Paperback Reader

Paperback Reader has Moved!

2010-02-28T17:08:00.001Z

Please join me here (http://paperback-reader.co.uk/)

I hope you like and enjoy my new home and please update your bookmarks; readers; rss feeds; blogrolls etc. and follow my blog at its new address.

I actually moved earlier this month but I am calling any stragglers ... I miss you!

Paperback Reader has Moved!

2010-02-08T17:15:00.001Z

Please join me here (http://paperback-reader.co.uk/)

I hope you like and enjoy my new home and please update your bookmarks; readers; rss feeds; blogrolls etc. and follow my blog at its new address.

Reading Day

2010-02-07T15:20:00.003Z

Only a mini-post today as I'm having a reading day/lazy day with my boyfriend. Tonight he is watching the Super Bowl with friends and I'm going for dinner with some of mine; we're also seeing one of the films showing as part of the Johnny Depp series at the BFI, the 1995 Dead Man where Depp plays a character named William Blake and one of the other characters believes he is the Romantic poet.

The lolcats image is apropos of nothing other than the fact that I found it funny. Personally I found the Twilight books addictive, like caffeine, but I know that they are not everyone's cup of tea. Moreover, when do I require an excuse to display my love of cats?!

Have a lovely Sunday.

Recent Acquisitions

2010-02-06T16:30:00.000Z

I have a few books to share with you that have recently been acquired from publishers. I am keeping the receipt of review copies at a minimum as I find it rather overwhelming but these are all titles that I would have bought anyway and that were on my wish-list. My only issue now is where to start as I want to read them all immediately ...

Red Dog, Red Dog by Patrick Lane: I have loved the Canadian literature that I have so far read and this was longlisted for the Giller Prize there in 2008 and this week released in the UK in paperback. I read about this in the lead-up up to the Booker nominees announcement last summer, my curiosity was piqued and I have been wanting to read it ever since. Windmill Books kindly sent me a copy.

You may notice that the other titles on the list are all from Virago; as you will probably know by now, I cannot resist books from this publisher and the lovely Sophie at Virago sent me these. The first two on the pile are both Virago Modern Classics and the other two written by renowned Virago authors (who each have other titles which appear on the VMC list).

Memento Mori by Muriel Spark: matching my other quirky re-issues of Spark novels this newest release is purported to be her best.

The Tortoise and the Hare by Elizabeth Jenkins: this VMC received a lot of attention amongst bloggers -and from some of my favourite ones at that- towards the end of last year as it was chosen for the Cornflower Book Group; I have been wanting to read it since then.

Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood: I love the new Virago issues of Margaret Atwood's books and it is all that I can do to replace my nearly-complete and mismatched collection of her books with the new ones. Cat's Eye of hers that I have been meaning to read for the longest; I recall attempting to borrow it from my school library many years ago and being refused by the school librarian as he deemed it "inappropriate".

Letter to my Daughter by Maya Angelou: this is a beautiful hardback edition of essays dedicated to the daughter the writer never had but sees all around her.

Okay, where do I start?

Les Liaisons Dangereuses

2010-02-05T18:20:00.002Z

I love Classic literature; I love books in translation; I love controversial novels with scandal and intrigue so when Polly of Novel Insights chose Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons) by Pierra Choderlos de Laclos for the Riverside Readers to discuss, I was delighted.

An eighteenth century epistolary novel, Les Liaisons Dangereuses concerns two bored aristocrats in pre-Revolutionary France who are in dire need of the guillotine for the evil ways the employ to alleviate their ennui. The Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil, ex lovers, each enjoy the arts of deceit and manipulation, each wishing to excel over the other. What begin as acts of revenge and of sexual conquest evolve into intricate Machiavellian plans of diabolical proportions; Valmont and Merteuil embroil others into their salacious machinations and nobody comes off unscathed.

The structure of the novel celebrates what is now the lost art of letter writing; the letters back and forth between all the players serve to look at the deceptions from every available viewpoint and fully appreciate their well-thought-out wickedness. Despite the epistolary form, the characters each had distinct voices and the letters their own style and tone; each writer was easily identifiable and by providing the majority of the correspondence the reader gains an insight into the complex manipulations and behind-the-scenes workings that occur. The multiple ironies of Les Liaisons Dangereuses that the reader is privy to throughout make it compelling reading as did the insight into the other face and persona that each character showed depending on whom they were writing to. Les Liaisons Dangereuses is very witty and intelligent and where some readers find the Chevalier Danceny and Cécile Volanges, the piano teacher and the convent girl respectively, to be annoying, I found them exceptionally amusing in their naïveté and their hyperbolic declarations of love.

Madame de Tourvel, the sexual object of Valmont's whim, is exceptionally virtuous and pious but her letters display great intelligence and passion and Laclos's representation of women is very impressive for its time; the Marquise is a vividly-drawn alpha-female and her verbal sparring with Valmont is every bit as much about sexual politics as it is sexual attraction. A manual in seduction, Les Liaisons Dangereuses is salacious and sordid; sex sells and the novel was very ahead of its time in being very much a part of ours. The scandalous lengths that Valmont and Merteuil go to to gain revenge are quite something; the novel is enthralling (the second volume does admittedly drag in its involved scene-setting) and shocking. At the same time as attempting to seduce Madame de Tourvel -whose conquest will earn him a sexual reward from Merteuil- Valmont is playing older male tutor to Cécile Volanges, at Merteuil's request as she has a score to settle with Cécile's future husband and Valmont consents because he desires revenge on Madame Volanges, Cécile's mother, who is confidante to Madame de Tourvel; further pawns are the impressionable Chevalier Danceny, in love with Cécile and seeking advice and assistance from both Valmont and Merteuil, and Madame de Rosamonde, the matronly aunt of Vamont and friend of de Tourvel, as well as a couple of other by-standers who are caught up in the devilishly dangerous scheming.

I did not find Merteuil or Valmont at all sympathetic; they are thoroughly cruel and loathsome characters in their depravity yet they are fascinating, especially Valmont in his phallocentrism and boundless vanity. Les Liaisons Dangereuses in a study of Sadism and a play-by-play of how people deceive, seduce and manipulate others to their will; it examines the underbelly of human nature. Merteuil loves Valmont and Valmont de Tourvel love each other as much as vain, narcissistic people can love another, but they will not bend to the other and relinquish their power, which is why they can not, ultimately, co-exist; these odious characters will never submit to true feeling at the expense of their reputation and the face that they show to others.

I read the Douglas Parmée translation of the novel, which I found immensely readable; it gives a modern voice to the words, which never jarred for me but it may for some. I didn't lose any of the aristocratic language nor Laclos's deft and clever plays on language and innuendo to depict sexual liaisons. I also watched the Stephen Frear's 1988 adaptation of the novel and thought it wonderfully brought to screen; the editing that is lacking in the novel is brutal in the film but not to the detriment of the story. John Malkovich as Valmont is outstanding although I was disturbed by his sympathetic portrayal as I was vehemently opposed to the deeds he carried out -in relation to Cécile- but could not resist his charm. Frears achieved an impressive visual representation of Laclos's moral ambiguities and complexities that resonates; of the people at book group who had seen the film, none of us could separate the characters from their incarnations on-screen, that and it was far easier to refer to the Marquise de Merteuil as Glenn Close as none of us could pronounce her name.

Some key dialogue -through letters- between Valmont and Merteuil setting out their despicable plan :

Till now my thoughts were all of love; but it was soon replaced by rage. Who do you think is trying to ruin my reputation with the woman I adore? What fiend in woman's shape is evil enough to weave such an abominable plot? You know her, it's your friend and relative, Madame de Volanges. You cannot imagine the tissue of horrors that obnoxious old hag has written about me. It is she and she alone who has been disturbing my angel's peace of mind; it's her views and her pernicious advice that are forcing me to leave; in a word, it is she who has victimized me. Oh, there's no doubt about it, her daughter has got to be seduced; no, that's not enough. That woman must be smashed and since the old trout is too long in the tooth to be attacked directly, she must be made to suffer through someone she loves.

You may be a trifle annoyed at what I'm asking you to do but isn't it a very small return for all the trouble I've been taking over your affairs? Didn't I restore you to the judge's when, through your own stupidity, you'd been forced to leave her? And then wasn't it me who placed into your hands ways and means to settle your score with that mischievous old bigot Madame de Volanges? You're always moaning about the time you waste looking round for exciting things to do. Now you have a couple under your very nose. Love or hatred, take your pick; they're both sleeping under the same roof and you can live a double life, fondling with one hand and stabbing in the back with the other...

Thoughts from other Riverside Readers:

Farmlanebooks

Novel Insights

Reading Matters

Savidge Reads

Quicksand

2010-02-04T12:15:00.004Z

Today I would like to welcome The Classics Circuit to my blog as one of the stops in the Harlem Renaissance Tour. The Harlem Renaissance was a movement of literary and artistic expression during the 1920s and 30s that sprang up amongst the African American population of Harlem, New York. I studied the period of "awakening" a little whilst at University and discovered Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Countee Cullen and Claude McKay; Nella Larsen's novels, Quicksand and Passing, were (and remain) critically acclaimed and significant novels of the movement. I have had Passing on my wish-list for some time but as it was a popular choice for the tour and as the volume I have contains both of the short works, I decided to review her first novel, Quicksand; I shall post my thoughts on Passing later in the tour.

***warning: this review contains spoilers in last paragraph***

Loosely autobiographical, Quicksand tells the story of Helga Crane, a young mulatto (mixed race) woman whose Danish immigrant mother is dead and whose father abandoned her and her mother, when Helga was a baby. Helga has "no people"; she was uncomfortable with her resentful white stepfather and step-siblings; her uncle Peter who rescued her as a child and sent her to school, disowns her as he has taken a wife who will not accept being aunt to a girl of another race; her Danish aunt and uncle, whom she later lives with in Copenhagen, use her to elevate their social status, as she is unique and exotic amongst their society. Before Helga goes to Denmark she lives in Harlem where her friends are focused -often hypocritically- on the "race question"; Helga does not identify with this group, with this race, until she is later racially alone in Copenhagen (the quotes below demonstrate this shift in perception). Quicksand is about Helga never fitting in or belonging, from the Naxos school where she teaches in the novel's opening to the small Alabama town where her husband is Preacher, in its close.

Helga is not a sympathetic character and is quite unpleasant; she is impulsive and often takes offense to people in frustrating ways. What I became to understand though was that Helga's transitory shifts in emotion, often of anger and irritation, are representative of a woman guided by her passions. Quicksand is regarded as the first novel to give a voice to the sexual desires of a black women but this theme of the novel was too subtle for me -probably by today's standards- yet the passionate reactions, if viewed as representative of her sexual desire and discontent, can be charted throughout the novel. Other symbolism that stood out to me was Helga's desire early on to wear bright colours, to complement her skin, but she was told it was unbecoming for a black woman; later, in Denmark, Helga is encouraged by her Aunt Katrina to wear colourful dresses and at first Helga rails against it as she has been conditioned to dress and behave appropriately. It is Helga's defiance against any categorisation, as a woman or as a person of colour, that makes Quicksand a revolutionary novel of its time; she seeks fulfillment from each of the communities and roles that she moves through, finding none. Furthermore, there are some very interesting passages on race, miscegenation and eugenics that are insightful and challenging to read; in both its treatment of sexuality and race, the text reminds me of some of the short stories and novella, The Awakening, by Kate Chopin.

Helga's finding -and then losing- of religion and her subsequent hasty marriage and new-found motherhood in the last chapters didn't originally work for me in relation to the other defined sections of the novel -Naxos; Chicago; Harlem; Copenhagen; Harlem- but the ending resonated. In Quicksand's close, Helga lies ill after the birth and death of her fourth child, planning her escape from this imprisoning life, but the novel suddenly ends with the pregnancy of her fifth child; it was in the closing lines that Quicksand truly became a novel about the women question as much as it was about the race one.

Outside, rain had begun to fall. She walked bare-headed, bitter with self-reproach. But she rejoiced too. She didn't, in spite of her racial markings, belong to these dark segregated people. She was different. She felt it. It wasn't merely a matter of color. It was something broader, deeper, that made folk kin.

Helga Crane didn't, however, think often of America, excepting in unfavorable contrast to Denmark. For she had resolved never to return to the existence of ignominy which the New World of opportunity and promise forced upon Negroes. How stupid she had been ever to have thought that she could marry and perhaps have children in a land where every dark child was handicapped at the start by the shroud of color! She saw, suddenly, the giving birth to little, helpless, unprotesting Negro children as a sin, an unforgivable outrage. More black folk to suffer indignities. More dark bodies for mobs to lynch. No, Helga Crane didn't think often of America. It was too humiliating, too disturbing.

Library Loot

2010-02-03T09:00:00.000Z

I really must stop requesting books from the library ... but there are so many that catch my eye and it is better than buying them!

In this week's visit I collected:

Bone Black by bell hooks: a memoir by the famous feminist, I'm interested in hooks' thoughts on her growing up during racial segregation.

Vanessa and Virginia by Susan Sellers: as soon as the Not the TV Book Group reading list was announced, this title caught my eye and I was delighted that my library had it in stock (I was able to pick it up from the stacks as opposed to requesting it, which happens less often than I would like). Published by the Two Ravens Press, this looks like a book that I will love and I'm excited to read it, being a fan of Virginia Woolf.

White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi: I enjoyed The Icarus Girl and had Oyeyemi's follow-up novels on my wish-list but when Eva compared the psychological horror of White is for Witching with Shirley Jackson, I knew I had to read it immediately.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett: who hasn't raved about The Help? It's about time that I read this one.

Have you read any of these or intend to?

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Eva and Marg encouraging library use and its promotion.

Tuesday Teaser and Trivia

2010-02-02T09:00:00.000Z

A few Christmases ago my boyfriend bought me the Book Lovers Edition of Trivial Pursuit and I thought I could virtually play with my fellow book lovers, or at least ask you a weekly literary question. So here goes (if you win then please treat yourself to a slice of pie/cake/pizza/delete where appropriate)...

From the Book Bag section:
What three words begin Lilian Jackson Braun mystery titles: Said Cheese, Saw Stars and Sniffed Glue?

Quote a couple of spoiler-free sentences from the book you’re reading to tempt others.

"The millions of eggs that we women begin with are cleanly destroyed through an innate cell program called apoptosis. The eggs do not simply die - they commit suicide."

Woman: An Intimate Geography by Natalie Angier p. 3

The Rehearsal

2010-02-01T14:05:00.003Z

"All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players" is a well-known theme; a high-school sex scandal is not an original concept either and yet Eleanor Catton manages to blend both performance and controversy together into an accomplished and original début. The Rehearsal is a novel of extended metaphor where fact and fiction collide and you are left questioning was was real; I know that is oxy-moronic as the book is a work of fiction but the story you read takes on the mantle of performance.

Told in alternating chapters, The Rehearsal tells two stories, one -in chapters that move back and forth through days of the week- about high-school girls and saxophone students who are affected by the illicit relationship between one of their peers and (former) music teacher; the other story -that shifts between different months of term- about the local drama college where Stanley, in his first year, and his classmates use the local sex-scandal as the basis of their end-of-term production.

I was given the impression from early on that the high-school story -where the student, Victoria, and the teacher, Mr Saladin, were merely secondary characters in their own drama- was set and what I was reading was not what inspired the drama students but what they were performing. The three main characters of these sections, Julia and Isolde, Victoria's sister, and their nameless saxophone teacher who tutors them extracurricular lessons, are presented as characters who have no interior monologues but are lit and given detailed stage directions.

