C. Litka's Blog, page 27

The Shape of Book Sales

The song "House of the Rising Sun" might have been written to warn poor sons and daughters not to become writers, since it's "been the ruin of many a poor soul." Artists tend to be temperamental, and a common fate of too many writers of fiction is to "wear that ball and chain" and "The only time he's satisfied, Is when he drinks his liquor down".  Maybe that's an exaggeration. But then again, maybe not.

The reason is that while a few authors become very famous - anything is possible, after all - the vast majority are not only not famous, but not even published. And even today when anyone can publish their own work at their expense, most are not read. As I have noted in the past, it is said that 60% of traditionally published authors are out of the business after three years, and 90% are out after ten. The rate is likely higher amongst self-published authors. The reason is that the book business is one where a relative handful of authors sell a ton of books, a lucky few sell enough books to stay published (this is a declining category) but most fail to click, selling a relative handful of books. I would go so far as to say that most traditional published authors are merely auditioning to become best sellers. They are given their chance - a contract - and if/when they fail to click, the luckiest ones end up either selling their future books to a small presses for a thousand dollars, while the rest find themselves looking for a new career.

To illustrate this sad fact, let's revisit some Amazon data dating back 2016 which I blogged about back then. To generate the data authors provided sales numbers and Amazon sales ranking to AuthorEarning. This data was used to reverse engineer how Amazon ranks each book by sales. Once a quarter, on a single day, AuthorEarnings collected the sales rankings from all the books listed on Amazon's many "100 Best Selling Books" lists and used known rank/sales numbers to estimate the sales of those books on that day. This captured data on 200,000 ebooks. Below is the chart AuthorEarnings "Data Guy" provided for Feb 2016. Click on the chart for a larger version.

The green and grey dots represent author supplied data points. The important thing to note about this curve is that it is logarithmic, both the sales numbers and ranking increase by an order of magnitude at every marking; i.e. sales on the vertical axis go from one book a day to 100, 1,000 and then 10,000 a day at the top, while the sales rankings run from #1 to a million on the horizontal one. This method creates a nice fat curve that looks promising, until you realize that by the middle of the curve, you've gone from 10,000 sales a day to 100 with a sales rank of perhaps 5,000. At the end of the scale you're selling one to 10 books a day. 
The graph below charts the above data on a linear scale, with sales represented by the red line. That fat curve in the graph above is the little bend in the red line below. This graph gives a much clearer idea of the big picture.


Using numbers from these graphs, we can roughly estimate the sales range for ebooks in the various levels of ranking, as they existed in 2016. The numbers might be slightly different today, but the picture is likely the same.
Sales Rank    number of titles  sales per day   sales per year at day rate#1 to #10                        10     8000 to 2000    2.92m to 730,000#11 to #100                     90    2000 to 500    730,000 to 182,500#101 to #1000                900    500 to 100      182,500 to 36,500#1001 to #10,000          9,000      100 to 12        36,500 to 4,380#10,001 to #100,000    90,000         12 to 1            4,380 to 365#100,001 to #200,000  100,000       1 or less            365 or less
The data collected only included the top selling 5% of Amazon sales. The lower 95% of books sell less than a book a day, and once a book's sales rank falls below 200,000, it is a book a month or less. Many sell none at all. While these figures are 7 years old, I doubt things have changed significantly - though pages read in the Kindle Unlimited lending library are now figured into sales ranking, somehow.
I do have one anecdotical bit of information that provides a glimpse of this sales phenomena. By some strange stroke of luck, my book The Girl on the Kerb earned some sort of promotion on Amazon after they cut the price to free, and so for several days it was selling between 700 to 800 free copies a day. This level of sales moved its sales rank up to being the #5 book best selling book on the 100 Best Selling Thriller-Espionage list, and I seem to remember it being somewhere near the 1,000 rank on the complete Best Selling Free chart. Today, with its glory days behind it, it still ranked around #29 on that list and #6,568 on Amazon's Best Selling Free list with its sales of 2 to 3 copies a day (76 for the month of July 2023), so that you see how fast sales fall off the further a book is from the top 10 sales spots.
All of which is to say that freelance writing is a very bad business to be in unless you are very, very lucky, and perhaps have some talent. To continue to be employed in it requires every bit as much luck. Heck, you need to be very lucky just to get your chance to fail at it. Failure is the norm. And it ain't easy being one of the lucky. I've seen an author literally begging people on Titter to buy his book, as he perceives his career circling the drain - without any apparent success. And you often hear of authors taking time away from pursuing their dream of being a published author for mental health issues. Plus, the initial high of landing a book deal- the dream of a lifetime - quickly fades as the reality of the business, settles in. Down through the ages machines have replaced people doing dirty, dangerous, and mind numbing jobs, and in this respect, the rise of AI written books could easily be seen as part of this tradition and a blessing in disguise. 
However, many people write simply for pleasure, myself included, so that AI will never replace writers completely. Human writers will find other ways to reach readers, and some may even find some sort of way of making some sort of money off of it. Again, anything is possible, after all. Perhaps these "handmade" stories will evolve into something that looks like the fan fiction community of today - a community of readers and writers who enjoy writing and reading, and not a business at all. Time will tell.

The Saturday Morning Post (No.8)

This week I'm reviewing two books, the first, a humous fantasy novel featuring a devil, Mephistopheles, and a wolf that he transforms into a man and a humorous romance about an Australian genetics professor's plan to find a suitable wife.
 

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

The Devil and The Wolf by Richard L Pastore  BMany centuries ago, an old and powerful devil, Mephistopheles had been tasked with giving the humans he selects whatever they desire, as part of an experiment to determine if humans are fundamentally good or evil. Apparently this question is of some importance to both heaven and hell, which are currently engaged in a cold war following a disastrously hot war. However, Mephistopheles has grown weary of his task, since no definitive answer has come out of this long running experiment. Because of this, he has devised a plan to end it, which involves remaking a wolf into a human; one JR Wolfe, the wolf in the title. I will admit that the metaphysical and philosophical underpinnings of both the experiment and how the creation of JR Wolfe fits into it are over my head, but I just went along with the flow. And the story flows along with a lot of humor as the former wolf explores his human nature and human possibilities. There are a number of subplots involving humans here on earth and angels and devils in heaven and hell that threaten Mephistopheles and his plot to bring the great experiment to an end as well. These subplots slowly unfold throughout the story, though it is never clear exactly what Mephistopheles is up to until the very end, so I won't spoil that except to say that there is an explanation of sorts, and that it involving a tense confrontation between him, heaven, and hell. Thankfully, this confrontation is kept low key, keeping the whole story somewhat believable, unlike the last book I read dealing with heaven and hell, Grave Importance by Vivian Shaw which carried its confrontation well over the top. To be honest, I don't know if the explanation makes any sense, as I'm unfamiliar Western philosophy, but I have my doubts. As I said, I content just to go along for the ride. I enjoyed the story, though I read it more as a modern fairy tale than a fantasy novel.
But oh, that premise again. What follows are a few remarks concerning that premise, not of the book The Devil and the Wolf, itself. My comments apply to all similar stories like Good Omens, The Good Place, Grave Importance, and likely many others as well. Indeed, the winning novel of the Self Published Fantasy Blog Off #8, Small Miracles by Olivia Atwater is another book featuring an angel and a devil vying to win over a selected human. It seems to be a popular theme.
But not with me. By the time I was in 8th grade in a Catholic school, I was reading SF and had come to realize just how insignificant the Earth's place in the universe is. This being the case, to ascribe it as the center stage of THE whole reason for the creation of the whole universe seemed silly to me even at that tender age. Four more years of Catholic education and a lifetime lived has not changed my view of the matter. This outlook means that stories that utilize Christian mythology with angels and devils, heaven and hell, strike me as being inherently nonsensical. And even when a writer tries to modernize this mythology, as in the stories mentioned above, by giving heaven and hell some sort of faux scientific basis using quantum mechanics and the theoretical multiverse, they are still ignoring the vastness of the rest of the universe. They are still placing the Earth center stage for THE universal drama, which as I said, just doesn't make any sense to me. Plus, the authors of these stories strip devils of their evilness and angels of their rightlessness, and in doing so, ignore almost everything fundamental about them. They instead simply make devils and angels into humans with magical powers and wings, who, like humans, must deal with politics, war, and death. Gone are the orthodox flames of eternal damnation and the great cathedrals of heaven; heaven and hell are just alternate versions of Earth. Since they are defanged, revisionist, unrecognizable versions of those mythological places, so why use them at all? Moreover, I believe that all of the stories I've mentioned keep the Christian god well off stage, without mention of him at all. I assume this is for story reasons, since a supposed all-powerful creator of everything could solve any problem presented in the story in a snap of his fingers. 
Still fiction is fiction, so what's the problem? There is none, except that for me, my fundamental disbelief of the premise they are playing with makes the story a mere fairy tale for me. By fairy tale I mean a story that, as I read the story, I can't suspend my disbelief and really get into the story as I would like. This is not always the case for fantasy or humorous stories for me. You can have silliness and silly characters, and still ground the story with just enough realism for me to suspend my disbelief in the premise and/or characters, so that, at least when I'm reading the story, the characters and their story become alive in my imagination. I'm willing, indeed, wanting to believe that P G  Wodehouse's world could exist somewhere in the multiverse because his characters seem like they could be real somewhere, in sometime. In writing his stories he keep one foot on the ground, even if he has to stand on his tip toes to do so. This isn't the case for me when dealing with devils and angels, as my long held disbelief in their existence and Christian mythology makes it impossible for me to see the story as anything more than tall tale. Blame it on my youth.


