Second-hand books: a bit icky?

Here is a silly piece entitled 'Why I hate Second-hand books' from the Guardian Book Blog by a boy who needs untwist his knickers a bit, as he is missing out on one of life's great joys for book lovers.
In a similar vein though, I was once away in the country with a group of women, which included a group of psychologists, to celebrate a psychologist friend's impending wedding and we went on a shopping trip in the local town where I found a magnificent second-hand book shop. When we all met up for lunch I, of course, was clutching a bag full of second-hand treasures, which included, if I remember rightly, a collection of T E Lawrence's letters and Scott's Quentin Durwood. One of the psychologist contingent looked with disgust at the pile of books I was so proudly displaying, backed away a little, and asked 'But aren't second-hand books all dirty?'
Occasionally I may have come across a suspicious chocolate-like smear on a page in a book, although to be honest that is usually from my own previous reading. Usually the joy of holding and reading a book that you know a kindred spirit has also held and loved, and breathing in that old book scent far outweighs the occasional dessicated fly between the pages. These people need to loosen up and learn to love the second-hand book shop before they all disappear into history; they are missing out on one of the greatest pleasures I've found this world has to offer.

Comfort reading

I haven't been around much in the blogosphere lately, I realise, for a number of reasons. Mainly life seems squeezed in too tightly to give me the free time to spend on the internet at the moment, which is a shame as I've missed my travels around people's blogs, keeping up with what you're all reading and doing.

We are also coping with our cat's first serious illness in his nine years, which I'm finding very traumatic. He is probably going to have to have an operation next week once the vet figures out what is wrong with him. So at the moment a lot of time is being spent making sure he is as happy and comfortable as possible.

I'm reading too, quite voraciously, there is a pile of books read recently sitting on my desk. And vet-visits last weekend meant that some serious comfort reading was in order, you know the sort of reading that just takes you completely out of yourself so you forget to worry about the worrying thing for a little while, but while still being good writing so you don't have any self-loathing afterwards. So first, on the bad vet-visit-day itself, I treated myself to the wonderful fluff of a Georgette Heyer, The Grand Sophy - much recommended by various people and thank you all, it was perfect.

Then I sank into the deep warm comfort of Wendell Berry with Andy Catlett: Early Travels. Berry's wonderful prose took my mind off waiting for the vet to call with blood test results.

I am beginning to suspect that Berry may be my favourite author, his books are so thoughtful, beautifully written and just plain enjoyable. I loved Andy Catlett almost as much as I loved Jayber Crow, and was almost breathless with the anticipation of meeting up with Jayber and Burley Coulter again, they are like old friends. It is a crying shame that Berry is not really sold in this country; I bought this novel from the Harvard bookstore last winter where I stocked up on Berry as I knew I'd never see him on bookstore shelves in the UK. That said though, I have seen one lonely little copy of a book of his poems in Waterstones recently, so perhaps there's hope. Thank goodness for the internet, where I can order all the Port William books, and I soon will. I was concerned Jayber Crow might have been a fluke, and the others not as wonderful, but Andy Catlett has put my mind at rest on that score.

I have bought the odd book too during my blogging break: I picked up a collection of Robert Frost's poems the other day, as he is quoted a lot in Timothy Steele's book on metre, and I wanted to know more of this American poet. Then there was a book I first read about on Danielle's blog, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, about a sensational murder case in the 1860s which inspired, among others, Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone. This was particularly attractive as it touched my favourite subject of legal history when the, at times, farcical legal hearings were described. That has already been read and is part of the 'waiting to be written about' pile. And Mathias Freese has sent me a copy of his short story collection 'Down to a Sunless Sea' which I am looking forward to reading very shortly.

Currently I am lost in the Roman Empire, as I have finally got round to Robert Graves' I, Claudius. I began to read it as a teenager and found it hard going but the intervening twenty years has included spending time with classical authors such as Suetonius and Tacitus, meaning the events and characters described are very familiar, and this now counts as excellent comfort reading too.

Scenes of Clerical Life by George Eliot

This is a collection of three novellas of varying length, all set in the same fictional area and concerning three clerical figures. The stories are very different: the first, The Sad Fortunes of the Reverand Amos Barton, concerns a rather weak curate and his family and the troubles they undergo with a small income and unfortunate friends. The next, Mr Gilfil's Love Story, is a story of a vicar, who was remembered fondly as someone 'who smoked very long pipes and preached very short sermons', telling the tale of his one love affair with his wife as a young man. The final story, Janet's Repentance, is quite a harrowing tale of a wife beaten regularly by her drunken lawyer husband who becomes an alcoholic herself but finds spiritual strength through the support of an evangelical minister.

All three are mixtures of amusing and charming scenes and hard social commentary. There are a number of moving episodes and all are fully developed in their own right. It is quite an extraordinary book. The first story was only 70 pages long but in that time made me care about the characters despite their shortcomings, laugh and cry, which is quite a feat.