The lights change. The overhead lights and the bright overcast light from the window are doused; a template falls into place in front of a solitary floodlight and the attachment begins to rotate, so that the yellow light is thinly striped and ever changing, playing over the pair of them like passing streetlights striping the dashboard of a moving car. Julia sits down. The streetlights come and go, streaking over her knees and curving away over her shoulder to disappear, and she is dark for a moment before another streak of light rises up to replace the first, and then another, and another, all yellow and forward bending.

Julia is listening in a dreamy, sleepy way, the music drawing from her one slow, definite impression rather than a slideshow series of impressions that she can cobble together later and divide to find the arithmetic mean. She is thinking about Isolde. She can't quite see her past the stern unmoving profile of the saxophone teacher, just a flash of her knee every time Isolde crosses her leg, but even so she finds her left-hand peripheral vision is sharpened with a tense hyper-awareness whenever the younger girl shifts in her seat.

Are you given the same impression by the quotes that I am - that what we are reading and seeing on the page is actually being acted on-stage by the drama students? In my mind we are never presented with the true events that inspired the performance, the rehearsal, but are only provided with the students' interpretation of it and their subsequent dramatisation. I studied drama at school and I remember for exercises we were given small sheets with basic character profiles written on them, which we used to flesh out into a believable character; the snippets we are given of Julia, Isolde and Victoria are as if they are those character profiles.

Julia watches them slot into place around the current locus of popularity and wit with a feeling of contempt and mild jealousy. Most of the girls are seventh formers, contemporaries of the violated girl and infected only by vague proximity. The rest are the music students, more critically infected and so personally summoned by a solemn pink slip photocopied over and over and signed by the counsellor in a delicate whispery hand.

The Rehearsal removed me from my readerly comfort zone as it is not a passive reading experience; I was continually working out what was real and what was being performed (in the drama school sequences there are many "scenes" that you assume are part of the narrative before realising that it is an acting exercise) and if this sounds confusing then that's because it is. I chose this novel as my first read of 2010 as I had high expectations and anticipated a thrilling and salacious read; I struggled with it and read 150 pages over the first five days of the year before setting it aside and moving onto read other books; three weeks later I decided not to give up on it but sat down and managed the remaining 160 pages in one sitting. An exploration of the nature of performance, The Rehearsal isn't by any means an easy read; it it highly inventive but can come across as dense, pretentious and dryly high-brow. I admire its inventiveness and did find the latter half absorbing; I am relieved that I gave the novel a second chance as it possesses much to admire technically but it is more of a construct of literary artifice than an engaging novel.

'Because at the end of it everything collapses,' on of the girls said. 'For the girl, the victim, the one who was abused. It all comes down around her like a castle of cards.'

I predict that this interesting and erudite albeit not particularly enjoyable read will feature on the longlist for the Orange Prize next month.

On the Bedside Table

2010-01-31T10:00:00.000Z

Do you have several books on the go at once? I'm usually what you would consider a monogamous reader: a girl who is loyal to one book at a time; occasionally though I read a few books at once, especially longer classics and books that I am reading over an extended period of time. Books that I am slowly reading are kept on my bedside table (nightstand) as well as books that I plan to read next; my immediate to-be-read pile also lies in two stacks: one beside the bedside table and another in the living room, for ease of access wherever I happen to finish a book, depending on what I'm in the mood for reading.

Currently on my night-stand are two Japanese classics: I Am a Cat by Soseki Natsume and The Pillow Book by Sei Shonagon, both of which are In Spring it is the Dawn read-alongs, one of which is coming to an end and the other about to commence. The other titles, To Bed With Grand Music by Marghanita Laski and Foe by J. M. Coetzee, are two that I am looking forward to reading and have placed within easy reach to pick up and read when the time is right.

Do you keep books by your bedside? If so, what do you have there at the moment?

Defined by Books

2010-01-30T13:42:00.000Z

Simon of Stuck-in-a-Book tagged me in his ten books meme three weeks ago and I am only now getting around to posting; both another cookie crumbles and JoAnn of Lakeside Musings tagged me in the honest scrap "ten things" award so this is also a response to them with ten bookish things about me.

Simon's rules:

1.) Go to your bookshelves...
2.) Close your eyes. If you're feeling really committed, blindfold yourself.
3.) Select ten books at random. Use more than one bookcase, if you have them, or piles by the bed, or... basically, wherever you keep books.
4.) Use these books to tell us about yourself - where and when you got them, who got them for you, what the book says about you, etc. etc.....
5.) Have fun! Be imaginative. Doesn't matter if you've read them or not - be creative. It might not seem easy to start off with, and the links might be a little tenuous, but I think this is a fun way to do this sort of meme.
6.) Feel free to cheat a bit, if you need to...

Seeing as Simon fully sanctioned cheating ... I did. To be fair, I instinctively know where all of my books are so I couldn't have picked them unknowingly blind but I did choose them at random by looking at the bookshelves and quickly choosing ten books from ten different shelves, one or two of them as intentionally representative of something about me.

Everything I Needed to Know about Being a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume: this title is self-explanatory and true. I could have shared one of my Judy Blume books but instead I thought this was far more revealing about me. I loved Judy Blume as a girl and still hold a soft spot for some of her books (Just as Long as We're Together, Here's to You Rachel Robinson, Tiger Eyes, Deenie ...)

Trumpet by Jackie Kay: there are several books that I could have used to tell you that I am from Glasgow but none quite as beautiful as this one, in which the 1960s sections are set in my home-city (Kay also grew up there).

The Collected Stories by Katherine Mansfield: I was first introduced to Katherine Mansfield by a beloved English teacher at school who gave us "The Doll House" to read, which remains one of my favourite short stories because of its apparent simplicity yet also inexplicable quality. This book reveals not only a cherished bookish memory from school but also that I own a replica Victorian dollhouse (I used to own two, but my sister now has my first one) and collect miniature furniture, including books, a Swan Lake screen, a tiny Tiffany lamp (post-dating Victoriana but too cute to resist). Furthermore, it reveals my obsession with silver Penguin Modern Classics, of which this one is a favourite.

Bold Girls by Rona Munro: another set text from school (for Higher English), Rona Munro is a Scottish playwright although this play concerns four women in war-torn Belfast. I loved this play when I studied it and a friend bought me my own copy and wrote a dedication inside likening me to one of the characters (whose part I had read in class). I am a huge fan of drama; I don't read or see as many plays any more as I used to but I have a full shelf on my bookcases dedicated to plays and that doesn't include my numerous books by and about Shakespeare. I forget that readers of my blog probably don't know that I am an English Literature graduate (I also have my Master's) but it is an intrinsic part of me.

Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter: I couldn't define myself using books and not include Angela Carter. Anyone who doesn't know that I am a Carter devotee hasn't been reading my posts closely enough! Nights at the Circus was the first book of hers that I read and hence meaningful.

Mog's Christmas by Judith Kerr: along with Dogger by Shirley Hughes this was my favourite picture book as a child. My much-loved and dog-eared copy was handed down to my sister and is still at home but my boyfriend bought me a lovely mini hardback copy a few Christmases ago.

Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them by Francine Prose: another perfect gift choice by my boyfriend, this book is indispensable and I love close-reading a chapter at a time over and over. The subtitle is revealing as I am both of those people; the book sits on my writing shelf, where I have writing style handbooks, creative aids, and a number of short story volumes by writers included in the book.

The Brontës Went to Woolworths by Rachel Ferguson: I began to consciously collect the original green-spined Virago Modern Classics in April 2008 and very early on I coveted an elusive copy of this book. Shortly after looking at expensive copies online, I went into an Oxfam Books in Glasgow, purposefully seeking a copy; I instantly honed in on a green spine (a skill known by all that collect these editions) and it was the one I was looking for! Priced at a wonderful £2.49. Very surreal and quirky, this book bears re-reading but I know that I am never going to part with it, even if Bloomsbury have re-issued it in a particularly lovely ice-cream copy.

A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf: I adore this essay by Woolf and love to pick it up and luxuriate in her words and thoughts. As a feminist I love to read about Woolf walking on the lawn of Oxbridge and adore her creation of Judith, Shakespeare's sister. Although I am attached to this Penguin edition I am somewhat obsessed with the earlier purple and cream striped one; I own most of the Penguin merchandise that imitates the iconic edition: the bookbag, the notebook and poster and I covet the postcard and mug.

Love by Toni Morrison: this is the book I'd rescue from a burning building, not because of the book itself but the inscription inside; my boyfriend bought me this for our first Christmas together and wrote something beautiful to me. This is one of several books that have something meaningful written to me inside but this one, above the others, is incredibly special; if I shared it online, it would betray my boyfriend and I would never do that.

Did you learn anything new about me from this meme and did you notice that all of my books are written by women?

To the Lighthouse

2010-01-29T14:30:00.001Z

I meant nothing by The Lighthouse. One has to have
a central line down the middle of the book to
hold the design together. I saw that all
sorts of feelings would accrue to this but I
refused to think them out, and trusted that people
would make it the deposit of their emotions - which they
have done, one thinking it means one thing another another.
I can't manage Symbolism except in this vague, generalized way.

So said Virginia Woolf of her novel To the Lighthouse. "[O]ne thinking it means one thing another another" is the essence of the Woolf in Winter read-alongs, where we read a Woolf novel (or two, or three, or all four) and "make it the deposit of [our] emotions". To say what Woolf means is reductive, I find, and I approach her emotionally; I savour her beautiful prose and I connect to the words, the representative -as opposed to symbolic- images and the tone. I don't read Woolf to understand but to appreciate; her books are not the type that are easy to review and I'm not going to attempt to but give my impressions instead.

Starting in medias res, Mrs Ramsay tells her son, James, that they will go to the lighthouse tomorrow if it is fine; a page later Mr Ramsay says that it will not be fine and by the end of the first volume they do not go to the lighthouse; in the third volume, years later, James and his father and his sister take a boat trip to the lighthouse. A basic premise, the lighthouse itself signifies nothing but is representative of so much emotion and history; the first volume, 'The Window', is a glimpse into one day of the Ramsays' lives and those of their guests; the lighthouse is one single memory (of various people) acting as a cohesive idea holding it all together. With its occasional twenty-seven line sentences containing such resonant images of beauty, "so that the monotonous fall of the waves on the beach, which for the most part beat a measured and soothing tattoo to her thoughts and seemed consolingly to repeat over and over again", the stream-of-consciousness 'The Window' volume was by far my favourite and a reminder of why I love Woolf.

To the Lighthouse is an elegy to Woolf's parents and contained in it is such a sense of palpable, heartrending grief and pain. At many points, I found rage in the tone, in the pounding of the waves (the recurrent water imagery of Woolf at play), and the bitterness of the characters. There is a violent potency to the masculinity presented in the novel, a hyper-sexed desire to produce and a fear of barrenness and failure, and the calming, maternal, female influence at its centre; To the Lighthouse is a precursor to Woolf's feminist polemic, A Room of One's Own and in it I see a man who is lost without the strength of his wife and the feminist Lily Briscoe who rails against Tansley's accusation that as a woman she cannot write or paint, both lost without Mrs Ramsay and one finding her way.

I read "The Fisherman and his Wife" by the Brothers Grimm, the story Mrs Ramsay read to James, in an attempt to find some illumination; I wonder if the tale of a bullying, greedy wife who railroads her husband was arbitrarily chosen or is another of Woolf's representations ... can it be reduced to the age-old phrase that behind every great man there is an equally great woman?

Structurally I found the first volume the strongest and I preferred its style; I would have enjoyed To the Lighthouse more -as opposed to enjoying the first volume and appreciating the second and third- if it had all been in the stream-of-consciousness style of the first but, as it was, the technical 'Time Passes' stunned me in its beauty and mastery and 'To the Lighthouse' resolved the novel for me. It wouldn't be Woolf though if it was a simply an enjoyable novel, something profound is always at work and I come away wowed. Of the Woolf in Winter choices, To the Lighthouse was the one of the four novels that I hadn't yet read and had always wanted to; I also intended to read it for my Bucket List and for the Women Unbound challenge. It has been some time since I have read any Virginia Woolf and I have missed her; I am now wondering where to now ... do I reread Orlando for the next volume of the Woolf read-along or do I attempt one of the three novels of hers I have not yet read, the early The Voyage Out and Night and Day or the later The Years? Alternatively I could read A Writer's Diary or the Hermione Lee biography, both of which I have only dipped in and out of so far.

The Woolf in Winter discussion for To the Lighthouse is being hosted by Emily today.

Some favourite passages:

For the great plateful of blue water was before her; the hoary Lighthouse, distant, austere, in the midst; and on the right, as far as the eye could see, fading and falling, in soft low pleats, the green sand dunes with the wild flowing grasses on them, which always seemed to be running away into some moon country, uninhabited of men.

Never did anybody look so sad. Bitter and black, half-way down, in the darkness, in the shaft which ran from the sunlight to the depths, perhaps a tear formed; a tear fell; the waters swayed this way and that, received it, and were at rest. Never did anybody look so sad.

It was sympathy he wanted, to be assured of his genius, first of all, and then to be taken within the circle of life, warmed and soothed, to have his senses restored to him, his barrenness made fertile, and all the rooms of the house made full of life - the drawing-room; behind the drawing-room the kitchen; above the kitchen the bedrooms; and beyond them the nurseries; they must be furnished, they must be filled with life.

She praised herself in praising the light, without vanity, for she was stern, she was searching, she was beautiful like that light. It was odd, she thought, how if one was alone, one leant to things, inanimate things; trees, streams, flowers; felt they expressed one; felt they became one; felt they knew one, in a sense were one; felt an irrational tenderness thus (she looked at that long steady light) as for oneself. There rose, and she looked and looked with her needles suspended, there curled up off the floor of the mind, rose from the lake of one's being, a mist, a bride to meet her lover.

Flowers for Mrs Harris

2010-01-28T16:15:00.000Z

Mrs Ada Harris (pronounced Mrs 'Arris by the lady herself) is a London charwoman and a widow; at the outset of the novella Mrs Harris is on her way to Paris to buy herself a Dior evening gown. Flowers for Mrs Harris by Paul Gallico (who I have waxed lyrical about once before) is a charming read; Ada Harris is vivacious and determined to fulfill her dream of acquiring couture whilst brightening up the lives of those she meets in the city of Dior. A light, frothy book, Flowers for Mrs Harris is about achieving one's dreams, the dedication that requires and, ultimately, the things that matter in life above material possessions.

Flowers for Mrs Harris could have been overly saccharine but its sweetness is well-balanced; in essence it is a sweet novel but it also comments on snobbery, on appearances being deceiving and of the friendships that arise out of surprising situations between disparate people. Mrs Harris has gumption, says what she thinks and goes for what she wants; I was reminded somewhat of Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winfred Watson although Gallico's Mrs Harris didn't enter my heart like Miss Pettigrew did. However, my heart did break for Mrs Harris towards the end of the novella and the sudden poignancy turns an otherwise comic -Flowers for Mrs Harris is at times very funny and dryly witty- tale into a heartwarming one.

Published as Mrs 'Arris Goes to Paris in the US, it was the first in a series of four books; I was delighted to discover that Bloomsbury are publishing the first two, Mrs 'Arris Goes to Paris AND Mrs 'Arris Goes to New York, as one of their forthcoming Bloomsbury Group novels this summer. I look forward to discovering what the antics of Mrs Harris are in the Big Apple and the impression she makes.

Favourite quotes:

[F]or she understood the fierce, wild, hungry craving of the girl to be something, to be somebody, to lift herself out of the rut of everyday struggle and acquire some of the good things in life for herself.

