To Paradise, by Hanya Yanagihara

 

I've now read this book, by an author  referred to in the previous post, in which I reported on an interview  found in "The New Yorker."

It's extremely rare that I turn back to the beginning to read again any book I have just completed.  The last time it happened was with Hilary Mantel's personal memoir, "Giving Up The Ghost".

"To Paradise" is long, and divided into three sections - 1892, 1992, and 2092.  The sections are connected by what appear to be members of two or three families, the Binghams, the Griffiths, and the Bishops.  Characters from the first section turn out to be the grandparents and great-grandparents, and later the great-great grandparents of those who appear in the later sections.

Another common theme is that all the main characters are gay men, and in fact, the writer depicts these sometimes successful, sometimes failed relationships with such skill, delicacy and empathy that I had to look the author up again to make sure that it is not a man.  I'm not sure why this is such an important theme, as the successes and (more often) failures are similar to those of any relationship.  There is also the common theme of discrimination, which runs throughout the novel.The main characters in each section are discriminated against, usually on grounds of their sexuality, but also on racial grounds and even on the grounds of their political and social position.

The theme of the total destruction of the world as we know it is what hits hardest. As our homes sizzled in hitherto unheard of 40 degree temperatures, I was reading of environments devoid of trees - they had wilted to death in constant and relentless heat. As we were warned of hosepipe bans, I read of water shortages such that showering took place in communal "air showers" and even these were strictly rationed.  News footage of wildfires accompanied me as I read of the exhaustion of the emergency services  dealing with fires following hard on the heels of devastating floods.

The recent pandemic of Co-vid 19 (which is not over yet) runs through the book - a relentless series of pandemic waves pouring over the world in all too realistic detail.  The great skill of a good dystopian novel is to select actual, factual elements from the world around us, then weave them into a narrative of imagined characters set against recognizable backdrops. The backdrops are altered just enough to make the settings scary and the events are exaggerated just enough to convince the reader that this could be us, if things should, (as the narrative insists that they will ) get  worse.  

It's possible to trace the apocalyptic climaxes in the third section back to events and human activities from the first and second parts.  The middle section is particularly vivid in its depiction of the island of Hawaii, notable for desecration by human activity.  The words of a Joni Mitchell song rang in my ears throughout - "They paved paradise, and put up a car park."

The first time I read the book, I concluded that the "Paradise" of the title was death.  Some of the main characters actively wish for death, others can only achieve peace via death. And the mess humans have made of the planet seems a fitting reason why death is the only solution for human beings.  

Near the end, we are given an ancient fable about a lizard which ate and ate and ate every leaf, blade of grass, fruit, fish,  anything it could, because it had to eat to stay alive.  Its whole purpose was simply to eat and stay alive.  Naturally it ended up destroying its habitat until there was nothing left to eat.  Ah, we think, a perfect image for the human race, destroying its environment - then humans will die out completely and that will be the end of it.  But the lizard doesn't die, it returns, as a creature walking upright, and the environment gradually regenerates.  The narrator in this section reflects that some will die, but others will "keep doing what we always have ... doing what our nature compels us to ..."

The second reading made me think the complete opposite.   Life is an ongoing gift, which we should never reject by pessimism and defeatism. The majority of us will not in any case choose to reject, but are driven on by the impulse to survive.

Life is the paradise, the world is the paradise.  It's up to us to make the best of it.  

More About The Writing of Hilary Mantel

 This is Hilary Mantel's latest book.

"Mantel Pieces" 

It's a collection of essays from the London Review of Books spanning a period from 1987 to 2019, with some reprints of emails and other communications between Hilary and the editor of the LRB. It's fascinating, among other things, to trace the development of communication from handwritten letters (1987 to 1997), through the invention of the fax (1994 to 1999) and finally the ubiquitous email from 2001 to the present.

There's much to say about this book. In numbered order of occurrence:

1. On the opening page, I burst into tears.  This intrigued me, as bursting into tears was the reaction HM reported on first encountering the inspiration for "Wolf Hall". 

