A Girl Walks Into a Bookstore...

Pages: Original date of publication: 1959 My edition: 2002 (Vintage) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Waterstone’s Piccadilly, London, September 2011 Laurie Lee was a journalist, writer, scriptwriter, and poet, who also spent some time volunteering in the Spanish Civil War. Later, he worked with a team of documentary filmmakers, among them Emma Smith , author of Persephone’s The Far Cry . At the time, Cider with Rosie was an idea that Lee had, but Emma Smith encouraged him to finish writing it. Cider With Rosie is considered a children’s book, but even as an adult, I enjoyed it. Cider With Rosie is the first in a trilogy of memoirs that Lee wrote about his childhood and young adulthood. This installment in the trilogy focuses on the war and early-interwar years, when Lee was roughly between the ages of 4 and teenage, and it is often hailed as a classic in describing scenes from a provincial childhood, much like Lark Rise to Candleford .   Th...

Pages: 236 Original date of publication: 1970 My edition: 2007 (NYRB Classics) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Joseph Fox bookstore, Philadelphia, February 2012 In 1928, a young Canadian named John Glassco set out for Paris with his best friend. The two set out to explore all that the city had to offer: the cafes, bars, and brasseries that the Americans of the Lost Generation would have been familiar with as well. Glassco set out to have a literary career and along the way rubbed shoulders with some of the greats (at one point in this memoir a man walks into a bar and someone calls him “Ernie;” it took me a while to realize that yes, it was that Ernie). Glassco wrote this memoir as truth, although it’s not completely factual. For example, Kay Boyle and Djuna Barnes, both important figures of the literary expatriates of Paris at the time, receive new names; and there is a certain sense of scintillism to Glassco’s account—probably because the author w...

Pages: 429 Original date of publication: 1944 My edition: 1988 (Virago Travellers) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Ebay, November 2011 Emily Hahn was an American who spent 9 years living in China as a journalist, starting in 1935. She lived first in Shanghai, where she had a common-law marriage with a native Chinese and owned a couple of gibbons. During WWII, she lived in Chungking, where she met her future husband Charles Boxer. I first ran into the prose of this author about a year ago when I read the Virago Book of Women Travellers , in which another essay of Hahn’s is excerpted. The first line of that essay goes: Though I had always wanted to be an opium addict, I can’t claim that as the reason I went to China. The opium ambition dates back to that obscure period of childhood when I wanted to be a lot of other things, too—the greatest expert on ghosts, the world’s best ice skater, the champion lion tamer, you know the kind of thing. But by the time I went to China I ...

Pages: 370 Original date of publication: 2010 My edition: 2010 (John Murray) Why I decided to read: I was in the mood to read something Mitford How I acquired my copy: Waterstone’s, York, UK, September 2011 Deborah Devonshire was the youngest of the famous Mitford sisters—last in line after Nancy, Pam, Diana, Unity, and Jessica. In 1941 she married Andrew Cavendish, son of the Duke of Devonshire, and eventually became the Duchess of Devonshire. Deborah helped turn Chatsworth into a popular tourist destination and is the author of several books. She also knew, literally, everyone, as seen from the impressive number of names she drops in this memoir. The memoir is arranged more by subject matter than chronological; a chapter on the Kennedys (who Deborah was related to distantly through marriage; Andrew’s brother was married to Kathleen Kennedy, sister of John F. Kennedy) is followed by a chapter on Deborah’s involvement in public life. It’s a good way to organize the book considering how...

Pages: 182 Original date of publication: 2012 My edition: 2012 (Random House) Why I decided to read: it was offered through Amazon Vine How I acquired my copy: Amazon Vine, February 2012 Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake is a series of essays, really, about being in one’s fifties. She covers topics such as owning “stuff,” having girlfriends, marriage, having grown children, and aging. Although I couldn’t really relate personally to a lot of what Anna Quindlen talks about, reading Anna Quindlen’s book (and this really goes for all of her books) is kind of like talking to your mother. And there are similarities to my own mom that are eerie! (“I have needlepoint pillows everywhere: camels, chicks, cats, houses, barns, libraries, roses, daisies, pansies. I needlepoint while I watch television. I have a vision of my children, after I’m gone, looking around and saying, ‘What are we going to do with all these pillows?’”). As I’ve said, there’s not a lot in this book I can actually relate to, s...