'Lady Dant 'as one of them in her 'er cupboard. She brought it up for the charity ball tonight. I've never seen anything like it in me life before except perhaps in a dream or in a book.' Her voice lowered for a moment as she became reflective. 'Why, even the Queen ain't got a dress like that, ' she said, and then loudly and firmly, 'and I mean to 'ave one.'

Mrs Harris's lip began to tremble and her little eyes screwed up as the implications of the disaster became clear. Here, in this apparently empty, hostile building, before cold hostile eyes, the unimaginable seemed about to happen. They didn't seem to want her, they didn't even appear to want her money. They were going to send her away and back to London without her Dior dress.

She found herself in a curtained-off cubicle on a corridor that seemed to be a part of an endless maze of similar corridors and cubicles. Each cubicle held a woman like a queen bee in a cell, and through the corridors rushed the worker bees with the honey - armfuls of frilly, frothy garments in colours of plum, raspberry, tamarind, and peach, gentian-flower, cowslip, damask rose, and orchid, to present them where they had been ordered for trial and further inspection.

Meeting Jasper Fforde

2010-01-27T22:30:00.003Z

Last week I attended the UK launch of Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde at Foyles bookshop. For two hours Jasper spoke to a packed gallery (it was standing-room only!) and regaled us with a humorous talk, interspersed with some short readings from his new novel, before opening it up to the audience for Q&A. Fforde comes across as a comedian doing stand-up, complete with opening gag to size up the room, which was an approach to a author event that I found worked exceptionally well. The talk was balanced between amusing and interesting and was engagingly entertaining enough for those attendees who were not already Fforde fans (i.e. my boyfriend, who is now even more interested in reading his books). Fforde was self-effacing, charming and exceedingly funny, of which I had no doubt considering the wittiness of his work. Moreover, he also provided insightful commentary into his new book whilst reading us extracts; it was clear that Fforde doesn't enjoy reading aloud and I think he has handled this aversion in the best possible way, by playing to his strengths. The Q&A ranged from his new work; existing work; future work; writing style, routine, influences; film adaptations; he answered all with humility and hilarity and a very fun evening was had.

Of the author events I have enjoyed so far, Fforde can be best compared to Neil Gaiman, who is also memorable; in contrast, Gaiman is an assured and eloquent orator but both writers are very enjoyable speakers and the most charismatic authors I have yet met. Each of these authors' events are successful, in my mind, because they both appear to enjoy them and fully engage with their fans; I have always had the utmost respect for Neil Gaiman's work ethic when it comes to signings and the way he repays his fans' support; I am pleased to discover that Jasper Fforde is of a similar mindset to one of my other favourite authors. If you are also a fan of Jasper Fforde then I would highly recommend attending any of his signings if you ever have the chance to do so; he is very friendly when signing and also provides promotional postcards and, in the instance of Shades of Grey, a special stamp (as seen above).

What do you enjoy about book signings? If you haven't had a chance to attend one, which writer would you love to meet in person and what would make a successful signing for you?

Tuesday Teaser and Trivia

2010-01-26T10:55:00.000Z

A few Christmases ago my boyfriend bought me the Book Lovers Edition of Trivial Pursuit and I thought I could virtually play with my fellow book lovers, or at least ask you a weekly literary question. So here goes (if you win then please treat yourself to a slice of pie/cake/pizza/delete where appropriate)...

From the Children's Literature section:
What milestone does a ghost at Hogwarts celebrate in lieu of a birthday?

Quote a couple of spoiler-free sentences from the book you’re reading to tempt others.

"In the days before a loaf of bread cost half a million dollars, he said, one hundred cents made one dollar. He took down an old tin and said as he opened it, 'We used the coins as recently as 2000'."

From the title story of An Elegy for Easterly by Petina Gappah p. 32

The House-Keeper & the Professor

2010-01-25T14:40:00.006Z

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa is a tender exploration of the relationship between a housekeeper, her client the maths Professor and her son, Root, who is so-called by the Professor because his flat head reminds him of a square root sign. The Professor suffered brain-damage in a car accident seventeen years previously and lives with only eighty minutes of short-term memory, which is both a problematic and poignant factor in their day-to-day lives together.

Translated from Japanese by Stephen Snyder, The Housekeeper and the Professor is a lyrically touching novel. Very gently told, Ogawa uses maths to create heartfelt connections between the Housekeeper, her son and the Professor. I enjoyed the simplistic style to the story and how it broke down maths to connect these disparate people together; the Housekeeper becomes interested in maths, on working out problems and noticing patterns whilst the Professor sees the world through numbers. Using complex equations metaphorically throughout the novel was effective for me; I didn't think that it was simply a vehicle but was an interesting means of connection between an employer and employee in a subservient role who may have otherwise been unable to communicate. It has been a long time since I studied maths and I liked the refresher course and enjoyed seeing how Ogawa, through her characters, drew links between maths and life.

The Housekeeper and the Professor is a gentle novel, simply rendered with only four nameless characters and an unseen baseball player. It is beautiful meditation on the nature and limitations of memory and also on what can make familial relationships and what they can teach us; it is subtly written and the sadness of the Professor's short-term memory is never overwhelmingly tragic or trite but resonates in its understated form. Culturally, the novel taught me the Japanese fascination with baseball; educationally it made me appreciate maths once more; emotionally it touched me.

Some favourite and/or key passages:

I happened to glance at some of the notes to his suit: " ... the failure of the analytic method...," "... the function of the elliptical curve...." Shuffled in among the fragments of obscure numbers and symbols and words was one scrap that even I could understand. From the stains and bent corners of the paper and the rusted edges of the binder clip, I could tell that this one had been attached to the Professor for a long time: "My memory lasts only eighty minutes," it read.

I don't know what the evening star meant to him, perhaps finding it in the sky soothed his nerves, or maybe it was simply a habit. And I don't know how he could see it so long before anyone else-he barely noticed the food I set right in front of him. For whatever reason, he would point his withered finger at a single spot in the vast sky-always the right place, as I eventually discovered-and that spot had significance for him and no one else.

Euler's formula shone like a shooting star in the night sky, or like a line of poetry carved on the wall of a dark cave. I slipped the Professor's note into my wallet, strangely moved by the beauty of those few symbols. As I headed down the library stairs, I turned back to look. The mathematics stacks were as silent and empty as ever-apparently no one suspected the riches hidden there.

Library Loot

2010-01-24T15:40:00.001Z

I've been meaning to post my latest library loot for a while but erratic blogging and internet problems have prevented me until now. Furthermore, I realise that my last three posts have been stacks of books but 1) I know how much you like looking at books 2) I have a few reviews scheduled for this week and a few more in the bag.

My last Library Loot post was in 2009 and I suggested that it may be my last for a while as I resolved to read more from my TBR; that's still my intent but the lack of borrowing has fallen by the wayside a little as I looted for a few challenges and read-alongs that I am excited about (although ultimately I am reading more for myself and have been enjoying the freed0m to read books on a whim).

I still have a few outstanding library requests but on my last visit I came away with:

Quicksand and Passing by Nella Larsen: these two texts are for The Harlem Renaissance tour for The Classics Circuit in February; I'll be picking up Quicksand later today and I am really excited as I've been wanting to read both of these novellas for some time.

Daughters of Decadence: Women Writers of the Fin-de-siècle ed. by Elaine Showalter: this collection of short stories -written by "new women" about "new women"- has been on my wish-list for the longest time, since I studied Modernism. Including one of my favourite short stories "The Yellow Wallpaper" as well as a couple by the wonderful Kate Chopin, I'm looking forward to reading this collection for the Women Unbound Challenge.

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa: I borrowed this to read for the Japanese Literature book group at In Spring it is the Dawn and you can read my thoughts tomorrow.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley: I requested this on a whim at the beginning of the month and now I can't really recall why ... perhaps to see what all the fuss is about? Now that I have it, I'm feeling less inspired to read it. A reviewer for The Guardian is quoted on Amazon as saying it is a mixture between I Capture the Castle (a beloved book of mine) and The Addam's Family; I'm going to love it, aren't I?

Woman: An Intimate Geography by Natalie Angier: another book for Woman Unbound, I read about this on Eva of A Striped Armchair's blog and she completely sold me with this paragraph:

To say that I loved this book feels like a horrible understatement. I believe every single woman should read this book. If I were a billionaire, I would buy a copy for each woman who could read English, and press it into her hands with fervent good wishing.

High praise indeed (although to give credit where it is due, it was Nymeth who recommended the book to Eva); I've been awaiting a special inter-library loan request for this book since November and I hope it is worth the wait.

Have you read any of these or do they appeal?

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Eva and Marg encouraging library use and its promotion.

The Purple Shelf

2010-01-23T11:40:00.000Z

It's been a while since I featured a coloured bookshelf but with the acquisition of Inkdeath I finally accrued enough purple books in London to make s shelf of their own (some of these were on the pink shelf so I may recreate that at some point; I have a copy of 2666 by Roberto Bolaño that should easily replace them).

Reflective of my collection as a whole, this shelf contains the obligatory Angela Carter texts as well as some secondary material. Frances Hodgson Burnett appears in duplicate as does Colette (I adore Colette and I adore the Vintage editions of her books). Armistead Maupin is given a place as is another beautifully-written (and Scottish) LGBT book, Trumpet by Jackie Kay. For the first time, I think, in my bookshelves series we have a biographical work, Captivated: J.M. Barrie, the Du Mauriers and the Dark Side of Neverland that lends its hue wonderfully well to the shelf. I shall leave you to browse the other titles but I will point out that the pale lilac of Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie may be at the lighter shade of purple but for the title alone had to be included.

Recent Acquisitions

2010-01-21T15:30:00.001Z

Here they are, the first books of 2010. I've even read one already and began another!

The Spare Room by Helen Garner: Canongate declared this "the decade's best unread book", I popped it on my wish-list and when Frances of Nonsuch Book was cleaning out some book, I took this one off her hands; Frances describes it as "Spare and dark and unsentimental treatment of caring for a cancer patient not viewing their illness with much realism. Quick and memorable read."

To Bed With Grand Music by Marghanita Laski: As you know I acquired several Persephone Books recently when I visited the shop with Verity of The B Files but this is the one I purchased and that I am most excited about. I intend to read this soon not least of all because I know many of you are tempted by this one yourselves.

Life & Times of Michael K by J.M. Coetzee: Disgrace was one of my favourite reads last year and Coetzee an amazing new-to-me author discovery. I couldn't resist his other Booker winner when I found a new copy for £2 and I'm tempted to go on a bit of a Coetzee binge this quarter.

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates: this is the book that I wish I had read last year. The film adaptation was sublime and I am excited to finally read this, more so as Rachel of Book Snob is hosting a Season of Yates and has some lovely things to say about him (but then she has lovely things to say generally).

Les Liaisons dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos: Polly of Novel Insights chose this as our next Riverside Readers book group read and I purchased it immediately, I was so excited. This is a French classic that I have been wanting to read for some time, I have never seen the film (I intend to before we discuss the book) and I have started to read the book and I am enjoying it immensely.

The Passport by Herta Müller: until Müller won the Nobel Prize for Literature last year I knew nothing about her and this was something that I sought to rectify. The Passport is a slight novella by her, which seems to be touted everywhere as the book of hers to read, so I thought it was the one to go for; Simon of Savidge Reads implies that it is a challenging and unique reading experience, which makes it sound as if it could be inaccessible but I'm up for a challenge! Ultimately he enjoyed it though so that's all that matters.

Pastors and Masters by Ivy Compton-Burnett: a good friend wrote her Master's thesis on the works of Ivy Compton-Burnett when we were at University together and that was going on four years ago ... I have been reading to read Ivy since that time and Simon of Stuck In A Book has been another advocate. Simon recently reviewed Pastors and Masters and conveniently I had just won a copy to review from Hesperus Press (via LibraryThing). Simon classes it as "ICB-lite" so I'm thinking it is a good place to start.

Audition by Ryu Murakami: another writer that I've been wanting to read for some time and one I was discussing with Jackie of Farm Lane Books in relation to gritty Japanese thrillers last month. Ôdishon was a Japanese film released over a decade ago based on Ryu Murakami's novel; Bloomsbury released the novel in translation last year and kindly sent me a copy.

In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez: this novel was cited in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz and I wanted to read it from then and when Nymeth of Things Mean a Lot reviewed it shortly after, I purchased it. I am trying not to plan my reading but it is all I can do not to score out a couple of days in my diary in early February so that I can curl up and devour this book.

Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde: I have already read and reviewed this acquisition (because I couldn't wait!) Many thanks to Steph of Steph & Tony Investigate for sending me a copy of this book when I won one of their generous bloggiversary give-aways. I loved this book and have no qualms in declaring it my favourite and most enjoyable read of 2010 so far.

Wild Child by T.C. Boyle: Bloomsbury also sent me the latest collection of short stories by T.C. Boyle, which I am looking forward to savouring. T.C. Boyle is a writer I admire a lot, whose works I plan on reading more of this year and that is thanks to JoAnn of Lakeside Musing and her enthusiasm for him. It's been a few years since I read any of his novels but read his short story "Chixiclub" recently and he can write short fiction along with the best of them.

Just as I was about to post this yesterday my internet died. We have an engineer coming to fix it tomorrow but until that time I will be offline.

Tuesday Teaser and Trivia

2010-01-19T12:30:00.000Z

Those readers who mark memes as unread in their Google Reader probably won't read this, which makes it somewhat pointless to ask, but do you enjoy my teaser and trivia Tuesdays? I added my own feature to Teaser Tuesdays as I wanted it to be original and also fun; I partake in this particular meme to give me one day where I can concentrate on reading and preparing other posts and I also occasionally -like today- use it to update you on me and/or my blog and use it like a salon in miniature. However, if its not working for my readership then I will happily re-evaluate. There is never a dip in my visitors on Tuesdays but I do enjoy feedback, so what do you think?

A few Christmases ago my boyfriend bought me the Book Lovers Edition of Trivial Pursuit and I thought I could virtually play with my fellow book lovers, or at least ask you a weekly literary question. So here goes (if you win then please treat yourself to a slice of pie/cake/pizza/delete where appropriate)...

From the Book Club section:

What Louisiana Creole term did Rebecca Wells redefine as "a person who is afraid and still drinks of life very deeply"?

Quote a couple of spoiler-free sentences from the book you’re reading to tempt others.

"Fermat and Descartes were only able to find one pair each. They're linked to each other by some divine scheme, and how incredible that your birthday and this number on my watch should be just such a pair."

From The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa p. 19

Shades of Grey

2010-01-18T11:00:00.000Z

A future world, Chromatacia, after the "Something That Happened" is run by the Colourtocracy and the collective are ordered into chromatic hierarchies, based on the limited colour that they can see see. Eddie Russett, nineteen years old, is a Red and there is nothing that he can do to change that; the test, your Ishihara, doesn't lie and you can't cheat the Colourman. Reds are only one shade above Grey, the worker bees of the collective, and it is crucial to Eddie and his family's standing to marry up within his part of the colour spectrum; some people marry for love but more often marriages are arranged or auctioned and nobody ever marries a complementary colour. Eddie is on a "half-promise" to marry Constance Oxblood until he and his father, a Swatchman (medical man who heals using swatches of healing hues applied directly to the retina) are sent to East Carmine on the Outer Fringes, for Eddie to attain humility. In the Outer Fringes Eddie falls in love with a Grey named Jane, a tempestuous revolutionary who hates you mentioning her nose, and begins to question the Rulebook. Questioning the Rulebook could earn a Reboot in the Emerald City but exactly what does that involve and are inquisitiveness and applying logical theory to queueing systems so harmful to the chromatic collective? Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde opens with Eddie about to be eaten by a carnivorous plant, an attempt by Jane to kill him, and his narrative recounts the previous four days' events that brought him to the deserted village of High Saffron and this inconvenient state of impending death.

