, mostly with recipes, some of which originally appeared in Gourmet magazine. I've owned multiple copies of this book and its predecessor, Home Cooking, and my daughter has read it so many times I finally bought her a copy of her own (a first edition). Her style is very chatty, like you're having a cup of tea with a good friend, and the recipes are good too -- her chocolate pear pudding is one of my favorite desserts and I wrote about it in one of my very first postings on this blog, back when I imagined I'd be writing about books and food. Colwin's fiction is also excellent and I've read all of it.

3. A Good Place to Hide by Peter Grose. Last year I visiting my eldest daughter in New York City and we visited Albertine, the beautiful French-English bookstore at the French Consulate on Fifth Avenue (just a short walk if you're visiting the Met). It's stunningly beautiful and they have a great selection of books in French, and books in English about France and by French authors. They even had some early editions of classic French writers. I bought A Good Place to Hide which is a nonfiction account of a village in the Loire Valley that saved 3,500 Jews during WWII. I haven't read it yet because I have to spread out WWII books or it's too depressing.

But here's the best photo I could get of the bookstore. 

It has two levels and has a beautiful mural painted on the ceiling. 

4. Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind Letters, edited by Richard Harwell. One of the perks of working at the library was that we always got first pick of the donated books before they were put into the Friends of the Library Sale. I've always been a huge fan of GWTW so I figured it was worth the $1 investment. I think I bought this in 2011 or 2012 and still haven't read it.

5. The Levant Trilogy by Olivia Manning. The second three-volume set of Manning's Fortunes of War series, this one follows Guy and Harriet Pringle as they've fled the Balkans during WWII. Of course the war spreads to the Middle East and they're caught up in it all over again, plus Manning adds some new characters. Another book I haven't started yet, but I hope to get to it this summer.

6. Cakes and Ale by W. Somerset Maugham. I'm not actually sure if I've read this or not -- I read my first Maugham, Of Human Bondage, way back in college (mostly to impress a cute boy in my dorm). I think I tried to read this one during a college summer break when I was home working at a boring job, with no friends my own age. I started reading Maugham again about ten years ago and I've loved most of his books so I couldn't resist this beautiful Vintage edition, also from Half Price Books.

7. The Lark by E. Nesbit. A new favorite of bloggers who read middlebrow women's fiction, this novel for adults by E. Nesbit was finally reprinted this year by Dean Street Press, thanks to Scott at the Furrowed Middlebrow blog. This book was nearly impossible to find until Dean Street and Scott coordinated to republish these hidden treasures. I have actually read this one and really enjoyed it, it's a bit of a fairy-tale; set in London just after WWI, cousins Jane and Lucilla have to make their own way after a rascally guardian loses most of their inheritance, except for a small cottage and a tiny income. They hit upon the idea of selling flowers from their garden and miraculously find help wherever they need it. It sounds soppy and unrealistic but it's really charming, just the thing when current events are too depressing. (And check out Scott's Middlebrow Syllabus if you want guidelines to find great middlebrow authors, though I warn you it could be dangerous to your bank balance.)

8. The Barbara Pym Cookbook by Hilary Pym and Honor Wyatt. Years ago I went to cooking school, and I worked for about five years in professional kitchens. I love cookbooks, especially those with a literary connection. Barbara Pym has a lot of food in her books and I think this cute little cookbook has the same jacket designer as her beautiful hardcover editions. I've read bits and pieces of it but I haven't tried any of the recipes yet.

9. Private Enterprise by Angela Thirkell. I started buying these nice Moyer-Bell paperback editions of Thirkell's Barsetshire series whenever I found them at the Half-Price Books in Texas, and I think I have about a dozen so far. (This one is number 16 in the series).I haven't started any as I'm rather daunted by the 32 books in the series -- I fear once I start I'll end up buying the other 20 as my library here doesn't own any and I don't know if they're available for digital download!

10. The Other Day by Dorothy Whipple. I'm a devoted follower of Simon and Rachel's podcast Tea or Books? and I was quite jealous when I heard that Rachel of Book Snob had found a copy of this memoir by Dorothy Whipple at a used bookstore for only about £4 !! So I'd been keeping my eye out for a copy and bought one from an online seller a couple of months ago. Unlike lucky, lucky Rachel I did not pay £4. It was more than I usually spend but I thought I was only going to buy 24 books this year so I felt justified (and my 24 books vow has been an utter failure -- but I still have the book! Unread of course. (And wait and see, Persephone Books will wind up publishing it, I bet.) Anyway, I'm sure I'll treasure it. And if you haven't checked out the Tea or Books? podcast, you're in for a treat.

So, that's basically me in ten random books -- some food writing, some literary biographies, a little history, a couple of classics, and a lot of middlebrow fiction -- mostly unread! Maybe this will be a good jumping off point for my 20 books of summer project.