Pages: 285 Original date of publication: 1817 My edition: 2010 (NYRB Classics) Why I decided to read: it’s an NYRB Classic How I acquired my copy: Joseph Fox Bookshop, Philadelphia, January 2012 Eliza Fay was 23 when she accompanied her husband Anthony Fay, a lawyer, to India in 1779. Not much is known about her early life, but her editor, EM Forster, surmises that her father might have been a sailor. On her first journey out to India, she traveled through France and Egypt, and she and her husband were imprisoned when they arrived in Calcutta. Due to Anthony Fay’s mismanagement of money and infidelity, Eliza Fay split from her husband a few years later, and set herself up briefly as a milliner. Over the next 30 years she was to travel to India a few more times, and each time she traveled, she kept a journal of her journey. It was a time when the British turned from mere merchants and traders in India to a major imperial power. Eliza Fay wasn’t of the wealthiest class, but she nonethele...

I’m really, really behind on review-writing, so I thought I’d write a few short reviews instead to get caught up... Miss Mole, by EH Young Pages: 288 Original date of publication: 1930 My edition: 1984 (Virago) Why I decided to read: it’s on the list of Virago Modern Classics How I acquired my copy: The Strand, New York, April 2011 The story of a middle-aged nanny/companion/nurse/housekeeper. Set in EH Young’s fictional city of Radstowe (based on Bristol), Miss Mole’s sharp tongue keeps getting her into trouble. A very witty novel, but not my favorite by this author, because the pace of the book is rather slow at times. 3 stars. The Group, by Mary McCarthy Pages: 437 Original date of publication: 1963 My edition: 2009 (Virago) Why I decided to read: it’s on the list of Virago Modern Classics How I acquired my copy: Waterstone’s, Piccadilly, September 2011 The Group is the story of eight roommates from Vassar living in New York City in the 1930s. Although the author is extremely candi...

Pages: 137 Original date of publication: 1973 My edition: 1976 Why I decided to read: it seemed like the perfect thing to bring on the plane when I went on vacation to England How I acquired my copy: Amazon UK, January 2010 You decide to stop using the word “anachronism” when a seventeenth-century carriage drives through the gates of Buckingham Palace carrying twentieth-century Russian or African diplomats to be welcomed by a queen. “Anachronism” implies something long dead, and nothing is dead here. History, as they say, is alive and well and living in London (p. 82) In 84, Charing Cross Road , Helene Hanff collected the letters she and Frank Doel, a bookseller in London’s famous Charing Cross Road, exchanged for twenty years, from just after WWII up until his death. Helene Hanff had always wanted to travel to England, but until the summer of June 1971, after 84 Charing Cross Road had been published and she went on tour to publicize the book, she had never had the opportunity to do s...

Pages: 176 Original date of publication: 1973 My edition: Virago (2004) Why I decided to read: I’m a huge fan of anything by Daphne Du Maurier How I acquired my copy: Awesomebooks website, February 2011 I feel as though I can never go wrong with Daphne Du Maurier’s books. Fiction, nonfiction, I haven’t run into a bad one yet. Myself When Young is a memoir based on the diaries that Du Maurier kept from 1920-1932, or from ages 13 to 25, when her first novel The Loving Spirit, was published. It’s a short book, but covers a lot of ground, from her early years living in the shadow of her father Gerald Du Maurier, her schooling in Paris, and her early years as a writer. One of the things I enjoyed most about this book was how Daphne talked about the inspiration for some of her writing—specifically Rebecca , The Loving Spirit , and some of her earliest short stories. I also liked seeing how certain places (Menabily especially, which was in the inspiration for Manderley in Rebe...

Pages: 294 Original date of publication: 1942 My edition: 1983 (Houghton Mifflin) Why I decided to read: it’s a Virago title How I acquired my copy: Philly Book Trader, February 2011 Beryl Markham led a fascinating life. . Born in Britain in 1902, she spent much of her life in Kenya, working as the only female airplane pilot in Africa. She was also a racehorse trainer, and her memoir details her childhood and adulthood in Kenya. Markham had a wide range of friends and acquaintances, among them Karen Blixen and her lover, Denys Finch-Hatton. All of this should equal a well-written, interesting memoir, right? Well-written this book is, but Markham’s writing isn’t all that engaging and so I was very bored in man y places as I was reading this book. I became interested in West With the Night after reading The Virago Book of Women Travellers , which contains an excerpt from it, but other than that excerpt, there’s not much all that interesting about the way that Markham tells her story. Par...

