Books I have read in February

I was going to count how many cups of tea and pints of beer I had in February, like Diamond Geezer, but firstly, that would have been a bit derivative, and secondly, I lost count.

But I can, just about, keep track of my reading matter, and if I volunteer to share it with the world, that will help me to steer clear of the most egregious tripe when I'm in the library. This doesn't include work reading; only what might loosely be called pleasure, or more accurately, killing time. Most train journeys (an hour and a half each way to work, although I really should try to do more work on the train, especially as I now have my new toy); and on the sofa of an evening when my brain's too exhausted to read anything that actually requires thinking.

My usual strategy is to go into the paperback section of the local library, which is not large (hardbacks are not so convenient for lugging around) and select one volume from each section of shelf. Not quite randomly, because I'll put it back if it looks too awful; chick lit, magic realism or mediaeval monastery. This is supplemented by the odd book I buy at the station (if I've forgotten or finished the library book), find lying around, or, rarely, go out of my way to buy.

So, in February I read:

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
The dangers of adultery, debt and arsenic in nineteenth century rural France. But mostly debt.

Journeys of the Swan by John Liley
A deliberate purchase, this, and will tell you more anon. Very good though.

Bread upon the Waters by David Blagrove
A re-read for reasons that may become apparent but probably won't.

The Portrait by Iain Pears
Painter takes his murderous revenge on critic, all in the second person. Not quite unreadable.

The Hours of the Night by Sue Gee
Surprisingly good sparsely told tale of various unrequited loves, spoiled by glib wrapping up on the final page.

Two Caravans by Marina Lewycka
That difficult second novel. Frothy comedy of human trafficking and factory farming featuring a dog that thinks in English.

Under the Net by Iris Murdoch
Slightly surreal but strangely engaging fifties period piece, with a really good dog.

Out of my Depth by Emily Barr
Disappointing. Maybe I got her mixed up with someone else.

Pause Between Acts by Mavis Cheek
Formulaic and superficial. But Simon Hoggart likes her, so I keep trying.

The Lucky Ones by Rachel Cusk
Minutiae of women's lives, but in a different league from the last two. Beautifully observed detail.

The Inimitable Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse
Delightful. Though I suspect if you read the whole oeuvre from end to end it might become a trifle repetitive.

Buried by Mark Billingham
Police detective race against time sort of thing. I'm always on the lookout for new authors in this genre - this one's OK.

All the Colours of Darkness by Peter Robinson
Newly out in paperback, the latest case for DCI Alan Banks. One of my favourite series. I'm still reading this one, but it's looking good.

Painted Boats and Pirates

I went to see a film last night; not something I often do. But this of course was a film featuring - if not actually about - boats. Apparently Painted Boats, directed for Ealing Studios by Charles Crichton in 1945 was intended as the first in a series of what we would now call docu-dramas about workers in wartime Britain. In the event, no others followed.

As a film drama, it is, to be perfectly honest, not exactly gripping. It centres on two boating families: the traditionalist, horse-boating Smiths, whose daughter Mary has somehow acquired a cut glass accent and is wont, at moments of heightened emotion (which are frequent) to clasp a kitten to her breast. Interestingly, although the film is set over a period of months, the kitten never gets any bigger. The cause of the heightened emotion is Ted Stoner, whose family have a motor boat and butty, but who has had a bit of education and can't wait to get off the cut. My favourite character was the obligatory cheeky kid brother, Alfie. So we follow the trials and tribulations of the families through various life events - the death of Mr Smith, the replacement of horse by engine and the eventual call-up and escape of Ted, after which Mary and her mother continue pluckily on to Limehouse, accompanied by Alf who, although it is never spelt out, I like to think has also escaped from the fate of being sent to live with an aunt and going to school.

But the plot and the accents and the size of the kitten don't matter at all, of course, because it's got boats in. And there is nothing like some old footage of heavily loaded boats, particularly with a Bolinder soundtrack, to get me clutching the metaphorical kitten oh so tightly. I'm not entirely sure who was playing the boats, only that they were fictitious characters - although quite a few others did make cameo appearances as themselves. I'm sure this is a matter of record somewhere, but I can't remember where.

The event was courtesy of the IWA, held at the Pirate Club in Camden, and was the first of their 'socials' I've attended. Everyone was certainly very welcoming, and it is, I hope, no disrespect to note that a good number of them could have been founder members - and who knows, perhaps were. It was also a great pleasure to meet Tim Lewis, one of the prime movers behind Fulbourne, one of my favourite-to-look-at boats.

