Tag: Elizabeth Goudge

#1936Club – Blundering around the bookcase: finding books published in 1936

1936 was an eventful year and I found some interesting books published in 1936 for the #1936Club book challenge. Here’s what I found on my own shelves.

After taking part in the 1956 Club challenge, I was looking forward to hunting down some books on my TBR shelves for the next year chosen, which turned out to be 1936: the 1936 Club is born! Thank you to Kaggy’s Bookish Ramblings and Stuck in a Book for picking such an interesting year: unrest on the horizon, but pre-WWII. It was also a very eventful year, with the infamous Berlin Olympics, the Depression in full swing in the USA, the abdication of King Edward VIII, Beryl Markham was the first woman to fly the Atlantic, the Hoover Dam (then called the Boulder Dam) was completed and Crystal Palace burnt down. But what to read? I had plenty of time. I could read the books beforehand and line up some blogposts ready to go, surely… Full of enthusiasm, I did some research, made a 1936-club tab for my Goodreads page, started reading early and still didn’t manage to read them all. Here are my initial thoughts. I’ll be adding my reviews and updating the links here in the coming week, work and gardening commitments willing.

  • The Torminster Trilogy part 1: A City of Bells by Elizabeth Goudge

Books on my TBR shelves

I already had a few lined up on my shelves, but I discovered an unexpected one while perusing the shelves:

The Insect Man: Jean Henri Fabre by Eleanor Doorly, with an introduction by Walter de la Mare and the most wonderful woodcut illustrations by Robert Gibbings. This is a biography aimed at children and bought from my school library when it was selling off old stock. I seem to have been in a biography reading stage at the time because I believe I also bought a biography of Salk, the inventor of the polio vaccine. This was also when I bought the book about the Pestalozzi Children’s Village that I read and reviewed for the 1956 Club.

South Riding by Winifred Holtby, published posthumously after she died tragically young. This is a semi-autobiographical novel set in rural Yorkshire, centring on the county council where all walks of life come together. This was given to me by a fellow BookCrosser together with Testament of a Generation, a collection of journalism by Holtby and her lifelong friend Vera Brittain, whose book A Testament of Youth made me a lifelong pacifist. I may very well have bought that at the same library sale; dangerous things, library sales. Sadly, Vera Brittain’s daughter, the indomitable politician and academic Shirley Williams, died on 11 April 2021 at the grand old age of 90. She was a worthy testament to her mother’s beliefs, so reading South Riding now seems perfect timing.

A City of Bells by Elizabeth Goudge. This is the first book in a trilogy set in a small rural country town where everybody knows everybody else’s business. Since the town has a cathedral, it is officially a city. In the books it’s called Torminster, but the author grew up in the similarly tiny rural city of Wells so it echoes the real place. This was a book that used to belong to my mother, who was the one to tell me about Elizabeth Goudge as The Little White Horse was her favourite book and was mine too, for a while. As one of the main protagonists is a young girl, it sometimes seems like a children’s book, but as one of the themes is mental health, desperation and suicide, though not too prominently, it is definitely aimed at adults. I did say I was going to read Goudge’s The Rosemary Tree for the 1956 Club, but that still hasn’t happened yet; it’s planned for June and my gardens theme.

Also on my shelves but unlikely to be read within the time frame (if at all) are Erle Stanley Gardner’s The Case of the Sleepwalker’s Niece and The Case of the Stuttering Bishop, books 8 and 9 in the series. I discovered to my surprise in the 1956 Club that the books are more entertaining than I expected, but I have so many books I really do want to read and these aren’t going anywhere as they’re part of my husband’s permanent collection. Having looked at the back covers, The Sleepwalker’s Niece sounds like it all comes down to the “brilliant cross examination” in the court case, my least favourite part of this sort of book. The Stuttering Bishop, on the other hand, sounds like it’s going to be far more about detective work and interviewing suspects, which I usually enjoy far more. And who could resist the front cover tagline:

Bogus bishops. Gold-digging granddaughters. No one in this case is for real – except the corpse.

1936 books I’ve already read 

One book published in 1936 that I read years ago and has stuck in my mind is Peter Fleming’s News From Tartary, about a journey on the lesser-travelled southern silk route. I will try to add my review near the 1936 Club week.

Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild. As one of my imaginary career options at the age of ten was to become a ballerina, I obviously read Ballet Shoes and several others by Noel Streatfeild. I still have it and am rather surprised it was written so long ago. Not to mention feeling perplexed to realise that I spent my entire life not noticing the odd spelling of the author’s name!