Pages: 410 Original date of publication: 1860 My edition: 1997 (Virago) Why I decided to read: LibraryThing recommendation How I acquired my copy: Amazon UK, March 2011 Emily Eden’s name has been floating around in my literary consciousness for a while—many years ago I read a novel called One Last Look , which apparently is based on Emily Eden’s travels in India; and then a couple of years ago I read Women of the Raj , a historical overview of British women in India in the 18 th , 19 th , and early 20 th centuries. So when I found out that her letters home to her sister were available, this became a must-read for me. The book is a collection of letters that Emily wrote between 1837 and 1841, when Emily’s brother George, who was Governor-General, set out to tour the Upper Provinces of India; Emily and her other sister, Fanny, came with him. Historically, Emily’s travels were important because she was able to witness the beginnings of the First Afghan War, although s...

Pages: 333 Original date of publication: 1880 My edition: 1984 (Virago) Why I decided to read: recommended to me through LibraryThing How I acquired my copy: Amazon UK seller, January 2011 Unbeaten Tracks in Japan is composed of a series of letters that Isabella Bird wrote home to her sister and friends during the summer of 1878. She set out from Tokyo, eager to explore the “unbeaten tracks” of the northern part of Honshu (the largest island of Japan) and Hokkaido. The letters are a combination of travelogue, anthropological study, and cultural study. I was especially eager to grab this book off my TBR shelf after what’s recently happened in Japan, and I enjoyed reading about Isabella Bird’s adventures there 130 years ago—a very different experience from when my family lived in Tokyo in the 1980s and ‘90s! Isabella Bird inserts very little of her own thoughts and feelings into the narrative of her letters, but at times her very subtle sense of humor comes through, ...

Pages: 271 Original date of publication: 2010 My copy: 2010 (Riverhead Books) Why I decided to read: two years ago I greatly enjoyed her other collection of essays How I acquired my copy: review copy from the publisher, May 2010 How Did You Get This Number (apparently, no question mark in that title) is a collection of nine essays, ranging in topic. In the opening essay, Crosley takes an impromptu, off-season jaunt to Portugal for no apparent reason, and meets a troupe of clown college students; later, she discusses the relative merits and demerits of Alaska, when she attends a friend’s wedding in “Light Pollution;” and later still she discusses getting thrown out of Paris (“I do not think you should come to this place again”), and having a dealer of furniture who will get you things “Off the Back of a Truck.” These essays are always witty and sometimes funny. There’s no real connection between any of them, but Crosley has a way with words that is often poignant and...

Pages: 173 Original date of publication: 1934 My edition: 2008 (Persephone) Why I decided to read: browsing on the Persephone website How I acquired my copy: from the Lamb’s Conduit Street shop, September 2009 A London Child of the 1870s is a collection of remembrances of the author’s life, living in suburban London in the 1870s. Molly Hughes, nee Thomas, was born in 1866 and grew up in the company of four older brothers. The whole tone of the book is very nostalgic, a kind of “what had been” about Hughes’s early life, looking back on it fifty years on, sometimes comparing “then with “now.” And the book is very sentimental in many places, the author fudging a bit at the end the circumstances of her father's death. And yet it’s a very, very funny collection of remembrances, covering everything from trips to Cornwall to visit relatives to what was read on Sundays when no “fun” books were allowed (“Again and again I turned to something entitled The Dark Journey , on...

In Bitter is the New Black , Jen Lancaster gave us the brief details of her bio before she was famously fired from her high-powered job. In Pretty in Plaid , Lancaster illustrates some of those moments, from growing up in Cow Town, Indiana, to her life as a sorority girl during her eleven years of college, to her first job post-college. Like her previous books, Pretty in Plaid is written as a series of essays, all of which are connected by the theme of clothing. From her Girl Scout uniform—covered in (il)legally earned patches—to her first job interview suit, Jen illustrates how clothes shaped the way she views the world. I was extremely entertained by this book. It’s a fast read—I read it in less than two days—and it’s just as funny, if not funnier, than some of her other books. Jen Lancaster definitely has a unique voice that’s very witty, and her thoughts, as usual, are uncensored—good for the reader, since it meant that I was belly laughing all the way through. In fact, in places, ...

