a long breath out, a collection of miscellania (mostly books)

[alchimie]

The enormous outdoors weekend-long volunteer committment is done, and went extremely well, and now it is a Tuesday and my children are back at school and while there are approximately 87,532 things on my to-do list that were being put off as I prepared & executed the weekend trip, none of them are terribly urgent. It is a substantial relief and I am enjoying deep breaths and the pleasure of going at my own pace and choosing what I wish to prioritise -- which thus far seems to be petting cats, reading, and listening to music.

I have had a cloud of miscellaneous thoughts in my mind for the last month waiting for a chance to share them on Dreamwidth, so with no further ado:

• I am finally reading Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea in an original 1966 printing and am incredibly distracted that the cover art seems to be done by the same person who did the covers for the later Reachfar novels of Jane Duncan, the ones focused on her time in Jamaica. Or is it just me? Perhaps it was a common style, with the wrap-around covers and the vibrant greens and blues and such -- but whether it is actual or only in my mind, I find it incredibly distracting, since every time I pick up the Rhys I am expecting Janet's voice.
  
  
• When going to Target repeatedly to pick up needed objects for the weekend of volunteerism I also picked up a large number of on-sale candles; the one on my desk is 'sweet almond' and it smells lovely, definitely sweet in a non-food way, although I cannot vouch for the almond. I am fond of candles and scented things (if they do not trigger migraines but I can usually tell immediately enough to avoid that) but I largely want them during autumn and winter, so it is only just starting to be the time in which I will indulge in them. (September is not autumn here even once the equinox has come, but it has been colder in the mornings at least.)
  
  
• Pamela Brown's series of novels about a group of British children creating their own theatre company are all available again! I read the first one some small time back and was so frustrated not to be able to find the rest, so now I have them all as ebooks and am most of the way through the second. There's a good Guardian piece about them. I find them reminiscent of Streatfeild but less class-concerned and I think also less Imperial -- Streatfeild wrote at least some children's work on the glories of England etc etc and I can't imagine Brown doing that, her characters are too busy enjoying Greek food and wandering the cities they find themselves in to worry about how special their Englishness supposedly makes them.
  
  
• Speaking of special Englishness reminds me that over the weekend I reread some of an Angela Thirkell novel, Northbridge Rectory, and was as always struck by the mix of really pleasing bits with horrifying moments. The humour around the young man who has a crush on Mrs. Villars the Vicar's wife is excellent, with his determination to see her as a fragile heroine who needs his protection, and Thirkell's description of the way that Mrs. Villars sometimes gives into temptation and enjoys the attention but then feels afterwards like she has given in to her "inferior self" is for me a very accurate description of such moments -- but then we passages like "a piece of the roof fell in, most unfortunately not killing two very rude little girls" and I think this is meant to be funny also, but it is just horrifying, because Thirkell so clearly really does think working class people, especially children, are disposable and that the world would be improved by less of them. I was hyper-aware of this in the later novels, but had not realised it started popping up so early until this reread. I will doubtless keep on rereading (and complaining about) Thirkell from time to time, because the good bits are so good, but I wish I could find someone I found as satisfying without all of the ugh.
  
  
• Which brings me lastly to Miss Read, who I also read some of on my weekend (there is a lot of reading time while lying awake waiting for giggling children to quit whispering and fall asleep) -- she is not funny the way Thirkell is, but she is also not awful -- she seems to have a much greater appreciation for the times she lives in and the differrent people who make up a small community than Thirkell can accomplish. She was a generation later, of course, which I am certain helps, but she also did not grow up upper-middle-class, which perhaps has more to do with it? I do not know, but I am rereading Thrush Green and enjoying it.
  
  I should go eat before it is time to acquire children or otherwise I will be cranky while waiting in the sun for them to be released.