Cold Comfort Farm (1932) by Stella Gibbons #20BooksofSummer2025

💙 Flora Poste found herself an orphan and penniless at age nineteen. Her friend encouraged her to take a job, or be trained for something, but Flora had a better idea. She would bestow her numerous relatives - which she didn't quite know - with opportunity to take her to live with them. Accordingly Flora wrote these relatives, and one reply came from the Starkadders who lived in Cold Comfort Farm in Sussex. The fact that Flora - a city girl - must live in a farm didn't deter her determination. 

💙 Flora is a sophisticated urbane girl, level-headed and sensible. She found the Starkadders as coarse and ignorant farmers, isolated from the modern world. They had taken Flora in not willingly, but to atone for an unthinkable wrong once done to Flora's father (which was never revealed througout the book). But that's not the only unsolved mystery in this book - the other is Flora's Aunt Ada Doom, the elderly matriarch who confined herself at her bedroom for the past twenty years, because when she's a child she had seen "something nasty in the woodshed." I'm curious to know what that is, but sadly, it, too, was never revealed. :(

💙 To make the Starkadders more sophisticated and happier, was the job that Flora had taken herself during her stay. There's cousin Amos with his obsession to religion; Reuben who knew how to improve their badly-run farm but can't do anything because brother Amos was taking charge; and Elfin the unruly passionate young girl, for whom Flora had to arrange an honorable marriage. Not mentioning Aunt Ada, whose presence hindered everyone's happiness. Not too subtly, but unflinchingly, Flora forced changes upon changes into the family, bringing the family to more adept to modern world.

💙 It was really a humorous and witty satire of rural life in early twentieth century, with a touch of romance. Despite of her self-centered manner, I couldn't help to be fond of Flora right from the beginning. In certain books, her character would be much annoying, but here, it provides many hilarious scenes.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐12

Read for:

20 Books of Summer 2025

hosted by Annabel and Emma

High Rising (1933) by Angela Thirkell

💜 High Rising is the first novel in Thirkell's Barsetshire Chronicles - a series of 29 books set in Antony Trollope's fictional English county: Barsetshire. Like her contemporaries, E.F. Benson and E.M. Delafield, Thirkell's works were placed in the comedy of manners genre. It's witty and hilarious - the perfect light domestic satire which I liked very much.

💜 Laura Morland is a middle-aged widow with three children. Two of them had left home to pursue their careers, leaving the youngest, a precocious and boisterous boy named Tony, to be still in her care. The two of them spent Christmas holiday at their country home in a small village of High Rising. Her closest neighbor, George Knox, has just hired a secretary. She turned out to be a scheming woman, and her goal is to be next Mrs. Knox. And Laura made it her duty to help her friend George out of Miss Grey's clutches. Will she be able to do it?

💜 I enjoyed the whole reading - it's a light one, but full of well defined characters, and it never lacks of mild surprises and amusing incidents along the way. Laura, especially, is a lovely woman, full of affection for people around her, energetic, and efficient. It's no wonder that she got a few suitors - even a man younger than her. She is a successful writer, though she daubed herself as a writer of good bad books (who doesn't love this kind of book?!). The others are interesting too - her son Tony, for example, who loved automotive and obsessed with his model railway. Countless hilarious events come from that! And I also loved how the women closed rank in their "fight" against the scheming secretary they nicknamed "the Incubus". Well, not only the women, but also few of the men. And beyond that scheme, Laura still had time to bring a young couple together. On the whole, it's a charming and heartwarming story!

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2

Wigs on the Green (1935) by Nancy Mitford #NovNov24

Book Beginnings on Fridays (hosted by Rose City Reader):

No, I'm sorry,' said Noel Foster, 'not sufficiently attractive.'
He said this in unusually firm and final accents, and with a determination which for him was rare he hung up his office telephone receiver.

💚 After a high brow spiritual novella I've read earlier, a witty satire from Nancy Mitford seems like a perfect option to get into next. And it was pretty hilarious - its comical quality isn't unlike P.G. Wodehouse, but with a center theme of British fascism, Mitford is unbeatable. Fun fact: Mitford was actually inspired by her sisters' political enthusiasm, and the book caused a rift between the sisters.

💚 When Noel Foster came upon a small fortune, he retired from boring clerk job to hunt for wealthy heiress to marry. His biggest mistake was to boast about it to his sycophant playboy scheming friend of Jasper Aspect. The later knew of an unworldly but rich and beautiful Eugenia Malmains who lives in the countryside. They find her to be an ardent supporter of Union Jackshirts movement, headed by a Captain Jack.

💚 Also coming from London are two young women, one Miss Smith and one Miss Jones. They are in fact Poppy Saint Julien, who's considering to divorce her unfaithful husband, and is accompanying her friend Lady Marjorie, who's running away from a Duke she's just jilted on the altar. A fourth young woman who was to complicate the story is a local beauty, Mrs. Lace. The two friends from London represent their generation and background, the 1930s of metropolitan city like London, when young people, especially the rich, were reckless, irresponsible, and ignoring moral conventions.

