An Armchair By The Sea

Monday, 25 June 2012

Some thoughts about A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

This is going to be a very short opinion piece, rather than a review, because I am beyond all kinds of knackered right now. I know that isn’t an excuse (although to be fair, I’ve suddenly developed a huge baby bump from who knows where and have a small person attacking me pretty much 16 hours a day, plus working full time at a job that requires me to stand for 8 hours), but I just finished the sequel to A Discovery of Witches today, and I really want to talk about that, so really the writing of this review was to pave the way for that one, which will be epic, because there is even more science and history and geeky academic stuff I love in the second book...

Disclosure: I didn’t want to read A Discovery of Witches for ages because it sounded like it was going to be like Twilight. It isn’t. And that is all I am going to say about that series of teen vampire books from now on.

Basic synopsis of A Discovery of Witches, in case there’s anybody left out there who hasn’t read it yet, is thus:

Diana Bishop, a young scholar of alchemy, and also a witch, accidentally calls up an enchanted manuscript in Oxford’s Bodeleian Library. She’s been trying to avoid using her magic and so she sends the book back to the stacks and thinks no more of it, until a host of strange creatures begin to appear in Oxford, headed by the vampire Matthew Clairmont...

Initially (by which I mean within the first two pages) I was a bit jarred by A Discovery of Witches’ casual assumption that the reader will believe in the existence of witches, daemons, and vampires. There is no ‘you’re a wizard, Harry’ moment here. Diana Bishop is a witch from day one, she just doesn’t want to be. One of the most important things about novels of this kind is how successfully they manage to suspend your disbelief, and speaking as a person who tends to roll my eyes at the merest hint of anything even a little cliché, reading a book which initially seems like it’s subscribing to the above mentioned vampire mania, this book did that incredibly well. I got absorbed despite myself, and by a couple of chapters in I wasn’t finding anything at all to roll my eyes at.

The biggest thing about A Discovery of Witches is that it is really well written. The plot is well thought-out and it’s very pacy. Also it helps that they mention food a lot. I like books which mention food, and I love the fact that it’s about vampirism and witchcraft but talks about them in a totally scientific way. Deborah Harkness grounds her magic in reality, which is what made it so great for me. The world of vampires, daemons and witches is one which is pretty much as believable as the world of Harry Potter is to me (and I do secretly still think Hogwarts exists...), and I don’t think I’ve said that about a novel like this since then...

Please forgive the total crapness of this post. I felt the need to say something about this amazing book, but I'm not the most coherent at the moment. The next one will be better, I promise!

Wednesday, 20 June 2012

Review (ish): - The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte

So I wrote a post about how much I loved the first half of this book earlier in the week, and as part of my birthday splurge I went and bought a copy of Agnes Grey, which should give you some kind of hint as to how the rest of the book went.

I won’t say it until I’ve read Agnes Grey, but after finishing The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne is definitely in the lead as my favourite Bronte. As I’ve said, there are elements of the Austenian in Tenant, but what I liked most about it was that while the ending was pretty much what I expected it to be, along the way a lot of things which I didn’t expect happened. Also, I’m not sure how she does it, but the main character, Helen Huntingdon, could so easily be a total pain, but somehow she just isn’t. I really liked her; she has a bit of a difficult time because she seems to feel that she constantly has to atone for the mistake she has made in marrying her husband and then running away from him by pretty much continually making herself depressed, but she's got a huge amount of guts.

I can see how The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was more than a bit scandalous when it was published. I don’t want to spoil it for people who have yet to read it (because you should all read it, right now), but basically Helen’s husband is not very nice, quite aggressive and has very questionable morals, and she scandalizes society by leaving him and taking her child with her. Reading it from the 21st century, my thinking was that if her husband was going to do all the appalling things he does then of course she would leave and take her child, as she was obviously the more competent parents. But then I started thinking from a Victorian point of view, and realised how much of a major event her leaving him actually is.

Jillian wrote a brilliant post about this book this week, a lot of which I totally agree with and I don’t just want to repeat what she’s said in a less effective manner, so you should probably go check out her post. Basically though, life for a Victorian woman married to a less than nice man, could be a bit crap as they didn’t actually have any rights and everything that they had (including their children and themselves) legally belonged to their husbands. So really Helen is being incredibly brave by running away with her child, so that he won’t be influenced by his father’s negative attitudes and learn bad habits.I think it was the Little Women lover in me who really liked this passage from quite early on in the book, where Helen is talking about teaching her son, Arthur to dislike wine:

"I will clear as many stones from his path as I can, and teach him to avoid the rest- or walk firmly over them, as you say- for when I have done my utmost, in the way of clearance, there will still be plenty left to exercise all the agility, steadiness, and circumspection he will ever have."