The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion  BThis 2013 book was suggested by my wife, who read and enjoyed it. It set in the author's homeland of Australia and concerns a socially awkward but detail orientated college professor, Don Tillman. He is something of a genius who is on the Asperger's spectrum. He has decided to find a wife, and to do so he devises the Wife Project that includes a 16 page survey for prospective applicants to that position to complete in the hope of avoiding wasting time on unsuitable prospects. Pickings are few.
By accident he invites Rosie, who he thinks is responding to his Wife Project, but wasn't, to a disastrous dinner, but nevertheless becomes involved with her, helping her in her quest to find who her real father is. It was hinted to her that her biological father wasn't the man who raised her, but someone in her mother's class of fellow doctors who, on the night of their graduation party she slept with. Don uses his skills in genetic, access to the university facilities, and as the story goes on, his newly acquired skills to covertly collect and analyze DNA samples of her mother's classmates. Along the way he is forced to change his way of life, becoming less rigid, as he faces new challenges - changes that he discovers are worthwhile to make in his life. As usual, I don't like to give much of the plot away, so I'll leave it at that.
I enjoyed the book and the character of Don Tillman. It is told in first person by Don, so that you get into the mind of someone on the Asperger's spectrum and who is not only aware of his social limitations, but has adjusted to them, only to have to navigate the many changes inadvertently brought about by his decision to find a wife. By telling the story from Tillman's point of view, so we can watch, step by step, his thought processes, Simsion is able to make a plausible  case that Don could change in the ways he did within the story. If you want an lighthearted interesting read, with a little something different, this is your ticket.

Series in Paint and Print

During my ongoing survey of art, I have sometimes come across artists who paint the same scene again and again, in varying light, seasons and viewing angles. It struck me that writers often do the same thing, either in the writing of series stories with a familiar cast of characters and setting, or in the writing of different stories that explore a favorite theme or topic again and again, or perhaps just by reusing patterns and stylistic techniques across their various books.

Painting by George Ames Aldrich
I suspect that both artists and writers do this for similar reasons. First being that they might well be a love of the subject, the scene, the locale, the world, the stylistic motif and/or the cast of characters. It may also be a comfortable way of exploring and developing a technique, isolating it from the subject by using it on a familiar subject again and again. Plus, I also suspect that both viewers and readers (and publishers) find these differences in the details of something familiar both interesting and comfortable as well. Plus, there may be commercial reasons for doing so as well, some genres almost demand that writers write very similar books.

Bridge of Flowers by George Ames  Aldrich
In painting, Monet's Rouen Cathedral series of at least a dozen paintings is one of the most famous series of paintings. In it Monet explores how light changes our perceptions. However I've chosen George Ames Aldrich's series of paintings of the bridge at Quimper (or Quimperie) to illustrate this little essay because while the general shape of the scene is maintained, he changes many of the little details - things like how he paints the houses across the river and how wide the steps alongside the river are. The distant landscape beyond the bridge also changes in each painting to suit the scene. Writers do similar things, taking the shape of a familiar story pattern, setting, and characters, and then slightly alter the plot, use new dialog, new characters and perhaps expand the world to make the new story different enough while keeping its familiar feeling. 

The Bridge at Quimper by George Ames Aldrich
The  example in writing that inspired me to write this little essay is P. G. Wodehouse's Blandings Castle books. They feature the same setting and many of the same characters, or perhaps more accurately, many same and many similar characters, with similar story lines, like forbidden love, lack of money, and guests as imposters both benign and comically sinister. And then there is his unique writing style common to every story. What makes them interesting is how the plot, though familiar-ish, differs in the details as well as on a line by line, sentence level. And how, though the happy outcome is known to the reader from the pattern, it is finally arrived at.

Bridge at Quimperie by George Ames Aldrich
There are many other examples of authors returning again to familiar characters and familiar plots. I've mentioned the Stephanie Plum series as one where the author uses a formula to write the story - the premise, the title character that never gets better at her job, her helper, her love triangle, and her Grannie... all make their expected appearances. Perhaps less formulistic, but still familiar are the Louise Penny books that my wife looks forward to each fall. Indeed, mysteries almost always have their own familiar patterns, it is a feature of the genre. This true of many famous fantasies as well. And, then there are all those author-published romance, thrillers, science fiction, and fantasy series books on Amazon.

George Ames Aldrich (couldn't find its title)

In writing, as well as painting, there are more subtle ways of exploring different themes or subjects than just copying the same scene or using the same plot formula. One can use a familiar technique or style to present a different looking work of art or an entirely different story, that may still speak to a common theme. Different motifs and plot lines can be employed to address a favorite theme from different angles. And on a larger scale, it may be style and voice that provides the familiar elements across the artist's work, i.e. all Monet's work can be seen as a long series of impressionist paintings, just as stylistic elements tie all of Stephen King's books together.

The Flower Bridge, Quimperie by George Ames Aldrich
One such stylistic choice of mine, a common motif that I think may provide a familiar element in differing stories, is that since Beneath the Lanterns, I have written my first person narrator as a "Watson." That is to say, the narrator is merely the story's driving force character's sidekick, someone who sets out an account of what the mover & shaker of the story accomplishes. There is no particularity artistic reason for me to do this, it is simply that I am not a mover & shaker sort of person, so that by giving that role to a character in whose thought process is simply easier; I don't have to invent and describe the process in any detail. Instead, I can have them just explain their their motivations - or not - without describing all the messy mental work of arriving at them. I think that this point of view defines how the story reads, and thus, is an important element of my author "voice." Indeed, even Captain Litang in The Bright Black Sea starts out that way, and somewhat reluctantly evolves to be the decision maker a captain needs to be. And even then, in The Lost Star's Sea, he still often takes a back seat to companions who are more familiar with the world than he. 

Venetian Bridge by George Ames Aldrich
Of course, there can be much deeper themes and patterns within stories that an author might return to again and again that a casual reader may not discern. In this case the patterns might well be nestled deeper within the stories than the dissimilarities of the stories would suggest. Comfortable familiarity is often far from the aim of many writers. And well, this is what I suspect master of fine arts programs set out to teach. 

Still, while I am not a master of the fine arts, I think that I can say that most viewers and reader like a mix of the familiar with the unfamiliar. They will quickly get bored with the same old, same old, but they are also often reluctant to try something completely new as well. In art, viewers may not want to see the same subject painted over and over again in the same way, but as I have suggested they may well be a fan of an artist because of their familiar style regardless of the subject. And the same can be said of writers. Often it is the favorite elements of a writer's style that will keep readers coming back for different stories.