In essence, Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde is a Dystopian novel that contains, well, shades of classic Dystopian literature such as the futuristic Nineteen Eighty-Four, the nightmarish The Wizard of Oz and shares its carnivorous plants with John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids; however, where Fforde's other series of books are rich in literary allusion, he relies for the most part on his own inventiveness. Fforde has boundless creativity and imagination and his chromatic dystopia is highly original and intelligent. To begin with the detailed intricacies of this futuristic world and its dictionary of terms and Rules are a little hard to follow but it is such a vividly rendered world and engaging plot that one begins to see things the bursts of synthetic color and realise that things are not simply black and white, that there is a sinister undercurrent to the Colourtocracy, especially when you do not conform and exhibit any curiosity. Despite the departure from Fforde's usual alternative realities, that are a little more fantastical, and its more serious tone, Shades of Grey is hilarious; I love Fforde's satirical humour and often think that I am missing some of his intelligent jokes.

As well as immensely absorbing storyline and many laughs, Shades of Grey also contains moments of intense pathos; the last few chapters of the novel left me feeling unsettled yet also excited for the sequels and the last page had my heart in my mouth. For those who enjoy their Dystopias with a heart (think The Hunger Games) then read Shades of Grey; I also recommend it unreservedly to those who may not have been impressed by The Eyre Affair (I wasn't blown away by the debut but adored the remainder of the series), new to Fforde readers who enjoy witty original fiction and those readers who think they don't enjoy sci-fi.

But all doubts came to nought on the morning of your Ishihara. No one could cheat the Colourman and the colour test. What you got was what you were, forever. Your life, career and social standing decided right there and then, and all worrisome life uncertainties eradicated forever. You knew who you were, what you would do, where you would go and what was expected of you. In return, you simply accepted your position within the Colourtocracy, and assiduously followed the Rulebook. Your life was mapped. And all in the time it takes to bake a tray of scones.

On the Other Side...

2010-01-17T19:07:00.002Z

... It is always greener, or so they say.

Are you ever green with book envy? Do you sometimes think that people are reading better books than you? Not in a sense of the book being high-brow but that it sounds more exciting that what you yourself are reading? With freedom of choice over books I am usually very happy with what I'm reading and this month I've read some great books but every so often I see a book on somebody's blog where I think "Oh, I wish I had the time just now to read that" or "I covet that book" or "so-and-so is going to read Fingersmith and I wish I could have the first experience of that book over again".

I've been jealous of my boyfriend's reading material (um, maybe because I bought them all...) lately and some days I wish we could swap; I'll read on the commute alternating with playing with my iPhone and he can read the disparate texts and blog about them. Perhaps those thoughts mainly occurred earlier in the month whilst I was in a book slump and sought a comfort read and/or a gripping one but now I'm very happy to read my own choices, thank you very much; sometimes though the thought still lingers and I wish he'd hurry up with a book so I can read it too.

My boyfriend is an avid reader, not a voracious one, but he does love to read. A busy new job with long hours hasn't allowed him to read as much as he would like recently as he is either too busy on business calls to read whilst commuting or too tired to read in bed at night but he still reads when he can. In 2009 he read around fifty books, not that he counted. He reread all of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, read a lot of the Marvel Civil War graphic novels he is collecting and then the Penguin Sherlock Holmes boxset. Over Christmas he read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll on his iPhone and now he is about to venture into both the Fables series of graphic novels by Bill Willingham and the Mary Russell mysteries (featuring Sherlock Holmes) by Laurie R. King; these are both series of books that I would love to read and will more than likely pick them up after he does. Our reading tastes overlap here and there and he would like to read my Neil Gaiman, Jasper Fforde and John Wyndham books, all of which I know he will enjoy (he's a big fan of Gaiman's Sandman, so much so that he carried hugely heavy leather-bound volumes of the graphic novels to be signed, at a Neil reading). This year he also has new books by favourite authors to look forward to: Terry Pratchett, George R. R. Martin, Trudi Canavan (writer of "wizards in woods" type of books - a phrase coined by Jackie that I love!)

Does it sound as if I'm planning away my boyfriend's reading? I seem to be living vicariously through his choices by making them myself! No, seriously, I simply pick out books that I have read myself or have read about that he would like rather than impose books onto him although if I can read them myself then more's the better!

Do you have a loved one whose reading excites you or that you influence?

Hibernation

2010-01-14T16:44:00.002Z

The above book arrived (thanks, Steph!) and I'm hibernating today until it's finished. Do you do that too? Count down the days until a book is released and then drop everything else until you have read it? I am often incommunicado for a book and I wouldn't have it any other way.
See you tomorrow.

Embroideries

2010-01-13T18:00:00.002Z

When I read The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi a couple of years ago, I found it illuminating and a good access point into the form of graphic novels but I didn't fully enjoy it and found parts dry. However, this didn't discourage me from seeking out Embroideries when I learned that it was also a memoir about women's issues; as my graphic novel experience is still slight, I was excited to read one that dealt with a subject that I am most interested in as well as making a non-fiction contribution towards my Women Unbound challenge reading.

One of the things that I did enjoy about Persepolis was Satrapi's art and that is continued in Embroideries so I felt that it was almost one continuous story set in the same policed world albeit with a far less dry installment. I thoroughly enjoyed Embroideries and its insights into the lives of multi-generational women in Iran. Marjane and her family members gather with friends and neighbours for an afternoon samovar, the function of which was discussion; although the afternoon of tea and chat is translated as "discussion" I think it is more literally "gossip", or as Marjane's grandmother describes it, "To speak behind others' backs is the ventilator of the heart." I love that image and it is one continued later, where one of the neighbours is crying and another says "let her air out her heart. There's nothing better than talking". I respond well to female company, to good chats over tea or coffee and find it often immeasurably cathartic, illuminating or plain entertaining and Embroideries is all of these things. The discussions often involve sex and the experiences of the women discussing it; some have had horrible experiences with marriage and men and others entertaining ones or the women are recounting stories of women they know. From the childhood friend who razor-bladed her husband's testicle on their wedding night in an attempt to recreate the loss of her virginity (already lost) to the married woman who had never seen a penis or knew what the "white stuff" was that another story referred to, the discussions that take place around tea are highly amusing. Not all the stories are entertainingly shocking or amusing, however, but all deal with women's issues and the positions of women being forced to married the wrong man, the lengths they will go to keep a man, the steps taken to leave a man, in a culture that value men over these courageous, intelligent, witty women.

Some of the women who surround Marjane are strong and subversive, resilient and positive role models for a young woman and I am not surprised that Satrapi chose to write about them. I was entertained whilst being given insight into a cultural tradition that, albeit not very different in nature from Western women meeting up for coffee, is conducted behind closed doors. The stories recounted are rich in humour and experience and my only complaint is that Embroideries was so slight as I could happily have read something longer and more substantial, rather than barely a glimpse.

Tuesday Teaser and Trivia

2010-01-12T13:00:00.000Z

A few Christmases ago my boyfriend bought me the Book Lovers Edition of Trivial Pursuit and I thought I could virtually play with my fellow book lovers, or at least ask you a weekly literary question. So here goes (if you win then please treat yourself to a slice of pie/cake/pizza/delete where appropriate)...

From the Non-Fiction section:

What straightforward title did New York Times science writer Natalie Angier give to her best-selling "intimate geography" of the female body?

Quote a couple of spoiler-free sentences from the book you’re reading to tempt others.

"I had no sense of foreboding, when we sat talking together that last evening, before Ambrose set out on his final journey. No premonition that we would never be together again."

From My Cousin Rachel by Daphne Du Maurier p. 8

The Tin-Kin

2010-01-11T22:51:00.002Z

I read The Tin-Kin by Eleanor Thom at the tail-end of 2009 and it squeezed into my Best of 2009 post. An accomplished and resonant début, The Tin-Kin is set in 1990s Northern Scotland. Dawn, a single mother of a young daughter, Maeve, returns to her stifling home-town upon the death of her aunt. Dawn hasn't been home for years, leaving her violent ex-husband before Maeve was born; she has barely been in contact with her family until news of her aunt Shirley's death. Dawn lived with Shirley from a young age, was close to her and inherited her flat (apartment), in which she is presented with the cupboard that Shirley kept locked and told inquisitive child Dawn that in it were all of her aunt's secrets; now Dawn has inherited those secrets and in the revelation of these, her family history is re-written.

And somewhere she would find the key to the cupboard. If there was a secret, maybe it was supposed to be discovered like this, only after Shirley was gone.

Alternating with the modern-day narrative are first-person narratives from the 1950s; these narratives are told from the perspectives of three members of the one indigenous Scottish Travelling (tinkers) family: Jock, Auld Betsy and Wee Betsy. The shifts in time are never disorientating nor is the Scottish dialect, although being a Scot I probably have less trouble with it than most.

Pity, whit the settlin's done. It maks fowk bitter. Ye dinnae see wan another. It sits fine wi some, an others tak tae the drink. It's nae a lie.

Thom uses her own family history to tell an imaginative tale that she thought should be told; in the second chapter we learn that Jock is left to die on the floor of a cell, after being arrested for apparently being drunk and disorderly and the basis of that tragedy is that of Thom's grandfather whilst Uncle Jock the character is based on her great-grandfather.

This is a moving story and I was fully immersed in the lives of the family of settled Travellers; Wee Betsy's voice was particularly resonant and emotive. I was less engaged with the main character of Dawn but I suspect that she was intentionally two-dimensional to evoke her own sense of not belonging. Although the story -not a mystery as it is rather predictable- of the photographs from the 1950s that Dawn finds in Shirley's cupboard and the connection they have with the Travellers, is central to the modern premise, it is the 1950s story that had me enthralled; I would have preferred less balance and more focus on the crux of the novel. The story of the settled Travellers fascinated me; I knew little about the history of indigenous Scottish Travellers but now I am intrigued. Whilst reading, I remembered some experiences of Travellers from my own childhood, when "tinkers" came along the streets in pony-and-traps singing for "any old rags or iron" or older women who came to the door offering fortunes; I am now interested in learning more about this forgotten history and agree that Eleanor Thom told a story that had to be told.

Persephone Review and Additions

2010-01-08T17:25:00.002Z

I shared with you here that the Persephone book I received from my Secret Santa, Jodie, was Every Eye by Isobel English (the end-paper for which, a 1956 'Iberia' fabric, is pictured above), and I read it at the close of the festive period. This novella opens with the arresting first words, "I heard today that Cynthia died" and alternately tells the story of Hatty on her honeymoon with her younger hustband on a train through Europe to the Spanish island of Ibiza and a younger Hatty who had an older lover, a friend of her Uncle Otway and his wife, Cynthia. From the opening page the reader knows that Cynthia was an influence in Hatty's life, our attention is focused on her from the outset and we know that Hatty will reveal the details of the deterioration of their friendship:

... It is six years since I last saw Cynthia, six years since I cut myself free from the inquisitive disapproval; the light unfriendly laugh that always accompanied her sharpest barbs - the honey and the gall mixed to such a smooth consistency that were inseparable. And yet I should have known the reason for this; I am alwaus talking about a true sense of vocation - the time when I was going to become a pianist - and now once more when I am trying to put together the bits and pieces of my life to start off with a husband who is so many years younger than I.

The closing line of the novella -written in French and crucial to translate- is revelatory and refers to something that Hatty reads, which illuminates her perception of the past and the perception of the reader; I wanted to reread the novella upon hindsight to seek out possible hints. It is a cleverly-crafted work that is beautifully written. Isobel English (a pseudonym for June Braybrooke) was friends with a number of other talented writers one of whom was Muriel Spark; Spark wrote, "The late Isobel English was an exceptionally talented young novelist of the mid-1950s. Every Eye is one of her most successful and sensitively written books, a romantic yet unsentimental story of a young woman's intricate relationships of family and love, intensely evocative of the period, remarkable in its observations of place and character". The stunning prose of Every Eye impressed me and I found it a wonderful book to lose oneself in the descriptions of the Iberian landscape, the observations that Hatty makes of the social position of women and to study the hold Cynthia retains on Hatty even in death. Thank you, Jodie, for your lovely gift as it may not have been one that I would have purchased for myself for some time.

Some favourite passages:

So, it is Wednesday and the first for Cynthia below the ground - the cold raw earth lined with evergreens. 'Six feet of semi-detached will do me nicely, dear,' I had heard her say often enough when she was looking for another smaller flat when their lease had expired. At last this had been realised as a permanency.

The words carried right into the soft part of my brain and stuck there like three neutral stones. I suppose that I must have stood there with my mouth open, my bad eye focusing all over the place in an effort to materialise him again in the gap which he had left. This was the first time that anyone had ever said these words to me; the first time, and they were no more active that fizzy lemonade. I wanted to reach out and extricate them from the smutty stucco frontages of the ugly houses, save them from the smell of petrol and the dust-thick sun of two o'clock of that September afternoon.

I remember her now as she had been when I first saw her. The picture that had been taken with the unclouded lenses of a fourteen-year-old's eyes had gained in the intervening years another dimension; I could see now the might-have-been: the little touches of English chintz and pottery that she must have added to her hotel bedroom to make it like home; the warm nest of spinsterly living into which she would eventually wind herself. So often this is the way with solitary Englishwomen of character who retire abroad: they harden like the autumnal beads at their throat into hard little wax pellets that no heat will ever melt again, they turn into a self-supporting wholesome substance that can never take anything in, nor be taken in, again.

At that time, already the clouds were beginning to build up behind Cynthia. I saw her as an all-powerful magician who could produce black evil and despair at the flick of her wrist. Her small white voice creaked on, in and out of the teacups as she sat smiling at me behind the tray; these were no longer objects of domestic comfort, but stark receptacles for surgical performance, something in which to catch the sly tear, or conceal for second, with the raising of a hand, the buttoned-down anguish of her mouth.

With another Persephone book read and reviewed I look to the recent additions to my collection -bringing it to thirty five and the need for a longer shelf- acquired at the shop yesterday. Again, I would like to say how generous the shop are and I feel greedy and guilty looking at my Persephone loot. I purchased the copy of To Bed With Grand Music as I have been coveting a copy since October and Santa didn't me one (he brought other exciting and surprising things instead) and will most probably read that first swiftly followed by The Home-Maker, which I bought for my Santee, Thomas, and which he loved.

My new Persephones:

To Bed With Grand Music by Marghanita Laski
The Village by Marghanita Laski
The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield-Fisher
Daddy's Gone A-Hunting by Peneople Mortimer
Alas, Poor Lady by Rachel Ferguson
Amours de Voyage by Hugh Clough
Consequences by E.M. Delafield
How to Run Your Home Without Help by Kay Smallshaw
Making Conversation by Christine Longford
Marjory Fleming by Oriel Malle

More Tea and Chat

2010-01-07T23:25:00.002Z

Verity and I had our long-anticipated tea and cakes at Persephone Books today to celebrate the success of Persephone Reading Week. We had such a lovely afternoon chatting with Nicola, Lydia and Fiona. I had a delicious passion-fruit cupcake with buttercream frosting from Bea's of Bloomsbury and we made a trip to the remainder shelf in the basement where we liberated some Persephones that will be much warmer and well-loved on our Persephone shelves now; I shall share the titles that have been added to my collection at a later date and probably gush some more about the generosity of Persephone and Nicola.

Earlier in the day Verity and I also made a visit to another bookshop (I was on my best behaviour) and afterwards met with Book Snob and Bloomsbury Bell where they preempted our tea and cake (well, my tea and cake as poor Verity is currently on an exclusion diet to cure her ills).

