READING BINGES

Since New Year’s Day, I’ve been on a binge. Not a drinking one, but a reading one. I’ve been rereading Barbara Pym novels as if they were going to vanish tomorrow. For those of you unfamiliar with Barbara Pym, she was a British novelist whose heyday was 1950-1961. She did not write mysteries, and she was never an international sensation that I can discover; so there’s a good chance you will never have heard of her or read her.

Pym was very much like a (fairly) modern-day Jane Austen, in that her area of expertise was narrow and intense. She specialized in women who were being left on the shelf in post-war England, worthy spinsters with interesting inner lives. Pym also loved anthropologists and clergymen, and many of her characters are church-goers. Just as Austen observed the minutiae of social interaction in the society of her time, Pym observes and laughs about the foibles of men and women who are seldom, perhaps never, frank with each other.

Pym’s characters are, by turn, amusing, exasperating, clever, and frivolous. Wilmet Forsyth in “A Glass of Blessings” is definitely one of the latter. She’s married and bored, but she makes no huge effort to become more than decorative. She learns a life lesson when she falls into a flirtation with Piers Longridge, a translator. Just at the moment she’s convinced she loves Piers, she meets his roommate, and learns that Piers is “not a man who should marry.”

Dulcie Mainwaring (“No Fond Return of Love”) and Jessie Morrow (“Crampton Hodnet”) are my favorites. There’s something in these excellent women that resonates with me. Dulcie’s life, so dull on the surface, is a positive cauldron of delight when she becomes interested in someone. Jessie, a lowly companion, has a delightful sense of the ridiculous that helps her get through the drab days of servitude.

I’ll tell you what I really love about Barbara Pym’s writing: it’s the undercurrent of strong emotion that runs just under the surface of her overtly conventional characters. No matter how repressed and drab on the outside, underneath her people are battered to and fro by curiosity, love, longing, anger, or simply the desire to be noticed.

If you want to dive into Barbara Pym, you can start with any book except “Quartet in Autumn,” her last novel. You should read that one later; it’s her final word.

Do you binge read, too? If you do, who’s your writer of choice?

Charlaine Harris

Comments

[Susan Neace]

Georgette Heyer, Tammora Pierce, Sharon Shinn, you, Patricia Briggs, Dorothy Sayers top my list of read and reread. any time a new one of the current writers come out with a new one I read it and then go back again through the old ones

[Hank Phillippi Ryan]

Oh, yes, of course I binge read! ANd I am, well, happy I guess, to say I have never read Barbara Pym, so lookout, here I come.

COmpletely on the other side of the reading glass, I love legal thrillers...and am now reading David Ellis. I thought I had discovered him, but I--was wrong.

ANd bingeing--so funny! Jonathan and I are binge-watching Foyle's War. Aren't we wild and crazy??

[Deborah Adams]

Mary Stewart!

[PlumGaga]

Angela Thirkell. I go through her Barchester novels at least once a year.

And the mystery connection to Pym is that Hazel Holt (the Mrs. Mallory cozies) was her close friend and literary advisor.

[Charlaine Harris]

I'm ashamed to say I haven't read Angela Thirkell, and now I'll have to add her to my list. Mary Stewart! I haven't read her in ages. I loved "Nine Coaches Waiting" with a passion. And Georgette Heyer is one of my binges, too, Susan. Hank, the only thing I've binge-watched was "Justified," and it was worth it.

[Kathy Lynn Emerson]

Not exactly binge reading, but I have been slowly working my way through all of Charlotte MacLeod's wonderful humorous mysteries since I discovered they were available as ebooks. That was about a year and a half ago. They still make me laugh.

Kathy/Kaitlyn

[Charlaine Harris]

I love to remember Charlotte, and I haven't read her wonderful books in way too long. Thanks for the reminder, Kathy.

[Elaine Viets]

Agatha Christie. You. And I love legal thrillers. Guilty pleasure is Michael Palmer's medical thrillers.

[catriona]

Oh, I *adore* Barabara Pym. I'm glad I'm not living in her world, but I love it. And Angela Thirkell - delicious. I'd add Dorothy Whipple too and I think I love her writing best of all.

[Ellie Enos]

I am rereading all of JD Robb in order. I only discovered her books two years ago when our book club read Innocent in Death. I like to check out books that you recommend and start with the first one in the series. My daughter and I read all the Sookie books after she discovered True Blood.

[Laura Brennan]

I love to binge-read from the Golden Age: Ngaio Marsh, Ellery Queen, Dorothy Sayers... But I also find myself binge-reading on one particular nonfiction topic at a time -- the Psychology of Happiness being the most recent. It's fascinating to see how each person's work influences the others. Plus I'm hoping more of it sticks this way!

[Mary]

Angela Thirkell and Dorothy Whipple are new to me. So glad to hear good recommendations. Susan mentioned Sharon Shinn, who is also new to me, at least until about thirty minutes ago when I saw a couple of her books at the bookstore. I have some catching up to do!

[Kelly Saderholm]

I'm binging on Lawrence Block's "Burglar" series, looking forward to reading his newest Bernie Rhodenbarr release.

[Charlaine Harris]

Dorothy Whipple. Another name to add. Sharon Shinn is great. I've binged on Laurell K Hamilton's Anita Blake books, too, and Lawrence Blocks' HIT MAN books. Love those! What a lot of good ideas for revisiting old friends and making new ones.

[Laura]

Dick Francis! Although I have recently discovered the Phryne Fisher murder mysteries (the excellent Australian TV series tipped me off) and I have been devouring them.

[Dana Cameron]

Dorothy Sayers. And now I have a whole flock of new writers to read!