Some Developments

1. I've bought a kindle! And already downloaded 6 samples to read (excluding ones I've already read and deleted) and 5 books.  It's fun. 

2. I've obtained a reader's ticket for the University of Leicester Library.  Unlike the British Library, you can actually borrow books!  Awesome.  I've borrowed three, but because of the excitement of my kindle, I haven't fully read them yet.

3. I've set a retirement date.  I gave three months' notice and am retiring on 15th August. Hopefully then I will read all the books I've downloaded and borrowed.

4. I think I am going to cry when I leave work.  Although there are rational reasons, work and family have been my whole life.  Family have grown up and got their own lives now.  Work is going to come to an end. This is a big change in lifestyle.  

Have people any tips for new retirees?

How Do You Read?

A publisher's site, http://nosycrow.com/blog/how-do-you-read, asks for feedback about whether people prefer to read books electronically or in hard copy.

My friend bought a Kindle a couple of years ago, and initially was very enthusiastic about it.

Yesterday I went with this same old friend to have lunch at The British Library.  After lunch, we browsed in the shop.  However, I noticed that, in the actual shop, she was eagerly grabbing hold of the beautifully arranged books, smoothing her hand caressingly over the pristine covers of the paperbacks,  admiring the colours, and generally acting like the books were a box of expensive chocolates which she craved and coveted.

I asked her about her current feelings about books.

She told me she was becoming tired of the Kindle.  It is so easy to download books that she has about 160 waiting to be read.  They all look the same.  There are no distinguishing covers, you can't easily go back and forth or insert notes in the margins.  They don't have a FEEL.  In short, she intends to resume her old habit of browsing in bookshops.

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!

A Fun Five Minutes

At lunchtime yesterday I went into the Amnesty International Bookshop on Mill Road, Cambridge.  Normally I try to resist the temptation, although it is  a mere three minute walk from my office.  I could probably buy up half the shop if I went in there every day.

Once I get in there, a feeling of intense excitement comes over me, similar to that which I feel on entering a large library.

All the books are beautifully categorised and each category is alphabetically ordered, so that it is easy to find a book one wishes to buy.

The till lady recognised me, and remembered that two years ago I asked to be notified when any book by Barbara Pym came into stock.

She pointed to a pile of Barbara Pym books which had just been donated, and were still sitting in a pile waiting to be shelved.  Since I made the request, I have bought almost all of her books, from various sources, but there was still one left I had not read, so of course I had to have it.  Next she showed me a biography of Barbara unknown to me, so I bought that as well, although it was a rather poor quality paper back.

We tried to remember the title of an edition of Barbara Pym's letters and diaries,  both of us failed.  We chatted about our reading habits, the relative pleasures of second-hand versus new books, and what might be the merits of the Kindle.  We agreed that, although all books look the same in the Kindle, and there is no pleasure in holding and looking at it, yet it has advantages.  Notably the free down-load of many classics and other out-of-copyright books.  I mentioned that a friend had downloaded some Dickens material which is unavailable outside academic libraries.

Via our use of libraries, we got on to the subject of HG Wells.  (I am currently reading David Lodge's recent and partly imaginary biography, on loan from my local library). "The man was obsessed with sex," was my verdict.  We were unanimous in our disparagement of HG.  She summed him up as "an unpleasant old goat!" which I thought completely apt.  Leading on from this train of thought, I spotted what is probably the only novel by Rebecca West which I have not read, so naturally that was also added to my purchases.

About to leave the shop, highly pleased with my haul, I suddenly remembered what I had come in for.  Ordnance Survey maps for my holidays this year.  Needless to say, there were none suitable for my planned journeys.  But I went out of the shop with a pile of books and a feeling of warmth, well-being, and the pleasure of having communed with a fellow book-addict.

Barbara Wootton "In a World I Never Made"

So, back to my book that almost no-one else has heard of.   I picked this book up in a National Trust second-hand bookshop on my holiday in Norfolk.  When my friend arrived to join me, complete with Kindle, I showed her my trophy.  She thinks second hand books are tacky and doesn't like to touch them.  Later on, she asked me if I'd heard of Barbara Wootton.  Seems my husband isn't the only one who doesn't listen to me!

Her question arose from the Ilkley Literature Festival.  Seems someone has written a biography of Barbara Wootton and was due to attend the Festival for a talk and book-signing.  Someone else then, has seen interest in this hitherto forgotten person. Maybe she will develop a following.

Barbara Wootton was born in 1898, to upper-middle class parents. Against her mother's wishes, she fought for the right to study a subject of her choice at University.  She lost her husband (of a day and a half's standing) in the First World War.  Are you following the drift of this?  Yes, it is because of my interest in Vera Brittain that I was first drawn to look up BW.

At that point most similarities come to a full stop.  Barbara was a very different person from Vera.

Barbara led, to all intents and purposes, the life of a single woman, even though she had in fact married her first love.  She also married a second time, although she eventually left George and they never had children.  The latter fact was because of the unsatisfactory character of George. 

BW led an exemplary life in public service, and was a career woman throughout.  This, in fact, was probably due to her mother's influence.  Her mother, a classics don, instructed young Barbara on her wartime engagement, at 19, that she must continue her education.  "My mother was ....adamant that the engagement should make no difference to my academic career.  No one knew what might be ahead, or when I might need to earn my own living, so I must at all costs equip myself with that essential prerequisite to independence, a university degree."

After taking an exceptional first-class degree, BW continued to be an academic and to serve as a magistrate, a BBC Governor, and on many public committees.  She was honoured to be one of the first four women admitted to the House of Lords. Her work pioneered the "Social Sciences".

You read a book of autobiography, not just to find out the dates and the facts.  You long for the emotion, and the nuggets.

Here are the nuggets.

BW wrote scornfully in Chapter 2 of the difference between her own reaction to multiple bereavements by the time she was 21, and the reaction of VB.

"Indeed, what infuriated many of us, when Vera Brittain published her "Testament of Youth" was the impression she conveyed that she alone of the nurses with whom she worked had to endure the anxiety of knowing that her beloved was at the front." 

Sorry, BW, impressive though your credentials, you are completely wrong.  VB conveyed no such thing.  What she DID do, incomparably well, was to convey every nuance of emotion, every stage of apprehension, bereavement and grief, in such a way that millions the world over could understand.  This is because she is a writer.  BW, an academic and social scientist, stated a few bald facts and, shocking though they were, never touched a nerve, in me at least.

Later on in the book BW comments on the journey of all those women born in the 1890's, who were brought up without any expectation of ever getting the vote, and lived to see women enter Parliament and begin to influence far-reaching changes in the law which would eventually lead to the Womens' Movement of the 1970's.  A further nugget is related below.

Her close associate in the journey towards independence, a school-friend called Dorothy, became a leading doctor, "renowned throughout the world for her medical researches.  When she was about to receive an honorary degree from an overseas university, a newspaper man, looking down the list of honorary graduands, was heard to remark that he had not previously realised that Dorothy could be a man's Christian name."    I still laugh when I re-read this.

Finally, though, BW will be remembered, not for her writing, but for her contribution to society and her place in the pivotal years between the First World War and the 1960's