2. On finishing the first few pages, the introduction, in fact, written by HM, I immediately asked for a subscription to LRB as a Christmas present.  Elder daughter was happy to oblige and I am now signed up,

3. HM's writing is incredibly good, and having delved (as I am now permitted to do) into the LRB archives, I can say it stands above almost everything else I have looked at.  I would go so far as to say that HM could write a comparative study of toilets and I would most likely find it readable, engaging, fluent and thought-provoking. 

4. The cover refers to a 'famous', and definitely controversial piece: "Royal Bodies, From Anne Boleyn to Kate Middleton" which was written in 2013. This alluded to Kate Middleton as more or less merely a clothes-horse, but in more unflattering terms; "a jointed doll on which certain rags are hung...." 

Like the other essays, "Royal Bodies" ranges widely, covering Anne Boleyn, Marie Antoinette, Princess Diana, Her Majesty the Queen. (At a Palace reception, HM hid behind a sofa for much of the party). There is also a cogent explanation for why Henry VIII needed to have six wives, and a summary of recent research which promises an explanation of why Henry VIII's wives could not bear him the son he craved.

The press, however, on its first publication, homed in on the Kate Middleton "insults". Journalists patrolled the streets of Budleigh Salterton trying to find HM's home so that they could attack her. She tell us that "The neighbours wouldn't help them - in Budleigh Salterton we don't engage with vulgarians." The Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition denounced her.  There was a brief firework display of outrage and misunderstanding before it fizzled out, eventually.  However, the editors, seeking sales, obviously thought it best to draw attention on the cover to what they clearly feel is the most striking essay in the book.  It's a pity, because if there is one thing HM is NOT, it's a sensationalist writer. This is not the most important piece in the book.

5. The collection lends extraordinary insight into the development of HM's novels.  It is really true, as I wrote in my previous post, that the work took fifteen years to write.  There are essays on characters from Wolf Hall: Jane Boleyn, Charles Brandon, Margaret Pole.  These are replete with the learning HM accumulated from her years of research, lending further insights for those, like me, who are suffering from withdrawal symptoms and cannot come to terms with the idea that the trilogy will not be followed by a fourth novel.

6. There are further insights into an earlier book, also  contender for the Booker Prize, but not a winner. "Beyond Black". This is a deeply dark, beautifully written and perfectly constructed work which I have read twice.  The first time, shortly after its publication in 2005, I had barely heard of HM, and read it as a page-turner.  Revisiting it recently, I realised that I had not fully understood the denouement, or the links between the devils and Alison's childhood, and had certainly been oblivious to much layered nuance about modern life.

The essay in 'Mantel Pieces' called "The Dead are All Around Us - Britain's Last Witch" (published as a book review in LRB in 2001) is a flag-waver and foretaste for "Beyond Black". Whether HM wrote it as she was researching the seedy world of spiritualists and those who conduct seances for a living, or whether, on being asked to review the book in question, she realised what an incredible story this was for a novelist to explore, I do not know.  As she follows the life of "Hellish Nell: Last of Britain's Witches" by Malcolm Gaskill, (published 2001), she zones in to create a working construction of the character who will become Alison.  Alison is the protagonist of "Beyond Black", a lonely, overweight, unwell but strangely convincing professional medium who touts her trade around weekend "Psychic Fayres" in out-of-town motels, in "the banqueting annexes of steak-houses and the hospitality suites of non-league football clubs".  She has associates - these are a cohort of practicioners of the psychic arts: tarot card readers, palmists, purveyors of crystals for healing, with name cards like "Tanya, or Lilia" ... "all of Russian descent" although "it is true their accents often suggest an eastern derivation: Essex".  All these quotes are from the 2001 essay, but sound like a first draft and synopsis for the 2005 novel "Beyond Black". 

