Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

A brief note before our regularly scheduled Wednesday Reading Meme: I’m annoyed at my state for swapping our Democratic senator for a Republican, but on the whole the outcome of the midterm election was quite satisfactory. Maybe the news cycle will be less overwhelmingly awful on a daily basis now? Is that too much to hope for?

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Enid Blyton’s First Term at Malory Towers. Where as this book been all my life? Clearly on bookshelves in every English-speaking country on earth except America. WHY.

I love boarding school stories and this one is top-notch. Not so much in terms of writing quality - Blyton is a pedestrian writer at best - but she does have the one skill that is absolutely necessary in a school story, which is that of sketching in a lot of characters quickly but memorably. They generally start with one quality (Mary-Lou is timid, Gwendolyn is selfish, Sally Hope is Mysterious) and then develop a bit more complexity as they go along, which is surprisingly effective.

I quite enjoyed all the emphasis on the girls’ friendships (our heroine Darrell spends much of the book searching for a particular friend, as her first choice already has a best friend), and also all the parallels between this book and Harry Potter: you’ve got the train ride, the carriages to the school, settling into the dorm, etc. etc. I’ve seen Harry Potter described as a classic boarding school story and now I know why!

I’ve finished the Nanea duology, the latest American Girl books - I am forever bitter that American Girl series used to have six books and now have merely two - and these books are moderately pleasant but not good enough to overcome that bitterness or the fact that American Girl books no longer have illustrations. BRING BACK THE ILLUSTRATIONS, AMERICAN GIRL! I might even be able to forgive the reduction in number of books if they at least had illustrations.

I also read the graphic novel Compass South, because I’ve seen it out and about and any graphic novel set right before the Civil War might be interesting… but in practice it didn’t grab me. But a graphic novel is such a quick read that I finished in anything.

What I’m Reading Now

The Twins at St. Clair’s, which has not grabbed me quite like First Term at Malory Towers, maybe because the Enid-Blyton-boarding-school-story-shaped-hole in my heart has been filled? Or possibly because the twins already have each other and don’t seem interested in making friends yet so there’s much less friendship than in Malory Towers.

Also Heroines of Mercy Street: The Real Nurses of the Civil War, which is a companion nonfiction book to the TV series Mercy Street, but more informative and well-researched than you might suppose. So far I haven’t learned much about wounds (then again, how much detail do I want to know about Civil War wounds?) but quite a bit about the bewildering array of organizations that popped up to supply nurses to the army, the Army Medical Corps being utterly insufficient in itself. The more I learn about the Civil War, the more ad hoc and disorganized it all seems. How did either side ever manage to fight the war at all?

What I Plan to Read Next

I put a hold on Lee Israel’s Can You Ever Forgive Me?: Memoirs of a Literary Forger, but apparently I wasn’t the only person who had this thought after seeing the movie, so it will be a while before I get it.

Comments

[rachelmanija]

I just discovered that I have some duplicate Enid Blytons. Would you possibly want them, or some of them? I'll tell you which they are if so.

[osprey_archer]

Do you have any Malory Towers books after the first one? If so, YES.

I'm not as enthralled by St. Clare's yet, but I wouldn't say no if that's what you've got.

[rachelmanija]

Well, darn. None of the above. I have...

The Secret Island. Four mistreated kids run away to live alone on an island. I really like this one and I think you would too. It's very cozy but has some real emotion to it too.

The Island of Adventure; The River of Adventure. Pulp explorer type adventure for kids; fun but possible horrifying race issues. (Can't recall any in these two specifically, but River mentions "ancient desert lands" and "a forgotten temple" so possible. Island is probably safe as it's set on the "mysterious Isle of Gloom" which is off Cornwall.

The Mystery of the Five Find-Outers. Mystery for younger kids; I was very fond of these when I was eight but not sure how they hold up. They feature a smart boy named Fatty, his Scotty dog Buster, a comic stupid policeman named Mr. Goon who is always saying "Clear orf," and some other kids.

[osprey_archer]

The Secret Island sounds pretty good. How about that one? Do you have my address?

[rachelmanija]

No, PM me.

[duskpeterson]

There used to be a Goodreads group on girls' school stories; it's gone, alas. But maybe these would help in tracking down boarding-school stories?

https://web.archive.org/web/20051102112807/http://home.swipnet.se:80/flickbok/eng.htm

http://web.archive.org/web/20020221204341/www.penrithcity.nsw.gov.au/usrpages/collect/girls.htm

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/810042.The_Encyclopaedia_of_School_Stories

[osprey_archer]

Thanks! I've socked them away for a slow day at the library.