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. I read this and loved it years ago, but was extremely disappointed by the film. After hearing about it my entire life, I found the first fifteen minutes so slow I turned off the television. I suspect I would feel the same way about the novel now, but it’s on my shelf, just in case I feel an uncontrollable urge to read it again. In actual fact, there is another reason to reread it with fresh eyes: when I first read it years ago, I was caught up in the romance. With a heightened awareness of race issues, it would be interesting to reread it from that point of view.

The Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft. My son listened to some of these creepy stories online somewhere and treated himself to an 878-page doorstopper commemorative edition. Fortunately for me, only three of the stories were originally published in 1936:

  • At the Mountains of Madness – an Antarctic expedition, extremely verbose
  • The Shadow Over Innsmouth – A Cthulhu tale; something fishy this way comes
  • The Shadow Out of Time – “After twenty-two years of nightmare and terror, saved only by a desperate conviction of the mythical source of certain impressions, I am unwilling to vouch for the truth of that which I think I found in Western Australia on the night of July 17-18, 1935.” That’s the one for me!

Other books published in 1936

War With the Newts by Karel Čapek ticks all my boxes: it is on the 1001 list, it was written by an author from an interesting country (he was Czech), satirises many nationalities but especially the Czechs and Dutch (my adopted country) and it was already on my wishlist. However, it’s not on my shelf, so it will have to wait.

Eyeless in Gaza by Aldous Huxley. On the 1001 list and on my wishlist. I devoured A Brave New World as a teenager, but unfortunately I haven’t come across a copy of this, especially as the title is so intriguing.

The Negro Motorist Green Book by Victor Hugo Green. First published in 1936, this was an annual guide book along the lines of a Michelin Guide, but instead of listing the best viewpoints or historical sites along the way, it listed places that it was safe for a person of colour to stay or stop to buy supplies en route. This was the era of the Jim Crow laws in the USA, so it also gave tips about places to avoid such as the so-called sundowner towns that were for whites only. I know I had read about this before and now I’ve found out where: it has turned up in a recent book review of Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff. This sounds like a book I want to read.

One Thousand Ways to Make $1,000 by Frances C. Minaker. This was the book that inspired Warren Buffet, who must have been an overachiever because he claims to have read it when he was about seven and went on to become a multimillionaire.

The Story of Ferdinand by Munroe Leaf, illustrated by Robert Lawson. This was a children’s picture book with a story about a little Spanish bull who preferred to sit under a tree and smell the flowers rather than fight. I will add a review to this soon.

So, there we have it! Unfortunately I haven’t found anything in Dutch or translated from any other language published in 1936. I’ll be looking forward to finding out what other people found.

#1956Club – Blundering around the bookcase: finding books published in 1956

Searching for books for the #1956Club book challenge, I found various candidates, some more appealing than others. This is what I found on my own shelves.

Whilst reading a book blog I follow, I recently saw a reference to the 1956 Club challenge, which involves reading and reviewing one or more books that were first published in – surprise, surprise – 1956. Did I have any books that fit the bill on Mount TBR, I wondered. How would I find them?

Apart from physically opening up any books that I thought were of the era on my own physical shelves (and discovering I have an inordinate number published in 1986 that I opened up, just in case they were older than I thought), I also decided to do a little speculative ferreting for likely candidates on Goodreads. Any author that I could think of who wrote in the 1950s seemed like a good bet, including the children’s authors I enjoyed in the 1960s and ‘70s. I also tried to think of the people who would have been on television back then.

Books that might have appeared in 1956

For me personally, one of the most important things that happened was that my parents got married, as did Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier of Monaco. Rock and roll was taking off, with Elvis’ first appearance, the first Tefal pan was produced, the first nuclear power station opened in Britain, the first interstates in the US, there was the Suez crisis, The King and I was on Broadway. One thing I realised was that the 1950s was an era of exploration, with the first climbing of Everest in 1953 and other mountaineers and explorers also blazing a trail through the world’s more remote corners. Nevertheless, the Everest books, Annapurna and the Kon-Tiki expedition were too early. Elsbeth Huxley’s Flame Trees of Thika was published in 1959, Joy Adamson’s Born Free in 1960. The only book of that ilk I did find was The Drunken Forest by Gerald Durrell, describing a 1954 animal collecting expedition to Argentina and Paraguay. Fortunately for the purposes of the 1956 Club, his book telling the tale wasn’t published until 1956, followed by his most famous book, My Family and Other Animals, set on Corfu. I read that as a child and was captivated, but no longer have a copy. Sadly, I also never seem to put on the television at the right time to watch the dramatization of the Durrells’ chaotic family life. I am entirely willing to read The Drunken Forest this year, however, but probably not within the confines of the 1956 Club timescale.

