What other author are you reading at the moment?

[Chrissie777]

I want to read Winter Solstice, Chrissie. It’s driving me mad because I know we have a copy in the house but I can’t find it!

You will love it, Susie!
Maybe you could request it at your local library?

[pete9012S]

I paid three quid inc delivery for this on ebay so it had better be good!

[Chrissie777]

After having finished "Winter Solstice" and "Rebecca", I started reading "The Daphne DuMaurier Companion" by Helen Taylor. I enjoy the interviews with DDM's three kids.

[Nick]

I'm currently making my way through some of Thomas Sowells work. For those unfamiliar, Sowell is an Afro-American Economist, sociologist and intellectual historian and he writes on issues like race, culture, politics and economics.

I'm currently reading his Culture and Conquests in which he explores how conquests influenced culture and how culture influenced conquests. Other books that I've read are;

Basic Economics in which he provides a history of economics, theories and debunks many of the common claims made by politicians.

Black Red Necks and White Liberals. A series of 6 essays in which he explores how culture is passed from generation to generation and why some succeed and others fail.

Intellectuals and Society in which he explores where ideas and policies come from and how politicians and academics rarely consider trade offs when they push soloutions.

For those interested in who is there was a great documentary made about him a couple of years back.

https://youtu.be/WK4M9iJrgto?si=aCEu3VaAMcqrGoDq

[Lenoir]

I started "Treasure at Amorys", Malcolm Saville. I have the paperback which was bought in February 1975, according to my neat handwriting in the book.
I don't think my writing is that good nowadays.

[Katharine]

....
I don't think my writing is that good nowadays.

I know the feeling!

I'm currently reading 'Winter Holiday' by Arthur Ransome. I know I've read it before, but probably only once, and many years ago, so I can only remember the odd bit here and there which is good as it's almost the same as reading it for the first time.

My family are big Arthur Ransome fans, and previously it would have been a borrowed copy that I read. The 1960s edition I'm currently reading came to me when my a few years ago when grandparents' house was cleared. I'm not sure which of my grandparents it belonged to, or it may even have been my uncle's. There are 3 local newspaper cuttings inside connected to boats - the Nancy Blackett has visited nearby Woodbridge a few times. It was lovely to find them in there as it made me feel even more connected with my sadly long gone relatives.

[Debbie]

Winter Holiday is one of my favourite AR books. It's mostly about the setting, although as an adult I can't help feeling it would be less comfortable than they make out!

I've just reread "Holiday at the Dew Drop Inn" while my son was in rehearsals. I'd read all the Family from one End Street books when I was little but that was one I haven't been able to find before. Love the stories.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Winter Holiday is one of my favourites too, Debbie - stirring and magical.

The 1960s edition I'm currently reading came to me when my a few years ago when grandparents' house was cleared. I'm not sure which of my grandparents it belonged to, or it may even have been my uncle's. There are 3 local newspaper cuttings inside connected to boats - the Nancy Blackett has visited nearby Woodbridge a few times. It was lovely to find them in there as it made me feel even more connected with my sadly long gone relatives.

A lovely connection and something to cherish.

[Katharine]

Winter Holiday is one of my favourite AR books. It's mostly about the setting, although as an adult I can't help feeling it would be less comfortable than they make out!

I don't know whether it's poetic licence, or whether children were a lot tougher a few generations ago. I certainly can't imagine I'd have coped as well with all that ice and snow.

[Chrissie777]

The cold and lots of snow in Bavaria didn't bother me when I was a child.

[Splodj]

About 9 years ago there was discussion on this thread about John Creasey. I've been listening to 'The Toff On The Farm' on Radio 4 Extra have a few Inspector West books. It seems to me he is an underrated British crime author.

He seems to be similar to Blyton in that he wrote his books without planning and was prolific. I wondered if there were any books of his that could be recommended. For example, there are 60 'Toff' books; are they all worth reading?

[Courtenay]

I'm currently reading 'Winter Holiday' by Arthur Ransome. I know I've read it before, but probably only once, and many years ago, so I can only remember the odd bit here and there which is good as it's almost the same as reading it for the first time.

My family are big Arthur Ransome fans, and previously it would have been a borrowed copy that I read. The 1960s edition I'm currently reading came to me when my a few years ago when grandparents' house was cleared. I'm not sure which of my grandparents it belonged to, or it may even have been my uncle's. There are 3 local newspaper cuttings inside connected to boats - the Nancy Blackett has visited nearby Woodbridge a few times. It was lovely to find them in there as it made me feel even more connected with my sadly long gone relatives.

My mum is a huge Arthur Ransome fan and has all or most of his Swallows and Amazons series! I've only read the first book, but I loved it and am planning to start reading the whole series soon.

In the meantime, I've just recently re-read one of his earliest books, Old Peter's Russian Tales — Ransome's own retellings of folk tales he heard during his journalistic (and possibly spying!) career in Russia before and during the Revolution. I had this book as a teenager and loved it, especially as my own family is part-Russian and some of the stories I already knew from other collections, so it's interesting to read different versions of them. I'm amazed at how much I remember of this book after probably 25 years since I last read it — it's charmingly written with the framing device of Old Peter, a simple and good-hearted old forester, telling these traditional tales night after night to his two orphaned grandchildren, Vanya and Maroosia, who live with him in his little hut deep in the woods. Most of the tales are beautiful, some are comical, some are quite haunting — but gosh, the casual sexism of just a few of them!!