The middle story is the lightest, and more of a romance than any other but is also very enjoyable. The final story was hard to read, with its scenes of domestic violence, and especially in the attitude of Janet towards her husband, as she still tried to love him even when he beat her and would not leave him despite the fear and misery she lived through.

None of the stories deal with particularly light subjects, but they are not depressing due to the way that Eliot weaves wit and gentler passages throughout, even when dealing with her most difficult subjects. At a point when Janet has been locked out of the house by her husband in her nightdress, the next day the scene of her servants discussing what could have happened to her and wondering whether she has been murdered is almost comic as the cook describes how she would act with such a husband. But it does not stray too far in this way and diminish the power of the horror Janet has gone through - it is not comic at the expense of the drama. The servants are portrayed as sympathetic to their mistress and understanding of why she drinks but hardened to the state of affairs in the household.

Although ostensibly about the male clerical figures, all of these stories are really about the women in these men's lives. The position of women in early nineteenth century society is shown clearly throughout the story, and not just in Janet's extreme case. In the first story the curate's friends that cause him problems are a brother and sister whom the local gossips have decided are, in reality, lovers pretending to be related, mainly because the woman is too glamourous for them to accept her version of her life. The second portrays a poor girl whose feelings are played with by the rich heir of the family she lives with as an amusing way for him to pass the time, while he intends to pursue an heiress for marriage. In Janet's case, although clearly the victim, the local people criticise her for drinking and her mother-in-law firmly blames Janet for her husband's actions because she was not a good household manager or a subservient enough wife in the early days of their marriage. There are also less important characters, such as the Misses Linnet in Janet's Repentance, both just past thirty and so considered useless old maids or in the first story where a poor unmarried niece of an old wealthy woman is forced to act as a companion to her elderly relative, is regularly demeaned and unknowlingly faced with the prospect of being cut out of her aunt's will. The opportunities for women in this society if they were above the servant class were limited to just one, to get married and have a successful life only through their husband. Society had a fixed idea of how a woman should behave and live her life, and the penalties, in terms of how they were treated by the community, if women did not live up to this are clear through the moving and real portrayals in this book.

Abarat and Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War by Clive Barker

These are the first two books in what Barker has said will be a series of four. I wrote a little about them when I was reading them, about how the first did not feel as though it was an entire book so I had to rush out and buy the second to feel like I had read a whole story, and I hold to that, having read them both. At the end of the second book I felt that it had ended enough to feel that I had read a full story but with enough left open to make me want to read more. So the first thing I would say is that I advise you read both of these together.
The books concern Candy Quackenbush, a young girl in Chickentown in USA, a boring town so named because of the chicken factory which supports it and which is the high point of any one's career expectations. Candy does not fit in. Her home life is quite miserable with a drunken and at times violent father and a mother who seems to have given up trying to cope with him.
Candy has visions of other lands and on one particularly nasty day she walks out of school, through the town and keeps on walking until she reaches the grassy plain on the outskirts of the town. Here she comes across the remains of a lighthouse (hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean) and meets a very strange man, or men rather, as John Mischief has antlers which carry seven other heads, each of which is one of his brothers - all variously called John and all extremely vocal.
As if this wasn't weird enough, this man is being chased by another strange-looking man, who is trying to kill him. Candy helps the brothers escape but ends up calling a mystical ocean which carries her and the Johns to the Abarat - an archipelago where each island is named after, and permanently sits in, a particular hour.
Candy is a fugitive in this land as the evil Lord of Midnight, Christopher Carrion, chases her to retrieve something which John Mischief hid with her. As Candy travels through the different lands it becomes apparent that she is more connected to the Abarat than she realises.
The stories are very inventive, with weird creatures and characters and the different lands' descriptions are fascinating. Six o'clock is a land called Babilonium, where there is a permanent fun fair, another is built into a giant statue. Candy meets different people along the way, making both enemies and friends, especially Malingo, whom she saves from a life of slavery and who becomes her travelling companion. The travel around the different lands is one of the main reasons the first book may not be enough on its own; I felt that not enough of the Abarat is explored in this book, but just hinted at and it is not enough.
The story is magical and light but this is still Clive Barker, and there is a dark undercurrent of malice throughout. For instance, the land of funfairs is all very nice unless you have the misfortune to be one of the freaks living a life of misery in the cages of the freakshow. There is a lot of evil in the Abarat as well as good, and blood is spilt in the fight against it which develops into full blown war during the second book. There are also some quite grotesque images, such as when Carrion's grandmother, the real villain of the story, appears.

'Two more creatures now came into view, to the left and right of the first. Each had a hand that bled darkness into the air, knotting itself into configurations from the beast in the centre. They were subtly connecting themselves... Their skulls seemed to lose rigidity, and they too issued filaments of shadow-stuff, which knitted themselves together. The three were becoming one, their bony heads congealing into a single being, its identity unmistakably human.'

The stories are a lot of fun and written well, although occasionally there seems to be the odd loose end or continuity error that suggests perhaps they were written a little too fast. For light reading, though, they are great and I am looking forward to the next two books.