55 questions about reading

This is what internet people call a ‘meme’ and what I call an excuse to write self-indulgent drivel, but I venture to hope that it may pass the time (if not yours then at any rate mine). Thank you to Stuck in a Book where I found the template. If one follows the virtual paper trail, one can track down all sorts of interesting things about other people’s reading habits.

1. Favourite childhood book?
There are many, but The House at Pooh Corner and Quentin Blake’s Patrick were early favourites. Later on, Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr.

2. What are you reading right now?
The Family from One End Street by Eve Garnett. I vowed to read five Carnegie Medal winners this year, of which this is the third.

3. What books do you have on request at the library?
None at present.

4. Bad book habit?
My buying rate far exceeds my reading rate, but I suspect that’s a common vice.

5. What do you currently have checked out at the library?
Books: Eve Garnett – The Family from One End Street; Eric Linklater – The Wind on the Moon; John Updike – Rabbit Angstrom: a Tetralogy; Terence Rattigan – Plays One; Susan Tomes – Out of Silence; Lucy Beckett – Richard Wagner: Parsifal (Cambridge Opera Handbook); Thomas Mann – Erzählungen; Fiorenza; Dichtungen; Roger Scruton – Death-Devoted Heart; Ivor Keys – The Chamber Music of Brahms; H.C. Colles – Brahms Chamber Music; Christopher Headington – Peter Pears: a Biography
Scores: Bach – Goldberg Variations; Inventions, Sinfonias and Partitas; Brahms – the symphonies; various chamber works; piano duets by Franck, Inghelbrecht, Kurtág, Ravel, Schumann etc.; Robin Holloway – Sea-Surface Full of Clouds, Romanza; Ravel – piano works; Szymanowski – piano works; R.R. Terry – 200 folk carols; The Oxford Book of Carols

6. Do you have an e-reader?
No, nor am I likely to have one any time soon.

7. Do you prefer to read one book at a time, or several at once?
One at a time.

8. Have your reading habits changed since starting a blog?
Not since starting the blog, but then it’s turned out not to be the book blog I had originally intended it to be. My reading habits, certainly my reading tastes, have changed beyond recognition – diversified, one might say – since I started using message boards in 2003.

9. Least favourite book you’ve read this year (so far)?
There are a handful to choose from, but I think Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator is an utter car crash of a book.

10. Favourite book you’ve read this year?
Though I’m not a habitual reader of plays, Rattigan’s The Browning Version and Montherlant’s La Ville dont le Prince est un Enfant stand out. Updike’s Rabbit, Run and Josef Škvorecký’s The Cowards are among the better novels I’ve read this year. And the books that have made me laugh most have been, perhaps unsurprisingly, by comedians – John Shuttleworth’s 500 Bus Stops and Tim Key’s Instructions, Guidelines, Tutelage, Suggestions, Other Suggestions and Examples etc.

11. How often do you read out of your comfort zone?
Not that often, I suppose, but it’s a pretty wide zone.

12. What is your reading comfort zone?
Fuzzy.

13. Can you read on the bus?
Yes, though I generally don’t, or at least not as much as I used to (but then I don’t catch the bus as often as I have in the past). I associate certain books with the bus: Portnoy’s Complaint and Of Mice and Men with buses to and from Bath during my gap year; Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and various Jeeveses and Woosters with Cambridge buses in Autumn 2005.

14. Favourite place to read?
In my library corner.

15. What is your policy on book lending?
Very much in favour of it, but then it is my livelihood. In my personal life it depends on the book and the lendee, though I’m usually quite amenable. Certainly more so now than in the past.

16. Do you ever dog-ear books?
No.

17. Do you ever write in the margins of your books?
Almost never.

18. Not even with text books?
A rather presumptuous question, given that its pertinence relies on my having answered no to the previous one. No, not even then. Though I must confess, for all that this may not be seemly for a librarian, that I love finding other people’s annotations in second-hand and even library books. In one of King’s College Library’s copies of Tender is the Night, next to the line “My son is corrupt. He was corrupt at Harrow, he was corrupt at King’s College, Cambridge”, a student has written “They all are!” It’s one of the joys of reading.

19. What is your favourite language to read in?
English for convenience, though my occasional attempts to branch out are gratifying when successful.

20. What makes you love a book?
It must move me.

21. What will inspire you to recommend a book?
The above, allied to a knowledge of the person I am recommending it to.

22. Favourite genre?
I don’t often read what’s classed as genre fiction. Is humour a genre? But it might be argued that any book without humour is deficient. It’s an important part of life.

