logophilia

The lies we tell...

2009-03-05T10:30:00.002Z

...and Happy World Book Day*! I spotted this piece in today's Guardian about the poll conducted to tie in with this year's WBD. Rather than being about the most popular books people read it's actually about the books most people pretend to have read. George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four tops the list as the the book most people lie about having read (42%), followed by Tolstoy's War and Peace (31%), James Joyce's Ulysses (25%) and the Bible (24%).

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one guilty of lying about having read books to look well-read (see here for what some celebrities' have lied about). For instance, in spite of reading quite a few of Orwell's books, I've never even tried to read Animal Farm. But I act like I do. I blame watching the animated version as a child. It's given me enough knowledge to not actually feel the need for the original story (which is why, as an adult, I try to read the book before I see the film!).

I also lied about reading Tolstoy's Anna Karenina for years, as a friend at university just loved it and assumed no one could make it onto a undergrad literature degree without having read and loved it too. I did enjoy it when I finally read it about 4 years ago and hope to enjoy War and Peace just as much when I finally crack the cover on the copy that's been sitting on my shelf for the past 3 years!

While I've never lied about Ulysses - I read it at the age of 19 to shut up a fellow student who seemed to have based his whole reading identity on having actually finished it - I'd like to read it again, but this time with time to savour it properly. But I have lied about Oscar Wilde. I've never read anything beyond the excerpt from The Ballad of Reading Gaol that appeared on my Irish Writers' poster as an adolescent yet always acted like I had whenever Wilde came up with friends over the years.

I think the Bible's a funny choice to include, as I don't think many people actually read the Old Testament and New Testament cover to cover anymore. I've read all of the New Testament, but have definitely only read the "interesting" books of the Old Testament and have no particular desire to round out my reading with things like Micah or Haggai.

The survey also covered some reading habits like whether you turn down corners to mark your place or use a bookmark. The children's writer Francesca Simon is quoted in the Guardian's article as saying turning down pages is like mutilation, which I think is a tad extreme. I do both, with a preference for bookmarks, but then I don't consider the book itself as an animate object. I'm more concerned with the words themselves so I reserve my concern for mutilation of the censorous sort!

*to the UK and Ireland only, which for some reason celebrates WBD in early March when the rest of the world celebrates World Book and Copyright Day on 23 April, Cervantes' birthday.

Friday miscellany

2009-02-27T17:16:00.003Z

Anyone who also visits Mark Thwaite over at ReadySteadyBlog will know that the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize was announced this week (Mark is one of the judges). One of my unofficial reading goals for 2009 is to read more fiction in translation so I’m happy with anything that gives me more of a clue about what’s out there. I’ve recently read two of the books on it (The Armies and How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone), both excellent but of which I preferred How the Solider Repairs the Gramophone. I’m happy to see it on here, as I think it’s a book that deserves to be much more widely read. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that it makes it to the short list. I’ll also try and write up my thoughts on The Armies at some point.

This week also the announcement of the winner of the inaugural Warwick Prize for Writing - Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine. I found out from Stephen Mitchelmore over at This Space (one of the judges) that one of my current reads The Art of Political Murder by Francisco Goldman was the runner-up. Although Stephen didn’t notice any coverage for this book it did win the 2008 Index on Censorship Book Award, which is how I heard about it. So far so good, but I'll write up my thoughts properly once I've finished it.

But back to business with my thoughts on Fethiye Cetin’s My Grandmother: A Memoir (introduction and translation by Maureen Freely). I read this slim book in one sitting and very much enjoyed this spare but powerful story of how one woman survived the Armenian genocide in Turkey. I’d recommend it for anyone looking for a personal insight into an often overlooked area of history.

As a child growing up in provincial Turkey, Fethiye Cetin knew her grandmother Seher as a loving, resourceful Turkish housewife at the heart of the family. This selfless woman thinks only of others and is available to all, acting as the provider of everything from "candles for the newborn to coffins for the dead". But as Fethiye gets older she slowly realises that this stalwart of her family and community has a story more extraordinary than anything she can imagine.

For most of her life, Seher's true identity as a Christian Armenian has been suppressed. She was born Heranus, to a well off family eventually caught up in the events of the genocide. After witnessing a massacre, Heranus is forced onto a death march in 1915 with her mother and brother. Both herself and her brother are ripped away from their mother, given Muslim names and sent to live and work in different Turkish households. As Seher (as she's now called) grows up, the memories of her true family and identity stay with her. But, for her own safety and the safety of her family, she keeps them hidden. Her tragic story is made even more moving by her knowledge that her parents managed to reunite in America, to be joined by her brother after his escape from Turkey. She lives, and eventually dies, with the knowledge that her remaining family continued to live many thousands of miles away from her.

Once Seher reveals her secret to her granddaughter, Fethiye discovers that her family’s true history acts as a microcosm of one aspect of the formation of modern Turkey. But politics doesn't interfere with the telling of what is ultimately a story about the strength of the human will. Maureen Freely's introduction also contextualises the story, reminding the reader how courageous Cetin is to write this story, in a country that not only doesn't acknowledge the genocide but also has severe repression of free expression.

How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone - Saša Stanišic

2009-02-24T15:41:00.002Z

At the heart of Saša Stanišic's debut novel lies the real massacre of Muslim Bosniaks by their Serbian neighbours in the Bosnian town of Višegrad in 1992. The events are refracted through the eyes of the adolescent narrator Aleksandar Krsmanovic. Aleksandar wants to become as good a storyteller as his paternal grandfather Slavko by taking his grandfather's advice to "imagine the world better than it is". Using this child's perspective, Stanisic takes his readers on a tremendously imaginative journey through Aleksandar's childhood, as Tito's Communist dream finally turns to ash, though his adolescence, as ethnic tensions start to build, to his young adulthood, returning from exile in Germany to compare his memories to reality.

Slavko's death at the start of the novel is the young Aleksandar's first opportunity to flex his imaginative muscles, with an attempt to magic his grandfather back to life using the magician's hat and wand his grandfather had given him. But in spite of his childish belief in his powers, and in his grandfather's belief in him, this is Aleksandar's first taste of the futility of the imagination in the face of incontrovertible reality.

Aleksandar tries so hard to imagine a better world, in which his beloved river Drina can speak and his neighbours and relatives' stories co-mingle with his own like the Drina's tributaries joining her waters. His repeated desire to magically alter reality - "If I were a magician who could make things possible..." - becomes a moving reminder of how nothing can undo the events that overtook his life. Because just like the river, and just life life, his stories must move relentlessly forward.

At the emotional heart of the story is Aleksandar's protection of a Muslim girl with the "wrong" name. He and the girl, Asija, are playing together in Aleksandar's apartment building even though the building's overrun with Serbian soldiers, a brief reminder of how childhood continues even in the face of the horrors of war. When a soldier asks him their names he has a moment of clarity, when he clearly sees the power of names, of words, to alter the course of events, and protects this girl with a life. The fate of this girl - he never even found out her surname - haunts him even after he's fled to Germany with his family. From exile, he writes her letters that convey his dislocation and his desire to find out her story, what did her future hold?

The fabulous language jars with the brutal events at the novel's core but it also gives the novel its power. The fractured, anecdotal nature of the story heightens the horror Aleksandar's gradual understanding of the violence bubbling up in his ethnically mixed town and family. By using a child's perspective to narrate real historical events Stanišic emphasises the tragic absurdity of constructs like religion and ethnicity, while bearing witness to the horrific events that ripped through southern Europe only 17 years ago. Such a perspective also puts this novel in a tradition of writers that have used such perspectives to tackle historical atrocities (I kept thinking of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, despite this book being worlds away both in time and style). I also have to commend Anthea Bell's translation from the German. It's so skillfully done that at no point did I find myself self-conscious of the translation.

Emerging from the undergrowth

2009-02-18T13:45:00.003Z

I've been silent on here for too long, especially since I've never planned on taking such a long break from blogging. But as the days turned into weeks, then months, my lack of posting developed into a block of sorts - the more I thought about posting the less likely I was to post. I had notions about using the new year as a chance to get back into blogging (I even had my first blogiversary as an added incentive) but I got sidetracked. Between having visitors and moving from Brighton back to London my reading was sparse enough in January, let alone finding the time or inclination to post. But, since I've been reading some tremendous books recently and my life has calmed down after a few unsettled months, I've realised it's time for me to emerge from the undergrowth and start to pay some attention to my space on t'interweb.

So this quick post is my way of doing some pruning and general tidying up before I resume business as usual.

Books read 2008:

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi - Half of a Yellow Sun
Adiga, Aravind - The White Tiger
Atwood, Margaret - Cat's Eye
Baldwin, James - Go Tell It on the Mountain
Barker, Nicola - Darkmans
Barker, Pat - The Ghost Road
Barry, Sebastian - The Secret Scripture
Bioy Casares, Adolfo - The Invention of Morel
Boyne, John - The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
Capote, Truman - Other Voices, Other Rooms
Cormier, Robert - The Chocolate War
Danziger, Danny & Gillingham, John - 1215: The Year of Magna Carta
Ferris, Joshua - Then We Came To The End
Gaskell, Elizabeth - Cranford
Ghosh, Amitav - The Sea of Poppies
Gladwell, Malcolm - Outliers
Grant, Linda - The Clothes on Their Backs
Hensher, Philip - The Northern Clemency
Jones, Lloyd - Mister Pip
Kelly, Julia - With My Lazy Eye
Kongoli, Fatos - The Loser
Lessing, Doris - The Fifth Child
MacCarthy, Cormac - No Country for Old Men
McCabe, Patrick - Winterwood
Miller, Candi - Salt & Honey
Pollan, Michael - The Omnivore's Dilemma
Samarasan, Preeta - Evening is the Whole Day
Sexton, Anne - Transformations
Stubbs, John - Donne: The Reformed Soul
Thackeray, William - Vanity Fair
Toltz, Steve - A Fraction of the Whole
Yates, Richard - Cold Spring Harbour
Yates, Richard - Revolutionary Road
Yates, Richard - The Easter Parade

Total: 34

Of which:

Fiction: 29
Non-fiction: 4
Poetry: 1
Debut: 12
Children/Young Adult: 2
Works in translation: 2
Female writers: 11

Some of the things my first year of blogging has taught me:

1. I don't "do" reading challenges...in spite of loving them as a concept, I just can't seem to finish them. Mainly because I love the excitement of choosing books - such a good excuse to have a book-buying splurge! - but as soon as I "have" to read them I'll do nearly anything to procrastinate actually picking them up. Not a good trait to have with reading challenges so I'm going to avoid all challenges for 2009. Instead I'll try to finish some of the books I said I'd read for 2008 challenges, and possibly read some of the books picked out in other challenges (I love the list of recommended titles over at The Year of Reading Dangerously 2009 http://dangerouslychallenge.blogspot.com/

2. I read far too little non-fiction - a paltry 4 books in 2008. I've always thought of myself as an avid reader of non-fiction, especially history. I even did a joint English & History degree because I couldn't choose one over the other! But tracking what I read on here has forced me out of my self-delusion. I'm facing up to the fact that I'm primarily a fiction reader. Perhaps it's because most of my non-fiction energy is taking up with the daily paper, the Economist and the New Yorker? Who knows?

3. I read even less fiction in translation - an even more paltry 2 books in 2008. But I've already set to work rectifying this in 2009 (I'm currently reading How the Soldier Repairs the Gramaphone by Sasa Stanisic)

4. I love Richard Yates. He'd hovered at the edge of my consciousness for so long but when I finally read Revolutionary Road in early 2008 I was blown away (I even enjoyed Kate Winslet acting Leo Di Caprio off the screen in the film version). Since I've enjoyed two of his other novels in the past year I think I can officially declare that he's my current literary crush. I was also really impressed with Nicola Barker's compelling Darkmans and so am tentatively planning to read something else by her this year.

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

2008-10-19T19:07:00.003+01:00

Balram Halwai, the eponymous "White Tiger", narrates this furious, blackly humourous, epistolary novel. Over seven nights, sitting beneath the chandelier in his Bangalore office, Balram dictates his life story in a series of letters addressed to the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao. He wants to tell Wen Jiabao the "truth" about modern India, in advance of the premier's visit to the country. His journey from servant, living in the Darkness inhabited by India's majority underclass, to fully-paid up entrepreneur, part of the rich elite living in the Light, reveals the dark underbelly of the economic miracle of India today.

Born to a rickshaw puller in an impoverished rural village, where the water buffalo is the only member of the family to receive an adequate diet, Balram decides at a young age that he wants to escape his fate. He doesn't want to remain as poor as his father, scratching out a living in a village brutally controlled by the local landlords. His early childhood is marked by neglect - no one even bothers to name him until his first day at school, when the teacher bestows the name Balram - but he's an alert and bright child. He learns to read, a skill that instantly elevates him above most of his peers. When his schooling prematurely ends, because his family are too poor to afford his classes, he continues his education by observing and eavesdropping on the customers of the tea shop where he's put to work. Since he decided at a young age that good deeds are rewarded only with more suffering, he embarks on his career in the tea shop with "near total dishonesty, lack of dedication, and insincerity" and therefore finds it "a profoundly enriching experience".

It's in the tea shop, after hearing a conversation between two customers, that he decides to become a driver. He wangles lessons from a local taxi driver and manages to secure a job as second driver in the city residence of a landlord from his local village (the risk of kidnap means most landlords prefer the security of the city over the dangers of their ancestral villages). Through yet more opportunism, he rises to first driver and is then taken to New Delhi, to drive for the American-educated son of the landlord. The master/servant relationship between Ashok, with his foreign ideas and foreign wife, and Balram is at the heart of the novel, reaching a bloody climax that provides the means of Balram's escape from his fate.

Adiga's novel is fiercely critical of a country where the only way to succeed is through the corruption that fuels the entire system. Families trade their sons for dowries, and expect every penny earned in the city to be sent back to the village. Businessmen flourish by providing constant bribes to politicians. Doctors are too busy treating rich patients to actually treat poor people, despite drawing salaries from the state to do so. Policemen "solve" crimes based on who pays the highest price. Politicians buy votes, making a mockery of the democracy India is so famous for. No part of society is free from the lash of Balram's tongue as he reveals the decay. Even his fellow servants are castigated for the way they keep each other down through petty rivalries and hierarchies. Having climbed out of the Darkness and into the Light, Balram tries to be fair to his workers, but he too is wired into the system. As a driver, he ferried his master to drop off bags of money to politicians. As a boss, he pays his way out of any trouble his drivers get into.

The relationship between the servant class and the rich masters is what makes this novel so interesting for me. Ashok is clearly uncomfortable with having to command a servant, and his wife is disgusted by it, wanting to return to New York as soon as possible. Yet it gradually becomes clear that he prefers India, prefers a society where the rich are pampered and spoiled by a whole raft of servants - drivers, masseurs, cleaners, cooks, gardeners - in a way impossible in America or England. Adiga brings this alive with small details, such as Balram scrabbling around the floor of the car for a one-rupee coin Ashok's brother claims to have lost, finally taking a coin from his own pocket to satisfy the master. Underlying Adiga's descriptions of the boom in outsourcing - Bangalore's gleaming call-centres - is the idea that India is making itself the servant of European and American companies. The call-centre workers meet their clients' every need in the same way Balram attempts to meet Ashok's every need.