The worst example by far is the tale of a hunter who has a wife who is constantly bothering him with questions, and then one day he magically gains the ability to understand the speech of animals but must promise not to tell anyone of this, or else he will die. He promptly discovers (from hearing them speak) that his wife has been mistreating their dogs, and he confronts her with this, and she asks how he knew, and he can't tell her, so she keeps on and on badgering him about it. Then the hunter overhears the cockerel scolding his hens and declaring that he can keep his thirty wives in order while the master of the house can't manage even one properly — and so the hunter "made up his mind to be a fool no longer. He jumped up from the bench, and took his whip and gave his wife such a beating that she never asked him another question to this day."

... I can only assume Arthur Ransome was simply repeating this tale as he'd heard it told by Russian people — it was 1917 when this book was first published, after all — but I must say, reading that now as an (unmarried) adult woman, I wouldn't touch anything else written by this bloke ever again if I wasn't well aware his own original stories for children (written quite a bit later, from the 1930s on) are famous for having strong girl characters who regularly prove themselves equal to or better than the boys at lots of things!!! (Which, incidentally, is one of the reasons why my mum has always preferred Arthur Ransome's books to Enid Blyton's. )

[Anita Bensoussane]

I love Old Peter's Russian Tales as Arthur Ransome tells the stories so beautifully, keeping the reader spellbound. The ending of the story you mention certainly raises questions these days, Courtenay, with attitudes concerning male and female roles/behaviour having changed considerably! I'm in favour of traditional tales being passed on from generation to generation though, as they embody so much of our history. Fairy tales and folk tales from all around the globe feature domestic strife and they often portray women as cruel (wicked stepmothers abound!) - though it must be said that many also depict men as simpletons, despaired of by their long-suffering wives and by just about everyone else they meet. The Norwegian story 'The Husband Who Was to Mind the House' is one of the latter, in which a man stays at home to do the housework (believing he can do it more competently than his wife) while she does his work in the fields. She manages perfectly well but her husband gets into a terrible muddle with all the household jobs and ends up with the cow dangling from the roof by a rope, while he (having tied the other end of the rope to his leg) has been pulled halfway up the chimney! That story was one of my favourites when I was little! Of course, in most stories the message imparted applies to all human beings whatever their sex, warning readers against dismissing someone else's job as unimportant, or against being cruel, etc. These tales feed into much modern literature, art, etc. and it would be a great loss if we were to cast them aside because of problematic elements. I hope we'll continue to tell them/make them available and let children reflect on things for themselves and ask questions if need be.

[Courtenay]

Very well said, Anita, and I agree. I was just a bit shocked by the sheer callousness of that particular story ("The Hunter and His Wife") — it's made clear enough that the wife is a nasty and hard-hearted person, but the idea that she should be whipped for asking her husband too many questions, when it's not at all surprising that she should demand to know how he knew she'd given the dog a burnt crust and beaten it with the poker... And the idea that the husband should have a right to beat his wife if she doesn't do as he says, well, that's beyond ghastly. But I do realise it simply reflects the attitudes of a time and place and culture more than a century ago, and if I were reading that story to my children today (if I had children), I'd talk about all that with them — just as my own parents used to explain to me, when I bridled at certain aspects of Enid Blyton's stories, that people back then really DID have the attitude that girls should do the cooking and cleaning and stay out of the dangerous adventures that boys could go on. As I've said before, it made me much more appreciative of the fact that society's attitude towards gender roles had changed and I had a lot to be grateful for!

I was a bit harsh in saying "I wouldn't touch anything by this bloke ever again" if I didn't know about the much better attitudes towards girls in Arthur Ransome's own stories, but it definitely is a relief to know about those!! It just goes to prove that retelling a traditional Russian tale that advocates wife-beating doesn't mean that he himself actually approved of such practices. In the book, old Peter tells the story when young Maroosia has bothered him for too long with too many questions that he can't answer (though her brother Vanya is partly to blame as well), and so he presents it as a cautionary tale. And I do love the humorous twist as he finishes the story, the ending of which doesn't upset his granddaughter in the slightest:

"Yes," said Maroosia, "but then she was a bad woman; and besides, my husband would never call me an old witch."

"Old witch!" said Vanya and bolted out of the hut with Maroosia after him; and so old Peter was left in peace.

And indeed, there's another story earlier in the book — "The Stolen Turnips, the Magic Tablecloth, the Sneezing Goat and the Wooden Whistle" — which we're told old Peter also uses as a cautionary tale when one or other of his grandchildren is cross, and, we're told, "It was either the tale of an old man who was bothered by a cross old woman, or the tale of an old woman who was bothered by a cross old man;" the version that gets told depends on which of the children old Peter sees as to blame for the crossness! The rendition we get in the book has the old woman as the cross one who gets her comeuppances at the end, but presumably Ransome had heard it told the other way around as well, or at least he could see it would work just as well with the characters swapped around. That just gives us a glimpse of how folk tales easily get modified by the teller to suit the audience and teach a lesson to whoever is seen as needing one!

On that note, I recently bought a new novel I found in the children's section of Waterstones, The Snow Girl by Sophie Anderson — I picked it up specifically because it's based on one of the most famous Russian folk tales, which I've read many times in different versions, all with different endings, some happy and some sad! (Arthur Ransome, via old Peter, tells it as "The Little Daughter of the Snow".) I haven't read it yet, but it will be interesting to see what kind of ending this modern author gives it.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I've also read several different versions of the Russian tale about the Snow Maiden. Some of them are heartbreaking! I hope you enjoy The Snow Girl by Sophie Anderson. I recently bought (but haven't yet read) The Ice Children by M. G. Leonard, which is said to have been inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's 'The Snow Queen'.