Following our visit to the shop I had a great discussion about The Wind-up Bird Chronicle at the first Riverside Readers book group of 2010 then took my sniffly self home where I proceeded to slip on the ice outside my flat and bruise myself. Sore end to an otherwise idyllic day and now I am taking my aching body to bed. Woe is me!

Tomorrow I shall be reviewing the latest Persephone book read.

Artist's reproduction of the shop is by David Gentleman.

Secret Santas!

2010-01-06T18:00:00.000Z

Officially it may be January but my heart is still with Christmas. I was surrounded by a blanket of white whilst I was home for the holidays and returned to normality when I arrived back to London ... until today when I woke to white flurries once again. I was sad to take down my Christmas tree but consoled myself with the snow outside and now with sharing some of my Secret Santa gifts this year! One arrived at the same time as my Persephone Secret Santa and the other just missed by departure for home but was waiting for me at the Royal Mail depot.

My Holiday Swap blogging Santa was Brooke from Brooke Reviews who sent me -all the way from Florida- the wonderful colour-coordinated contents above. Inkdeath by Cornelia Funke is a book from my wishlist; the third in the Inkheart trilogy, which I have greatly enjoyed, I have been lusting after the final installment since its release last winter. Brooke was very generous and also sent me two very cool bookmarks and a notebook; I am a crazy collector of both so these were perfect gifts for me! Also in the package was some promotional material -including sampler- for the book, Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. I've been aware of some of the hype surrounding this book so look forward to the teaser and coincidentally Brooke reviewed the book today! Thank you for your generosity, Brooke, and for being so worried that it had been lost. I have really enjoyed the Holiday Swap this year and you can view my Santee's post here.

My other Secret Santa, photographed above (beautifully wrapped by Amazon) was arranged through the LibraryThing Virago Modern Classics group, which I partook in Christmas 2008 and in 2009. This time around my lovely Santa sent me Virago copies of My Cousin Rachel and The House on the Strand by Daphne Du Maurier. Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier is one of my all-time favourite years and yet in the fourteen years since first reading it I have never attempted another Du Maurier novel in case it didn't live up to my expectations; last year I decided that I would love to read more of her work -especially after hearing great things from blogging friends- and my Santa treated me to two that I can now indulge in. I am particularly excited about reading My Cousin Rachel after reading that another cookie crumbles preferred it to Rebecca! I intend to pick it up soon as it should make perfect reading during a dark, bleak winter.

I shall be sharing some more acquisitions over the weekend, including some that Santa also dropped off at home for me.

Tuesday Teaser and Trivia

2010-01-05T13:00:00.001Z

A few Christmases ago my boyfriend bought me the Book Lovers Edition of Trivial Pursuit and I thought I could virtually play with my fellow book lovers, or at least ask you a weekly literary question. So here goes (if you win then please treat yourself to a slice of pie/cake/pizza/delete where appropriate)...

From the Beloved Children's Books section:

What book begins when a compassionate elephant in the jungle of Nool hears "a small noise"?

Quote a couple of spoiler-free sentences from the book you’re reading to tempt others.

"Popularly they are known as 'Fuck-me bracelets'. It is a mark of a girl's daring to fashion such a bracelet for herself from the aqua seal of a Coca-Cola bottle neck, for whoever breaks the bracelet, however accidentally, thereby enters into a contract with the wearer."

From The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton p. 50

Both Kim from Chapter Chit Chat and Kals from At Pemberley awarded me the One Lovely Blog Award. Thank you!

I appreciate my readers and am so grateful that you think I have something original to say about books. In the coming months I have big plans for my blog and I hope you will all help me in ensuring it becomes even lovelier!

After the Fire, a Still Small Voice

2010-01-04T23:00:00.002Z

After the Fire, a Still Small Voice by Evie Wyld is a very accomplished début that I savoured slowly towards the end of 2009. I knew from early on that it would become a favourite book from the year; I also thought that it had a beautiful cover. Set in Australia, the novel tells the stories of two men, Frank and Leon, with no apparent connection, separated by some decades. Frank has moved to coast-line country following the deterioration of his current relationship to live in a shack-like house in New South Wales that once belonged to his parents; his narrative charts settling into that stark landscape whilst flash-backing to his turbulent relationships with both his ex and his father. Leon's story recalls growing up in Sydney in a bakery run by his European-immigrant parents, his father's enlistment in the Korean War and his own conscription to Vietnam, his subsequent time there and acclimatisation upon his return.

I enjoyed the alternate narratives; the key to a working structure of this kind is when both compel you so much that when one ends you want it to continue but then are fully engaged in the other as soon as it switches. Where the structure was strong, the richness of description was astonishing. I found the evocation of Australia striking; the starkness of the landscape and organic wildness seemed to capture the rawness of the emotions, the violence and rage that permeates the text. There is an intensity to After the Fire, a Still Small Voice and a resounding savagery but ultimately this story about violence is also one about communication. This section of the dust-jacket's blurb is one of the most appealing and succinct descriptions that I must quote it:

[T]his beautifully realised debut tells a story of fathers and sons, their wars and the things they will never know about each other. It is about the things men cannot say out loud and the taut silence that fills up the empty space.

"The taut silence that fills up the empty space"- isn't that an elegant description? It is true; Wyld achieves a credible fictional study of masculinity and how the male psyches communicate in a world where violence is often the means to articulate themselves. After the Fire, a Still Small Voice is an original novel and one that I thoroughly enjoyed and thought deserving of its John Llewellyn Rhys Prize win. From Frank's awkward yet touching friendship with seven year old Sal to his rage at his father and girlfriend and Leon's sculpting of sugar dolls for cakes to his role as machine-gun runner in Vietnam, there is a balance and contrast between gentleness and violence that is well-realised. After the Fire, a Still Small Voice is an impressive début with two complex and tormented male leads and beautiful prose; I predict that it will receive more accolades and that there will be promising things to read from Evie Wyld in the future.

Bookish Resolutions

2010-01-03T14:20:00.002Z

Happy 2010! I am back in London and feeling slightly better. Today will be a PJs and book day, I think, as I attempt to finish my first book of the year (yesterday I didn't manage to read a word as I don't find reading in the car conducive to my physical well-being). I didn't read as much as I had hoped for over the festive period but it was more important to be enjoying quality time with my loved ones, which I did in abundance. This intentional placing of less pressure upon myself to read a set amount of books (normally in an impractical amount of time) ties in with the bookish resolutions that I have set myself for the coming year; these are simple, relaxed rules that I hope will ultimately enrich my reading experience rather than constrain it.

1. Enjoy reading - it's not that I didn't enjoy reading in 2009 but there were occasions, especially in late November/early December, where I felt thoroughly overwhelmed with reading deadlines that I had set myself (or that were dictated by library due dates or book group meetings). I had enough of reading as a chore when I was at University and I need to return to the days of reading purely for pleasure and not with a sense of obligation or pressure.

2. Read freely - part of my stifled feelings at the end of the year were due to having far too many books on my TBR list that weren't there solely out of choice and whimsy but because of challenge commitments or themed reading that I set myself. I will still dabble in these but as and when I feel the freedom to do so. There are so many exciting and interesting reading challenges across the blogosphere and I am not banning them but I need to read for me this year. I miss the freedom of choice in my reading so in 2010 expect more randomness in my reading and more of an insight into my preferred reading material. I'll still challenge myself but on my own terms. I fully intend to complete the two challenges that I have already committed to for the year ahead and some exciting read-alongs but I won't be stressing myself to meet deadlines and missing out on other wonderful books along the way.

3. Acquire less books - I am not imposing any book-buying ban on myself but I am simply going to try to buy and borrow (from the library and friends) less books and obtain review copies until I have made a significant dent in the books that I already have. I already have an immense TBR list and acquired a lot of wonderful-sounding books last year and it saddens me that there were some that I didn't get around to reading. This year I am not making any written reading plans but plan to let my own senses and circumstances guide me in my reading choices on a book-to-book basis as I used to do successfully; for the latter half of last year I had a half dozen books at a time lined up and I don't read well under that pressure. A reduction in the amount of incoming books is required to realistically get on top of the ones already waiting for me.

Three fundamental, unconstrained, achievable resolutions that I won't feel pressured to achieve as they should come naturally. Reading is my favourite pastime; I have read prolifically and eclectically from an early age and I don't want that to change; blogging has enriched my reading experience through blogger recommendations but I want to strike a balance between my own personal reading freedom and participating in the blogging community. Here's to a 2010 full of wonderful books!

Ugh

2010-01-02T09:00:00.001Z

The new year has brought me an awful cold, which is not an auspicious start. I am also on my way back from my Christmas break at home so will be sniffling and shivering the entire journey.

I shall return hopefully in full health...

Happy New Year!

2010-01-01T10:00:00.001Z

HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Here's to a wonderful 2010 full of wonderful books.

At the time of scheduling this post I am looking forward to a lovely quiet Hogmanay (New Year's Eve) with my boyfriend involving pizza, wine and DVDs. We are travelling back to London at the end of the week and will be enjoying our last few days at home. I also have a New Year's tradition, which I will hopefully have completed by the time you are reading this. Before "the bells", I like to have finished the book that I am currently reading and, at the time of writing, I am almost finished a novella so imagine I will be picking up another one before the year is out. I like to bring in the new year with a fresh start and that includes my book. A couple of years ago my boyfriend and I celebrated at a very fancy hotel and even then I finished my book -The Way the Crow Flies by Ann-Marie MacDonald- in a bubble bath in a marble bath. Do you have any bookish traditions at New Year?

Best of 2009

2009-12-31T10:00:00.001Z

I have had a successful reading year in quantity but most importantly in quality. Some of the titles that I have read this year have become all-time favourites. I have also read a lot of new fiction and some of those were extraordinary and I couldn't choose between them all. I have included all of my favourites of 2009 (not in order, excluding the first book in the first mosaic) but have divided them into general best books, best fiction of 2009 and best young adult books read as some of those required special mention.

The mosaic maker crops the images but I thought it may be quite fun if you guessed my favourites from their covers; all of these images have appeared on my blog this year excluding two titles that have yet to be reviewed and were late -but deserved- additions to the list. Please feel free to ask in comments if you are unclear which book I'm referring to as some are more obvious than others.

A Reading Year

2009-12-30T17:15:00.002Z

As I was composing my end-of-year statistics I spied this meme on Savidge Reads and borrowed it.

How many books read in 2009?

I have beaten my own personal best by reading 133 books this year and I'll finish another before midnight on New Year's Eve.

How many fiction and non fiction?

I have only read eight works of non-fiction this year but that is actually rather good for me. I foresee me reading more non-fiction titles in 2010, with a few lined up already for the beginning of the year.

Male/Female author ratio?

35 male authors (two books at least but a few of them) and 78 female authors, which doesn't surprise me at all.

Favourite book of 2009?

The Group by Mary McCarthy, published in 1963 but reissued in 2009. For my favourite new book of the year, check back tomorrow.

Least favourite?

Howards End is on the Landing by Susan Hill.

Any that you simply couldn’t finish and why?

I've been lucky (for the most part) with my choices this year and haven't picked anything up that I couldn't finish although I'm still stunned that I managed to finish The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt and there were definite moments when I suspected that it would never end.

Oldest book read?

I finally read my last remaining unread Jane Austen novel, Persuasion, this year and that was published posthumously in 1817 and the oldest book that I had this year.

Newest?

After the Fire, A Still Small Voice was most likely the most recently published that I have read but I have read 24 new titles this year

Longest and shortest book titles?

After the Fire, A Still Small Voice and Mort.

Longest and shortest books?

Wolf Hall was the longest (even if The Children's Book felt like it) and I read a number of novellas.

How many books from the library?

I've utilised the library as much as possible this year and 38 of the books read were borrowed from the library.

Any translated books?

Fourteen books, predominantly French.

Most read author of the year, and how many books by that author?

Seven Terry Pratchett novels, six of them set in the Discworld.

Any re-reads?

I reread some Angela Carter, a number of children's books and a few titles that came up as book group choices that I had read years before.

Favourite character of the year?

Terry Pratchett's Death.

Which countries did you go to through the page in your year of reading?

Perhaps a world tour? London through the ages, Scotland, Ireland, The Czech Republic, the Deep South, North America, Domincan Republic, Colombia, Spain, Poland, Brazil, France, Russia, Australia, India, Japan, Afghanistan, Switzerland, Egypt, Iceland, Sweden, China, Australia, Brazil, Africa, a couple of deserted islands and the Disc.

Which book wouldn’t you have read without someone’s specific recommendation?

It being my first year blogging, there have been several!

Which author was new to you in 2009 that you now want to read the entire works of?

Esther Freud, John Wyndham, Mary McCarthy, Jhumpa Lahiri, James Scudamore, J.M. Coetzee, Sam Taylor and a few debut novelists who I will seek out future writings from.

Which books are you annoyed you didn’t read?

There are a few books that I have been wanting to read for some time that I am annoyed with myself for not reading - look out for those in 2010! On the plus side, I read more new fiction this year than I ever have any other year but next year I would like to strike a balance between new fiction and those books that I have been meaning to read.

Did you read any books you have always been meaning to read?

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, I Am a Cat by Soseki Natsume, Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (pre-blogging) and Brighton Rock by Graham Greene

Tuesday Teaser and Trivia

2009-12-29T09:00:00.000Z

Over the next couple of days check back for my round-up of reading in 2009 -both my favourite books of the year and the best published during the year- and following that there may even be a review or two to start of 2010. Once I return to London at the weekend I should be blogging regularly and proficiently again.

A few Christmases ago my boyfriend bought me the Book Lovers Edition of Trivial Pursuit and I thought I could virtually play with my fellow book lovers, or at least ask you a weekly literary question. So here goes (if you win then please treat yourself to a slice of pie/cake/pizza/delete where appropriate)...

From the Classics section:

What novel by D.H. Lawrence finds Gudrun and Ursula Brangwen from The Rainbow all grown up?

Quote a couple of spoiler-free sentences from the book you’re reading to tempt others.

"And somewhere she would find the key to the cupboard. If there was a secret, maybe it was supposed to be discovered like this, only after Shirley was gone"

From The Tin-Kin by Eleanor Thom p. 32

Hogfather

2009-12-28T16:15:00.001Z

My Christmas-themed reading mainly consisted of Hogfather by Terry Pratchett as I have less reading time over the festive period than I had imagined. However, it was the perfect holiday reading as I could pick it up here and there and be amused for forty so pages before eating and being merry and then return to it for a few more pages in those exhausted moments before I fell asleep to dream of Santa.

I have previously waxed lyrical about Pratchett's anthropomorphic personification of Death and how much of a literary achievement I believe it to be. Hogfather concerns other anthropomorphic personifications that are believed in by humans to creatively explain natural and festive occurrences e.g. the Tooth Fairy and Father Christmas, or in this case the Hogfather who delivers gifts on Hogswatch Night on the Disc. However, something entirely non-festive is afoot, the Hogfather is kind of ... dead, and Death is adorned in a red suit, false beard and attempting to say HO. HO. HO. If Death, along with his granddaughter Susan's assistance, doesn't save Hogswatch by impersonating the Hogfather then the sun will not rise the following morning or thereafter.

As always, Pratchett is pithily wise and witty and observes the traditions of Christmas/Hogswatch with an ironic and observed pen. On Christmas Eve I read "The Little Match Girl" by Hans Christian Anderson and then serendipitously came to this section in Hogfather when I resumed reading it afterwards:

'But ... little match girls dying in the snow is part of what the Hogswatch spirit is all about, master,' said Albert desperately. 'I mean, people hear about it and say, "We may be poorer than a disabled banana and only have mud and old boots to eat, but at least we're better off than the poor little match girl," master. It makes them feel happy and grateful for what they've got, see.'

