Top Ten Books of 2012 - part 1

Here we go - the first half of my top ten of books read in 2012: 

10. "Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady" by Florence King
One awesome women tells about her life as a Southern lady at a time when being a lady was something that required quite a bit of class and came with a whole lot of expectations. Emotional and hilarious at the same time. 

9. "How to Be a Woman" by Caitling Moran
Hilarious musings about what it means to be a women in our society today. Is it mandatory to have waxes? Who should we look up to as role models? Are we defined by the boys we kiss? Tackling some of the most difficult topics with a whole lot of humour and a completely lack of respect for comme il faut. 

8.  "Rules of Civility" by Amor Towles
New York in the 1930s. Glamourous girls, wealthy gentlemen, dubious playboys and lots of martinis. The perfect escapism read and a really good story to boot. 

7. "The Stranger's Child" by Alan Hollinghurst
Published in 2011 and already a modern classic, it tells the story of Britain in the last century through a series of linked stories. It all starts out with a love triangle and a poem. 

6. "The Privileges" by Jonathan Dee
The recession read. A story about a middle-class family who makes it big (really big, at least financially) through hard work and cunning investments that more than borders on financial crime. 

Role Models - Fascinating Fictional Females

I'm not sure if I'd call myself a feminist - I'm not that into the whole women-against-men rhetorics to be honest but I'm happy to confess that I love nothing more than a book with a strong female protagonist. Like Katniss Everdeen or Scarlett O'Hara. I like my women, like I like my G&T - strong and unapologetic. 

And with no further ado, here's my list of books that features strong, sassy females who make for great (albeit fictional) role models and mentors: 

"Fear of Flying" by Erica Jong

"The Group" by Mary McCarthy

"Rules of Civility" by Amor Towles

"The Best of Everything" by Rona Jaffe

"Gone With The Wind" by Margaret Mitchell

"A Vision of Loveliness" by Louise Levene

"The Stars in the Bright Sky" by Alan Warner

"The Summer Without Men" by Siri Hustvedt

Review: "A Vision of Loveliness"

The people who say that the world was a simpler place back in the days before internet, mobile phones, waterproof mascara and Topshop haven't read "A Vision of Loveliness" by Louise Levene. Or "The Rules of Civility" by Amor Towles. Or "The Group" by Mary McCarthy". Or "The Best of Everything" by Rona Jaffe. Books about women in the pre-waterproof mascara days essentially. 

But back to "A Vision of Loveliness". It's London in the 1960s and Jane is an intelligent and ambitions young lady who studies everything from Paris catwalking manuals to books about etiquette. She's eager, more than eager, to leave her life in boring Norbury behind and enter another, more glamourous world. So when she spots her ticket to this world, an expensive handbag left behind in a pub, she is not slow to grab it and she makes fast friends with the owner of the handbag, the radiant, beautiful Susie. 

Susie lives a life of champagne, expensive dinner and jewelry on the surface but beneath is a life in a dinghy, dirty flat, working as mannequin wearing sweat-stained dresses and trading "favours" for furs. To Jane, this looks like the glamourous life that she has dreamed of for so long - miles away from the Scotch eggs and economical dresses of her aunt's house in Norbury where there's a distinct lack of both money and love. 
At least in Susie's world there's money, even if love is thin on the ground... 

This is the story of London girls using their beauty and body to make a living in a time long before the glamour models and reality stars. Nothing comes for free, it is hard work staying beautiful for these girls and even at 19, they are aware that there is a sell-by date only a few years in the future. So they put everything on the line to get to where they want to be. They risk it all in the hope of hitting jackpot, of marrying a rick, upper class man. 

Read it if: You like Mad Men and the 1960's and the idea of Swinging London. If you enjoyed "The Group" or "The Rules of Civility" or "The Best of Everything"

Review: "The Best of Everything" by Rona Jaffe

Some books  retain their freshness decade after decade, never losing their relevance. "The Best of Everything" by Rona Jaffe is one of those books. It is truly special. Published in 1958, it was written during the 1950s when women wore smart skirt suits to the office and only worked to fill the time until they could get married. Preferably to a man with a good enough job to fund a house with double-garage and school fees for two children. Last year, apparently, the book got a bit of a renaissance because it was featured on Mad Men - however, I found it thanks to you wonderful people in the blogosphere!