In Bar Flower: My Decadently Destructive Days and Nights as a Tokyo Nightclub Hostess , Lea Jacobson recounts the roughly two years she spent as a nightclub hostess in Tokyo’s Ginza district. After she went to Japan in 2003 to work as an English teacher, Jacobson was fired from her job after a psychiatrist spilled the beans to her employer about her fragile emotional condition. She then went to Tokyo, where she began work as a hostess, entertaining Japanese “sararimen,” even though she was psychologically unwell and unable to cope with the rigid demands of Japanese culture. Jacobson describes this underbelly of Tokyo culture as being in a “floating world,” where everything is fluid and nothing stays constant for very long. As a result, Jacobson’s identity kept changing. Along the way, we’re introduced to a variety of interesting characters, including a dragon-like mama-san, an Irish boyfriend named Nigel, who lies to her and breaks her heart; and a four-year-old girl who learned fluent...

Target Underwear and a Vera Wang Gown is the story of Adena Halpern’s closet. If you’ve ever found yourself opening up your closet just to marvel at all the clothes you’ve amassed over the years (and maybe even tried some of them on, just for fun), you'll know what she talks about in this book. In little vignettes, she illustrates the major (and minor) moments of her life and what she wore on those occasions. She tells us stories of: the men’s boxer shorts she wore when she was a teenager, desperate to hide her curves; the six-inch heels that, at 4’11’’, she couldn’t live without; the $4,000 Vera Wang gown that Halpern bought after a breakup; and the Juicy Couture drawstring pants she practically lived in, in 2001 and 2002. Target Underwear and a Vera Wang Gown follows Adena’s story from her childhood outside of Philadelphia, through college in New York, to her move out to LA to live with an old boyfriend, and to work. Halpern and I grew up in the same area (though not in the sam...

I’ve finally discovered the answer to a question I’ve had for a long time: what exactly do housewives do all day long? Well, Julie Klam wrote a memoir. Yup, a bored housewife who was too lazy to go out and get a job even before she married has written a memoir about being absolutely “normal.” She grew up in a wealthy suburb, where she played hookey from school in order to go shopping with her mom. Later, she had trouble getting a job, so she chalks this up as “I was brought up to believe that women don’t work.” Please. Klam’s just l-a-z-y. Then, she dates an ex-con who steals $17,000 from her, and badgers her next boyfriend, Paul, with constant e-mails about wanting to get married. The rest of the memoir is a boring series of wedding details, baby details, and complaints about how horrible Klam’s life was now that she couldn’t afford to get her hair colored and that her size zero jeans didn’t fit. Poor Julie. Furthermore, she wants a job where she can afford to “go out to lunch and get...

Such a Pretty Fat: One Narcissist's Quest to Discover if Her Life Makes Her Ass Look Big: Or, Why Pie Is Not the Answer is Jen Lancaster’s third memoir, after Bitter is the New Black and Bright Lights, Big Ass . In it, Lancaster takes on weight loss—through eating right and exercising. At first, it seems like your typical weight loss memoir, except for the fact that its Jen Lancaster writing it, with her trademark good humor and see-the-forest-through-the-trees approach to her subject matter. Jen’s not an expert, but she certainly knows how to entertain, which is why I keep coming back to her work time and time again. What I love about Lancaster’s work is that she knows when to laugh at herself, and at others’ foolishness, without going over the top. For example, there’s brilliant scene in Such a Pretty Fat where she goes to Jenny Craig and then Weight Watchers, where the meeting participants discuss of the evils of food in the work place. Birthday cake is always, always mention...

Hons and Rebels , a memoir of the life of the “commie” Mitford sister, Jessica, details the authors life from her childhood in rural England up until the time she lived in Miami in the 1940s. The Mitford clan of six sisters (Nancy wrote The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate ) and one brother was an unusual one, prone to playing tricks upon one another and outsiders. Jessica grew up to embrace the ideals of the communist party, while her sister Unity became a Fascist, hobnobbing with Hitler. Jessica then ran away with and married her cousin Edwin Romilly, later moving to the United States. It’s a brilliant memoir, poignant and funny at the same time. Although Jessica’s not always the most sympathetic character, she’s always witty, touching her story every now and then with a hint of irony. Jessica describes everything in painstaking detail, from the Cotswold countryside to certain conversations she had with various people. The memoir is evocative of the time period in which Je...