Friday 56 Quote (hosted by Head Full of Books):

"There's nothing radically wrong with your nature, darling, but your upbringing and environment, so far, have been lousy. I never met anybody more invited to cope with the ordinary contingencies of life - especially the emotional side of it."

💚 As expected, Jasper turned out to be a rival rather than assistant to Noel's cause. And their whole wealthy heiresses scheme is thwarted by many unforeseen but hilarious events, from falling in love with the "wrong" women, to the appearance of mysterious detectives, to Union Jackshirt fanaticism. It is the latter aspect that provided this story with loads of incredibly foolish, but witty at the same time, humour, and comical scenes that will make you laugh. Like I said, the story feels like a mixture of Mitford's sharp and witty satire and Wodehouse's slapstick comic; a thoroughly fun and hilarious read!

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2

Read for:

Novellas in November 2024 #NovNov24

hosted by Cathy @ 746 Books and Rebecca @ Bookish Beck

Elizabeth and Her German Garden by Elizabeth von Arnim

✍🏼 Elizabeth von Arnim, neé Mary Annette Beauchamp was born in Australia. But then she married a German Count, and moved to Nassenheide, Pomerania, as Countess von Arnim-Schlagenthin.

✍🏼 Von Arnim wrote Elizabeth and Her German Garden as a mockery to German aristocratic society. It's a semi autobiographical novel, written as a diary of the protagonist, Elizabeth, who was developing a beautiful garden on the estate, though she knew almost nothing about gardening.

✍🏼 I enjoyed the book so much for three reasons: a) At times it's so hilarious, I had often to stifle my laughter while reading in public. b) It talks much about gardening, and though I'm not keen on the subject, I love everything concerning nature. c) I loved most of Elizabeth's unorthodox views on life and tradition, which I can well relate. I quote here some of her entries, which is bluntly honest and hilarious.

“I believe all needlework and dressmaking is of the devil, designed to keep women from study.”

"If you have to have neighbours at all, it is at least a mercy that there should be only one; for with people dropping in at all hours and wanting to talk to you, how are you to get on with your life, I should like to know, and read your books, and dream your dreams to your satisfaction?"

"I never could see that delicacy of constitution is pretty, either in plants or women."

"What nonsense it is to talk about the equality of the sexes when the women have the babies."

"To most German Hausfraus the dinners and the puddings are of paramount importance [...] but, I would humbly inquire, are there not other things even more important? And is not plain living and high thinking better than the other way about? [...] It cannot be right to be the slave of one's household gods, and I protest that if my furniture ever annoyed me by wanting to be dusted when I want to be doing something else, and there was no one to do the dusting for me, I should cast it all into the nearest bonfire and sit and warm my toes at the flames with great contentment, triumphantly selling my dusters to the very next pedlar who was weak enough to buy them. [...] is it not pathetic to find a young woman bravely struggling to learn languages and keep up with her husband?"

✍🏼 It's a short but entertaining novel, and I can't wait to read more of von Arnim. The Enchanted April is next. Maybe next year?

Rating: 4,5 / 5

Gulliver’s Travels

Okay, so I was wrong—Gulliver’s Travels turned out NOT ONLY about Liliput! And it is certainly not a children’s book, although the Liliput part is often adapted into children’s tales. It is written as a travel journal of a navy surgeon called Lemuel Gulliver. He joined several ships, but bad luck forced him to be stranded on strange lands. Liliput was only his first part of adventure, where he found himself in a land inhabited by a race of tiny people: Liliput. He finally could get home but not long after, involved in another sailing ship. He was abandoned by his companions, and soon found himself in the midst of a gigantic race of Brobdingnab. Gulliver’s next adventure was in a floating nation of Laputa, after his ship was being attacked by pirates. But the most inspiring journey, both for Gulliver and for his readers), might be that in the country of the Houyhnhnms—a race of talking horses.

As Gulliver has often mentioned throughout the book, his journal was not intended to amuse readers with fascinated adventures, but rather to introduce them of other civilizations so that we can learn to be a better race. I think Swift wrote it to satirize the political situation and humanity values at that time. The way Gulliver was stranded among, first, tiny people; then gigantic race, showed how superiority and inferiority stand among us—it’s not about who we are, but with whom we live. When Gulliver was in Liliput, he urinated on their castle on pretext of extinguishing the fire, without much remorse. But when he was in Brobdingnab, Gulliver became much more sensitive and was easily offended by (what the Brobdingnab people thought as) some trifles.

Gulliver’s changes of mood between adventures showed how we are strongly influenced by the society. When he was at Liliput, he boasted about his native country, England, and thought the Liliputians as unscrupulous. But when he was with the Houyhnhnms, he began to think of his fellows as disgusting. It also showed that humans are molded by habits; the longer you take it, the longer you can shake it. I didn’t take particular notes, but I think Gulliver’s stay in Houyhnhnms was longer than his others’, and so it was hard for him to get used to live in his old civilization.