I have some minor complaints about the epistolary structure - in spite of who the letters are addressed too, it reads too much like a standard first person narration and the epistolary structure feels artificial and unnecessary at times - but overall I liked this novel and I think it's a worthy winner of the Man Booker 2008. Adiga is definitely an author I'll be watching out for from here on in. If anyone would like to read a short story by him, check out this link to yesterday's Guardian Review.

And the winner is...

2008-10-14T20:53:00.003+01:00

I love brand new fiction. Each week I devour the book review pages in the newspapers and magazines I buy and daydream about what books I could read. I get excited when a blogger turns me onto a new author or book that sounds like something I'd love. Yet, in spite of this, I rarely read books in the year they're first published. This could be because I let my library membership slip years ago and don't generally like forking out for a hardback when I know the paperback will be around in a year or so. Or it could be that I tend to think "new fiction" means anything published in the last few years...anyway, back in September, I realised that the only piece of 2008 fiction I'd read was Preeta Samarasan's excellent Evening is the Whole Day. So when my birthday rolled around in I thought I'd treat myself to the entire Booker shortlist and try to read them all before the winner was announced. Well, tonight's the night the winner is announced and (drumroll please!) I've managed to read them (almost!) all of them (currently reading Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger, with only Steve Toltz's A Fraction of the Whole left to go). Best laid plans and all...in my defence, I'm not a terribly fast reader and the shortlisted books tend to be on the long side (Philip Hensher's The Northern Clemency is a stonking 738 pages long and the others range from about 300 pages to about 500 pages).

My reading's been influenced by the Booker shortlist for years - reading over the shortlists and winners from the last 40 years on Wikipedia (see here), quite a few of the books I've enjoyed most or that have stayed with my longest were either shortlisted or won. So while no list could define the best of what's on offer (how could one list that excludes US novels define something so subjective?), I was expecting it to be a good guide to cream of contemporary fiction in the UK. Now, after reading most of them, I'll be interested to see what finally wins. I didn't generally see the "extraordinary example[s] of imagination and narrative" the judges praised (see here for more from the judges). I'd be more interested to know what didn't make the shortlist (or even the longlist) in order to get a better sense of whether these really are the best of the 112 or so novels submitted for consideration. Perhaps that'll be the next step - we've got the longlist so perhaps it's a matter of time before we get a list of every book submitted...

Regardless, I've enjoyed my experiences. I loved Sebastian Barry's The Secret Scripture and it's the one I'd like to see win. I also enjoyed Philip Hensher's marvellous The Northern Clemency (which I actually expected to hate!) and would be almost as happy to see that win. Amitav Ghosh's The Sea of Poppies is a great read, though it wears its learning heavily (the details of the ship or the opium making process or life in that part of the 19th century in general were laid on thick and I kept thinking "yes, yes I can see you've done your research but please get your research out of the way of my enjoyment of your novel."). As it opens a trilogy, it didn't feel like a complete enough novel to me to warrant inclusion on the list (although Pat Barker's The Ghost Road won so being the start of a trilogy is no bar to winning). I'm afraid I intensely disliked Linda Grant's The Clothes on Their Backs, finding the characters cliched and hard to care about. Reading it was like wading through treacle, so even though it's the shortest novel on the list it's the one I laboured over most. Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger is enjoyable so far. It's a truly contemporary novel out of India, and is especially interesting to compare to the more traditional The Sea of Poppies. Steve Toltz's A Fraction of the Whole also looks interesting. I'd prefer if neither of the debut authors won, as I always feel a bit sorry for authors who scoop up big prizes on their debut - I worry that the critical expectation for all their subsequent work can hamper their development.

Anyway, I'm off to heat up some pumpkin soup made on Sunday and settle back down with The White Tiger.

UPDATE: ...The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga is this year's winner. Just announced live on the BBC's ten o'clock news. I do like when book news makes the headlines!

Booking Through Thursday (er, on a Friday), or how to break a blogual silence.

2008-09-19T15:06:00.002+01:00

To anyone who's not heard of Booking Through Thursday, it's a weekly meme that's almost always about books and reading. It's great fun to read through people's various responses, as it highlights one of my favourite things about book blogs: how different people respond to the same thing. I'm not usually tempted to answer the memes myself, but this week's is too appealing. Answering it also helpfully breaks my blogual silence, which should give me the kick I need to finish off the stack of unfinished reviews I've got in draft form!

This week's BBT is:

Autumn is starting (here in the US, anyway), and kids are heading back to school–does the changing season change your reading habits? Less time? More? Are you just in the mood for different kinds of books than you were over the summer?

My reading habits are definitely influenced by the seasons, in that I find that June & July are the months I read the least. Sunny weather makes me want to be outside - be it for walks, picnics or drinks after work - and I'm terrible at reading out of doors. The newspaper or the New Yorker is about all I can handle when sitting in the sun. So I relish the start of Autumn, which I count as from August (if you want to learn a bit more about the Irish seasons check out the Wikipedia entry), as my rate of reading begins to pick up. This August had some gems in it, mainly Michael Pollan's excellent The Omnivore's Dilemma and Nicola Barker's equally excellent Darkmans (more on both soon). But September is my favourite month of the year - I love the back-to-school atmosphere (although I'm glad to not be actually back to school this year!), the renewed sense of purpose. For me, September is Autumn at its best: the fruit is ripe and the leaves are slowly changing and the days are getting just a touch shorter. I love it. It makes me want to read more than any other time of year. And this year I craved fiction. I craved fiction to the point where I looked at all of the new-to-me authors on the Booker shortlist and thought about how much I'd love to read them. I usually try to read the favourites on the Booker shortlist before the prize is announced, to have some sense of what the judges are deciding between, but I've never before had the time nor the inclination to read the whole list. But this year, my craving was enough for me to treat myself to the entire shortlist (so many hardbacks! Such a treat!). I've finished Amitav Ghosh's The Sea of Poppies (again, more on that later) and am now on Linda Grant's The Clothes on Their Backs. So far, I'm enjoying my newly reinvigorated autumnal reading habits.

Ramblings of a kitchen revolutionary

2008-07-31T22:10:00.004+01:00

As I'm sure you know by now, the Man Booker longlist was announced earlier this week. As usual, it provoked quite a reaction, especially because of the inclusion a thriller (Tom Rob Smith's Child 44). For anyone who's interested, the full list is:

Aravind Adiga - The White Tiger
Gaynor Arnold - Girl in the Blue Dress
Sebastian Barry - The Secret Scripture
John Berger - From A to X
Michelle de Kretser - The Lost Dog
Amitav Ghosh - Sea of Poppies
Philip Hensher - The Northern Clemency
Joseph O'Neill - Netherland
Salman Rushdie - The Enchantress of Florence
Tom Rob Smith - Child 44
Steve Toltz - A Fraction of the Whole

I've not read any of them, yet, which is unusual for me. From these, The Secret Scripture is the only one I'm definitely planning to read. I'll probably add The Sea of Poppies (I've wanted to read Ghosh for a while and this is the opening book of a planned trilogy) and Netherland (which I've started to notice around the book blogs I read and is apparently already the bookies' favourite). I must admit that Rushdie leaves me cold - I overdosed on Rushdie about 10 years ago and have been unable to summon the energy to read any of his new books since then. The mixed reviews The Enchantress of Florence has received turns me off even more - there are too many books I want to read this year than feeling like I should read this one.

I'd be much more interested to read the list of books submitted and called in by the judges (103 submitted and 9 called in), as it would be interesting to know what didn't make it on. However, the longlist is a means of generating publicity, both for the prize itself and for the actual books in the running. A publicity tool like this can save a book from sinking without a trace. Check out this article in the Bookseller for some sales stats about the numbers of copies sold of the longlist so far. Unsurprisingly, Rushdie leads the pack but the 363 copies of de Kretser's The Lost Dog since its May publication shows the sorry state that hardback literary fiction in the UK. If publishing a long list helps that in some way, then I'm happy with that.

In other bookish news from chez Logophile, I have fallen head over heels for a new book. I can safely say that the wonderful The Kitchen Revolution by Rosie Sykes, Polly Russell and Zoe Heron is transforming my life (check out the excellent website here). I'm not generally a fan of cookbooks. I've had my fingers burned in the past (mostly metaphorically!) trying to cook from cookbooks I quickly realised were duds, so these days we tend to stick almost exclusively to an old 60s edition of The Joy of Cooking. But The Kitchen Revolution is something special, and since I've been recommending it to friends and colleagues in real life I thought I'd blog about it too!

I first noticed The Kitchen Revolution when the Guardian wrote it up a couple of months ago. The whole premise is to maximise the choice of meals in a given week while minimising time in the kitchen and reducing food miles. This is music to my ears - my new commute is a whisker short of 20 hours a week, so the less time shopping and cooking the better and I'm always interested in ways to cut our carbon footprint. Each week features a big meal from scratch (this week we had duck breast with cherry sauce, roast baby veg and a salad - it was delicious!); something for nothing (two easy and quick meals that transform the leftovers from the first night into yet more delicious food); a seasonal supper (last night we had chilled courgette & avocado soup that honestly tasted like it came from a restaurant despite taking only minutes to make); a larder feast (using only store cupboard ingredients, for when the fridge is bare - tonight it was braised lentils with herb cream cheese); and a 2 for 1 meal (something that freezes well, so half can be eaten straight away and half can be frozen for future enjoyment). The website also features the recipes and shopping lists, so it's easy to print out the shopping list in advance.

This book has totally changed our cooking and eating habits, as well as reducing the amount of money we spend on meals out or takeaways. The weekly meal plans make it possible to enjoy a variety of meals without any stress, as well as expanding the range of food we're eating. What amazes me about it is that I'm spending less time than ever actually cooking yet eating excellent home cooked food every night (my husband enjoys it even more, since he was the chief cook in our household but I love this book so much I'm doing most of the cooking at the moment!). Now I just wish somebody would do a vegetarian version, so that I could make an even smaller impact on the planet...

1215: The Year of Magna Carta by Danny Danziger and John Gillingham

2008-07-25T16:44:00.003+01:00

No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised or outlawed or exiled or in any way ruined, nor will we go or send against him, except by the lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of the land.
Magna Carta, clause 39.

To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice.
Magna Carta, clause 40.

The nobility of the ideals expressed in these two clauses has echoed down the ages, elevating Magna Carta, a piece of 13th century English legislation, to iconic status. It is now revered as the well spring of modern justice, particluarly because of its influence on the authors of the US Declaration of Independence. I debated whether to reproduce these quotes here, as this delightful book is about far more than how we view these two particular clauses nearly 800 years after the rebellious barons forced King John into signing Magna Carta. Danziger and Gillingham wear their learning lightly, resulting in an illuminating and enjoyable read that lifts the veil (or should that be pulls back the tapestry?) on life in the late 12th and early 13th centuries.

Each chapter opens with a quote from Magna Carta, setting the theme for the pages that follow. Themes range from the domestic (castle building and castle life, family life and family strife, education) to warfare (the role of hunting and tournaments in preparing for war, how battles were conducted and the crusades) to the Church (the Lateran Council and Pope Innocent III's conflicts with King John) and England's place in the wider world. King John, that legendary villain, comes across as perhaps the first "English" monarch (as his brother Richard Lionheart/Coeur de Lion and the rest of his ancestors were essentially French), despite his scheming and overbearing style of leadership that provoked the rebellion that led to the signing of the charter. The breadth of themes covered allows the reader to get a firm hold of both the complexities of Plantagenet kingship as well as the ups and downs of everyday life.

I particularly enjoyed the authors' placing of England in the wider world at around the time of Magna Carta. In Asia Minor, the crusades were reaching their bloody climax in the decades on either side of 1215. The Muslim warrior leader Saladin captured Jerusalem, marking a turning point in the struggle for control of the city sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims (the struggle that is still being felt today). Meanwhile, in China, Genghis Khan and his armies captured Beijing in 1215 after breaking through the Great Wall of China. In the years that followed, the Mongols moved through Central Asia before terrifying Europe with their speed and ruthless methods. Back in Europe, St Francis of Assisi was founding his mendicant order of monks, revolutionary in its austerity and detachment from worldly wealth. Pope Innocent III, by presiding over the Fourth Lateran Council, gave lasting shape to the subsequent structure of the Catholic Church as well as influencing justice throughout Christendom.

If you think this all sounds a little staid, the style is really quite funny at times, especially when quoting from The Book of the Civilised Man, an etiquette guide by Daniel of Beccles (sample advice: don't scratch yourself or look for fleas in your breeches or chest in public). Daniel seemed to be swimming against the tide in a society where Roland le Pettour (that is Roland the Farter) was rewarded with a country estate for entertaining the Royal Court by "leaping, whistling and farting before the king"!

Friday Notes

2008-07-18T17:02:00.002+01:00

The move to Brighton went really well, I can see the sea as I cook in the kitchen and so far I'm coping with the much longer commute. It's funny, I keep getting sympathy from colleagues about the length of time on the train and I keep responding with "well, yes, it's certainly longer but I get a seat and I can read uninterrupted the whole way". I'm enjoying it a lot more than the scramble for space and jostling for elbow room that was the central or northern lines at rush hour!

The downside to moving house is that all of my books are still in boxes, which has thrown off my reading plans for the month (I'm especially conscious that time is a-tickin' on the Year of Reading Dangerously Challenge and if I don't get myself sorted soon I'll be way behind!). Luckily some books I mooched arrived the day before we left London, so during my train time this week I've finished a popular history book (about 1215, the year of Magna Carta) and am currently devouring Margarent Laurence's The Stone Angel. We're planning to search around the flea markets of Brighton tomorrow to see if we can find some shelves so that my books can escape their temporary cardboard prisons and breathe again.

The other major downside of moving is that we don't have internet at home yet. On the one hand it's quite nice - much easier to focus on unpacking when not tempted to wander through the blogosphere! - but it does mean I'm also falling behind (again!) with keeping up to date with the book blogging world. Am trying to fit it into my working day (not working so well at the moment as I am busy busy).

I did notice that the Society of Authors' Translators Association has released a list of the 50 outstanding translations from the last 50 years to celebrate its 50th anniversary (see here for the full list). It's an interesting selection, with much that's brand new to me. My irresistible urge with lists of any sort is to check off how many I've read. I'm rather ashamed to admit that I've only read 12 of these 50 titles!

The first thing I noticed is that Seamus Heaney is the only author to translate his own work (for his marvellous Beowulf). I've always wondered about the relationship between a translator and an author, what "belongs" to the author and what "belongs" to the translator (a great writer who also translates can be found at the excellent blog Incurable Logophilia)...Another interesting thing to note is the spread of the titles throughout the decades - there are 11 titles from this decade but only 9 from the 60s and a paltry 6 from the 70s. I wonder how much of this is accounted for by changing fashions in the world of translating. I admit to ignorance on this but I'd love to hear what anyone else thinks.

