"Rather dated"

[ImJustMadAboutSaffron]

I just finished reading a book, published in 1977, set either 1975 or 1976. I went on Amazon to look at some reviews (I know these are not worth reading, for the most part; often I have seen "Boring" or "Rubbish" as a "review") because sometimes there are some interesting ones.

Someone has written that the book is "rather dated". What do they expect 45 years later for heavens' sake???

I love those too!

also the Wheel of Time, Penmarric and Cashelmara

Oh, the nostalgia! Mary Wesley, anyone? I have read and loved most of the previous posters' offers.

Not really. They just wrote "Boring - depressed characters - etc. Rather dated, also."

I'd actually agree with The Road to Lichfield being a bit dated, even though I love Penelope Lively. Some of her later work (e.g. Moon Tiger) and children's fiction is genuinely timeless, but there's something about RtL that makes it feel like it doesn't quite work a few decades later. Jane Gardam is the same: Old Filth is timeless, but Faith Fox is dated. I think it's something to do with the social assumptions that are presented as universal, but were actually very much of their era. Jane Austin isn't dated because the behavoirs are guided by very fundamental human traits, within a social setting. In dated novels, behavoir is only governed by social setting.

I read Look at Me last year and found it quite painfully sad.

More good "rather dated" might include Margaret Drabble The Garrick Year.

And love Beryl Bainbridge too - my dm read most of those.

Possibly the dictionary definition of fabulous but "rather dated" are Barbara Pym novels.

I think a strong signifier of "rather dated" is characters drink driving and it not being remarkable.

And love Beryl Bainbridge too - my dm read most of those.

God I adore Beryl Bainbridge. One of my favourite authors.

lots of great recommendations here!

I agree that ‘rather dated’ is often code for sexist/racist/homophobic etc. On the flipside, a bugbear of mine is when historical fiction published now airbrushes these attitudes out, and has its heroines shaking their heads uncomprehendingly at them.

I have Sweet William somewhere on my shelves.

Yes, regarding datedness, while I'm a fan of Monica Dickens, she has a disgustingly antisemitic comment in the otherwise classic, Mariana. I was rather surprised in fact that Persephone Books chose it if all her books to republish.

This has made me decide to go through all my orange Penguins to see what I shall re-read. I still have the 1960 edition of Lady Chatterley.

Another 'rather dated' entry that's occurred to me - David Lodge. Another author who leans towards middle-class and academic folk, often through the lens of Roman Catholicism; some laugh out loud moments. My favourites are 'Ginger, You're Barmy' 'How Far Can You Go' 'Nice Work' and 'The British Museum is Falling Down'.

I'm a great fan of David Lodge too. Of course the most dated aspect for me as an academic is his depiction of campus life, though the machinations of management haven't changed that much, come to think of it .

The most recent David Lodge I read was a reasonably recent hardback, courtesy of the library, just before DS2, now 13, was born, so I can't believe it was so long ago. I didn't enjoy Deaf Sentence as much as his earlier work, especially the campus life swap stories which were great fun, but I did find the descriptions of the main character's thoughts useful, as he is an older man who is struggling with going deaf. I tried to think about how it might feel to be my mum's dh who was already struggling with hearing loss and aids in his later 60s, I think, and how I could not make things harder. That copy wasn't mine to lend but I did recommend it to my mum and her dh who both quite enjoyed it.

On whether novels are dated and how much it's still possible to enjoy reading them, and I love period pieces generally, what I do find startling is the attitudes in the 1970s to what were considered the best books - the lower proportion of women and writers of colour or in any way outside the Establishment. Although there were women and some not white men on award lists and judging panels, they were very much in a minority and tended to have broken through from similar backgrounds to their white male peers, eg through education (private/grammar school and Oxbridge) or occasionally via marriage.

Virago, the Women's Press and other explicitly feminist work in publishing and the book trade did start to change things slowly, but oh, they had sooo much work to do. And Lennie Goodings of Virago does acknowledge in her recent memoir that they didn't really question enough about publishing mostly white women, especially on their famous Classics list.

