I freely admit to struggling with my reading and blogging at the moment. I know from comments I have received both off and on blog that others feel the same. But I remind myself that I am lucky, I have my home and my family and I am not suffering as are others in the world at the moment and I remember my mum's mantra "you have just got to get on with it". She was, and is, right.
I posted about D E Stevenson a week or so ago and had a huge response here on the blog and on social media. I ended the post by saying that she had been accused of writing "nice" books and I said, we could do with "nice" right now. And so I am delighted to bring you more "nice" though I do think the use of that word infers mediocrity and a lack of inspiration. Well I disagree and in the last week have rediscovered Miss Read.
"Miss Read, or in real life Dora Saint, was born 17 April 1913. A teacher by profession, she started writing after the Second World War for Punch and other journals and as a scriptwriter for the BBC. She is the author of many immensely popular books, including two autobiographical works, but it is for her novels of English rural life for which she is best known. The first of these, Village School, was published in 1955 and Miss Read continued to write about the fictitious villages of Fairacre and Thrush Green until her retirement in 1996. In the 1998 New Year Honours list she was awarded an MBE for her services to literature".
Miss Read was another of those authors, along with D E Stevenson and Dorothy Whipple, who I used to stamp in and out on a regular basis when working in the library system. I have already said that my teenage lip curled at these books but now I know better and have read many by these authors over the last twenty years. And lovely it is that so many of them are now available, and here I mention Dean Street Press (I know I go on about them but I love them) who, as I write, only have one Miss Read title on their list. MORE PLEASE.
If you glance at the side of the blog you see all the books I have recently read and you cannot fail to miss that I have read all of the Thrush Green books by Miss Read in the last few weeks. I have had them on my Kindle for quite some time. There was an amazing offer for the entire books in this series for 99p and that could not be ignored. And there they sat until the time was right for me to discover them.
And I have simply loved them. The village of Thrush Green is set in the Cotswolds and it is clear that the author, like DE Stevenson, loves the country and is a keen and loving observer of the changing seasons in which they both delight.
Having read them all, in order, one after the other I have been able to become totally immersed in the comings and goings, loves and deaths, of the characters and see how they have developed the more I read. In the very first title, we meet Ella and Dimity, and from the delightful illustrations (which are included in the Kindle edition) Ella is a large, masculine, tweedy, chain smoking overbearing personality, and Dimity (perfect name for her) runs around after her friend and putting up with her rudeness and untidiness. The new local doctor does not care for her and this is made plain. But over the series we learn more about the relationship between this odd couple and it becomes clear that Dimity has a strength of character and determination that is easy to overlook. My personal feeling is that Miss Read changed her mind about these two characters and took them off in a different direction. The difference in their friendship at the end of the series is most marked.
I decided that I would look out more Miss Read and the other day I was in one of my local charity shops when serendipidity reared its head. I came across this box set of the Fairacre novels and all for the mighty sum of £3 so they are now on my TBR pile and will be opened soon.
I find there is a wit and humour to the Miss Read books which is not apparent in the DE Stevenson books. This is not a criticism, far from it, but they do add a little salt to the mixture.
"There were times when Richard, despite his brilliant brain, seemed absolutely helpless. Nevertheless, thought Winnie, he had brought a pork pie with him, One must be thankful for small mercies"
Packed full of glorious characters some of whom are positively Dickensian, I urge those of you who are having a reading slump at the moment, and it seems I am not alone in this, to check out Miss Read.
Note: I have just checked out the Thrush Green books on Kindle. The entire set which I purchased all those years ago for 99p is now over £50…………….
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