Yes, after more than two years of reading a book a month, I finally finished reading all of Angela Thirkell’s Barsetshire novels in order. That’s 29 of them! A few brave folks at least kept up with me by reading and or by commenting on one or more of my reviews.
- Brona of Brona’s Books
- Silvia Cachia
- Davida Chazan
- Christine of All the Vintage Ladies
- Liz Dexter of Adventures in Reading
- Penelope Gough
- Gypsi
- Helen of She Reads Novels
- The Readable Word
- Renee
- Anne Roy
- Sue
- Mary Taylor-Lee
- Simon Thomas of Stuck in a Book
- Yvonne of A Darn Good Read
I hope I didn’t forget anyone.
Having finished this project (yay!), I thought I’d wrap up by making a few points about the project in general:
- Was the project worth it? In a way. Before I started it, I had been reading the books arbitrarily, when I came across them, and I think I had read eight or nine of them before. However, attacking them in this way, I would have vague ideas that I had seen characters before but could seldom remember much about them or their relationships with other characters. Reading the books in order helped with this a lot. Some characters who recurred in almost every book became very familiar to me and I could remember others easily. However, I wished I had made a spreadsheet for myself from day one to note relationships and what I knew of each character, it got that complicated, especially toward the end when Thirkell seemed to introduce characters out of the blue and for only one book.
- Were the books written before and during the war really the best ones? That’s the common understanding, but I think they kept up their quality longer than that. In answer to this question, I would say that the last four or five books weren’t quite up there with the rest.
- What is the effect of reading one a month? Reading one a month does have the problem that you get a little tired of Thirkell’s tropes. She has character types that reappear and she has conversations that keep repeating. Also, she does remind you of things that happened to the characters, but towards the end, she brings these things up more than once a book. I think if you were reading one book a year, as you would if you read them as they were released, this wouldn’t bother you as much as if you are reading one a month. In fact, the reminders of what happened to the characters in previous books would be helpful.
- Did the last book being finished by someone else matter? Maybe not. The only difference I could detect were a few conversations, especially at the birthday party, that didn’t seem as clever as usual. Otherwise, I really couldn’t see much difference. However, I have no idea how finished this novel was before Thirkell died. If anything, I would say that there were fewer things repeated in the same book, a problem I had been running into for the last three or four books.
- Were there things I didn’t like about the books? Yes, there were quite a lot of comments that we now consider politically incorrect, especially toward the end of the series. At first, I just put them down to the times, but after a while, they seemed to get worse. There were some racist expressions, despite there being no actual nonwhite characters, and a lot of classist attitudes.
- What is valuable about this series? Even though it is set among privileged characters, it is a chronicle of the changes to society that were caused by the war and its aftermath.
- Who were my favorite characters? Lady Emily, Lucy Marling, Miss Merriman, Wicks, Lord and Lady Pomfret (Gillie and Sally Foster), Lord Stoke, Gradka, whom I at first found irritating, but afterwards made me laugh as soon as she appeared.
Anyway, I’m glad that I finished this project and am glad to be finished with it!
What? Me Read? 
Congratulations on finishing this. I’ve still only read the first two books but am hoping to read the next one soon. I enjoyed the two that I read but couldn’t have kept up with reading one every month!
I imagine that was the problem for a lot of people, plus some readers in England were unable to get the post-war books cheaply. Oddly, they are readily available here. I thought since there were 29 of them that if I didn’t read one a month, I wouldn’t finish the project. Thanks!
My pleasure, my dear, and BRAVA for mounting this challenge and keeping to it so faithfully.
Thanks!
I shared so many of your thoughts after finishing the series. One thing I’d like to see are family trees. I know they’d be complicated with all of the inter-marrying, but I think they would have helped me to keep the characters straight, particularly in some of the larger and more heavily featured families.
I had the exact same feelings on Gradka. I think she is definitely a character who works best in small doses.
I’m glad I happened across your project while I was still reading this series. Thanks for making my reading experience of the Barsetshire books even better!
What a nice compliment! Thanks for joining!
I’m waiting for Three Score and Ten—finally found an inexpensive copy. As for the rest, I’m glad I read the series. And I agree pretty much with your comments. The two things that I found constantly irritating was the pressure to marry, marry, marry—and the condescending comments about the villagers. You’d think they were all simpletons and sluts.
I find the last books, for the most part, VERY appropriate for bedtime reading—it’s like being at a garden party of senior citizens where you don’t have to listen much because you KNOW what they’re going to say. And it puts me to sleep without any trouble at all! I’m not sure what that says about the plots, or lack thereof, but at least I won’t be sent to dreamland with a bloody dead body!
Thanks for the fun!
You’re welcome! I agree about the villagers. On your other point, I didn’t really feel there was that much pressure to marry, marry marry. I felt like people wanted to get married. It was Thirkell’s idea of a happy ending, although not always completely happy.
Congratulations – a feat of willpower! I find with any author that I get tired of them if I read their books too close together, but on the other hand it does mean that events from previous books are still fresh in the mind. I still have book one on my wishlist…
It did turn out to be sort of a feat of willpower by the end. I was just determined to finish!
Now you’ll need to set yourself a new challenge… 😉
Yes, I know. Maybe not right away. I’m trying to think of either a series I haven’t read or an author with a lot lower level of output.
Well done! I read them more sporadically than you did once I had them in the right order, and I think something between how I read them and one per month would have been ideal. I agree that their worth lies in seeing the changing attitudes towards and through the war.
I think you’re right that one a month is too much. Maybe something like every three months would have been idea, but then the project would have taken seven years! Yikes!