When six women gather around a table to eat cake and talk books you can guarantee that it will be an enthusiastic gathering. We called the event: The Books that Built Me, and everyone was asked to bring along a book or two that was formative in their childhood, teens or just generally. The occasion was a tea party, sponsored by Wedgwood, held at my house, and photographed for Red magazine. (I have a piece in November Red on the link between books, tea and women.)
The guests were: Sarah Curran, founder of My Wardrobe.com, Jenny Lewis portrait photographer, Maggie Alderson, London-born Australian author, magazine editor and fashion journalist, Philippa Wright, Marketing director at wine merchants Goedhuis & Co., and Tara Spring, Celebrity Producer for network television.
Some people brought two books (I think Tara & Philippa stuck most closely to choosing books that were formative to them as children), others bought a sack full because they couldn’t decide. And we all kept thinking of more books we should have brought. So I volunteered to keep a list, and publish it on here so everyone could buy more books.
I think we all agreed that bringing books we loved to talk about, as opposed to having a set read was WAY more fun and interesting, so I wholly recommend book clubs that are show and tell in basis, rather than prescriptive.
Philippa’s books:
The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge
The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
Jenny’s books:
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Death of Bunny Munro by Nick Cave
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Book of Dave: A Revelation of the Recent Past and the Distant Future by Will Self
Sarah’s books:
French Children Don’t Throw Food by Pamela Druckerman
The Answer Is Simple…: Love Yourself, Live Your Spirit! by Sonia Choquette
Maggie’s books:
Howards End by E.M. Forster
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Down With Skool!: A guide to school life for tiny pupils and their parents by Geoffrey Willans
The Flambards books by KM Peyton
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Dusty Answer by Rosamond Lehmann
Sex Tips for Girls by Cynthia Heimel
The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis
Sasha’s books:
The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (Persephone Classics) by Winifred Watson
The Card by Arnold Bennett
A Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley
Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: Short Stories, Prose, and Diary… by Sylvia Plath
Ian Fleming’s James Bond books
Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers
Tara’s Books:
What Katy Did & What Katy Did at School by Susan Coolidge
And then there were all the books we kept remembering between us that we wanted to add to our list, for lots of different reasons. We all were disappointed that we didn’t discover I Capture the Castle until our 20s or 30s, so I urge anyone with a teenage daughter to force them to read it tout suite. (And if you love ICTC, then do try The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets by Eva Rice, which Tara & I both love.)
Then there are books that made us laugh: The Fly Girls, for example, is a bonkers novel written in the early 60s about the antics of air stewardesses. What none of our choices were were showy-off-y, pretentious or point-proving. Just lots of excellent reads and a bucket full of nostalgia.
The Fly Girls by Bernard Glemser
The Making of a Marchioness by Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets by Eva Rice
I Capture The Castle by Dodie Smith
A Long Way From Verona by Jane Gardam
Brother of the More Famous Jack by Barbara Trapido
The Damerosehay trilogy by Elizabeth Goudge
Coffee, Tea, or Me?: The Uninhibited Memoirs of Two Airline Stewardesses by Trudy Baker
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
The Madwoman’s Underclothes — Essays and Occasional Writings by Germaine Greer
Coronet Among the Weeds by Charlotte Bingham
Lorna Hill’s Sadlers Wells series
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What a lovely excuse for afternoon tea! Thank you for the list of books – some I’ve read and some I will read – I always appreciate suggestions for my daughters as well. I haven’t read I capture the castle but will do so now and encourage my girls too, they’re currently reading all the Swallows & Amazons books. I smiled when you said Maggie Alderson was there, I love her writing! Beautiful photos too.
My books:
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg
The Giver by Lois Lowry
Sloppy Firsts (and rest of series) by Megan McCafferty
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Ugh, too many to count. It is interesting to see the wide variety of books and how American based my novels are (even growing up in Canada).
“Return of the Native” and “Tess of the D’Urbervilles”, both by Thomas Hardy, “Island of the Blue Dolphins” by Scott O’Dell, which still makes me cry, the original Nancy Drew Mysteries and let’s not forget “Jane Eyre” in 6th grade.
A couple of months ago, you tweeted that you’d just finished rereading Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Cazalet novels. I too had read them many years ago and your comment prompted me to return to forgotten pleasure. I am just finishing reading them all again – on kindle this time! Thank you.
Oh thank you for this post! I love books and there are a few among the ones you have presented which I would now really like to read!
Such a lovely idea! Thank you for the list of books, Im always on the look out for something new to read so I’ll keep this list close by.
Thanks for this, I just wanted some new books for my Kindle!
It sounds like such a wonderful event and you’re right, it sounds so much more interesting to just share books that you love, finding out about authors that you’ve never heard of. I’ve already jotted down a few titles from the above to look into myself.
What a wonderful post, thank you!
I didn’t discover I Capture The Castle until my 30., for no other reason than it not being available in my native tongue (an utter disgrace!), but since then I am evangelical about promoting it, even going as far as giving it to strangers for free (last year it was one of 20 titles for World Book Night, and I volunteered to be a giver). I helped some of my Polish friends discover it and they are also perplexed as to why it has never been published in Poland, as they all loved it.
FAB post xxxxxxxxxxxxx
I LUFF this idea and might steal it for myself! I met Maggie at a book signing thing she did when I was pregnant, she wouldn’t remember me but I do absolutely love every word she writes.
I read I Capture the Castle as an adult and found it very dark indeed.
My choices are To Kill a Mockingbird The Great Gatsby The Pursuit of Love Love in a Cold Climate and Rebecca
LLG I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again I do luff your blog.
