Love in a Cold Climate and other novels by Nancy Mitford

The Pursuit of Love, Love in a Cold Climate and The Blessing are brought together in one brilliant, hilarious volume. Nancy Mitford was born in 1904, a member of the British artistocracy and a family of famous sisters. She was a novelist and biographer who lived in England and France, dying in 1973 in Versailles.
She writes about upper-class life in Britain and France and how the two cultures compliment and clash with each other. She wrote at a time of great change and it is fascinating to see how her characters adapt. The first two books are companions, with the same narrator. Love in a Cold Climate tells the story of Polly, the beautiful, aloof aristocrat who falls in love with her lecherous, married uncle, who also happens to be her mother's lover. All three books show the deliciously absurd side of the life of the British upper classes.

Love in a Cold Climate and Other Novels is available in the fiction section of Wagga City Library. A biography of the Mitford sisters as well as others books by and about the Mitford family are available in the non-fiction section.

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

Originally published in 1932, Cold Comfort Farm is a very amusing parody of the rather doom-laden novels of rural life in England, such as those by D.H. Lawrence, Thomas Hardy or the Brontë sisters.

Flora Poste is nineteen years old and has just been orphaned. Rather than find a way to make a living she decides to live with relatives in Sussex - the bizarre Starkadders. She is a very sensible young woman and sets about sorting out all their problems in a thoroughly modern way.

You can borrow this book from Wagga City Library.

Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome

I have seen this book on lots of top ten or top one hundred lists so was very keen to read it. It was published in 1930 and is, therefore, a story about the type of childhood that isn't possible now. Obviously we would never call a little girl "Titty" these days but what really struck me was the freedom given these children. Our children seem to be watched every minute and don't spend hours unsupervised, let alone days.

Swallows and Amazons is set in the Lake District in England, in 1929. Four siblings sail a little boat called Swallow and two sisters sail Amazon and together they have wild adventures. It is a delightful, fanciful story, somehow nostalgic even though my own childhood was very different.

You can find this book in the Junior Fiction section of Wagga City Library but it can be enjoyed by people of all ages.

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

Lily has grown up believing she accidentally killed her mother when she was four. She not only has her own memory of holding the gun, but her father's account of the event. Now fourteen, she yearns for her mother, and for forgiveness. Living on a peach farm in South Carolina with her father, she has only one friend: Rosaleen, a black servant whose sharp exterior hides a tender heart. South Carolina in the sixties is a place where segregation is still considered a cause worth fighting for. When racial tension explodes one summer afternoon, and Rosaleen is arrested and beaten, Lily is compelled to act. Fugitives from justice and from Lily's harsh and unyielding father, they follow a trail left by the woman who died ten years before. Finding sanctuary in the home of three beekeeping sisters, Lily starts a journey as much about her understanding of the world, as about the mystery surrounding her mother. (Fantastic fiction)

This is a delightful and heart-warming book that would be great to read in a book club. You can find it at Wagga City Library or reserve it here.

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Great Expectations is a classic novel by Charles Dickens and is an RRL Book Club book. You don't have to be a fan of classics to enjoy this story as it follows the delightful Pip as his fortunes rise and fall, Miss Havisham, the jilted bride who nevers sees sunlight nor has changed out of her wedding dress in all the years that have passed, the beautiful but cold Estella, brought up by Miss Havisham to get her revenge on men and the scary and surprising Magwitch.

This book is great to read before or after Mr Pip by Lloyd Jones, which is also an RRL Book Club book.

The Same Man: George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh in love and war by David Lebedoff

At first glance there seems to be very little common ground between Orwell and Waugh. Orwell is most famous for writing 1984 and Animal Farm and Waugh for Brideshead Revisited. They were both born into middle class England but while Orwell shunned the class system Waugh was the ultimate social climber. Lebedoff writes that what they had in common "was a hatred of moral relativism. They both believed that morality is absolute, though they defined and applied it differently. But each believed with all his heart, brain and soul that there were such things as moral right and moral wrong, and that these were not subject to changes in fashion."

This fascinating book gives an insight into life in England in the early to mid-twentieth century and how the influential authors participated in and reacted to society. It can be found in the non-fiction section of Wagga City Library at 823.912 ORW. You can also find the novels of George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh.

The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas

Winner of the Commonwealth Writer's Prize for the Best Book in South East Asia and the Pacific, shortlisted for the ALS Gold Medal 2009, shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Prize 2009. The Slap was also discussed on the ABC's First Tuesday Book Club. It is a gritty, confronting look at suburban life in Melbourne. It centres around a barbecue at which a man slaps a child who isn't his own. This event has great consequences for all present and the author tells the story alternately from the perspective of the different characters. It is thought-provoking on many levels looking, not only at parenting and children, but also at love, marriage and tradition.

This book has tended to provoke strong reactions in those who have read it. I did not like any of the characters in the novel and yet still found the book compelling. It is worth a read just to see what all the fuss is about but be wary if you are sensitive to swearing!

The Slap is available from Wagga City Library - you can reserve it here.