It just occurred to me that it has been five years since I started blogging. In fact, my five-year blogiversary was last week. I completely stumbled into starting My Porch in the first place. After filling in my information when I was making a comment on another blog, Blogger asked me if I wanted to start my own blog. And then I just walked through the very easy steps to do so and the rest is history. 

You will notice from my inaugural post (reposted below) that my blogging interests were pretty broad when I first started. Although I always wrote about books it wasn’t until late 2008 that I really started to focus on books. I did so not only because that is what interested me most, but because all of you showed up and started engaging me in a very satisfying way.

My original post is a little pompous but not entirely unrelated to how I conduct my blog five years later.

The Inaugural Post from June 14, 2006

In thinking about the kind of online discussion I wanted to initiate, I kept coming back to the idea of a place where people would engage each other. A place that would serve as an antidote to banal office conversation and the anonymous interactions that characterize most of our lives. Despite the absence of a physical location, the internet has done more to connect people with each other than anything else since television and suburban sprawl first disconnected us back in the 20th century. Sprinkled among the wasteland of post-World War II development, one can still find places like this–town squares, corner stores, and front porches–they just don’t get used much anymore.

Although I may end up ranting and raving from time to time, I want My Porch to be a place where the basis for every discussion is respect. I want us to disagree and argue like mad, but to remember above all that we are neighbors and have to live with each other. (Assuming someone other than me actually reads this…)

Topics of particular interest to me that will be featured in posts to come include, politics, urban planning, travel, TV (the great and the trashy), classical music, art, books, and about a million other things.

I take my inspiration from Samuel Barber’s (1910-1981) nostalgically beautiful Knoxville Summer of 1915.

“…It has become that time of evening when people sit on their porches, rocking gently and talking gently and watching the street and the standing up into their sphere of possession of the trees, of birds’ hung havens, hangars. People go by; things go by…”

Based on the opening section of James Agee’s A Death in the Family (which I haven’t read), Barber’s piece for soprano and orchestra opens in a rather peaceful, lilting way that never fails to remind me of some happy, yet undefined and fleeting moment from my childhood in small town Minnesota. A feeling rekindled during my graduate school sojourn in Ithaca, New York from 2000-2002. You know the feeling, one of those summer evenings at twilight with warm gentle breezes and crickets.

If you think I am living in a fantasy world you are partly right. It is a fantasy about living in a place where people care for other people and the world around them, and live honest, positive, engaged lives. It might actually be a great place. Let’s give it a whirl.

   
I noticed over at Time’s Flow Stemmed this morning that there is a website where you can plug in an author’s name and it will map out other authors who are similar. The closer together two authors are, the more similar they are–supposedly. I first put in Margaret Atwood, it had pretty much every big Canadian author you can think of (Laurence, Davies, Findley, Shields, Hoffman, etc.) which I found kind of dubious.  But then I noticed Margaret Drabble (an author I quite like) and clicked on her which took me to a map centered around Drabble. From there I clicked on Anita Brookner. While I like many of the authors who showed up closest to Brookner I couldn’t particularly figure out what their similarities might be. But that may be my fault, after all if a bunch of my favorite authors show up in a clump they must have something in common. Although I kind of fear that ‘English lady’ might be the common denominator.

One of the closest names to Brookner was Mary Wesley–a novelist I have never heard of. So I go look up Mary Wesley and her work sounds pretty interesting. I noted that one of her hits is The Camomile Lawn–which, oddly enough I just noticed the other day on Netflix as a film adaptation Felicity Kendall. How cool is that.

But the real question is, given what you know about my reading tastes, will I like Mary Wesley? And as for that matter, Anthony Powell was real close to Brookner as well. What would I think of him?

How many times do you read a novel and then pull out an atlas? I do it quite often. I love to be able to visualize the geography of the story I am reading. This is particularly true with novels that take place in London. I keep a London A to Z close at hand so I can look up particular parts of London as they appear in the books I read.