Anyway, I've got to rush off as I have a train to catch.

Evening is the Whole Day by Preeta Samarasan

2008-07-18T16:05:00.003+01:00

There is, stretching delicate as a bird's head from the thin neck of the Kra Isthmus, a land that makes up half of the country called Malaysia. Where it dips its beak into the South China Sea, Singapore hovers like a bubble escaped from its throat. This bird's head is a springless summerless autumnless winterless land. One day might be a drop wetter or a mite drier than the last, but almost all are hot, damp, bright, bursting with lazy tropical life, conducive to endless tea breaks and mad, jostling, honking rushes through town to get home before the afternoon downpour...
With this opening, EVENING IS THE WHOLE DAY swept me up into the muggy climate of early post-colonial Malaysia, the first stop on my journey around the world as part of the Orbis Terrarum Challenge. Samarasan skillfully weaves the personal life of the one Indian family with the public stories of the birth pangs of modern Malaysia to create a lush, multi-layered tapestry of stories.

Set mainly in 1980, but using flashbacks to dart throughout the proceeding decades, this novel follows the fortunes of the Rajasekharan family, of the Big House on Kingfisher Lane, along with their servants and neighbours. As the novel progresses, and secrets are revealted, relationships strain and cracks appear. There is 6 year old Aasha, heart sick for the love and attention of her older sister Uma and so lonely that she plays with ghosts. As Aasha tracks Uma's every move through the house and garden, the once charming and exuberant Uma has locked herself away, shutting down on her family as she plots her own escape by means of a college scholarship to the US. The mother, a woman who married above her class and suffers the consequences of her own emotionally bereft upbringing, is locked in a loveless marriage with the father, a successful and influential lawyer but a distant father and ineffectual patriarch. The aging grandmother turns her physical decrepitude to a sort of tactical advantage, using her ailments and physical frailty to control the dynamics of the household.The middle child, a boy named Suresh, uses humour to swim through the emotional currents around him.

Aasha, an unwilling pawn in the power play going on above her head, is a wonderful character. While she is too young to understand all of the struggles going on, she is sensitive and perceptive. Samarasan's descriptions of the six year old orbiting around her older sister had me laughing sometimes (it must be irritating for the teenage Uma!) and sighing at other times. The author really captures the way that children too young to understand what is really going on can blame themselves or make warped decisions about the truth. I also think the author perfectly captures the way people are products of their upbringing and past, especially the mother. She wriggles uncomfortably in her skin, despite having the nearly perfect veneer of the groomed and perfumed rich society wife. She in turn passes a hollow legacy to her children.

EVENING IS THE WHOLE DAY is a compelling read. The large cast of characters and mixture of public and private histories reminds me of a sweeping 19th epic, but even cameo or minor characters are rendered so humanely that none of the characters felt superfluous. The overall effect is that this novel is a page-turner, the sort of book I didn't want to end (I read those last 50 pages as slowly as I could!) and definitely my favourite contemporary novel of the year so far. What's even more impressive is that this is a debut!

With regards to the Orbis Terrarum Challenge, this novel captured the sense of place so well that I have a much better understanding of Malaysia now, especially the complexities of three races finding a place in society alongside each other. It is one of the best post-colonial novels I've ever read. If I were given to ratings, then this novel would be five stars for me.

Reading (and blogging) in my real life

2008-07-04T14:50:00.002+01:00

In the last week, two close friends have asked if I've given up blogging. And while the answer's a resounding no the question has made me step back and think about why I've been so silent on here in recent weeks. And why I've been so absent from my favourite blogs.

Initially, my law revision suffocated my reading. It was a gradual process, starting back in April when I'd feel guilty for enjoying fiction when I should have been revising acquisitions law (or some other such topic). By May, I was struggling with books I'd expected to love - books that had sat in my tbr stack next to my bed exuding "read me"-ness, books that I'd read great things about and was excited to pick up (step forward Reading Lolita in Tehran and The Wind-up Bird Chronicles). When I picked them up and turned the pages I knew I was physically reading, I mean my eyes were following the words, but nothing was happening. No veil was descending. Something was blocking me from entering the worlds unfolding on the page. I felt like I was locked out of my favourite place - I could see the good times to be had behind the gate but I just couldn't get in. Reading Lolita was particularly galling, as I could see how much Nafisi loves reading and just knew how much I'd love this book if only I could find the key. Of course, it was my mind's way of telling me that I needed to stop procrastinating and buckle down to some serious revision! Which is exactly what I did. I set aside all the juicy fiction I'm planning to read and kept my reading strictly to the work- and study-related variety.

But no reading meant no blogging as I felt I just had so little to say. And working and studying meant time was at a premium - no time to be browsing happily through the blogosphere reading reviews by bloggers whose taste I've come to respect and admire.

My exams finally finished two weeks ago. After four years of full-time work and part-time law school, I've been more than a little demob happy. I've crammed more socialising into the last two weeks than I did in the previous six months (weekends in Dublin and Edinburgh, a night and day in the Lake District, concerts, drinks & dinners with friends). While slightly dazed (I'm off to Dublin again tonight for another weekend away - my little sister's hen weekend!), I feel like I've emerged from black-and-white into full technicolour splendour, with the colour the exams had leached out of my reading well and truly returned.

The first post-exam novel I finished was With My Lazy Eye by Julia Kelly. While the cover blurb had my hopes high ("the freshest voice in Irish fiction" - John Banville), I enjoyed this less than I was expecting. This first novel follows Lucy Bastonme from childhood to womanhood in 1980s Ireland and London, particularly her relationship with her ever receding father. It's enjoyable, but mainly because it evoked the flavours and sounds of an 1980s childhood so well (reminding me of my own childhood - nothing like a nostalgia read every now and again). Some details niggled me, particularly the use of email in the late 80s and early 90s London office the character works in, but overall an enjoyable read.

The most recent book I've finished is the excellent Evening Is the Whole Day by Preeta Samarasan. I loved this book, becoming fully immersed in the world of the Big House with its characters (six year old Aasha in particular). I ended up reading this as slowly as I could, eking it out as I just didn't want it to end...I'll write up a full review soon but this is definitely one of my favourite books this year, and certainly the best debut novel I've read in a long time. It's been the perfect re-introduction to the joys of reading - savouring the experiences contained between the covers - and there were lots of new words for me to look up too as Samarasan uses language to stunning effect.

So while the last couple of months have presented the biggest challenge to my attempts to find a balance between the demands of work and reading and the choice of blogging - it's a dilemma that I'm sure every blogger faces - it's actually been interesting. It's forced me to think about why I'm doing something, or rather not doing something. There's still a lot of upheaval in the Logophile household - we're moving from London to Brighton next weekend - but now that my reading is back in rude health I'm sure my blogging will follow.

My hand luggage for Dublin has The Dubliners tucked in - a re-read but I've never read it while actually being in Dublin. And Nabokov's Lolita is coming up. In fact, there are too many books I want to read at the moment!

American fairytales

2008-05-31T20:28:00.002+01:00

I have been almost non-existent on this blog for the last month, mainly because my reading has temporarily paused. Well, I'm reading plenty it's just that none of it is interesting enough to share (unless anyone wants to hear my thoughts on the UK's Companies Act 2006?). Yes, my final law exams start next week and my reading for pleasure has been subordinated to my reading for necessity. With work being more than a little hectic at the moment, I haven't even had any time to read through the blogs I regularly visit! I've been feeling quite deprived...but the prospect of just a couple of more weeks of slog before being free to read without guilt for the first time since I started working full time/studying part time four years ago is the light at the end of this particular tunnel. I shall soon be able to read not just books but all my favourite blogs (my unread posts on Bloglines are at a crazy level, though I have promised myself that I will read them all properly soon!).

In the meantime, it's time to catch up just a little on some of my pending reviews, starting with my Reading Dangerously April & May titles.

TRANSFORMATIONS by Anne Sexton
This collection of poetry is short but no less formidable for that. Sexton reimagines (transforms) 17 fairy tales originally told by the Brothers Grimm. Starting with The Gold Key (a rather obscure tale that I had to look up in my Grimm collection), Sexton introduces her role within the poems as that of a "middle-aged witch", with her face in a book and her mouth wide ready to tell a story or two. This poetic witch wants to make us remember what it was like to be read to as a child, to make us reimagine these fairy tales ourselves, to remind us that the sanitised, Disneyfied tales we tell our children today are at some distance from the strangeness and violence of Grimms' original tales.

I particularly enjoyed Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. As with all of the tales, Sexton includes an introductory verse framing the poetic retelling:

No matter what life you lead
the virgin is a lovely number:
cheeks as fragile as cigarette paper,
arms and legs made of Limoges,
lips like Vin Du Rhone,
rolling her china-blue doll eyes
open and shut.
Open to say,
Good Day Mama,
and shut for the thrust
of the unicorn.

I had forgotten quite how shocking this fairy tale is. The stepmother, still clinging to the glory of her youthful beauty, ordering the murder of her stepdaughter, and competitor, and setting out to do the job herself when she learns that the girl has survived to keep house for the seven dwarfs.

For me, Sexton succeeds in reminding me of the strangeness of fairy tale by conjuring the feeling of reading these tales for the first time. There are no simple happy ending heres, like Cinderella, and her prince living as "they say, happily ever after, like two dolls in a museum case never bothered by diapers or dust, never arguing over the timing of an egg, never telling the same story twice, never getting a middle-aged spread, their darling smiles pasted on for eternity."

OTHER VOICES, OTHER ROOMS by Truman Capote
Joel Knox, thirteen and still reeling from his mother's death, is despatched to live with his mysterious father in the crumbling mansion in Alabama where he now lives with his new wife. On arrival, the hero father he has imagined is nowhere to be found on, as his eccentric stepmother and her even more eccentric cousin Randolph, steer him deftly away from questions about his father.

I enjoyed aspects of this novel. Joel is believably on the cusp between childhood and adulthood, especially the way he still retreats into the childish imaginative world of his hero Mr Mystery when real life gets too painful. I liked the interaction with the astoundingly tom-boyish Idabel and the general Southern Gothic atmosphere (the sonambulent mansion, Miss Amy and her obsession with the past, the wonderfully named Jesus Fever) but I was left a little cold overall. I had realised almost instantly who the mysterious lady at the window was, and found the layers of backstory revealed in Randolph's rambling stories overlong.

Can we find the world's favourite book?

2008-04-24T11:02:00.002+01:00

I'm not usually one for lists of best books - y'know, the endless lists of books you must read before you die or the best books of all time or the best books of the 20th century or whatever. While I secretly like checking how many I've read (don't we all like a little validation of our reading choices?), I usually don't pay them much heed, reflecting as they generally do the particular tastes of whatever literary editor put them together to fill the pages of the books section in a paper or magazine. .

But I've come across a fun new site PollthePeople.com. Its modest aim is to the find the world's favourite books, films and albums by polling people globally. The fun aspect comes in because of the social networking element - you can find people with similar tastes to you and rate their lists.

I'm terrible at restricting myself to just a top five, but I decided to sign up anyway (I can change my choices at any time) and you can check out my list here. I'd love to know what your top five would be!

Happy world book day!

2008-04-23T11:12:00.006+01:00

I've returned from my travels around Ireland but the demands of work and study have kept my blogging (and my reading!) at bay these past few days. But now that my assignment is in and my group report is moving along nicely, I thought I'd snatch a few minutes to wish everyone a happy Unesco World Book Day! I've never understood why in Britain & Ireland World Book Day is celebrated in early March, when the rest of the world is celebrating in different ways on the 23 April. And since the full title is World Book and Copyright Day (clunky I know) and since I work in the copyright/IP sphere, I also like to mark that.

As well as seeing too many amazing things in Ireland to list (the beehive hut on Inis Mór, which we explored on a sunny day, alone but for a white pony looking over the dry stone wall from the next field, and Newgrange, which I've wanted to visit just about all my life, were real highlights), I picked up some excellent books too, including Thomas Kinsella's translation of the Táin Bo Cailnge (the Cattle Raid of Cooley). The Táin is the centre piece of the 8th century Ulster cycle of epic tales. These stories, with Cuchulainn as the star of the show, are familiar to me from childhood but I'm excited at the prospect of reading Kinsella's attempt at creating a living version of these ancient myths.

I'm also happy to see that Francisco Goldman's The Art of Political Murder: Who killed Bishop Gerardi? won Index on Censorship's TR Fyvel Book Award 2008. I've not read this yet, but it's been on my list since Index announced the shortlist back in March. I hadn't heard of it before the shortlist but a bit of digging turned up reviews that make this book sound not just important for freedom of speech but an excellent read at the same time (check out this review from the NYT).

Goldman's book is on an ever-expanding list of non-fiction books that sound interesting. I really want to check out Torture Team by Philippe Sands. There's an excerpt on the Guardian's website (see here) that shows what a gripping and important book this will be (it's not published until 1 May). The fact that a TV show (24) inspired interrogators at Guantanamo to use torture is horrifying. Another hardback that's caught my eye is Bruce Dover's Rupert's Adventures in China, about Murdoch's quest to conquer the Chinese media market.

Speaking (of) poems

2008-04-13T23:19:00.003+01:00

I've been thinking about poetry these last few days, since reading Verbivore's thoughts on e.e. cummings over at Incurable Logophilia. I'm also still reading the biography of John Donne and I'm dipping into Transformations by Anne Sexton. All in all, poetry seems to be in the air.

For Verbivore, poetry is a private and intimate thing. As I turned this over in my mind I've realised that I enjoy poetry most when it's spoken aloud, either by myself or others. Poetry spoken out loud gives me a level of enjoyment I don't always get from silent reading. Perhaps the roots of this lie in my childhood, when reciting poems was a significant part of my primary schooling. Or in secondary school, when memorising poetry and other quotes was necessary for exams (no books allowed, which means I can still quote whole chunks of things like Macbeth and Hamlet!).

Reading Verbivore's thoughts reminded me of poems that I've carried with me since my childhood. Like Austin Clarke's The Blackbird of Derrycairn:

Stop, stop and listen for the bough top
Is whistling and the sun is brighter
Than God's own shadow in the cup now
Forget the hour bell. Mournful matins
Will sound as well, Patric, at nightfall.

Faintly through mist of broken water
Fionn heard my melody in Norway,
He found the forest track he brought back
This beak to gild the branch and tell there
Why men must welcome in the daylight.

He loved the breeze that warns the black grouse,
The shout of gillies in the morning
When packs are counted and the swans cloud
Loch Erne, but more than all those voices,
My throat rejoicing from the hawthorn.

In little cells behind a cashel,
Patric, no handbell has a glad sound,
But knowledge is found among the branches.
Listen! The song that shakes my feathers
Will thong the leather of your satchels.

Stop, stop and listen for the bough top
Is whistling . . .

I still hear these words when I hear birdsong in the morning. And it still makes me forget the hour bell! But it simply must be recited out loud, that opening ("Stop, stop and listen...") demands nothing else.