23. Genre you rarely read (but wish you did)?
If I wished it, I would do it.

24. Favourite biography?
Stephen Fry’s Moab is my Washpot is streets ahead of any other biography I’ve read.

25. Have you ever read a self-help book?
I suppose there are a handful of books I’ve bought when I’ve felt in need of reassurance, but they have tended to be religious texts by e.g. Julian of Norwich, Augustine, St Anselm of Canterbury (none of which I can claim to have read – perhaps all the therapy I needed was retail therapy). I’d turn to the Book of Common Prayer before any self-help book, perhaps principally because of the reassurance of familiarity. Wodehouse also works well in this respect. Many years ago I bought a little book called Kama Sutra for One, which was most enlightening.

26. Favourite cookbook?
I started cooking for myself about three and a bit weeks ago, so it’s too early for me to have a fixed opinion. But my preferred choc chip cookie recipe is the one in the 1990 Snoopy Annual.

27. Most inspirational book you’ve read this year (fiction or non-fiction)?
Mark Watson’s new novel Eleven. It’s tempting fate to suggest it might change the way I live my life, but no other book I’ve read for a long time has had such an effect on me.

28. Favourite reading snack?
I sometimes read when I am eating (cereal boxes were a childhood favourite); I never eat when I am reading.

29. Name a case in which hype ruined your reading experience.
I’m not sure this has ever happened, as I rarely if ever read books on the basis of hype. And I try to approach books without preconceptions as a disappointment avoidance strategy.

30. How often do you agree with critics about a book?
I don’t read reviews or criticism much. Most of the time I suspect I’m with the balance of opinion. There are certain highly thought of writers I haven’t really clicked with yet, but that’s not likely to indicate any shortcoming on their part. Virginia Woolf, Richard Ford and Cormac McCarthy come to mind. I’ll keep trying.

31. How do you feel about giving bad/negative reviews?
It’s an occasional compulsion.

32. If you could read in a foreign language, which language would you choose?
I can just about manage French and German. They’ve both lapsed since my teens, but I try to read the occasional book to stave off the day when I forget everything.

33. Most intimidating book you’ve ever read?
Bleak House, on account of its size. I’d never read such a long book before. Finding that it wasn’t as hard as I’d feared meant I could tackle stuff like Don Quixote and Anna Karenina without feeling too scared.

34. Most intimidating book you’re too nervous to begin?
Not nervous exactly, but I’m a bit daunted by Joyce and Proust. One day I will bite the bullet.

35. Favourite poet?
Probably Larkin. Otherwise, the usual suspects. Auden, MacNeice, Eliot, some Betjeman, Tennyson and Hardy. Shakespeare, Spenser and the metaphysicals.

36. How many books do you usually have checked out of the library at any given time?
Not as many as at present. Having access to multiple libraries has affected my borrowing. When I was a boy the limit was four.

37. How often have you returned books to the library unread?
Quite often.

38. Favourite fictional character?
There are many. Sergeant George in Bleak House (in fact, any one of many characters in Dickens). Charles Pooter. Can I say Winnie-the-Pooh? I do admire his stoicism. Ted Burgess in The Go-Between. In fact, as a rule, anyone played in a film by Alan Bates.

39. Favourite fictional villain?
Depends on what I’m in the mood for. Valmont, Woland, Mrs Proudie. I suppose I like my villains to be enigmatic.

40. Books you’re most likely to bring on holiday?
No hard and fast rule about this. Anything from near the top of the TBR. Probably not Proust.

41. The longest you’ve gone without reading?
I can’t swear to it, but I think between the ages of about 11 and 13 I didn’t really read anything apart from what was prescribed by school. I believe this is quite a common experience.

42. Name a book that you could/would not finish.
I rarely abandon books now, but I gave up on Starter for Ten after about 100 pages. Odd, thinking about it, as it’s exactly the kind of book I would normally love, and I sat through the film without suffering too much agony, but I seem to recall not caring about anyone in it.

43. What distracts you easily when you’re reading?
Noise. Television. The lure of the net.

44. Favourite film adaptation of a novel?
In terms of great novel and great film, I think David Lean’s Great Expectations is very hard to beat. And it’s not a film, but the Andrew Davies BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice never fails to cheer me. Mr Darcy… *swoon*

45. Most disappointing film adaptation?
Not that I would ever so much as entertain the thought of considering the notion of thinking about the idea of putting myself in the position of watching one of them, but what Disney has done to Pooh is presumably a travesty. I don’t intend to let ignorance impede my sense of outrage.

46. The most money you’ve ever spent in the bookstore at one time?
I did spend a large amount of money on poetry books shortly after my 21st birthday, some might say unwisely. I’m not sure I’ve used them a great deal, but it’s nice to know they’re there.

47. How often do you skim a book before reading it?
Not before reading; sometimes before buying.

48. What would cause you to stop reading a book halfway through?
Boredom, stroke, second half of book missing, narrative taken over by Richard Littlejohn.

49. Do you like to keep your books organized?
Up to a point. It’s useful knowing where to find any one of them. But I haven’t the shelf space to be meticulous.

