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Susan Hill
May. 24th, 2011 02:57 pmHowards End Is on the Landing: A Year From Reading at Home
So I picked up Susan Hill's Howards End Is on the Landing: A Year From Reading at Home a few weeks ago and read a little bit of it every night for about a week before finishing it. I was actually quite taken with it despite the fact that Susan Hill and I have absolutely no common literary ground between us, and I had only read three or four of the titles in her 234 page book. Normally, her book of musings wouldn't ever have come home with me, but it is such a lovely cover and the paperback edition is well made with a non-gloss cover and good solid binding. These things matter to me, so I took it home because despite not knowing who Susan Hill was (turns out a pretty big deal AND a ghost story writer to boot) I like books about people and their reading. Susan Hill has interesting insights into reading and her love of books is very, very obvious. Her experiment intrigued me. What I found so interesting though was what had, during the course of her life, accumulated in her home library. That part of her book was as fascinated as what she actually read and what she liked as a reader. It made me look at my own modest personal library of 1600+ books and despair, because quite frankly, there isn't much of substance here, at least in the fiction department. I have a solid collection of texts about my chosen field and then some more pretty interesting and important non-fiction books, a smattering of classics, and a whole lotta old Forgotten Realms novels. Plus some manga, only a bit of which is worth re-reading (Fruits Basket, Hellsing, Black Jack, RG Veda, I will re-read you, I swear!) and a few graphic novels, the best of which are Digger, Bayou, and Locke and Key. My science fiction shelves mainly contain classics, Bradbury, Delany, LeGuin, Herbert, and Clarke. My fantasy, well I won't get into that lest you think less of me. I have some new authors who are awesome and assume will always be highly readable, but the vast amount of my fiction collection, at least to me, looks readable but also throw-away. So, if I never buy another novel again, and am stuck with this library that I have amassed now, what will I have to keep me warm when I am Susan Hill's age? I shudder. But it goes to show how reading tastes and how exploring the literary landscape is a deeply personal and idiosyncratic journey. Priorities change. Even as recently as three years ago, I bought books to be entertained...now, well there are things on my shelves that would probably shock the people who know me well, because honestly, I and they would never I guessed that I'd be interested. Reading does more than entertain, and when I realized that quite a bit of what was on my shelves were books that I would read and most likely find entertaining, but would never dip into again, I was sorta floored. I'd always prided myself on my taste. What do you know when you're eighteen, nineteen, hell twenty-six anyway. It's my excuse, I'm sticking to it.
Towards the end of the book, Susan Hill muses about what her ultimate forty books, as in stuck on a desert island, would be. She was able to make those choices and seem okay with reading what she chose for the rest of her life. Not only could I not do that having not read enough, but I also think I am not mature enough, have not explored enough of my self to be able to make that decision. Which was an interesting insight because like I said, I had always thought I knew EXACTLY what sort of books I like and that those choices could sustain me as a reader. Hmmm.
I do think that it would be interesting, next year when all my pre-orders from Amazon are in, to try reading from home from my meager little library and see if my opinions change and then do it again in ten or twenty years and see what changes.
It was a good book about the comforts, joys and sorrows of reading. Susan Hill is a very learned lady and I came away with appreciation for books that are termed "classics" but I had thought I would never want to read. But the joy of reading is infectious and I should I guessed that I would come away with a list of books to read, including Middlemarch and A Room of One's Own, two books that had looked horribly boring to me before meeting with Susan Hill's quiet, gentle ruminations.
The Man in the Picture
So of course after reading her book about books, I looked up Susan Hill's oeuvre and ordered the titles most likely to interest me, namely her ghost stories. I have her most famous book The Man in Black as well as I'm King of the Castle, but I started with The Man in the Picture instead. Mostly because it's a pretty little book, and I could finish it last night, while the wind blew and the rain fell.
The novel is about a sinister picture. Very Dorian Gray. So knowing that, you've pretty much got a handle on the story. It was predictable, but enjoyable and had a decent enough sense of atmosphere. Susan Hill's ghost story sensibilities are Victorian, so of course I enjoyed it. It's a very small book, almost a novella or a very long short story. The pacing is adequate, and even though the reader can be very sure of the punchline, the picture is still remarkably creepy. I have a book that is a cultural history of the night and some of the oil paintings in it are very, very sinister and that just added another layer of creepy because I knew exactly what the narrator was describing when he talked about how weirdly lit and dark and shadowy the painting was.
And the last line, "I pray that I will not have a son," was an excellent way to end a ghost story. Recommended, but mostly as a library or borrowed read.