I hear the words of William Allingham's The Fairies whenever I find myself walking a shore. I learned this poem at a very young age from my father, it was my first experience of poetry beyond nursery rhymes. The rhythm almost stomps along and I still get such a kick out of it. Here's the first verse:

Up the airy mountain
Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a-hunting,
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl's feather.
Down along the rocky shore
Some make their home,
They live on crispy pancakes
Of yellow tide-foam;
Some in the reeds
Of the black mountain-lake,
With frogs for their watch-dogs,
All night awake.

I love the crispy pancakes of sea foam and the watch-frogs guarding the fairy folk as they go about their mischief. For a poem written in the mid-nineteenth century this still strikes me as remarkably fresh.

I'm currently on holidays in Ireland, with my husband and parents-in-law visiting my own family in Cork as well as touring around a little. My access to the internet is sporadic, so I shall have to catch up on everyone's blogs when I get back to London next weekend. At least I shall have some good time to catch up on reading!

Indy bookseller soon to be no more

2008-04-10T14:44:00.002+01:00

I've just found out that the excellent Metropolitan Books in Exmouth Market, London is sadly closing down. I'm not sure why owner Phil Griffiths has decided to shut up shop after ten years of business, but it's going to be a real loss for the readers who live or work around Exmouth Market (it's the nearest bookshop to my office, so shall have to head further afield to get my bookshop browsing fix now). This small bookshop always felt more like a front room in someone's house, so much cosier than the big bookshop chains.

Metropolitan Books will be selling off its stock at a 50% discount this Saturday 12 April. Unfortunately, I'm going to be back in Ireland as otherwise I'd be there.

I think independent bookshops are important to give a diversity of choice, and that's why I'll go out of my way to support them. Publishers pay such huge amounts to the big chains as marketing spend, ensuring that their "big" books are featured in 3 for 2 and BOGOF promotions or get window displays. I personally trust a recommendation from an independent bookseller, who loves books and understand his or her customers' needs, far more than from a chain bookseller who is promoting a book because they've been paid thousands to do so...

A very handy website for this is Local Bookshops Online. It allows you to search very easily for your nearest independent bookshop, via postcode or by the map.

World Literature Forum

2008-04-09T11:57:00.003+01:00

Finally, translated literature gets a proper online home for discussion! Stewart over at Booklit has created the rather brilliant World Literature Forum , a community for interested readers to discuss, review, recommend, publicise and generally rave about translated literature to their hearts' content. I've just signed up and I hope lots of you do too, as I've know there are so many lovers of world literature in the blogosphere (thanks to Mark over at ReadySteadyBook for bringing this to my attention).

Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood

2008-04-08T22:45:00.002+01:00

Most mothers worry when their daughters reach adolescence, but I was the opposite. I relaxed, I sighed with relief. Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-sized.
Cat's Eye, p118

Elaine Risley has returned to Toronto, the city of her birth, for the first retrospective of her artwork. As she wanders around present day Toronto she embarks on a parallel retrospective of her own, unleashing a flood of memories of her family, her first friends, her first lovers and her first steps in art. Elaine's narration moves fluidly between the Toronto of her present and the Toronto of her childhood, with this narrative structure serving as a reminder that the undercurrents of the past constantly move beneath the smooth surface of the present.

Most of Elaine's early childhood in the late 30s and early 40s was isolated but for her older brother Stephen and her loving but remote parents. Her family led a nomadic life, traveling around the forests of northern Canada to allow her entomologist father to conduct field research. This rootless existence restricted Elaine's ability to form friendships; the Risley family were never in one place long enough for friendships to bloom. From what she gleans from magazines and other snatched glimpses, little girls are as exotic as unicorns, with their dresses and ribbons and pink cheeks. They are far removed from her life of canvas tents, camping stoves, insects and lakes. She instinctively understands boys, as Stephen and his games and casual physicality teach her all she needs to know. When she's 8 her life is transformed as her father finally accepts a professorship at the University of Toronto. The Risleys move to the suburbs, furniture and the trappings of a middle class family life come out of storage and Elaine finally has her chance to make friends of her own age. Unfortunately, as she falls under the spell of Cordelia, her best friend and eventually chief tormentor, it's clear that Elaine is woefully unprepared for the manipulation, hypocrisy and bullying that soon becomes her daily reality.

Atwood captures the torment and complexity of childhood so well. The quote above leapt out at me, as it's a distinction many adult writers fail to make. The writing is nuanced, so that Cordelia and her associates are not starkly bad - they have parents and problems and motivations of their own. Elaine's parents and the other adults are kept to the peripheries, in the way that adults actually are for children, yet they emerge as distinct characters. Elaine's mother is particularly well drawn, with her slight bohemian air and ambivalence about the stay at home life of the typical mother and her struggle with knowing that Elaine is suffering but not knowing how to help her.

Best of all, Atwood skillfully shows how childhood traumas percolate through adulthood. Elaine may have been a victim as a child, but she goes onto form unhealthy relationships where she has a lot more power to hurt. She emerges into a successful artist, producing some of her best art from her childhood pain. There is no simple tale of the good girl versus the bullies, instead Atwood explores themes of female relationships, mother/daughter relationsips, male/female relationships, memory and the experience of aging.

The armchair traveller

2008-04-06T14:37:00.012+01:00

I feel like I've been travelling back in time recently, mostly thanks to John Stubbs' excellent Donne: The Reformed Soul but also thanks to the wintry weather that London woke up to this morning. I've been enjoying all the signs of spring - tulips, cherry blossom, budding leaves - but I felt like I'd travelled back to the depths of winter when I opened the blinds this morning! Check out these pictures from our garden this morning.

I'm still wandering the streets of Elizabethan London courtesy of John Stubbs' ability to bring John Donne's world vividly alive. Here's a description of Lincoln's Inn Fields, right outside Lincoln's Inn, where the teenage Donne is studying law:

Beyond the calm college enclosure lay Lincoln's Inn Fields: a large, open, rather dowdy space, yet an arena for a bit of everything in Elizabethan London. It was the rubbish-strewn site of public executions and discontinued building projects, a venue for all kinds of exercise, haggling, get-togethers and theatricals. Horses were taken there for a runabout, clopping perilously close at times to passers-by. Cripples and beggars assembled at their stations. Some of the city's pricier brothels and gambling dens were located in the lanes around the Fields, and prostitutes would come to take some air and loiter for early trade. The district grew livelier as the day wore on. Mountebanks would arrive with their cures and aphrodisiacs, set up their stalls, and crowds would assemble to heckle them. Puppet shows would open and throttled bears would dance on chains.

With such a world jostling for his attention it's a wonder that Donne got any study done!

Meanwhile, Eva, over at A Striped Armchair has led me to an excellent new challenge - Orbis Terrarum. This whole world reading challenge is being hosted by the foreign literature lovers over at B&bexlibris and is incredibly flexible, asking only that 9 different books, by 9 different authors, from 9 different countries are read in the 9 months from April to December 2008. Since Eva's post about her bookish jaunt around the world have given me itchy feet of my own and since my tbr stack is currently loaded with an interesting mix of international books (and there are some other international books I'm looking for an excuse to buy!), I'm packing my bags and signing up for this challenge myself.

I'm going to start off my armchair journey in Europe, with a trip to Albania courtesy of Fatos Kongoli's The Loser. This came to my attention via Index on Censorship's Freedom of Expression 2008 shortlist. According to its blurb, The Loser is a moving portrayal of the suppression not just of art by a controlled press and other repressive state mechanisms, but of a whole people denied the freedom to express themselves but is also a moving novel of love and loss. This sounds like just the entrance into contemporary Albanian literature that I need!

From Europe, I'm going to head to Iran with Azar Nafisi's memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran. I recently picked this up in a charity shop, after a fellow book browser interrupted me with the words "I'd never normally do this, but you simply must read that book - it's excellent". Since it takes a lot for most English people to break their reserve and speak to strangers, I'm thinking this book will be real treat.

From Iran I'm hopping over to Sri Lanka with A. Sivanandan's When Memory Dies. I love epic novels about families, and this novel about 3 generations of a Sri Lankan family, searching for coherence and continuity in a country broken by colonial occupation and then riven by ethnic wars, sounds excellent.

From Sri Lanka, I'll be heading further east, to Japan with Yasunari Kawabata's The Master of Go. Go is a game of strategy, and like all the best games, it's simple in its fundamentals but infinitely complex in its execution. This novel follows a competition between an older Master and younger challenger, a competition that turns into an elegy for an entire society. I've not read anything by the Nobel laureate Kawabata, but reading about Snow Country over at Verbivore's Incurable Logophilia made me resolve to read him this year. This challenge is the perfect chance to make good that resolution.

While on my travels, I'm going to bend the rules slightly so I can visit a place I've wanted to visit ever since reading Sara Wheeler's remarkable Terra Incognita several years ago - Antarctica. While Antarctica is actually a continent, rather than a country, I'm making this challenge flexible enough to allow me to include it. Terra Incognita is an exceptional book, chronicling Wheeler's experience as the first woman selected by the American government to be the "Writer in Residence at teh US South Pole Station". Luckily for me, I've got another of Wheeler's books lurking in my tbr pile: Cherry: A Life of Apsley Cherry-Garrard. Cherry (author of The Worst Journey in the World ) was one of the youngest member's of Captain Scott's final expedition to the Antarctic. I've also got Granta's beautiful anthology The Ends of the Earth , a collection of writings about the Arctic and Antarctic, to dip into for more about the frozen polar worlds.

From the icy landscape of Antarctica to the sunnier climate of Malaysia via Evening is the Whole Day by Preeta Samarasan. This debut novel isn't published in the UK until early June (it's out in mid-May for you lucky Americans), but I first heard about this novel from friends, as the writer is an old school friend of some of my closest friends, and have been planning to read it ever since checking it out via Amazon.

From Malaysia I'm going to journey to Australia via Sally Morgan's My Place. I spotted this novel in the sidebar of Antipodean Owl's blog and it seems Morgan's story of uncovering her family's suppressed Aboriginal heritage is a landmark in Australian literature.

I'm going to journey onto the Carribean, specifically the Dominican Republic, via Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I read (mostly) excellent reviews of this when it came out in hardcover and am looking forward to seeing what all the fuss is about!

The last stop on my whole world reading adventure will be Iceland, where I'll travel thanks to Halldor Laxness's Independent People. Iceland fascinates me, perched as it is in the no man's land of the north Atlantic between North America and Europe. I'd love to visit some day but, for this year at least, visiting via the Orbis Terrarum challenge is the best I can do.

In other blogging news, I've finally succumbed to BookMooch after reading Heather's post about going green over at this month's Estella's Revenge (and have added a little widget to my sidebar). I signed up on Friday night and I can see it's going to be seriously addictive! I've already got seven books to send, and have mooched my first book and am sure I'll be mooching plenty more in the future.

Revising my reading dangerously plans

2008-04-04T14:05:00.004+01:00

I recently started The Divinersby Margaret Laurence, as part of my Year of Reading Dangerously. The "official" title for March is Cat's Eyeby Margaret Atwood, but I decided to push beyond my Atwood comfort zone with another Canadian author. Since I'd only discovered Margaret Laurence in January, when I started my adventures in blogging, it seemed appropriate to include one of my first blogosphere discoveries in my first reading challenge!

Laurence's novel The Stone Angel was featured as the February title over at the Slaves of Golconda (see here for Stefanie's thoughts). Following the Golconda discussion really whet my appetite for this author and the first pages of The Diviners, as Morag Gunn delves into the recesses of her early childhood memory, have not disappointed. But I've decided to set this book aside for the time being. This is totally out of character for me - I usually finish what I've started, even if I really dislike the book (see my thoughts on Then We Came to the End for the latest of example of my chronic inability to put down a book once I've started even if I'm not enjoying it!). I've decided I want to start with The Stone Angel and work through Laurence's work in a roughly chronological order. The Diviners will be enriched by reading at least some of the earlier novels and stories.

Since I read Cat's Eye in March anyway, I'm substituting that as my Dangerous book for March (my thoughts on Cat's Eye will be posted this weekend). I've ordered Transformations by Anne Sexton, my April title, and am looking forward to continuing this challenge.

2008-03-28T11:49:00.005Z

My blogual silence for the past week is because I've just returned from a short Easter holiday in Languedoc. We're lucky enough in Britain to get both Good Friday and Easter Monday as bank holidays, so only two days off work allowed us to have almost a week's holiday. In spite of the weather (snow, rain, sleet, hail, the odd spot of sunshine), we had a glorious time. Eight of us, ranging in age from 9 months to 35, stayed in an old house in the village of Caunes Minervois in the foothills of the Montaigne Noire, about 20 minutes outside of Carcasonne. We were lucky enough to be staying right next to this boulangerie, so plenty of fresh bread and croissants.

Carcasonne was just as stunning as I'd heard, wandering around the mediaeval city was amazing. This picture capures a fraction of its splendour.

Of course my best laid reading plans were foiled by the good food, good wine and good company so I actually read practically nothing (though have made a good start on both A Life Reformed and Half of a Yellow Sun for the Chunkster and African reading challenges respectively, so not feeling too guilty!). It was also great fun to read books with my niece (she's literally devouring books - I suppose chewing cardboard helps with teething!) and nephew.

Richard Yates - Revolutionary Road

2008-03-21T19:24:00.002Z

Over the course of the spring and summer of 1955, this novel charts the ultimate unraveling of April and Frank Wheeler's suburban family life in the Revolutionary Hill Estate in Connecticut.

From outside, the Wheelers are happy and successful. Frank, with his stories of soldiering in Paris during the War, maintains ironic detachment from his New York job which means he keeps his air of an intense young man destined for great things. Beautiful April, with her flair for the theatre, her immaculate home and her two pink-cheeked children, is the envy of her friends. Their active social life revolves around cocktail parties with like-minded couples, who also happen to live in the suburbs but who remain passionately interested in the arts, the ills of contemporary society, the usual themes for intelligent adults. These conversations are essential for Frank and April, as they are their link to the bohemian life they had in New York City, before adulthood and responsibilities got in the way.

But April and Frank are not happy and successful, in fact their unhappiness is hardening into desperation. Frank is suffocating in the boredon of commuting and office routine. April, with her inability to love unconditionally, is drowning in domestic drudgery, her mind rotting. So April hatches a plan to rescue them from the brink: the whole family will relocate to Paris, where she will work as a secretary while Frank "finds himself". This plan, with its details (like passports, visas, beginner French lessons, selling the house), quickly takes over as the euphoria at the prospect of escape infuses everything. And so the novel builds to its painfully inevitable climax.

This book made me cry at times, as the world Yates weaves is unbearably sad. The optimism of post-war America, when the rise of the suburbs, that transitional limbo between the crowded city and the empty country, was wonderfully innovative, but crushed individuality and the human spirit along the way. The transition from footloose young adult years, when potential means the world is wide open, to the gradual constriction brought on by the responsibilities of parenthood is made all the harder for the Wheelers because their love for each other has dissolved in a mist of bitter arguments and white lies.

I loved this book. It evoked a world that's recognisable, but also alien, with the male and female characters equally well drawn. I was sucked in, and didn't want it to end. I'm now looking forward to when I inevitably re-read this book.