Untitled by George Ames Aldrich
So, in the end, there limits to both originality and repetition. Artists of all kinds and mediums, be it paint, words, music, etc. must, if they want commercial success, find and work within those lines of audience acceptance, as vague as they are - even as they often strive to push them out just a little more.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 7)

 

This Saturday I am reviewing, discussing, and contrasting two British authors' attempts to write light, humorous stories, namely Dornford Yates and P G Wodehouse.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

Berry And Co. by Dornford Yates  DNF 32% (up to chapter 5)

Berry and Co is a 1920 collection of short stories featuring five cousins, the namesake, Berry i.e. Major Bertram Pleydell who is married to his first cousin Daphne, plus Daphne's brother Boy Pleydell,(the first person narrator) plus Jonathan (Jonah) Mansel, along with Jonah's younger sister Jill, all of which, I must admit seems a bit strange, if not a little creepy cast of characters. But I guess if marrying a first cousin is good enough for the royalty of Europe, its good enough for this upper class cast of humous characters. The book is a collection of short stories originally published in The Windsor Magazine, a monthly literary magazine of the time. My copy of the book is a Gutenberg ebook version.

The premise of the story is that these cousins are wealthy enough to not have to work, at least as far as I could tell from the limited number of stories that I've read. The series began in the pre-war world of 1914, and the series continued after the war, once the men had returned from war, in which Berry we know had been an army officer. The stories in this book take place after the war, as they are reestablishing themselves in society. The stories are very light. For example the first one has them all together at the family home "White Ladies" on a Sunday for the first time in five years. They go to church, during which their new acquired 1914 Rolls Royce is stolen (you apparently didn't need keys to start a 1914 Rolls) despite having asked a fellow watch over it for them. Boy, with the help of a girl in a car, trace the Rolls in her car (until it runs out of gas) and spot it parked in front of an inn. They take off with it - only to discover upon arriving home that their own Rolls had been found previously, it being very short of petrol hadn't been driven far, so that they had actually stolen someone else's identical Rolls. Then the police then arrive with the second car's owner... You get the idea.

Since I didn't finish the book, you can correctly assume that I did not find these stories as amusing as they were intended to be. Humor's that way, some of it works, some doesn't. It all depends upon the recipient. Given that, I thought it might be interesting to talk about why this is, by comparing it to another British author of Humorous stories, P. G. Wodehouse. To better compare them, I picked a Wodehouse book off my shelf and read it. A quick review below, and then the discussion of why one worked, and the other didn't.

Heavy Weather by P. G. Wodehouse  B+

This is the 5th book in Wodehouse's Blandings Castle Saga of 11 novels and nine short stories. Blanding Castle is the home of the prize fattest pig obsessed Lord Elmsworth, his sister Lady Constance, his younger gadabout brother, the Honorable Galahad Treepwood, who are all faithfully served by their butler, Beach. And into this venerable English country estate, where it's always summer, comes a host of Wodehouse characters, many of them drawn from the Drones Club, as well crooks, private investigators, plus other sundry characters. 

In this case we have Monty Bodkin, who has to hold down a job for a year to marry get his sweetheart's father's approval for marriage, Ronny Fish who needs Lord Elmsworth to release some of the money held in trust for him so that he can marry his true love, the ex-chorus girl Sue Brown, a wedding opposed by his mother, Julia Fish, sister to Constance, Elmsworth, and Galahad. She and her sister Connie hope to browbeat Elmsworth into not giving Ronnie the money and nix the marriage. And then there is the memoir of Galahad, who, along with most of the now peers of the land, was a man about town in the 90's and whose stories about the antics of the now respectable people in those days would cause an outrage amongst his peers. Constance and Julia hope to keep the manuscript suppressed (as it was in the previous installment of the saga) while the publisher, Lord Tilbury hopes to steal it and publish it, as originally promised... And being Wodehouse, it get pretty involved...

This book is not an apples to apples comparison to Berry & Co. as it is a novel, not a collection of short stories, and not a first person narrative. The Bertie Wooster short stories would be a more apples to apples comparison, but I had reread some of those in the last year or two, so I chose this book more or less randomly off the shelf to read to refresh my impression of Wodehouse, though I am fonder of his Bertie Wooster stories.

The contrast between Yates' stories and Wodehouse's stories could not be, in my opinion, greater, despite sharing more or less the same premise; they feature the lighthearted misadventures of people many of whom have inherited enough money to live on without having to work. There are several factors that contribute to this contrast.

The first difference between the two writers, is that the characters of the Yates books are portrayed as adults. Berry is an (ex?)army major, and one would have to assume to be at least middle aged. In contrast, while Wodehouse's protagonists while university educated young men about town, retain a rather carefree, if not juvenile attitude. The female cast of characters vary greatly, from the young, often independent, pretty women who the Drones Club members inevitably fall in love with, to the formidable aunts who these members must get around to marry their true love. There is an air of youthful cheerfulness in these Wodehouse characters that somehow seems lacking in the Yates cousins. Yates' cousins come off as, well, wealthy, idle, and bored snobs. While some members of the Drone Club may or may not be wealthy and many are often idle, living on inherited money like Bertie Wooster, others have to work as tutors or private secretaries, at least until their quarterly allowances, which they lost on unfortunate horses, is paid, and as often as not, get sacked before it does. They come across as far more likeable, if perhaps less likely, chaps than the company of Berry & Co. They are people you would like to believe could exist.

And while Yates' short stories are somewhat similar, Wodehouse's are usually far more involved. Which brings us around to the writing. Yates' humor relies on having his characters use witty/silly dialog. Take this example, Here is Berry describing his time in a local jail; 

'How did you spend your  time?' said Jonah.

'B-b-beating my wings against the crool b-b-bars,' said Berry. 'My flutterings were most painful. Several turnkeys broke down. The rat which was attached to me for pay and rations gambolled to assuage my grief. Greatly affected by the little animal's antics, I mounted the plank bed and rang the b-b-bell for the b-b-boots. In due course they appeared full of the feet of a gigantic warder. I told him that I had not ordered vermin and should prefer a fire, and asked if they'd mind if I didn't dress for dinner. I added that I thought flowers always improved a cell, and would he buy me some white carnations and a b-b-begonia. His replay was evasive and so coarse that I told the rat not to listen, and recited what I could remember of "The Lost Chord."' He turned to me. 'The remainder of my time I occupied in making plans for the disposal of your corpse.'

Berry, at least, and the others as well, often ask or answer questions with such flights of fancy, being bright, carefree people of the post war jazz age. They were popular stories, so I am sure some people, and perhaps you as well, might find them funny. There are several books of these stories on the Gutenberg project for free if you think you might. 

Wodehouse's humor is more intricate and often grounded in slang. Take this passage I choose amongst half a dozen I found within a minute of opening the first pages of The Inimtable Jeeves between Bertie and Bingo Little.

'Jeeves tells me you want to talk to me about something,' I said.

'Eh?' said Bingo, with a start. 'Oh yes, yes. Yes.'

I waited for him to unleash the topic of the day, but he didn't seem to want to get going. Conversation languished. He stared straight ahead of him in a glassy sort of manner. 

'I say, Bertie,' he said, after a pause of about an hour and a quarter.

'Hallo!'

'Do you like the name of Mabel?'

'No.'

'No?'

'No.'

'You don't think there's a kind of music in the word, like the wind rustling gently through the tree-tops?'

'No.'

He seemed disappointed for a moment; then cheered up. 

'Of course, you wouldn't. You always were a a fat-headed worm without any soul, weren't you?'

'Just as you say. Who is she? Tell me all.'

For I realized now that poor old Bingo was going through it once again. Ever since I have known him - and we were at school together - he has been perpetually falling in love with someone, generally in the spring, which seems to act on him like magic. At school he had the finest collection of actresses' photographs  of anyone of his time; and at Oxford his romantic nature was a byword.

'You'd better come along and meet her at lunch,' he said, looking at his watch.