Nell, (Helen Duncan, born early in the 20th century in Scotland, exact date uncertain ) first experienced clairvoyant experiences at the age of seven, and developed "crippling diffidence, timidity, and passivity" characteristics entirely appropriated by the fictional character of Alison, whose childhood likewise saw the first of her supernatural experiences. Both grew up to earn their living "as the mouthpiece of dead people: travelling the roads of Britain" .... Helen was "sustained by tea and endless cigarettes, her parasitic husband in tow" (for Alison it was her hard-as-nails business manager, Colette),  "her [Helen's] heavy body always sicker, and apt to take on the sicknesses of other people..." (In Alison's case, she was likewise very overweight, and unwell a lot of the time as she travelled). HM notes and uses in her novel, Malcom Gaskill's observation that "spiritualism was a theatrical spectacle that .... drew on farce, burlesque and vaudeville" In "Beyond Black" this makes for brilliant storytelling, as the medium, Alison, displays such a convincing blend of trickery (suggesting and planting ideas in her subjects) and realism, "Your mum likes your new kitchen units" and then arrows in with an insight which has you believing that she truly does have psychic powers.   There is much, too, to say on the subject of Helen's "spirit guides" - a dead person who returns in spirit and through whose voice the medium would speak.  Alison's range of spirit guides are truly awful ghouls, "the fiends", she aptly calls them, who haunted her childhood, committed unspeakable crimes, and make her life a misery until the end of the novel, when there is a redemption, which I missed the first time I read it.

By the end of the piece, it appeared to me that HM is already seeing Alison, when she writes: "It is a sad thing to see a medium hyperventilating, trembling, running with sweat, gasping out messages from the ancestors to the gormless deracinated teenagers of the Thames Valley, who are too ignorant to know their grandparents names or where they came from." (This exact situation occurs in BB). It is truly awe-inspiring to follow a creative mind at work in this way.

More to follow in a future post.

Wolf Hall Volume 3, Lockdown Reading

Lockdown reading, 900 pages

The long-awaited third, (and final) volume of the "Wolf Hall" trilogy.

I've written about "Wolf Hall" before.

Here is an account of an interview with Hilary Mantel, in which she described how she first got the inspiration for the book.

Here, I gave my experience of the difficulty of reading the original, the first volume, and some tips on how to overcome the difficulties.

My most important tip on how to read "Wolf Hall" is to start with the second volume instead of the  first.  The second volume is called "Bring Up the Bodies".

It's shorter (only 400 pages) and covers a more concise period of history, from the death of Katherine of Aragon to the execution of Anne Boleyn, (a mere four months) so the politics and the characters are simpler to follow.

Here is Volume 1, the original "Wolf Hall", weighing in at 650 pages,which covers the period 1500 to 1535.


The third volume "The Mirror and the Light" starts immediately after the execution of Anne Boleyn in summer 1536, and ends with the execution of Thomas Cromwell himself (no spoilers there, everyone knows he ended up a victim of Henry VIII.)  A period of almost exactly four years.

On finishing Volume 3, I immediately went back to Volume 2, BUTB, and started re-reading it.  It seems so much clearer now.  In fact, it becomes apparent as you progress through BUTB, that Hilary must have known pretty much exactly what she was going to include in Mirror.  Certain foreshadowing events now take on huge significance.  There are also numerous flashbacks to Thomas Cromwell's earlier life, as recorded in WH.

I will probably re-read WH again as well, after finishing BUTB.

Mirror is undoubtedly a work of genius.

If anyone is quaking at the thought, please let me recommend the audio version.  My local library supports three different platforms which enable users to download audio-books, completely free of charge. Fortunately I had already signed up for these a couple of years ago, and was therefore able to take advantage of them when lockdown closed all physical libraries.

You can also download e-reader versions, but I prefer either a book to hold in my hand, or the audio version.  I listen as I go for my daily walk (one hour in lockdown), while I do dusting or ironing, (not hoovering, too noisy), and some cooking activities (not clattering and banging ones).  I listen when I want to retreat to a separate room behind a closed door and make it absolutely plain to my husband that I am absorbed in an exclusive activity and don't want to chit-chat.

(It's chit-chat that erodes a relationship in lockdown, not silence.  Silence strengthens a bond of 41 years, and reminds me that we have survived many challenges.  Chit-chat generally causes irritation, and often ends in an argument).

I started off by listening to a section on the audio-book (so as to make the best use of the time), and then carrying on from there with the printed version.  So interesting and addictive is the narrative, however, that very often I both read and listened to whole chunks in duplicate, to get the full impact of the writing.

