For the Love of Retro Reading

My love for vintage books like Mary McCarthy's "The Group" and E. F. Benson's Mapp and Lucia books have sent me on a journey to discover vintage books. Classics. Retro readings. Call them what you like. Books that were written in another time, by another type of author, in another context but with a message that transcends time and tradition and still stands as valid as ever today. 

The best place to start that type of hunt is over on Stuck In a Book. This is the blog that will open your eyes to books you didn't know existed and today Simon's post on Diana Tutton's "Guard Your Daugthers" showed up in my facebook feed and I was hit by book lust-at-first-sight. I want it so badly. 

It is - according to Simon and various other sources - the story of a family living in a time pocket in rural England and it reminds many readers Dodie Smith's "I Capture the Castle" which is one of the best books ever. So really it not a case of, I want it. It is a case of I need it!

Other retro readings that I would love to get my hands on are: 

"The Rector's Daughter" by F. M. Mayor
A story of rector's daughter - 35-year-old Mary - who has spent her life devoting herself to her father and sister without wanting more until one day, she experiences love. 

"Cheerful Weather for the Wedding" by Julia Strachey
A wedding day. A bride-to-be. A whole lot of doubt. 

"Angel" by Elizabeth Taylor
About the risks of daydreaming and the fine line between dream and delusion. 

Review: "The Franchise Affair" by Josephine Tey

Jospehine Tey is one of the perfect author names and when I read "The Franchise Affair", I kept thinking "What a lucky lady to be born with such a beautiful name!" Then I googled her and realised that she actually wasn't - her real name was Elizabeth Macintosh but she published her crime fiction under the name Josephine Tey and used the name Gordon Daviot for publishing historical novels. I had never come across her novels before until I saw mentioned on a blog as a master of classic crime fiction. For some reason coming across "a master" that I have never heard of always provokes me a bit so I ended up buying "The Franchise Affair" to explore her writing.


"The Franchise Affair" starts in the provincially distinguished offices of a lawyer in a smaller, English provincial town. Robert Blair, partner and solicitor, is finishing up for the day and is halfway out the door - going home to dinner served by his lovely, motherly Aunt Lin - when the phone rings. Two ladies, a elderly mother and her unmarried daugther, have been accused of a horrible crime. A young, fresh-faced girl is accusing them of having abducted her, beaten her and tried to force her to be their servant. The women deny everything and beg Mr. Blair to represent them in the horrible case. Mr. Blair reluctantly agrees and thereby shatters the quiet rhythm of his daily life.


Everything points to the guilt of the two women living in the big, shabby house "The Franchise" but as Robert becomes more and more involved with them and with the case, he also becomes more and more desperate to prove their innocence.


I liked "The Franchise Affair", I didn't love it and I might not read it again but I did enjoy it. Not because of the crime story which was quite predictable really and not that exciting. Robert Blair, however, is absolutely adorable in his own, bachelor-ish, parochial way and the two women at The Franchise are a breath of fresh air. Actually I would have loved to have read another story but with the same characters because they were the story for me.


The Britain in "The Franchise Affair" is the stern, make-do-and-mend post-war Britain full of gossiping  old ladies and - oh horror - unmarried independent women and men being looked after by their aunts. It is charming really so read it for the setting and the characters but note for the excitement.

Read it if: You love E.F. Benson's Lucia or Dorothy L. Sayer's Lord Peter Wimsey or adore Agatha Christie novels.

Top Ten Tuesday: Good trends, bad trends

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish and I love it! This week is really interesting - it is Top Ten Trends You Would Like to See More or Less of!
So here's my list:

See more of:
1) Books being promoted in the blogosphere! I think it is so great the bloggers share their love of books and promote books that maybe wouldn't get the attention they deserve if it wasn't for the blogosphere. We love great authors and wonderful books and sharing that love is beautiful!

2) Young, female authors writing literary fiction and getting acknowledged for their hard work and talent - such as Téa Obreht, author of "The Tiger's Wife"

3) Authors being translated to English. There are so many great authors out there and they deserve to be translated - one example is Sofi Oksanen's fantastic novel "Purge" that has been translated into English and is really popular.

4) Dystopian and steampunk, great imaginative genres that deserve more attention and more bestsellers.

5) Wrapping up classics in beautiful, tasteful, cool covers such as these below. Personally I would really love for E. F. Benson's "Mapp and Lucia" to be given some more attention.





See less of:
1) Vampires and werewolves. Enough is enough people. I don't care if they are sparkling or have tattoos, I don't want anymore of them for a while. Please come up with something else to write about.

2) Less focus on incest/pedophilia as romance/love relationships. Though I really liked "Repeat It Today With Tears" by Anne Peile and liked "Tiger, Tiger" by Margaux Fragoso, I really do not like this topic...

3) Paranormal romance... girl and vampire, girl and werewolf, girl and angel... it is becoming ever so slightly tiring.

4) Celebrity novels, ghostwritten by some poor guy/girl who really needed the money. I am not talking about real biographies from politicians etc. but Katie Price as an author? Really? That's just plain wrong.

5) Awful covers that try to sell a book as something it isn't (...or try to trade off Twilight, such bad taste!!)

Top Ten Tuesday: Thanks for your recommendation!

The best way to learn about great books is through recommendations from people who share your taste in literature and books. I love getting books recommended to me and I love recommending books. So this week's Top Ten Tuesday topic is great for me: Books that came recommended!
Remember to pop by The Broke and the Bookish - www.brokeandbookish.blogspot.com - to see the linky for this meme and also to visit their amazing blog!

