Books from Other People’s Shelves

My friend Bex, whose house and cat I watched while she was on vacation with her family, mentioned that bookish people should go on holiday at other bookish friends’ houses. This is an idea I can fully endorse, and in fact, began immediately while there!

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The Brontes Went to Woolworths is a book I have at home. I tried reading it, having loved the other books in the Bloomsbury Group series, but put it down after about 2 chapters. I managed to make it slightly further this time, getting about 5 chapters in, but I still didn’t finish it. The story, about three sisters who are so immersed in their own made-up world that the intrusion of reality shakes them, should be my cup of tea. I just can’t seem to make it past the brittle tone and, well, the silliness of the girls. Oh well, my copy is still at home if I want to try again.

Bex also had a Nancy Mitford that I hadn’t read before, Highland Fling. While not quite as good as Love in a Cold Climate or The Pursuit of Love (and is anything that good, really?), it was still amusing. It was Nancy’s first work, and follows two bright young things as they get married on ‘nothing’. As their nothing involves plenty of creature comforts, including borrowing a castle in Scotland, they’re not exactly suffering. Frothy and fun, and ultimately forgettable.

Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Bookshop was a reread, mostly because the night I read it it was hot and I couldn’t be arsed to go downstairs and find another Persephone to read. If you haven’t read it, though, you should. The story of a widow who opens a bookstore in a small coastal town, and the resistance she gets from the very people who claim to love books and art. A beautiful book.

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