What my mother read!

[tobee]

My mother has always been a great reader. Since lockdown I've found myself reading books that she would have been given for birthdays and Christmases of my childhood!

If I could choose one author from my childhood that my mum read it would be Beryl Bainbridge and from when I was older Edith Wharton.

Just to add a bit more my nana would read PG Wodehouse and Francis Durbridge. My granny would read Mapp and Lucia and Miss Read.

So, if you were inspired by your mum or your grannies what would you be reading? And would you be enjoying their choices?

My mum was an English teacher so I grew up surrounded by books. She adored George Eliot and Henry James. She was a terrible book snob but we had the full set of the Whiteoaks books about Jalna. I read them all and loved them in my teens, partly because any attempt to smuggle in aa Mills and Boon was greeted by a lecture on the importance of Good Reading.

My mum loves George Eliot too (actually always made a point to call her Mary Ann Evans) I think because she came from Nuneaton which is Eliot-land isn’t it?

She also loves Daphne du Maurier.

My Gran had so many Catherine Cooksons and also so many Danielle Steeles! And about a million copies of Reader’s Digest, People’s Friend and Woman’s Weekly.

My mum is similar to me - reads widely and indiscriminately. We have fairly similar tastes but there are some authors she likes who I have never really got into (but keep thinking I should give them another try) - Dorothy L. Sayers, for example. She once said 'Gone with the wind' (Margaret Mitchell) was one of her favourite books but I could never get beyond the first chapter. So I would try again with Dorothy L Sayers for my mum-inspired choice.

My maternal grandmother wasn't much of a reader - she was very musical and spent all her free time playing, singing or listening to music.

My paternal grandmother liked long sagas such as 'The Thorn Birds'. She also subscribed to a magazine called 'My Weekly' (I think it still exists) that was mainly romantic short stories and serials. I'm not much of a magazine reader and I tend to find magazine stories a bit samey, though you get the occasional clever one, so I would stick to the sagas for my gran-choice and give 'The Thorn Birds' a try because I've never read it.

My mother is obsessed with really brutal and violent crime thrillers- usually where a woman has been raped and murdered. I can't cope with that.

My grandmothers....not sure although I know Lorna Doone was always in the bedside table when i went to visit one grandmother.

My grandmother was a regional and national newspaper reader, the Farmers Journal and Ireland's Own.
Farmers need to be politically aware, as the party in power, new agricultural minister etc directly affect their livelihoods. She didn't have time for pleasure reading, but could remember huge chunks of literature and poetry from her schooldays right up to her 90s.
My DM has much more highbrow taste than me Joyce, Dostoevsky etc
We have the middle ground of Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer and shared scorn for the self sabotaging over emoting Bronte characters

@bibliomania, I remember my Mother giving me a copy of The Female Eunuch when I was about 12. Was completely teenagerly grossed out by the idea of tasting my own period so it got flung aside!

SJane, it was the extract from Last Exit to Brooklyn, with a very graphic rape scene, that most disturbed me.

That’s understandable!

Just had a bath in an effort to try and warm up and was thinking what a nice thread this is and whether in turn I as a prolifically reading mother had inspired my own daughters reading?

In short, I don’t think so! My 26 year old reads a lot and well but virtually exclusively science fiction which I don’t at all. As for my 12 year old, if she does read at all it’s books about confused teenagers snogging. Or Wuthering Heights which her English teacher introduced her too. Which is its own way is another book about confused teenagers snogging!

Anyone else feel like they’ve more positively inspired their daughters?!

DD(13) isn't nearly as much of a reader as I was and am. She has sobbed her way pleasurably through The Fault in our Stars at least three times though.

I read way more than both my mother and grandmother but there are a few books we've shared; my gramma gave me the first few books from Jan Karon's Mitford series after she read them, I wasn't crazy about them but they bring back fond memories of her whenever I see them. My mother introduced me to James Herriot, whose books I do love and count as some of my favorite books ever; she, incidentally, was introduced to his books by her grandmother.

I'm not sure if I've positively inspired my now adult dd's book reading; she's got her own ideas. Although my mum is very good at choosing books for dd that dd seems to like.

