Fidelity Giveaway and the End of Persephone Reading Weekend

I had fourteen people enter the drawing for Fidelity by Susan Glaspell!  And the winner is. . . .

Cristina from Rochester Reader!!! 

It looks like this dove-grey book will be crossing the pond back to England.  I've emailed her and hope to mail this book to its new home very soon.  Congratulations!

And here are the answers to the endpaper challenge, in case you're curious:

The Crowded Street by Winifred Holtby

The Blank Wall by Elizabeth Sanxay Holding

The Woman Novelist and Other Stories by Diana Gardener

How To Run Your Home Without Help by Kay Smallshaw

The Young Pretenders by Edith Henrietta Fowler

I haven't read any of these but I want to read all of them -- and I'm tempted to buy them for the beautiful endpapers!  Thanks again to everyone who entered the giveaway. 

If you didn't win and you have a Region 1 DVD player, there's still time to enter my other giveaway for the delightful film adaptation of Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, which has been extended until Midnight tonight, U.S. Central Standard Time.  I was so busy reading this weekend (and watching the Oscars -- that I still haven't had time for the second viewing, but I know I'll be watching it again soon.  And it's practically spring break, so I'll have extra time for reading.

And what a great weekend for reading Persephones!  I posted three Persephone book reviews, read another Persephone (Little Boy Lost), and discovered so many great blogs!  (I actually read two of the Persephones earlier in the week and saved the reviews for the weekend -- plus they were both really fast reads).  And I was so inspired by all the great reviews I went to the local college library and checked out two more Persephones -- Brook Evans by Susan Glaspell and A London Child of the 1870s by Molly Hughes.  I really have no business checking out library books when I still have almost 200 unread books on my shelf but I had to return A Woman's Place and I couldn't help browsing, that library has so many great books and so many of them are first editions -- how could I leave without checking something out?

I hope everyone enjoyed Persephone Reading Weekend.  Many, many thanks to Claire and Verity for organizing this, for all the roundup posts and for the great giveaways!  I'm already thinking about what I would read next time around.

Flush by Virginia Woolf

I'd been planning for weeks to start reading Flush, and finally it was time.  It's in the Persephone catalog, so it was top on my TBR list for that reason; also, Amanda from The Zen Leaf chose it for me last year in our first-ever Reading Swap.  And it's been sitting around on my TBR shelf for a couple of years now, so my timing was perfect. 

Now that it is time to put words on the blog I find I'm at a bit of a loss.  This is a short little book about a dog written by Virginia Woolf; specifically, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's dog.  Ostensibly, it is a biography, but is it about a dog or a poet?  Or is it just an excuse to start reading Virginia Woolf, who scares me?


Flush is not a hard read, and I suppose it's not one of the Woolfs that is studied and discussed and analyzed extensively by the literati.  (Which I am not, believe me!)  It begins when young Flush is given as a gift by his owner to Ms. Barrett (not yet Mrs. Browning), an invalid.  He must give up his days of sniffing and running and exploring the outdoors to be the indoor companion of this bedridden poet.  He loves her and becomes extremely protective and suspicious of Mr. Browning, and he is along for the ride during their elopement and marriage and journeys to Italy and back.  The story moves back and forth in places between his point of view and that of his owner.  

I know next to nothing about Elizabeth Barrett Browning but now I am intrigued by her life as well.  I do remember Browning and Flush are included in a book called Shaggy Muses, which is a nonfiction work about the lives of several women writers and their pets.

Like the life of a dog, Flush is sadly short.  This was the first of Woolf's fiction that I really liked, and I wish I'd had more of it to read.  I am glad, however, that the ending wasn't terribly sad -- there are so many tearjerking stories about beloved pets these days, I really did not want to cry at the end of this book.

Virginia Woolf seems to be all over the blogs the past couple of weeks.  My good friend Amanda was baffled by Orlando; Carolyn at A Few of My Favorite Books brought To the Lighthouse to Florida for a beach read!  To the Lighthouse has been sitting on my shelves unread as long as Flush, but it scares me -- it's such a short little book but I've heard it's challenging.  Stream-of-consciousness is not really my thing.  

The endpapers from the Persephone edition of Flush

I did read Mrs. Dalloway and was underwhelmed, but that was a few years ago when I had just started reading classics.  Maybe I didn't know enough about her work to appreciate it.  Last year, my classics book group at the library read A Room of One's Own, which I quite liked, but that's really a long essay, so I don't know I'd like her fiction.


This probably isn't the best review I've written, but I feel like I don't know enough about Woolf or her writing to think of something clever and insightful.  I would love to hear other people's thoughts -- how does this compare to other works by Virginia Woolf?  Should I take the plunge and read To the Lighthouse or start with something a little easier?

