Virago 50th Anniversary Reading Project 2023 - February

2023 sees us celebrating 50 years of our favourite publisher, Virago!

We have set up a reading project to choose books from a section of the VMC catalogue in sequential order, and after some discussion on other threads, have decided to go for equal sections rather than trying to divide up the 50 years and fit books into this by publication date!

To aid us, we will be using our Virago Collection Tracker which can be found in the Group Wiki.

In February, our first month, we can choose from books starting with the first ever VMC, Frost in May by Antonia White, and ending with book number 70, A Note in Music by Rosamund Lehmann.

This should be a fun way to explore our collections, reconnect with our Viragos and help celebrate the 50 years! We'll look forward to hearing what you choose to read, enjoy and share with us in the monthly threads! :D

NB I had somehow managed to create two versions of this thread so please ignore the one marked duplicate and use this. The only difference is the size of the picture which is a bit more manageable on this thread! :D

I'm going to go for Maurice Guest (no. 49) for this month. It's been on my tbr shelf for ages.

I'm planning to read #25 Mary Olivier: A Life by May Sinclair OR re-read #32 The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West.

Love your book shelf of all those lovely greens--I just want to go in and browse!

>3 Sakerfalcon: Excellent! Not one I've read!

>4 kac522: Love Return of the Soldier but haven't read the Sinclair. The first 70 books do have many, many good choices!

>5 kac522: 😊 I'm like that - love seeing other people's shelves!

>4 kac522: I thought Return of the Soldier was excellent when I read it this past year. I can certainlyl see rereading it.

I'm planning, very tentatively, to read The Lacquer Lady by F. Tennyson Jesse.

>10 NinieB: That's one of my possibles too - I guess it will depend how my mood goes!

I've begun reading For Love Alone but it's a bit of a slog. I'll read a few more pages (there are many) but will probably abandon it. Has anyone else read it?

I haven’t but I’m not really a fan of Stead. A slog is exactly how I’d describe the two I tried and I gave away the other unread books of her I had. I would say definitely bail if you’re not enjoying it!! 🤣

I also abandoned For Love Alone a few years ago. I have only read The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead and that was only because it was required reading for an Aus Lit course.

I haven’t tried any of her other works as I found her writing a very hard slog.

I am reading The Love Child by Edith Olivier- reasonably short as Mt TBR is quite tall at the moment with new release library books.

I've just finished The House in Dormer Forest, which I enjoyed more than I expected, but you can see where Stella Gibbons got some of her ideas for Cold Comfort Farm.

>14 mrspenny: I'm finding it such a relief that it isn't only me who struggled with Stead!

As for The Love Child, I read this a while back and really loved it - found it very moving!

>15 CDVicarage: Oh interesting! Yes, I'd always heard that Gibbons' satire was aimed at Webb so that makes sense!!

>12 kayclifton:, >13 kaggsy:, >14 mrspenny: I liked For love alone and Lettie Fox, but have struggled to stay engaged with some of Stead's other books. If you're not enjoying it I agree that it's fine to put it aside!

I've been reading a similarly long and dense book, Maurice Guest. It's both fascinating and frustrating - fascinating in the portrayal of life in 1890s Leipzig among the international community of music students; frustrating because the two main characters are histrionic and melodramatic in that German Romantic way. "She doesn't love me! I will die!" "Oh you are too cruel! How can you wound me thus?!" I finished the novel this morning and am just reading the introduction which says that Richardson wrote the book as a study of obsession. She certainly examines the theme in great detail - 560+ pages of it in small dense type! It didn't need to be that long, but I mostly enjoyed it. I doubt I will read it again though.

>14 mrspenny: I have read the Love Child twice. It is on my list of favorites.

Agree 100% on Stead. Gave up years ago. Life is too short.

I love both Webb and Gibbons. I started reading Webb after seeing the tv production of Precious Bane. Then I read Gone to Earth which I recognized immediately from a movie I'd seen as a child. Very melodramatic. 'His hot breath fanned her bosom' and all that good stuff. But it stuck in my head for decades because of the small fox the heroine adopts and dotes on. I still love those two books. In Precious Bane the heroine has a hare-lip and still manages to find love

In addition to Precious Bane and the House in Dormer Forest I have also read The Golden Arrow and enjoyed it as much as the other two. The critics describe Webb as a "romantic' novelist.

I re-read #32 The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West (1918), which had just as much impact on the second reading as on the first. I was struck on this reading by how precisely West describes the contrasts of how people look, what clothes they wear, what furniture surrounds them, what the exteriors of the buildings and grounds look like. All of these descriptions divide the characters by class and wealth. And how few characters there are and the limited scope of the book, while still having a broader vision.

I have just begun reading Plagued by the Nightingale by Kay Boyle.

>23 kayclifton: I have that one sitting on my table, but just haven't got to it yet... 🙁