Reader GeneaMeme

 

It's National Year of Reading in Australia - time to post a GeneaReader meme. (courtesy of Jill at Geniaus)

The list should be annotated in the following manner:
Things you have already done or found: bold face type
Things you would like to do or find: italicize (colour optional)
Things you haven’t done or found and don’t care to: plain type
You are encouraged to add extra comments in brackets after each item 

Which of these apply to you? reading

1.   Have you written any books?  No.But all of my friends have...does that count?
2. Have you published any books? No.
3. Can you recommend an inspiring biography? Hmm....inspiring...hmmm biography...I've read a few inspiring autobiographies...e.g. Richard Branson's and Angela's Ashes....I did enjoy reading the Julia Gillard biography and I particularly enjoyed the Packer biography Who Killed Channel 9? but I'm not sure that they were inspiring....instructive....insightful....amusing....
4. Do you keep a reading log? If yes, in what format?  Sort of...call it a blog....
5. Are you a buyer or a borrower of books? Both.
6. Where do you get reading recommendations? Librarything mostly.
7. What is the one genealogy reference book you can't do without? Nick Vine Hall still stands me in very good stead.
8. Do you hoard books or do you discard them when you have finished? Oh dear...hoarder...
9. How many books are in your genealogy library? Never enough...but to be specific about 50....
10.  What's your favourite genealogy magazine or journal? Well I am besotted with Inside History at the moment...
11. Where are the bookshelves in your house? Everywhere...though we have refrained from the toilet and bathroom (due to mould -  you understand)
12. Do you read e-books? How?On my iPad that my BBF gave me...
13. How many library cards do you have? I think about four.....one for Uni (well it's not a card..it's a number..one for Brisbane City...one for Moreton Bay and one for State Library ...though Charlie did tell me about the National Library so I think I'll be getting one there too...does State Archives count?
14. What was the last genealogy title you read? Probably something about Bathurst at QFHS today..ooh that's potentially another library card!!
15. What is your favourite bookshop? Oh dear....that's hard...I think it has to be the State Library bookshop...Avid Reader at West End is very good but I feel more at home at State Library for some weird reason...Berkelouws is a close second....oh but then there is online and I do like Book Depository and ABE
16. Do you have a traditional printed encyclopaedia in your house?  We have several....Arthur Mee's is my favourite ...but we do have Colliers and also the Children's Brittanica...when I think about it Children's Brittanica is the one I refer to most....we also have The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Animal Life
17. Who are the authors in your family tree and what have they written? Zip...
18. Who is your favourite author? Barbara Pym is pretty neat but I'm going for Elizabeth Gaskell....
19. Where do you buy books? see answer to question 14
20. Can you nominate a must-read fiction title? So hard to pin down just one...George Eliot seemed to have a great impact on me....but I also loved loved loved Elizabeth Gaskell most recently...
21. How many books are in your personal library? Hmm too many to count...we're up to 3,000 on Librarything but I'd say a conservative estimate would be more like 6,000.
22. What is your dictionary of choice?  Well of course I'd like the OED but we've got Robert's old Concise and well chewed Oxford which does us very well.
23. Where do your read? In bed, but that can be fatal...everywhere really...living room...while cooking tea...on the train....
24. What was your favourite childhood book?  It's awful but I can't remember the title of it...but from memory it seemed to feature donkeys (Charlotte stop laughting...it's most unseemly) and was Russian from memory...failing that, Beatrix Potter..The Tale of Two Bad Mice is a firm favourite....here are some very important quotes..."They would not come off the plates, but they were extremely beautiful."   A dieter's dream!
    
    "-all so convenient!"
    
    "Then Tom Thumb lost his temper." - said with great emphasis.....
    
    followed swiftly by...
    
    "Then there was no end to the rage and disappointment....." sounds like my house....
    
    and to top it all off....
    
    "Jane leant against the kitchen dresser and smiled...." as all dolls do....
25. Do you have anything else to say about books and reading? A bit like the old Nike ad...Just Do It!

Less than Angels

Less than Angels by Barbara Pym

I think it's important to have small comforts in life, particularly at bedtime.  I am always intrigued by people's night-time rituals.  When I was a child it was always fun staying with friends and seeing what their families did.  Little friend Deborah's Dad, known to me as Uncle Warren, would bring each child (including guests) a cup of hot cocoa at bedtime and would soothe ruffled feathers, sibling rivalries and over-excited munchkins with firm but loving admonitions.  Another friend would literally rock herself to sleep. She urged me to try it but I found it too exhausting.  My mother always had a Georgette Heyer by the bed - somewhat guiltily - but it did the trick after a hard day of being a domestic goddess.

I think I have found my "blanky" in Barbara Pym.  God's in his Heaven (or hers) and all's well with the world when I read Barbara Pym. I am using her books as relief from some of my more worthy and good for you (like multi-grain bread) reads.

Less than Angels is my second Barbara Pym.  I was delighted to find a reference to some of the characters from my first - Excellent Women - but it is not necessary to have read it to follow the story.  It just deals with a different group - a bit like those multi-layered films that are so popular these days like Short Cuts - where storylines slightly intersect.

A friend from bookclub has lent me four books from her Barbara Pym collection and lest I "forget" to return them, I assiduously returned this as soon as I had finished, so I'm sorry but I can't quote from it.