This is my third book for Persephone Reading Weekend, hosted by Verity and Claire.  Check out their blog links for more thoughts on Persephone books!

A Woman's Place: 1910-1975 and Another Giveaway!

I have so much to post about, so I'm going to have to make this review a little short. I've been lucky enough to find some a copy of A Woman's Place: 1910-1975 at one of my local college libraries, so I snapped it up this week.  I thought it would be the perfect thing for Persephone Reading Week: some nonfiction for more background about the period covered by so many of my Persephone favorites.

A Woman's Place is a great quick read.  If you're interested at all in the social history of women's roles in Britain, I highly recommend it.  It starts with the period just before WWI, and covers women's suffrage, the war efforts, the fight for equal pay, and so much more.  My American edition was a short read, just over 200 pages (though the Persephone edition is listed as 352 pages -- maybe larger margins?) Either way, it was a very absorbing read.  I'm sure there are books which go into much more depth about these periods -- there's really only a chapter each about each decade, so there's a lot covered for such a short book.  But it's a great overview.  I learned quite a lot, much of which annoyed and infuriated me.  For example,the British government refused to give nurses professional status during WWI, because it might detract from that of the men, resulting in a severe shortage of untrained nurses and hospitals after the battles at Marne, Ypres, and Neuve Chapelle, at which thousands of young men died.

I could go on and on and pick out a lot more fascinating facts and statistics from the book, but I did want to let everyone know about my second giveaway!  In honor of Persephone Reading Week, I'm giving away a copy of the DVD adaptation of Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day, my first Persephone, which is still one of my favorites.  The movie does digress from the original plot a little, but I think that Frances McDormand and Amy Adams really captured the essence and spirit of Miss Pettigrew and Miss LaFosse -- and I will always love Ciaran Hinds!  I'm planning another viewing tonight in honor of PRW.

Unfortunately, I'll have to limit the giveaway to the U.S. and Canada, simply because it is a Region 1 DVD (so if the winner was in Europe, it just wouldn't work -- sorry!)

If you'd like to enter the drawing, please answer the following in the comments:  which is your favorite Persephone so far, and why?  If you haven't read a Persephone, which one do you want to read?  Please leave an email contact in the comment if you don't automatically link to your blog. 

The contest is open through Midnight, Monday, February 28 (U.S. Central Standard Time).  I'll select a winner at random from all eligible entries, and post the results on Tuesday!  Good luck and happy reading!

I'm having such a wonderful time reading all the Persephone postings.  Many thanks again to Claire and Verity for organizing this, and for all their hard work.

Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple

At last, Persephone Reading Weekend!  I knew I had to read at least one book this weekend by Dorothy Whipple.  After I read The Priory last December, I knew I wanted to read more of her books, and I got three for Christmas! When it came time to choose the next one I just decided to go with the one I'd bought first.  I know this isn't everyone's favorite Whipple, but I just loved it. I loved everything about it -- except the characters I hated, but I was supposed to hate them.

Essentially, this is a story about a marriage in 1950s Britain, and how it suddenly dissolves.  Avery and Ellen North are an upper-class couple living in the country outside London.  He's in publishing but has inherited wealth; she's a busy housewife who loves to garden, and they have two lovely children.  The oldest, Hugh, is doing compulsory military service before he goes off to university, and the younger, Anne is a horse-crazy teenager at boarding school.  On the surface, they seem like the ideal family.

However, Mr. North's widowed mother, who is wealthy and lives in a large estate, is dissatisfied.  No one's giving her enough attention, so she answers an advertisement from a young Frenchwoman, Louise, and hires her to come and stay as a sort of live-in companion and French tutor.  Louise is bored to death living in a provincial town, and angry at having been thrown over by her secret lover for a more socially advanced fiancee.  Staying with the Dowager North is her ticket out.  She is an interloper, and one thing leads to another, but in a really interesting way.

The beautiful endpapers from the dove-grey Persephone edition
(which, sadly, I do not own).

If you read Dorothy Whipple expecting a lot of plot or action, you will be disappointed, as they're extremely character-driven.  But somehow I never notice this.  Her characters are so beautifully realized that I get sucked in to their world and I want to know more about them.  Even though not much happens on the surface, this book raises a lot of questions about marriages and family dynamics, and what motivates people to do the things they do.  Whipple is really good at getting into characters and letting the reader in on what makes them tick.  They're really dimensional -- when she's writing about the characters you're meant to dislike, she is somehow still able to make them somewhat sympathetic.