Hogfather is about believing as much as it is about suspending belief and is also a story about storytelling. It was ideal themed reading during the festive period as I was engaged and amused as well as absorbed without being so immersed that I forgot to eat a mince pie or two. I have always maintained that Pratchett makes perfect reading for those in book slumps and recently I haven't been reading as much as normal so it was an ideal choice for Christmas. As I also prepare my review post for the year, I discovered that I have read seven Terry Pratchett books this year (six of the Discworld), which is far more than any other author, so it was also a treat to return to him at the tail-end of the year.

A few other examples to demonstrate why this book is read to be jolly fa la la la la la la as Pratchett is so much better described in his own humorous words :

But it was much earlier even than that when most people forgot that the very oldest stories are, sooner or later, about blood. Later on they took the blood out to make the story more acceptable to children, or at least to the people who had to read them to children rather than the children themselves (who, on the whole, are quite keen on blood provided it's being shed by the deserving), and then wondered where the stories went.

The Death of Rats nibbled a bit of pork pie because when you are the personification of small rodents you have to behave in certain ways. He also piddled on one of the turnips for the same reason, although only metaphorically, because when you are a small skeleton in a black robe there are also some things you technically cannot do.

LET'S GET THERE AND SLEIGH THEM. HO. HO. HO.
'Right you are, master.'
THAT WAS A PUNE OR PLAY ON WORDS, ALBERT.
I DON'T KNOW IF YOU NOTICED.
'I'm laughing like hell deep down, sir.'
HO. HO. HO.

Ridcully sat in horrified amazement. He'd always enjoyed Hogswatch, every bit of it. He'd enjoyed seeing ancient relatives, he'd enjoyed the food, he'd been good at games like Chase My Neighbour Up the Passage and Hooray Jolly Tinker. He was always the first to don a paper hat. He felt that paper hats lent a soecial festive air to the occasion. And he always very carefully read the messages on Hogswatch cards and found time for a few kind thoughts about the sender.

Here too is a clip from the television adaptation of Hogfather that aired a few Christmases ago:

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-25T11:00:00.001Z

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I hope your holidays are filled with joy and books!

Normal blogging service will resume in due course.

Rosie's Riveters

2009-12-22T16:51:00.003Z

Today I appear on Aarti of Booklust's blog, participating in her wonderful Rosie's Riveters series. I am grateful to Aarti for running such a fascinating feature that celebrates strong and memorable female characters in literature and I am delighted to have had a chance to participate before the feature ends in the New Year.

Check out my post to see who I chose as my Rosie's Riveter!

Tuesday Teaser and Trivia

2009-12-22T09:00:00.000Z

A few Christmases ago my boyfriend bought me the Book Lovers Edition of Trivial Pursuit and I thought I could virtually play with my fellow book lovers, or at least ask you a weekly literary question. So here goes (if you win then please treat yourself to a slice of pie/cake/pizza/delete where appropriate)...

From the Non-Fiction section:

Which Nobel Prize winning writer's autobiography became a bestseller in the Spanish speaking world in 2002?

Quote a couple of spoiler-free sentences from the book you’re reading to tempt others.

"Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on."

From Hogfather by Terry Pratchett p. 40

A Christmas Memory

2009-12-21T14:01:00.000Z

I had been planning on finally reading "A Christmas Memory" by Truman Capote for a few months, ever since reading this post by Mee. I also knew that it was one of Nymeth's favourite stories and this would finally be the year to read it. I settled during this festive period fully prepared to be heart-warmed and I was but I realised from the opening paragraph that I have actually read this short story before! Possibly last Christmas or the Christmas before, I don't recall, but I have read it. Has this happened to you? It never happens with novels but there are short stories that have escaped my memory, which is ironic considering this one is entitled "A Christmas Memory"; it is a reminder why I blog because I have a hopeless retention for all that I have read.

Anyway, second time or not, "A Christmas Memory" is a sweet and touching story about a young boy named Buddy, our narrator, and his friend, an older woman and distant cousin, who live together along with a household of other relatives, none of whom they really care for. This unconventional but touching relationship is joyful to read about, especially during the festive seasons which is essentially about spending quality time with our loved ones. Buddy recalls one Christmas -their last spent together- in which they made fruitcakes together, up to thirty-one of them, which they sent to passing acquaintances and even one to President Roosevelt. The making of fruitcakes for Christmas gifts is one of their traditions and on a morning in November Buddy's friend wakes to declare "It's fruitcake weather!"

This is a gently affecting story that serves as a reminder of the true nature of Christmas. Even though I happened to have read it before I was happy for the reminder as it served as a festive reinforcement. Apparently autobiographical, you can watch Truman Capote read the story here (thanks to JoAnn for the link).

Brief and Wondrous

2009-12-18T11:49:00.000Z

Junot Diaz was scheduled to speak at the Festival of Ibero-American Literature hosted by Foyles bookshop a few weeks ago and I read his 2008 Pulitzer-winning The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao in preparation. Regretfully his talk was cancelled due to travel issues and I was disappointed not to hear him speak but enjoyed the book nonetheless.

Oscar is an unconventionally overweight and nerdy Dominican Republican teenager living in New Jersey with his mother, Belicia, and punk runaway sister, Lola. Oscar dreams of becoming the next Tolkien and is continually falling hopelessly in love. Their story is predominantly narrated by Yunior de Las Casas, who was a friend of the Cabral family, although he remains unidentified for the first half of the book. This is a narrative not just concerning the "brief and wondrous life" of Oscar but an epic that spans the Cabral's tragic past in the Dominican Republic under the rule of dictator Rafael Trujillo and a study of the fukú, or curse, that has plagued the Cabral family.

From the irreverently-told prologue explaining fukú, I was enthralled. Yunior is a witty and pithy narrator who tells the story as if he is sitting down in a coffee shop recounting it to you; I enjoyed the conversational style of the story-telling, the everyday colloquialisms and language and dialogues. However, be warned that some of the narrative is peppered with colloquial Spanish and, more often than not, I was reading without my babelfish to hand.

In honour of Oscar, much of the text alludes to and cites science fiction and fantasy, with Tolkien references and analogies prolific and a love for footnotes that are as amusing as those by Terry Pratchett. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a novel concerning big themes of identity, of the Dominican Diaspora, of family, of masculinity, of dictatorships. I was unaware of The Trujillo Era in the Dominican Republic, of the bloody tyranny of Trujillo, El Jefe, until his assassination in 1961; embarrassingly, it wasn't until towards the end of the book that my brain processed that this Dominican Republic with its bloody history -one of the bloodiest of the twentieth century- was the same Dominican Republic of all-inclusive holiday resorts in the twenty-first century. The tragicomic novel uses its fantastical and familial narrative to historically educate and now that I am more informed I am seeking out another Dominican novel cited, In the Time of Butterflies by Julia Alvarez, a fictional account of the real-life Mirabel Sisters, who Trujillo had murdered for resistance. This type of fictionalised history that Diaz and Alvarez utilise works for me; I respond better to history in the form of fiction, when I can empathise with fully-fledged characters rather than facts and statistics and Diaz blends well the facts with the fiction.

The style of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is unique and the reader has to be paying attention to its narrative leaps in time, narrator and jumps from story to footnotes; the linguistic lapses into Spanish, the footnotes and the dependence on knowledge of the genres Oscar's life revolves around may be offputting but this is a highly enjoyable, absorbing and rewarding novel from an original voice. From its opening pages I was immersed in this humorous, heartwarming but ultimately tragic story; Oscar Cabral is indeed a wondrous protagonist.

Some favourite passages:

These were Oscar's furies, his personal pantheon, the girls he most dreamed about and most beat off to and who eventually found their way into his little stories. In his dreams he was either saving them from aliens or he was returning to the neighbourhood, rich and famous-It's him! The Dominican Stephen King!

Shrugging of her weariness, she did what many women of her background would have done. Posted herself beside her portrait of La Virgen de Altagracia and prayed. We postmodern plátanos tend to dismiss the Catholic devotion of our viejas as atavistic, an embarrassing throwback to the olden days, but it's exactly at these moments, when all hope has vanished, when the end draws near, that prayer has dominion.

To say I'd never in my life met a Dominican like him would be to put it mildly.
Hail, Dog of God, was how he welcomed me my first day in Demarest.
Took a week before I figured out what the hell he meant.
God. Domini. Dog. Canis.
Hail, Dominicanis.

Library Loot: the débuts

2009-12-17T13:37:00.002Z

If I stick to my resolve, this will be the last library loot I shall be posting about for a while as I attempt to tackle the overwhelming to-be-reads. Coincidentally these books are all débuts by female writers, three novels and one collection of short stories. I requested the top one, which reminded me to request the second one (both won first book awards, the Guardian and Orange, respectively) and the bottom two both come highly recommended.

An Elegy for Easterly by Petina Gappah won the Guardian first book award 2009 earlier this month. Synopsis (from the publisher Faber and Faber): In her spirited debut collection, Zimbabwean author Petina Gappah brings us the resilience and inventiveness of the people who struggle to live under Robert Mugabe’s regime. Despite their circumstances, the characters in An Elegy for Easterly are more than victims; they are all too human, with as much capacity to inflict pain as they have to endure it. They struggle with larger issues common to all people everywhere: failed promises, unfulfilled dreams and the yearning for something to anchor them to life.

An Equal Stillness by Francesca Kay won the 2009 Orange Award for New Writes prize. Synopsis (from the publisher Orion): Jennet Mallow is born in Yorkshire in the 1920s but her interest in art and creativity alienates her from her family, her father who is a priest, her conventional sister and her emotionally stunted mother. Jennet moves to London in search of a more exciting life and finds it in her new environment and in the handsome and enigmatic figure of the painter David Heaton. When Jennet falls pregnant, her parents more or less force the two to marry. In the postwar austerity of the 1940s, the young couple struggles to make ends meet and Jennet finds that her home life is gradually eroding everything she has fought to achieve. Aware that David is becoming increasingly reliant on drink and tired of the dank and drab bedsit in which they live, Jennet suggests they move to Spain. There, the bright blue skies, warm air and sunlit beaches give the couple and their children a new lease of life. Jennet begins to paint again and an agent takes an interest in her work. But as Jennet's own career begins to take off, her relationship with David sours and the two enter a destructive spiral with tragic consequences.

The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton is a book that I first came aware of a few months ago but allowed it to fall off my radar until a couple of bookish friends on Twitter reminded me about it when they named it as their favourite read of 2009 last week. Synopsis (from the publisher Granta): A high-school sex scandal jolts a group of teenage girls into a new awareness of their own potency and power. The sudden and total publicity seems to turn every act into a performance and every platform into a stage. But when the local drama school decides to turn the scandal into a show, the real world and the world of the theater are forced to meet, and soon the boundaries between private and public begin to dissolve. The Rehearsal is an exhilarating and provocative novel about the unsimple mess of human desire, at once a tender evocation of its young protagonists and a shrewd expose of emotional compromise.

The Tin-Kin by Eleanor Thom comes highly recommended by dovegreyreader and I am annoyed that it has taken me to the very end of the year to actually get around to borrowing the book, let alone reading it. However, upon discovering that Thom graduated with her Master's in Creative Writing from my alma mater, the University of Glasgow, I think I will be reading this next. The synopsis (provided by the publisher Duckworth) cements by desire to read it: When her aunt Shirley dies, Dawn finds herself back in her claustrophobic home town in Northern Scotland for the first time in years. She spends her days caring for her small daughter, listening to tapes of old country songs and cleaning Shirley’s flat, until one day she comes across the key to a cupboard that she was forbidden to open as a child. Inside she finds an album of photographs, curling with age. A young couple pose on a beach, arms wrapped around each other; little girls in hand-me-down kilts reveal toothless smiles; an old woman rests her hands on her hips, her head thrown back in blurry laughter. But why has her aunt treasured these pictures secretly for so long? Dawn’s need for answers leads her to a group of Travellers on the outskirts of Elgin. There she learns of a young man left to die on the floor of a cell, and realises that the story of her family is about to be rewritten... Weaving between narratives and decades, The Tin Kin is a beautiful moving novel about love, hardship and the lies and legends that pass between generations. It is a striking, unforgettable debut.

Never have I read so much new fiction in the one year, least of all new writers, as I have in 2009. Next week I shall be reviewing an astonishing début -also a prize-winner- and easily one of my favourite books of the year (a list of those will appear before the end of the year).

Have you read any of these or do any appeal?

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Eva and Marg encouraging library use and its promotion.

I Am a Cat Vol. II

2009-12-16T22:00:00.002Z

I have enjoyed Volume II of I Am a Cat as much as I have Volume I, probably more so as I have become immersed in the novel and attuned to its narrator and satirical humour. I Am a Cat is highly amusing with wry perceptions through the eyes of a cat. Volume II has been more episodic -with the setting and premise established in Volume I- with the cat (or Neko, as I refer to him when posting) venturing out to a Japanese bathhouse, spying on neighbours and being the only witness to a burglary in his master's home (of course burglars are also known as cat burglars). The scene were Neko attempts to prove his worth by catching rats -before a visitor to the Sneazes' home takes him to eat- is a moment of high comedy. Neko's commentary is insightful as well as scathing at times but it is always witty; when he is not participating in his own escapades then he is observing the domestic dramas of his owners, their friends and acquaintances. I also enjoyed a cheeky reference to Sōseki and his poetry by Sneaze and his friends, Coldmoon and Waverhouse.

I am finding I Am a Cat immensely readable and enjoyable and have definitely found my stride with Volume II; the characters are more fully-fledged and less annoying than in Volume I (not that they irritated me that much but Mr Sneaze is rather pompous) and the cat, himself, is more humanised, which is a development interesting to follow. The cat is by far one of the most intriguing and compelling narrators I have ever had the joy of reading. The concept of an omniscient narrator that is a character and a cat is awe-worthy and it still impresses me two volumes on; I am very excited -but also disappointed- to read the third and final volume for January 15th.

How are you finding I Am a Cat? I know that some of you have borrowed it from the library on my recommendation and I hope that you are enjoying it as much as I am.

Some quotes from Volume II:

So who the hell is this that has so blithely appropriated the cushion which was destined, sooner or later, to have eased Suzuki buttocks? Had the interloper been a human being, he might well have given way. But to be pre-empted by a mere cat, that is intolerable. It is also a little unpleasant.

But cats, I can assure you, just like anyone else, feel the heat and feel the cold. There are times when I consider that I really wouldn't mind, just that once, soaking myself in a bath, but if I got hot water all over my fur, it would take ages to get dry again and that is why I grin and bear the stink of my own sweat and have never in all my life yet passed through the entrance of a public bathhouse. Every now and again I think about using a fan but, since I cannot hold one in my paws, the thought's not worth pursuing.

Tuesday Teaser and Trivia

2009-12-15T10:30:00.000Z

A few Christmases ago my boyfriend bought me the Book Lovers Edition of Trivial Pursuit and I thought I could virtually play with my fellow book lovers, or at least ask you a weekly literary question. So here goes (if you win then please treat yourself to a slice of pie/cake/pizza/delete where appropriate)...

From the Book Club section:

What Pulitzer-winning book notes: "Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood?

Quote a couple of spoiler-free sentences from the book you’re reading to tempt others.

"Two of the boys I was running with, boys I had found on the bank of the bloody river, they both went to her. And when they drew close enough, she lifted an automatic rifle and shot through the chests and stomachs of the boys."

From What is the What by Dave Eggers p. 6

I Was Dreaming...

