feather_ghyll

Last May, I posted a list of links with the title 'LINKS: VARIOUS', saying ‘Here are some links I have meant to post for a good long while’. This is the case again, only the links are different:

Here’s an enthusiastic review of Daddy Long-Legs (I must find a copy of Dear Enemy!)

And in the same series of ‘Squee’ features, one for The Blue Castle (the comments praise A Tangled Web, which is one of the few LMM books I don’t own…yet).

Here's an overview of the Dimsie series and its appeal which led me to something similar about the Abbey girls series.

The confessions of a sci-fi and fantasy bookseller (some of this is specific to SFF, but some points would be echoed by other booksellers, I think.)

Collected over months (or longer):

A tribute to Elinor M. Brent-Dyer by nobodyjones

The thrill of the used bookstore hunt

Amanda Diehl talks about book hunting practices involving second-hand bookshops that I can partially sympathise with. I do have strange habits about books, but let’s focus on the euphoria of finding something you’ve long looked for at a reasonable price.

Daniel Dalton recommends 33 Books You Should Read Now, Based On Your Favourite Films. Having read and seen some pairs, I can see where he’s coming from and have found a cuple of recommondations.

There are a few Nancy Drew icons here by misbegotten.

Angela Brazil: dorm feasts and red hot pashes

Kathryn Hughes has been rereading Angela Brazil (spoilers for A Patriotic Schoolgirl).

Here’s a new blog about children’s books that I think will be worth keeping an eye on: homeintimefortea

Carolynp mounts a well-argued defence of the Chalet School's Mary-Lou (I have to admit that my initial response was ‘Huh?’ at Mary-Lou needing to be defended)
here

Here's a blog post about slang and its use to include and exclude.

The other day, I experienced something that has never happened to me before when buying a book - I watched bemused as the shopkeeper wrapped it up in brown paper, stuck some tape to keep it together but then cut off a piece of string and tied it up with a bow. It was one of Maria's favourite things. It was at a shop that sold 'vintage' goods and was partly a tea shop - too knick knacky to be an antiques shop, and with all sorts of objects lying in front of the mainly hardback books that were for sale in a bookshelf. The book in question was in quite good nick, so I suppose it's what they do with everything they sell.

( Read more... )</>

Ths isn't the review that I said was coming (but then today was meant to be a book-buying day and that didn't happen either). Friday before last I read Anne Billson's feature on 'An Education', An Education that is very British, and the depiction of (British) school life or lack therefor on the big screen. I then saw 'An Education' (recommended, even if it sometimes falls on the side of being funny and charming rather than profound, the acting is very good, and the heroine's school life is a thread) and before it a trailer for Cracks, which is mentioned in the feature. I'm not sure entirely whether elements that were hinted at in the trailer will come through in the film. It looked like one I'd want to see, although everyone's hair was awfully messy!

Anyway, in her feature, Billson asks But why did no one ever film Malory Towers, or The Chalet School?. She discusses part of the reason in the feature, I think, St. Trinian's, which in part parodied the girl's school story. A strong, parodic or absured iconography like that made a 'straight' rendition difficult. In addition, the examples she offers are series, which before the Harry Potter and Twilight phenomena would probably put film-makers off (but why no television series?) Perhaps not so much these days? I don't know. It would be fun to see an all-girls school story with the rivalries, the midnight feasts, the prefects nd mistresses and the daring rescue from a fire or unexpected tide!

I've referred to Lucy Mangan's series of features on how to build up 'a brilliant children's library' before. Here in No. 15, she reaches Dimsie goes to School and Angela Brazils. Apparently the only difference between Fairlie Bruce and Angela Brazil is that one wrote her books a little earlier, which is unfair. Though I do appreciate that this is a short piece and she's talking about Dimsie as a representative of a genre.

But no, I cn't help but be pedantic, Fairlie Bruce wrote about Scotland as well as England, and Jean is a rubbish example of stoicism. I type as one who has four Dimsies waiting to be read upstairs. There's also a reference to 'You're A Brick, Angela' in the article, which apparatently was 'the first substantial book of criticism-cum-championing of girls' school stories'. This leads to the inevitable thought that if that's championing, who needs undermining. (I discuss that book and line of thought here.