Thinking about one of my great grandfathers, who must have been born in the late Victorian era, he was often found sat reading a book. When challenged as to why he wasn't taking a more active part in family life he famously replied "Someone's got to do the reading"

My mum passed away last year and was a big reader.

SHe did read a lot of Catherine Cookson and nurses in the war type books, which I didn't like, but she also enjoyed Harry Potter, Game of Thrones (but got fed up of it as the series progressed endlessly) PD Robb, Phillipa Gregory, Norah Lofts.
For comfort reading she loved the Just William books

The last books she read was the Cormoran Strike series.

I've no clue what my grandmother read, I never recall her reading anything except Bella magazine.

My mum's great love was literature, she talked about it a lot and encouraged us all to read as much as we could.

But. I don't ever remember her actually reading. I'm guessing after a day wranling us five children it must have happened after we were in bed.

When I was older she had lost her sight and had a lot of audio books via the RNIB but I'd left home by then so I don't know what they were. My older siblings might know, I'll ask them.

WERE the Cormoran Strike series

My grandmother really enjoyed crime fiction.

My mum died a few years ago and sometimes I read things that I think she would have loved this or found it interesting and wish I could share. I used to give her books as presents or pass things on, and some of them her husband would quite enjoy too, She liked literary and historical fiction, books about WWII, Irish literature, occasionally children's books (I discovered that she'd bought her own copies of 3 books from a Scandinavian children's series when I took my copies to London with me - she and my stepdad used to read them to my much younger brother and sister).She also liked interesting memoirs with a social history diimension - for example I persuaded her to try the original memoir Call the Midwife a few years ahead of it becoming a TV series. She enjoyed Elizabeth Jane Howard's Cazalet books when they were reissued.

For lighter reading she quite liked Maeve Binchy.

I was quite surprised to find that she'd taken up reading the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich but I think she appreciated the pure escapism (she was diagnosed with cancer which was never really cured so she was living with ill health for a lot of her last years -)

The only books I can recall reading that belonged to my mum was “Little Princess” - Marion Crawford, about The Royal family, and a biography about the Von Trapp family.

When visiting my grandparents, used to live reading old, dusty copies of Readers Digests.

Growing up, my next door neighbours Gran used to give up us Mills and Boons she’d finish with. As a teen, loved reading them (they were fairly innocent romances).

Like several other mothers here, my mum used to read the Mazo de la Roche series. I've just looked them up and didn't realise that they are set in Canada. I always thought they were located in South Africa. In the sixties I used to go to library by myself from the age of ten and she would ask me to bring a couple of books back for her from this series. Another title she didn't mind reading again was 'Sara Dane' by Catherine Gaskill. After she died I decided to read it for myself and for its time, it was quite enjoyable. Set in Australia, it involves the transportation of convicts.
Another author she liked was Anya Seton and on her recommendation, I read 'Katherine' as a teenager. Absolutely loved it.

Just remembered another author, Neville Shiite

Just been enjoying catching up on posters responses on this thread.

My father is a big reader but I can’t remember my mother ever reading anything. Certainly all the books in our house were my dads. His favourite book is “ Three Men in a boat “. He gave a first edition for my 21st birthday. He lives in New York and I haven’t seen him since this Covid thing hit. One of the things I’m looking forward to. I haven’t seen or spoken to my mother in years.

My mum only read stuff like Mills and Boon until I got her on 'genteel' murders! In her defence she did not read any Barbara Cartland - even she had standards. My aunt was a different matter stuff like Valley of the Dolls and some James Baldwin stuff too.

My dad loved sci fi and some thrillers.

Forgot to say! My Grandma loved horrors and used to read one every night!

My mother enjoyed biographies; most seemed to be about 19th century European royalty. My father read hefty tomes about Africa, never any fiction, though he claimed to have read Ivanhoe at the age of 7 and could quote favourite passages from Three Men in a Boat.

My granny always had a weighty tome positioned on the sofa - a lesser Dickens or Russian novel. One day my aunt lifted up a sofa cushion and revealed her stash of bodice rippers!

My mother never read anything except Woman's Realm and three daily newspapers. My father read two biographies a week. I went every Saturday with him to the library to collect his order. Ah, I loved the sound of the library stamp - thwunk - and those big thick plastic library tokens.