'A ripe suggestion,' I said. 'Where are you meeting her? At the Ritz?'

'Near the Ritz.'

He was geographically accurate. About fifty yards east of the Ritz there is one of those blighted tea-and-bun shops you see dotted about all over London, and into this, if you'll believe me, young Bingo dived like a homing rabbit; and before I had time to say a word we were wedged in at a table, on the brink of a silent pool of coffee left there by an early luncher.

Bright, brisk, with a bit of silliness in the slang of his characters, while still being grounded in characters and indeed, a world, which you would very much like to believe once existed. 

And perhaps the greatest difference is that Wodehouse tells the entire story with a great deal of dash, cleverness, and humor, whereas Yates tells it with a light touch, but with an ordinariness that is broken by the occasional flights of fancy and silly/faux clever dialog that strikes me to be out of character for his characters.

Humor is very subjective, so that if you should find Berry and Co. funny, I can't find fault in that. Sadly, I didn't.

The Blandings Castle Saga

I have, quite by chance, undertaken the reading of P. G. Wodehouse's "Blanding Castle Saga." I plan to review the individual books in my The Saturday Morning Post, so in this post I'll just outline the setting of the saga, the castle that gives it's name, its usual inhabitants, mention some of the guests, many of whom arrive as imposters, and livestock. I owe a lot of the information on Blandings itself to the 1977 hardcover book, Sunset at Blandings, which includes Wodehouse's last and unfinished Blandings story, along with a map and house plan of Blandings Castle drawn by Ionicus with an accompany essay on the setting by Richard Usborne.

So to begin, with a warning to authors;

'...there is nothing an author to-day has to guard himself against more carefully than the Saga habit. The least slackening of vigilance and the thing has gripped him. He writes a story. Another story dealing with the same characters occurs to him, and he writes that. He feels that just one more won't hurt him, and he writes a third. And before he knows where he is, he is down with a Saga, and no cure in sight.' P G Wodehouse in the preface to Blandings Castle.

A Blandings Castle novel always includes the castle's proprietor, the absent minded Lord Emesworth, often his equally empty headed son Freddie Treepwood, his domineering sister Aunt Connie, his butler Beach, sometimes his sinister secretary, the Efficient Baxter, and the later stories, his pig The Empress of Blanding. 

The books below listed in reading order constitute Wodehouse's second greatest saga, after the Bertie Wooster and Jeeves saga.    

Something Fresh (1915) (aka Something New in America)

Leave it to Psmith (1923)

Blandings Castle  Includes six short stories written between 1924 to 1931; The Custody of the Pumpkin, Lord Emsworth Acts for the Best, Pig-hoo-o-o-o-ey, Company for Gertrude, The Gogetter, and Lord Elmsworth and the Girl Friend

Summer Lightening (1929)

Heavy Weather (1933)

"The Crime Wave at Blandings" (short story, 1937)

Uncle Fred in the Springtime (1939)

Full Moon (1947)

"Birth of a Salesman" (short story 1950)

Pigs Have Wings (1952)

Service with a Smile (1961)

Galahad at Blandings (1965)

"Sticky Wicket at Blandings" (Short story 1966)

A Pelican at Blandings (1969)

Sunset at Blandings (1977) an untitled novel which Wodehouse was in the process of writing on his death bed.

They are all stand alone books in that they can be read and enjoyed in any order, though references to earlier incidents may be included. Below is Blandings Castle from the air, as drawn by Ionicus, who illustrated the Penguin books in the 1960 & 70's, and who I consider the definitive P G  Wodehouse illustrator.  

Blandings Castle

Blandings Castle and its cast of characters are firmly set in the Wodehouse "universe." While I don't think Bertie and Jeeves were ever a guest at Blandings, an Emsworth a maybe cousin of sorts, Algernon Wooster did stay there in Something Fresh (or New, if you have the American book). And readers familiar with many members of the Drones Club will find familiar names amount the guests, including Monty Bodkin, Ronnie Fish, Hugo Carmody, Rev. Rupert "Beefers" Bingham, and Pongo Twistleton. Psmith, in Leave it to Psmith, is also a member, and who was an early Wodehouse character first appearing in a boy's story Mike and Psmith, and then went on to star in two earlier books, Psmith in the City, and Psmith Journalist, before arriving at Blandings Castle in the guise of the Canadian poet, Ralston McTodd. 

Below is a map of Blandings countryside, and of the various locales mentioned in the books. Hopefully if you click on it, it will come up large enough to explore.

Blandings Castle, Grounds, & Surrounding Countryside

Blandings Castle is set in the west of England, in the county of Shropshire, a four hour train ride from London's Paddington Station. Wodehouse found it a slightly inconvenient locale in that he couldn't have his characters easily popping up to London to do something and return in the same day in time for dinner.

Blandings Castle is said to be one of the oldest inhabited houses in England. It "stands  upon a knoll of riding ground at the  southern end of the celebrated Vale of Blandings in the country of Shropshire. Away in the blue distance wooded hills ran down to where the Severn gleamed like an unsheathed sword; while up from the river rolling park-land, mounting and dipping, surged in a green wave almost to the castle walls, breaking upon the terraces in a many-colored flurry of flowers as it reached the spot were the province of Angus McAllister, his lordship's head gardener, began."

On the map above you will note some of the major features mentioned in the book, including the old and new pig sty, the residence of Lord Emsworth's prize winning pig, The Empress of Blanding, the lake where Lord Emsworth makes it a habit to bath each morning in summer, the mossy Yew Alley that Angus MacAllister would like paved with gravel, and in the upper right corner, Market Blandings, where the train from London stops, some two miles from the castle.

Market Blandings is said to be the perfect quaint old English town, almost untouched by the passing of time. Market Blandings's Elmsworth Arms is the favorite inn in the saga, though the little town also offers excellent beer at the Wheatsheaf, the Wagoneer's Rest, the Beetle and Wedge, the Stitch in Time, the Blue Cow, the Blue Boar, the Blue Dragon, and the Jolly Cricketers, and several more. "In most English country towns, if the public-houses do not actually outnumber the inhabitants, they all do an excellent trade. It is only when they are two to one that hard times hit them and set the inn-keepers blaming the Government."

The proprietor of Blanding Castle is the ninth Earl of Emsworth, Clarence Treepwood, best known as Lord Emsworth. He is "normally as happy as only a fluffy-minded man with excellent health and a large income can be. A writer, describing Blandings Castle in a magazine article had once said 'Tiny mosses have grown in the cavities of the stones until, viewed near at hand, the places seems shaggy with vegetation.' It would not have been a bad description of its proprietor. Fifty-odd years of serene and unruffled placidity had given Lord Emsworth a curiously moss-covered look. Very few things had the power to disturb him. Even his younger son, the Hon. Freddie Treepwood, could only do it occasionally" However, it has to be said that in the books he is often disturbed by the various alarms and excursions of the castle's guests who arrive, often as imposters, for various reasons. It is sad to say that when I first read these stories, Lord Emsworth was a rather absent minded 60 year old man, and now as I reread these stories, what the fuck, he's 13 years my junior. That's dashed sad.

The Blandings Castle Saga is, unlike the Bertie Wooster stories, told in third person, and while on the whole I prefer the Bertie Wooster stories, especially the early ones, I find that I am enjoying these tales perhaps even more than when I first read them. That said, I am going to have my work cut out for me when I get around to writing the reviews of each, as while a great deal happens in each story, they all follow a very similar pattern; true love foiled by a lack of money and/or the opposition of Aunt Connie. It seems that Lord Elmsworth is the trustee for various nieces and nephews and so the needed capital for the proposed onion soup bar, to get married, or what have you, must be pried out of him, usually over the objections of his sister, Aunt Connie and usually because of the unsuitability of the prospective marriage due to class prejudice.

As I said, there is a pattern to these stories, despite being extremely intricate when it comes to plot. I found that I was missing two of the later books, so they are now in the mail as I post this. More about Blandings in the Saturday posts coming in a few weeks.

