Dog Eared and Foxed: Recent Episodes
6thfret
This is a look back at my year of extreme reading and how it helped (and maybe hindered) my wellbeing during 2021.
There will also be plenty of out-of-band episodes inspired by the community around our craft ale bar, The Ink Spot.
This set of books:-
Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf. Wedding Night, Sophie Kinsella. XTC Song Stories, Neville Farmer. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith. Paradise, Toni Morrison.
Other books are mentioned.
Thanks for listening,
If you'd like to talk books on the show, please get in touch!
T: @6thfret E: simonsle@outlook.com
This set of books:-
Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont, Elizabeth Taylor. Miss Pym Disposes, Josephine Tey. Have A Bleedin’ Guess: The Story of Hex Enduction Hour, Paul Hanley. The Curious Case of Maggie Macbeth, Stacey Murray. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro.
Many other books are mentioned.
Thanks for listening,
If you'd like to talk books on the show, please get in touch!
T: @6thfret E: simonsle@outlook.com
As I'm a Patreon supporter of Mark Ellen and David Hepworth's Word In Your Attic podcast/YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/WordInYourEar), I got to have a chat with them on my birthday, and this is the audio of that chat.
Loses a couple of things as audio-only, but at least you don't have to look at me.
It was a hoot, my thanks to Mark, David, and Alex.
The next set of books:-
Asking For a Friend, Andi Osho. Confess, Rob Halford John Lennon 1980, Kenneth Womack Facing the Other Way - The Story Of 4AD, Martin Aston. The Young Visiters, Daisy Ashford.
Other books are mentioned.
Thanks for listening,
If you'd like to talk books on the show, please get in touch!
T: @6thfret E: simonsle@outlook.com
The next set of books:-
Daisy Jones & The Six, Taylor Jenklins Reid. The Girl With All the Gifts, M.R. Carey The Driver's Seat, Muriel Spark. The Mandelbaum Gate, Muriel Spark. Before We Was We, Madness.
Other books are mentioned.
Thanks for listening,
If you'd like to talk books on the show, please get in touch!
T: @6thfret E: simonsle@outlook.com
The revised text of my short presentation at The Ink Spot's International Women's Day event, 8th March 2022.
From a young age, I was a voracious reader. I gloried in book tokens, a book for every trip away to visit family, book in my hand, another one in my pocket. I spent all my pocket money at the fortnightly Alnwick Lions book stall in the Shambles. I staggered around the house with appalling stomach cramps desperately looking for a book so that I could finally go to the toilet.
As I grew away from children’s books, I found myself drawn to both types of novel – science fiction AND fantasy. And that was me for about 15 years. Until the mid 90s and listening to A Good Read, the Radio 4 show where three people recommend books and they all read and discuss them. Someone, I can’t remember who, recommended Antonia Fraser’s not-fiction book The Gunpowder Plot and I thought it sounded interesting, so I got myself a copy.
It was incredible, so readable, it frothed with the energy of great fiction, and carried a resounding emotional wallop – this was real, it had happened. Well, that was me totally rewired for non-fiction. I read about eight of her books straight away, and I was now a facts man. Don’t want any made-up nonsense, I want good solid facts, in a robust and appropriate chronological sequence. Up to three inches thick.
When me and Ange got together we found we shared reading as a love, but we read very different kinds of things. Ange was big on novels, poetry, literary fiction. She urged me to read more fiction and I gradually allowed more in, quite often genre fiction, or books I’d seen the film of like the wonderful Miss Smilla’s Feeling For Snow and Let The Right One In.
At one point, seeing that I was reading more fiction, Ange asked me if I was reading many women writers. I checked my Goodreads history and saw that really I wasn’t. I hadn’t consciously chosen not to - it had been a woman writer who had made the first big change in my reading habits, I just hadn’t made any effort to consciously include more women. So I made a pledge to myself to prioritise women writers. Ange filled me up with ideas, and when I mentioned this plan on Twitter I was deluged with suggestions.