50. Do you prefer to keep books or give them away once you’ve read them?
I only give a book away if there’s someone I particularly want to have it or if I’m certain I will never read it again.

51. Are there any books you’ve been avoiding?
Only things I’m not interested in reading. Otherwise all book avoidance is solely motivated by time constraints.

52. Name a book that made you angry.
The Bible. But I think I’m over it now.

53. A book you didn’t expect to like but did?
Complicated, this. I expected to like The Catcher in the Rye before I first read it, and didn’t. The second time I thought I might like it, but still didn’t. Something made me try a third time without a great deal of hope, and I loved it. I had grown up a bit.

54. A book that you expected to like but didn’t?
Carol Mavor’s Reading Boyishly. Looked fascinating, but turned out to be enormously frustrating and annoying. I persisted for about 400 pages and then gave up.

55. Favourite guilt-free, pleasure reading?
I don’t feel guilty about reading anything. As far as pleasure’s concerned, it might be any number of things. At the moment, Trollope. Framley Parsonage is next up.

Hyperion 10: #10. The Feast of St Michael and All Angels at Westminster Abbey / Choir of Westminster Abbey, Robert Quinney, James O’Donnell

Thank you if you’ve stuck with me through this. A bit more variety will be coming to the blog soon. But there’s been variety in these posts, albeit firmly within the sphere of classical music. And I hope they have given at least a dim impression of the magnificence of Hyperion Records.

For my last choice, I had to pick one of the marvellous series of discs to come out of Westminster Abbey in recent years. They have released a number of superb recordings of music relating to particular seasons or feasts of the liturgical year, and I have chosen the one for Michaelmas, which happens to fall this coming Wednesday. The strength of this series lies as much in the astute selection of repertoire as it does in the performances. The structure of each programme covers three services – Matins, Eucharist and Evensong. This allows a broad selection of motets and anthems, canticles, preces and responses, Psalms, a Mass setting, and an organ voluntary. It’s a superb concept.

I can’t cover everything in detail, but will write a few things about this particular programme. It opens with Richard Dering’s radiant Factum est silentium, though that is the only music here dating from before the late nineteenth century. The responses, familiar but never hackneyed, are those by Kenneth Leighton, a composer of whom I am particularly fond. Though of course I don’t remember it, I gather I met him when I was a few months old, he having been one of my parents’ lecturers at Edinburgh. Mrs Leighton kindly gave me a small wooden car as a present, though I do not play with it as often as I ought to. The two Psalm chants are among the most lovable in the repertoire: Stanford for Psalm 148 and Alcock for Psalm 91; and the ‘Jubilate’ for the Matins service is the popular Britten setting in C, which receives the breezy, ringing-toned performance it demands.

The centrepiece of the CD is Jean Langlais’ magnificent, imposing Messe Solennelle, which really allows the choir and organist Robert Quinney to shine. It’s a great example of a piece written in a modern idiom (though its harmonic language draws on the medieval) that is nevertheless fairly ‘user-friendly’ to those who believe themselves immune to post-1945 classical music, and judging by this performance it must be a joy to sing, if not a walk in the park.

The music for Evensong features pieces commissioned by George Guest for the 450th anniversary of the foundation of St John’s College, Cambridge in 1961. The music of Sir Michael Tippett can be forbidding, but in the motet Plebs Angelica and his evening canticles for John’s, he shows himself to be a sensitive (if in some respects severe) composer of liturgical music. The ‘Nunc dimittis’ from his service is particularly beautiful, and beautifully sung by a quartet of soloists led by the uncannily pure-voiced Nicholas Trapp. Much more than just a curiosity from a man who rarely wrote church music.

Herbert Howells, by contrast, wrote his best music for the church. His Sequence for St Michael is one of a handful of pieces that poignantly invoke the memory of his son Michael, who died suddenly in 1935 at the age of nine. It is a great pleasure to lose oneself in the richly chromatic writing of this moving tribute. If I have one regret about the series it is that no hymns are included, and I feel their absence particularly keenly on this disc, where Howells’ tune ‘Michael’ (‘All my hope on God is founded’) would have been a fitting and self-recommending choice. Jonathan Harvey’s arresting Laus Deo is the giddying and fitting final voluntary.

As luck would have it, here’s a rather nice video of the hymn from Westminster Abbey. I can’t quite date it, but given some of the hair on show (particularly on the lady in blue) I’d be surprised if it was much later than 1990.