Another version of Blandings Castle

The Saturday Morning Post (No.6)

I've a grab bag of books to review this week, starting with Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel, which I wanted to read to see if it was indeed, Batman with swords which the Wikipedia made it out to be. Let's get right into it.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy Orczy  C+

Let's address the elephant in the room, this proved not to be Batman with swords. Indeed, not only does the title character play only a minor role, on stage anyway, in most of the story, but there is not one sword fight, indeed, not one fight scene at all. So what is the story about?  Well, the Wikipedia entry states;

The novel is set during the Reign of Terror following the start of the French Revolution. The title is the nom de guerre of its hero and protagonist, a chivalrous Englishman who rescues aristocrats before they are sent to the guillotine.... (who is) a formidable swordsman and a quick-thinking master of disguise and escape artist. The band of gentlemen who assist him are the only ones who know of his secret identity. He is known by his symbol, a simple flower, the scarlet pimpernel.

Luckily for me, I did not reread this summery before I read the book, so I forgot who they identified as the Scarlet Pimpernel, (I've edited it out for you) and so I learned who it was, more or less as the Baroness intended, though before it was actually revealed. That made the story a bit more interesting. My advice forget the summery in its entirety, as it does not describe the book in any meaningful way.

The story is largely set in 1792 England, and the main point of view character is a former French actress, Marguerite Blakeney (nee St Just), the wife of a very rich and very oafish English aristocrat Sir Percy Blakeney - though it takes a couple of chapters of set up to get to her and Sir Percy who is an intimate friend of the Prince of Wales, i.e. one of the in crowd. Their marriage has fallen on ill times, though Sir Percy treats her with great respect, he would seem to have ceased to love her, and she him.

The plot centers around Marguerite, whose dear brother, is working with the Scarlet Pimpernel to smuggle aristocrats out of France during the reign of terror, even though he is both French and not an aristocrat. Indeed, having been beaten to a pulp for sending a note to the aristocratic girl he loved, he is a believer in the revolution, but feels that it has perhaps gone too far. In any event, his involvement with the Scarlet Pimpernel is discovered by a French agent in England and is used to blackmail Marguerite into helping him discover identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel and capture him while he is in France, as he rushes to save Marguerite's brother and the French aristocrats that the Marguerite's brother went back to France to help escape as part of the Scarlet Pimpernel's gang of helpers.

After the introduction of the setting and characters in the first couple of chapters, the story revolves around Marguerite's struggles to save her brother at the cost of betraying the identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel, and then her attempts to save him herself. It is rather overwroughtly written by today's standards, but I enjoyed it, even though it was not what I expected. I believe that there are something like 19 novels concerning the exploits of the Scarlet Pimpernel and members of his band of adventures, so maybe they include some sword fights. At least several are available from the Gutenberg Project where I downloaded my version of the story, so I might give them a try some day. We'll see. 

When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nghi Vo  C+

This is a fantasy novella set in a fantasy version of China with were-animals, in this case weretigers. The story concerns a traveling cleric/scholar Chih who is escorted to a way station in a snowy mountain pass by a Si-yu, a scout who rides a mammoth. At the station they are confronted with three weretigers who intend to eat them, and Chih must tell his version of a love story between a human and a weretiger to the weretigers who, in turn, have their own version of the story to relate, in order to keep the tigers from attacking and eating them. Each learns from each other different aspects and different attitudes of the characters and the story as they knew it. It is a quick read of 80 pages, and is set in a world first introduced in her novel, The Empress of Salt and Fortune, and now includes a second novel, Into the Riverlands. I believe Chih is the central storyteller who links all the books of the Singing Hills Cycle of which Mammoth at the Gates will be the fourth. While I can not say for certain, since I have not read either of the other stories, I suspect that this series may follow the blueprint of Ernest Bramah's Kai Lung stories set in a fictional China that have Kai Lung relating stories to bet himself out danger, but I could be entirely wrong.

I have this story only because it was one of the free books TOR.com offered, no doubt to promote Into the Riverlands when it was released. In any event, if you like weird tales of sort of China with magical creatures, then you should like these books. 

John Burnet of Barns, A Romance by John Buchan  C+

This is Buchan's second novel, written when he was 23. It is a historical novel largely set in 1680's in the low lands of Scotland, with a brief section in Holland. This was a time of great religious strife in Scotland between the Scottish Calvinist dissidents and those upholding the official state religion of the Church of England and it saw the king's soldier hunting down these diehard dissidents for treason. The hero of the story, John Burnet falls afoul of his elder cousin, and after besting him a duel in Holland where the cousin was a captain in a band of mercenaries. On the cousin's return to Scotland where he pursues John's true love and spreads lies that has John branded as a traitor. John returns to Scotland to save his love and clear his name.

There is nothing Buchan likes better than describing the scenery of Scotland, and having his hero a hunted man, gives him great scope for doing so. He also paints a vivid picture of the time and place with a story filled with desperate action. A fine, authentic historical novel written in the style of 1898 if that's to your taste.

The Half Hearted by John Buchan  D

This is Buchan's fourth novel, written when he was 24 and tells the story, in two parts, of a very accomplished upper class young man, heir to an estate in Scotland, Lewis Haystoun, who doesn't fit in with modern society. He is not driven, too good natured, doesn't know what he wants to do with his life and so is unable to commit to anything with his whole heart. The first part of the story, relates an ill fated romance, where his indecision, and in his view "cowardice," prevents him from wining the girl he loves, and who loves him as well, plus losing an election to parliament. The second half sees him traveling to the frontiers of India and foiling a plot to invade and start a native uprising there.

I have to feel that Buchan had ambitions for this book to be "important", since he spent great deal of words expounding on his philosophy of live by putting the words into the mouths of his various characters. Buchan, was a brilliant person, the son of a Scottish church minister, he won scholarships and awards, graduating from Oxford and going on to become the private secretary of a high British government official in South Africa for three years before returning home to become the editor of the Spectator Magazine and write more novels. He ended up governor general of Canada in the late 1930's. All the photographs of him I could find all show a tight lipped grim looking man. Thinking back, I have to admit that most of his books have a great deal of "intellectual" weight to them and that his heroes all tend to be the type of people that George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman would think fools; upper-class, idealistic, self sacrificing, very pro-British Empire, foolishly brave fools and knaves who built and maintained a colonial empire for several hundred years. At the end of the story, his half heartedness lost in his determination to save the British Empire in India, Lewis Haystoun becomes one of them.

I found the story a bit too "important" and ended up skimming a lot of book two of the story as it contained a lot of talk, long descriptions of the landscape and everything the hero did, as well as social comments that are long out of date. Plus the "threat" to the British Empire seemed too silly for me to take seriously. In short, I would not recommend this Buchan story to modern readers. His best one is The 39 Steps, and if you like the hero of that one, he appears in three more books written over several decades.

Honor of Thieves by C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne  B (Republished as The Little Red Captain)

I found this book on my ebook reader, and while Hyne is one of my favorite writers, it didn't ring a bell - until I started reading it. It proved to be the first Captain Kettle story, a book I had read in paper many years ago, so my read turned into a reread. 

I should say right at the start that if you are sensitive to racism, racist stereotypes, and nationalities referred to in the most demeaning terms, save the English in print, you should steer well clear of the Captain Kettle stories. The character of Captain Kettle is that of a tough, sharp tongued tramp ship officer who has to deal with crews that are composed of hardboiled characters, and does his job by ruthlessly dominating them with sheer will power and a belief that the English race is superior to all other races and nationalities. He makes that clear in how he treats everyone not English, white or not, at least in words, if not action. I do not know how much of the racism is a reflection of Hyne's attitude and how much is his effort to make his character authentic. In any event, I can accept this attitude as a reflection of the time in which it is written and the type of character the story centers on. I think it's an accurate portrait of the racism of 1895 and take heart in the fact that while we still a long ways to go for all people to view all people as one people, this type of book illustrates the fact that progress is being made, if not as fast as we would like.

