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PERSONAL: Browsing for books
Sep. 1st, 2013 04:46 pmLast week, I visited – I was going to type ‘bookshops’, but one of them was a charitably run book recycling project. ( Read more... )
LINK: Dimsie and pedantry
Jan. 26th, 2009 08:56 pmI'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?
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?
I made it to the final page of the 'Family' section of Saturday's Guardian last night*. Lucy Mangan has reached number 7 in a series about building a good library of children's books, a series in which she described The Secret Garden's Dickon as a proto sex god, which is certainly memorable. I'm tryng to remember whether I have actually, properly and fully read TSG. I must have at school or through the library. (I'm confused because I may have read a ladybrid version or be going by a film adaptation). This week, she'd got to a book written by Gwen Grant that I think is the one where the girl wants to wrte, but it's after the war and there's a shortage of paper.
Anyay, on the same page of the supplement $is an interview with Meg Cabot about her family, which told me a lot of things I didn't know, and which do explain a lot about Cabot's style and tics.
*This may give you a big hint as to how I am not even approaching reading books.
Anyay, on the same page of the supplement $is an interview with Meg Cabot about her family, which told me a lot of things I didn't know, and which do explain a lot about Cabot's style and tics.
*This may give you a big hint as to how I am not even approaching reading books.