This is been the loveliest thread to read - I adore so many of the authors and books mentioned.

I don’t love reading fiction nowadays as much as I used to and I have always assumed it was me and where I was at. (Young children, mind can’t concentrate as well etc) Partly I’m sure it is but maybe it’s also I find it harder to engage with modern fiction. So many of the books mentioned - from the light to the more serious - were so easy to lose myself in.

Some contemporary fiction is so promising on the back cover but is just too dense to break into.

@SwapPlaces I totally agree. For the last year or so I’ve been combining reading these older women writers (a Barbara Pym tear got
me started there) with random contemporary stuff from the library, and it’s 90% the older books that have really grabbed me. Where I’ve enjoyed a more modern novel it’s been one along the same lines (Anne Tyler, Elizabeth Strout). Unfortunately a lot of the modern “light” reading is either so light as to be unbearably vacuous or yet another clumsy psychological thriller with absolutely no character development. It’s the characters in all of these novels that I like, and the evocation of a faded world.

I completely agree @AtomicBlondeRose. This thread has almost been a revelation to me.
I’ve missed reading fiction so much but every new book I start feels like a thing to persevere through… but as soon as I read these names and titles it was like a breath of fresh air.

Yes it’s the character development and the women focus, and the recognition of the ‘ordinary’ life.

i will look up Elizabeth Strout though, she sounds very good.

Penelope Fitzgerald and Margaret Forster are two more authors in this style.

Another for the list - Pamela Hansford-Johnson. I prefer her work to that of her more famous (but also rather dated) husband, CP Snow. I particularly like 'The Holiday Friend' and 'The Honours Board' but I haven't so far found any I dislike.

CP Snow himself is more hit-and-miss for me; there were some of the 'Strangers and Brothers' novels I struggled with or couldn't finish, but others that I've read over and over again. 'The Conscience of the Rich', 'The Masters' 'The Light and the Dark' and 'The Affair' are the novels I enjoy.

I read a lovely dated book called On Wings Of Love by Emma Woodhouse (really Cynthia Harrod-Eagles; she also calls herself Elizabeth Bennett!) Really evocative of living in the country in the 70s.

I remember enjoying a book of hers set during the Civil War - I think she wrote a lot of historical novels under the Harrod-Eagles name,

Perhaps we should have a separate thread of contemporary yet readable books... I'm stuck for example how many Booker winners in the past were both literary and readable, which is rarely the same of recent ones.

I agree - literary fiction does seem to be growing more impenetrable (or perhaps my brain is fermenting in middle-age ). I'm no snob and I'm happy to settle down with a commercial page-turner, but I dream of finding books that I want to go back to again and again, not just another one that goes to the charity shop once I've found out whodunnit.

Kazuo Ishiguro is one of the few contemporary writers I've found readable of late.

frustratedacademic, have you tried

• other award lists


• library and bookshop themed promotions and new books displays


• all the places online where you can get recommendations based on what books you have found readable with substance


• book discussion threads on various websites. Here I've found the 26 books and 50 books threads full of good ideas, and it really doesn't matter if you think you'll read 10 or 100 books this year on any of these. I also particularly like Librarything.com and its discussion forums - I also use Goodreads but really that's to see what online friends who I originally "talked to" elsewhere and in some cases have met in real life are reading. I have a particular personal grudge against GR and lots of people do like it

If you like Virago Modern Classics and other allegedly dated books from the 20th century and others, whether the writers died before you were born, are/were your mother's favourites (or other family and friends as applicable), or they are writers you discovered as a teenager or young person and have followed ever since, there are, for example, Virago Modern Classics collectors/readers' groups on FB (kind of led by the publisher but I think there's room for people to make what they want of it) and on Librarything.com.

There was a lot of open anti semitism in 20th Century culture, literature and society.

Also, I went to a polytechnic, that was well known for being radical and left leaning, in the 90s and took English Literature and I don't remember there being any non white authors or poets or playwrights on the syllabus. I do remember there being Irish writing modules and on the compulsory syllabus though.

There weren't many (any?) women playwrights on the syllabus either before the likes of Caryl Churchill.