Immediately before this, she is being ridiculed by the Markhams, as they say that her child will never make a proper man if she doesn't allow him to overcome temptation for himself. I like the recognition of all the trials that life can present, and that she isn't sticking her head in the sand over the possiblities that could be open to her child. Ultimately, we are all responsible for our own actions, but there is no reason not to help each other, as she tries to do with her child, and even with her impossible husband, throughout the book. I really like the idea, present throughout the book, that we can influence our lives through our actions. A lot of people nowadays seem to be content not to take any responsibility for themselves and to blame all their problems on other people, and I think it's partly the attitude of self -improvement and self-sufficiency of attitude which draws me to the Victorians, and especially the Brontes, as writers.

In The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Helen Huntingdon is in a terrible situation, and so she removes herself and her son from it, in a time when doing so was actually illegal, and more than that, she actually supports them both as an artist by selling her work. She is kind of awesome.

I feel I've got a bit off-topic, but this is a book that inspires a strong emotional response. While there were things about it which annoyed me - mostly Eliza Markham and a few other characters who just seemed so overly excited by gossiping about other people's misfotune - I really enjoyed the plot, and I loved to hate Arthur Huntingdon the elder. Stylistically, the writing is great. Really fluid and engrossing, and I really never wanted to put the book down. Also, it has a happy ending, and I liked that Anne Bronte allows the reader to see what happens beyond the wedding, at least a little bit.

I did a course in Women Writers of Victorian Literature at University, but the only books I remember reading for it (and I know for sure there were more than this!) are Wuthering Heights and Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. I feel like I've really not read enough of the Victorians, and reading The Tenant of Wildfell Hall made me want to read more. I have North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell on my shelf and it's also on a lot of my challenge lists for this year, so maybe I'll read that next. I'd love to get to Dickens, but we have such a difficult relationship that I don't want to kid myself by saying that I will.

Tuesday, 19 June 2012

Tomorrow, I will be a quarter of a century old..

Or as certain people prefer to call it, celebrating my silver life anniversary :-/ Rhys (who is horrendous at keeping secrets) has already given me some presents. These include:

Fables Volume 5:Mean Seasons by Bill Willingham

An awesome Phantom of the Opera silver bookmark

The soundtrack to The Muppets movie, which is beyond all kinds of amazing.

He also made me this:

I did the lettering (badly, its been a while since I've used writing icing...) but in case you can't tell, it's a big rectangular chocolate cake, iced with white icing (for the middle of the book) and black icing (for the cover), and he has made a replica of the circus tent from the cover of my version of The Night Circus, which, in case you missed all the raving I've been doing about it, is like my favourite book of the last long time...

This is the best birthday cake I've had since I was around ten or so I think. I literally jumped up and down when he showed it to me.

I do have the day off tomorrow (because Wednesday, by happy coincidence, is my regular day off anyway), but I won't be seeing family until the weekend when I'm having an epically awesome cake party. Cross your fingers for good weather - we're planning a kind of Mad Hatters Tea Party type event. My sisters collect tea pots and we generally fill them with various concoctions of both alcoholic and non alcoholic varieties, and people are bringing different kinds of cake. If I get my act together I'm taking carrot cake and Mars Bar brownies.

But yes, tomorrow we have bookshop related plans.... Armed with a £20 note from my grandma (who never forgets!), we are hitting the charity shops along the coast and eventually plan to arrive in Whitstable for yet more outings to two of my favourite bookshops in the world, and also discovering lunch along the way. In the evening we're going to see Dark Shadows at our local cinema, which only charges us £5 and has £1 popcorn, so just general win :-)

Day off with my lovely hubby, cheap bookshops, guilt free money to spend on said books, amazing cake, and Johnny Depp. Now all I have to do is hope the sun shines...

Friday, 15 June 2012

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte (Part 1...)

The baby is making me dizzy again and I have been sent home from work under orders to lie down and rest. Obviously this means I have to read, and what I'm currently reading is The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte. I haven't finished it yet, but I am absolutely dying to talk about it. Although I hardly ever post about books before finishing them, I just can't restrain myself any longer! I ADORE this book, and what's more, it evens out my tally of Bronte books I've read; Charlotte Bronte - 1 (Jane Eyre - love it), Emily Bronte - 1 (Wuthering Heights - a little weird and not at all what Kate Bush and popular culture led me to believe, but still great), and now Anne Bronte, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. (On looking back at the stats I'm surprised - I thought I'd read more Bronte, but maybe it's just that Jane Eyre was the first classic I ever loved, and Wuthering Heights took up so much space in my brain trying to figure out what on earth was going on and why would he dig her up after she was dead and stuff??!)