Although Swift presented us a lot of fascinated adventures in strange lands, it is not easy to enjoy this book. Maybe because it was intended to be a journal, with flat and monotonous sentences, and with many statistics and scientific methods; which fittingly placed Gulliver’s Travels in Enlightenment lit category.

Three stars for Gulliver’s Travels.

~~~~~~~~~~

I read Penguin English Library paperback

This book is counted as:

5^th book for Literary Movement Reading Challenge (Enlightenment)

2^nd book for Back to the Classics Challenge 2015 (Classic Children’s Book)

Baca Bareng BBI 2015 (Mar: Book adapted to movie)

90^th book for The Classics Club Project

Don Quixote: Final Review

I have a mixed feeling about Don Quixote. On the one hand I quite enjoyed Cervantes’ wit and beautiful prose, but on the other I disliked the absurdities. I just could not force myself to believe there are people so contradictory like Don Quixote and Sancho Pança, who at a time were so wise, but at others so stupid. I know that Cervantes made it absurd on purpose, but that’s why I could never really like it.

Alonso Quixada was a gentleman who lived quietly in La Mancha. He was obsessed by books of chivalry in his personal library. The idea of knight-errantry poisoned his mind, that one day, in his thoroughly frenzied mind, he felt a strong impulse to become a knight and sought adventures in order to relieve the weak and oppressed from their sorrows. He followed every rule he had read from his books, and was suddenly transformed into a Don Quixote de la Mancha. He recruited a country farmer called Sancho Pança as his squire, and took a peasant woman to be his adored-lady—just because a knight in books used to have a squire, and a lady to whom he dedicated all his deeds. Mounting on his skinny horse—which he fancied as a stout one—he left La Mancha to seek adventures.

And indeed, a lot of adventures he got along the way. However, far from helping people, Don Quixote often ended up bringing trouble to others. It’s because he himself had fancied that those people were in trouble and needing his help—while in reality they didn’t. In the urge of having problems to solve, Don Quixote used to create them in his fantasies. In these fantasies, either people, or animals, or even things might become his worst enemies. One of his, probably, most memorable (and funniest) adventure is when he attacked some windmills which he imagined as giants! But you might wonder, if the adventures were mere fantasies, how did he react when they were failed? When things went wrong, Don Quixote blamed it on enchantment or works of a magician.

If he was so deluded, why didn’t his squire or others lead him to the truth? Sancho was quite a man of sense, but he was also deluded by illusion of power. He was so sure that one day Don Quixote would be a King, and would grant him island to govern. But other than that, Sancho was an amiable man. And maybe, besides his childish trust to his master, he was the most natural character of others, and has become my most favorite character in this book.

Now, along his adventures, Don Quixote met so many people. Interestingly, none of them seemed really appreciate Don Quixote’s main aim by entering knight-errantry profession, which was to help others. This was a noble dream, but people failed to see it as it was, and focused instead on the crazy ways he tried to achieve it. The curate, the barber, and the bachelor tried hard to bring him home and cure him. In their eyes, Don Quixote was a poor deluded old man who only humiliated himself by his knight-errantry. The Duke and Duchess were much worse; they put (too) much effort to create adventures for Don Quixote just to amuse themselves—it’s bullying, and I hate them for it! There were still many other characters, some were kind to Don Quixote and Sancho, but some were quite rude. But all of them saw the same thing from our knight: a mad man; either they pitied him or were annoyed by him.

So, that is how Cervantes saw the world in his era. The nobility and moral value had been decaying, and people only saw what appeared on the surface. The biggest irony in this story is how people regarded Don Quixote as a deluded man, while in fact it was they who were deluded. Strange and unreasonable as he was, Don Quixote was the only one who still strongly believed in nobility and the need of helping others; while the others—normal as they believed they were—could only see a strange old man, and failed to see his much deeper and important quality as a human being.

Only after I finished this book, did I see why Don Quixote has been a very important work in our literary world. Cervantes is indeed great in conveying his ideas through this entertaining satirical romance, which became the first complete novel ever published. Don Quixote is actually divided into two parts. In the first one Cervantes wrote it as if he presented us a history of a certain knight, written by a Moor called Benengali. Interestingly, in the second part, Cervantes took a more active role, by putting another author who has been writing the sequel of Don Quixote without his permission, and made Don Quixote met people who have read the false history of him. The meta-story style could also be found in part one; actually one of them: “The Impertinent Curiosity” is so engaging I even think I love it better than the original story! And this is very interesting, considering it was written some four centuries ago.

All in all, I realized that Don Quixote is a special and genius piece of literature, but somehow, I could not like it as I thought I would. I got bored many times, and used to skip few pages, before continuing. Maybe, if Cervantes didn’t put too many adventures, I would like it more. But in the end, three and a half stars are the best I could give for Don Quixote, one memorable story but too tedious for my liking.

~~~~~~~~

I read Wordsworth Classics paperback

This book is counted as:

2^nd book for 2014 TBR Pile Challenge

1^st book for Back to the Classics 2014

67^th book for The Classics Club Project

16^th book for WEM Self-Project

 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die