Mangan's argument for these books is mainly nostalgic, though she makes an interesting point about how these books are no longer being passed on. Is this true? The Chalet School, Mallory Towers, St Clare's and Trebizons were easily available in paperback as I grew up, and I found others from my mother and her friends', a haphazard collection, and became a haunter of charity shops and Christmas fairs, but I was a real bookworm. But what about young girls these days? Do they get their hands on copies to beguile, entertain and confuse them?

Hello there! I know that my posting has turned from sporadic to non-existant over the past few months. It's been due to health issues (RSI, so you can see why I've been abstaining from computer use). I'm getting better, so the review that I said I'd post at the start of the year will get posted soonish, followed by other reviews. Or so I hope, but I'm not promising anything.

For now, it was a good week for girls' stories in Saturday's Guardian:

Dimsie and the Chalet Girls get a mention in Lucy Mangan's rant on what is being done to The Famous Five in Disney's 'The Next Generation' adaptation here. And there was a feature celebrating Anne of Green Gables's centenary by Margaret Attwood click here.

This is what happens when you don't do your googling before posting an overview of a subgenre. You have to do a follow-up post.

Here's an informative overview of the Sally Baxter series.

Article: Not Just for Children Anymore: Girls' Series Books
What many girls' juvenile series seem to have in common is that they posit the existence of a safe, orderly world, a world where right and wrong are clearly defined, and where right eventually triumphs. The protagonists face dilemmas, but few moral ambiguities. They are secure, fulfilled, and happy--and they never forget to be "feminine," to act like ladies, even when they are being their most adventurous and liberated.

More info on this subgenre at a comprehensive site - it has info on the Susan Sand mysteries (I have three of them). This is the related blog.

The Cherry Ames page.

Rereading 'Secret Water' the other week was a real treat. ( Read more... )

I must have read 'Swallows and Amazons', the first book in the series, first, but I probably read them out of order, getting them out of the library and rereading them, and I'm not sure if I ever read them all. Although there was a time when I'd have said the Anne series was my favourite series, and I've been reading new-to-me Montgomery's over the last year, I'm basking in a lot of Ransome love at the moment. Looking back, it occurs to me that I liked 'mixed' series when I was at primary school: the Famous Five, the Lone Piners and Swallows and Amazons, and more girl-centric series the older I got: the Chalet girls, the Annes and the Abbey girls. That isn't to say that it was so clear-cut, I mean, I read Mallory Towers along with the Famous Five and was into the Scarlet Pimpernel in the lower part of secondary school, and I probably started buying my own copies of the Swallows and Amazons books about that time, too, thanks to more pocket money. Due to the availability of library copies if I wanted them (and yes, they were hardbacks with the nifty dust-jackets covered in a plastic binding) and my familiarity with the stories, I didn't hunt down copies of my own. Though if they came my way cheaply, i'd buy them. As a result, I've probably read the most land-bound book, 'Pigeon Post', the most. I had half resolved that this year I'd try to complete my collection of Chalet School books (which is mainly Armada paperbacks - I try not to think about the abridging that has gone on in them too hard), but right now I'm more enthused about getting a complete set of the Swallows and Amazons series.

Reading 'Secret Water' set me off to hunt the interwebs for resources. I may have been looking in the wrong places (livejournal and Google mainly) but there doesn't seem to be much around. I wanted something on the chronology of the books, essays on the characters and their roles, with an eye to gender, and on the themes of the books. The story needs all of them, from instigator Nancy, future naval commander John, the excellent Susan (who I really appreciated in 'SW'), dreamer and mapmaker Titty, to the others. There seems to be some stuff out there about Ransome-the-author, but not as much discussion of the text, just lots of short comments that can be summarised as 'Swallows and AMazons, oh yes, I loved them. Wasn't Nancy great? They're pure escapism'. Surely there's more to say than that!

Here's what I did find:

Swallows and Bolsheviks from oursin


This knocked my socks off:
Secret waters: Reliving author Arthur Ransome's literary journey along the Essex coast by Graham Hoyland

When my father was the age of an Amazon, one of his teachers was the poet W H Auden, who later called the 1930s "a low, dishonest decade". To adults, perhaps, it was, but to Ransome's fictional children it seems an age of innocence. What parent would now leave their young children (including a six-year-old, Bridget) to camp on an island unsupervised?
[A part of me is outraged on behalf of the excellent Susan Walker.)

Resources: Arthur Ransome/S and A background books [I'd probably need to see reviews before getting them.]

Icons based on cover art by keswindhover

Any other links would be very much welcomed.