The audio version of all three volumes in the trilogy is read by Ben Miles, who played the lead role, Thomas Cromwell himself, in the Royal Shakespeare Company stage version of WH and BUTB in 2014.  (Tickets sold out in minutes, the furore over the whole project was so great).

Ben Miles reads it beautifully, and fully enters into the mind and character of Thomas Cromwell, even giving him a faintly rough, common South London accent which indicates he was a blacksmith's son from Putney (although the accent would have sounded very different in 1530's). He even manages to make Cromwell sound like a burly, solid bruiser of a man, which he allegedly was.

Ben also reads Henry VIII exceptionally well, conveying perfectly the monarch's selfishness,  petulance, childishness, deviousness, insecurity, and cruelty.

At the end of the audio-book, a bonus section gives an interview between Ben Miles and Hilary Mantel.  This is illuminating.  In it she says she was planning and drafting the third volume as she sat in on the RSC's rehearsals in 2013.  And that the actors playing the parts influenced how she saw and heard the characters in Mirror. She said that the TV actors in the BBC version influenced her also.  That makes sense, as I found myself seeing them in my mind's eye as I listened.

Ultimately, in this bonus section, Hilary Mantel says that these three novels are the great project of her life, and took her fifteen years to complete.

Fantastic work.  Definitely genius.  I want it to go on. I want Thomas Cromwell's ghost to peer over the shoulder of the nasty Jane Rochford when she gets her come-uppance at last (she was executed for facilitating the sexual liaisons of Henry's fifth wife, Katherine Howard, who was likewise  executed, in 1542).  Jane Rochford had, in 1536, betrayed her husband, George Boleyn, (Anne's brother). She testified against him, thus helping secure his and Anne's conviction in 1536.  Jane Rochford went mad, apparently, while awaiting her fate in the Tower. Cromwell would have relished the spectacle.

I want to see Thomas watch the nasty Earl of Surrey (Anne Boleyn's cousin, eldest son of the Duke of Norfolk),  arrested. He put up a spirited defence at his trial but he, too, gets his come-uppance.  Surrey was executed for treason two weeks before the death of Henry VIII.  I particularly want to see Thomas enjoying the spectacle of wicked old "Uncle Norfolk" (the Duke,  uncle to both Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard, wives 2 and 5 respectively), sweating out his last night on earth in the same Tower, after his son's death.  Norfolk was due to be executed the next morning, but Henry VIII died in the night, and so he escaped his fate.  He did spend the entirety of the next reign (Edward VI, six years) in the Tower.  I suspect Cromwell would have haunted him there, just as Thomas Wolsey and Thomas More, previous victims of King Henry VIII, haunted Cromwell.

Then there's nasty Wriothesley, Cromwell's former friend and protege, who betrayed Cromwell and went over to the Duke of Norfolk's side, to help arrest Cromwell and secure a conviction.  He wasn't executed, but must have been terrified that he was about to be, when in 1546 he marched confidently into the King's presence to arrest Henry's sixth and final wife, Katherine Parr.  He was confident that he could have her executed for treason as well, and had already plotted to search her papers, and had tortured (illegally) on the rack a woman thought to be a supporter of the supposed treason.

Unfortunately for Wriothesley, Katherine Parr managed (unlike her five predecessors), to effect an affectionate reconciliation with Henry, and Wriothesley was sent packing. He must have feared for his future, but got away with it and survived into the next reign.

Hilary Mantel is very taken up with ghosts, they play a marked role in Thomas Cromwell's thoughts, particularly when he realises he is on the downward slope of the King's favour, and there is little hope that anyone or anything can save him.

Hilary Mantel's own memoir, a fascinating account of her childhood, is entitled "Giving Up the Ghost", and this is a book I intend to look at in a future post.

Ten Writing Tips From Hilary Mantel

Acknowledgements to Hilary and to : Bridget Whelan

Ten things I’ve learned….since I started writing my first novel, in 1974 (which feels like yesterday). Ten things to think about, or ten rules I try to keep: I won’t call them advice, as I’d hardly presume to give it.

