John Mole – Arthur Hofn

My reads, not the books that came out this year…

This is the second of my look back at the books I’ve read in 2020. There were more then appears in these two blogs, some I’ve already written about, some I will do later, some I just read for fun. You can find Part One here (and last year’s batch here and here). So a new year is ahead and it’s quite exciting, I have a blank shelf again as it were. There are many books in my “To Be Read” pile but I’m sure I’ll add to it during the year; in December next year I could well be blogging about a book I’ve never heard of at this moment… well I find that interesting. Happy Reading all.

Cider With Rosie – Laurie Lee. As posted elsewhere I try to avoid knowing anything about a novel before I read it. I’d heard of this book in various places over the years and when I saw it in a second hand shop decided I’d see what it was about. The novel opens with a first person account of moving into a home in the Cotswolds at the age of three, it goes on to then describe what living in this very rural location was like. It soon became clear that this was during the First World War and as such the England that is being written about is certainly different from the one I know. Just as the author was over seeing the cusp of a dramatic change in society I too felt I was doing the same, only over one hundred years later and at a much older age than he was. One of the negative points about avoiding all spoilers is that you miss the things you are supposed to know and it wasn’t until awhile into the book that I realised that the viewpoint of the character I was following was male and not female, it was this revelation that made me do a little research and I discovered that the author’s name is LAURIE and not LAUREN as I’d been misreading it all this time! Cider With Rosie is in fact an account of his actual childhood and the first of a trilogy. The title is a mystery until you near complete the book when at only that point does it make any sense. Overall it’s beautifully written, evoking a simpler time deep in the real English countryside; very much like The Green Fool by Patrick Kavanagh, only his is in Ireland. I enjoyed it so much I’m planning on finishing reading the trilogy.

“I had learnt my first lesson, that I could not hit Vera, no matter how fuzzy her hair.”

“Eight to ten loaves came to the house every day, and they never grew dry. We tore them to pieces with their crusts still warm, and their monotony was brightened by the objects we found in them – string, nails, paper, and once a mouse; for those were days of happy-go-lucky baking.”
― Laurie Lee, Cider With Rosie

The Man In The High Castle – Philip K Dick. The concept of this 1962 novel is intriguing, set at the time of publication mainly in San Francisco (as well as some other other states in the west of what we call the USA), this is a world where the Axis Powers won the Second World War. Nazi Germany rules Europe and the eastern half of America, whilst the west is in the Japanese Empire. There is a book, forbidden in some places, that is a dystopian account of that would have happened if the Allies had won the Second World War. As a world this is very well thought out and and close enough to our own for it to feel totally alien, it’s only talk of going to colonise other planets and unrealistic rocket technology that break the spell. The concept is a good reason to read this novel. The plot, however, is… strange. Generally following the lives of a few citizens in San Francisco, it doesn’t properly lead anywhere. It does feel as if it has things to say, but doesn’t quite get to them. I believe the reason for this is because there was supposed to be a follow up that never happened. The result is with such a great concept and well built world, it feels like this should be amazing but is a missed the opportunity; still worth reading for the setting though.

“Send that,” he told her. “Sign it, et cetera. Work the sentences, if you wish, so that they will mean something.” As she started from the office he added, “Or so that they mean nothing. Whichever you prefer.”
― Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle

It’s All Greek To Me – John Mole. This was a book a friend of mine had read and years ago commented to me that it was a amusing read. I’d made a note of it and it sat in my Amazon list for nearly a decade. It came up very cheap at some point last year and so I got round to ordering it, where is sat in my “to be read pile” until I decided I needed to read something light and fun. This did fit the bill. Telling the true story of the author’s attempt to build a house (or in fact refurbish a very old house) on a Greek island not that far from Athens. It doesn’t really stretch you as a reader, it does make you feel sorry for him when you realise the size of the challenge and smile if not laugh out loud. He paints a very vivid picture of the small Greek village and the people who live there. Not quite up to Gerald Durrell’s standard but this did exactly what I wanted it to do, take me away from England and think about a simpler life, well simple by watching – I’d not actually like to take that task on.

“Where I come from money isn’t to be talked about or flaunted in front of strangers. But Ajax snatched up the wad and counted it out loud, ceremonially, slapping the notes down on the table while the witnesses mouthed the amounts. It was all so public and embarrassing.”
― John Mole, It’s All Greek to Me!

The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark. This was a book that I went through stages of hearing about quite a bit, then I’d not hear it mentioned for years only for it regularly resurface once more. I found it in a second hand bookshop for a pound so decided to give it a go. It’s… eccentric. I had no idea what to really expect and it turns out it’s about a teacher at a 1930s girl’s school in Edinburgh; not generally my go to place for stories. The teacher, the eponymous Miss Jean Brodie is obsessed with her “prime” or the peak of her life in all its ways. She mentors groups of girls in what she thinks is the best for them, but as not everyone would agree with her methods it’s all very secretive. It’s a short book, my copy is 128 pages and this is enough. It’s written from the viewpoint of one of her groups of girls and it goes on to show what became of them, but it’s not chronological. It’s not a book I think I would have read if I had not been curious as to why it keeps coming up in various places, or what people mean when they refer to it; as it is there are interesting things to think about, like what is/ was my prime and did/do I take as much appreciation of it as out title character did.

“The word ‘education’ comes from the root e from ex, out, and duco, I lead. It means a leading out. To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil’s soul. To Miss Mackay it is a putting in of something that is not there, and that is not what I call education, I call it intrusion, from the Latin root prefix in meaning in and the stem trudo, I thrust.”
― Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Buy Cider With Rosie by Laurie Lee
Buy The Man In The High Castle by Philip K Dick
Buy It’s All Greek To Me by John Mole
Buy The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark