A Bookish Lunch, Tolkien's Gown and The Laughing Academy

Here's a review by Danny Yee for a book that was brought by Annabel to a village Bookish Lunch to recommend.  Tolkien's Gown is, in my opinion, something to delight a bookworm and a real reader-friendly volume of bite-size chapters.  This little compendium has been written by Rick Gekoski, writer, broadcaster, rare book-dealer.  Let Danny Yee tell you about it:

'Each of the twenty essays in Tolkien's Gown is a mix of biography, literary history and personal memoir, focusing on a leading twentieth century writer and one of their key works, with details from Gekoski's own encounters with them or rare editions of their books.

Gekoski provides background for those who might not be familiar with his subjects, but doesn't attempt general biographies, usually treating one aspect of or episode in their lives. Similarly, he restricts himself to scattered critical comments on relatively minor topics. This is given some body by the inclusion of his own recollections — he knew personally many of the notables he writes about — and glimpses into the workings of the rare book market.

The result is very easy to read and good fun. I learned something both about the authors and works I knew well and about those that were largely unfamiliar to me. And I have no great interest in the rare book market, but Gekoski's glimpses into that were also interesting.

The authors covered are — in the fairly random order of Tolkien's Gown — Vladimir Nabokov, J.R.R. Tolkien, William Golding, Oscar Wilde, Jack Kerouac, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, J.D. Salinger, T.E. Lawrence, Sylvia Plath, John Kennedy Toole, Evelyn Waugh, Beatrix Potter, Ernest Hemingway, Graham Greene, George Orwell, Salman Rushdie, T.S. Eliot, J.K. Rowling, and Philip Larkin.'

Another recent read of mine is The Laughing Academy by Shena Mackay. 

Mackay is a Scottish novelist born in 1944.  Her writing career started with her winning a poetry competition in the Daily Mirror at the age of 16.  When interviewed for The Observer she is described as wry, funny but serious too........  is a witty, black and compelling read   The collection of short stories in The Laughing Academy takes the reader from antiques fairs to Cloud-Cuckoo-Land, geriatric wards to Crystal Palace, and the collection offers a journey around the bizarre yet familiar characters and settings that Mackay has made her own. There are Roy and Muriel Rowley, the fun-running charity-junkies who give blood by the gallon (offending their daughter's religious principles); we meet Gerald Creedy who only loves three beings - his twin brother, Harold, and his two tortoises, Percy and Bysshe - and the mysterious lodger Madame Alphonsine who has the strange powers to make things (including tortoises) disappear; and then there is the rather arrogant bestselling novelist who gives a reading at a women's bookshop only to find, to her horror, that two of her old schoolfriends are in the audience.

This was another read to enjoy in bite-size pieces.