1. If you see a problem in your narrative, go there fast. Head for the point of danger. It’s where the energy is.

   2. Free up your creativity: Liberate it from your expectations and experience. When you have an idea, don’t assume it’s a novel or story, just because that’s your usual medium. It might be a play, poem, song, or movie. Who knows, it might be best expressed as garden design. Or maybe you should knit it?

   3.  If the rhythm of your prose is broken, read poetry.

   4.  Cut every page of dialogue by one-third.

   5.  If a phrase troubles you, strike it out, and if there seems no alternative, try simple omission. If you are dubious about it in your manuscript, you’ll shrink from it in the printed book.

   6.  If you don’t know how your story ends, don’t worry. Press on, in faith and hope.

   7.  If you see a habit forming, break it.

   8.  Control where the story starts. In a novel, don’t put anything important—like a clue—before “Chapter One.” Prefaces, epigraphs: 90% of readers ignore them.

   9.  When you break through, not everyone close to you will enjoy your success. Accept this.

   10.  Writing for the theatre is the most fun.

More About Wolf Hall

Recently, Hilary Mantel was the guest on Radio 4's Book Club.  Book Club is a lovely Sunday afternoon treat, ideal for those replete and resting off a large Sunday lunch indoors on a winter day, perhaps while ironing.  Jim Naughty (pronounced Knockerty, for any foreign readers visiting here), was the interviewer.  He kicked off with the question, "What inspired you to write "Wolf Hall"? 

Hilary, bless her, answered, in her tremulous, slightly squeaky voice, that she had been visiting an Elizabethan house.  It was the home, and was first built by, one of the protégés of Thomas Cromwell, by the name of Ralph, or Rafe Sadler (or Sadleir - Tudor spellings vary).  Ralph is a historic, real-life character in "Wolf Hall" and "Bring up the Bodies".  He did well for himself, learning much from his mentor Cromwell, who in his turn had learnt much from his own mentor, Cardinal Wolsey.  Ralph built the house when he moved out from the Cromwell multi-generation and multi-occupancy household, to what was then a small country village three miles east of London.

Hilary said that she was so overcome by the Tudor brickwork, tiled floors, wood panelling and cracks in the plaster, that she burst into tears, and immediately started imagining her Tudor stories.

"And," she wound up, triumphantly, "It's still there!"

As soon as the programme ended, I looked the house up in the National Trust handbook.  As I suspected, it is a NT house, and open to the public all the year round.  Quickly, I arranged a meeting with my friend of longstanding, who shares just about all my interests, and we went down to London on Saturday to visit Sutton House, NT, Hackney.

It was pouring with rain, and we struggled along the High Street, deafened by traffic and police sirens.  Hackney is now an uber-urban environment.  We were disappointed that the café inside offered only one type of cake, and we were tired.

Unfortunately, beautiful though Sutton House undoubtedly is, we just could not access the atmosphere which had enchanted Hilary Mantel.  However, don't let that put you off.  It is well worth a visit if you are at all interested in the novels.

Tips on How to Read Wolf Hall

I don't know anyone who has finished "Wolf Hall". Most of my friends (as you would expect) are avid readers, but all of them say things like: " I couldn't follow it", or "You didn't know who was who, or who was speaking", or simply "I found it unreadable".

Finally, four years after publication (Wolf Hall won the Man Booker Prize in 2009), and three years after I bought and stashed away my hardback copy, it has at last reached the top of my "to-read" pile.

First tip - Read "Bring Up the Bodies" first.  (Thanks are due for this tip to my young friend and ex-work-colleague who took a first in History, but still couldn't make it through WH).  She said that BUTB is easier, and I certainly agree with her.  I didn't have any problems with it and it eased me into the mind-set of the author's way of writing, and her intentions.  Also, I was disappointed when it ended, and therefore actively looking forward to reading WH.  Although WH comes first, of course, and BUTB follows on, both chronologically and in the author's order of writing.

Second tip- Watch "The White Queen" first, and read at least one of the four novels on which the series is based.  You don't need to read all of them because they each take a different character's point of view of essentially the same events.  Maybe not "The Lady of the Rivers", though, because that one is slightly earlier in time.  The best two books in my opinion are "The Red Queen" and "The White Queen".