My one complaint about this book was that so much time was spent setting up the story and developing the characters, the ending seemed a little rushed in comparison.  After two Whipples, I'm beginning to suspect endings might not be her strong point; in retrospect, I realized The Priory had the same problem.  I did like that it was somewhat ambivalent, and not a completely Hollywood happy ending.  It left open the possibility that the characters might be happy, someday.

I really wish my library had this book and that there were enough copies that I could recommend it for a book group, because I think it would be great for a discussion.  This is a book that I will probably buy and give as gifts to other people, simply so I can discuss it with someone else.  My mother is coming to visit in a couple of weeks and I'm quite sure I will be forcing this on her so we can discuss it -- hopefully before she leaves!  If we do, I'll post her thoughts as well. Mom, if you're reading this, prepare for a guest posting.

This is one of the ten Persephone Classics that are available in here in the U.S.  You might not be able to walk into Barnes & Noble and find it on the shelf, but you can order it online without too much trouble.

P.S. I'll be writing about Persephones all weekend, and don't forget about my dove-grey giveaway in the previous post!  I'm planning another giveaway this weekend as well, so please check back.

Persephone Reading Weekend Giveaway

The beautiful endpapers of Fidelity by Susan Glaspell

I'm so excited about Persephone Reading Weekend, which starts tomorrow.  So, I thought it would be  the perfect time for a dove-grey giveaway!!  Due to a mix-up last year from an online book retailer, I accidentally received two copies of a a dove-grey Persephone: Fidelity by Susan Glaspell (which is sadly still unread on my TBR shelf).  According to the Persephone catalog, Fidelity is a "1915 novel by a Pulitzer-prize winning writer brilliantly describing the long-term consequences of a girl in Iowa running off with a married man."

I've heard so many good things about it, I thought this would be the perfect time to share, so I'm giving away my extra copy!  But I'm going to make it a little challenging.  Since Persephones are known for their beautiful endpapers, I thought I'd incorporate that into the challenge.  I'll choose the winner at random from anyone who can correctly identify the following Persephone endpapers by the deadline:

Don't leave your guesses in the comments; instead, email me at karenlibrarian13 [at] yahoo [dot] com.  And be sure and put the name of your blog in the email so I can link to it in the announcement if you win!  The contest is open world-wide, and it will be open until Midnight Sunday, February 27, U.S. Central Standard Time, and I'll post the results Monday morning, same time zone.  Good luck and happy reading!

Villette Readalong Week 3

Week Three of the Villette Readalong is upon us!  I apologize for posting this early, but I'm getting ready for Persephone Reading Weekend and I have a lot of posting to do.   It's actually been about a week since I finished this section, so if I mix up any of my facts, please forgive me.

So, this week, we're discussing Chapters 12 through 17.  At first was going to start out by writing that not much happens, but now that I look back, I suppose it does.  I'll explain.

Lucy has settled into her role as English teacher in the school and spends a lot of time observing everyone else around her.  She spends a lot of evenings sitting outside in one of the school's walled gardens, and one evening she finds a mysterious little package that someone has thrown over the wall.  Dr. John is spending a lot more time at the school -- ostensibly to take care of Madame Beck's children, but does he have ulterior motives?  Madame certainly seems to have a crush on him.

Ginevera Fanshaw is still playing games with all her suitors, which makes me want to smack her even more.  She's starting to annoy me as much as Cathy from Wuthering Heights (and I do realize they're different Bronte sisters, but I always lump them in together.  I can't help it).  Anyhow, Ginevera is playing two suitors off one another -- one is a French officer and another is a mysterious man she only refers to as "Isidore."  That is a truly unfortunate name for an alias.

There's also a somewhat interesting section in which Lucy is pressed into acting a part in a play for the annual school fete -- actually, in man's part, which makes her sort of uncomfortable.  Monsieur Paul, a very overbearing sort of teacher, basically strong-arms her into taking the part at the last minute, going so far as to lock her in an attic without food and water so she can learn her lines.  I can't imagine anyone putting up with that kind of treatment -- I would have been so angry I would have refused to be in his silly play at all.  (But I am not a 20-year-old English teacher in a 19th century novel, so of course this helps to advance the plot.)  Naturally, she's playing opposite Ginevera.  To her surprise, Lucy really enjoys the play:

What I felt that night, and what I did, I no more expected to feel and do, than to be lifted in a trance to the seventh heaven.  Cold reluctant, apprehensive, I had accepted a part to please another: ere long, warming, becoming interested, taking courage, I acted to please myself. 

However, the next day she has regrets and resolves never to do it again:

A keen relish for dramatic expression had reveal itself as part of my nature; to cherish and delight, but it would not do for a mere looker-on at life: the strength and longing must be put by; and I put them by, and fastened them in with the lock of a resolution which neither Time nor Temptation has since picked.

