BOOKS AND THIS WRITERS

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17180, 25 October 1923, Page 11

BOOKS AND THIS WRITERS

?905TES BY “THE REVEWEK“

Anybody who imagines that the common mushroom he secs iu tne season is th© only fungus of its kind will learn better from an article in the September Chambers’s Journal; he may be surprised to find that there are noU less than twelve hundred European species. As usual the articles and stories are grave and gay. There is “ The Variation of Terrestrial Gravity,’ J and there is Andy Anderson of •‘“The Angler’s Rest” giving a sympathetic account of a unique Scottish worthy. British Sea Power is a rather pessimistic view of things as they are since the War. Man-Hunting deals with different national methods of crime-detection ; Greenland whales, Mason Wasps, South-West Africa are other subjects. The Tale of Tanjong Duri is a thrilling story of a German spy’s doings in Penang when the Linden came into the port. “ Y r O HE HO AND A CASE OF RUM.” “ The man at my side—-I could have had a thousand pounds, a good round sum for a shifting idler, by merely whispering his name into a trooper s ear . . . legends were round that name It was known over the Seven fik?*as* and in movst of their ports. Dead ©v alive, said the British Government . . f another European Government wanted him dead.” So you guess as you listen to the soliloquy of the shiftless idler in a Melbourne shanty bar, that Mr Gordon Young’s “Wild Blood ” is likely to supply interesting happenings. And it does. The South Seas are a shade overdone ; the 1 * pur-ple-plumaged islands ” of the ** brown maids,” and murderers have been utilised to the hackney power, but there is room for a romancer who can create “Hurricane” Williams, t© .say nothing of the woman who, prevailed upon by a callous English peer to contemplate the cold-blooded murder of her father, comes under the influence of the tiger Williams and takes a very prominent part in the drama, or of the narrator, runt-cull as he may be. A capital piece of work. Even those who know all about “Bully” Hayes won t bo disappointed. (London: I- r isher Unwin). «■ MORE THAN THE DUST. “ I never had any other desire so strong, and so like to covetousness as that one which I have had always, that I might be Master at last of a small house and a largo Garden, with very moderate Conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my Life only to the culture of them and study of Nature.” In this instance the Mistress of the garden speaks. The amateur pea-pars-ley-and portulacea-producer —if he or she has time—will revel in Mrs D. H. Moutray Read's “ One Garden, an intimate story of how by her own labour the “plot lydy,” after cultivating necessities on a Wimbledon/warplot, mad© a three-quarter acre section in Sussex that had gone back to wilderness “ blossom like the rose. Finance was short, but the gardener was enthusiastic and tireless; friends in Europe gave her plants and it she could not buy novel!ties sh© managed to beg, borrow or exchange th enactor the making of a garden that was “ the gardener’s daily .joy and occupation with beds arranged so that at any season they might offer a succession ot surprises and delights.” Mrs Read found, as most do, that gardening books' are unsatisfactory in omitting th© very details required; this book is not open to that objection, it is full of tips The author is practical, and is not without a sense of humour, nevertheless her plants are personalities, her “children of the garden not “ more items that make up tho garden” and “the nursery is arranged to suit the children.” The result was a place “of dear delights and colour and charm and most of all and best of all full filled with memories and fra<rrant records ©t my friends.” There are. plans and pictures of the garden at various stages, illustrations of loved floivers. The appendixes contain a Us„ of hardy flowers and a list of the flora, of “ one garden ” with local cultural notes and references to tl»e text. (London : AVilliams and Norgate). AN ASSIDUOUS RED FLAG REFORMER. Tho picture of the girl on the folder was one of the objects of his search, but she did not pan out as he expected. In fact hardly any person or thing did pan out as he expected and ho had a very rough spin did “ Samuel, the Seeker” whose experiences Mr Upton Sinclair details with verisimilitude—especially from a propagandist poult of view. Samuel, when he sets out from his village, isn’t properly warned, and is therefore considerably surprised when he finds that professing Christians are not necessarily followers of the Galilean in their business dealings. His family savings had been swallowed up in big business” reconstruction) and about tho first “ cold deal ” handed to Samuel robs him of his omy seventy dollars. While, he is learning what it is to be unemployed a Professor—subsidised by Lockman, the Captain of Industry, whose swindle ruined Samuel’s family—tells him that the rule of life being the survival of the fittest and he being obviously unfit, he must eliminate himself. Then one of the many coincidences favoured by Mr Sinclair enables Samuel to save the life of Lochman’s son and heir, who is a “ goer.” Samuel finds life increasingly unsimple and his persistent attempts to reform all and sundry bring upon him the fate of most moial reformers. Samuel sis a moving and Mr Sinclair—as might, be expected from the “Jungle” man —has produced a stirring indictment of childlabour and graft. (London : John Long). NAT IN THE 23RD MILLION* Of th© making of Gould stories there is apparently no end. “ Beating the Ravourit© ” the latest of tho late Nat Gould's racing romances starts with a man and a dog on the Murray River; the horses arrive at page 11, tho hypocrite, who lived a double life and was a sly drinker and a drug-taker under the influence of a vamp, arrives in the VI. chapter. Then there’s in Chapter IX. a description of the Melbourne Cup and in Chapter XXX. of the Caulfield <sup. The story goes with the plenitude of cross-plotting and surprises guaranteed by Nat Gould. (London : John Long). Sixty-seven thousand copies of Kipling’s books have been sold in Denmark- The “ Jungle Book ” is the Danes’ favourite. Mjss Mary Johnston has written a new novel dealing with the early settlement of Virginia. The book will shortly appear in America.