When I was on my honeymoon last September, we visited the Parsonage at Haworth and I fell in love.

Okay, I know it's a bad photo, but I'm not the greatest of photographers at the best of times and I seem to have spectacularly failed during this particular trip. I also failed to take a picture of Anne Bronte's headstone in Scarborough... :-/ But anyway, if you're ever in the region (and I know that some of you are because 'the region' is where you live!) then I strongly urge you to go. It's just amazingly inspirational. They have loads of original Bronte artefacts and tonnes of information about the family which is really interesting, as well as some original manuscripts. You can also do a walk from there to the moors, which we didn't do because it was ridiculously windy, but which I really want to do next time we go - I keep pointing at pictures of moorland lately and saying stupid things to Rhys, like 'look, moors!'. He just looks at me till I stop.

So back to the point of this (although to be honest 'the moors' kind of are the point...) - Wildfell Hall. I'm currently about half way through the book and the thing I'm adoring most is that Anne Bronte just doesn't seem to be interested in writing characters for people to love. It's also not as clear cut as Jane Austen - the characters are not necessarily either good or bad,but feel like real people. Yes, some are fairly clearly not good people, but most are just human with good and bad traits who often do thoughtless and silly things, like Gilbert Markham, who occassionally reacts to things in an entirely inappropriate manner. For instance, you're angry with another man, of course the appropriate response is to smack him over the head with your whip and knock him off his horse. Then, when you see that he's bleeding, you should absolutely just ride off and leave him, before coming back, offering assistance, and then taking offence and leaving again when the man you've just nearly killed quite reasonably doesn't want your help. WHAT?! I'll be honest - up until this point (and even after it), I quite liked the guy, but really wouldn't it have been easier to just explain why you're angry and talk it out like civilized people rather than acting like a child - a child with a big whip, admittedly but still a child.

I also love the style of her writing. During the first part of the novel, during which Mrs Graham and her son Arthur have come to live at Wildfell Hall and have come under scrutiny from the local community, I have turned over so many pages which contain memorable passages I want to use in my review that I was seriously tempted to grab a pencil and go back to uni habits of annotating the book - something I haven't done in years. I don't know much about The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, because every time I try to read up on its' background I get some kind of epic spoiler on what will happen in the rest of the book, except that when it was published (in 1848), it became an instant success, but that many people disagreed with the subject matter, which was quite a bit ahead of its' time. I am only just getting into the heart of that subject matter at the moment I think, and I can't wait to find out what actually will happen. Helen Huntingdon (Mrs Graham's actual name) is just beginning to discover the kind of person her husband Arthur is, and their relationship is already difficult. I love it so far because I can totally buy it - she loves him because of his energy, because he is wild and unpredictable and exciting, and she still believes that she can change him. I think that there are a lot of people in relationships, even today, who know what it is to have the 'oh but he could be so much better and I'm sure he'll change because he loves me' thing going on. I know I have in the past (although thankfully long before I met the hubby!).

Basically I have nothing but good things to say about this novel, and I really hope it stays that way! It's reminded me how much I love Victorian literature, and all the reasons why I was so desperate to participate in Allie's Victorian Celebration!

The book is also on my lists for the 2012 Mount TBR Challenge, A Classics Challenge and The Classics Club, so many birds are being killed with one stone, to use a horrible metaphor!

Sunday, 10 June 2012

Sunday Stuff

I apparently am in the mood for writing, and I thought I should probably take the opportunity to post some at least vaguely book related things here :-) So I thought I'd do a 'books I've recently acquired' post, because I haven't done one of those for ages.

This week I was super proud of myself because I realised that I have actually gone a whole six months without buying anything from Amazon, thus making my boycott entirely successful so far, and it's not even been that painful. It's also been a hell of a lot better for my wallet, although I may reassess this opinion in a minute when I go through what I've acquired so far in June, which just to put it in perspective for myself (as I seem to have a problem whereby I always believe we're much further through a month than is actually the case), we are only ten days into... So. Here goes:

The top two are Tintin titles: The Seven Crystal Balls and The Calculus Affair, which we got for Rhys as he was feeling nostalgic and loved the movie. Also because we went into Harbour Books, which I'm sure I've raved about before, and all of their Tintin books were £2.99 brand new, so that was exciting! Also from Harbour Books I got Yoga for Pregnancy in the vain hope that it will make me be at least vaguely active and not just lie on the sofa every night after work moaning about how tired I am!

The Beautiful and Damned and Flappers and Philosophers by F. Scott Fitzgerald both came from the lovely Ellie, as an RAK and because she saw that I've been a bit down lately and wanted to cheer me up :-) She is seriously lovely, thanks again!