Every day young women flood out of the subway stations in central New York making their way to the city's offices. One of them is Caroline, a young graduate from a good college, who discovers that she has ambitions and slowly starts to work her way up in the world of publishing. While working for a publishing company in the glamourous Rockefeller Center, she meets the obsessive actress Gregg who becomes her flatmate, the beautiful April who is as terrible with men as she is with personal finance and the successful single mother Barbara, divorced at the tender age of 21.

As chapter after chapter weaves their stories together into one story, I felt like these girls became my friends. Their world absorbed me completely and as they experienced bad romances, difficulties in their careers and worry about families and futures, I became more and more enthralled to the story. When the last page turned, it felt completely wrong. I just did not want to let go. I craved knowledge of what happened next and the last few days, I have been thinking about all of them, especially about Caroline and Barbara.

It is a story of looking for love and finding instead sex, friendship or rejection. Of trying to figure out whether to pursue a career or while away the hours until a walk to the altar. It is absolutely fascinating and many of the observations are as relevant today as they were then. Like the lecherous senior executive who will grab any female thigh when he's had a bit too much to drinks or the girl who brings even her bridal underwear to work in order to get the approval and envy of her colleagues. It resonates with me as a modern office girl and I found the office politics very familiar, just as the trouble that these girls experience with prioritising family, work and boyfriends is just like the stuff that my friends and I talk about today.

The beauty of this book is in its relevance, in the way that all girls will recognize something of themselves in these girls even though the books was written over fifty years ago. Also it is beautifully written with every girl's voice being distinct and characteristic.

Read it if: You enjoyed "The Rules of Civility" by Amor Towles" or "Valley of the Dolls" by Jacqueline Susann. You prefer a good book to a re-run episode of Sex & The City.

Review: "Rules of Civility" by Amor Towles

Show me someone who claims to have never dreamed of time traveling and I will show you a liar - because come on people, time traveling would be so cool!! Of course we only dream of traveling to the good times in history, the masked balls, the celebrations and the events that will go down in the history. The lack of opportunities for a shower and brushing teeth and the option to pop a pain killer the day after the party is something that we conveniently forget.

Luckily we have books that allow us to travel through time from the comfort of our warm chair with a hot cup of coffee next to us and the opportunity to brush our teeth at any time we should feel so inclined. Thanks to the authors of historical fiction we get to soar through the most interesting parts of history and dream ourselves away. 

Recently I bought a ticket for the "historical fiction time traveling machine" when I picked up "Rules of Civility" by Amor Towles. The destination was New York in the 1930's and as soon as I had read the first line, I was lost in a different world, off on adventures with a young lady called Katey Kontent. 

Katey Kontent is in her 20's, a daughter of Russian immigrants who left the land of samovars and revolution to seek their fortune in the land beyond Ellis Island. She is a girl who knows how to have a good time and during night out with her beautiful, charismatic friend Eve, she treats New York as her playground. Thought money is tight, these girls know how to party and when on New Years Eve they meet the rich, waspy banker Tinker Grey, they become fast friends with him and doors are opened to a different type of life. 

The story follows Katey through that fateful year of 1938 where her life changes, some parts for the better, some for the worse, and where events transpire that will set her on the path that will shape the rest of her life. It is a year of sorrows and joys, of gin martinis and silk stockings, of country clubs and scruffy flats, of women in pearls and young men with the world at their feet. 

Katey becomes increasingly entangled in this world of privilege and Tinker is always there in the back of her mind... 

It is an amazing book, a really fascinating beautiful story of life and what it does to us. It is about surviving and making the best of what you get given. About grabbing life in the moment and shaping it to your wishes. It is a reminder of the importance of enjoying yourself even when you have little money for rent and food and none for martinis. 

This is retro Manhattan. It is the clever entertainment for girls who find Gossip Girl and Sex In the City a little too pop culture and glossy. 

It is the book that you long to come home to because it takes you to a different world - a glamourous, tough New York where men are gentlemen and women are enjoying an new-found freedom. It is the ultimate time traveling experience.

Read it if: You enjoyed "Valley of the Dolls" by Jacqueline Susann. You love New York and have a secret longing for a life full of martinis, silk stockings and elegance. 

10 Things I Love About... "The Rules of Civility" by Amor Towles

1) Katey Kontent. A heroine with that kind of name is made to be noticed and Katey Kontent is as cool, classy and confident as her name is cliched. 

2) The harsh reality - quote from page 63

"It wasn't about who had dibs now or who was sitting next to whom in the cinema. The game had changed; or rather, it wasn't a game anymore. It was a matter of making it through the night, which is often harder than it sounds, and always a very individual business."