Children’s books in 1956

Children’s books are another likely suspect for discovering books published in a certain year, especially those authors who publish many books in a series. As such, I suspected Noel Streatfeild might fit the bill and I was right. However, I have neither of the books which she had published in 1956: Dancing Shoes and a book called Judith that I have never come across. Dancing Shoes is part of the so-called ‘Shoes’ series that started with the wonderful Ballet Shoes, a book I still possess. When I looked up Streatfeild’s books on Goodreads, I was surprised that there were so many in this series, because I didn’t know many of them. I remember one of my favourites being Apple Bough, but had not remembered it as being connected in any way, but Goodreads tells me it was also known as Traveling Shoes. The clue is in the spelling: as Ballet Shoes (1936) had been so successful, Streatfeild’s American publishers decided to rebrand the books as the Shoes series, even though the stories were virtually unrelated. Hence another of my childhood books, Party Frock became Party Shoes. In the Frock version, the children decide to arrange a historical pageant for the whole village, simply because the girl staying with them for the summer has been sent a parcel containing a marvellous party dress (cream organdie with a blue sash) and they need to find a reason for her to wear it. I can almost physically feel the beauty of that dress, even though I read it in my very early teens, or earlier, in my ‘longing to be a ballet dancer’ stage.

Prolific authors

Another likely way of finding books published in a particular year is to think of prolific authors; the sort who publish series of books or who seemed to churn out a book every year. One of these was James Michener with 150 distinct works on Goodreads, starting with Tales of the South Pacific in 1947, then publishing new books in 1949, two in 1951, two in 1953, one in 1954 and… his next three in 1957. As already discussed on , another author who used to reliably produce a good novel every year or so was Ian Fleming and, indeed, he wrote Diamonds are Forever, his fourth James Bond novel, in 1956. My husband owns a copy of this, but it remains on my ‘maybe I’ll read it one day’ list.

I then realised that my next best bet was Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason mysteries. Gardner was horribly prolific. My husband collects his books (as did his father before him) and two entire shelves in our bedroom are taken up with them. I’m rather fond of the TV series starring Raymond Burr, especially the later ones, when his secretary Della Street is finally credited with a brain. Della was played by the phenomenally gravelly-voiced Barbara Hale, who was a movie star in her own right before switching to television roles. 

I believe I once read one Perry Mason mystery, possibly The Case of the Fan Dancer’s Horse, but don’t quote me on that. Even though my husband was so enthusiastic, I was put off straight away by the ridiculous names and the sexism; Perry always had to explain everything to his secretary Della. No matter that I often need mysteries explained to me at the end, I objected on principle! I had no idea that the first ones had already been written in the 1930s, which obviously makes me look upon the attitudes with slightly more understanding.

Since he was writing for a television series, whilst remaining a practising lawyer, Gardner published several books a year. In 1956 he published:

The majority of his titles are similarly alliterative, which I love, but I much prefer watching the television show to reading the books. Especially the later ones. I might have a peek at one of the Erle Stanley Gardners, just to see whether I dislike it as much as I thought.

Likewise Ian Fleming’s Diamonds Are Forever, one of my husband’s books. I am not really a Bond fan, though watching those early films is amusing just to see the decor. I’ve never attempted any of the books, though I have read his brother Peter Fleming’s account of travelling on the Silk Route, News from Tartary, which was fascinating (and is available online).

My candidates for the 1956 Book Club

Obviously I wasn’t able to read all of those within a week, especially as I didn’t even come across the concept until the week had already started. I have skimmed The Drunken Forest and will try to post a review very soon. I have started The Rosemary Tree and will post something about it as soon as I have something to say. I spotted a review on Goodreads of an Elizabeth Goudge fan who mentioned reading a chapter of The Rosemary Tree per night. In theory that is a wonderful idea, but inevitably I will get distracted. As Elizabeth Goudge is one of my mother’s favourite authors, I will try to read it this week, in honour of her birthday week. We shall see. As for the rest, time will tell. They are now earmarked for a skim and brief comments. Watch this space; I hope this will kickstart my return to more active blogging. Thank you for the inspiration, kaggsysbookishramblings, stuckinabook and thank you also to Liz at librofulltime.