2009-12-14T23:59:00.002Z

... of a grey Christmas. I hear that it's foggy at home so when I'm there for Christmas I shall be in good company with Persephones to read. One of the Persephones that I will be packing to read over the festive period is my newest acquisition, Every Eye by Isobel English. This novella was sent by my Persephone Secret Santa and I am very much looking forward to reading it. I also received an exceptionally sweet pencil case that is very me (or Matilda, if you prefer) and a Jennifer Gordon designed bookmark; I have been coveting one of her bookmarks ever since she was profiled by Carl of Stainless Steel Droppings. Open gifts of any kind is such a joy, especially when they are book-related, but to receive a Persephone book is a joy in itself. Thank you so much to my generous -and secretive- Santa, whoever she may be, and to Stacy at Book Psmith for organising this exciting gift exchange; may we all have a wonderful grey Christmas.

Thomas of My Porch was my Santee and you can read about the Persephone I sent to him (including review!) by popping over to his lovely blog.

Recent Acquisitions...

2009-12-13T18:49:00.001Z

There have been rather less books arriving at Paberback_Reader abode recently as I have been making a conscious attempt to receive or request less titles, as well as buying none, because I completely overwhelmed with reading material at the moment. As of early New Year I will also be using the library less as I embark on a personal challenge to gain control of my current to-be-read titles without adding to them. However, there have been a few recent acquisitions, a few of which are photographed below.

When Verity recently wrote about the Animal Series published by Reaktion Books, I was immediately intrigued and thought that the books looked original, interesting and beautifully presented. Upon looking at the website I also discovered their Edible series and knew that I had to have a closer look at these titles; Reaktion Books very kindly sent me two titles from each series: Penguin and Elephant from the Animal series and Cheese and Chocolate from the Edible one. These books are simply stunning with wonderful illustrations and both are unique series with Edible books hardbacks and both series have their own distinct style.

The lovely people of Random House also sent me a review copy of Ruby's Spoon by Anna Lawrence Pietroni, which sounds spell-binding. In the photograph below, the book is wrapped in a promotional newspaper front-page that alludes to the witch, mermaid and missing woman that the plot revolve around.

Another package to arrive this week that was not a book but definitely a bookish item was this incredible Jane Austen action figure! I won this from J.T. Oldfield of Bibliofreak blog after entering Everything Austen mini-challenge there. As a Jane Austen fan and a lover of all things literary, this action figure will make a wonderful addition to my bookshelves where I shelf a lot of bookish and literary-themed paraphernalia.

Have you received anything exciting recently or are you waiting for Santa Claus to bring you some instead?

A David Garnett Duo

2009-12-12T16:45:00.000Z

Blogging definitely opens me up to more obscure titles and A Man in the Zoo and Lady Into Fox by David Garnett both fall into the category of neglected classics; one was a novella that was a gem to discover and the other was more like cubic zirconia that should have stayed unearthed. A Man in the Zoo was brought to my attention by Fleur Fisher and Lady Into Fox by both Simon T and Simon S; upon reading the first and third reviews, respectively, and realising that the writer was one in the same, I decided to purchase an out-of-print volume containing them both. Lady into Fox is in print with Hesperus Press in a delightful-looking edition.

Lady Into Fox concerns John Cromartie who, upon having a quarrel with his fiancée, Josephine, offers himself as an exhibit within the Ape-house of the Regent's Park Zoo.

'You are Tarzan of the Apes; you ought to be shut up in the Zoo. The collection here is incomplete without you. You are a survivor - atavism at its worst. Don't ask me why I fell in love with you - I did, but I cannot marry Tarzan of the Apes, I'm not romantic enough. I see, too, that you do believe what you have been saying. You do think mankind is your enemy. I can assure you that if mankind thinks of you, it thinks you are the missing link. You ought to be shut up and exhibited here in the Zoo - I've told you once and now I tell you again - with the gorilla on one side and the chimpanzee on the other. Science would gain a lot.'

I found the premise to be intriguing and fully expected to be enchanted. Alas, I struggled with this novella and found it inaccessible for the most part in its lofty tone and thought John was exceptionally condescending. I was bored and mildly irritated but then towards then end became thoroughly offended when a "second man, a negro" was exhibited in the cage next to Cromartie, and the latter's subsequent treatment and opinion of his new neighbour, Joe Tennison. I realise that A Man in the Zoo is very much a product of its time but overall the novella left a thoroughly bad taste in my mouth. I imagine that Garnett was attempting to say something original about humanity but his point eluded me.

Conversely, Lady Into Fox was enchanting and I was completely charmed. A country gentleman, Richard Trebick, and his wife, Silvia, née Fox, have been married only a year and are very much in love, when Silvia turns into her former animal namesake. Devastated Richard attempts to keep living as husband and wife, dressing his wife in her old clothes and dismissing the servants; he attempts to control his wife's new carnivorous and cunning nature to no avail (see the bottom quote for a beautiful description of his devotion to them staying together). Lady Into Fox is a tender and poignant novella and is also a very clever tragicomedy; Garnett ingeniously plays on her name Silvia Fox and moreover on the word vixen with the villagers suspecting that she has run off with another man. I shall not spoil the conclusion of this charming and emotive story for you - do you think it will have a happy ending?

He waited till it was quite dark that he might the better bring her into her own house without being seen, and buttoned her inside his topcoat, nay, even in his passion tearing open his waistcoat and his shirt that she might lie the closer to his heart. For when we are overcome with the greatest sorrow we act not like men or women but like children whose comfort in all their troubles is to press themselves against their mother's breast, or if she be not there to hold each other tight in one another's arms.

Then she ran hither and thither a stark naked vixen, and without giving a glance to her poor husband who stood silently now upon the bank, with despair and terror settled in his mind. She let him stay there most of the afternoon till he was chilled through and through and worn out with watching her. At last he reflected how she had just stripped herself and how in the morning she struggled against being dressed, and he thought perhaps he was too strict with her and if he let her have her own way they could manage to be happy somehow together even if she did eat of the floor.

Cassandra at the Wedding

2009-12-11T17:05:00.002Z

Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker: Cassandra Edwards is a graduate student at Berkeley: gay, brilliant, nerve-wracked, miserable. At the beginning of this novel, she drives back to her family ranch in the foothills of the Sierras to attend the wedding of her identical twin, Judith, to a nice young doctor from Connecticut. Cassandra, however, is hell-bent on sabotaging the wedding.

Dorothy Baker's entrancing tragicomic novella follows an unpredictable course of events in which her heroine appears variously as conniving, self-aware, pitiful, frenzied, absurd, and heartbroken—at once utterly impossible and tremendously sympathetic. Cassandra reckons with her complicated feelings about the sister who she feels owes it to her to be her alter ego; with her father, a brandy-soaked retired professor of philosophy; and with the ghost of her dead mother, as she struggles to come to terms with the only life she has.

First published in 1962, Cassandra at the Wedding is a book of enduring freshness, insight, and verve. Like the fiction of Jeffrey Eugenides and Jhumpa Lahiri, it is the work of a master stylist with a profound understanding of the complexities of the heart and mind.

I wrote last week that I was intending to indulge in some themed reading at the weekend as I was attending a wedding (two friends - beautiful day) and I did; I opted for Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker. I decided on this one because it was the title that most intrigued me, I had been tempted by it since reading Verity's review this summer and, moreover, it had been some time since I read any of my green Virago Modern Classics (or non-green, come to that). So, Cassandra at the Wedding it was. I felt it worthwhile to include the synopsis again to firstly recount the key plot points and also for the comparison with Jhumpa Lahiri that is given; after also reading Lahiri recently, I can testify that Dorothy Baker is likewise a "master stylist", skilled at evoking emotion.

Cassandra at the Wedding is a novel of heightened emotion; it is intense. The narrative is written in a conversational style that is inclusive and yet also overwhelming; Cassandra's narration is so emotionally-charged that it is a relief when Judith narrates a section in the second half, before a calmer, more focused and less passionate Cassandra resumes the telling. The intensity of the novel is employed also through the short time period of events -two days- and a stifling heat is described that also evokes a sense of claustrophobia within the text; these literary devices are highly effective as we are taken on an emotional rollercoaster of a ride with Cassandra. Also indicative of Baker's sheer talent is that never once is the word "twin" used yet Cassandra and Judith are twins and that is very much conveyed without using the term, for example, "I looked ... in a blue mirror .... It was the face of my sister Judith" and "It was on our birth cerificates that way. The one named Cassandra was two ounces heavier and eleven minutes older than the one named Judith." This is a novel about the struggle for identity especially when you have someone who looks identical to you and who you sometimes think is you; it is about familial and emotional dependence and an exceptional study of jealousy. Cassandra at the Wedding will resonate with anyone who has a sister, not necessarily a twin, who understands the sense of moving on and moving away and grieving for a childhood that was so much simpler.

Cassandra at the Wedding is not a plot-driven novel but an emotion-based one that has wonderful moments of wit and wryness. Cassandra is both an unreliable narrator and a sympathetic one; she was an intriguing character and one that I enjoyed immensely. The rapid and pithy dialogue between Cassandra and Judith is like an energetic, competitive game of tennis and a joy to read, if a little difficult to keep up with as they parry back and forth. This book is engaging as well as a great study in writing.

A favourite passage and example of the style:

I'm not, at heart, a jumper; it's not my sort of thing … I think I knew all the time I was sizing up the bridge that the strong possibility was I'd go home, attend my sister's wedding as invited, help hook-and-zip her into whatever she wore, take the bouquet while she received the ring, through the nose or on the finger, wherever she chose to receive it, and hold my peace when it became a question of speaking now of forever holding it.

Christmas Reading

2009-12-10T15:25:00.010Z

Here's a sneak peak at some of the themed reading that I am hoping to indulge in over the next two weeks. What are your festive reads, if any?

Interpreter of Maladies

2009-12-09T19:59:00.001Z

When I wrote about books to take home with me, it was Aarti (thank you!) who commented that a short story collection would make the perfect reading for a busy long weekend; the comment immediately reminded me of another short story collection that I have been desperate to read recently since the one lined up no longer seemed appropriate: Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri. I packed it and it was the perfect read, especially on the returning flight, when short stories were the perfect length for the wait in departures, a few read on the flight with the last pages of one finished whilst we were delayed taxiing on the runway and another on the train home from the airport. The stories themselves are a good length as is the volume and I didn't bore of them or have my attention diverted as is the case with some short story collections; instead I was engaged and entranced by the writing.

After reading "Hell-Heaven" from Lahiri's new volume of short stories, Unaccustomed Earth, I knew that I loved her style; her writing is simple yet nuanced and her stories are rich and powerful. Interpreter of Maladies won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2000 and I wish I had read it earlier. Very accessible, these stories are a delight to read and riveting in the Bengali Indian experiences (native Bengalis, Bengali immigrants to America and second generation Bengalis) that the stories evoke. Some of the stories are about assimilation into American culture whereas the title story is about a Bengali man encountering an American woman in his own county and others are about young married couples. As with all short story collections some stories are stronger than others but all of Lahiri's resonated; with some I have been left with a profound feeling of sadness and sympathy for the characters depicted. There is a sense of being disconnected from the characters at times but I think this was intentional, especially in those stories where the protagonist is struggling to fit in and feel distant themselves from their Indian home and from the culture surrounding them; moreover, the characters often feel distant from one another, most often in their marriages.

My favourite stories (from nine)

"A Temporary Matter" is by far the strongest story in the collection, the first and my favourite. The temporary matter refers to an electrical outage that will affect the house of married couple, Shoba and Shukumar, but that temporary matter becomes to symbolise more. Since a tragedy befell them, Shoba and Shukamar have been unable to communicate more than superficially but the blackout allows them to speak to one another again and freely they begin to confess things unknown to the other. This story is profound in its exploration of what couples leave unsaid and what they say to hurt one another. Its play on silence and communication is accomplished.

"This Blessed House" is a story I read in a short story collection recently about lovers' quarrels and I did prefer the stories about the younger married couples than I did some of the others. Twinkle and Sanjeev had their marriage arranged and barely know one another; the story charts their growth as a couple and how they begin to understand one another and the compromises they make.

"Mrs Sen's" is one of the stories I found the saddest as Mrs Sen's loneliness is palpable. Mrs Sen is a tragic character seen through the eyes of eleven-year-old Eliot, who stays with Mrs Sen after school whilst his mother works. Tradition is a huge part of Mrs Sen's reason for being and her traditions aren't always feasible in her new surroundings, especially when it involves learning new skills such as driving. Like most of Lahiri's stories, food is a central component to the plot: the ingredients and preparation, the eating and the senses it evokes.

Tuesday Teaser and Trivia

2009-12-08T09:28:00.004Z

I have finally caught up with the 1200+ blog posts in my Google Reader. Apologies for commenting less and writing less but now normal service really should resume. I have a few reviews pending and they will begin appearing from tomorrow as I have been somewhat lax in that area of late. After being away for a long weekend, ill and then busy, I have also been having a mini reading slump but I'm hoping that will be taken in hand today.

A few Christmases ago my boyfriend bought me the Book Lovers Edition of Trivial Pursuit and I thought I could virtually play with my fellow book lovers, or at least ask you a weekly literary question. So here goes (if you win then please treat yourself to a slice of pie/cake/pizza/delete where appropriate)...

From the Beloved Children's Books section:

What poem from Through the Looking Glass inspires Alice's remark: "It seems very pretty, but it's rather hard to understand"?

Quote a couple of spoiler-free sentences from the book you’re reading to tempt others.

"It was on our birth certificates that way. The one named Cassandra was two ounces heavier and eleven minutes that the one named Judith."

From Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker p. 8

Library Loot

2009-12-07T08:30:00.002Z

I haven't posted a library loot post for some time as I have been consciously attempting not to borrow (nor buy) any books and work on the every-increasing to-be-read piles/stacks/shelves. instead I did collect a few requests this week though and noticed another that I had been wanting to reading so added that to my ticket.

Bluestockings: The Remarkable Story of the First Women to Fight for an Education by Jane Robinson is a book that I requested upon reading Nymeth's review a couple of months ago. I wanted to read it at the time but now serendipitously it will make for the perfect non-fiction reading for the Women Unbound Challenge.

Another non-fiction title in this current library stack and also another blogger recommendation from Eva of A Striped Armchair is Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain by Maryanne Wolf. I actually requested this before Eva endorsed it, when she mentioned in her own Library Loot post a few weeks ago; I knew that a neuroscience book about how and why we read was something that ... well, I needed to read. Last Christmas books about the effect of music on the brain seemed to be all the rage and I am thrilled that there is a literary equivalent. I have a feeling that upon reading this I shall want to own my own copy.

Serving Crazy with Curry by Amulya Malladi is a book that I've been trying to track down for a couple of years. It is out-of-print in the UK and the library in my home-city didn't have a copy at the time I was originally looking for it so I was excited to discover that my new library's district did upon remembering about it. I did buy one of Malladi's other titles, The Mango Season, last year and enjoyed it; it was easily readable and diverting. I enjoy Indian-American settings and books about cooking and suicide (my, that makes me sound morbid) so the synopsis for Serving Crazy with Curry intrigued me.

It's not that Devi is the black sheep of her family. It's just that she can't seem to succeed at anything. Not even suicide. Rescued at the last minute by her interfering mother, Devi is returned to the family home to recover from the 'incident.' While Devi refuses to talk, she insists on cooking - and what food she creates! Drawn back to the table again and again by her stunningly successful dishes, the other members of the family talk, argue, joke and worry. Soon, secrets emerge, unshakeable family relationships lurch into new patterns, and success and failure don't seem quite as clear-cut as they used to be. This delightful, hopeful book sheds a warm light on three generations of women. Traditional and modern values and the cultures of Southern India and California are stirred and blended into surprising new flavours, much like one of Devi's own curries.