The story involves a shipowner, Theodore Shelf, whose business is going under, in part due to the extravagance spending of his wife. She is bent on climbing the social ladder by having him made a peer. He meets a well educated and well traveled man, Patrick Onslow who knows of an undiscovered river where a ship may enter the Florida everglades, which in 1895 was a wilderness still inhabited by Indians, alligators and mosquitos. Onslow proposes to use this discovery to offer hunters access to the everglades using a ship as a home base, and then sell the land to would-be orange growers. Shelf, needs more money than that, and quicker, so he proposes another plan involving faking the sinking of one of his ships for the insurance money on the ship and its cargo. Captain Kettle, with an undeserved bad reputation, is hired to oversee the dirty work.

In this story Captain Kettle is a supporting character, but after this story was first published Pearson's Magazine, in an English monthly literary magazine, the editors asked Hyne to write more stories featuring Captain Kettle, which he did over the next few year, and continued to do so for until 1938, along with stories featuring a number of other nautical characters.

Coming next week, a review of two books by British writers of humorous stories and novels along with a brief discussion of how and why humor works and doesn't.

35,301 Paintings (And Counting)

A painting by George Ames Aldrich

There are two things I've always enjoyed doing, painting, and writing stories. I've done both of those activities off and on for most of my life. I have a closet full of paintings, at least 1500 of them of various sizes and styles, that are worth millions of dollars, if my kids play their cards right once I'm dead. (See Upton Sinclair's Lanny Budd books.) Alas, over the last five years my output of paintings as diminished to the point were I was only painting covers for my books, and that only begrudgingly, and not very well, either. With my story writing seemingly winding down, I'd like to get back into painting, and to that end, I've been surveying the world of art to get that set of creative juices flowing once again.

That survey of art has taken the form of watching slide shows of paintings from the vast collection of the Learn from Masters video collection of paintings. It includes work from over 800 painters, some of which are represented by only several dozen paintings, while others have hundreds or more. Each painting is shown for something like 6 or 7 seconds, though you can pause the video if you care to to study a painting longer. I, on the other hand, am only trying to get an overview, a feel for art again, and perhaps absorb in some intuitive manner what works and what doesn't, so I play the videos at 2X speed, viewing each painting for only 2 to 3 seconds. Some painting deserve a lot more time and attention, and others, less, I'm not trying to study art, but experience it. So far I've viewed 35,301 paintings from a mere 260 different artists.

Ideally, the paintings would be arranged chronologically so that you could see the evolution of the artist. But given the sheer number of paintings this person has assembled, I'll not complain that they are in rather random order. It would be nice if they were titled, but again, given the sheer numbers... The other problem inherent in the presentation is that all the paintings are more or less the same size. A painting could be 7 inches wide or 7 foot wide and both would appear to be the same size on the screen. This is unavoidable. However, since both finished paintings and small field studies are presented in more or less the same size, it is sometime difficult to know what the artist intended the painting to be. Was the artist painting in an impressionist style, or are we're seeing just the preliminary plein air painting made on the scene for use as a reference in producing a finished work completed in the studio. Below is an example of what I believe is a study:

And here is the finished work:

 Both painting by Maximilien Luce

Sometimes the paintings are clearly quick studies for a larger work, but sometimes they stand on their own as a completed painting. In the case above what appears to be the study was shown in the presentation after the finished one, but close enough in the series that I recognized it as more or less the same painting I'd seen earlier. When you can see both the study and the finished product, you can see how a painting is developed. 

I have a number or art books on impressionist painters, so every now and again I'll come across a painting from a less famous artist that I recognize. Plus it is nice to see more than one example of their work to judge them by.

I am a landscape/cityscape/seascape sort of person, so those are generally my favorites, but I do enjoy seeing portraits as well, especially when well executed. and there are plenty of them in many collections. And because these paintings can date back something like 200 years, they offer the viewer an authentic glimpse of  the life of the people of bygone eras, as well as taking the viewer to exotic locales, some real, other imagined.

Here are some other things I've learned so far.

There are a lot of paintings and a lot of artists. With 800+ artists, there could be a 100,000 paintings to view.

Kylie Cows Watering by William Langley

Cows are aquatic animals. Many of the old landscapes that have lakes also have cows knee deep in them. Who knew?

Watercolor  by William Russell Flint

It seems that it was common for young women to gather and skinny-dip. Or so a lot of painters would have us believe. I suspect this was either wishful thinking or a fringe benefit of being an artist. What a racket.

Grand Canal Venice by Thomas MoranEvery painter, it seemed, painted Venice.

Docks of Paris Les Quais by Eugene Galien-Laloue
 And Paris. 

London by Giuseppe de Nittis

And London. Which is fine, they are interesting places.

Robert Lewis Stevenson by John Singer Sargent

Many, if not most artists, painted portraits. I suspect because those commissions paid the bills.

Benefits Supervisor Sleeping by Lucian Freud

Many, if not most artists, painted nudes. It was considered classic "art." Right. As I said, quite a racket.

There are, indeed, such things as masterpieces. Many times when going through a collection I will come across one or two paintings that just seem to stand out from all the rest - a combination of the right scene, lighting, colors, and execution. They are, however, rare, which is what makes them masterpieces.

I should've been taking notes, but I didn't, and now it's too late now.

Some people keep track of how many states they visit, or foreign countries. I'm going for how many paintings and drawing I've viewed.

In addition to these paintings, I'm currently up to date on installment no. 98 of Pete Beard's survey of forgotten illustrators that you can find here. In each of these segments he highlights the work of 4 illustrators in each 15 minute or so installment. I haven't counted how many pieces he shows, as it varies according to the amount of source material he has to work with, but between them and the special shows of a single artist or style, they could easily add another 5,000 paintings and drawings to my total.

Illustration for books and posters is another facet of art which I find fascinating. In many cases, I really like the illustrator's approach to a subject, though I like some countries' illustrators more than others. As I said, all fascinating stuff.

Stanley R Badmin advertising art

We'll have to see if it pays off.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 5)

This post offers two more reviews of the books by British woman from the Furled Middlebrow collection; the best, and the most disappointing of the lot. Let's start with the most so-so book of the lot and finish with the best, but first my customary disclaimer...

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

Babbacombe’s bySusan Scarlett C

Each of the 72 books Furrowed Middlebrow they havepublished feature anintroduction by Elizabeth Crawford describing the author, their work, and thenovel at hand. In this case we learn that, Susan Scarlett is the pen name of NoelStretfield (1897 – 1986) a prolific writer whose 40 year careerspanned several genre, including children’s novels in her own nameand pen names.

Thisstory concerns the Carson family, with a focus on Elizabeth Carson,the eldest daughter. Mr Carson has been employed at Babbacombre’sdepartment store, and with her graduation from school, Elizabeth starts her first job there as well. Unfortunately, they were askedto board an orphaned niece of Mr Carson, the daughter of ahalf-brother that he could not stand. She turns out to be veryunpleasant as well, nevertheless he gets her a job at Babbacombre’s as well. She chooses to be an elevator operator, as it is an easy job, thoughwithout a future, but she has a private income of sorts, so she doesn’tmind. You see, she has no intention of working all her life when there arerich men to be found.

Iopted to try this one largely based on the cover, a cutaway of adepartment store, thinking that a lot of the action would take placein the workplace, but alas, that wasn’t the case. This was adisappointing book. I found the domestic problems were toosoap-opera-ish, too melodramatic to really care about. The family came off as toogoody-two-shoes. The spoiled cousin remains too much the unredeemable snake inthe family's bosom, always looking to shove a stick intoBeth’s romance. And just to amp up the stakes, we have Beth’syounger brother going blind with cataracts (a big deal, involvinga dangerous operation in 1939, I gather). All in all, a little tooover the top for me, who likes things understated. 

And now, my favorite book of the lot.