When a novel greatly succeeds it is always translated into foreign languages because a story that interests the book public of one country interests the book public of another. A French edition of Mrs Hull’s “ Sheik ” has oeen very popular, and the romance has also been translated into Dutch, Swedish, Danish and Spanish. Publishers of books in other languages are constantly writing to Mrs Hull, asking that they may be allowed to publish her story.

A WOMAN’S LIBRARY. An interesting sidelight on the problems of censorsnip is to be found in a current fiction and non-fiction library chat supplies books chiefly to business women at the Central Branch of the Y.W.O.A. in New York, states “The limes ” is a small library of not more than 500 volumes, owing to lack of space, and to reduce the a valanche of books poured forth by American publishers to a good representative halfthousand is no light task. Women writers, as one might expect, are especial lv well represented. 4 . feel wo must carrj' practically everything that has genuine literary merit and we do conscientiously, to eliminate the trash/ 7 said the diroct°r of the library. “ For instance, we find a great demand for good detective stories, especially among tho higher class of business and professional women. They tell us that they are too tired at night to read anything requiring mental effort, and that mystery stories are a great relaxation- “ People’s ideas of the desirable in literature differ so radically that it is practically impossible to please everyone. Hamsun, for instance, was frowned upon by one of our readers who found his 4 Growth of the Soil ’ a distasteful book. On Ln© other hand, we had many calls for the ‘ Sheik,’ which we did not feel justified in filling.” The library, established about a year ago, is a pioneer in that it handles only recent publications, differing from the regular libiarj-. “ There is no surer guide to a woman is thinking than her reaction to the books she reads, and modern books on questions of tho day, be they fiction or non-fiction, are a wonderful help Fn getting to know the girls and women who pass through the lobby of Central Branch at tho rate of 5000 k day,” said the librarian. “Time after time a woman whose life is crampei and uninspired will find a new world opened to her by such a hook as the letters of Walter Hines Page, now in great demand, or Well’s 4 Outline of History.’ Others come in longing for little friendly conversation and find that thev can make the subject of a book the opening wedge, from which to pass on to discussions of everything under the sun. hut particularly of the world we live in. That is the fascination of the currertt literature library.” WEATHER IN NOVELS. IT CANNOT BE LEFT OUT. You can write a short story without ever mentioning the matter of weather, but if you embark upon a. novel weather is a subject which you cannot well avoid. All writers of Shockers or of Action Stories of any sort are largely dependent for their effects upon atmospheric conditions. Road Rider Haggard, for instance. In every one of his books you find descriptions of weather, and in that story which many people consider the best of all his • novels, “ Jess,” the biggest scene of all is that of the great thunderstorm in which Jess and John are being driven to their death in the flooded river by the villain Frank Muller. South African thunderstorms are notoriously the worst in the world, and Mr Haggard knows them 113- actual experic nee. “It was an awful night. Great pillars of mud-coloured cloud came creeping across the surface of the veldt towards them, seemingly blown along without a wind. And now. too, * a ghastly-looking moon arose and threw an unholy distorted light upon the blackness that seemed to shudder in her rays as though with a prescience of the advancing terror.” Then at th© moment when Muller pressed them to dive into the flooding rives, pretending there was a ford. “Down right on them, its centre bowed out liko the belly of a sail by the weight of wind behind, swept the great storm cloud; while all over its surface the lightning played unceasingly, -appearing and disappearing in needles of fire. The distant muttering of thunder had died away, and now the great storm swept on in silent majesty . . . only before it sped the swift angels of the wind and behind it swung the curtain of the rain.” Another wonderful storm description is t© be found in Henry Kingsley’s halfforgotten story, “The Hillyars and the Burtons.” It is a West Indian hurricane of which he writes. Ho speaks of the “fog of stones and dust and sticks and boughs, nay even seaweed which must have been carried above a mile ; and fierce stinging rain which l thought was from above, but which was only the spray blown from the surface of the ocean a mile off.” Many of the Victorian novelists were accurate observers of weather conditions and portrayed them perfectly. Blackmore's description of the great frost in “Lorna Doone” rises at once to the mind; also Black’s of the terrific gale which ended the unhappy life of Macieod of Dare. Besant dwelt rather on the pleasanter side of things, and if you want a delightul description of a perfect .June day you will find it. in that charming book, “By Celia’s Arbour.” Conan Doyle rarely describes weather at any length, yet makes plenty of use of it, especially in the Sherlock Holmes stories. Nor does Kipling writ© long descriptions, but then he into a single sentence an impression which others would use a j>age to produce. I will just quote one instance from “Kim.” “And while they talked tho voices of th© snow water around them diminished one by one as the night frost choked and clogged tho runnels.”