Index on Censorship TR Fyvel Book Award 2008 - shortlist

2008-03-19T11:55:00.005Z

I've just been sent the shortlist for Index's 2008 book award, part of the Freedom of Press Awards 2008. All of the titles look interesting:

The Loser by Fatos Kongoli, published by Seren

Holy Warriors: A Journey into the Heart of Indian Fundamentalism by Edna Fernandes, published by Portobello

The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed Bishop Gerardi? by Francisco Goldman, published by Atlantic Books

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, published by Penguin

The Reluctant Fundamentalist has the highest profile but I think The Loser looks interesting. I had spotted it on The Complete Review (see here for the review) and added it to my mental tbr list. I'm now hoping to read it before the prize is announced on 21 April.

Reading Notes

2008-03-19T00:01:00.003Z

I'm in the midst of Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood. It's a book I didn't plan on reading, but since I'm still waiting for The Diviners by Margaret Lawrence to arrive from Amazon it's a book I thought I'd read to pass the time...but it's such a powerful evocation of what it's like to be bullied by fellow children that I feel I must share some of it. From around page 138:
I see there will be no end to imperfection, or to doing things the wrong way. Even if you grow up, no matter how hard you scrub, whatever you do, there will always be some other stain or spot on your face or stupid act, there will always be some other stain or spot on your face or stupid act, somebody frowning.
I didn't think I'd be so moved by Atwood's book, but I'm gripped. My husband is away with work, leaving me with the time and space to explore some of the books on my TBR list, but all I can do is continue to read Cat's Eye, as I think I shan't be free to enjoy any other book until I've finished it. This Atwood book has me under a spell and I shall be writing about this more fully once I can get my head around it.

5 kind things

2008-03-16T22:44:00.004Z

The lovely Verbivore has very kindly tagged for this meme. And since it's the perfect way to round off the weekend, I thought I'd respond to it quickly!

The rules are simple:
- list 5 kind things you do for yourself
- list five kind things you do for your closest friend, partner or child
- list five kind things you have done for a stranger
- have fun!
- tag five people

5 kind things I do for myself

1. Read. As reading is my chief means of making sense of the world, and my place within it, I become anxious and irritable if I don't read enough. So reading - books, newspapers, blogs, journals - is definitely the kindest thing I do for myself!

2. Walk. I love to walk. Solitary walking is when I do a lot of my thinking. The rhythm of my feet, the very physicality of it, seems to help me think. But I also love to walk with others, as talking complements the rhythm of walking so beautifully. Walking gives a conversation space. London is tremendously walkable - a series of villages strung together with plenty of green spaces and history oozing out of the seams. Since I don't drive, I'm the quintessential pedestrian!

3. Keep this blog. Embarking on this blogging adventure has enriched my reading, by helping me to read more thoughtfully and opening me up to the vibrant world of litbloggers. I love reading other people's thoughts on books, as it provides a layer to my understanding and enjoyment of books. By blogging I've reminded myself that I love talking about books almost as much as I love reading!

4. Watch the birds in the back garden. We moved into a house with a garden last summer, and we hung a bird feeder on the washing line. I get such pleasure from watching the birds. The blue tits with their lovely colours. The pair of robins who I sometimes think would come right into the house, so inquisitive are they. The jays, the blackbirds, the wood pigeons, the sparrows, the starlings. I especially like when there are a few types of bird feeding at the same time. I even like watching the lengths the squirrels go to to get at the seed.

5. Eat in restaurants as often as my wallet allows me. I love restaurants, and the satisfaction I get from an excellent restaurant experience is akin to the pleasure a good play gives me. I waitressed all through university, so I appreciate the team work and performance behind good service.

5 kind things I do for my partner

1. Encourage him. I do my utmost to be supportive and encouraging of my husband, as I know he's brilliant and I know that my support and encouragement helps him to think he's brilliant too!

2. Iron his shirts. This is a new one for me, as I've only just started doing it. I've always been quite anti ironing - why can't society accept wrinkles and release people from the drudgery of ironing?? - but have recently started ironing my husband's shirts. And the funny thing is I'm quite enjoying it! I even looked up how to iron a shirt on youtube this evening, and it really helped me get through the pile faster. And I enjoy knowing that I'm saving my husband a chore.

3. Make him laugh. My husband has the best laugh, and I can listen him laugh all day, so making him laugh is perhaps also an act of kindness for me!

4. Keep track of his stuff. I have a good memory, so this is pretty easy for me, but I try to keep an eye on his stuff - the shoes, keys, wallet, oyster card and other paraphernalia of daily life - so that he doesn't lose things.

5. Pick him flowers. We planted spring bulbs together last autumn so I've been picking him daffodils from the garden. I can't wait for the tulips to bloom so I can pick them for him too!

5 kind things for strangers

1. Give directions. I love to help people with directions, and sometimes numerous people ask me for directions on the same day (I must have a sort of "ask me for directions" face!). Last week, I actually overheard a tourist mum say to her tourist daughter to keep an eye out for Holborn tube and I pointed them in the right direction (they were heading towards Russell Square instead of Holborn).

2. Respond to people making friendly conversation in bank queues, bus queues, etc. I like to respond if someone makes friendly chit chat of the weather variety in lines. It seems to happen mostly at the bank or post office. I think it helps break up the monotony of queuing!

3. Greet the bus driver. I get the bus from Kings Cross to work and it never ceases to amaze me how people just file on and don't even make eye contact with the driver as they swipe their oyster card. I like to greet him or her, as I figure that's the least I can do for the person who ferries me through rush hour London traffic!

4. Pick up litter in parks etc. I hate wind-blown litter, so I like to pick it up when I can so that it doesn't annoy anyone else.

5. Offer my seat on public transport to people who need it more than me. This is such a simple thing, but it happens less that it should.

So I enjoyed this! But it's late, and my husband is thinking the kindest thing I could do for him is to go to bed, so I'm tagging anyone who reads this and fancies answering the questions!

When has spring sprung?

2008-03-14T18:37:00.002Z

I have fallen for a new word: phenology. It’s the observation and recording of recurring natural phenomena and has the rather charming etymology of phenomena + -logy (see here for the OED definition). Suddenly, an activity I’ve enjoyed all my life has a name! All these years of noticing the firsts of the year – the first snow drops or daffodils brightening up the garden in early spring or the first strawberries of summer or berries of autumn or the first frost as nights draw in – qualify me as an amateur phenologist of sorts. Apparently, this simple activity that so many can enjoy is becoming an increasingly important means of charting the impact of climate change on our environments. And to think I thought it was the study of bumps and lumps on the head when I first heard it today lol (because of course I was mixing it up with phrenology)

Discovering new worlds - Richard Yates & Richard Dawkins

2008-03-11T11:32:00.012Z

Richard Yates was one of those gaps in my knowledge that had become a little embarrassing (Carson McCullers is another - though at least I know I'm not alone after reading this post by Ann over on Table Talk the other day!). I vaguely knew of Yates as a writer's writer, one of those talents that had fallen out of fashion (at least in Britain and Ireland - I'd love to hear how popular/unpopular he is elsewhere). My book-loving friend Vincent raved about him. I heard rumblings that Sam Mendes was working on a film of Revolutionary Road. Then I read this article in the Observer and finally on a day trip to Ely and a visit to the marvellous Topping and Company I came across such a comprehensive selection that I had no choice but to begin at the beginning and buy Revolutionary Road.

It turns out that's the best £7.99 I've spent in a long while. I'm not going to put pen to paper (or rather finger to keyboard!) and write up my full thoughts until I've let this book percolate for a while. But what I can say is that it dazzled me, leaving most of what I've read recently in the shade. To anyone who says Then We Came to the End nails the office working experience (like this recent post on the Guardian books blog) I can now say “but have you read Revolutionary Road?” as it captured so perfectly the realities of the daily office grind.

A bit of digging showed me that Vintage are in the process of reissuing Yates as Vintage Yates. Initially dropping the first name seemed gimmicky, but the more I think about it the more I think that this is one writer who more than deserves to be known by surname only, up there with the Updikes and Bellows and the rest. And I think the covers are just so beautiful, so evocative. Check out Easter Parade:

Or Cold Spring Harbour:

Or Eleven Kinds of Loneliness:

Just gorgeous. Now that I’ve realised what a gem of a writer he is, I’m delighted that Yates has been given the full Vintage classics treatment. I can’t wait to get my hands on them. Expect Yates to pop up regularly on here from now on.

I’m also romping through Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion at the moment. I must be one of the few readers left in the UK who hasn’t read his spirited attack on all things supernatural. I’m an atheist who had a religious upbringing, and there are many people in my life still with strong faith as well as just plain loyalty to religious traditions, so I appreciate both the disadvantages and advantages of religion. So far, I’m finding it thought-provoking and interesting, even if the style is a little shouty (or “passionate”, as the cover blurb so helpfully describes it) at times.

Salt & Honey by Candi Miller

2008-03-05T22:45:00.004Z

This is a beautiful written, powerful portrayal of Southern Africa in the middle of the Twentieth century, when apartheid was warping the morals of ordinary people. Koba is a sensitive young girl from a Kalahari desert tribe, a member of the Ju/hoansi, or the harmless people, in her own tongue. Her hunter-gatherer life, of family and tribe and ancestors, is torn apart when her parents are murdered by white Boer hunters in front of her. The very men who slaughtered her parents then take her away from her desert home, to live in exile alongside a white family - Marta Marais, her husband Deon and her son Mannie.

I was swept up by Koba's story. Her journey into and out of exile, with the different types of love that develops with the Marais family, is gripping. The book was literally unputdownable. Miller spent a decade researching and living the Ju/hoansi, and her dedication has paid off. This book is full of issues - apartheid, violence, politics - yet is so deftly written that the issues never get in the way of the story and the characters.

I studied a San tribe in an anthropology class as a teenager, so I knew a little about the culture and beliefs. However, I'd never considered their place in the apartheid system and entering this world through fiction was, in a way, more rewarding for me. The desert, its plants and animals, the stars and sky, was made alive to me in a way that a text book alone just can't do. So I'm planning on sending a copy to my old anthropology teacher. And I'm planning to give a copy to my sister (she's planning her honeymoon to South Africa and Namibia at the moment). In fact, I think I'll be recommending this book to all of the readers in my life!

Finally, I'd like to thank Juliet over at Musings from a Muddy Island for bringing this book to my attention. It was her great review (see here) that led me to this book and I'm so glad it did. It was also the gorgeous cover, as good cover design can often sway me.

Monday, monday

2008-02-25T11:56:00.001Z

How on earth is it Monday already? The weekend whizzed by, with just not enough reading, either of books or blogs, to keep me happy. My mind is still on law study so I've been flitting around since I finished Then We Came to the End. I'm counting the minutes (well, almost!) until next Saturday afternoon, when my Litigation exam is over and I can enjoy some guilt free reading. Happily, I'm now 100 pages into The Crime of Father Amaro by Eca de Queiros. He's a brand new author for me, and I'm enjoying it so far. The themes of hypocrisy and romantic love are deliciously rendered, with some of the characters just hilariously drawn. It's set in Portugal in the 1880s, which is an almost utterly unknown period for me and it's interesting to contrast it with the 19th century British and American novels I've read. At this stage, I feel sure that I'll write up my thoughts more fully in due course.

I was also lucky enough to have an excellent brunch yesterday, hosted by a dear friend who lives in the most amazing flat just steps away from Borough Market. She's a voracious reader, with such a wide and interesting taste. I can spend hours gazing at her shelves and asking for her thoughts on the various books I stumble across. I trust her recommendations a lot, so there was much opinionated discussion of what we loved and what we hadn't. Pretty much the ideal way to spend a Sunday morning at a time when I just don't have time to read as much as I'd like!

Office daze

2008-02-19T23:44:00.002Z

I was really excited to read Joshua Ferris' Then We Came to the End. It's about workers at an ad agency in Chicago in the late 90s, faced with lay-offs brought on by shrinking advertising budgets. As you can see, it's got a gorgeous cover and it was heaped with praise when it came out in hardback last year. I work in an office, and I was intrigued by a novel from a promising young writer about my daily reality. Spring was in the air and it was time to lighten up and read some humourous fiction. It started promisingly enough:

We were fractious and overpaid. Our mornings lacked promise. At least those of us who smoked had something to look forward to at ten-fifteen. Most of us liked everyone, a few of us hated specific individuals, one or two people loved everyone and everything. Those who loved everyone were unanimously reviled.

The first person plural narrator initially seemed like a quirky way of getting the reader instantly inside the gossip-y world of the strangers forced to spend most of their waking lives together as colleagues. A stream of characters were introduced, and some details were spot on - Marcia with her 80s hairstyle and continued devotion to the bands she worshipped as a teenager, the woman still a teenager in her head; Jim Jackers, with his insecure desire to be loved by all and his fear of the blank page, the archetypal college kid transitioning to adulthood.

But I couldn't get hooked on the story. The first person plural narrator stopped being quirky and just started grating. I didn't care about the characters, so I didn't really care about the endless firings. I didn't care enough to follow who was laid off when. And, crucially, I didn't care about the tragedies playing out in these characters' lives. I wasn't moved by the mother of the murdered child handicapped by grief. I didn't care about the suicidal Carl Garbedian, with his existential crisis and marital problems. I found most of it profoundly depressing, particularly the bullying and isolation of Joe Pope.

I had a reprieve in the middle of the book. For a brief chapter Ferris moved into third person singular, following the character of Lynn, a partner at the ad firm. His writing here was much better, portraying a woman used to being in control during a very vulnerable time. The depth and complexity on display were so much more appealing to me and gives me faith that Joshua Ferris is a writer of talent if he can move beyond stylistic posturing. And it helped me get through the book, as I think I would have put it down otherwise.

This book made me wonder, yet again, about what goes on in reviewing circles. Had any of these reviewers every actually worked in an office? Perhaps if they hadn't, it would explain how they could find such a depressing book "dazzling" and "stunning" and the like. It's funny how there's usually such a consensus around debuts like this, like he's been annointed the hot writer with the buzz for the year, so nearly every reviewer is going to treat his debut as the best thing they've read. But it's certainly reminded me that I need to get back to my usual policy of ignoring the critical guff on prelims and jacket blurbs...

Random jottings

2008-02-13T15:32:00.004Z

You know when you've never heard of a writer and then someone mentions them to you or you read their name for the first time and within days they start popping up everywhere? I'm experiencing that at the moment with Marianne Moore. I had, literally, never heard of her before recently discussing twentieth century poets with a friend, who raved about her as an outstanding poet worthy of a far higher profile. Then I saw her book cover on Nigel Beale's collection of his favourite book covers on flickr (there are lots of lovely faber covers on there) and today her name's popped up in David Morley's poetry workshop on the Guardian Books site.

So I thought I'd head over to one of my favourite poetry sites, the Poetry Archive to see what I could turn up. I love the Poetry Archive. It's a charity that exists to promote the worldwide audience for poetry and they have an incredible archive of recordings of various poets reading their own work. If you ever fancy listening to Yeats reading The Lake Isle of Innisfree or Tennyson reading The Charge of the Light Brigade or just want to meander through, listening to your favourite poets or poems you remember from school then this is the place for you. Unfortunately no Marianne Moore for me on there but now that she exists for me I hope to read some of her work myself soon.

Go Tell It On The Mountain by James Baldwin

2008-02-12T15:28:00.000Z

This poor blog's been sadly neglected over the past week or so, as it's been a busy time chez moi...but I won't bore you with the intricacies of revision for my property law exam! Instead I'd like to share my thoughts on James Baldwin's stunning Go Tell It On The Mountain. Baldwin always struck me as a writer that's fallen out of fashion, with his popularity tapering away after his death in 1987. Despite his "modern classic" status, I wasn't ever particularly tempted to investigate his work for myself. But since African-American writing was the genre for February in the Year of Reading Dangerously challenge, I thought I'd give his debut novel a go. Mainly because I just loved the cover artwork (which, as you can see for yourself, is starkly gorgeous). And I am so so very glad I did.

John Grimes is going to be a preacher when he grows up. He's going to preach at the Temple of the Fire Baptized, just like his father Gabriel. Everyone says so and everyone's been saying so for so long that even John himself believes it now. The novel opens on the morning of his fourteenth birthday, the first morning he begins to realise the enormity of his looming future. He's still not saved, not like the living saints in his storefront church, so how can an unsaved sinner like him find a future saving sinners as a preacher man? His emerging sexuality and his changing body add to his guilt and fear. But his biggest sin is his hatred of his authoritarian and distant father. He's nursed this hatred so long that it's part of him, part of his future, and his struggle with this hatred in the eyes of God is the biggest part of his spiritual journey.

This is an intense novel, grappling with the role of religion in early 20th century African-American culture at a time the blues and jazz explosion were expressing African-American life in new ways. The first and last chapters are largely from John's perspective, while the three longer chapters are from the perspective of his paternal Aunt Florence, his father and his mother Elizabeth. While the action unfolds only over the course of less than 24 hours, this tight structure allows Baldwin to swoop over decades and geography. His older characters move from the South to the North, following lovers or seeking a new life away from the grinding physical poverty of the South. His spare, almost clipped, style adds to the repression and poverty of post-emancipation life in the South. One character, Deborah, was violently gang-raped as a teenager by a group of white men, while lynchings are in the background as the white bloodsport. But the fabled North is not much better, with black women still toiling as cleaners for whites and black boys too afraid to go into the New York Public Library, as it's too imposing, too intimidating, too white, even for an intelligent boy like John Grimes. John is not a likeable character, he's dutiful but resentful, at times self-pitying (will anyone remember his birthday?) and isolated from the rest of his family. But the family secrets revealed (to the reader, not necessarily to all the other characters) show how he's a product of his history and environment. It's compelling stuff

This accomplished debut was just what I needed after finishing another debut (Joshua Ferris' debut Then We Came To The End - more on this later). I'm now planning to read more Baldwin, to make up for all the years when I thought he wasn't worth the effort!

Digital natives

2008-02-07T13:45:00.000Z

I got a kick out of Steven Johnson's article "Dawn of the Digital Natives" in the Technology section of today's Guardian on my Northern Line journey this morning. It's a response to the NEA study released back in November 07 about the decline in reading in the US saying that the Google generation's reading is not quite as woeful as anyone over 25 likes to think. It's pretty US-centric, but he has a good line in one liners:
"Simply excising screen-based reading from the study altogether is like doing a literarcy survey circa 1500 and only counting the amount of time people spent reading scrolls".

One month already?!?

2008-02-05T21:03:00.000Z

Today is my one month blogging anniversary, my blogiversary if you will. I can't believe how fast the month has passed...on the 5th January I was still missing Paris (where we spent New Year's) and was on day five of my new non-smoker self. On Feb 5th I'm loving London again and haven't even thought about cigarettes in weeks. I was comedy proud of myself on Saturday night, as I managed to wait outside the theatre while the Husband parked the car and not only didn't want to smoke but actually felt a little sorry for the smokers standing out there with me. Which must be some sort of non-smoking turning point. And then one of the actors was smoking on stage and I thought the smell was obnoxious - I've well and truly turned! The play (David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow at the Old Vic) was fantastic, helped by my crush on Jeff Goldblum no doubt. I generally don't like Mamet, as I found Oleanna and Sexual Perversity in Chicago (the only other Mamet plays I've seen) tiresome, but I would recommend this one. The Husband loved it, which was handy as I'd gotten the tickets as his birthday present. Mamet always makes me wonder about whether a play should be readable or not. Oleanna was easy to read, but I just didn't buy it as a performance, which to me makes a weak play...whereas I struggled with Henry V but was gripped by the RSC performance I saw in Stratford last autumn. I sometimes think a play only read is a lesser thing, as it's a performance and a text. It's like only reading songs.

A friend has a wonderful food blog (Treat a Week - he's such a foodaholic, and I can vouch for how good some of these recipes taste!), and reading his posts got me thinking about blogging myself. I work full time and have also been studying law by night for the last three and a half years (the end is in sight - I finish in June and it's going to be great to "just" work!). The work/study combination is at times terrible for my reading (my telly watching's also suffered but that's really no bad thing). I started to think how a blog may help my reading, may help me to reenergise and expand my horizons, may help to remind me that there's life beyond work and text books and case law and revision. So I started to mull over the idea of starting my own blog. I even mentioned it to the Husband, who was his usual supportive self (he's got far more faith in my than I do!).

After all my thinking about it I actually signed up to Blogger on a bit of a whim at the end of the first week back at work in 2008. My "official" aim is to actually look up words I know instead of just skipping over them, hence the name of the blog. Hmmm, that promise hasn't actually survived so well. I'm still noting words down, and where I found them, but finding the time to actually look them is proving elusive. Probably because I'm discovering this whole amazing world of bloggers! I love to wander through blogs, it's amazing what you find. Though thank god I discovered bloglines, or I think I'd spend all my free time wandering through the litblogosphere and never get any of my own reading done!

I want to write up my thoughts on Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris (I initially disliked it, but got more into it and ended up thinking it's a worthwhile debut - I'll keep an eye out for Joshua Ferris in the future) and Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones (I loved this book, I think it should have won the Booker, although Darkmans is sitting in my TBR pile as I write this so I may revise that opinion when I get around to that book). I'm currently reading Go Tell It On the Mountain by James Baldwin (my second Reading Dangerously book) and I'm finding it an intense experience. I read a little before pausing to digest, so it's a more thoughtful reading experience than other books I've read recently. Unfortunately, I've got a Property exam coming up on the 16 Feb so I'm just going to have to go and study and leave the world of books for pleasure behind for a while...

Spring is in the air

2008-02-02T10:48:00.000Z

Look what I got in the post today!

Some more books for my African Reading Challenge. I love getting books in the post, there's all the satisfaction of a package with the added thrill of new books. It's not quite as good as browsing in an actual bookshop but it's lovely all the same. I've just started using The Book Depository and it's been so good. It has a massive selection of books (I went on there originally because I couldn't find all the books I needed for the African challenge on Amazon), with good prices and free delivery. I think the free delivery is what sells it to me. I hate the awful "hmmm which delivery method should I use" part of Amazon and the cost usually makes me feel I've not made such a big saving on the book. The BD also sends the books out as they're ready from its warehouse, which means I had the fun of receiving So Long A Letter earlier in the week. So I get even more packages, which can only be a good thing. And it sends book marks too, which should help to stop me moaning about the perpetual lack of book marks in my life...it's such a lovely morning here, cold but bright and clear. The spring bulbs are still coming up. The slight breeze is perfect for the laundry on the line. I had the distinct feeling that I was being watched as I refilled the bird feeder. So I wasn't too surprised when the blue tits and our local jay were there within seconds of me closing the back door. I love watching the birds, the wood pigeons bullying the magpies, the robins who seem so fearless. I even love the squirrels, despite my perpetual campaign to position the feeders in squirrel-proof locations! I've got to admire their ingenuity at getting at the food. Spring is definitely in the air in London despite the snow and storms in other parts of Britain.

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

2008-01-30T16:16:00.000Z

The novel opens with Rebecca Sharp and Amelia Sedley leaving Miss Pinkerton’s Academy for Young Ladies. Amelia is the kindest of souls, with her tearful promises to write to her numerous bosom school friends, while Becky is determined to overcome her humble birth. The stately Miss Pinkerton deems Becky too lowly to receive the copy of Dr Johnson’s dictionary presented to all young ladies on their graduation from her establishment. When a copy is smuggled to her, Becky doesn’t want it and throws it out of the carriage taking the two girls away, much to Amelia’s genteel horror!

Amelia is headed back to her father’s house in Russell Square, to await marriage to her long-term beau George Osborne. Becky stays with the Sedleys en route to a position as governess at Sir Pitt Crawley’s country house Queens Crawley. While at Russell Square, Becky sets about wooing Amelia’s brother Joseph (an hilariously self-centred dandy). Luckily for the reader, Becky doesn’t ensnare Jos Sedley, allowing her to continue on her journey to scale the social heights by heading to Queen Crawley.

I don’t want to reveal too much of the plot. It was originally serialised so Thackeray used lots of tricks to keep the reader hooked. There’s a wide range of characters from right across the social spectrum, from humble servants to aristocrats (and even occasional glimpses of the King). There are secret marriages. There are scheming relations vying with each other for their maiden aunt’s sizeable fortune. There is a bankruptcy. People flee to Paris to avoid their debtors. Waterloo carries most of the sizeable cast of characters to Brussels.

I’ve been meaning to read Vanity Fair for years, and I was very curious to know what I’d make of Becky Sharp. She’s one of those characters with a life of its own (and I’ve not even seen any of the screen adaptations of the book!). She’s certainly the brains of the operation, skilfully handling not just the men but most of the women too. She contrasts brilliantly with the rather insipid Amelia, to the point where at times I wished for less Amelia and more Becky. She also shows how frustrating life was for women, who were effectively powerless and reliant on fathers, brothers, husbands and patrons to survive.

But William Dobbin was a revelation for me. I wasn’t expecting him at all, and he was undoubtedly the beating heart of the novel. He physically unappealing, being lanky and squeaky voiced, but his heart is good and he’s a true friend. His emotional depth compensates for the weaknesses in other characters. The contrast between William Osborne and George Osborne counter balances the contracts between Becky and Amelia perfectly.

John Carey, who introduced this novel (or wrote the afterword in my case, as I obeyed his exhortation to only read his introduction after reading the entire novel!) in the Penguin Classics edition I read made some interesting comparisons with War & Peace. I hadn’t known of Thackeray’s influence on Tolstoy and since War & Peace is also a challenge read for me this year I’m looking forward to seeing how it compares.

Eva's Reading Meme

2008-01-28T14:52:00.000Z

Thanks to Verbivore at Incurable Logophilia for tagging me in Eva's Reading Meme ! This is the first meme I’ve responded to and the questions are just delicious! Also perfect for me today, as I finished Vanity Fair late late last night and my tired brain has enjoyed these questions so much…

Which book do you irrationally cringe away from reading, despite seeing only positive reviews? This would have to be Saturday by Ian McEwan. Not sure if all the reviews I saw were positive, but it was just everywhere. It seemed like whenever I opened a newspaper there was a review or a piece by or about McEwan. It seemed that whenever I listened to Radio 4 it was being talked up. I live in London, was actually on the anti-war march on the day the novel is set, and I even love Fitzrovia (where the main character lives). I’ve enjoyed other McEwan books (though I think the film of Atonement is completely over-praised!). So usually I’d be raring to go but it just repells me. Actually thinking about it, a wealth of postive reviews or enthusiastic friends means I’m quite likely to avoid books (for instance, I’ve not read Harry Potter and now the fact that just about everyone I know loves them means I probably never will).
If you could bring three characters to life for a social event (afternoon tea, a night of clubbing, perhaps a world cruise), who would they be and what would the event be? I’d invite William of Baskerville (from Eco’s The Name of the Rose), Brogeen the leprechaun (from Patricia Lynch’s Brogeen books, particularly my favourite Brogeen and the Green Shoes) and Sylvie (from Robinson’s Housekeeping) to a dinner party. Not too sure what the topics of discussion would be, but between a mediaeval scholar monk, a representative of the fairy folk and a free spirit from mid-20th century America, I'm sure it would be an interesting night.
You are told you can’t die until you read the most boring novel on the planet. While this immortality is great for awhile, eventually you realize it’s past time to die. Which book would you expect to get you a nice grave?. This is perhaps cheating a little but it would have to be Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (which is actually a very long poem). It bores me to tears, so despite trying it a few times I’ve yet to actually finish it.
Come on, we’ve all been there. Which book have you pretended, or at least hinted, that you’ve read, when in fact you’ve been nowhere near it? I don’t generally have a problem owning up to not having read something, but I must say I did pretend to have read Tristram Shandy for the first couple of years of university. I think I was trying to look as well-read as possible (and it’s still on my tbr list now!). I also pretended to have read Villette, but only because I inadvertently ended up in a literary conversation with two friends who’d read it, and loved it, and assumed I did too. I went straight to the library, checked it out and discovered my favourite Bronte novel. I even then admitted my previous ignorance so it all ended quite happily!
As an addition to the last question, has there been a book that you really thought you had read, only to realize when you read a review about it/go to ‘reread’ it that you haven’t? Which book? Erm, nothing springs to mind in this category as I generally have a pretty good memory for what I’ve read and what I haven’t. But if this question were about a book you thought you hadn’t read but actually had, then it would be The Little Friend (Donna Tartt). I went to read it about a year ago and started having the strangest déjà vu. It seemed so familiar, but I was sure I hadn’t read the book. Well, when my déjà vu reached prophetic levels (as in I knew exactly what was coming next), I admitted that I’d suppressed the memory of this book. It’s actually quite a good book, so I was happy to inadvertently reread it, and it remains a puzzle to me why it disappeared so completely from my memory!
You’re interviewing for the post of Official Book Advisor to some VIP (who’s not a big reader). What’s the first book you’d recommend and why? (if you feel like you’d have to know the person, go ahead of personalize the VIP) I think maybe something by Bill Bryson. His style is so funny and chatty that even a non-reader would be sucked in. Or perhaps Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, for its sheer beauty. And I loved that book, so I’d happily sing its praises to the VIP in question, hopefully getting them into the right frame of mind to love it too!
A good fairy comes and grants you one wish: you will have perfect reading comprehension in the foreign language of your choice. Which language do you go with? Spanish, as I’ve enjoyed so many Spanish language books in translation. But there’s a small likelihood that I’ll someday build on my schoolgirl Spanish (and French and Italian) so I’d choose Mandarin. I think there are going to be more and more interesting novels coming out of China, so it would be handy to be able to effortlessly read them in their original language.
A mischievous fairy comes and says that you must choose one book that you will reread once a year for the rest of your life (you can read other books as well). Which book would you pick? I’d have to go with One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I’ve reread this intermittently since I first read it as a teenager and I still love now as much as I did the first time around.
I know that the book blogging community and its various challenges have pushed my reading borders. What’s one bookish thing you ‘discovered’ from book blogging (maybe a new genre, or author, or new appreciation for cover art-anything)? I’m still pretty new to blogging, and am still finding my way around the book blogging community, so I’d have to say that challenges are my big “discovery”! A month ago I had literally no idea they existed and now I’ve signed up for three, so plenty of new books and new authors are in store for me in 2008. I can also feel myself becoming more thoughtful in my reading, as the act of noting down thoughts, reactions and words to look up is making my reading more textured.
That good fairy is back for one final visit. Now, she’s granting you your dream library! Describe it. Is everything leather-bound? Is it full of first edition hard covers? Pristine trade paperbacks? Perhaps a few favorite authors have inscribed their works? Go ahead-let your imagination run free. I think my dream library would have to have a fireplace, as I love reading in front of a fire more than anywhere else. So two chairs, on either side of a fireplace, each with its own reading lamp. There’d be a window, which looked out over trees and a pond (so I could see the seasons, or the rain, or the dark and feel even snugger in my dream library). The shelves would be full of cloth bound sewn hardbacks. Much as I love the smell of glue in paperbacks, I hate the way they gradually fall apart. The shelves would be magic, in that I’d never run out of space (now if only that would happen in real life!). And all I’d have to do to get a book into my library is to think about it. In fact, if I’m not sure of the title, all I’d have to do is think about a particular theme or idea and my dream librarian (with her vast knowledge) would provide interesting books.
I’d like to tag Cass at The Reading Life of Antipodean Owl, Orchidus at Epiphany, Juliet at Musings from a Muddy Island and Equiano at Lost in Translation. Only answer if you’d like to, as not sure if you love/hate memes!