Nice cake x
I Capture the Castle is one of my all-time favourites. I also love A Kind of Loving by Stan Barstow, How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff and Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd.
Oooh! What fun. I may have to get some girlfriends round and do similar! Just of the top of my head, books that “built” me;
The Twits – Roald Dahl
Are you there god, its me Margaret – Judy Blume
Sweet Valley High – the entire series!
The Wasp Factory – Ian Banks
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
The Handmaids Tale – Margaret Attwood
Glamorama – Brett Easton Ellis
The Dirt – Motley Cru biog (dont laugh, it was the first non-fictional biog I actually really enjoyed and led to me going through a period of simply reading biogs)
Basically taken me through my pre-teen to mid 20′s! I am not mostly reading OU textbooks and cookery books but there are a few on your lists which I am going to try! x
I love that you called Maggie an Australian author – we always feel she is one of ours.
For me, some of the books that had the most impact on me growing up were Anne of Green Gables, the Sweet Valley High series (trashy but I always had my nose in a book), Jane Eyre, pretty much all the Roald Dahl books and The Hobbit.
as soon as I saw this post I said: omg, I wish I could have more time to read…
I have tons of books which I buy for when I’ll have time to read.
need to start asap!
I love this idea for a show and tell book club – more fun, less like homework. And The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets is one of my all-time favourite books too! Even though Eva Rice wrote it in the noughties, it absolutely feels like she could’ve written it when it was set, in the 50s, and I love it every bit as much as I Capture the Castle and Pursuit of Love.
No one read Judy Blume’s “Forever?” That book traveled a long road through the hands of every girl (and some guys) in my eight grade class.
What a fantastic idea! Tea, cake and talking about books – my three favourite things! There are so many books on your lists that I’ve loved I’m sure to enjoy the ones I’ve not read yet and have added them to my kindle wish list. If you enjoyed ‘I Capture the Castle’ and ‘The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets’ try the Montmaray trilogy by Michelle Cooper…nostalgia by the bucket load!
p.s. loved the feature in ‘Red’ magazine!
Yep – Forever would have been on there for me. Plus:
The Chalet School books
Pride and Prejudice
Vanity Fair
The Handmaids Tale
Beroul’s Tristan (first proper old old book I ever read, at uni)
Nigel Slater’s Real Fast Food
Contact by Carl Sagan
Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
Baudelaire Les Fleurs du Mal
(I did a French and German degree so am not showing off with the foreign books
)
oh what a wonderful post Sasha and what a wonderful time you must have had! I love this idea, of a different kind of book club.
The books I had in my head as I was reading this rapidly exposed me for my lack of erudition compared to you and your guests but I’m going to say them anyway: Lace & Valley of the Dolls. Purely because they represented a tentative teen’s window into the glamorous world of being woman.
Before then it was Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, The Firebird, Carrie’s War and any Sherlock Holmes or Poirot.
Great post Sasha, I loved this x
I Capture the Castle is one of my favorite books! Not enough people have read it.
What a wonderful post Sasha… I was fortunate enough to find I Capture the Castle at age 14 and read it to death. I now work in a girls’ school library (a truly wonderful job) and it’s the first thing I recommend to any girl looking for a read that will get her in. I only found Cold Comfort Farm last year and now think I’ll have to read it every year! It went straight to the top of my list. This list and the comments are invaluable. And thanks to Maggie for her lead to Liberty London Girl. x
What good fun you had and what an impressive range of books … I too have a copy of the Johnny Panic book and remember being captivated by Ted and Sylvia.
It was Grimm’s and Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales and Enid Blyton who started me reading and I am forever grateful to these writers.
I’ve loved reading this post. Thank you.
Brilliant! I’m currently struggling with Mrs Dalloway for my book club which is best understood when completely exhausted!
Thanks for sharing will pass onto my ‘literary ish ‘ gang x
LOVED this post! lots of my favourites here but also several I don’t know. I would add Agatha Christie to the always good to go back to category, strangely for murder mysteries I never fail to find them comforting- like Ian Fleming she has quite a spare but acute style that I appreciate.
Great to see you include Gaudy Night. All the Dorothy L Sayers books are a good read but Gaudy Night is a great one. Just re-read Busman’s Honeymoon on audio book which great for airports etc on iPhone.
I Capture the Castle is one of my favourite books (and inspired the title of my blog!) I definitely agree that it is a must read for any teen girls – I first read it when I was about 16 and have loved it ever since. I spent a happy evening perusing the Persephone website the other day and was considering buying the Miss Pettigrew book for a friend…I’m definitely getting it now I’ve seen it recommended!
Other books that I would put on my list would be…
Behind the Scenes at the Museum – Kate Atkinson
When Hitler Killed Pink Rabbit – Judith Kerr
The Family From One End Street – Eve Garnett
Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood
As a teen I also worked my way through anything Agatha Christie had to offer, and also Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals series (his paragraph about phosphorescence in the water has stuck in my mind ever since).
So pleased to see Cold Comfort Farm has been included. It’s a relatively unknown quirky gem but it’s my all-time favourite read! The 1995 film version is certainly worth a watch (especially for the lovely Rufus Sewell).
I loved this post and have now added so many more books to my wish list! I am especially looking forward to reading I Capture The Castle for the first time.
Great idea and another great post! The books that made me read were the Grimm Brothers and I just finished reading ‘New World Fairy Tales’ by Cassandra Parkin, excellent twist on the Grimm Tales. ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings’ Maya Angelou had me hooked when I was sixteen. What I like is that my booklist keeps growing, total reading addict.
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