Hyperion 10: #9. Brahms: Viola sonatas, op. 120; Trio for piano, viola and cello, op. 114 / Lawrence Power, Simon Crawford-Phillips, Tim Hugh

Given my current mood, in which my love of Brahms continues to grow each day until, I anticipate, some kind of explosion will be brought about, it would have been impossible for me not to choose at least some Brahms here. I’ve gone for the recording of his chamber music for viola – the op. 120 sonatas and the op. 114 trio – by Lawrence Power (viola), Simon Crawford-Phillips (piano) and Tim Hugh (cello). These three works are among Brahms’ latest utterances, each one inspired by his acquaintance of the clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld. It’s a shame there are no recordings of Mühlfeld that survive: he died in 1907 at the age of 51. Brahms swiftly made new arrangements of the pieces substituting viola for clarinet, and the rest is history.

I have a special affection for the viola, which undoubtedly arises in part from my being a trombonist. As solo instruments they are usually neglected in favour of the violin and cello, the trumpet and horn. Neither instrument gets the tune very often either, but at least in the orchestra, though I don’t wish to grumble unduly, the violas get to play a bit. I remember going to an orchestral rehearsal once and finding the trombones had only one note to play, which fell on the final beat of the piece. We were permitted to leave. But I digress from my point, which was meant to be that for this bridesmaid of instruments to be given the occasional opportunity to get married (taking this metaphor a little too far now) is a cause for celebration.

The point has been made more eloquently by others that, listening to these performances, there is not the slightest suggestion that they might originally have been written for another instrument. Lawrence Power is a persuasive and poetic soloist. The first sonata, various Ohrwürmer from which have been going around my head for what seems like days, is a favourite. Its third movement, whose kinetic joy recalls the finale of the great Franck sonata (and prompts me to wonder whether Brahms knew the piece) and which Tovey identified as “the most deliciously Viennese of all Brahms’s works”, is played with an irresistible verve. Power’s gentle, teasing portamenti are quite joyous. H.C. Colles wrote in 1933 that the sonatas lose a great deal when not played on the clarinet, a view also widely held by clarinettists. One wishes he could have heard Power and Crawford-Phillips. What the sonatas may necessarily lose in mellowness of tone they regain here in intimacy from the less forthright character of the viola.

In the trio, though, I do sometimes miss the autumnal shades of the clarinet against the cello and piano. Which is not to say that the three musicians here fail to give it a compelling reading – quite the opposite. Duncan Druce, writing in Gramophone, rightly praises it as “a very fine performance, of exceptional expressive range, from extreme delicacy to thrilling power.” For those who can’t bear not to hear the clarinet in these pieces (and what unreasonable people you are, I must say), Thea King’s intelligent performances of them are available from Hyperion’s budget label Helios, and also in this box set of Brahms’ complete chamber music, which also includes the CD under discussion (and may be bought somewhat more cheaply than from the Hyperion website at present).

Hyperion 10: #8. The Psalms of David / Choir of St Paul’s Cathedral, John Scott

I think on first acquaintance with the Psalms in their Anglican manifestation, i.e. sung to harmonic chants, if I can remember that far back, I was not a receptive listener. In a bad performance the effect of these repeated chord patterns can be dull, particularly if the choir fails to take the trouble to illuminate the words. I’m afraid that with hymns I still often find myself glossing over the words, preoccupied with the tune. That’s a habit that repetition ought to eliminate: once you’ve got the notes, you can concentrate on what the words mean.

With the Psalms – especially with the Coverdale Psalter – one misses so much by failing to consider the text. You don’t have to have faith to see something tremendous in “I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint : my heart also in the midst of my body is even like melting wax” (Psalm 22) or “I am become like a pelican in the wilderness : and like an owl that is in the desert” (Psalm 102). The poetry is evident in every line. Just a momentary glance at a phrase like “O Lord, rebuke me not in thine indignation : neither chasten me in thy displeasure” (Psalm 6) will transport me back years into the past like the twitch upon the thread Waugh writes about in Brideshead. Maybe the effect of the language is so profound because we (by which I mean I) have become accustomed to devotional writing being merely fit for purpose, rather than beautiful in its own right like the Book of Common Prayer.

To get back on track. This is a complete recording of the St Paul’s Cathedral Psalter. There’s no danger of the Choir of St Paul’s glossing over the words: each phrase is perfectly nuanced and executed, and their clarity of diction mostly overcomes the cavernous acoustic. That acoustic is a reason some critics have resisted the recording. I think the sense of place it gives can add immeasurably to the atmosphere, and don’t find harmonic definition obscured, though the resonance does mean that it is necessary for the choir on occasion to employ slower tempi than might be thought desirable.

The entirety of the recordings, which were made over a period of about seven years, date from John Scott’s tenure at St Paul’s, and he is more than ably assisted by his two organists, Andrew Lucas and Huw Williams, whose perceptive embellishments are all one could hope for. The choice of chants is a pleasing combination of the standard and the unexpected, the old and the new. The familiar Stanford chants for Psalms 147 and 150, for instance, are present and correct. I have very fond memories of singing the Cooke chant for Psalm 7 in an Eton Choral Course evensong at King’s several years ago. A treasure trove.