Holiday Reading

There can be few nicer things than arriving at a holiday cottage with a week stretching ahead of you and discovering some well stocked bookcases. Mr J and I (with our six year old) landed on our literary feet in Suffolk last week I can tell you.

The cottage sitting room had a wonderful selection catering to both our tastes. There was more literary fiction than I could possibly get through in the time but I spent the first evening covetously making myself an over-ambitious to-be-read pile for the week. There were several Robertson Davies including The Cunning Man and What's Bred in the Bone, Troubles by J G Farrell that recently won the Lost Man Booker, Graham Swift's Learning to Swim, a large selection of Bruce Chatwin and the wonderful comic thoughtfulness of Fludd by Hilary Mantel (a review of Fludd will follow in a few days).

Meanwhile Mr J, who on the whole is not a reader of fiction, was very taken with the large number of Ian Niall volumes. The only Ian Niall I've read is his excellent novel No Resting Place which follows the adventures of a gypsy family, but here were The Poacher's Handbook with the Barbara Greg illustrations, and To Speed the Plough among other titles. There was also a good selection of poetry including Edward Thomas on the Countryside: A Selection of his Prose and Verse, plus the wonderful River by Ted Hughes illustrated with photographs by Peter Keen.

Then there was the bedroom bookcase:

This was awash with Country Book Club editions of all sorts of gems on farming, canal boats, fishing, country crafts and more, plus paperback editions of early to mid-twentieth century favourites like Miss Read.

All in all the two bookcases made a welcome change from the battered Ian Rankin and Joanna Trollope that usually adorns the shelves of holiday cottages. They should seriously consider detailing the bookcases in brochures and on websites. I am sure I am not the only one who'd be swayed in choosing a booking by the quality of the bookcase contents!

What's your best holiday-read finding?

**********************************************************************

You might also like the Independent's obituary of Ian Niall. Ian Niall's son by the way is Andrew McNeillie, poet, literary editor with the OUP, and founder of the poetry publisher Clutag Press. Juxtabook readers might be particularly interested in The Second Common Reader by Virginia Woolf in the excellent annotated edition by McNeillie; in it Woolf uses her stream of consciousness techniques to address a variety of major-minor writers including George Meredith, George Gissing, Mary Wollstonecraft, Dorothy Wordsworth etc. As McNeillie says in the introduction:

...Virgina Woolf felt that literary archaeology of this kind, upon what might be called primitive sites, no less than that conducted at more celebrated locations, could act as a restorative.

As many book bloggers specialise in this kind of literary archaeology of 'primitive sites' I think there is much here of interest.

Comments

[Bowlieb]

What a cool place! I don't think I've actually stayed in a place that has had a bunch of books available to read (or I haven't paid attention--I usually bring my own on vacation).

I think my favorite vacation find was Munro's in Victoria, British Columbia. It was a fantastic bookshop and I found The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova there for $6.00 CAD I think. I devoured the book on the plane ride home (it was like an 8 hour plane trip). I want to go back to Victoria just so I can visit Munro's again!

[Kit Courteney]

I usually stay in holiday cottages that (thankfully) have a very similar set of bookcases.

My favourite was near Penrith where I found (in the 2nd bedroom) millions(?) of Enid Blyton books.

Oh, heaven!

It took me right back to my childhood and I spent the week devouring them all!

[Verity]

That's amazing - I don't think I've ever stayed anywhere so well stocked. Occasionally I find things I want to read (I discovered Monica Dickens as a child in a holiday let). Here's hoping for some books when we go away in September!

[Juxtabook]

Bowlieb - I always travel with books in case of literary emergency. I've been lucky though and everywhere that I've rented for a holiday bar one has had some books and there's usually one I want to read. I've never been so spoilt for choice though.

Kit and Verity - I don't remember finding kids books in holiday cottages as a child but many of my childhood book discoveries were made in bookshops on holiday. I remember fidning my first Malcolm Saville 'Not Scarlet But Gold' in a little second hand bookshop in Cornwall.

[Kristen M.]

What a fantastic addition to your holiday!

And I'm happy about Bowlieb's comment because I get to visit Munro's for the first time at the end of the month.

[Wendy Butcher]

Thanks for the info on the books. I have a holiday cottage and leave an assortment of books, but with your inspiration, I will look through the boxes of paperbacks I have and start a better collection of holiday reading. Miss Reed is a favourite of mine too!

[Jane]

I always take books with me. The oddest book experience we had was in a cottage in Dartmoor. There were plenty of books; shelf after shelf after shelf, but they were all untouchable as the cottage owner had attached wooden strips across each shelf so nothing could be taken out. By dint of some determined and lengthy wiggling, I did manage to extract some books - from memory, one was Thackeray's Vanity Fair.

The book experience quite put us off the cottage, and though it was lovely in all other respects, we decided we wouldn't ever go back.

[Thomas at My Porch]

Twice I stayed at a house in Tuscany. On the second stay, about two years after the first, I was combing the bookshelves and came across a Willa Cather novel. Even though I had already read it I took it off the shelf to have a look. I peeked inside the front cover only to discover my name written on the first page!

Also, once at hotel in Florence I came across my first Anita Brookner--now fifteen years 23 Brookners later I am hoping she keeps writing.

[Juxtabook]

Kristen - it is lovely to go away with a good bookshop at the destination even if wwhere you are staying does not supply reading material.

Wendy - thanks for your comment and for visiting Juxtabook. I clicked through to your website and I have to say that the cottage look sstunning. I am sure a revmaped bookcase will make it perfect!

Jane- how absolutely infuriating. I'd have been tempted to but a chisel and have the wood strips off, and I'm not much given to vandal type thoughts usually. It is such a mean spirited thing to do. I am glad you managed to circumvent the owner's evil plans.

Thomas - what a lovely story. I like book reuniting stories. A fellow dealer recently came a cross a book he'd sold twenty years ago. I am looking forward to a revisit from one of mine.