Okay, we wrapped up the second book, The Man In The Wooden Hat, and had to blast down to the library to pick up Last Friends, the third in the set. Kim read book one aloud, I read book two aloud, and now we are alternating on this one. Yes, we still recommend these reads, and probably anything by Jane Gardam.
Tag: old filth
Books, Including Old Filth
So the Pew Research Center tells us that one in four American adults didn’t read a book in the last year. (I would have expected more non-readers than that, actually.) Anyway, that leads me to report that we are now well into the second of the Old Filth Trilogy, namely, The Man In The Wooden Hat, and this time I am the out-loud reader on the eye-friendly Kindle. The trilogy, btw, was written when its author was approaching or in her 70s and 80s. Here’s part of what Wikipedia has to say about Jane Gardam, who has to be one of the least-known great writers out there:
Jane Mary Gardam OBE FRSL (born 11 July 1928) is an English writer of children’s and adult fiction. She also writes reviews for The Spectator and The Telegraph, and writes for BBC radio. She lives in Kent, Wimbledon, and Yorkshire. She has won numerous literary awards, including the Whitbread Award twice. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2009 New Year Honours.[1]
Filth Defined
The question has arisen, and I apparently had neglected in my earlier post to explain. The “Filth” in Old Filth is actually an acronym popularly used by British civil servants, at least in the referenced novel: FILTH is “Failed in London, Try Hong Kong.”
So Far, So Good … Read On
Here at Chez H we have embarked on a new set of reading adventures, having completed Sarah Bakewell’s hard act to follow of At The Existentialist Cafe.
On my own, I am reading Bakewell’s earlier (2010) How To Live, a piece of non-fiction on 16th century essayist Michel de Montaigne. And loving it.
But we have also been searching for a good read-aloud book (following our success in that mode with Joseph Mitchell’s Up In The Old Hotel). Now we think we have found it in Jane Gardam’s Old Filth, fiction about a postwar retired English barrister and judge who was once a British Empire civil servant in Hong Kong.
A melancholy sort of comedy, I’d say, Old Filth might be worth a movie or series of BBC or Masterpiece Theatre ilk. This thing is the first in a trilogy, which we will happily move on to if it continues at this rate. You can hear an audio excerpt on this page, btw.