I'm not really into literary analysis, since I'm writing this for fun and not a class assignment, but I definitely get the idea this is an important section and one that would be discussed and analyzed if this was a literature class.   In general, Lucy seems to spend a lot more time watching than doing. Maybe this is because it's a later, more mature novel than Jane Eyre, but it seems to me this book is much more character-driven than plot driven, much more internal and philosophical.  I wonder if this passage signals that Lucy was tempted stop being so passive, but realizes it's not in her nature (which would surprise me because she took charge and moved to France and got a job); or, if it signals that she's ready to change and take charge of her life.  We shall see.

Before the close of this section, Lucy has a crisis of nerves and falls into a fever -- what is it with the mysterious fevers people fell into in those days?  Is it just a literary device?  Obviously they didn't have the medical knowledge of today but it seems like literary characters seem to mysteriously fall into a fever at convenient plot points, after a tragedy or broken heart or what have you.  Anyway, Lucy is naturally saved and when she comes to, the reader is presented with another of those fabulous and unbelievable coincidences of Victorian literature.  I'll say no more.

Persephone Decisions

I'm so excited about Persephone Reading Weekend which starts this Friday!  I have a lovely stack of dove-grey books I haven't read yet, plus a couple of Persephone Classics and a few books from the library. Altogether I have ten unread Persephones on my owned-and-unread shelf but I've narrowed the week's fiction choices down to six:

• Family Roundabout by Richmal Crompton
• Consequences by E. M. Delafield
• Fidelity by Susan Glaspell
• Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski
• Saplings by Noel Streatfeild
• Flush by Virginia Woolf

[I also have three Dorothy Whipples on my TBR shelf, but I'm saving those; I just finished Someone at a Distance and I have to ration the Whipples out!  Plus The Winds of Heaven by Monica Dickens but I'm saving that one too. . . I loved Mariana so I'm saving her other book for a comfort read. ]

I also have three possible nonfiction choices, from various libraries: 

• A Woman's Place: 1910-1975 by Ruth Adam
• The Carlyles at Home by Thea Hume
• Julian Grenfell by Nicholas Moseley

 I'm hoping to read one nonfiction plus at least one fiction, maybe two.  I'll also be posting my review of Someone at a Distance . . . and I have two giveaways planned!  I'd love some feedback on my possible reads.  And what's everyone else reading?  I look forward to reading all the blogs and adding lots to my TBR list.

Dumbed-Down Book Covers

The other day, when I was making my weekly post for the Villette Read-A-Long, I was searching the internet for an attractive cover so the post wouldn't look so boring.   I loved the cover I chose, which is one of a series for Vintage Classics:

Elegant and classy, I thought.  So I began to look for more.  Here are some more of the covers in the same series, which I find so beautiful that when I see them in the bookstore that I am tempted to buy them (despite the fact that I have multiple copies of some of these books, like Pride and Prejudice).  I particularly like the Jane Austen covers, especially Persuasion. 

I'm no expert on art or graphics or whatnot, but I think they're simply stunning.   But when I was searching the internet, here's what I kept finding: 

I'm not sure but it looks like Vintage has abandoned the beautiful and classy covers for something more cartoony.  In fact, these covers look suspiciously like they're meant to attract lovers of chick-lit.  Seriously, does the world NEED more book covers with stylized illustrations of young women and their fashion accessories??  

And after my recent review of Barbara Pym's Excellent Women I found these new paperback British editions of her books, which confirms my suspicions:

Apparently, Barbara Pym's works are now 1950s chick-lit, either about housewives having trouble with their husbands or career girls looking for husbands.  Or perhaps this is a nod to the popularity of Mad Men, one of my favorite television shows -- the woman in the top cover reminds me of Betty Draper and the girl in the bottom looks just like Peggy Olson! These are from Virago Books, once known for their eye-catching and distinctive green covers with lovely artwork.   I find this trend so disappointing.  It's good literature, must publishers dress it up like lousy chick?  I admit I'm a bit of a book snob, but why do I get the feeling they're trying to dumb these books down to attract more readers?  Or am I just reading too much into this?  

Villette Readalong Week 2

So, Villette, chapters six through eleven.  I had some real momentum while reading this the past couple of weeks and I'm way ahead, up to chapter 20.  Either I need to slow down my reading or starting writing posts as I read, because I'd almost forgotten what I'm supposed to be posting about.

