Waterstones Howards End is on the Landing
331 ratings
TO EXPLORE MORE
Price: £10.99
Brand: Waterstones
Description: Early one autumn afternoon in pursuit of an elusive book on her shelves, Susan Hill encountered dozens of others that she had never read, or forgotten she owned, or wanted to read for a second time. The discovery inspired her to embark on a year-long voyage through her books, forsaking new purchases in order to get to know her own collection again. A book which is left on a shelf for a decade is a dead thing, but it is also a chrysalis, packed with the potential to burst into new life. Wandering through her house that day, Hill's eyes were opened to how much of that life was stored in her home, neglected for years. Howards End is on the Landing charts the journey of one of the nation's most accomplished authors as she revisits the conversations, libraries and bookshelves of the past that have informed a lifetime of reading and writing.
Category: Books
Merchant: Waterstones
Product ID: 9781846682667
Delivery cost: 2.99
ISBN: 9781846682667
My website utilises affiliate links when you click my 'Get the best deal now' buttons. If you buy something through one of these links, I may earn a little commission, at no extra cost to you.
I have relationships with many of the top online retailers (purchasing, shipping and returns will be handled directly by them) which enables me to offer the best deal online for the Waterstones Howards End is on the Landing and many other similar products - which will appear below, to enhance your online shopping experience.
For even more great deals on Waterstones Books, click the link.
Author: Sandradan1
Rating: 5
Review: I selected this book off my to-read shelf where it has sat for at least two years and, on reading the first paragraph, knew I must read on. ‘Howards End is on the Landing’ by Susan Hill is a gem of a memoir, a year in the life of a crime novelist who decides to read only the books on her bookshelves. But this is more than a review of books – it can be dipped in and out of, the chapters are conveniently short which makes you want to read ‘just another’ – because Hill attaches a personal story to each book, each author. I have always felt an affinity with Susan Hill; she was born eight miles from my own Yorkshire birthplace, and I was intrigued to learn about why she writes. I learned so much more; how her first novel was published when she was only eighteen, how she lives an ordinary life but mixes with some breath-stopping names. She met and/or knew TS Eliot, EM Forster, Cecil Day Lewis, Penelope Fitzgerald, Ian Fleming, Iris Murdoch, Elizabeth Bowen; it is a mirror image of my reading list at university, except for the Bond. Above everything though, the book reveals Hill as a reader who devours everything from Dickens to WG Sebald, Anthony Trollope to Anita Brookner, John le Carre to Olivia Manning. Her bookshelves contain signed copies, first editions, expensive sets, anthologies and poetry, plus shabby cheap paperbacks bought at airports and train stations, or second hand in charity shops. She writes in her books, turns down the corners of pages, discovers things used years ago as bookmarks – bills, paid and unpaid; receipts; picture postcards; shopping lists. She is, like you and I, someone who loves reading books. I recognised her description of reading library books as a child. “Although when I was a child and growing up I could borrow books every week from the library, there was a limit on the number to be taken at any one time and so, as there was not the money to buy many books either, I found myself reading, re-reading and re-reading again. If I liked a library book I simply got to the end, turned it round and began again. It was a bit like sweets. Until I was ten, sweets were rationed. I had a quarter of a pound a week and there were various ways in which they could be made to last. A sweet a day. Buy only boiled sweets which could be sucked for a long time. Suck half and re-wrap the rest until tomorrow. Occasionally I would have such a sugar-craving that I bought something that was gobbled up in a great burst of sweetness that exploded in the mouth like a firework and then was gone. Sherbet lemons were like that. Marshmallows did not last long.” I turned my library books round and began again, too. I also read my mother’s books. That’s how, as a young teenager, I discovered Mary Stewart. This is a delightful slim paperback which made me want to re-read many novels first read forty years ago, and to try authors I have always meant to read such as Sebald and PG Wodehouse.
Author: Valerie J.
Rating: 3
Review: I'd never read a Susan Hill book before but this was part of the recommended reading for a Masters in Creative Writing. I admit, for someone in the final year of the post-grad degree, I might have plebeian taste. Low taste, some might call it. In this book, I saw no mention of the great contemporary writers like Stephen King, John Grisham, James Patterson, G R R Martin, Michael Crichton, Dennis Lehane, and all the rest. Don't laugh! I mean it. I love them and I am not alone in that. They sell by the billions. Susan Hill admits she deplores Jane Austen's work and yet her selection of books is packed with classics. She hates A Tale of Two Cities and yet I liked it. I like a number of classics but I'm not a book snob and if I were a well known writer (I accept that the possibility of that is more remote than Pluto) I would not knock the work of others because life is this: when you reach the top of the ladder there is nowhere to go but down and then you might meet some people you have scorned going up the ladder. You get my drift? Hill's book is a mixed bag. There are moments which are interesting but when she talks about the books she loves they all seem to be of the same nature, a bit like posh soap operas. They are! Hill also contradicts herself. She says that thrillers aren't the kind of thing to read twice, and books that we wouldn't read twice should be thrown out , and then later in the book she goes on to tell us about thrillers she has kept and rereads. She tells us that we should get rid of books we don't plan to read and then tells about a set she has that she has not read and never will. Sling 'em out then, Sue! She is scathing about people who keep books in order (people like me that arranges them in A-Z by author), and people who catalogue them (like me and a million others on Goodreads). "They colour coordinate them, or arrange them by alphabet or author or subject. Well, that is what collectors enjoy doing, with books arranged like stamps in albums. Good luck to them. My father's sock drawer was the same." pg 6 Susan Hill hoards books. Oh yes you do, Sue. That means she collects them. She's lucky, she has the space. The fact that she has them in disarray and likes to go hunting to try and find the one she wants is ok by me. Good luck to her. :D As for the name dropping, well, it's all a bit sad really. I did once see Rod Stewart on a beach in Barbados, and sat next to John Lennon's son in a bar there. See? I can name drop too! Would I read another Susan Hill book? Probably not. Will I keep hold of this book. Probably not. And the final forty she lists. Is she kidding me? For those who love this book, I am glad for you. It's great to find a book that you can thoroughly enjoy. For me? What am I reading right now? Aliens by Alan Dean Foster, part of the Alien trilogy. Told ya, I have plebeian taste! :)
