2021 Must Read Something During Lockdown books

 by Diana Studer

- gardening for biodiversity

 in Cape Town, South Africa

 

Happy sigh, fresh library books after lockdown!

 

Alan PARKS

February's son

~

Glasgow in the seventies. (We visited the Tenement House, so it's a little familiar) Detective Harry McCoy. 'Tartan noir'. Warning - gratuitous graphic violence - I skimmed those paragraphs.

 

Jack & Bet

 

Sarah BUTLER

Jack & Bet

~

The cover with models by Mel Four spelling out the story. Green silk evening dress. Passport to a different life in America. Elephant and Castle housing estate demolished - but, only built in 1974, they remember moving in to shiny new!

 

 

Kate Elizabeth RUSSELL

My dark Vanessa

~

She worked on this book for over 18 years.

It is dark (paedophile grooming) but, reading, I glimpse understanding WHY did she fall for his spiel??

 

 

John BOYNE

A ladder to the sky

~

Berlin before and after the wall.

A book where every character is filled out, and holds your sympathy in turn. I will enjoy sinking into that again.

 

Wakenhyrst

 

Michelle PAVER

Wakenhyrst

~

In the Suffolk fens which fill the book. Gothic thriller spanning 5 centuries of history and superstition.

 

 

Time opened up to read books from my mother

 

Cornish Harvest

 

This book is mine, but bought for my mother's Cornish childhood.

Cornish Harvest, edited by Denys Val BAKER. Includes a folklore story by A. L. Rowse - my mother had his autobiography - a bitter and twisted man.

Good stories linger in the air like flower scents or autumn smoke, about the tongue like wine, about the touch like silk; and shift and struggle before the eyes like the ever-changing patterns and colours seen through a child's kaleidoscope - Frank BAKER The Green Steps

 

My London born mother in 1937

 

Angela HUTH

The Englishwoman's wardrobe - twenty-five Englishwomen talk about their clothes (1986)

~

I was surprised when my mother told me that after school she worked in a dress-shop - but, as she said, there was nothing else available. Fabric and textiles, I still have a hopeful pile that needs to be made up?!

 

 

Paul BLOOMFIELD

Uncommon people - a study of England's Elite.

~

My mother preferred to read biography, social history, memoirs and letters - but I was shocked to discover that this is about eugenics. And now I can't ask...

 

 

V. M. FITZROY (Violet Mary 1907-1991)

Down to earth

~

About early / colonial gardens in Cape Town. Arderne Gardens still exist as an exotic arboretum. Apparently I can blame them in 1847 for the plague of Norfolk Island pines across our city?

 

 

Rereading the books I loved as a child, and loved again!

 

Emma escaping
from lockdown

 

Dorothy Ann LOVELL (the mystery of DAL)

The strange adventures of Emma.

~

Emma is a doll - but this book is timeless, as spellbinding as ever.

 

Pomanders' village

 

Gunvor HAKANSSON

Mr Pomander

and

The Pomanders of Little Chipping

~

As a child I took 'Little Chipping' for an English village, but, it is Lillkoping translated from Swedish.

 

 

When I worked in the Central Library in Zurich I bought some books in German.

Only now do I come to read them.

 

Heidi among Alpine meadow flowers

 

Johanna SPYRI

Heidi

~

In English, as a child, I read that again and again. Lost in a fantasy world among the flowers on an Alpine meadow. Fast forward to a Swiss husband, a SIL called Heidi, and we have walked alongside those Alpine meadows of flowers. Reading in German I was caught by the black vanilla orchid.

Translation please?

Picture

About Heidi, the author

Behind the scenes and A life less ordinary

 

Gardens of China
zigzag bridge

 

Marianne BEUCHERT

Die Gaerten Chinas.

~

Reading NON-fiction in German, which was a marathon of persistence, but interesting to read about the Chinese roots of what I thought of as 'Japanese' gardens. Our offset path a tiny homage to their zigzag paths along the lake shore.

 

 

An eclectic collection driven by Must Read Something During Lockdown,

 chosen by my mother, our library or charity bookshops.

 

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