📚The Mumsnet 'Rather Dated' Book Group - All welcome to join📚

[Antarcticant]

Welcome to the Mumsnet 'Rather Dated' Book Group, where we will be reading and discussing fiction from the 1930s to the 1990s that would have been described as 'contemporary' in its day.

The best introduction to the 'rather dated' concept would be to read the wonderful thread which inspired this group:

www.mumsnet.com/talk/what_were_reading/4596284-rather-dated?reply=119670989

To summarise, a number of posters expressed disappointment that literature of the 20th Century is often dismissed as 'rather dated' because society has moved on from many of the values and lifestyles described.

We decided to create a reading group where the literary merits of such fiction can be appreciated, with any 'rather dated' elements being a point of interest rather than a reason to dismiss a novel.

We will be reading one book a month. Our first book, for September, will be the book that inspired the original thread:

The Road to Lichfield by Penelope Lively

Please do join the thread whether you want to take part in the discussion or just place mark to follow it.

Fellow Rather Dated people, please add anything important I might have missed!

(With huge thanks to ImJustMadAboutSaffron for the original thread and idea )

We could do both @Howeverdoyouneedme: March and April?

Seconded.

Those both sound great. I've wanted to read 'Miss Pettigrew' for ages.

I'd love to read it but I tried and sort of forgot about it and went on to something else. Would quite like to try again. But I'm up for all suggestions.

I’d love to read them. And I’ve just had another thought, for a future read …. Diary of a mad housewife by Sue Kaufman, if anyone fancied it?

Just a quick hello, will write more later xx

This does look good.

Fortnight in September is quite expensive on eBay...

I couldn't get into A Fortnight in September at all. If you like Kazuo Isiguro you'll love it though (I can't stand him).

I just read a gem from the 1930s - Strange Journey by Maud Cairnes. part of the British Library Women Writers series.

It is expensive isn’t it @Howeverdoyouneedme I’ve reserved it from the library, but that usually takes a long time unfortunately.

I think A Fortnight in September is my favourite book - but I was born in the 50s and it made me pine for a more simple life than now.

An Expendable Man by Dorothy B Hughes is a good story - recommended by Harriet Gilbert on A Good Read (Radio 4).

I’ll never tire of raving about An Expendable Man!

I've just read Dangerous Ages by Rose Macaulay, also from the British Library Women Writers series. Written in 1920, but a lot of it feels very modern. But other bits "rather dated".

Maybe March could Mrs Pettigrew. I’m in two minds about ‘Fortnight’ given the price of it.

You can order ‘Fortnight in September’ via a bookshop from Persephone Books for £11/14.

And here:
www.amazon.co.uk/Fortnight-September-Rc-Sherriff/dp/1906462224/ref=asc_df_1906462224/?tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=310877798537&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=9859282321390895708&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1006614&hvtargid=pla-562138297387&psc=1&th=1&psc=1

I just put The Fortnight in September in google shopping filter, it is strangely pricey. It's £7.99 on kindle but is that not in keeping with "rather dated" ?

I think it's because it's been reprinted by Persephone. Their books hold their value incredibly well, even second-hand.

I’d just got used to pay £3 on eBay! Happy to get.

I'm happy to try to take over thread-making, though I'm not sure I'm savvy enough to be able to build in all the links to our other threads that you've done so well. But I'm enjoying the Very Dated Bookclub, so wouldn't want it to fizzle out.

I've ordered Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day and A Fortnight in September, but I wasn't sure which - if either - we are reading first? I sensed from some of the responses that we were going with Miss Pettigrew first (so the thread for that opens on 1 March and we all contribute as we finish the book)?

Slightly dated -please!

Thanks Mother. Happy to do Mrs P in March.

I'm eagerly leaning in: the more Dated, the better.

I’ll probably sit out Miss Pettigrew as I read it for a book club fairly recently and I feel I’ve got everything out of it that I can, but happy to rejoin after that with TFIS, if that’s the next choice.

I looked up Miss Pettigrew and I like the sound of it. Looking forward* *to the discussion.

Please can I join? I'd love to read Miss Pettigrew.

Currewntly reading The Life and Loves of a She-devil by Fay weldon. May be a bit dated but it's quite powerful and acerbic and astute in places. funny too. It has a kind of robust - feminist? - energy I don't find in much modern writing - though I might be reading the wrong people.