Dear You,
Do you have books you read again and again?
I have a few - and at the moment I read this (again):
Mavis Cheek: Mrs Fytton's Country Life (published in 2000!)
I think the book incredibly witty and funny (maybe only for my generation?), I still can laugh on almost every page, and agree with Mail on Sunday: "..she (Mavis Cheek) possesses the wickedly sharp eye of a born satirist." I think it is Cheek's best and funniest novel.
And when I take it from the shelf it is always a sign for me that I want (or have to) change and to come down to earth again.
And feel which direction I want to go. Even if the picture might look a bit foggy or blurred - there is a direction.
I reread Barbara Pym in this way. Too funny, every time. I must check out your writer, new to me.
ReplyDeleteDear Boud, I love Barbara Pym very much - for me she is soothing and yet really funny. I had the honour to translate one of her short stories for a great German publisher.
DeleteHope that you like this book (especially this!) book by Mavis Cheek.
Not very often. If I wasn't enjoying a book back in the older days, I rarely finished it. If I did love a book the first time around, I remembered it fondly and didn't want to jeopardise the original pleasure decades later.
ReplyDeleteHowever now I will read the last AS Byatt novel; I thought she was terrific.
That reminds me, dear Helen, of an unwritten rule I have: never try to meet a long-ago lover decades later :-) - I want my memories unspoilt.
DeleteIf a book doesn't please me after three chapters, I stop and put it into those public book-cases where everyone can take them with him - I don't have the heart to throw a book away.
AS Byatt is still on my list.
I return to Middlemarch, over and over.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much, dear Joanne, that you reminded me! Long time ago I read it with great joy - and will do it now again.
DeleteFunny: Mavis Cheek uses a quote from George Eliot!
(she is very well-read.)
This book sounds great so I wrote down the title to consider buying. Humor is precious to me. I can read Jeeves and Wooster books more than once, P.G. Wodehouse is so funny.
ReplyDeleteDear Terra, I do not often recommend a book, because tastes differ so much (two month ago I convinced a good friend to watch a film - she didn't like it...)
DeleteYes, Jeeves and Wooster: great! Also the DVDs with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry.
I often return to E.F.Benson's "Mapp and Lucia" novels, and enjoy many (though not all) novels by Elizabeth von Arnim ("Father" is so uplifting and funny), and Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey is also a gem.
I haven't been reading for ages. I should really, but I'm too busy working, cooking, eating and drinking... Nice photo!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Tom: here in Bavaria I see stunning sunrises and sunsets, and because I look from a hill down into a vast meadow after the light often follows fog - beautiful.
DeleteI think that working, cooking, eating and drinking are wonderful pleasures - and fill the day and evening!
I will return to a Paul Theroux travel book over and over and to Philippe Sands East West Street about his Jewish family in WW2 but I never return to a work of fiction. I have read a Mavis Cheek many years ago and remember enjoying her eye for detail and humour.
ReplyDeleteTrue, Rachel, and she can be a bit sarcastic and critical but she makes me laugh. I often wonder - when I re-read a work of fiction as "Madame Bovary" or "Effie Briest", how my feelings towards the situations in the novel have changed - it is such a big difference if I read a book with 20 or sixty - and I like to see that process.
DeleteI don't know this author, for shame, but I'm putting this one on my list, dear Britta, for I trust your taste in books. After all, you set me to rights on Lord Peter Wimsey and the Moomins, to name but two.
ReplyDeleteI do enjoy revisiting books and when the soul needs a balm I do rather prefer to reach for something amusing, like Mapp & Lucia's antics; perhaps The Wind in the Willows if I'm needing nostalgia in spades; or Middlemarch if something meatier is required.
Dear Pip, I hope that I didn't promise too much. I love the resilience and intelligence of the protagonist - and and the highly humorous and keen intelligence of Mavis Cheek. And her way to articulate it.
DeleteI am glad that we agree on E.F.Benson, Dorothy Sayers and Tove Jansson. Middlemarch I have read once (upon a time) - but as it now appears twice in the comments I will reread it. I am looking forward to that!
I've ordered the book today! Some New Year's reading for me and I shall think of you as I do so :)
DeleteI always feel so fidgetly, when I read that, Pip - I hope very much that it does not disappoint you!
DeleteI don't know how I missed this post. Sorry. I can read a book many times if I like it. I never could get past the first chapter of The Lord Of The Rings series but my mother read them at every new year as a treat to herself.
ReplyDeleteDear Emma, I am glad to find you here! Yes, it is a pleasure to read a book more than one time if one liked it (I never read Lord of the Rings because I am not deeply in that genre).
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