3) New York in the late 1930s. A place of jazz and glamour, of old money and new fashions, of Depression era worries and of opportunities. If this book is turned into a film, it will be a feast for the eyes. 

4) Did I mention the glamour? - quote from page 47

"The men wore tailored suits and accented their breast pockets with untouched handkerchiefs. The women wore silk dresses in royal colors and chokers of pearls."

5) Katey Kontent's love of Dickens - quote from page 128

"Admittedly, there's something a little annoying about all those plucky underprivileged kids and the aptly named agents of villainy. But I've come to realize that however blue my circumstances, if after finishing a chapter of a Dickens novel I feel a miss-my-stop-on-the-train sort of compulsion to read on, then everything is probably going to be just fine." 

6) Tinker Grey. A fascinating character is all I can say... For some reason he keeps reminding me of the lyrics from Regina Spektor's "Man of A Thousand Faces":

The man of a thousand faces

Sits down at the table
Eats a small lump of sugar
And smiles at the moon like he knows her
And begins his quiet ascension
Without anyone's sturdy instruction

7) The truth about going to the hairdresser - quote from page 233

"Historically, once in the hands of a hairdresser, I had done whatever necessary to stymie conversation: grimacing; sleeping; staring blankly into the mirror; once I even faked ignorance of English."

8) The determination of Evie Ross - quote from page 15

"True, she was only five foot five, but she knew how to dance in two-inch heels - and she knew how to kick them off as soon as she sat in your lap."

9) The stories of elite Manhattan kids - quote from page 169:

"For a group freshly spilled from the country's finest schools, they were surprisingly aimless, but that didn't make them bad company. They didn't have much spending money or social status, but they were on the verge of having both." 

10) The stories of Russian immigrants in New York - quote from page 283:

"The first wind of the New York winter was sharp and heartless. Whenever it blew, it always made my father a little nostalgic for Russia. He'd break out the samovar and boil black tea and recall some December when there was a lull in conscription and the well wasn't frozen and the harvest hadn't failed. It wouldn't be such a bad place to be born, he'd say, if you never had to live there. 

Buying Books - at Work!

This week The Book People made Thursday a very special day at work for me because they set up a charity book sale just a few metres from my desk! Obviously I was one of the first people there - having circled the area of the sale several times while they were setting up. I found some really really good stuff, here is what I bought:

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt
From BookPeople.co.uk: Set in Oregon in 1851, The Sisters Brothers are the notorious professional 1850s Gold Rush killers Eli and Charlie. On their way to kill a man named Hermann Kermit Warm, they experience a series of violent and unsettling experiences. Bickering brothers who are very different, Charlie will kill anyone for money, while Eli doubts his vocation and falls in love. When they finally meet Hermann in California, they discover he is an inventor who has come up with a magical formula that could make them all very rich. A gripping, stark and sad story about lies and loyalty that is full of dark humour, this is an emotional but exciting second novel from the award-winning Patrick deWitt, author of 2009's Ablutions.

Into the Darkest Corner by Elizabeth Haynes
From BookPeople.co.uk: Catherine has been enjoying the single life for long enough to know a good catch when she sees one. Gorgeous, charismatic, spontaneous - Lee seems almost too perfect to be true. And her friends clearly agree, as each in turn falls under his spell. But there is a darker side to Lee. His erratic, controlling and sometimes frightening behaviour means that Catherine is increasingly isolated. Driven into the darkest corner of her world, and trusting no one, she plans a meticulous escape. Four years later, struggling to overcome her demons, Catherine dares to believe she might be safe from harm. Until one phone call changes everything. This is an edgy and powerful first novel, utterly convincing in its portrayal of obsession, and a tour de force of suspense.

The Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
From The Guardian: If you want shopping at Bendel's, gin martinis at a debutante's mansion and jazz bands playing until 3am, Rules of Civility has it all and more. If you want something original that doesn't borrow at all from Breakfast at Tiffany's, The Great Gatsby or even Boardwalk Empire, you might be a little disappointed. Me, I lapped it all up ... In the opening chapter it's 1966 and Katey's at an exhibition looking at a picture of the man who changed everything for her: Tinker Grey. She is immediately transported back three decades to the night she first met him – on the eve of the most memorable year of her life. Tinker is enigmatic, adorable and lives his life according to George Washington's Rules of Civility. Except that he definitely hasn't read the last rule: "Labour to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience."