Okay, here I am. It's been a really weird month, with my grandma Norma dying on the third, and then an extensive holiday(!) for me with family before her funeral on the twenty-eighth. She always wrote "granma" so I feel like adding the D is in fact going against her wishes, but it just looks different typed. It needs that D, at least here.
I feel strange posting about her. I think I've made maybe three posts so far - one showing a few pictures, one about her Vita Mahjong addiction, and one video about looking at the stuff in her flat - and yet it feels excessive, it feels like I'm making "dead grandma" my persona. Which is obviously hilarious. I guess it's just odd to say these things out loud for a bunch of random people, feels a bit weird to package this very personal stuff up into a little cute post for my darling followers. But, y'know, that's just one little bit of expression. One tiny slice. I kinda wish I could export some kind of brain cell that everyone could eat up and really know the whole My Grandma world. Thankfully, for you, such a technology has not yet come to fruition.
One of the things I did recently was look through a stash of her books. There were about seven boxes stuffed into my granddad's study, I had had two glasses of wine, and I craved the allergic reaction the myriad of ancient spores contained in those books would give me. So I spent a few hours looking at every book.
Norma had some interests that show up here massively - history and geography (she worked for the Scottish Geographical Society), birds, Scottish literature. She liked witchcraft, feminism, and mysteries. I particularly loved the back of this Poirot book:
I even found a postcard she must've given me in the mid-late '00s. It was wedged inside an anthology of Scottish Literature, and features a Pictish carving (another solid interest of hers).
So there's a lot to be gleaned from her book collection, and I found a few things - like a stack of 2003 issues of The Beano - that had belonged to me. Here is, for the sake of posterity, the full list:
Norma's Library
- The Shell Natural History of Britain - Edited by Maurice Burton
- Reader's Digest - Yesterday's Britain - The Illustrated Story of how we Lived, Worked, and Played
- R.L.S. - Stevenson's Letters to Charles Baxter - Edited by DeLancey Ferguson and Marshall Waingrow
- A History of the Scottish People 1560-1830 - T.C. Smout
- Townscape Painting and Drawing - J.G. Links
- The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club - Vol. XXXV part 2 - 1985
- Scenery and Antiquities of Mid-Lothian
- Origines Parochiales Scotiae - The Antiquities Ecclesiastical and Territorial of the Parishes of Scotland
- Victorian and Edwardian Edinburgh from old photographs - Introduction and commentaries by C.S. Minto
- A Book of Old Edinburgh - Compiled by Eileen Dunlop & Antony Kamm
- Edinburgh Past and Present - its associations and surroundings
- Pocket History of Scotland - Geddes & Grosset
- 1066 and All That - A Memorable History of England - W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman
- Letters from a Scottish Village - Elisabeth Macpherson
- An Anthology of Pieces from Early Editions of Encyclopaedia Britannica - 1963(?)
- Edinburgh and its Neighbourhood - Hugh Miller
- Leith Lives - Memories at Work - A look at employment between the wars
- Leith Lives - The Old Kirkgate
- Keith Brockie's Wildlife Sketchbook
- Scotland Bloody Scotland - The Baron of Ravenstone
- Bartholemew's Pocket Plan of Edinburgh and Suburbs
- Children of the Dead End - Patrick MacGill
- Waiting for Zebras - Nancy Somerville
- Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character - Ramsay
- A Companion for Wood's Town Atlas
- The Outlook Tower Association - The Royal Burgh of Edinburgh
- The Capital of Scotland - Moray McLaren
- The Earth Shall Blossom - Shaker Herbs and Gardening - Galen Beale and Mary Rose Boswell
- Cultural Action for Freedom - Paulo Friere
- Sciennes and the Grange - Malcolm Cant
- Restalrig Parish Church - A Short Account of its History and Traditions - by the Rev. Robert Black Notman, B.D.
- Leith Lives - "It Wisnae A' Work"
- Gorgie and Dalry - Malcolm Cant
- Nelson's Picture Geography - The British Isles - E.M. Sanders
- Scottish Art Review - Special Ethnographical Number 2/6
- Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland - I - 1473-98.
- Stories of King Arthur's Knights Told to the Children
- Scotland Illustrated
- Map of Soviet Central Asia & Kazakhstan
- The Far Side Gallery 5
- The Ecclesiastical History of the English People - Bede
- Adult Learning Project programme 95/96
- A Colour Guide to Clouds - Richard Scorer and Harry Wexler
- Glencolumbkille - 3000 B.C. - 1885 A.D. - Aidan Manning
- Serendipity - A free book of 20 extracts to wet(sic) your appetite
- The House with the Green Shutters - George Douglas
- The Last Days of Pompeii - Lord Lytton
- Diary of a Country Parson - Woodforde
- American Geographical Society - Russia - Around the World Program
- Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats - T.S. Eliot
- The Forth Naturalist & Historian - Volume 8 1983/4
- We'moon '94 - Gaia Rhythms for womyn - cycles
- The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding - Agatha Christie
- Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
- Dubliners - James Joyce
- The Quarry Wood - Nan Shepherd
- Mr Wu & Mrs Stitch - The Letters of Evelyn Waugh & Diana Cooper - Edited by Artemis Cooper
- Far Flies the Eagle - Evelyn Anthony
- English Letters of the XVIII Century - Edited by James Aitken
- Captain Beaky - Jeremy Lloyd - Illustrated by Keitch Mitchell
- QI Annual MMIX
- Chambers - Buildings and Landmarks of Edinburgh - Michael T.R.B. Turnbull
- Chambers - Scottish Superstitions - Raymond Lamont-Brown
- The Lost Lights of St Kilda - Elisabeth Gifford
- Mytho-Poeikon - The Paintings, Etchings, Book-Jacket & Record-Sleeve Illustrations of Patrick Woodroffe
- the Forth Naturalist and Historian - University Jubilee Issue - Volume 16
- The Little Book of Fred - Rupert Fawcett
- The Story of Helen Duncan - Alan E. Crossley
- Before the Poison - Peter Robinson
- Radical Scotland - Kenny MacAskill
- edinburgh tales - a collaborative
- Chambers - Scottish Gardens - Joyce and Maurice Lindsay
- Bringing Back Some Brightness - Association of Scottish Literary Studies
- The Bridge - Iain Banks
- Diaries of a Dying Man - William Soutar
- Lying Awake - Catherine Carswell
- The Spotted Dog & Other Stories - Anthony Trollope
- The Heart of Mid-Lothian - Sir Walter Scott
- Britain's DNA Journey - Our Remarkable Genetic Story - Alistair Moffat
- Chambers - Monuments and Statues of Edinburgh - Michael T.R.B. Turnbull
- The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
- Agricola and Roman Britain - A.R. Burn
- Sophie's World - Jostein Gaarder
- A Lost Lady of Old Years: A Romance - John Buchan
- The Macdermots of Ballycloran - Anthony Trollope
- Castle Rackrent - Maria Edgeworth
- Nature's Child - John Lister-Kaye
- Historic Corstophine and Roundabout
- History & Antiquities of St. Leonard's
- The Home Herbal - A Handbook of Simple Remedies - Barbara Griggs
- Glencoe and the Indians - James Hunter
- Memorable Edinburgh Houses - Wilmot Harrison
- The Suicide Club and Other Stories - Robert Louis Stevenson
- Rob Roy - Scott
- Cautionary Verses - H. Belloc
- Janus in the Doorway - Douglas Guthrie
- Rebus 20 - Exclusive Souvenir Paperback celebrating 20 years of Inspector Rebus - The Scotsman
- The Statistical Account of Scotland
- Life of a Scottish Naturalist - Samuel Smiles
- The Second Flowering of Emily Mountjoy - Joan Lingard
- All Change - Elizabeth Jane Howard
- Northumberland & Durham - Thomas Sharp
- For The Women They Were. From The Women We Are. - Womanzone
- Leith Lives - Schooldays
- Edinburgh's West End - A Short History
- A West Lothian Miscellany - West Lothian History and Amenity Society
- Fergusson, A Bi-centenary Handsel (1974)
- Pococke's Tours in Scotland
- Gardening in a small space - The Royal Horticultural Society
- The Old Red Sandstone - Hugh Miller
- Saint Margaret - Edited by Iain MacDonald
- Penguin 60s Classics - Tales of Cú Chulaind - Irish Heroic Myths
- Penguin Classics - Lives of the Saints
- Picturesque Edinburgh - Katherine F. Lockie
- The Geology Around Edinburgh / The Geology of the District around Edinburgh
- The Port of Leith Handbook (1924)
- Edinburgh in its Golden Age - W.K. Ritchie
- Transactions and Proceedings of the Perthshire Society of Natural Science - Volume VI
- The Wildlife of Dalry Community Park (leaflet)
- Memorials of His Time - Lord Cockburn
- My father is the wise man of the village - Explorations in collaborative practice
- Two Worlds - David Daiches
- Knowing Your Grandfather - Joseph William Wilson 1879-1958 - Malcolm Cant
- The Laird of Restalrig's Daughter: A Legend of the Siege of Leith - John Harrison
- Excursions illustrative of The Geology and Natural History of the Environs of Edinburgh - William Rhind
- Old Edinburgh Beaux & Belles - William Paterson, Publisher (1886)
- The First Book of The McFlannels - Helen W. Pryde
- The Road to Mingulay - A View of the Western Isles - Derek Cooper
- The Wee Scotch Piper - Madeline Brandeis
- Strange Tales of Old Edinburgh - Ian Ansdell
- Pepys' Diary and Correspondence
- Donald's Dive - MacNib
- A Hundred Years in the Highlands - Osgood Mackenzie
- Tales and Sketches - Hugh Miller
- George V and Edward VIII - handwriting inside: "Thomas Burgess / 2. Garden City / East Calder"
- Scotland's Scrap of Paper - Full text of Treaty of Union of 1707 - The Scots Secretariat
- National Gallery of Scotland - David Baxandall
- An Historical Atlas of Scotland c.400-c.1600 - Edited by Peter McNeill and Ranald Nicholson
- Views in Edinburgh and its Vicinity - Drawn and engraved by J. & H.S. Storer
- Directory of Gentlemen's Seats, Villages, &c. in Scotland
- Local Heroines: A Women's History Gazetteer to England, Scotland and Wales - Jane Legget
- A Hundred Years in the Highlands - Osgood Mackenzie (double!)
- Strange Island - Britain Through Foreign Eyes 1395-1940 - Compiled and edited by Francesca M. Wilson
- Contemporary Review October 1989
- The Wee Yellow Butterfly - Cathy McCormack with Marian Pallister
- My Past and Thoughts - The Memoirs of Alexander Herzen - The Authorized Translation - Translated from the Russian by Constance Garnett (1924)
- The Charm of Edinburgh - An Anthology - Compiled by Alfred H. Hyatt (1908)
- The Golden Bough - Sir James Frazer
- I Never Knew That About Scotland - The Scotsman - Christopher Winn
- Longfellow's Poems
- Poetic Gems - William McGonagall
- From Margaret to Mary - A Herstory walk of the Royal Mile - Rose Brown (booklet)
- The Scottish Historical Review - Volume I.II, 2: No. 154: October 1973
- The Changing Land - A Look at the Primordial
- The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists - Robert Tressell
- The Faber Book of Fevers and Frets - Edited by D.J. Enright
- British Calendar Customs - Scotland - Banks - Vol. I. Movable Festivals / Harvest / March Riding and Wapynshaws / Wells / Fairs
- ENACT for women - The Third Annual Women's Festival Celebrating Women's Achievements - 6th-16th March 2002 (leaflet)
- Three Days That Shook Edinburgh - Story of the Historic Scottish Hunger March - Harry McShane
- The Scottish Geographical Magazine (September 1934)
- Edinburgh and its Neighbourhood - Geological & Historical - Hugh Miller
- Cranford - Elizabeth C. Gaskell
- Royal Edinburgh - Mrs Oliphant
- A Journey to Edenborough in 1705 - Taylor
- Celebrating the Life and Times of Hugh Miller - Scotland in the Early 19th Century - Edited by Lester Borley
- Picts - Anna Ritchie
- The Silent Traveller in Edinburgh - Chiang Yee
- Ben Peach's Scotland - Landscape Sketches by a Victorian Geologist
- The Forth Valley - George Dott
- Columba - The Man and the Myth - Mitchell Bunting
- Roll of Edinburgh Burgesses - 1406-1700
- A Highland Chapbook - Tales of Scottish Folklore - Stories of Omens, Charms, and Curses, Witches, Magic, and the Evil Eye - Isabel Cameron
- Tocher (28) - Tales Songs Tradition - Selected from the archives of the School of Scottish Studies
- Poems, Fables, Dramatic Sketches and Songs - Book of the Carlops Festival - Allan Ramsay
- Self and Others - R.D. Laing
- Ancient Scottish Weapons - Scottish Art Review Special Number 2/6
- Buildings of the Scottish Countryside - Robert J. Naismith
- 100 Years in Pictures - A Panorama of History in the Making - with text by D.C. Somervell
- Edinburgh as it was - Volume II - The People of Edinburgh - Norma Armstrong
- Thames and Hudson - A Concise History of Scotland - Fitzroy Maclean
- The Prince in the Heather - The Story of Bonnie Prince Charlie's Escape - Eric Linklater
- The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club - Issued to Members November 1959
- The Union of England and Scotland
- A History of English Literature - Peter Quennell
- Works of Fancy and Imagination - George MacDonald - Vol. II.
- Anne Frank - The Diary of a Young Girl
- My Friend Flora - Jane Duncan
- My Friend Rose - Jane Duncan
- East Calder and Wilkieston Gala Week Official Programme 5th-11th June 1983 (leaflet)
- The Letters of Charles Lamb - Volume two
- Leaves from the Life of a Country Doctor (Clement Bruce Gunn, M.D., J.P.) - Edited by Rutherford Crockett
- Letters from my Windmill - Daudet
- Chambers - Book of Days - A Miscellany of Popular Antiquities in Connection with the Calendar
- The Bertrams - Anthony Trollope
- The Adventures of Peter Williamson - Frances McDonnell
- A Child's Garden of Verses - Robert Louis Stevenson - Illustrated by Mary Shillabeer
- A Gift from the Gallowgate - An Autobiography - Doris Davidson
- Then and There - A hundred years of medical care - Alan Delgado
- A Journal of the Plague Year - Daniel Defoe
- Proceedings of The Alloa Society of Natural Science and Archeology (1865) - handwriting inside: "A. Thompson / July 1866"
- Scottish Connection - The Gardener's Scotland - Dawn MacLeod
- The Edinburgh Police Register 1815-1859 - Edited by Peter Ruthwen-Murray
- Works of Fancy and Imagination - George MacDonald - Vol. VII.
- Scotland and The Scotch - Catherine Sinclair
- Edinburgh and its Society in 1838. In Six Parts. - Sebaldus Naseweis, Esq. (1838, surprisingly!)
- Letters of Mrs. Gaskell and Charles Eliot Norton - 1855-1865 - Edited by Jane Whitehill
- A Concise Boswell - The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - James Boswell (1946)
- Pliny Letters - Revised by W.M.L. Hutchinson (1940)
- Herodotus Stories and Travels - Edited by Guy N. Pocock M.A.
- Philips' Handy Administrative Atlas of Scotland - Edited by George Philip, F.R.G.S.
- Using Pastels - Joan Scott
- The Lisle Letters - Edited by Muriel St. Clare Byrne
- A New View of Society - R. Owen
- The Leaves of Spring - Schizophrenia, Family and Sacrifice - Aaron Esterson
- National Gallery of Ireland - Illustrations of the Paintings (1951)
- Visit Soviet Uzbekistan (leaflet)
- Bob Bushtail's Adventure
- The Kings and Queens of Scotland
- A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle - Hugh Macdiarmid
- Marking Time - Elizabeth Jane Howard
- The Cat That Could Open the Fridge - Simon Hoggart
- Historical Guide to the Abbey and Palace of Holyrood - Collected by Henry Courtoy
- The Naming of the Dead - Ian Rankin
- Scottish & Other Miscellanies - Thomas Carlyle
- The Complete Sketching Book - John Hamilton
- Cranford - Elizabeth Gaskell (double!)
- Scotland Before 1700 from Contemporary Documents - Hume Brown
- The Story of the Forth - Cadell
- Old Wives' Lore for Gardeners - Maureen & Bridget Boland
- Geological Excursion Guide to the Glasgow District - D.A. Bassett
- Hooray for Holyrood - Political cartoons by Frank Boyle
- The Robert Louis Stevenson Companion
- The Land Out There - A Scottish Land Anthology - Edited by George Bruce
- Growing Up in New Guinea - Margaret Mead
- The Making of Scotland: Nation, Culture & Social Change - David McCrone, Stephen Kendrick and Pat Straw
- Savour of Scotland
- Scenes from Northumbrian History - William Bell Scott
- Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt - C.S. Sonnini
- A Guide to Holyrood Park and Arthur's Seat
- The Life of Samuel Johnson - James Boswell (double!)
- The new small garden - Lady Allen of Hurtwoord F.1.L.A. and Susan Jellicoe
- Original Prints - Volume II - New Writing from Scottish Women - Introduction by Elspeth Davie
- Edinburgh's Legendary Underground City - The Town Below the Ground - Jan-Andrew Henderson
- Between the Muchle Cheviot and the Sea - David Hay
- Stanford's Geological Atlas of Great Britain and Ireland - Edited by H.B. Woodward, F.R.S. (fourth edition)
- The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club - thirty-second volume (1966)
- The Raiders and The Lilac Sunbonnet - S.R. Crockett
- Schott's Original Miscellany - Ben Schott
- Ghosts and Marvels - A Selections of Uncanny Tales from Daniel Defoe to Algernon Blackwood - V.H. Collins
- North and South of Tweed - Jean Lang
- The Wrecker - Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
- Story of Scotland in Stone - Ian C. Hannah
- Beyond the Highland Line - Highland History and Culture - Caroline Bingham
- The Rocks & Minerals of the World
- The Social Life of Scotland in the Eighteenth Century - H. Grey Graham
- Sunset on the Clyde - The Last Summers on the Water - Duncan Graham
- Robert Burns and his World - David Daiches
- ROSC Review of Scottish Culture - Number 5 1989
- Reader's Digest / National Trust - Nature Notebooks - Ornamental Trees
- An Exile's Eye - The Photographs of Wolfgang Suschitzy
- Rebus's Scotland - Ian Rankin - A Personal Journey - Photographed by Tricia Malley and Ross Gillespie
- Adventures of Tammy Troot - Lavinia Derwent
- History Matters - A Separate World - Britain in the Middle Ages: 1066-1500 - Rosemary Kelly
- Glasgow Since 1900 - Ninety Years of Photographs
- Patrick Ferguson 'A Man of Some Genius' - M.M. Gilchrist
- Newnes' Motorists' Touring Maps and Gazetteer of Scotland
- Debrett's Guide to Tracing your Ancestry
- History of the Burgh of Canongate with notices of the Abbey and Palace of Holyrood - John Mackay
- The Birds of the British Isles and their Eggs - T.A. Coward, M.B.O.U.
- Twenty Years A-Growing - Maurice O'Sullivan
- Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry - Thomas Tusser
- Scenes and Legends of The North of Scotland; or, The Traditional History of Cromarty - Hugh Miller (1885)
- The Diary of A Canny Man 1818-1828 - Adam Mackie - farmer, merchant and innkeeper in Fyvie - Compiled by William Mackie
- Scotsmen in the service of The Czars - Ian G. Anderson
- Unbeaten Tracks in Japan - Isabella Bird
- Stories - George MacDonald
- Eastern Approaches - Fitzroy Maclean
- Chambers's Biographical Dictionary
- The Scottish Review - The Scot Abroad
- Edinburgh - An Illustrated Architectural Guide - Charles McKean
- Carlyle's French Revolution
- Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides - Heinemann
- Soviet Art
- The Story of Scotland - F. Fraser Darling
- Twentieth-Century Scotland - A Pictorial Chronicle 1900-2000 - Edited by Martin Hannan and Donald MacLeod
- Proposals for Public Works in Edinburgh
- Memories, Grave and Gay - Dr. John Kerr
- Scotland in the Thirties - Rudolph Kenna
- Mackenzie's Guide to Edinburgh
- Edinburgh - A Symposium - University of Edinburgh
- Our Noble Families - Thomas Johnston
- My Schools & School Masters - Hugh Miller
- Life and Letters of Edgar Allen Poe - John H. Ingram
- Witch Hunt - The Great Scottish Witchcraft Trials of 1697 - Isabel Adam
- Maureen Sinclair's Games A Bogie
- A Forest Seen Through the Belly of a Dinosaur - Poems by Colin Donati (leaflet)
- The Diary of Fanny Burney
- Five Red Herrings - Dorothy L. Sayers
- Trilby - George Du Maurier
- Malleus Maleficarum - The Classic Study of Witchcraft
- The Stickit Minister - S. R. Crockett
- A Century of Pleasures Pastimes and Service
- The Iron Mills at Cramond - Patrick Cadell
***
Phew! Was I tempted to issue myself the challenge of reading through all of these (or most of them)? Yes. But I have the good sense to dimiss my own most feverish ambitions. I will pick some to read, though. Sooner or later.
Finally, here are the covers of a few favourites:
