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Victoria Corby

~ Reading, writing, living in France

Victoria Corby

Monthly Archives: October 2012

Bookish Pleasures

30 Tuesday Oct 2012

Posted by victoriacorby in Books, Reading

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Phoenix Book Sale

One of the consequences of living in France is that I suffer from acute book browsing deprivation.  There are a couple of bookshops with English language sections in Bordeaux but I don’t go there that often, besides I don’t know what the buyer in one of the shops reads but it definitely isn’t to my taste.  There is a charming little librarie in Cadillac which sells tea along with toys and books and has a tiny selection of surprisingly varied and good English books, I’ll go in and yearn but as they’re 12 euros each they’re a treat for special occasions only.  Otherwise I largely have to rely on book sites on the internet.  They’re wonderful, I rely on them, but you have to know what you’re looking for, you don’t get to browse, to pick up books at random, to see something that you’d never have thought of…

Unsurprisingly the bi-annual Phoenix book sale – about 15,000 second-hand books for a euro each – has the same effect on me as truffles do on a pig.  To be honest I don’t need to buy any more books, there are enough in the to-read bookcase to last for a year and that’s not counting what’s crammed on other book shelves.  But try telling a pig in a truffle wood that it’s had its ration for the autumn…  Anyway all the proceeds go to helping abandoned animals so you could say that by adding to the piles of unread literature in the house I was just doing my bit for charity.

I got there a bit late so the initial rush was over which meant more space just to look and see what might catch my fancy.  Rather a lot as it happens –

Not all of them are for me, my youngest daughter has just discovered Mary Stewart and I don’t think she has The Ivy Tree.  I read about The Magicians by Lev Grossman on a blog and thought it sounded her cup of tea so that was lucky find.  So was Ernest Shackleton’s account of his journey to the South Pole which is the sort of book I’d never think of looking for on the net.  Child 44 and Even Steven are for my husband, he also seized Tim Pears’ Disputed Land with an ‘Is this for me?’  No actually, it’s for me, but I’ll allow him to borrow it.  He is really pleased with Ernest Shackleton’s South, his account of his journey to the South Pole though.

I’d vaguely registered that if I ever saw Perfume from Provence by Lady Fortescue I’d buy it but there’s no way I can claim that I need the prettily illustrated Dear Cassandra, Jane Austen’s letters to her sister – but I’ve got it.  I met Rosin McAuley last year, she’s absolutely charming, I’d read two of her books and was delighted to come across Singing Bird.   I have to confess that I’d never heard of R K Narayan, but it looks delightful and there were a couple of Scandi crimes by new authors, a Paula Gosling I’m sure I haven’t read and the third volume of M M Kaye’s autobiography in a pristine hardback, Pure by Andrew Miller and Fire and Woodsmoke by Claude Michelet which describes itself as ‘a powerful saga of one family in the heart of rural France.’  Irresistable!

I’m always riveted by what other people buy.  There was one woman with an armful of misery lit, all with pictures of miserable children and one word titles like ‘Beaten’, ‘Abused’ or ‘Forsaken’, another whom I heard saying to her friend, ‘I’m done, I’ve been round everything and I’ve chosen myself a book’.  She came to a book sale with a choice of 15,000 with the intention of chosing one book?

Unnatural I call it.

84 Charing Cross Road

27 Saturday Oct 2012

Posted by victoriacorby in Books, Reading

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Helene Hanff, The Olde Wine Shades

I read 84 Charing Cross Road years ago and though I couldn’t remember much detail about it, it’s always lodged in my mind as one of those delightful books that should be re-read some time.   When Lucy from Literary Relish posted about it this week I was prompted to have a hopeful look in the bookcase, for I was sure my copy had disappeared several years ago, and there, among the H’s and  tucked in a corner, was a slim, battered paperback copy of 84 Charing Cross Road.

Note to eldest daughter who informed me I was anal when I rearranged my books in approximate alphabetical order (first letter only, it really doesn’t worry me if the Austens are in front of the Atkinsons) – being anal has its uses sometimes.

For those who’ve never come across this wonderful little book before it’s the correspondence between Helene Hanff,  a New York writer and playwright, and Marks and Co, secondhand booksellers of Charing Cross Road.  It starts in 1949 when good second hand books are rare and expensive in New York and England is under the grip of worse rationing than during the war.  They send Helene the books she craves, she sends them a food parcel as a Christmas present and then panics because there’s a 6lb ham in there and it’s occurred to her that the owners, the Marks’ might be kosher.  The letters continue for twenty years, Helene is always saving up to go to London and meet everyone in the bookshop but one financial crisis after another gets in the way, until finally it’s too late.

This book is a joy, it’s not meaningful, it’s not going to change your life, it’s just sheer, unadulterated pleasure from beginning to end.  Helene Hanff was bossy, opinionated and certainly didn’t share my tastes in books, she didn’t like fiction for heaven’s sake and writes of finally getting round to Jane Austen and ‘going out of her mind’ for Pride and Prejudice – she refused to return her library copy until Marks and Co sent her one of her own but she’s an utterly sympathetic character.

This edition also contains the sequel which i hadn’t read before, the Duchess of Bloomsbury about when Helene was finally able to make her longed-for trip to London after the English publication of 84 Charing Cross Road.  By then the bookshop had closed and one of her chief correspondents was dead though she had a warm friendship by letter, and then in person, with his widow.  She seems to have had a ball, she was entertained so much that she could afford to stay on in her hotel for an extra two weeks due to all the money she saved by not having to pay for her own dinners.

On July 19 she was taken to the Old Wine Shades in St Martins Lane which dates from 1663 and is the only City pub to have survived the Great Fire of London.