All I need say to encourage you to read it is that I laughed out loud and snorted on several occasions.  Ms Pym has that marvellous ability to describe characters forced to live closely together in straitened circumstances - usually family members...and the way they carve out a modicum of privacy, self-determination and/or sanity in shared households.  Her descriptions of the two sisters living together with one sister's adult son and daughter is classic.  I'll leave it to you to guess which sister I wanted to smack on frequent occasions.

There's so much more I could say but doubtless others have waxed enthusiastic before me...if you haven't read Barbara Pym yet, don't waste another moment.

What's your nighttime ritual? It's a bit too hot for cocoa in Queensland at the moment.

Book Reviews and More Adelaide Collection

Here's another sample of the fabulous new Adelaide Collection of William Morris fabric from Michele Hill.

And here are some book reviews that I have finally got round to writing today about my most recent reads....

One of the great things about Librarything is the fabulous people you get to meet - even if only virtually. PaperbackPirate recommended I consider this book for my bookclub on the other side of the globe in the land down under. What an excellent suggestion!

Even though I do describe myself as a Bear of Little Brain and can truthfully say I spectacularly failed Science at school, I did manage to make my way through this amazing book. A couple of times I did stop myself and rehearse what I would say if someone asked me what it was about....aka "Well it's about cell culture thingummies" just wouldn't cut it with the scientific fraternity.

So what is it about? Well it's about one woman's journey to find out who Henrietta Lacks really was. Rebecca Skloot first heard about Henrietta in a community college biology class. She learned that she had died in 1951 from cervical cancer but that before she died, "a surgeon took samples of her tumor and put them in a petri dish." Her cells differed from other human cells in that they reproduced every 24 hours and didn't die. She wanted to know more but no-one could tell her anything about Henrietta despite her cells being omnipresent in most labs around the world today.

This book is, at face value, about scientific discovery and ethics. But it is so much more than that. There were times when I had to put the book down and take a big breath because some of the subject matter was so tough to read. It impressed upon me the immense vulnerability of those who through misfortune do not have access to education, good health or parents to protect their best interests in their childhood.

Ultimately what impressed me most was Rebecca Skloot's tenacity and compassion to work together with Henrietta's descendants to uncover the truth . She gives an honest account of that journey which was not easy by any stretch of the imagination. Yes the book is about science but it is also a story about a family's and an individual's struggle. This book is a tribute to Rebecca, to Henrietta and her descendants.

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym

At long last ! My very first Barbara Pym! I wasn't quite sure to expect but being rather fond of a Pimms at Christmas I thought it couldn't be too bad and probably rather nice. An enthusiastic response from fellow Virago-ites confirmed my supposition and I leapt in with both feet.

This particular edition has an introduction by Alexander McCall Smith which is also an excellent sign as I'm very fond of his sense of humour. He sums up the world of the book very cogently by describing it as "a world of shortages and genteel drabness". Excellent Women is in fact the perfect tonic for these austere times. For our book-club this year we have decided to swap books for Christmas as a nod towards belt tightening. Some lucky gal will be snaffling this treasure tomorrow night.

So what's it about? Well it's about living in a small community where everyone knows who you are and thinks they know where you will end up - including you - only you sub-consciously wish it might be different. The story is set after the war when, no doubt, a lot of eligible young men were knocked off and there is a surplus of eligible young women - or spinsters as some unkind people used to call them.

Mildred is our heroine of sorts. She provides a wry commentary of the goings-on of her new neighbours, the Napiers, and the disturbance they cause to the delicate balance that is ultimately village life, even in the big smoke - London. When you discover that the lead male "interest' Mr Napier's christian name is Rockingham, you know you're in for a treat. Mildred is a clergyman's daughter and spends much of her time with the local vicar and his sister organising the odd bazaar and, before she can object, the rocky domestic life of the Napiers.

As McCall-Smith says, much of the joy in this book is to be gained from a reflection of our own human foibles. Chapter Two for example concludes with the following observation...

"I hoped the Napiers were not going to keep late hours and have noisy parties. Perhaps I was getting spinsterish and 'set' in my ways, but I was irritated at having been woken. I stretched out my hand towards the little bookshelf where I kept cookery and devotional books, the most comforting bedside reading. My hand might have chosen Religio Medici, but I was rather glad that it had picked out Chinese Cookery and I was soon soothed into drowsiness." Well I may not have Chinese Cookery or Religio Medici for that matter in my collection, but I am guilty of taking a good craft book to bed, secure in the knowledge that I will never complete one tenth of the projects therein but deriving great satisfaction from considering them nonetheless.

There are so many wonderful lines in this work. Barbara Pym celebrates the ordinariness of life - the sheer, at times, tedium of existence and how we invent ways to deal with it.....shall I share one more quote? Here Mildred is describing Everard Bone, the object of Mrs Napier's unrequited affection....

"He was certainly very clever and handsome, too, in his own way, but there was no warmth or charm about his personality. I began imagining him as a clergyman and decided that he would make a good one. His rather forbidding matter would be useful to him. I realised that one might love him secretly with no hope of encouragement, which can be very enjoyable for the young or inexperienced."

Fabulous stuff! Excellent Women - you know from the get-go what kind of book it will be and sometimes that is a very comforting place to be indeed.

What will you be reading over the Christmas holidays?  What do you hope to be given for Christmas?