The reason for my second tip is as follows:

Philippa Gregory's historical novels are much, much easier to read than WH or BUTB, and you can easily get into the period via these novels.  The period of course being the one immediately prior to the Tudors.  In fact Henry VIII's father, Henry Tudor, is a major character in the Philippa Gregory series.  You get to know him, and his extremely stubborn, single-minded and obsessive mother, Margaret Beaufort.  Don't forget she was H8's grandmother on the Lancaster, (or Red) side.  And they introduce you to his grandfather (on the York side, the white side of the Tudor Rose).  This was Edward IV, and once you have met him, you see how much H8 took after him.  Physically, both were very tall, very golden, very good-looking, very charming, and very athletic and strong - in their youth.  Both put on weight, ran to fat, and became more self-centred and ruthless in middle age.

A further crucial similarity is that Edward IV, controversially, married an English commoner, for love.  And even more interestingly, that particular woman refused to be his mistress, and held out for marriage or nothing.  And another similarity is that the existence of a "pre-contract" or earlier marriage (which happened before the one universally recognised), later emerged as a reason why the public marriage was declared legally invalid.  And when it did emerge, the children of the public marriage were declared to be bastards.  And someone else took the throne on that presumption.  (The infamous Richard III, but I am not going there). 

So all that sets the scene, and gives a background for the character and behaviour of H8, and the background of civil unrest and war which explains the ruthlessness of the Tudors in executing anyone who set up as a rival claimant to the throne.  The history of the "Wars of the Roses" and the "Princes in the Tower" also explain the Tudors'  absolute obsession with the production of adult male heirs. 

Third tip - Read and study the family trees which are laid out at the beginning of WH, and insert pencilled notes about the characters based on what you have learned from the study of the "Wars of the Roses" period.  Keep a bookmark in the family trees page, and refer to it as often as needed.

Fourth tip - Have some history books to hand.  My recommendations are as follows:

"The House of Tudor" by Alison Plowden.  This gives an excellent overview of each of the Tudor monarchs as they follow on from the Plantagenets, and has further helpful family trees.

"The Six Wives of Henry VIII" by Antonia Fraser.  The really excellent and meticulous fact-gathering of this work help you to navigate through the politics both national, international and religious.  You can use the index to help you sort out the many Thomas's appearing in WH. You can look up the differences between Thomas Wolsey, Thomas Cranmer (both churchmen) and Thomas Cromwell, (linked to both, and the central persona of WH and BUTB). 

In a similar vein, the last of the Plantagenets are confusingly called "The Poles", (descended from George Duke of Clarence, he who drowned in the butt of Malmesy wine), and the "de la Poles" (descended from a sister of Edward IV, also sister to Clarence and Richard III).  You can look these names up in the history books to clarify who is who, and amend the family trees with further information.

Antonia Fraser's chapters on Anne Boleyn herself recount many of the events described in Wolf Hall, in the same order, so you can go there for verification of what is going on.  And lastly, perhaps most importantly, Antonia Fraser gives impeccable reference notes, and lists her sources exhaustively.  So, for example, you learn that Wriothesley, an irritating minor character in WH and BUTB, has a cousin who is the author of a "Chronicle of England" and hence a source.  Likewise, the rather shadowy minor character George Cavendish, Wolsey's servant, turns out to have written a biography of Wolsey which is heavily used by AF as a source document.  This is heaven for a person who likes checking things.  Novels, of course, don't have an index!

Fifth tip - don't read it as a page-turner - it isn't. Take your time.  Savour the language, and the historic detail, which you will recognise from the history books.  Enjoy the "inside" knowledge which you are gleaning, ostensibly from the mind of the person there at the time, Thomas Cromwell, but in fact from works of history and the benefit of hindsight.  Enjoy this god-like feeling of both knowing what is going to happen next, and having an imaginative insight into the thoughts and feelings of those present at the scene.  This is where Hilary Mantel really excels.  Her imagination recreates scenes with such realism, but simultaneously with such emotion and feeling - the latter qualities of course are  completely absent from sixteenth century historical records.  It is this skill which, I think, is what makes people feel sad when they have finished the book, and thirst for more.