Doris Lessing on the writing life

2008-01-24T11:31:00.000Z

I went to listen to Doris Lessing (in conversation with Hermione Lee) at the Southbank Centre on Tuesday night. The Literary Saloon drew my attention to Ben Hoyle’s article in The Times about Lessing’s thoughts on contemporary authors and their promotional duties. This grand old dame, frail in body but still strong and edgy in spirit, expressed sympathy for the young writers of today, particularly young women. It’s interesting to think about whether the media profiles of authors – readings, signings, literary festivals, talking head appearances on TV and radio and the like – have a detrimental effect on the quality of writing they produce.

I’ve not read much Lessing, and only went along because it was her first public appearance since being awarded the Nobel. But it was a rather marvellous experience!

She began by reading the opening from her new novel, Alfred and Emily (due from HarperCollins in May 2008). It’s about her parents, about how WWI changed them so drastically that she thinks she never met her “real” parents, the people they’d have been but for the war. She described how the first half of the novel gives them the lives she imagines they had while the second half is about what actually happened to them (at least as far as she knows). It opens in 1902, Edwardian England, with the village cricket match at which the 16 year old Alfred meets the 18 year old Emily.
She said it will be ultimately be “quite anti-war”. I’m looking forward to reading it.

Lessing was witty and sharp, quite like her fiction really. She spoke intelligently and movingly about WWI, about how it was the foundational event of the 20th century, twisting and shaping everything that came after it, but yet doesn’t get the time or attention she thinks it deserves. She spoke about Zimbabwe, about the friends she still has there and the daily struggles they face. And if it’s bad for them (who are comparatively well off) it must be brutal for poorer people.

I recently finished Lessing’s The Fifth Child. It’s a slim novel, but still powerful. Harriett and David Lovatt are out of step with the Swinging Sixties, being “conservative, old-fashioned, not to say obsolescent”. Their shared dream is to create the perfect family, to provide a loving home to a brood of children in a rambling Victorian house. As the first four children are born the reality almost surpasses the dream. The children are healthy and charming, the parents are brimming with love for them and each other, the extended families are brought together, with wounds from the past being healed during shared Christmas and Easter holidays in Harriet & David’s house.

The plot turns sinister when Harriet falls pregnant with the fifth child. None of her pregnancies had been easy but this one is tortuous. The baby quickens early, and the movements gradually build into a crescendo of agony for Harriet. She starts to think “this savage thing inside her” is the enemy. When Ben is born at 8 months there are no reserves of maternal love for this monstrous child, so different from the other Lovatts. The cracks have well and truly appeared in the Lovatts’ charmed family life.

This almost reads like a fairy tale, a reworking of the ancient fear of giving birth to a monster. The taboo of the mother who despises her child. But there are shadows lurking in Harriet and David’s life before Ben’s birth, and Ben is not a complete monster (I felt quite tender towards him at times, at his isolation within his family), and it’s this complexity that made this an interesting read. I would say it’s a good book, good enough to seek out more Lessing.

The Africa Reading Challenge

2008-01-21T16:00:00.000Z

I came across the Africa Reading Challenge over at Siphoning Off A Few Thoughts. It involves committing to reading 6 books by African authors or books about Africa or African issues, from January 1 to December 31 2008. It got me thinking about extending my reading beyond my usual European/North American focus. I’ve read a fair bit of African fiction, by writers like Andre Brink, JM Coetzee and Chinua Achebe, and a tiny amount of African non-fiction (erm, Philip Gourevitch’s powerful We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families is the only thing that springs to mind at the moment). Since Half of A Yellow Sun is currently in the stack next to my bed, and I’ve wanted to read Nadine Gordimer for so long now it’s getting embarrassing, I’ve decided to sign up for this challenge. Six books seems totally achievable! And since my limited African reading to date involves male writers - The Bride Price by Buchi Emecheta is the only book by a female African writer I think I’ve read - I’ve decided to make this a female only list. Here's the list:

So Long a Letter by Mariama Ba (Senegal)
Your Madness, Not Mine by Juliana Makuchi (Cameroon) – short stories
Nervous Conditions by Tsi Tsi Dangarembga (Zimbabwe)
The Pickup by Nadine Gordimer (South Africa)
Our Sister Killjoy by Ama Ata Aidoo (Ghana)
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria)

I’m looking forward to reading the reviews posted as part of the challenge – I’m sure it’ll end up with yet more books I desperately want to read!

The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares

2008-01-20T01:00:00.000Z

Borges led me to Adolfo Bioy Casares' The Invention of Morel. Borges writes that to classify this novella “as perfect is neither an imprecision nor a hyperbole” while Octavio Paz describes it as a
“perfect novel”. I usually discount blurbs but two such heavy hitters, along with Louise Brooks on the cover, were enough for me to buy this novella and read it in one sitting.

The unnamed narrator is on the run from the police, after a trial where he was sentenced to life imprisonment. He smuggles himself to an uninhabited and diseased island. With its disused swimming pool, chapel and museum, combined with its isolation, the island is the perfect place for him to remain hidden, serving a life sentence of his own design.

The novella is made up of journal entries, which start with the mysterious arrival of other people on the island. They appeared as if from nowhere, sending the narrator into hiding so as to avoid detection and arrest. He creeps around the island, watching the new arrivals unobserved, particularly the beautiful Faustine. He watches her each evening, as she sits on the rocks as the sun sets over the ocean. His unrequited love is sharply observed:

She watches the sunset every afternoon; from my hiding place I watch her. Yesterday, and again today, I discovered that my nights and days wait for this hour. The woman, with a gypsy’s sensuality and a large, bright-colored scarf on her head, is a ridiculous figure. But I still feel (perhaps I only half believe this) that if she looked at me for a moment, spoke to me only once, I would derive from those simple acts the sort of stimulus a man obtains from friends, from relatives, and, most of all, from the woman he loves.

The island's inhabitants become more mysterious the more he learns. Two suns and two moons appear in the sky. The narrator talks of the searing heat and the roots he subsists on and the reader wonders how much of this is “real”, as related in the factual journal, and how much is imagined or hallucinated. I won't discuss the invention of the title, as the revelation of what is happening on the island serves the plot so well.

For me, this was certainly not the perfect novel heralded by Borges and Paz, especially as I read it in translation, but it is readable and tightly plotted. The mystery builds as the threads of the story are woven. It's a book I think I'll reread, as it's short but dense with themes of immortality and metaphysical love.

Reading dangerous (and chunky) books

2008-01-16T22:28:00.000Z

Wandering through the litblogosphere is bringing out my inner explorer...stumbling across an insightful and quirky blog is like discovering a new land. I'm reading about new authors, or new books by authors I've already read. It's invigorating, and exciting. My mental reading list is growing ever longer.

My other great discovery has been reading challenges. There are some utterly wonderful reading challenges out there (I'm thinking of things like the outmoded authors challenge I saw on Books of My Numberless Dreams). Most challenges would be too challenging for me, as I'm not a big one for lists, preferring to read where the mood takes me. But then I came across the year of reading dangerously challenge. It grabbed my attention. Such an idea, reading outside my personal comfort zone. And not too prescriptive either, providing a recommended list of titles, with the option to mix & match as I choose. Which suits me perfectly!

Here's the recommended list of titles:
- January: Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens (English classic)
- February: The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison (African American)
- March: Cat's Eye, by Margaret Atwood (Atwood for Atwood's sake)
- April: Transformations, by Anne Sexton (Poetry)
- May: Other Voices, Other Rooms, by Truman Capote (Southern US)
- June: Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov (Russian)
- July: The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier (adolescent)
- August: Maus I and II, by Art Spiegelman (Graphic Novel, Pulitzer winner)
- September: The Secret Lives of People in Love, by Simon Van Booy (Independent)
- October: The Human Stain, by Philip Roth (Contemporary/Jewish)
- November: A Month of Classic Short Stories, Various - watch for a list
- December: The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck (Dusty)

But, since I've read some of these, and since Atwood is one of my favourite authors (so not exactly dangerous!), I've decided to tweak it slightly. Instead, here are my dangerous reads:
- January: Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray - This has been on my shelf, making me feel guilty, for about three years.
- February: Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
- March: The Diviners by Margaret Laurence - this Canadian Margaret is brand new to me.
- April: Transformations, by Anne Sexton (Poetry)
- May: Other Voices, Other Rooms, by Truman Capote
- June: Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov (Russian) - this will be re-reading, as I love Nabokov but don't read him now as much as I used to.
- July: The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier (adolescent) - I didn't like adolescent novels when I was an adolescent so this is quite "dangerous" for me.
- August: Maus I and II, by Art Spiegelman - I've never really gotten into graphic novels
- September: The Secret Lives of People in Love, by Simon Van Booy
- October: The Human Stain, by Philip Roth
- November: A Month of Classic Short Stories
- December: The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck (Dusty) - I've read a lot of Steinbeck, but not this one.

So with these twelve books to look forward to, I thought I'd sign up for another challenge - the Chunkster Challenge. Again, this isn't too prescriptive, as it's just four books, of over 450 pages, over the course of the year. Even better, cross over with other challenges is allowed so my Vanity Fair counts for this. But I really want to read War and Peace, and to re-read Ulysses, so this challenge appeals. My chunky books for 2008 are:

- Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray (809 pages)
- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (a whopping 1358 pages)
- Donne: The Reformed Soul by John Stubbs (474 pages) - I'm very glad this qualified as this has been in my stack a while
- Ulysses by James Joyce (732 pages) - The 1922 edition

It should be an interesting and satisfying year I hope!

Arts Council funding cuts for publishers

2008-01-14T12:22:00.000Z

So much for not buying any more books! I've just spent nearly £40 on Amazon after reading Nicolas Lezzard's piece on today's Guardian Books blog.

I've been thinking how strange it is that I go out of my way to support independent bookshops but that I don't really seek out works by small independent publishers. And I do often check who's publishing what I'm buying (I worked in publising for a number of years, for two of the large mega publishers, so I retain an interest in the industry). My plan was to rectify this by starting with Persephone Books, as the bookshop's near where I work and it combines independent bookshop and publisher in one tidy package. But then I read a comment to Lezzard's piece along the lines of "well, how about supporting independent publishers by actually buying their books". So I have. I've bought:

At the Water's Edge by Pradeep Jeganathan (South Focus Press - I can't seem to find a website for them, so if anyone knows it I'd appreciate it)
The Crime of Father Amaro by Eca de Queiros (Dedalus)
The Maimed by Hermann Unger (Dedalus)
The Class by Hermann Unger
When Memory Dies by A. Sivanandan (Arcadia Books)

While I bought these on impulse, they do fit with some of my nebulous reading aims (more short stories, more works in translation, more new authors). Now I just want them to arrive so I can start the process of discovering if there are any jewels in this haul!

Winterwood by Patrick McCabe

2008-01-13T15:58:00.000Z

I'll often sit in winterwood for hours...maybe just humming a few bars of 'Scarlet Ribbons', watching all the little ribbons as they flutter in the breeze. In the timeless beauty of our winterwood home.

Winterwood tells the story of Redmond Hatch, a journalist who returns to his roots in the West of Ireland. In his home place of Slievenageeha, he comes under the spell of Ned 'Auld Pappie' Strange, a fiddling, story-telling mountainy man. Is Ned a gas ticket or something a lot more frightening? The storyline follows Hatch's descent from family man in the economically depressed Ireland of the 80s to mentally unstable drifter in the boom times of the Ireland in the Noughties.

Hatch's convoluted narration, with his self-consciously "educated" vocabulary, shows his dislocation from his background, and ultimately from reality. He idealises his wife and daughter, trying maintain a perfect happiness that steadily becomes creepier and creepier. As his life fragments, he starts to emulate Auld Pappie. His reaction to the changes in his life and in the society around him is to obsessively dwell on the old fashioned mountain life of his early childhood.

Only McCabe could imbue such a disturbing narrative with black humour. This dark and twisted novel is by far his best book since The Butcher Boy. The sinster story got under my skin in a way few stories do. This is brilliant and disturbing and a must-read for any fans of contemporary Irish fiction.

Eileen Chang

2008-01-13T01:03:00.000Z

I've just seen Lust, Caution, at the marvellous Phoenix Cinema, and now I must, must read some Eileen Chang. And soon. It's a luscious film...and so, working on the Brokeback Mountain principle (incredible short story = incredible Ang Lee film), things bode well for her original story.

No Country for Old Men by Cormac MacCarthy

2008-01-12T18:11:00.000Z

The book opens with Chigurh, the sinister killer, brutually murdering both a police officer and a man picked solely because he's driving alone. Meanwhile, Llewelyn Moss, out hunting antelope, finds the remains of a drug deal gone wrong: three shot up vehicles, several dead bodies, a cache of weapons, some heroin and a suitcase full of $100 banknotes. He decides to take the money, knowing it will change his life forever, knowing he will become the prey.

Chigurh is on Moss's trail. Almost a killing machine, he methodically and clinically kills anyone who gets in his way, often using a slaughter house bolt gun.