The novels of Anita Brookner provide abundant opportunity to explore London. I think all of her 24 novels take place at least in part in London. And her characters spend a lot of time walking around. I have always had it in my mind that I wanted to document Brookner’s London. Now that I am starting to re-read all of her novels in chronological order, I realize I have the perfect opportunity to construct a sort of Gazetteer of London place names in Brookner’s fiction. I am also tempted to chart the places out of London, or out of the country (mainly France and Switzerland) that Brookner’s characters visit. But her books are so London-centric, that I think the spirit of her characters live in London regardless of their temporary forays outside the metropolitan area.

For instance in The Debut/A Start in Life, the main character Ruth details one of her walks:

From Edith Grove (where she lives)

down to the river [presumeably following Cheyne Walk and the Chelsea Embankment] to Chelsea Old Church

to Victoria Station

turning back to Sloane Square

then following the King’s Road to Fulham Road where she catches a bus back to her flat on Edith Grove. 

It isn’t clear where she connects with Fulham Road from the King’s Road but using Google maps, this “walk” is about five miles.  I know many other Brookner characters take similar walks. I am looking forward to see where their perigrinations take them.

For a full list of the London places that appear in The Debut (and eventually all of Brookner’s novels) check out this link.

Not being able to think of a good illustration for this post, I did a Google search on “bits and bobs”. Little did I know there is a British puppet duo of that name. Seems like as good a picture as any for this post.

Although we all love to read, it is still wonderful to find oneself in a true reading groove. You know, the exact opposite of a reading funk. The kind of mood where everything you pick up is splendid and you just want to consume as much as you can.

You know what gets in the way of such a reading groove? Blogging.

Because I want to stay in the groove as long as possible, I am eschewing reviews for a bit and switching over to list mode:

After posting about my Virago haul recently, a few of you were desirous to know which 17 VMCs I managed to snag. Unfortunately I had already mixed them in with my existing VMCs and with a few exceptions I don’t remember which are new to me and which I already had. So we all miss out on that fun list and picture. I will do better next time.

I just finished Carol Shields’ novel Small Ceremonies. It was a re-read for me. I love Shields’ work and have decided to re-read all of her novels. As I did the first time I read it years and years ago, I enjoyed Small Ceremonies quite a lot. But it also reminded me that I often have quibbles with Shields’ endings. For some reason they leave me wanting something different. Not so much so, however, to make me not want to read her books. She was a wonderful writer. I wish she was still around to write more for us.

I also just finished Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton in a beautiful NYRB edition. I must say I didn’t enjoy it the way that most bloggers have. I understand why it is a good book. And I liked the beginning and the ending, but the middle had way too many trips to the pub and drunken nights to hold my interest. It got kind of tedious in that regard.

And this evening I just finished a re-read of The Debut (A Start in Life) by Anita Brookner. For those who have not been living under a rock, you will know that I am gearing up for International Anita Brookner Day on July 16th. And since I have read all of her novels already I have decided to start over and read them chronologically. I loved all of her novels the first time around, but I really got so much more out of The Debut this time around.  I look forward to reviewing it for IABD.

After I finished the Brookner tonight I wasn’t quite sure what to move on to. So I did what I often do when looking for my next read. I comb through my TBR piles and pick up a handful of books and give them a good look over to see if any of them rise to the occasion. Tonight I picked up Life and Death of Harriet Frean by May Sinclair, A Game of Hide and Seek by Elizabeth Taylor, Every Good Deed by Dorothy Whipple, Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams, Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens, Vanity Fair by William Thackeray, and Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope.

Usually when I play this game I read the openings of each of the books and decide which one speaks to me most at the moment. I started with the Trollope. Then I moved on to two of the others, but I had this irresistible urge to go back to the Trollope. So I didn’t even make it through my stack. Trollope won the day. Not a total surprise given how much I like his other work. And since a I finished the Barsetshire series a few years ago I have been wanting to begin the Palliser novels. Still I was a little surprised how quickly and thoroughly Can You Forgive Her? pulled me in.  So I need to quit blogging and get back to reading. After all, it is only midnight.

