Monthly Archives: July 2012
Man Booker Prize 2012 Longlist Announced
The contenders for this year’s Man Booker Prize have been announced, not without the usual controversy. Accused last year for “dumbing” down the award for putting a focus on “readability” this year the judges choices “appeared to support ambition and experiment” (Gaby Wood, The Telegraph), were to be applauded for favouring eccentricity (Justine Jordan, The Guardian) or are damned for being biased (The Guardian). The judges this year are Bharat Tandon (academic, writer and reviewer), Dinah Birch (academic and literary critic), Sir Peter Stothard (newspaper editor), Amanda Foreman (historian) and Dan Stevens (from Downton Abbey).
- Nicola Barker – The Yips
- Ned Beauman – The Teleportation Accident
- Andre Brink – Philida
- Tan Twan Eng – The Garden of Evening Mists
- Michael Frayn – Skios
- Rachel Joyce – The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
- Deborah Levy – Swimming Home
- Hilary Mantel – Bring Up the Bodies
- Alison Moore – The Lighthouse
- Will Self – Umbrella
- Jeet Thayil – Narcopolis
- Sam Thompson – Communion Town
You can read a run-down of all the longlisted books both here (The Independent on Sunday) and here (The Telegraph).
Anyone read anything on the list? I’ve only read Bring Up the Bodies and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, both of which I would recommend.
Charles Dickens: a life
In The Mystery of Charles Dickens on the New York Review of Books blog, Joyce Carol Oates discusses extensively Claire Tomalin’s biography of Dickens: Charles Dickens: a life, London : Viking, 2011.
Claire Tomalin’s biography is likely to be one of the definitive Dickens biographies in its seamless application of “the life” to “the art”
“The narrative is present-tense; the mood is suspenseful”
“Dickens the greatest of English novelists? Few would contest that he is the most English of great English novelists, and that his most accomplished novels are works of surpassing genius.”
The Blue Mountains Library holds 2 copies of this definitive biography of the greatest English novelist! Charles Dickens: a life by Claire Tomalin
#NYR12 Twitter Night – July
Half way through, how are you enjoying Twittering so far? During July Discover has been the theme in the Love2Read / National Year of Reading monthly themes.
Has you discovered anything in your July reading? A new author, new skills, the way to a new You?
There will be a live Twitter discussion on July 31st, starting at 8pm Australian Eastern Standard Time (and lasting until about 10pm Western Standard Time).
Join in using the tag #NYR12 as you discuss your discoveries this month.
#NYR12 Twitter nights will be held at 8pm AEST on the last Tuesday of each month throughout 2012 - put it in your diary now.
Royal Mistresses of the House of Hanover-Windsor by Susanna de Vries
Royal Mistresses of the House of Hanover-Windsor by Susanna de Vries
Published in 2011 by Pirgos Press, 425pp incl. endnotes and index.
Found on the Adult Non-Fiction shelves at 941.07 DEV
Summary : We late 20th and early 21st century mortals may have been scandalised and/or titillated by the sexual shenanigans of Britain’s younger royals, Squidy- and Camilla-gate but marital infidelity among a class that relied on dynastic rather than love matches pre-dates written history. There is a wealth of material to draw on in terms of extra-marital affairs in the British royal family but Susanna de Vries in this book limits herself to the House of Hanover (that became Windsor during WWI).
Starting with Countess Melusine von der Schulenburg, mistress of King George I who succeeded the last Stuart monarch, Queen Anne, in 1714, we move through another eight mistresses* and three royals** before arriving at Prince Charles’ mistress, Camilla Parker Bowles, now Duchess of Cornwall. Camilla is the only former mistress who eventually (legally) married her prince.
We read that many of these princes treated their mistresses appallingly, leaving them destitute when the affair came to an end but equally many of the mistresses used their royal ‘friend’ as a source of cash and cachet. We learn that George IV as Prince of Wales used to keep souvenirs of public hair from his mistresses (“enough to stuff a mattress” apparently) which was discovered after his death. We can take warning from the stories of unloved princes such as the later Edward VIII who, alternately hit and then sexually molested by his nanny, developed some odd sexual needs and relished being dominated by Mrs Simpson.
Review : I have rarely been so thoroughly frustrated by a book as I have by this one by Susanna de Vries. This book seems to have gone to publication without benefit of either editor or proof-reader.
There is certainly plenty of information for Susanna de Vries to give us on these naughty royals, much of it interesting. Unfortunately it reads like a first draft where Mrs de Vries has just been writing down all her thoughts before putting them in good order. The number of repetitions became really annoying, most within a couple of pages of each other. For example, on p26 we are told that “before the passing of the Married Woman’s Property Act in 1875, all money earned by a wife was deemed to be the property of the husband.” By p31 we are expected to have forgotten this already (carried away by all the goings-on perhaps) and are told again, “before the passing of the important Married Woman’s Property Act in 1875 any money a wife earned was legally the property of her husband.”
The worst instance comes on pp 273-274 where in one paragraph we are told, “Enid [Furness] had been raised on a property in New South Wales and was a crack shot and a brilliant horsewoman’” In the next paragraph, and within five lines, we have to be reminded, “raised in New South Wales as a bush girl, Enid Lindeman was a crack shot and a brilliant horsewoman.” Even this peri-menopausal reviewer, absent-minded enough to leave her handbag, glasses and other items all over the place and arrive in a room without a clue why she went there, could retain information that long. And not only did the memoirs of Jennie Churchill ‘conceal more than they revealed’, so did those of Daisy Brooke and Wallis Simpson. These are just a very, very few of the repetitions that pepper the book.
My other bug-bear is the number of errors of spelling and fact that should have been picked up and which spoiled further my enjoyment of the stories being told. Repeatedly, one or other of the wives or mistresses were said to have ‘born‘ one or more children, eg. p33 “Queen Charlotte had born her husband 17 children.” On p57 “Maria stayed with a former school friends“. Several times ‘diner‘ is printed instead of ‘dinner.’ Proof that spell checkers cannot be trusted.
On p58 we are expected to ignore that ”the Prince of Wales, a handsome youth, six years younger than Maria [Fitzherbert]” had aged much more swiftly than his lover for by p66 “Maria truly believed she did love the Prince of Wales and was prepared to overlook the fact that he was six years her senior.” It’s a hard life being a prince it seems. And on p85 Princess Charlotte, heir to George IV, died prematurely in “1917″ – that should read 1817 – it was the death of Princess Charlotte shortly after giving birth to a stillborn son that precipitated the hasty marriage of the parents of Queen Victoria in a race to sire the next heir.
By the time I’d ploughed my way through the whole book, it fairly bristled with post-it notes!
Susanna de Vries has been a fairly prolific writer but if this is an example of her writing I am not inclined to pursue them. I don’t think my nerves would take it.
Reviewed by : Alba
* Mary Darby Robinson, Maria Fitzherbert, Lady Jennie Churchill, Lady Daisy Brooke, Alice Keppel, Freda Dudley Ward, Lady Thelma Morgan Furness, Wallis Simpson
** George IV, Edward VII and Edward VIII
Family History Week @ the library
Family History Week @ Springwood Library
As part of Family History Week, The Blue Mountains Family History Society will be conducting sessions to introduce you to the Family History resources at Springwood Library. An overview will be given of the varied specialised resources available for genealogy research. These free 1 hour sessions will be conducted in small groups and held Monday July 30, to Friday August 3, 10am-11am and 11am-12noon. Bookings are essential. To book call Springwood Library on 4723 5040.