Now let me first acknowledge that some of my reactions to reading more women writers won’t necessarily be direct consequences of the writer having been a woman. Male writers may be entirely capable of covering some of the same ground equally as richly, but my reading experience was shaped by a deliberate choice of women writer when looking for a new book, so women writers were often the first to bring things to me.
So let me tell you about some of the books by women writers I’ve loved these past few years.
I read Insatiable by Daisy Buchanan and In at the Deep End by Kate Davies, two filthy and ultimately life affirming books about women who – through dissatisfaction - are drawn into initially exciting, but clearly toxic, relationships. In weathering these they discover the truth about what they need and want from love and life, and these revelations surprise and delight them, and us. It was so illuminating to read such strongly – and I’m not kidding - sexual material written from a woman’s perspective. Without going into detail, the tone and the emphasis felt completely different. The end of Insatiable made me cry with happiness.
Actually, it’s probable that 80% of the books and authors I’m going to mention have made me cry at some point, so if you could just pencil that in for yourselves in as we go along…
I read Ariel Levy’s The Rules Do Not Appy, her devastating memoir of grief after losing her child, home, and partner within a few months, something she came to feel was her punishment for her life of privilege. She’d lived believing that anything was possible if you had enough ingenuity, money, and tenacity, and that you could construct a perfect life like it was a piece of flat pack furniture of your own design. There is such pain in her growing awareness that the qualities which led to the hubris of thinking she had “solved” life, and about which she is now so brutally self-recriminating, are the same qualities that she will need to draw on to move forward with her life. Such a powerful book.
I read best-selling thrillers by Paula Hawkins, Gillian Flynn, Louise Miller, and Lisa Jewell. I read Erin Kelly’s fantastic, gripping, and horrifying, He Said/She Said, about a woman stumbling on what she judges to be, and reports, as a rape at a festival in the 90s and the echoes of that incident over the next 15 years. And Inga Vesper’s enraging The Long, Long, Afternoon, about the disappearance of a suburban housewife in 1950’s America. A simmering thriller, the book delves into the reasons why a woman might not find living the white-picket fence American Dream quite as satisfying as her husband does. As the main source of inside information is the family’s black maid, who gets immediately framed as a suspect just because of her skin colour, the book piles injustice upon injustice until you’re ready to spit blood.
I read the authors that Ange recommended: Toni Morrison’s rich and powerful Paradise, the poetic, fragmentary, modernist work of Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Taylor’s View of the Harbour, Dodie Smith’s I Capture The Castle, and Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth. Dazzling and revelatory books, which changed my perception of what could make a book compelling and satisfying.
I read collections of odd, enthralling, and disturbing short stories from Sarah Hall, Daisy Johnson and the Northumberland-based poet Frances Leviston. Her recent collection, The Voice in My Ear, about ten women, all named Claire, who face conflict in their relationships with their mothers and partners, is outstanding.
I read Milkman by Anna Burns, Tennis Lessons by Susannah Dickey, A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimar McBride, Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss, The Water Shall Refuse Them by Lucie McKnight Hardy, The Wayward Girls by Amanda Mason, and Brother of the More Famous Jack by Barbara Trapido, books which illustrated the resounding impact that era, location, friends, and family can have on a girl’s journey into womanhood as she tries to fulfil her own needs, and set her own goals, under a suffocating weight of expectation.
I read the frankly astonishing Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellman, Desperate Characters by Paula Fox, The Home-maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher, and Standard Deviation by Katherine Heiny. These books explored some of the realities and complexities of maintaining healthy and fulfilling relationships, while dealing with the unexpected incidents, and family and work commitments, which fill all our lives.
I read touching, funny, odd, and absorbing books from authors whose names I knew from the ether but had never read; Sarah Waters, Beryl Bainbridge, Anita Brookner, Muriel Spark, Penelope Mortimer, AS Byatt, Mary Wesley, Iris Murdoch, Penelope Fitzgerald, Margaret Drabble, Annie Proulx, and Anne Tyler.