    
1. No Name
The winner of the my extra copy of No Name by Wilkie Collins is:

 Ti at Book Chatter

2. Where in the world?
I have to say, I really enjoyed the Where in the World? picture I put up this week. It was fun to think of clues, but it was even more fun to see how smart and worldly my readers are. I think Claire is right, I did underestimate you all. I love that Stu knew the Gehry reference, Read the Book knew the Russalka reference, Margaret used the Czech name, and Simon had similar mattress issues in Prague. And I even love that Sel shared the clues with her/his brother to get the answer. I think I am going to do something like this again. But I can see I am going to have to make the clues much harder. The winner, who gets to choose the book of her/his choice of paperback from The Book Despository, and was randomly selected from 13 correct answers, is:

Mad Bibliophile

3. Book Lust
The winner of the Book Lust giveaway is:

Brenna at Literary Musings

For you non-winners, better luck next time. For you winners, please email your mailing address to onmyporch [at] hotmail [dot] com

Recently Cornflower asked her readers if they were given unlimited resources would they go on a binge and buy everything they wanted for their library or would they take a more piecemeal approach. No sooner had I responded that I enjoyed the hunt and would not get much pleasure from buying everything I wanted at once, when I was faced with two book buying opportunities. As I mentioned in a post last week, I am really tempted to buy the complete 37-volume Melville Publishing Art of the Novella series at 30% off. If I really was the onesy-twosy book hunter that I claim to be, I don’t think I would be consider buying this whole set. I highly doubt I would be interested in all 37 volumes, but my god the completeness of the purchase would be stunning. And then in a comment on my post I have CB James egging me on, for the right reasons mind you, but egging me on nonetheless.

And then I went to a book sale at my local library (Frances: that would be the Chevy Chase Library, not the new Tenley Town branch) and came away with 17 books. Granted the total haul only cost me about $25 but I must admit I was a bit indiscriminate in my choices. Not really finding anything that I really had to have at first, I started to grab every Virago I could see. I don’t feel bad about this. While not impossible to find here, Viragos are much rarer in the US than the UK. And who knows which of these Viragos will turn out to be undiscovered gems for me? It was only after I got home that I actually read the back covers and determined that most of these seem right up my alley. So it seems like I didn’t buy anything I shouldn’t have.  And there was one that was a true find: Our Spoons Came From Woolworths by Barbara Comyns. Her novel The Skin Chairs turned me into a fan so I can’t wait to open up this one.

I guess the lesson for me is that while I wouldn’t find it interesting to buy a whole library worth of books in one fell swoop, I certainly can’t claim to be the restrained book buyer that I may have thought I was.
    

    
A prize for the person who can figure out in which city this lovely hotel room is located.

Hints:

• I stayed there in 2002 as part of a month-long trip around Europe to hear opera.
• The bed was too short for me. And because there was footboard similar to the headboard, I had to put the mattress on the floor in order to be able to sleep.
• A Communist may have been responsible for the phone.
• Mozart and Frank Gehry have both made their mark on the city.
• Although Russalka would feel at home here, I heard Cosi Fan Tutte and Aida.
• If the city makes you think of Vin Diesel I wouldn’t hold it against you.

Put your guess in the comment section. In the event there is more than one right answer, I will draw randomly. Winner can be anywhere in the world and will receive the paperback of their choosing from The Book Depository. Deadline for entries will be Sunday night (June 12th).

    
I listen to a lot of BBC Radio 3 online.

I have spent many a happy hour at Wigmore Hall enjoying all kinds of wonderful recitals. Back in 1997 during an open house I even got the chance to take my place on stage. For a minute I made believe that my undergraduate minor in vocal performance had turned into a life of international concertizing.

  
I pulled this out of a magazine (the now defunct Domino, I think) back in 2008 before I knew anything about Persephone or the Penguin Great Ideas series, or the Art of the Novella series from Melville House. I just thought it was a fantastic page full of…bookish eye candy. I recently unearthed it as I was doing some sorting and was struck by how so much on this page has become a part of my life.

UPDATE: I just noticed when I went to the Melville House link I provided that they are offering all 37 of their novella series at 30% off plus a tote bag. But that still comes to $300. I am so tempted but I can’t figure out if I really want the books or it is just my OCD kicking in.

   
There isn’t enough money in the world.