Apricot Skyby Ruby Ferguson A

Apricot Skyis your $2.99 ticket to a delightful summer holiday in thenever-neverland of Scotland’s western coast of 1948. You will bestaying at Kilchro House, with its large garden and sweeping views ofthe Western Islands in the golden sun and cool mist. You will beguests of Mr & Mrs MacAlvery, their two daughters, Cleo, justhome from three years in America, and Raine, recently engaged tomarry the 28 year old Ian, the younger of the Garvine brothers, theelder being Neil (age 30), the Laird of Larrich, plus their threeorphaned grandchildren, Galvin (age 15), Primrose (age 14), andArchie (age 10ish), as well as the household staff of Mysie, themaid, Mrs Mortimer, the cook, and Miss Vannah Paige who arrived in1917 when Mr MacAlvery was in France and has stay on for twenty oneyears, seemingly unchanged. Oh, and you’ll meet a host of otherguests, family friends, neighbors, and other characters and share intheir minor alarms and excursions during a golden summer in theHighlands – from boat trips to the islands, shopping expeditions,visits from and to the neighbors, and of course the marriage.

Ruby Ferguson fondlypaints a lush view of the Scottish Highlands, with vivid sense ofplace, as well as deftly bringing to life all the various characters,both major and minor with a friendly, but witty eye to detail, brightand breezy dialog, and a light, sarcastic sense of humor. What I loveabout her writing, and that of Molly Clavering is the fluidity of it.It simply flows, carrying you along through the seemingly mundaneeveryday life of her characters with wit and charm. Ruby’s bookjust edges out Molly’s in my ratings because of the wickedly cleverhumor she sprinkles in her story. I have to say that while I am surethere are American authors who can write as well as British authors,I can’t think of any at the moment. (I count Chandler as British,since he was educated in England, and I have to believe that theireducation is what makes the writer, at least it did 100 years ago.)

Ruby Ferguson wasborn in 1899 and read English at St Hilda’s College, University ofOxford. She wrote detective stories for magazines and 8 mystery booksbefore marrying at 35 and turning to romantic novels writing 11 ofthem, plus 10 children books about horses and a memoir. None of herother adult novels seem to be in print, which, if they are anythinglike Apricot Sky, is a great shame.

Apricot Sky issimply a wonderfully entertaining book. Highly recommended.

There are plenty more books by women authors of the last century to sample, but I think it is time to move on for awhile. Up next will be three books that I've downloaded to my Kobo ebook reader from the Gutenberg Project, which is to say more old books, starting with Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel. Is it  "Batman with swords?" Plus one fantasy novella that I got free from TOR.com, no doubt promoting the new release of a book by the author in question.

The Co-Op Short Story

This year I managed to enter Beneath the Lanterns  in the 9th edition of the Self Published Fantasy Blog Off. Last year I somehow missed the date, and this year the 300 slots were filled in something like 47 minutes. My book will be judged by the team from Timy - Queen's Book Asylum. Timy, on her blog, offers her contestants five options to be creative and highlight themselves and their books over the course of the contest. I choose the "To be continued" option which involves co-write a short story with three other writers. Each of  us are assigned one of four slots in the story to be written in sequence, and we don't know who the other writers are so we can not discuss the story before hand. I thought that it would be an interesting challenge, while at the same time, being something I'd be more comfortable doing, than say throwing a fictional party for my characters, or getting stuck in a familiar book, or writing a character into a magically locked room. I'm not that creative. 

I was assigned the third slot in a story tentatively titled Jesting with a Cold Soul, and the writing prompt was "illusion and dream in a carnival setting." Each section should be 500 to 1,000 words long, but you can go longer. Being both a novelist, not a short story writer, and someone who won't use one word where two will do, I ended up writing close to 2,500 words.

Luckily for me, the first author chose not to set the story in an actual magic/fantasy carnival with evil carnies and sinister clowns which is very much not my thing. Instead they went in a grimdark direction, making the carnival into a small band of, I suppose, mercenaries/bandits who dress up like jesters, and starts the story with their carts arriving at a small village to kill, pillaging and rape. Not my type of either, but that was always going to be the challenge. 

In the first two parts of the story a fellow named Trisfan, one of this band of jester-murders, in recalling his own youth, ends up killing a fellow member of the band, named Jackal, in order to save a young boy from a fate similar to his, i.e. being taken into this band of killers and being unable to escape. He lets the boy flee, but this deed is observed by the band's leader, the Mad Master. Fearing retribution, Trisfan runs away, only to end up exhausted, back in the very village that they had just sacked, with the Mad Master waiting for him. This is the point where my part begins.

Grimdark is pretty much the opposite of what I write, and being halfway through the story already, I wasn't about to steer it in any other direction, though I suppose I could've if I was creative enough. Instead, I decided just to go with the flow of the story, which as I read it, Trisfan wants to escape, but is bound by some sort of magic that keeps him tied to the Mad Master.

I had him bound to the Mad Master by a magic amulet. Given the murder of Jackal, he decides that he has nothing to lose by attempting to kill the Mad Master as well. He attacks, a brief sword fight and then they fall to the ground wrestling. As they do so, one of the gang, the Mad Master's toady, attempts to end the fight by striking Trisfan in the back with his sword, but with a last second change of position, he ends up killing the Mad Master instead.

With the Mad Master dead, the remaining mercenaries need to select a new leader. Deadeye and Jackal are the two most likely candidates, but of course Jackal is dead, though only Trisfan knows this since the Mad Master is also dead. They all get drunk and eventually drift off to sleep while they await the return of Jackal. All except for Trisfan, who having decided to take his leave of the band, now possessing the amulet that bound him, decides to take along with the Mad Master's iron box filled with the band's earnings to establish a new life as well. When everyone else seems asleep, he sneaks into Mad Master's caravan, finds the treasure box and just as he is set to leave, discovers Deadeye waiting for him, wanting the treasure box for himself. This is where I end my part of the story.

We'll have to see how the final writer ends the story. I know how I would've ended it. I'd have Trisfan get the drop on Deadeye, and kill him. Then deciding not to leave potential enemies behind, he'd silently cut the throats of all his other companions as they sleep, save for the two servants who they employed to drive the caravans, make camp and cook, etc. He would then have these servants hitch up one of the caravans and then set off for the city to reinvent himself with the the treasure. The story would end with the two servants, Nog and Bog, conversing. Nog; 'He wasn't born to be hanged.' Bog; 'Nor lose his head on the block.' Nog; 'Or be drawn and quartered in the town square.' Bog; 'Or die of old age.' Nog; 'Really, having your throat cut in your sleep is such a peaceful way to die.' Bog; 'He should thank us, alas, but I doubt he will.'  Nog; 'Not in his present condition, anyway.' They shake their heads sadly. Bog; 'Oh well, virtue is its own reward. Let's dump his body and be on our way. We want to be in the city by morning to get our gold safely into the bank.'

Hardly the most surprising or original twist, but a twist nevertheless. That said, in my opinion, all short stories are just set ups for the twist at the end. This is why, with few exceptions  i.e. the stories written by Wodehouse, (Bertie & Jeeves)  Doyle, (Sherlock Holmes) or Gilpatric, (Glencannon), I dislike short stories. They seem to me to be mostly gimmick, a mere set up for a clever(ish) twist. However, this ending is only my unofficial ending, we'll have to see how the final author finishes up the story. That will be sometime in August. I'll let you know, and post a link when it is published.

As a side note, I have to say that after writing just part of this short story, I really appreciate my use of the British style single quotation marks, i.e. 'quotes' rather than the usual quotation marks "quotes" since I found having to always hit the shift key for every damn quotation mark to be not only a real annoyance, but a likely carpel tunnel generator. 

My own books:

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 4)

This post is the first of two where I review novels written by British women authors who are largely - but not entirely - forgotten today.

All the books are published by the Furrowed Middlebrow via Dial Press and are available as ebooks and trade paperbacks. I came across them by the Furrowed Middlebrow Blog that was listed on yet another blog, and I was curious enough to investigate their catalog of books - some 72 of them - and go on to read some sample pages on Amazon. They publish a good number of D. E. Stevenson books, an author who I have read and reviewed already on this blog. However it was Molly Clavering who I happened to sample first because her stories were set in Scotland, and liking what I read, I actually purchased one to read. Having enjoyed that title, I've gone on to purchase seven more titles of hers plus two other authors so far. I've sampled several more titles, but they did not quite intrigue me enough to get me to hit buy button, however I will likely be returning to this collection at some point in the future to see what else I can find, since for some strange reason, I very much enjoy this type of story.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

As I you have sees in my statement above, I like small stories with pleasant characters, and for some reason these little stories of everyday life in Scotland and England in the first half of the last century appeal to me.

