And new books

One of my tasks for today was to pick up my held mail from the post office. Most of the mail I get is junk (and now I am starting to get fliers from places selling stamps for stamp collectors, apparently because I mail ordered postage stamps. Sigh.)

But I did get a couple packages: the bimonthly installment of the String Theory Colorworks sock club (I won't spoil it in case anyone else is in the club and hasn't got theirs yet, but this month's does NOT disappoint and I think it will be my next pair of 'simple' socks). And my Folio books came.

I glanced at the big archaeology one ("Gods, Graves, and Scholars") but now finding myself wondering if it's now slightly dated. (I finished "Ancestral Journeys" by Jean Manco over break - she incorporates a lot of the new DNA findings, which support some long-held assertions in archaeology but lead to questions about others, and she also discusses the "prejudice" in mid-20th century archaeology against migrations - there seems to have been an idea that migration of people was very limited, but ideas and goods moved more readily; the DNA evidence suggests instead many large-scale movements and also times of depopulation and repopulation of areas - related to climate shifts or warfare). I'll still read the book, though. And of course, I'm not knowledgeable enough to know if Manco has certain prejudices or an axe to grind and therefore is slanting the evidence one way or another.

(Heh. Axe to grind. I wonder if it's a stone axe?)

I looked more closely at the other two: "Father Brown Stories" and "Diary of a Provincial Lady." If Folio comes out with an edition of a book I particularly love, even if I already own it in paperback or an indifferent hardback, I will buy the Folio copy as a "permanent library" copy and dispose of the lesser copy.

The Father Brown book is very pleasing: not too large and heavy, bound in a slightly coarse grey fabric. Simple and unimposing. And it has drawings: simple black and white line drawings. (Of late, the trend in Folio Society books seems to be for very self-consciously "arty" color plates. I'm....not totally on board with that. I tend to feel like pictures in a book should enhance the story rather than be like stand-alone works of art. So I like this style). In fact, the line drawings remind me very slightly of Pauline Baynes' drawings for the "Chronicles of Narnia." (Well, in "Father Brown," there's one drawing of a person shot through the neck with an arrow - not gory but still - so maybe it's not that much like Baynes' drawings after all. Then again, she drew a few battle scenes....)

The Provincial Lady book is also very nice - small, slim, also bound in grey but a smooth finish cloth this time. It looks very much of the time it was written (the 1930s) and it pleases me as well.

"Diary of a Provincial Lady" is a book I didn't really know about until a few years ago - I think Jane Brocket mentioned it in one of her books - and I tracked down a paperback copy and read it. It's VERY funny, or at least to my sense of humor, I found it very funny. It's one of those comedies of errors/comedies of manners things - perhaps one part Keeping Up Appearances and one part, I don't know, Last of the Summer Wine? Maybe? I haven't seen many episodes of that one....

At any rate, I found the book very entertaining and I recommend it. I don't think you have to be an Anglophile to enjoy it but it might help.

Which brings me to the paperback copy: if anyone would like it, drop me an e-mail with your mailing address (You will have to use my new address - the .gmail one). If more than one asks, first person gets it. I'll pop it in a puffy envelope and drop it in the mail to you.

(I think I'm going to keep my "Complete Father Brown" paperback for now; I think the hardback I bought doesn't have ALL the stories in it, I have to check)