One of the outstanding scenes for me was when Chigurh pulls into a filling station just as it's getting dark. The shopkeeper tries to engage him in the usual polite conversation about the weather and where he's from. The tension mounts and the terse dialogue culminates in a coin toss. Chigurh is deciding whether to kill him and the shopkeeper doesn't even know that his life is to be decided by the flip of a coin:

The man looked at Chigurh's eyes for the first time. Blue as lapis. At once glistening and totally opaque. Like wet stones.
You need to call it, Chigurh said. I cant call it for you. It wouldnt be fair. It wouldnt even be right. Just call it.
I didnt put nothing up.
Yes you did. You've been putting it up your whole life. You just didnt know it. You know what date is on this coin>
No.
It's nineteen fifty-eight. It's been travelling twenty-two years to get here. And now it's here. And I'm here. And I've got my hand over it. And it's either heads or tails. And you have to say. Call it.

Meanwhile, Sherrif Bell is also trying to find Moss, trying to save him from Chigurh. While the book is narrated in the third person, Bell's first person thoughts are interspersed throughout. He reflects on the changes in society since his boyhood, since he became a police officer after World War Two. He tries to make sense of the violence he witnesses in what was a law-abiding and peaceful place.

The impact of war, from World War Two on Bell and Vietnam on Moss and Wells (who is also on Moss's trail), is a recurring theme alongside the degradation in American society. Bell is trying to atone for something that happened in the war when he was 21. Moss had already killed in Vietnam, so perhaps the carnage he unleases by taking the money is not totally alien.

The plot is pacy and violent, but the writing is generally outstanding and the tone is unremittingly bleak. MacCarthy's descriptions of the desert setting are often achingly beautiful (see here for some thoughts on the words he uses). While I enjoyed this, I'm not sure it deserves the hyperbolic praise it seems to have received from just about every publication, to judge by the quotes included in my edition. It reads like a beautifully written thriller, enjoyable but no masterpiece.

The desert in words.

2008-01-12T18:06:00.000Z

Cormac MacCarthy’s No Country for Old Men was a feast of new words. It’s a gripping read (see my review here) and MacCarthy’s pared down style means he uses words carefully. Sentences are mostly short. Characters mostly speak in short bursts of dialogue. It seems only right that MacCarthy displays his command of the language by using words that describe specific features of the desert setting. He’s showing me the reader how intimately he knows this land, how knowledgeable Moss is about his physical place in the world.

The first word that had me reaching for my dictionary, “datilla”, appeared on page 8. Neither of my dictionaries have a definition for it, so my googling turned up this . It seems likely that it’s describing a yucca, or other desert plant, when the word is taken in the context of the sentence: “The sun was up less than an hour and the shadow of the ridge and the datilla and the rocks fell far out across the floodplain below him.”

I was quickly reaching for my dictionaries again when I came across “barrial” on page 10: “The barrial stood silent and empty in the sun.” Again, nothing in my dictionaries and I couldn’t find a definition via Google. It reminds me of barrio, so it would seem to be a Spanish word describing desert terrain.

I came across “caldera” on page 15 (He looked out down the track south across the caldera back the way the truck had come.”), and finally my OED could help me. It’s a noun, meaning a large volcanic crater, especially one formed by a major eruption leading to the collapse of the mouth of the volcano (late 17th centry, from Spanish, originally Latin calderia meaning “boiling pot”). Such primeval violence contained in one short word. Knowing what it means adds depth to MacCarthy’s description, as the book opens in the aftermath of a violent drug deal gone wrong.

“Bajada” appeared overleaf, the end of page 16: “At the foot of a rockslide on the edge of the bajada was a small piece of something blue.” Again, my OED relieved my ignorance. It’s a noun meaning a broad slope of alluvial material at the foot of an escarpment (mid 19th centry, from Spanish “descent, slope). The specificity of the word, along with the fact that the rockslide is at the edge of it, somehow reinforces the smallness of the blue thing Moss sees. It is a blue speck in the reddish desert landscape that he can only see through his binoculars.

It was another word describing the physical landscape that had me next reaching for my dictionary: “He took off his boots again to try to cross the gravel without leaving any tracks and he climbed a long and rocky Rincon toward the south rim of the river canyon carrying the boots and the wrappings and the pistol and keeping an eye on the terrain below.” (p 35). “Rincon” means an interior corner, a nook; hence, an angular recess or hollow bend in a mountain, river, cliff, or the like.

The final word this book taught me is "caliche", which is used on page 270 to describe a woman burying her husband herself in 1879. It means a mineral deposit of gravel, sand and nitrates, found in dry areas of America (mid 19th century, from Latin American Spanish).

I lived in New Mexico for two years as a teenager. I hiked in desert landscapes, listening to rattlesnakes as the sun rose overhead. I learned words to describe my environment, words like arroyo and butte and pinon. These words from MacCarthy’s book have added to that stock.

French feminism

2008-01-09T22:22:00.000Z

Today is the centenary of Simone de Beauvoir's birth, and she's long been on my to read list. As a teenager, a French/Ecuadorian friend strongly recommended The Second Sex as a foundational feminist text but I never seem to come across a translation at a point when I've the time or inclination to read it (not helped by the criticisms of English translations of her work). Here's an interesting article in The Independent about how this cultural event is being celebrated in France.

I spent five days in Paris with my beloved over New Year, so found this particularly interesting. I adore Paris, but I do find it a fairly conservative and old-fashioned place compared to London. Perhaps it's the knowledge the beauty of Hausmann's centre is ringed by ghettos I'll probably never see. Still, we had a marvellous time, food and wine and lots of walking and talking, as well as the Louvre (the scrum of tourists snapping the Mona Lisa on their mobile phones was profoundly depressing) and the Arc de Triomphe and the utterly marvellous sewer museum, which was my personal museum highlight. After admiring the majesty of Notre Dame on New Year's Day, we walked to Shakespeare & Co for some much needed book browsing. We had a conversation outside the shop about what we'd study if we had the time and money. My beloved said architecture and I said philosphy, mentioning de Beauvoir and Sartre but expressing a desire to start with the classics, and get to know the foundations of the canon I've grown up with. We had a lively discussion about the merits of both subjects, how much they'd reveal to us about the development of ideas and culture in the world. Maybe we'll get around to it one of these years.

The first book of 2008 - Cranford

2008-01-09T12:43:00.000Z

Elizabeth Gaskell had not registered on my reading radar before the recent BBC production. In fact, I only tuned into the first episode of the BBC production because a colleague mentioned in passing that everyone dies in Mrs Gaskell’s stories. Morbid, I know, but it was enough to pique my interest. I was immediately hooked. The stories unfurled during the four weeks of the series were gentle and witty, tender and gripping, funny and unbearably sad. Such was my addiction that I received not one but two copies of the stories the series was based on (Cranford, Mr Harrison’s Confessions and My Lady Ludlow) as Christmas presents.

Cranford (1853) is simply sublime. Narrated by Miss Mary Smith, from the first page it is an engaging and wryly amusing take on the predominantly female world of the village of Cranford:

…for deciding all questions of literature and politics without troubling themselves with unnecessary reasons or arguments; for obtaining clear and correct knowledge of everybody’s affairs in the parish; for keeping their neat maidservants in admirable order; for kindness (somewhat dictatorial) to the poor, and real tender good offices to each other whenever they are in distress, the ladies of Cranford are quite sufficient. ‘A man’, as one of them observed to me once, ‘is so in the way in the house’.

The characters are vivid and engaging. The gentle Miss Matty, kind but easily flustered as she attempts to accommodate genteel manners with the changes in society wrought by the encroaching modern world. Her sister Miss Deborah, a formidable lady who dismisses the modern idea that women are equal to men, as she knows they’re superior! Miss Pole, and her meticulous collection and broadcasting of gossip. Martha, the faithful young servant, and Jem Hearn, her “follower”.

The pace is slow, but only slow in that the narrative is made up of anecdotes and asides. It’s more a smoothly rolling pace of stories related in letters, or told to a visitor to update her on the events of the months since her last visit. There are many stock themes, such as the thwarted love affair or the long lost brother, but they’re so beautifully written that it’s a pleasure to read. There are so many gems it’s hard to isolate my favourite bit, though Miss Matty’s attempts to enter the world of trade are handled so deftly that they’re funny instead of maudlin.

Mr Harrison’s Confessions (1851) is enjoyable, though more than a little overshadowed by Cranford. The plot follows a young and unmarried doctor as he embarks on his first general practice in the small country town of Duncombe, with a series of misunderstanding and practical jokes leading to much romantic misinterpretation.

My Lady Ludlow (1858) was more of a struggle for me. Structurally, it’s interesting but I found it over long. The story about the French Revolution was a bit too melodramatic for me, even as I appreciated that it was an attempt to balance the revolution occurring in the lady’s world as modern life encroaches. The social history, a feature of all three stories, was most apparent, and most interesting, in this story. It reminds me of how far we’ve come as a society in terms of things like universal suffrage, education and protection of children or medical advances.

I’ve now added other Gaskell novels to my list of books to read, perhaps some that deal with working-class life in industrialising and urbanising England, maybe Mary Barton or North and South, to counter the pastoral Cranford stories.

And I’ve gathered two new words for my collection: fain and quondam.

Fain works as both an adverb and adjective. As an adverb, it means:
1. with pleasure, gladly;
2. by preference, by desire
As an adjective, with “to”, it means:
1. Happy, pleased (archaic)
2. inclined, desirous (archaic)
3. (a) willing; (b) being obliged or constrained: compelled

Quondam, an adjective, means “former” or “sometime” and dates from the first half of the 16th century, from the Latin quom, when.

I’m fain to recommend Cranford and, now that I’ve finally discovered her, I hope Mrs Gaskell is never my quondam friend. This was the perfect book to start my reading year.

Little Women's Christmas

2008-01-06T16:06:00.000Z

Today is the feast of the ephiphany, the day baby Jesus got his presents from the Magi. At least that's how I thought of it as a child, as the three wise men figures in our nativity scene inched forward day by day until finally arriving at the crib on the 6th of January. I used to feel quite sorry for little baby Jesus, I didn't understand why he had to wait so long for his presents when Santy brought ours on Christmas morning. And then to just get gold and frankincense and myrrh. Poor baby I used to think, passing the crib.

This is also an important day in Cork, where I'm from, because it's Little Women's Christmas (or Women's Little Christmas, as we call it in our house). It's Oiche Nollaig na mBan in Irish - most Irish students should be familiar with Sean O Riordain's famous poem of the same name. It's a day when men took over household and family chores, allowing women to get together and socialise. In bygone days even respectable women could go to the pub, to enjoy a few drinks and a sing song with female friends. Nowadays, the pubs and restaurants of Cork are still full of women celebrating together on this night. My mother, originally from Limerick, says it's not really celebrated in Limerick, so it was a new tradition to her when she moved to Cork in the late Sixties. From what I gather from speaking with friends from other parts of Ireland, it's celebrated most strongly in Cork. So I particularly associate it with Cork, part of my proud Corkonian heritage!

And epiphany, while not a new word to me, is such an interesting one to blog about, as it works on a religous, personal and literary level. According to dictionary.com, it means the following:

1. (initial capital letter) a Christian festival, observed on January 6, commemorating the manifestation of Christ to the gentiles in the persons of the Magi; Twelfth-day.
2. an appearance or manifestation, esp. of a deity.
3. a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.
4. a literary work or section of a work presenting, usually symbolically, such a moment of revelation and insight.

Its origins lie in the late 13th century, from Middle English epiphanie, from Old French, from Late Latin epiphania, from Greek epiphaneia, 'manifestation', from epiphainesthai, 'to appear': epi-, forth; + phainein, phan-, 'to show'

I had always known of the feast of the Epiphany, as even someone as lapsed as myself knows it's a holy day of obligation for Catholics. But I hadn't realised it had other meanings, meanings that could help my reading, and even apply to moments I experience myself, until my late teens. It was in English class, when I was 17, that our teacher brought it up. I think it was House of the Spirits we were studying, but it could have been 100 Years of Solitude or the Borges' stories we read that year. But the word struck me as so useful that its meanings have stayed with me.

And as it was an epiphany experienced while reading the Saturday paper that set me blogging, it seems an especially useful word to me at the moment.

And so to begin.

2008-01-05T15:32:00.000Z

I love words, to the point where I willingly label myself a logophile. My logophilia began early, as reading unlocked worlds and experiences far from my suburban Irish childhood. And the essential privacy of reading, the silent communion between reader and writer, calms me in a way few things do.

It’s always been interesting to see how the different people in my life view my reading. I’ve had boyfriends who’ve been jealous of something that absorbed my time and attention, so it’s no surprise that the man I’ve chosen to spend my life with is also a reader, albeit to a lesser extent than me. I’ve had family and friends wonder how I can stay indoors on a hot day, or stay up for hours, when I’m reading something I literally cannot put down.

The physicality and sensuality of books add to my intense enjoyment - the cover artwork, the texture of the paper, the acknowledgments and dedications and smell of glue. But my love of words is more than bibliophilia. I read the words on shampoo bottles in the shower or on adverts on the tube when it’s too packed to read my book and wonder about who chose those words and why. I eavesdrop on strangers as I move through my life and wonder what the words they use actually mean to them. I love to find old postcards in antique markets, the thrill of imaging the stories behind the faded lines written by strangers to strangers. I love the history of words, and how word usage varies from region to region. Words are my entry into other stories, other worlds, other times, and are as close as I’ll come to another’s mind.

When I was 13 or so, one of my favourite English teachers used to set a weekly list of 10 words to memorise. The words had a theme, perhaps collective nouns or words sharing the same root, and I just adored them. I can still recite some of the lists, with definitions, and I remember how exciting it was to feel my vocabulary expand. And the praise she used to give for using the new words in our essays and book reports. That was a stage in my life when I still avidly looked up words I didn’t know when I came across them in my reading. I stopped doing that at some point during university, when it just became too much hassle, despite studying English and History. Perhaps it was the embarrassment of not knowing words that I felt I should have known, that were obviously well known enough for an author to use them. Or perhaps it was just laziness of my part.

But a couple of weeks ago I read a wonderful piece in the Guardian’s Review section by James Meek. He decided to look up every word he didn’t understand, and produced a delightful essay about language and lexicography and what it tells us about our world. I didn’t know most of the words he mentioned and it set me thinking about how I nearly always skip over words I don’t understand. This triggered memories of when I used to look them up, about how my first major purchase at university was a set of Oxford dictionaries being given away as an introductory offer by a book club. The same set of dictionaries I’ve used and taken care of in the decade since then, carefully packing and unpacking them as I moved from flat to flat. So I decided to honour my love of words by making a resolution to look up words I don’t know, and note where and when I found them. This will hopefully reinvigorate my reading as well, as it’s a chance to recapture the excitement of learning. I’m wondering what patterns I’ll uncover and what effect it’ll have on my own speech.

The very first word I came across after making this resolution was adumbrate, which was used in an email forwarded to me by a colleague. My OED defines this verb as follows:

-report or represent in outline;

-indicate faintly;

-foreshadow or prefigure a future event;

-overshadow

It originated in the late 16^th century, from Latin adumbratus, ‘shaded’, from the verb adumbrare, from ad ‘to’ (as an intensifier) and umbrare ‘cast a shadow’ (from umbra ‘shade’).

And of course, now that I know what it means, and its origin, I clearly see the echo of umbra and it seems such a much more useful and multi faceted word than ‘summary’. I’m already glad I’ve made this promise to myself.