[conuly]

If you're a particular fan of boarding school stories, have you read the ones by Antonia Forest?

[osprey_archer]

I hadn't heard of Antonia Forest, but I looked them up and... now I am intrigued. My library doesn't have them, though. But someday!

[conuly]

They're definitely a cut above most other school stories.

[asakiyume]

Wakanomori would love how much you enjoyed the Enid Blyton--he grew up on those stories. There were still some lying around the parental home when we were living there, and I read a couple to my kids. They were well constructed adventure stories! I didn't read First Term at Mallory Towers, though (it wasn't among the books in the house), so it's interesting to hear how it works, what elements are ones JKR used, etc.

[osprey_archer]

She wrote SO MANY BOOKS, it's incredible. In so many different genres too - boarding school stories, fantasy stories, adventure stories, probably other kinds of stories too... Are we sure she wasn't actually five people?

[ladyherenya]

I remember liking the Malory Towers series -- or liking whatever I read of it.

I haven't tried to reread anything by Blyton for years. Not so much because I think the books will be terrible as I just know they won't live up to my childhood memories of them.

[osprey_archer]

Yes, I think that would be a real problem with Blyton. Her stories have a lot of emotional pull (I can only imagine even more if you read them as a child!) but her prose just isn't very good, and that might get in the way of a reread.

[ladyherenya]

Her storytelling also doesn't really have the sort of depth which means books are worth rereading in order to pick up on the nuance you didn't notice or appreciate as a kid.

I think Blyton's books have things in common with series which were available through Scholastic bookclub in the 90s. Prolific, intensely appealing, focus on food, friendship, adventure and often animals.

[thisbluespirit]

This is because St Clare's is just not as good as Malory Towers! Aside from Fifth Formers which does contain Enid Blyton's funniest sequence (in which Mamzelle spends a night capturing burglars, who are not burglars).

Blyton also wrote another boarding school series that you might be interested in, which is The Naughtiest Girl set of three books. I mostly (at this remove) wouldn't got to Blyton for boarding school stories, because Blyton and there are so many better ones out there, but the Naughtiest Girl is actually kind of interesting because it's a co-educational boarding school which is kind of governed by the pupils themselves & unlike any of the others. (It's called the Naughtiest Girl because its heroine doesn't want to go to school and spends the first term trying to get herself expelled.)

The Chalet School are the boarding school stories of my heart, though, much as I used to love Darrell and MT. (Poor Gwendoline!!) I can reread Elinor, I can't reread Enid. (Although MT and the Five-Find Outers & Dog are some of those that hold up the best, I think.) But I know Chalet School is even harder to come across in the US, though! It's great, though: Madge Bettany needs to find some way of looking after herself and her younger sister Jo, so she sets up a school in Austria where it's really cheap (it's c. 1926) and they take in a mixture of boarders and local Tyrolean girls and it's addictive comfort reading in which the school gradually grows while doubling up as a mid-century travel story. People do get reformed by mountain accident a lot, but I don't think ever as obnoxiously as people are taught lessons in Blyton, or as uncomfortable as, say, Dimsie's Anti-Soppist clubs and WWII spy-hunting.

One day I must get hold of the ur-girls boarding school story - Angela Brazil - given that I do still have a ridiculous fondness for the genre. Terrible in so many ways, but so much about girls and their friendships and ambitions and problems! <3

ETA: Obviously this sort of thing requires cash, alas, but FYI Girls Gone By who exist to keep these sorts of stories in print: https://www.ggbp.co.uk/

Out of interest, have you ever read the Sadler's Wells series by Lorna Hill? They were ballet books, but pretty good & also sit with Chalet School in my head.

[landofnowhere]

Angela Brazil is on Gutenberg, if you like e-books. I read one of them a long time ago because they get a mention in The Lives of Christopher Chant and I was curious, but I think I've completely forgotten them.

[thisbluespirit]

Thanks! I don't have an ereader, or I would already have snaffled them, though.

[osprey_archer]

I binged on a bunch of Angela Brazils a few years ago after downloading them on my e-reader. I didn't like them quite as much as Malory Towers, but it was still a good time.

[osprey_archer]

My library actually has the first of the Naughtiest Girl books! So I may have to read this one simply to encourage the library's acquisitions in this direction.