Paper Towns by John Green was also an RAK from Claire, and I'm really excited to read it! Thanks Claire!

The next three books are all from the other amazing bookshop in Whitstable, Oxford Street Books, which is a second hand bookshop that has recently expanded even more onto a second floor! I love the place, its like a cave of wonders, and the owners are so on top of their stock. Ask them for anything and they know if they have it and where it is in the shop. It's pretty impressive!

Size 12 is Not Fat by Meg Cabot - I've been eyeing this up for a while and it was 95p so I couldn't resist any longer!

Where Three Roads Meet by Salley Vickers is part of the Canongate Myth Series. It's a reworking of the Oedipus Myth and sounds great.

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga - I kept seeing this in Waterstone's and finally succumbed. Again, 95p so not bad!

Also at car boot sales this morning I got a beautiful hardback copy of Charlotte's Web for 50p, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce, which I need to read for The Classics Club, and (ridiculously excited about this one!), a copy of Scarlett Thomas' Going Out. I already own it, but it's gone straight into my present drawer for when we get to Christmas!

Books aside, we've got a little windowsill garden going which we're really pleased with! We have four tomato plants, a strawberry plant, a sweet pepper plant and coriander and basil which we grew from seeds. The basil makes the room smell gorgeous and we have the first strawberry from our plant which we're going to eat later, just because we're so proud of ourselves. It doesn't even matter that it's one strawberry between two of us - we're both notoriously bad at gardening so we're really excited that we've managed to not kill things! Also, I have basil drying in my airing cupboard, which is lovely :-)

Happy Sunday, everybody!

Friday, 8 June 2012

Why Book Blogging is Amazing...

I'm edging my way back to a place where I'm hoping to be able to put some real content on the blog, rather than just lists, link - ups, and apologies. Ironically since I posted my update a few days ago about why I'm not able to really blog at the moment, I immediately felt better about the whole situation, and the response that I had to that post was just amazing. We have had so much support from family throughout the situation we are currently experiencing, but to have so much support from people who don't know any of the details and that I've never met in real life was really lovely. A couple of people in particular (I hope they know who they are!) have been really brilliant in terms of letting me rant about random unrelated things and even in once case sending me books to cheer me up :-) And I just wanted to say thank you to them, and to everybody who reads this blog, whether or not they comment. I love being part of the book blogging community. I love meeting awesome people and discovering their awesome blogs, and I love having my little corner of the internet where I can wallow in books for hours at a time.

Sometimes I get all my books off of their shelves, intending to re-organize them, and then get sidetracked by discoveries of things I'd forgotten I had and end up sat in the middle of the floor in our spare room, literally surrounded by books and unable to get out. It is bliss, and blogging and the blogging community is the virtual equivalent of that. Bloggers are some of the most generous people I've ever "met", and sometimes I have so much to say to them and so much in common with them that it's difficult to believe we've never physically met. So yes, I'll stop before I get really sentimental (not difficult these days - what with baby hormones and current life stress, I'll cry at almost anything!). Thank you all for being amazing :-)

Thursday, 7 June 2012

The Telling Tales Challenge Master Review List

Trying to keep track of what everybody's read for this challenge through individual monthly link ups was getting a bit difficult so I decided it was time to stop being lazy and put all of the reviews into a master list here. It also makes it a lot easier for people to find recommendations etc, and to use for reference purposes in case I decide to host this again next year! I'm just going to link them in order of when they were read rather than trying to do anything more complicated! Apologies for some reviews that are missing; this is because early on some people have linked to their blog rather than the specific review and I am having a bit of a difficult time finding the review for the challenge. If I've missed your review off please just contact me or comment to let me know and I'll add it in!

Also I just wanted to announce that during December, the last month of the challenge, there will be some surprise events happening in order to thank all you lovely people for your participation, so watch this space :-)

1602 by Neil Gaiman (Bex)

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness (Bex)
A Kiss at Midnight by Eloisa James (Mirjam)
A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare (Bex)
A Wolf at the Door by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling (Jenny)
Adrianna's Fairy Tales by Adrianna White (Tobe)
Ash by Malinda Lo (Michele)

Beastly by Alex Flinn (Tobe)
Beastly by Alex Flinn (Michele)

Beauty by Robin McKinley (Tobe)
Beauty and the Werewolf by Mercedes Lackey (Mirjam)

Brundibar by Tony Kushner and Maurice Sendak (Nicola)

Cinder by Marissa Meyer (Nicola)
" " (Michele)

Cinderella: Fables Are Forever by Chris Roberson (Nicola)

Ember by Bettie Sharpe (Michele)

Entwined by Heather Dixon (Kim)