Books I read at school

Someone on Writers' Dock has started a topic about reading in school, and whether it put us off particular books. Now, ok this is half a century ago, so...

I have very little memory of the books I read at primary school - I was devouring Enid Blyton adventures and the like at that stage, although my father didn't approve. I think we may have been encouraged on an individual basis rather than reading as a class.

At High School, we did read books as a class - I remember Moonfleet, by John Faulkner, which I loved. An adventure yarn with smuggling, treachery, mystery and so on. Mysterious noises in the church vaults during morning service. A cracking yarn.

I could never resist reading on ahead, rather than following whoever was reading in class. I was always two pages or more ahead, with one finger keeping my official page..

We read Hard Times, by Charles Dickens. I wasn't so struck by that at the time.

We read at least one Shakespeare play per year - Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth all stick in my mind. We used to take the parts and read them out.

I don't think we read Jane Austen or the Brontes in school, though I certainly read them at home.

It would have taken more than school to stop me reading as a child. Even the hour at the end of Friday afternoon didn't achieve that. That was when our revered headmistress 'taught' us Religious Studies by reading chunks of the Bible, evidently unaware that some of us eleven-year-olds were wriggling around trying not to wet ourselves.

Just re-read Five Quarters of the Orange, by Joanne Harris. I think this is my favourite of hers. I love the stories where her darker side emerges.

I am reading Friends, Lovers, Chocolate, by Alexander McCall Smith. I like this better than his Mma Ramotswe books about Botswana. He is pretty good at getting inside the head of a modern, intelligent woman.

Light in the Piazza

An odd film, made in 1962, set mainly in Florence. We started to watch it for the scenery, but we continued to watch , in spite of misgivings and being unable to suspend disbelief completely.

Jane Gardam - Old Filth

Just read this - liked it much more than I expected to. Hope to post more on it later.

Kate Long - The Daughter Game

Kate Long's books always keep me reading. I read Swallowing Grandma on a transatlantic flight and it entertained me for the whole journey. I especially enjoy her witty, realistic dialogue, and sharply observed characters.

Her most recent novel, The Daughter Game, doesn't have so many laugh-out-loud moments as the others, but I still picked it up first thing in the morning in preference to my laptop.

The book starts with a scene where the main character, Anna, melts her headmaster with a flamethrower – letting us know that she has a good line in imaginary vengeance, and setting the tone for this lively, warm, and funny though sometimes disturbing book.

Anna is a successful school teacher, but her apparent confidence hides conflicts. She has a history of miscarriages, and is increasingly dissatisfied in her marriage to an ex-teacher who is now a full-time writer. All of the pressures lead her to question everything about her life, from her relationship with her dead mother to her longing for a child.

She has an affair with her brother-in-law, but he wants more from her than she can give. In school a friendship with a promising new female student becomes too intense as Anna sees her as a daughter figure.

Anna’s journey takes us from classroom to staff room, from her middle-class home to a rented caravan to a run-down slum, and I travelled with her all the way.

I have to admit I was rooting for a different ending, but the one in the book makes sense, and I guess it shows I was involved with the characters.

More short notes

I've indulged in something like a reading orgy over the last 2 weeks in Bristol:

The Flamboya Tree - Clara Olink Kelly

Here on Earth - Alice Hoffman


Shuttlecock - Graham Swift.

Talk to the Hand - by Lynne Truss

The Book Thief - I haven't been able to finish this one yet, as it's not mine and I have to leave it behind. I should have started with this one.

Catch-up again

I seem to be reading a lot at the moment, in a not very analytical way.

Daphne du Maurier's House on the Strand for the third time. One of thse slip through time books, this time with the aid of a drug and the added attraction of falling in love with someone who has been dead for 600 years. Same kind of magic as Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley which I read over and over again at the age of 10 or so.



Carol Shields' The Box Garden - a basically upbeat book - Charleen Forrest returns to the house where she was brought up for her widowed mother's wedding to a man she met at the oncology clinic. During the story we learn of her marriage and divorce, her new relationship with an orthodontist, her lovely son, Seth, and her relationship with her sister. She also has a talent for poetry, and writes letters to a mysterious monk, Brother Adam.