As I did after finishing "Bring up the Bodies".

Electronic Equipment Seduces Me, but I Resist

I've commented before on the strange dissimilarity between myself and a very old friend  (32 years and counting), concerning her dislike of second hand books. Second hand books are one of the greatest joys of my life. She already has a Kindle (150 books on it waiting to be read, when I saw her last week), and has now bought an I-pad.  I asked her what she was going to use if for, and she didn't know.  You can read books on an Ipad, as well as play games and do emails.  She already has equipment to do all that, and I have to conclude that it was the aesthetic beauty of the I-pad which she could not resist. I thought the same myself, whilst waiting in PC World recently for the stock department to cough up a result for a new laptop I was considering purchasing. I was drawn to the display of Ipads, and picked one up.  It was lovely to hold, lovely to look at, and the clarity of the graphics was just so brilliant.  I was terribly tempted, but had to keep telling myself, "You cannot run Microsoft Office on this equipment, and the whole reason I wish to buy a new laptop is so that I can run the full suite of Office equipment and send documents electronically with ease to others using the same programmes."

The possibibility of reading books on an I-Pad was not a factor at all in my thinking.  I love the feel of old books, I love the colour of old paper, and the distinctive character of different type faces.  The physical weight of a real book tells you something about the contents.  After Hilary Mantel won the Booker prize a second time last week, I retrieved from my bookcase my copy of her first win, "Wolf Hall". It's a hardback, which cost £1 in a charity shop.   About eighteen months ago, charity shops were flooded out with copies of "Wolf Hall", presumably because people had found it to be unreadable, after being given copies for Christmas.  The heavy, solemn dimensions give a preview of what the book will be like to read - not light or frothy.

At the present time, I am reading a copy of "A Pair of Blue Eyes", by Thomas Hardy.  My copy, sourced in the excellent "Oxfam" Bookshop in Guildford, was printed in 1895.  It is not a "First Edition" (the book was published in 1873), but a first "new" edition of the version printed by the American publisher, Osgood, McIlvaine.

Well over 100 years old, the spine is weak, and bits of old brown paper drop out of the binding when I prop it up in my book stand to read over meals.

The paper is yellow, the margins wide, the cut edges of the paper uneven, and the typeface small,  hard to read without my reading glasses.

Wishing to find out more about the book,  I went to the local library and took out a modern edition, "The Oxford World's Classics"  version.  This gives two maps of Wessex, a preface, an Introduction, a Note on the Text, a reading list, other historical notes, and an Appendix.

This is a pristine paperback, with a colour picture on the cover, and only one borrower has taken it out before me. It is printed in the Oxford Classics typeface, exactly the same as that used in its companion, "Jude the Obscure", also in my library pile.

The book smells of nothing, and gives out no atmosphere.  I have read all the introductions and notes, but not the text (even though it differs slightly from the earlier, as TH revised it frequently during his lifetime, and this version has taken into account revisions later than 1895).

It does not stimulate my imagination.  Reading the yellowing pages of the older book conjures up a time when women wore long skirts, had no vote and little chance of any education, and had to rely on marriage for a chance to leave the family home.  Ladies, in particular, had to be shy, modest, able to play the piano and ride a horse, and had to have a spotless and unkissed past in order to impress a gentleman suitor.  It is easy to connect with that long ago time when the book connects you with it.  The new book, a uniform edition, has no such effect.

I do feel that a Kindle would have an even more dampening effect on my imagination. 

Not long ago, on one of my now frequent visits to the library, an assistant approached me and tried to interest me in attending a lecture by Miriam Margolyes on electronic books. This lecture was free, and apparently designed to stimulate interest.


I was shocked, and told her I had no intention of moving over to electronic.  This being in the actual library, I was rather worried that in ten years time there will be no books left on the shelves.

More encouraging was a small book I saw recently in the shop in the British Library.  It was by former Booker Winner Julian Barnes, and was a hymn of praise in favour of real books, and particularly of second hand ones.  I vowed to continue building up my stocks!