In this first installment, I'm going to review books by Molly Clavering, the first two written under her early pen name of B. Mollett from 1936 & 1939.

Susan Settles Down by Molly Clavering  B+ (Writtenas B. Mollett)

Writtenin 1936, it is the story of Oliver, an ex-Royal Navy officer with aleg smashed in a car crash, inherits a rundown manor in the Scottish Border lands, and of his mid-30’s single sister, Susan who keeps house for him, which in the case of many of these books, means overseeing the cook and maids who do the actual housekeeping. In the course of the story we meet the local residences,get a glimpse of the tide of life in that age in rural Scotland, andwatch several tentative romances weave their way through thenarrative. In short a light little novel, the type of story I like – a quiet,relatively realistic understated romance set in a lushly, andlovingly, described countryside. Miss Clavering was a neighbor andgood friend of D E Stevenson, whose books, as I mentioned, I’ve read decades ago. I actually paid money forthe digital copy of this book after reading the free sample ofanother book which I will be reviewing shortly.

Touch Not the Nettle byMolly Clavering  C + (Written as B. Mollett)

Thisstory is a return to the locales and characters in Susan Settled Downwritten several years later in 1939. It introduces several newcharacters, the local Heriots, brother Larry and sister Ruth, tworather unpleasant people, and Amanda Carmichael, the possibly widowedshirttail relative of Susan’s husband Jed, who they take in helpher to escape her domineering mother while she awaits word about thefate of her husband, an aviator whose plane disappeared, and isthought to have crashed in the Brazilian jungle. We learn the state of Amanda’s marriage, and the reasons behind the unpleasantness ofthe Heriots. I did not like this one quite as much as the first book,perhaps because it had some unpleasant characters.

The next four Clavering books I read werewritten between 1953 and 1956, and they are much more mellow books,with older protagonists. These early books I think are still slice oflife stories, but have some mildly melodramatic elements, and moreconflicts. Though there are two more of the "B. Mollett" books fromthis era that are available, their blurbs don’t appeal to me, so Ithink I’ll pass on them for now.

NearNeighbors by Molly Clavering  B+

Ican’t for the live of me say why I find these little domestic sliceof life stories so delightful, as a character in these stories mightexclaim. But I do. And always have. Decades ago I read all of theMiss Read books I could find in the library, as well as most of D EStevenson’s books, plus a number of similar but more contemporarystories set in the America. Moreover, as I mentioned in the intro, I have always been fascinated by life inEngland in the first half of the 20th century, be it theFu Manchu stories of Sax Rohmer, the London books of H V Morton, thecomic stories of P G Wodehouse, and the adventure stories of JohnBuchan. And in similar vein, the Cape Code stories of Joseph Lincoln. I just find them more engaging than sprawling epics withworld shattering stakes, just as I would much rather read a historybook entitled “Every Day Life In…” than a book that focused onkings and queens, princes and knaves, generals, wars, and politics.Go figure.

Thisstory is set in Edinburgh post WW2. The main character, Dorothea is a68 year old spinster whose domineering elder sister has just died.Over the years she has watched the comings and goings of the neighborfamily, a widowed mother, four daughters, (one married with theyoungest 16) and a son. After the funeral, one of the daughters seesDorothea in the window and decides to pay her a call of condolences,something she wouldn’t done when the elder sister was alive. Thisvisit is the beginning of a friendship between Dorothea and the Lenoxfamily and the affairs, love and otherwise of the Lenox family, aswell as the emergence of Dorothea as her own person.

Ifind these stories interesting in their fictionally enhanced view ofeveryday life in England. The main characters are what I supposeyou’d call upper class middle class, i.e. they’re not rich, butwell off enough to employ at least a cook, if not a maid as well. Andif they have young children nannies and nurses. Though we sometimesget a view of the lower classes as well, they are filtered through theeyes of the upper class middle class writers of these stories.

MrsLorimer’s Quiet Summer by Molly Clavering  B+

Ireally like the way Miss Clavering wrote. While there is nothingidentifiable Clavering in the writing, as one could say about, say, PG Wodehouse, nor is there nothing startling about the stories shetells, they are stories about the little domestic dramas of uppermiddle class life in Britain before and after World War Two, nevertheless shewrites them with such a deft fluidity that her stories have anunderstated elegance to them. I couldn’t put my finger right on it,but I’ve read Babbacombe’s by Susan Scarlett, anovel written for the same market, and it just doesn’t have quitethe charm of Miss Clavering’s stories. Review of that book is coming next week.

Thisnovel concerns, as the title suggests, one summer in Mrs. Lorimer’slife, though it is not quite as quiet as the title suggests. TheLorimers, Mrs., a successful author, and Colonel Lorimer, now retiredand an avid gardener, have a house in the Scottish Border lands. MrsLorimer feels, with some justification, that the house too small for when all four of their children, two sons and two daughters plus theirfamilies come for a week long visit. Some of thechildren have to stay at her best friend’s house, Miss Douglas.Each of them bring with them their own problems, a broken heart, anunhappy marriage, a dreamy, un-domestic wife as well as a long lostlover, for Mrs Lorimer to try to sort out. Once again we are treatedto life in Scotland in 1950 seen through (likely) rose colored, upper middleclass glasses, which, as I’ve said I find entertaining.

Dear Hugo by Molly Clavering   B

AStory set in the early 1950’s Scottish Border lands, in the villageof Ravenskirk, likely a fictionalized version of Moffat where MissClavering lived for a time. Sara Monteith writes a seriesof mostly monthly letters to Hugo, the brother of Ivo, her love  killed in WW2, who is an officer stationed in NorthernRhodesia. The letter format is just a loose framing device, and itreads pretty much like a first person narration, with just a fewasides to the recipient. Sara has moved toRavenskirk for sentimental reasons; it was the home of Ivo and his brother, she wanted to becloser to his memory. She somewhat reluctantly agrees to look after Arthur, the teenageof a cousin of hers. He is moving to the U.S. with a new wife, andArthur, having been raised with his grandparents, did not settle inwith his father's new wife and family. The story covers several years as Sara and Arthur, who is away during the school year at an Edinburgh boarding school quickly bond. As usual, it tells the story of everyday life, the people and the countryside in rural Scotland as well as the special social events around the coronation of Queen Elizabeth. And, as usual ,there is just a hint of romance.

I should note that Sara in this story is not wealthy enough to employ a full time maid or cook, but does employ a part time maid to keep her small house in shape. She is not employed outside of the home, but lives on some sort of inheritance, plus money she receives from her cousin for the care of his son. I have to wonder if the necessity of employing even part time help to keep house is a reflection of how many time saving devices we enjoy today that allow most people to keep house without help, or a reflection of the social attitude of the time; a gentlewoman does not do housework. I'll report back if I ever get a better insight into this phenomena. 

Becauseof Sam by Molly Clavering  B

Anotherstory set in the Scottish Border lands of the early 1950’s, i.e. acontemporary story at the time it was written. This story featuresthe long widowed Millie Maitland who has a rather prickly daughterAmabel who is in her late 20’s and is employed in Edinburgh. Once again, Millie gets some sort of income from inheritance, but has to make ends meet by taking in dogs as boarders for vacationing people. Sam in the title being one of the dogs she looks after for a neighbor's cousin. And once again we’re given a story of everyday life in rural Scotland,its people their social customs and classes, seasons, and setting, with several traces of romancewoven through it. However, though all of Miss Clavering’s books, romanceis only a minor element. Miss Clavering’s heroines, like the authorherself, are independent women whether married or not.

Next week I will review two more books from two different British women authors published by the Furrowed Middlebrow from this time period. But until then, a period cover...