For the less observant, it appears that vintage is back. Has been back for quite some time, in fact. You can’t buy a biscuit without getting a ‘vintage-style’ tin with it. Frugality, too, is quite a buzzword. This does tend to take the guise of buying expensive books that advise you on how to save 49 pence each day, but nevertheless it is also somewhat of a trend. I positively embrace the ‘handy tips’ in my grandmother’s magazines that inform me how, exactly, I can transform those potato skins languishing in my freezer that I so enthusiastically saved last month into something nutritious and delicious. Let’s face it: life was much better in the 40s and 50s. Enid Blyton was having jolly good larks with The Famous Five and Roald Dahl was flying high above Egypt in his Gloster Gladiator. Humphrey Bogart was spitting out scatter-shot ripostes and Charlie Chaplin was taking on the rise of Nationalism in possibly his funniest role ever as Adenoid Hynkel in The Great Dictator. Everything cost less than a penny and you could get literally anything the heart could desire in a tin. Tinned tongue, tinned pasta, tinned butter? You name it, the Famous Five probably had it for breakfast. Aside from global conflict and widespread sexism and casual racism and virulent homophobia and the never-ending hardship of poverty, they really were the best of times.
Because of these trends, my reading list is very much informed by the interests of nostalgia and frugality. Tired of the irony of complaining about e-readers on the internet, I have decided to take my fear of the decline of the book in hand. My approach is three-fold. Firstly: Oxfam Books, already a favourite, will be my shop of the year – ahead of the free p&p of Amazon. Secondly: I shall take my membership of my excellent local library to new levels; the classics will always be around on paper and I fear that I didn’t entirely grasp Kant the first time around. Thirdly, and most importantly, not a word of e-dissent shall pass my lips until every single book in my house is re-read at least once. This has the happy serendipity of meaning that my book list shall be made up predominantly of dusty children’s books.
Dr Who, bang on vogue as usual, combined both fashions with a fantastical Chronicles of Narnia-inspired Christmas special in December, and, whilst the North is battered with gale-force winds and furious hailstorms, who wouldn’t want to disappear into a land of magic and whimsy? I am a great and garrulous admirer of children’s literature. The authors are our earliest teachers and the lessons that they teach are the harshest we will ever learn. The laws of nature, that we know and yet choose not to directly look at as adults, are laid out in unflinching prose. Suffering, bravery, cunning, loss (lots of that), redemption and love all play prominent roles. We are taught how to deal with distress, but, more pertinently, we are taught to expect distress. In the tradition of the old fairy-tales we are shown how to meet adverse situations with intelligence and strength. We are also invited to laugh a lot. This is perhaps the most brilliant part. Children are discriminating consumers and their needs must be taken into account. Roald Dahl’s stories are nothing short of grisly and they often border on the vaguely sickening, but they are funny. This is why I shall be amongst good company this year. Twelve months of personable, loveable and hilarious stories. I can think of no better. And, when I run out of children’s books (sometime shortly before the 1st of January 2013), I can move onto my private canon written by my favourite children’s authors. Roald Dahl is still high up on that list with his deliciously tricksy Switch Bitch.
I suspect that this undertaking shall not be an easy one. I fully expect to get my heart thoroughly broken by Michael Morpurgo, as just the first of many stumbling blocks, and I fear that by the end I will be turning to Leo Tolstoy, Virginia Woolf and James Joyce for a little light relief. However, I hope that by the end of this challenge I will emerge a more discerning reader, and, more pertinently, someone who can take a biscuit out of my 40s-style tin with the feeling that I have earned my vintage stripes.
Leah Ellis
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