10)Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery. Came recommended from my best friend's sister and I begged my parents for it and finally got it on a vacation when I was ten years old.

9)Seacrow Island by Astrid Lindgren (better known as the author behind Pippi Longstocking) and was recommended by the librarian at my school. Loved the book and read it so often that when it was worn almost out the librabrian gave it to me.

8)The Twilight saga. Came recommended by my sister who told me that I had to read them because there really was something about these books. So I did. Several times. Just as Jamie from The Broke and The Bookish writes, this book was my gateway to many great YA experiences and I am thankful for that even if the series itself has its faults.

7)Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis came recommended by my boyfriend and is the proof that real life - and the people in it - is sometimes way stranger than fiction. Especially in banking.

6)The Mapp and Lucia series by E.F. Benson came recommended by Simon from www.stuckinabook.com and is amazing! Very funny, very entertaining and a very true picture of a certain type of Hyacinth Bucket type of person. Read it and laugh.

5)The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins came recommended by many of you my fellow bloggers. Normally would never have picked it up but I absolutely loved it!

4))Descarte's Error by Antonio Damasio. Was recommended by everyone from first-year students to lectures and ph.d. students when I studied psyholcogy. I am almost done reading it now and it is a better than amazing non-fiction book about the way emotions and brain neurology interact.

3)Special Topic in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl came recommended by my father and once I had started reading it, I just couldn't put it down again. Will need to re-read it soon.

2)The Closed Book by Jette Kaarsbol came recommended from my mother and I read it with tears in my eyes and a sense of wonder at the amazing prose and the gripping story. A Danish masterpiece!

1) Collected Works of John Betjeman. I can't remember who recommended John Betjeman's stunning poesy to me but I will always be grateful. John Betjeman's words are like a balm for my soul and I sometimes listen to his recordings of his poems when I need to be cheered up, they always speak to me of beauty.

Top Ten Tuesday: Who would you name your child after?

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at one of my favourite blogs: The Broke and the Bookish - http://www.brokeandbookish.blogspot.com.

This week’s topic is fantastic – Top Ten fiction/literary characters that you would name your child after. Fantastic! When I was a tween, I was determined to name my daughter Laura after Laura from The Little House on the Prairie. Since then I have been through many many books and my future children have been named various names depending on my fancy at the time.
Here is my current Top Ten:

10) Cassandra after the main character of Dodie Smith’s “I Capture the Castle” because she is a sensitive dreamer with a beautiful soul.

9) Jonathan after Prince Jonathan from Tamora Pierce’s Song of the Lioness Series. Because I had a huge crush on him when I was 12-13 years old and still think the name is cute though I’ve recovered from my crush ;-)

8) Wilhelm after the two Wilhelms in Margit Söderholm’s Hellesta series because they embody the gallant Scandinavian man.

7) Viola after the lady in Shakespeare’s “The Twelfth Night”.

6) Penelope after the wife of Odysseus.

5) Elizabeth after one of my all-time favourite heroines Ms. Elizabeth Bennett from “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen.

4) Georgiana after Georgiana Darcy from “Pride and Prejudice”. Who wouldn’t want to name their daughter after such a truly accomplished young lady?

3) Cedric. As in Harry Potter’s Cedric Diggory because he is the archetypical high school hero.

2) Eryka after a character that appears briefly in “A Gathering of Gargoyles” by Meredith Ann Pierce. I love the sound of the name and what the character stands for in the book.

1)Lucia after the main character from the Mapp and Lucia books by E.F. Benson. Her real name is actually Emmeline and though she can be pretentious and really annoying at times, mostly she is a caring, loving woman with a great imagination and a resourceful way of handling all the skirmishes she has with Mapp. I love the name!

This was a tough one! Which names do you like? And why?

Review: "Mapp and Lucia" - Girlfight!

Thanks to Simon from Stuck in a Book - http://www.stuck-in-a-book.blogspot.com - I became interested in reading the Mapp and Lucia seris by E.F. Benson. However, I didn't do my homework properly and thus ended up starting with the fourth book in the series! This happened because I bought a used edition of "Lucia Victrix" which contains the last three books in the series, something I only discovered when I was almost done reading the last book... Well done!

However, I must say that it doesn't really matter because it was very easy to get into the books and the scenery - not prequels ever struck me as missing, the books worked fine as they were. Here I will write a bit about the first one I read: "Mapp and Lucia".

The story centers on Lucia - Mrs. Emmeline Lucas as her real name is - who rents a house in the small seaside town of Tilling for a couple of months over the summer. Along with her, her best friend Georgie Pillson also rents a house in the town and these two friends prepare to take on the social scene of Tilling - they for some reason reminded me of a sophisticated 1930s version of Batman and Robin. This, however, is not what Elizabeth Mapp has in mind. It is her house Mallards that Lucia has rented and Mapp has made plans to introduce Lucia as her protege. Lucia is not one to be condescended and soon the two ladies are heading for collision. No weapons are sacred in this fight for social power and tea parties, bridge games and dinner parties are all part of the war. One battle in particular is over Lucia's recipe for lobster a la Riseholme - a secret that Mapp will do anything to get her hands on.

Again and again these ladies wage war, competing for power and the role as queen of Tilling and it is really really entertaining to read about. There is no real action, no mystery, no love story line - just a description of the lengths these go to in order to have one up on each other. The characters are perfectly created with a lot of depth - they all have flaws and vanities but it is impossible not to care for them because they are so incredibly human.

Just like so many of the other books that Simon has recommended, I loved this one. Absolutely loved it and within the next few days, I will review the other two Mapp and Lucia books that I have read - hope you will pop by my blog to read them!