And I've heard marvelous things about Chalet School, which is almost impossible to come by in the US, but I live in hope that ONE DAY I shall walk into a used bookstore and discover that someone has abandoned their entire Chalet School collection and I'll acquire them all in one fell swoop. Someday! It could happen. (Or maybe someday I'll take a trip to England and haunt various used bookstores there till I acquire a complete set. That might be more likely.)

I've read a few Angela Brazils but they didn't make a big impression on me. But it's probably worthwhile to read at least one for the sake of understanding The History of the Genre.

I had never heard of Sadler's Wells and I suspect it's one of those British series that never crossed the pond to any great extent. (There seems to be a great overlap between "books I would very much like to read" and "books that the British kept for themselves, no rebellious colonists allowed.") But when I was still at a tender age my mother read me Rumer Godden's Listen to the Nightingale, which is set at a ballet boarding school, and may have set me up for my lifelong love of boarding school stories.

[conuly]

Though that first one has a really, really weird ending.

Do you mind a spoiler?

[osprey_archer]

I'd rather you didn't, really.

[conuly]

Noted!

[thisbluespirit]

(There seems to be a great overlap between "books I would very much like to read" and "books that the British kept for themselves, no rebellious colonists allowed.")

I'm fairly sure the problem must be the reverse - given the size of the US market, few authors are going to shun that kind of potential cash. ;-p

Oh, and I bookmarked the Girls Gone By website. Someday I shall have a windfall, and then I envision a shopping spree.

Indeed! You never know!

Oh, and re. Enid Blyton: how much she wrote was a thing that came up frequently in her lifetime and she was outraged by the fact that people couldn't believe she wrote that much and sued a librarian for suggesting she had ghost writers. The truth seems to be that she wrote without planning or research and was pretty much addicted to writing and had a daily schedule that allowed her to write 6,000-10,000 words a day. Nobody has ever found any evidence to suggest that anyone else wrote anything with her name it on while she was alive. She was pretty odd, really, although she was also apparently traumatised by the father she adored walking out on the family. One of her daughters seems to have pretty much hated her, the other thought she was all right, so it depends who you listen to. (There's a very good biopic called Enid starring Helena Bonham Carter, although I doubt that Hugh Pollock was quite as much of a saint a he appears in it. But it's v well done and played and a good intro to the weirdness of Enid & also the success that she achieved with hard work and canny ability to sell herself as a brand.)

Sorry, Enid Blyton is simultaneously awful and impressive and fascinating. (My fellow children's librarian is connected to her in some way - I think one of her daughters married a cousin of hers, so she actually knew Gillian or Imogen, i forget which.)

[osprey_archer]

6,000-10,000 words a day

Good lord. I suppose if she started writing right after breakfast, and had lunch delivered on a tray and continued writing as she ate it, if she wrote the whole time she could probably polish off that many words in time for dinner? You'd think her brain would get tired eventually, though.

Many of her books are so short, she must have polished off about one a week.

[thisbluespirit]

That's how she wrote 50 a year!!

[osprey_archer]

Which leaves a week off each for Easter and Christmas! A most reasonable writing schedule.

[osprey_archer]

Oh, and I bookmarked the Girls Gone By website. Someday I shall have a windfall, and then I envision a shopping spree.

[evelyn_b]

It's in the nature of news cycles to be awful, but I don't think you're wrong to feel encouraged! Lots of good news at the state level (though not, as usual, in the state where I live).

It sounds from your previous review like I definitely need to read Can You Ever Forgive Me? as soon as possible, whenever that is.

or the fact that American Girl books no longer have illustrations. BRING BACK THE ILLUSTRATIONS, AMERICAN GIRL!

No offense to everything else in history, but this has got to be one of the crowning absurdities of our time. What the hell, American Girl? What was wrong with having illustrations?

(I know I've complained about this before, but I STILL DISAPPROVE. >:|)

[osprey_archer]

I suspect that my library will cough up Can You Ever Forgive Me? about six months from now and I will stare at it in vague puzzlement before going "Oh yeah! That one!"

I will complain about American Girl's ridiculous choice to cut the illustrations TILL THE END OF TIME. Do you hear me, American Girl??? THE END OF TIME! Even the new books, written in the post-illustration period, have moments that CRY OUT for illustration, as if in their hearts the authors know the illustrations ought to be there and can't restrain themselves from including the place for them, even though they also know that no matter how the text cries out, its yearning will never be fulfilled.