Waltzing into the New Year

Decades of brass rubbings

“I am putting a mental jigsaw together of what a hobbit looks like, based on a composite of every customer I have ever sold a copy to.”
― The Diary of a Bookseller

Like many people on this little island, we started the new year unwell. Everyone in our household, including the dog, was under the weather. As a result, our celebrations were quiet and resolutions slow to start. On New Year’s Day we always watch the Vienna concert, courtesy of the European Broadcasting Union. Oh the flowers, the dancing in lederhosen, Petroc’s trivia (marzipan pigs anyone?!) and of course, the music. My partner has been working on a new orchestral arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture all week, so there’s been a slightly bombastic mood here. I’ve started reading Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World by Richard Cockett, which was a delightful Christmas present. While there is a central argument, each chapter works as a standalone thematic essay, so I think I might parcel these out over the coming months.

All the flowers at the Musikverein, Vienna.

The very first book I actually sit down to read each January has been the same for the past few years, Shaun Bythell’s The Diary of a Bookseller. If you haven’t yet read Bythell’s book, I implore you to. It’s full of Pooterish daily observations, manages to make me laugh out loud every year, and is glorious insight into a life so different from my own. It’s not at all twee like so many others in this genre, and should be mandatory reading for anyone setting foot in a second-hand bookshop. Pure joy.

In this quiet, in-between time I decided to undertake a large, foolish task. Sorting through my books. Every single one of them. In doing so, I’ve found myself getting rid of hundreds. I’ve found some duplicates, some books I will never read, and some I never really wanted in the first place. Why have I kept them for so long? Probably because they’re books I thought I ‘should’ have, but as we know, ‘should’ is one of the most toxic words in life. So I’m selling a couple hundred books and donating as many again to charity. Fear not, I’ve not gone all Marie Kondo on you, we still have thousands of books here, just on slightly less groaning shelves.

While doing all this sorting I listened to the audiobook of From Hollywood with Love: The Rise and Fall (and Rise Again) of the Romantic Comedy by Scott Meslow, which I first heard about on Jessica Stanley’s marvellous newsletter. I don’t listen to many audiobooks, but the format perfectly suited this smart and chatty book. That said, the hardback edition does have some lovely illustrations, so I might need that too…

Meslow combines brisk and detailed analysis of the films themselves, while using the romcom to examine the state of Hollywood and dating culture, with snippets of fascinating inside gossip. If you’re interested in the latter, this book will explain how Tom Hanks made My Big Fat Greek Wedding possible, how many times Richard Curtis rewrote the script for Four Weddings and a Funeral, and why Pretty Woman was almost an Al Pacino movie called 3000. Most of all, I appreciated how deftly Meslow handled some of the ‘issues’ around rom coms, from class to racism and ageism, being thoughtful and amusing without lecturing. This book would would make an excellent Valentine’s present for any film fan.

I also read Time’s Witness by Rosemary Hill, which is an oddly inspiring book. The subtitle is History in the Age of Romanticism, which I suppose was deemed more appealing than what it is, a history of antiquarians. These were the relentless amateurs who devoted their lives to preserving and uncovering British history, flying in the face of upper class obsessions with Latin and Greek history, while valiantly fighting off accusations of ‘popery’. In this sense it reminded me of the spirit of Detectorists, showing that passion and perseverance can matter more than any official status. By the way, any fans of Detectorists need to read Landscapes of Detectorists, a fabulously geeky collection of essays by academics who love the show.

At the moment I’m reading Thackery’s Vanity Fair. You’ll get a review when I’m done, but I’m in no hurry to finish it as I’m having so much fun. Yes it’s over 800 pages, but it’s flying by. For now, I’ll say that it’s far easier to read than I had imagined, and when I’ve finished I intend to watch the Reese Witherspoon film, so you’ll get my thoughts on that too.

Finally, this week I watched Mad About the Boy: The Noel Coward Story, which is the sort of programming that’s catnip to me. Yet another story to show that all financial roads lead to Vegas. My highlight was a very tanned David Niven sharing an anecdote about him and Coward getting out of a scrape in wartime Paris. This made me want to re-read Nivens’ The Moon’s A Balloon, which is not only the best book ever written about showbusiness, but one of the best memoirs full stop.

On that note, does anyone have a recommendation for a good biography of Harry Houdini?

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