In the 60’s there were plans to raze this and put an office block in it’s place…

I worked there one summer and spent half an hour on the net trying to find out which year Helene visited just in case  I might have served her.  I didn’t, she was there in 1971 which was before my time.  What did surprise me is that she said she was taken there for ‘sherry at eleven’.  The Old Wine Shades was very genteel in those days, it only started serving beer the year before I worked there – pubs serve beer, the Old Wine Shades was a wine bar… but I don’t remember any of the City gents who streamed in through the doors as soon as we opened at eleven having anything so innocuous as a sherry.  They went for double whiskeys, usually several, and would then move on to a roast beef sandwich accompanied by several glasses of wine.  At closing time, three o clock they’d return to their offices and get down to the serious business of managing the nation’s money markets.  Anyone ever wondered why Lloyds was such a Horlicks?

Returning to the point, 84 Charing Cross Road is an absolute keeper and belongs on every booklovers bookshelf.  if you don’t have a copy already, do yourself a favour and hunt one out.

Happiness is…

20 Saturday Oct 2012

Posted by victoriacorby in Cats

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Kevin the kitten

joinng the grown ups for dinner and…

even better…

taking over the dog’s new basket.

Look At This!

10 Wednesday Oct 2012

Posted by victoriacorby in Books, Writing

≈ 6 Comments

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book covers, cover design, ebook, Theo Wayte, writing

A few months ago I posted about the problems I was having in coming up with new cover designs for my books.   I wanted something that was slightly more grown up than the originals, Something Stupid was once classified as Teenage Fiction purely because of the pastel cover and I know that my novels have always appealed to older readers as well as younger ones.  I thought about going to a professional cover designer but the ones I could afford were all American, very good but you only have to spend five minutes in an American bookshop to see how different their covers are to ours.  My books are quintessentially English and I don’t think I’d be doing them any favours by making them look American.  Of course if they were ever taken up by an American publisher who got behind them that would be different…

My husband designed several covers for me some of which were wonderful – the rubber duck with hearts all over it floating in the swimming pool was particularly memorable, as was the vortex with our cat staring out from it – but weren’t really quite the sort of thing for my type of light women’s fiction.  So then I did what I’d thought of right at the beginning and hadn’t acted on for some reason, asked my brilliantly talented friend Theo Wayte to design me a series of covers for the three books, all different but with a common style to link them together.

Theo wasn’t a book cover designer then; she is now.  See below.  She’s an artist and a calligrapher who does menus, place cards, seating plans, illustrated manuscripts, certificates, awards, labels – anything in fact you want which needs fabulous writing and the eye to know exactly what goes where.  There was a picture in Hello magazine of Michael Jackson at a huge party with one of Theo’s menus in front of him (gold writing on black card).  Oh and she also makes things, personalised wrapping paper, stamp boxes, pen jars, greeting cards, book marks…. which she takes to craft fairs and go like hot cakes.  As I said, seriously talented.

After a little bit of doubt if she was capable of doing it (ha!), Theo came up with this:

I just love it, it’s got that touch of difference I was looking for though it’s still indisputably feminine.  It might not work as a cover on a physical book when stacked up on a table but it’s really going to stand out amongst all the other drawings, pastels and photographed covers in the women’s fictions section of the Kindle store.  That’s what I need, for people to click out of interest, see that I have some genuine reviews going back several years and, who knows, they might actually buy it.

My Kind of Vendanging

02 Tuesday Oct 2012

Posted by victoriacorby in France

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Enjoying yourself, grape harvest, Vendange

A couple of weeks ago friends who have a small patch of vines over the other side of the river in Sauternes issued their annual invitation to come and help them vendange.  As usual they were practically flattened in the rush to say yes and on Monday last week some 14 of us gathered to bring the grapes in.

The day goes likes this: everyone rolls up at about 9.30 for coffee and a chat.  If you have a pair of grape cutting scissors you bring them otherwise they’re issued, along with a bucket, by the patron.  At about 10 we start picking.  Or those who didn’t have a power cut which shorted the alarm clock do.  That was our excuse for turning up as everyone was returning from rows of perfectly picked vines and we’re sticking to it.  I reckon that another picker overslept; he claims the reason he was wearing pyjama bottoms to vendange in was because it didn’t matter if they got splashed with grape juice.  Yes, we all really belive that.

Inspecting the grapes

The next stage is settling down to strip the grapes off the stalks – bigger châteaux have people standing at sorting tables, this one has the workers on garden chairs chatting and being served coffee and biscuits by la patronne while they work.  The stripped grapes are then measured and put in a tank where, instead of using their feet,  the patron and his helper crush the grapes with a large oak stick.  This of course also helps to add a subtle tinge of oakiness to the year’s vintage.

Seriously downtrodden workers having a miserable time…

Some two hours later all the grapes are in the vat, the perennial question of whether we picked more than last year has been answered – yes, 43 buckets compared to 38, and after cleaning our buckets and clearing up we’re summoned in for lunch.  This is five courses, pumpkin soup, salmon mousse, chorizo and cous-cous, cheese and salad, peach crumble and cream for those who had room – most did, la patronne is a wonderful cook and you really don’t want to say no to any of her food.  At four o’clock we arose reluctantly from the table, we had dogs to let out, and were given a party bag to take home with us – half a case of last year’s rosé and white.

If only all party bags could be like this.

That was approximately three hours work followed by three hours lunch, an excellent work/play ratio in my opinion.  And we got given a present.

It wouldn’t surprise me if there isn’t already a waiting list for next year’s vendange.

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