To Be Read - Leap Day Eve 2020

As I’ve mentioned before there are a lot of unread books already on my shelves and given that and my long history of library fines I normally try to keep the flow of books going out as well as in and not let more stack up.

At the moment however I am the proud possessor of what can only be described as two (count ‘em) TBR piles. So I thought I’d share them while I have them.

On the bottom of that first pile is The Five by Haillie Rubenhold, which I've been keen to read ever since I knew it existed and was lucky enough to get for Christmas. I’ve already dipped in and been instantly intrigued by the two versions of history described. One of course was the glitz of the jubilee, the other a homelessness crisis that has now been largely forgotten. (As an ex history student I can tell you this happens a lot with the past, especially with visual evidence. Almost no-one photographs scaffolding, roadworks, abandoned sleeping bags where someone is clearly sleeping, piles of horse manure, old cola cans and the like. Similarly most fiction and quite a lot of non-fiction is about (and generally by) the comfortably off, so unless you read old newspaper reports, death stats and the literature written by people eager to change what was actually a very hard world you can get a horribly distorted idea of times past).

Next up is the Virago Writers as Readers, which I bought with a Waterstones voucher I got for Christmas. The extremely beautiful cover pulled me in and the first chapter kept me in those toils. It’s not a book I feel I can carry about though, because that cover will get ruined in my bag, and it’s quite heavy to hold in one hand while hanging onto a yellow tube pole with the other. So here it sits, waiting for the next really wet weekend I decide I’d rather stay in. Which I don’t imagine will be far away.  

Above that is My American – Stella Gibbons. This is one I am actually reading already, and although I have started others I will get back to it. Stella Gibbons is famous of course for her cheerfully satirical fantasy Cold Comfort Farm, but this is far more of a straight novel. The story introduces two main characters (Amy and Bob) who meet once, briefly, as children, and then follows their growing up in London and America separately.

So far (I’m 303 pages into a 460 page book) it’s the London story that is grabbing me. It feels as much a portrait of a place and time as of a person. Whereas the American town Gibbons describes feels a bit like Burnet in What Katy Did, only – for a long stretch at least - without the more realised characters and serious illness that sometimes struck the Carrs.

Most noticeable of all is the way everyone keeps mentioning the depression, but there are no symptoms of a depression. No-one who wants a job seems to be struggling to get one. No-one is hungry.  The other troubling thing that’s going on is the rise of the mob, but although his cousin Helen tries to burst Bob’s bubble when he insists his old childhood friend who has been running speakeasies in Detroit and Chicago had never killed anyone, it still feels like it’s not really happening. It's all off stage. 

It’s the same with the two main characters– Amy feels more real. We see her interior world and her worries and her school and the people she lives with. Bob is seen from the outside, and when it starts to go wrong is the first time he seemed interesting to me.

Then there are my Wimbledon library reads:

The Invoice - Jonas Karlsson. This looks like a darkly funny and quirky (I hate that word but it’s the most appropriate I can think of) read.  

Deep Water – Patricia Highsmith. I don’t think I’ve read any Highsmith, but can’t be 100% sure. I read a lot of books in in my teens - detective and science fiction mostly - and completely failed to take note of most of the titles or authors’ names, so every so often I read a plot summary or a first chapter and realise I already know it.

All Passion Spent – Vita Sackville West. Not sure this needs an introduction. I love Sackville-West’s garden writing, was a bit infuriated by her in Portrait of a Marriage (mostly because I felt horribly and inexorably sorry for poor pretty, selfish Violet Trefusis who everyone wanted to protect but nobody wanted to be honest with). I haven’t actually read any of her fiction so I'm curious to see what it's like.

Duplicate Death – Georgette Heyer. I’ve read a few of Heyer’s crime novels and they’re always witty, amusing reads. I haven’t read the regency romances for which she's more famous, although I did start some previously. Both a colleague at work and blogs I enjoy recommended them, and I seem to remember Stephen Fry is a fan, but despite my best efforts something just hasn’t clicked yet.

And on top of this pile is The Language of Cities – Dedjan Sudjic. This is a very easy one for the tube (which is why it’s on top – it was actually in my bag), and was also a voucher purchase from the new Waterstones in Kensington High Street, which I notice has moved closer to the station. I don’t know if the rent is less or they were refurbing anyway and think they’ll get more foot traffic. 

Kensington High Street does seem to be condensing down, and the council have been exploring other things to draw people there besides shops. So there are some quite nice benches with planters, some crossings with Bauhaus names (near the Design museum) and Japanese art (near Japan House), although as with most urban high streets it can never be truly pleasant given that it is, ultimately, a road from one busy place to another busy place.

The second pile is mostly comprised of all these Dark Tower Stephen Kings – I’ve had them ages, and they don’t actually belong to me. I did offer to return them last year when I started my course again and stalled on book 3, and was told it was fine - but they really do need to be read and go back to my brother, who is also meant to be reading them (and has also stalled) and then giving them back to someone at work.

And on top of SK we have Umberto Eco’s Five Moral Pieces which I picked up today from Kensington Central Library. This book of essays was an impulse borrow. I first picked up Deborah Levy’s Things I Don’t Want to Know – a book of essays in response to George Orwell’s Why I Write, and Eco was sitting back to back with it and caught my eye. 

Unfortunately I didn’t get to take the Levy because an alert popped up when I was checking it out and I had to bring it to the desk as someone in Pimlico had reserved it.

And on top of Eco is Allingham's Dancers in Mourning and Ben Aaronovitch’s The October Man, both from Paddington Library. I’m actually not sure if I’ve read the novella or not but I want to make sure before I read False Value - the next full book in the series, which has just come out. 

Arguably that means that False Value is technically on my TBR pile too, even though I don’t have a physical copy yet. And so it goes on..