After a brief review, I remember that this is the part in which Lucy makes a life-altering decision.  After going to London on her own in search of work (which I think is pretty gutsy for such a young girl) she decides to travel to France to look for a job teaching English.  She doesn't know a soul in France but on the crossing she meets a young girl, Ginevra Fanshawe, who is at a French school in a town called Villette (hence, the title) and Lucy decides to go there to look for work.  Upon arriving at the town at a late hour, she luckily encounters an Englishman man who gives her directions a reputable inn; however, she gets lost, and serendipitously finds Madame Beck's school for girls.

Though Lucy has no references and little experience, Madame Beck sizes her up and decides to give her a shot as a nursery-governess.  Much of the weeks' reading are about Lucy's experiences at the school and a great description of Madame Beck, who is kind of a tough lady making her way in what is still largely a man's world.  Lucy and Madame Beck don't exactly like one another, but it's obvious that there's a lot of grudging respect between the two.  Eventually, Lucy works her way up in the school, teaches more advanced students and apparently becomes pretty fluent in French.  The Englishman reappears, and so does the young lady from the boat, Ginevra.

So far this was my favorite section.  We got a lot of background and character development, especially Madame Beck.  I don't know if I like her exactly -- she's tough, but not quite a villainess -- and I think that's how Bronte wants the reader to feel.  I still don't know that I've gotten to Lucy very well, though I admire her guts -- first, she's gone to London on her own; then, she travels to a foreign country without any contacts or prospects, found herself a job; and now she's taken control of some uppity French students.  There's a great scene [MILD SPOILER ALERT!] in which Lucy is thrown into a situation substituting for the teacher of 60 teenaged girls, not much younger than herself, and she knows if she gives them an inch they'll walk all over her.  She has to show them that she's in control, and she takes a sassy student and locks her in a closet.  Well done!

I've now read about 40% of Villette but there's a lot left to go.  I'll try to catch up and write posts as I'm reading from now on  -- hopefully I won't lose momentum if I slow down a bit.  This book isn't quite as engaging as Jane Eyre, but I'm willing to give it more time.

I'm reading this as part of Unputdownables Villette Read-A-Long. Visit the link if you'd like to read more thoughts on this book.

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym

You know what I just love about reading?  When you find a book and you get so into it that you can't stop reading it, and it's just as wonderful as you hoped -- and then, you find out that this author has written a whole bunch of other books.  And then you want to rush to the library or the bookstore or online and order all of them, right now!

Well, that's how I felt about Excellent Women by Barbara Pym.  It was short and charming and I loved the main character, and it really made me think.  It's British domestic fiction, but it's not at all cutesy or twee.  Why did I wait so long to read this book?  I bought it more than two years ago, and though I didn't finish it in time for Virago Reading Week, I'm so glad it was a the top of my TBR list.

But now that I've been babbling, I suppose a brief description would be an order.  So.  Set in in London in the 1950s, Mildred Lathbury is a thirtysomething spinster, a clergyman's daughter and "excellent woman" who spends a lot of time volunteering at the local vicarage and generally doing good works.  She lives alone in a small flat, in what seems to be the verge of genteel poverty -- she only works part-time and doesn't seem to get much to eat.  Mildred's life gets shaken up when some new people move into her building, a young couple called the Napiers.  The wife Helena is an anthropologist and her husband arrives later, a rather dashing young naval officer who'd been posted in Italy.  Mildred gets slowly sucked into their somewhat tumultuous marriage, sort of acting as a go-between.

Mildred's other best friends are the Malorys: Julian, the parish vicar (whom, it is generally believed, is a perfect match for Mildred) and his sister, Winifred, who lives at the parish and keeps house for them.  Winifred and Julian decide to convert their attic into a flat to let, and things get interesting when an attractive young widow, Allegra Gray, moves in.  Her late husband was also a clergyman and she has definite ideas about how things should be run so things in the parish get complicated as well.

The novel doesn't have a whole lot of action, but the characters are so well-drawn I was quickly sucked in to the minutia of life in 1950s England.  Pym has been described as a modern-day Jane Austen but what really struck me was that Mildred didn't really remind me so much of one of Austen's heroines as much as Austen herself -- I think if Jane had been living in 1950s England, she would have been very much like Mildred: unmarried, a clergyman's daughter, quietly and wryly observing the lives of the people in her parish.  Though Excellent Women is set in London, it definitely had a the feeling of village life to it.

I grew to love Mildred and her observations, and now I want to read everything by Barbara Pym -- but now I'm annoyed at myself for waiting so long to read this book.  I'm also annoyed that I'm in the middle of the TBR Dare and I am not allowed to check out books at all.   So I'll have to wait until April, but luckily my library has ten more of her books, though I can definitely see myself wanting to own all of them.