Quiet reading

Tis the season to be sitting by the fire with a good book. Once again, lately, I have mostly been reading bad ones. So much less effort. But among my Christmas presents was Peter Ackroyd's Thames: The Biography, a memento of the happy(?) times spent on that great river last summer, which I should get stuck into. I am also mindful - as I always am at this time of year - that there are still a number of canal-related books that I should reread, perchance to write about. And one that I haven't read at all yet, and really should: John Liley's Journeys of the Swan. I ordered one through Abe Books, and it arrived today. That should keep me out of mischief for a little while.

Book review: The Boat Girls

Yes, I know, not Isambard's Kingdom, at least not yet. Despite some interesting snippets (Eton College unsuccessfully tried to get an injunction to stop the Great Western stopping at Slough because they feared the boys would escape; coots only feed one of their young) the style was just so boring, I couldn't take it in large doses. Maybe I will return to it in snippets. In the meantime, I have collected Minnow on the Say, but haven't dared open it yet, for fear of disappointment.

My usual practice, on visiting the library, is to randomly select half a dozen books from the paperback fiction section, and see what I've got when I get home. That way I occasionally uncover something brilliant that I would never have looked at otherwise (J.G. Farrell's Troubles comes to mind), I usually get something sufficiently mindlessly engaging for the train, and sometimes of course, tomes that are completely unreadable (no matter how good the author (sorry Kate Mosse, Hilary Mantell, Joanne Harris; even Daphne DuMaurier), I simply cannot engage with anything set during the French Revolution).

And there on the shelf in front of me (not having been to the library for a while, the first couple of visits saw me accidentally only looking in the historical fiction section. I'm not too keen on the English Civil War as a backdrop either) was The Boat Girls by Margaret Mayhew. Sure enough, the story of three eighteen year old women from different backgrounds who go off to work on the boats in the war. Women-in-WW2 is clearly Margaret Mayhew's stock in trade, judging by her other half-dozen or so titles, whose covers were reproduced inside. Women and Americans, women and Dunkirk, women in the WRNS, women in the WAAF, and women on the IW.

Well, it wasn't at all bad. I could cavil and say that the characters were somewhat superficailly drawn and not very emothioally engaging, but I've seen a lot worse, and anyway, that's probably not what Mayhew's readership is after. It was a bit of a shame that they all had to be the same age - Shy Prue, tyrannised by her suburban father, who escapes a lifetime of drudgery as a bank clerk by ultimately escaping to Winnipeg with a lost-and-then-found-again airman (oh, sorry, spoiler); Privileged Frances, tyrannised by her upper class RAF officer brother (her father having not quite been himself since the first war), who escapes a lifetime of drudgery as chatelaine of a crumbling stately home by nearly running off with a boatman before realising that it just wouldn't work and settling for an upper class RAF officer friend of her brother's instead, and Ros, the down to earth gritty one, forged in a lifetime of theatrical lodgings, who rather improbably gives up the casting couch for Frances' brother (Vere, if you please) who is so smitten with her that he throws his tyrannical morality to the winds.

Mayhew acknowledges her debt to the work of Woolfitt, Cornish and Gayford, and indeed, it's very clear throughout the book that she's drawn heavily on them not only for background detail, but also for stories, events and even characters. The trainer, 'Pip' is indistinguishable from Gayford, right down to the bicycle, and Frances is recognisably based on Woolfitt. She does it very well though; accurate, rarely heavy handed, always readable and usually clearly comprehensible. The focus is on the boats and boating life for the largest part of the book and the atmosphere and imagery are perceptible if not quite palpable. Someone who came to this as a fan of Mayhew, or of the plucky home front heroine genre more broadly, would go away with a good idea of the Idle Women's experiences - well, as good as they'd get from Woolfit and Gayford, at any rate. And a coherent, undemanding and instantly forgettable story as a bonus.

What were the publishers thinking of when they approved the cover illustration though? All the books in the series feature a photo of a woman (looking fiery, pensive or determined as appropriate) in uniform or forties dress and hairdo, superimposed on a suitable background (airfield, battle at sea etc). This one has a rather modern looking woman, albeit in obligatory too-big shirt, corduroy breeches (both very clean) and big belt, with a hairdo like nothing I've ever seen (perhaps it was supposed to look unkempt and lousy?), foregrounded against a lock. With, clearly visible in the background, a modern leisure narrowboat, and some kind of Dutch barge. It seems a shame, when the author has clearly gone to some lengths to do her research and get the detail pretty much spot-on, that the publishers couldn't at least dig out a picture of some old boats, or even better an old picture. Hap'orth of tar, anyone?