I read Luster by Raven Leilani, A Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank, and Voyeur by Francesca Reece, books which featured young women dealing with the excitement, drama, and legacy of being drawn into the emotional and sexual orbit of much older men. Ange can also tell you all about this.
I read authors whose names I’d seen on the books my mum used to have beside the bed when I was a kid, like Mary Stewart and Jilly Cooper. Virginia Andrews’ Flowers in the Attic on my to-read list.
I read authors who had significant and well-regarded bodies of work, but of whom I had not heard. Wonderful authors all, whose work I am having an absolute ball reading. Barbara Pym, Rosamond Lehmann, Elizabeth Jane Howard, Jane Gardam, Josephine Tey, Lissa Evans, Margery Sharp, and Alison Lurie.
I read The Hotel by Elizabeth Bowen, Two Serious Ladies, by Jane Bowles, and Radcliffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness, some of the first novels to feature lesbian relationships. I read Mary Renault’s The Friendly Young Ladies, written partly in response to what she felt was the glum and tortured tone of the Well of Loneliness, and which featured bohemian young lesbians exploring their sexuality with wit and joy.
Grace Dent, Sophie Kinsella, and Miranda July wrote books which made me laugh out loud consistently but which also had the power to floor me with heartfelt, bleak, or sad, moments, moments which needed some time-out for reflection.
I read books by Sarah Maine, an archaeologist who has lived in Scotland and Canada and who writes highly enjoyable novels about women from Canada arriving in Scotland and having their plans foiled by the discovery of something archaeological. I read Maria Kuzniar’s Young Adult book Ship of Shadows about a crew of tough and resourceful women and girl pirates which I wish had been around when my daughter was younger, and which our grandson Roman will be getting in his Christmas stocking one day.
I read Ghosts by Dolly Alderton, Asking for a Friend by Andi Osho, The Man Who Didn’t Call by Rosie Walsh, the absolutely superb Pretending by Holly Bourne, and The Baby Group by Caroline Corcoran. These books shone a light on the difficulties of developing strong relationships with anyone when the truth of a someone’s identity and history can be glossed over with artful social media posts, and where they can disappear from your life with a click of the block button.
I read books that took me all over the world – The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Leslie, The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives by Lola Shoneyin, We That Are Young by Preti Taneja, Belladonna by Anbara Salam, and My Sister The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite. I read books that showed me some of the desperation in our own cities, Poor Cow and Up The Junction by Nell Dunn, You People by Nikita Lalwani, and Hot Stew by Fiona Mozely.
I read lovely, warm, funny, books by Jenny Colgan, Stacey Murray, and Clare Pooley which spoke of the sense of community and friendship we get from being here with you all at the Ink Spot and Pop Up, and which the lockdowns had taken from us. These books helped me cope with the loss of that comfort.
I read Julia Blackburn’s strange and intensely personal books which weave memoir, psychogeography, poetry, illustration, and history into something quite unique and touching.
I read books by Helen Oyeyemi, Barbara Comyns, Stella Gibbons, Hilary Mantel, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Alice Thomas Ellis, SA Harris, Shirley Jackson, and JJ Barnes which salted the world we know with often dark, sometimes playful, magic. I read a collection of feminist science fiction stories, Her Smoke Rose Up Forever, by James Tiptree Junior: a pseudonym for the bisexual Alice Bradley Sheldon, who killed her cherished husband and herself in a suicide pact when they started to become enfeebled with age. One of her stories, "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" follows a group of astronauts who discover a future Earth whose entire male population has been wiped out; the remaining females have learned to get along just fine in their absence. Formidable, and clear-sighted stuff.
I read things that helped me cope with the grief of losing my mother, things which opened my mind and my heart, things which resonated with the love I feel for our kids and friends. I read things which made me absolutely brim with gratitude for the partnership, shared passions, and life of adventure I have now with Ange, my amazing, beloved, wife.