So I picked up Susan Hill's Howards End Is on the Landing: A Year From Reading at Home a few weeks ago and read a little bit of it every night for about a week before finishing it. I was actually quite taken with it despite the fact that Susan Hill and I have absolutely no common literary ground between us, and I had only read three or four of the titles in her 234 page book. Normally, her book of musings wouldn't ever have come home with me, but it is such a lovely cover and the paperback edition is well made with a non-gloss cover and good solid binding. These things matter to me, so I took it home because despite not knowing who Susan Hill was (turns out a pretty big deal AND a ghost story writer to boot) I like books about people and their reading. Susan Hill has interesting insights into reading and her love of books is very, very obvious. Her experiment intrigued me. What I found so interesting though was what had, during the course of her life, accumulated in her home library. That part of her book was as fascinated as what she actually read and what she liked as a reader. It made me look at my own modest personal library of 1600+ books and despair, because quite frankly, there isn't much of substance here, at least in the fiction department. I have a solid collection of texts about my chosen field and then some more pretty interesting and important non-fiction books, a smattering of classics, and a whole lotta old Forgotten Realms novels. Plus some manga, only a bit of which is worth re-reading (Fruits Basket, Hellsing, Black Jack, RG Veda, I will re-read you, I swear!) and a few graphic novels, the best of which are Digger, Bayou, and Locke and Key. My science fiction shelves mainly contain classics, Bradbury, Delany, LeGuin, Herbert, and Clarke. My fantasy, well I won't get into that lest you think less of me. I have some new authors who are awesome and assume will always be highly readable, but the vast amount of my fiction collection, at least to me, looks readable but also throw-away. So, if I never buy another novel again, and am stuck with this library that I have amassed now, what will I have to keep me warm when I am Susan Hill's age? I shudder. But it goes to show how reading tastes and how exploring the literary landscape is a deeply personal and idiosyncratic journey. Priorities change. Even as recently as three years ago, I bought books to be entertained...now, well there are things on my shelves that would probably shock the people who know me well, because honestly, I and they would never I guessed that I'd be interested. Reading does more than entertain, and when I realized that quite a bit of what was on my shelves were books that I would read and most likely find entertaining, but would never dip into again, I was sorta floored. I'd always prided myself on my taste. What do you know when you're eighteen, nineteen, hell twenty-six anyway. It's my excuse, I'm sticking to it.
Towards the end of the book, Susan Hill muses about what her ultimate forty books, as in stuck on a desert island, would be. She was able to make those choices and seem okay with reading what she chose for the rest of her life. Not only could I not do that having not read enough, but I also think I am not mature enough, have not explored enough of my self to be able to make that decision. Which was an interesting insight because like I said, I had always thought I knew EXACTLY what sort of books I like and that those choices could sustain me as a reader. Hmmm.
I do think that it would be interesting, next year when all my pre-orders from Amazon are in, to try reading from home from my meager little library and see if my opinions change and then do it again in ten or twenty years and see what changes.
It was a good book about the comforts, joys and sorrows of reading. Susan Hill is a very learned lady and I came away with appreciation for books that are termed "classics" but I had thought I would never want to read. But the joy of reading is infectious and I should I guessed that I would come away with a list of books to read, including Middlemarch and A Room of One's Own, two books that had looked horribly boring to me before meeting with Susan Hill's quiet, gentle ruminations.
The Man in the Picture
So of course after reading her book about books, I looked up Susan Hill's oeuvre and ordered the titles most likely to interest me, namely her ghost stories. I have her most famous book The Man in Black as well as I'm King of the Castle, but I started with The Man in the Picture instead. Mostly because it's a pretty little book, and I could finish it last night, while the wind blew and the rain fell.
The novel is about a sinister picture. Very Dorian Gray. So knowing that, you've pretty much got a handle on the story. It was predictable, but enjoyable and had a decent enough sense of atmosphere. Susan Hill's ghost story sensibilities are Victorian, so of course I enjoyed it. It's a very small book, almost a novella or a very long short story. The pacing is adequate, and even though the reader can be very sure of the punchline, the picture is still remarkably creepy. I have a book that is a cultural history of the night and some of the oil paintings in it are very, very sinister and that just added another layer of creepy because I knew exactly what the narrator was describing when he talked about how weirdly lit and dark and shadowy the painting was.
And the last line, "I pray that I will not have a son," was an excellent way to end a ghost story. Recommended, but mostly as a library or borrowed read.