And I read, and I read, and I read, and I read…
And while I don’t have a reservoir of shiny new facts to dip you all in, I feel, with absolute certainty, having read all these wonderful authors, that I now know so much more.
Thank you.
In this episode I talk with Ange, my wife, about International Women's Day book recommendations from:
Sylvie Simmons, JJ Barnes, Jenny Colgan, Lissa Evans, Lindy Morrison, Helen McCookerybook and Joolz Denby
And of course Ange has her own suggestions.
Thanks for listening,
If you'd like to talk books on the show, please get in touch!
T: @6thfret E: simonsle@outlook.com
In this first of two episodes for International Women's Day 2022, I will be presenting several titles selected by some outstanding women authors and journalists who responded to my request for their recommendation of a book they felt had special significance for women today.
The selections included come from Laura Kelly, Julie Burchill, Jo Bartosch, SA Harris, Zoe Dronfield, Harriett Gilbert, Mary Paulson-Ellis, Inga Vesper, Amanda Mason, Daisy Buchanan, Stacey Murray, Kate Long, Jenny Colgan, Flic Everett, Caroline Corcoran and Samira Ahmed
This episode also includes a conversation with Dana from Denmark who shares her thoughts on the history of feminist literature.
Zoe Dronfield's Justice 4 Victims of Serial Domestic Abusers GoFundMe can be found here.
Books covered:-
Circe, Madeline Miller Coming Undone, Terri White The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath From Reverence to Rape, Molly Haskell Sexual Politics, Kate Millett Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen Mind over Manipulators, Zoe Dronfield The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir My Brilliant Career, Miles Franklin Random Family, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc Wayward Girls, Amanda Mason The Sound Mirror, Heide Pearl James Rachel’s Holiday, Marian Keyes Misogynies, Joan Smith New World for Women: Stella Browne - Socialist Feminist, Sheila Rowbotham How to Be a Woman, Caitlin Moran The Pursuit of Love, Nancy Mitford I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou. Women, Race and Class, Angela Davis
Thanks for listening,
If you'd like to talk books on the show, please get in touch!
T: @6thfret E: simonsle@outlook.com
The next set of books:-
Fast Forward: Confessions of a Post-Punk Percussionist: Volume II, Stephen Morris. Insatiable: A love story for greedy girls, Daisy Buchanan. The Vinyl Detective - Low Action (Vinyl Detective 5), Andrew Cartmel. The Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett, Compton MacKenzie. Lies Sleeping (Rivers of London, #7), Ben Aaronovich.
Thanks for listening,
If you'd like to talk books on the show, please get in touch!
T: @6thfret E: simonsle@outlook.com
The next set of books and an interview with local Book Club Boudicca, Jules Buchanan, in this bumper episode.
The Baby Group, Caroline Corcoran.
The Authenticity Project, Clare Pooley.
Dear Mrs Bird, A.J. Pearce.
Emerald Wren And The Coven Of Seven, J.J. Barnes.
Reginald, Saki.
Thanks for listening!
Slippy
T: @6thfret
E: simonsle@outlook.com
In this episode I talk about:
There's No Home, Alexander Baron.
The Midwich Cuckoos, John Wyndham.
Her First Bad Man, Miranda July.
The Continuity Girl, Patrick Kincaid.
The Bookshop, Penelop Fitzgerald.
Several other books, and some films are mentioned.
Thanks for lstening!
Slippy
Being mainly me, thinking out loud about whether there's anything here to make a podcast from, and a little bit about my reading habits.
Here's the first proper episode. Books 1 to 5.
“I love that you read so much, but not when there are jobs to be done.” - Ange.
The Little Shop of Happy Ever After, Jenny Colgan.
The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing, Melissa Bank.
The Accidental Tourist, Anne Tyler
The House By The Sea, Louise Douglas
Sweet William, Beryl Bainbridge.