Last but not least is the debut novel of James Scudamore, The Amnesia Clinic. After loving Heliopolis when I read it as part of my Booker longlist reading challenge, I made a mental note to read Scudamore's previous work at some point and jumped on it when I happened to spy it in the library on my visit to collect requests. Winner of the Somerset Maugham Award in 2007, The Amnesia Clinic was also shortlisted for other literary prizes and sounds as fantastic (in both senses of the word) as its follow-up.

Anti, a quiet English boy living in Quito, Ecuador, strikes up a friendship with flamboyant classmate Fabian, who is everything Anti isn't: handsome, athletic and popular. What's more, he lives with his rakish Uncle Suarez, while Anti is stuck in the dull ex-pat world inhabited by his parents. Suarez, a storyteller par excellence, infects the boys with his passion for outlandish tales, and before long their relationship becomes one conducted entirely through the medium of storytelling. One subject, however, is taboo: Fabian's parents. But when details surrounding their disappearance begin to emerge, Anti decides to console his friend with a story suggesting that Fabian's mother may be living at a bizarre hospital on the coast for patients with memory loss. With confused emotions and reality losing its tenuous grip, the boys embark on a quixotic voyage across Ecuador in search of an 'Amnesia Clinic' that may, or may not exist.

Have you looted any library books this week and what do you think of mine?

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Eva and Marg encouraging library use and its promotion.

Appendix

2009-12-04T22:40:00.004Z

An appendix to yesterday's post on Mary McCarthy's The Group: I forgot to mention that a copy of the book appeared in the current series of the critically-acclaimed and popular American TV show, Man Men. From the screen-shot below you can see that the copy is being read in the bath by the character, Betty Draper; set in the 1960s the book itself would have been topical and I like the clever and historically-accurate product-placement.

As I have disclosed previously on Twitter to some fellow bloggers, I have tried to watch Man Men but I can't get into it. I find it aesthetically pleasing (the sets and styling are sumptuous) and I have a love of the period but it fails to fully sustain my attention; it is a very gentle and character-focused show and my concentration fails. I have attempted the first two or three episodes of the first season and my boyfriend is a huge fan so should I persevere? I have the feeling that it is a series that I would ultimately love and that it is the Richard Yates equivalent of television. Furthermore, how can the inclusion of The Group not sell it to me? I have heard nothing but positive reviews thus far but I need some extra encouragement ... so do you watch it and recommend it?

The Group Redux

2009-12-03T12:00:00.000Z

In July I wrote about The Group by Mary McCarthy and I enthused about it; five months on and it remains one of my best book discoveries of 2009. Today marks the reissue of The Group by Virago Press as a Virago Modern Classic, a categorisation it so richly deserves; readers in the UK can now buy a copy (with 25% off from an affiliated online bookseller). Virago very kindly sent me the book and I was so happy to receive a copy of my own that I was tempted to immediately reread it again, which is testimony to how profound an impression this book made on me. I actually received my copy a few weeks ago but it was under embargo so I haven't been able to urge you all until now to buy The Group now that it is newly available!

When I reviewed The Group I mentioned the comparisons to Sex and the City (that may make some run for the hills but I personally love the show) and appropriately Candace Bushnell wrote the introduction to the reissued edition. Bushnell's editor commissioned her to write "the modern-day version of The Group" and what is apparent, being familiar with both and being a woman myself, is that the issues that face women and the choices they make are not so very different seventy years on (the novel is based in the 1930s).

The Group was published a few months after The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan and is a seminal feminist text within the bounds of fiction. I find it interesting that Mary McCarthy distanced herself from this label as do current female writers (you can read more about the effect of the novel on McCarthy and subsequent women writers in this interesting Guardian article from the weekend). There is such a stigma attached to the word "feminist" that is, in my opinion, unjust. The Group is a highly enjoyable and intensely interesting novel that vividly evokes the era it is set in and yet remains timeless in its concerns. The first of its kind to address the issues of sex, contraception, motherhood, marriage and careers, The Group is a striking study of the issues women face and the choices they make. It is also wonderfully well-written and for writers and those aspiring to write, a great example of what can be achieved writing about real-life and personal experience.

In a serendipitous blog coincidence, Verity has reviewed The Group today.

I Take This Book

2009-12-02T18:13:00.005Z

I am attending a wedding this weekend and I have some wedding-themed literature lined up to read. I'll probably only manage to read one of the following but I thought I would share the ones that I have in mind. Do you like to theme your reading around things you are doing or places you are going? It isn't something that I do frequently but I thought it would be fun and weddings make me happy.

The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers: With delicacy of perception and memory, humour and pathos, Carson McCullers spreads before us the three phases of a weekend crisis in the life of a motherless twelve-year-old girl. Within the span of a few hours, the irresistible, hoydenish Frankie passionately plays out her fantasies at her elder brother's wedding. Through a perilous skylight we look into the mind of a child torn between her yearning to belong and the urge to run away.

Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker: Cassandra Edwards is a graduate student at Berkeley: gay, brilliant, nerve-wracked, miserable. At the beginning of this novel, she drives back to her family ranch in the foothills of the Sierras to attend the wedding of her identical twin, Judith, to a nice young doctor from Connecticut. Cassandra, however, is hell-bent on sabotaging the wedding.
Dorothy Baker's entrancing tragicomic novella follows an unpredictable course of events in which her heroine appears variously as conniving, self-aware, pitiful, frenzied, absurd, and heartbroken—at once utterly impossible and tremendously sympathetic. Cassandra reckons with her complicated feelings about the sister who she feels owes it to her to be her alter ego; with her father, a brandy-soaked retired professor of philosophy; and with the ghost of her dead mother, as she struggles to come to terms with the only life she has.
First published in 1962, Cassandra at the Wedding is a book of enduring freshness, insight, and verve. Like the fiction of Jeffrey Eugenides and Jhumpa Lahiri, it is the work of a master stylist with a profound understanding of the complexities of the heart and mind.

The Wedding by Dorothy West: Set on the Elysian isle of Martha's Vineyardm among an insular community of proud and prosperous black families, Dorothy West's first novel for nearly fifteen years centres around the marriage of Shelby Coles, daughter of the community's foremost family to a struggling white jazz musician. Not just the story of one wedding, but of many, this thought-provoking and deeply interesting novel offers insights into issues of race, prejudice and identity while maintaining its firm belief in the compensatory power of love.

I also have The Robber Bridegroom by Eudora Welty and The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood to hand but those are only wedding-themed in their similar titles only. I want to read all three of the books detailed above but I am leaning towards the one pictured and the one I know most about, Cassandra at the Wedding. Verity read this thematically over the summer and I have been saving it to read until I had a wedding to attend also.

Of course, it being the first weekend in December, I am also preparing a pile of Christmas reads but more on that another day...

Tuesday Teaser and Trivia

2009-12-01T09:39:00.003Z

I'm back! Normal service should now resume ... although I picked up the cold whilst away and now in bed with hankies, painkillers and tea but that may give me the opportunity to catch up with the 850 posts currently waiting for me in my Google Reader. I read a little whilst away (although none from the previous books hinted at, despite packing one of those) and will be back to reviewing this week.

I am continuing my new Book Lovers Trivial Pursuit mini meme. A few Christmases ago my boyfriend bought me the Book Lovers Edition of Trivial Pursuit and I thought I could virtually play with my fellow book lovers. So here goes (if you win then please treat yourself to a slice of pie/cake/pizza/delete where appropriate)...

From the Book Bag Surprise section:

What Katherine Dunn novel centres on a carny owner Aloysius Binewski and his freakish kids?

(Although we are only in the second week of this meme, I am so far only asking questions that I know the answer to myself and/or about books I have read).

Quote a couple of spoiler-free sentences from the book you’re reading to tempt others.

"Something happened when the house was dark. They were ab;e to talk to each other again."

From "A Temporary Matter" in Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

The Complete Maus

2009-11-25T16:45:00.002Z

If you read one graphic novel then let it be The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman. Theordor W. Adorno wrote that to "write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric" but later retracted it by stating that "Perennial suffering has as much right to expression as the tortured have to scream"; Maus is not poetry, it is a graphic novel (well, two graphic novels), and a novel approach to writing the Holocaust. Cynics say that to win Oscars all you have to do is direct or act in a Holocaust movie and the same can apply to literary prizes; Spiegelman won a Pulitzer Prize (Special Mention) for Maus but I don't think he appropriated his father's experiences in Auschwitz for success and acclaim but in an attempt to understand and record.

Chapters one to six of Maus Volume I: A Survivor's Tale (My Father Bleeds History) and chapters one to four of Maus Volume II: And Here My Trouble Began first appeared, in a somewhat different form, in Raw magazine between 1980 and 1991; Raw was an acclaimed magazine of avant-garde comics and graphics of which Spiegelman was co-founder and editor. Maus Volume I contained a graphic novel within a graphic novel, the short 'Prisoner of the Hell Planet', which originally appeared in Short Order Comix #1, in 1973.

Spiegelman employs an extended metaphor throughout The Complete Maus of anthromorphisation with Jews as mice (hence the German word for mouse as the title) and Nazis as cats; other cutesy animals appear but the horrific scale of the game of cat and mouse is pronounced in Spiegelman's use of literary device. Furthermore, mice represent the Nazi notion of Jews as vermin and this metaphor becomes more detailed and complicated in the second volume, eventually breaking down (Spiegelman intentionally destroying the separation of humans along race-lines) when he depicts himself as human wearing a mouse mask and self-consciously referring to his metaphor. To say that the account of Vladek's, Spiegelman's father, experience as a Polish Jew during the Holocaust and his recollections of his time is harrowing is an understatement. However, to my mind, Holocaust literature is necessary and The Complete Maus is highly effective in its juxtaposition of the graphic novel form and the events it is recounting in art.

Due to previous Holocaust reading, Spiegelman didn't inform me of anything new in the core subject matter but I greatly appreciated what he had to say in regards to the nature of guilt as both a survivor and the offspring of survivors. Artie and Vladek did not have the best of relationships but how can you connect with your parents when they have experienced the unfathomable? I also admired how Spiegelman portrayed his father as someone you didn't necessarily sympathise with, emphasising that it was not the worthy who survived the Holocaust but the lucky. To strip back such dark, essential themes to literally black and white boxes had me in awe of Spiegelman.

To say much more would come across as trite but suffice to say that Spiegelman never trivialises Vladek's experiences but articulates them with brutal honesty and creativity that emphasises rather than detracts from the horror whilst also presenting it through an accessible medium. The Complete Maus isn't entirely harrowing but does have moments of humour especially in Vladek's later life when he is remarried to Mala and living in New York; Vladek is an often stingy and once shockingly racist elderly man whose metabiography makes thought-provoking and challenging reading.

Tuesday Teaser and Trivia

2009-11-24T11:04:00.005Z

Hi all! I took a long weekend off from posting as we had visitors and I was simply too busy. I could have scheduled posts but I needed a mini blog break. I'm off home this weekend for a long weekend and undecided still whether I will post or not; normal service will resume after that, if I do take another break. Sorry for not announcing it in advance but I temporarily lost my motivation. I'll also try and catch up on my Google Reader but I can't make any promises - especially next week! Anyway, you know how it is.

Today is another mish-mash of a post but I want to share this site for anybody seeking out literary-themed gifts, either to give or to add to their own Christmas wish-list. I am coveting the literary cats notecards.

Today marks the beginning of a new mini meme from me to combine with Teaser Tuesdays. A few Christmases ago my boyfriend bought me the Book Lovers Edition of Trivial Pursuit and I thought I could virtually play with my fellow book lovers, or at least ask you a weekly literary question. So here goes (if you win then please treat yourself to a slice of pie/cake/pizza/delete where appropriate)...

From the Beloved Children's Books section:

What animal does the Little Prince first ask the pilot to draw for him?

Quote a couple of spoiler-free sentences from the book you’re reading to tempt others.

"She covered the plastic with her palm, to retain the glue's power. Sniffing it would kill my hunger in case Maisha did not return with an Ex-mas feast for us."

From "An Ex-mas Feast" in Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan

Recent Arrivals

2009-11-19T12:30:00.002Z

I haven't bought a book for two months (and that one was a slip) as I am a) trying to conserve funds b) trying to get on top of my spiralling-out-of-control TBR piles and shelves and library. So there has been less recent acquisitions and arrivals to post about. However, a few books have made it into Paperback_Reader abode in the meantime, with a few more expected, and I thought I would share some of them with you. Two of these I mentioned in my post yesterday: Say You're One of Them and Manja, which very kindly came from Frances of Nonsuch Book and a LibraryThing member and reader of my blog, respectively.

The other two arrivals are another Persephone (Classic), The World That Was Ours by Hilda Bernstein and Virago Modern Classic, Peyton Place by Grace Metalious. The former book I used an Amazon US giftcard to purchase (the irony of purchasing a Persephone from across the pond does not escape me) and the latter was sent by the lovely Sophie of Virago at my request.

These books could not be more different: one is South African nonfiction that tells of the ordeal the author experienced when her husband was trialed (but acquitted) along with Nelson Mandela and other members of the ANC in the infamous Rivonia trial of 1964; the other is a novel described as "salacious", "sordid" and "wicked" with an opening line that has the potential to make you blush. These two surely are proof of my reading eclecticism; I am at once excited about getting my teeth stuck into apartheid writing and an addictive soap-opera novel.

Have you received anything recently that excites you? Which of my arrivals are you most looking forward to reading about or reading yourself?

Trip home

2009-11-18T15:19:00.006Z

I'm going home for a long weekend next week to visit family and friends; I have a friend visiting from overseas so it will be a busy time with a belated Thanksgiving dinner surrounded by lunches, coffees and drinks plus some quality time with my parents, sister and my cat, Mandoo. I probably won't have much reading time except for when I'm at the airport and flying up but nonetheless that does not prevent me from planning which books I am taking with me. Whenever I venture out, I have a book in my bag as I like to be prepared for all eventualities and potential reading time. For four nights at home I am conservatively packing two books -preferably chunky ones- but I have books at home, some of which I am planning to bring back with me.

Now this is where you come in. I have a shortlist of potential reads to take with me but I am having difficulty deciding between them. Which would you recommend/suggest travel with me?

What is the What by Dave Eggers: this comes highly recommended by Claire of Kiss a Cloud. The copy I have is from the library so reading it is time-sensitive. 560 pages.

Synopsis: At the heart of this astonishing novel is a true story of courage and endurance in the face of one of the most brutal civil wars the world has ever known. Valentino Achak Deng is just a boy when conflict separates him from his family and forces him to leave his small Sudanese village, joining thousands of other orphans on their long, long walk to Ethiopia, where they find safety - for a time. Along the way Valentino encounters enemy soldiers, liberation rebels and deadly militias, hyenas and lions, disease and starvation. But there are experiences ahead that will test his spirit in even greater ways than these...Truly epic in scope, and told with expansive humanity, deep compassion and unexpected humour, What is the What is an eye-opening account of life amid the madness of war and an unforgettable tale of tragedy and triumph.

Manja by Anna Gmeyer: the latest Persephone to pique my curiosity, a reader very kindly sent me a copy of my own. 552 pages.

Written in London by a young Austrian playwright in exile, Manja opens, radically, with five conception scenes one night in 1920. Set in the turbulent Germany of the Weimar Republic, it goes on, equally dramatically, to describe the lives of the children and their families until 1933 when the Nazis came to power. 'What is so unusual,' wrote the playwright Berthold Viertel in 1938, 'is the way the novel contrasts the children's community - in all its idealism, romanticism, decency and enchantment - with the madhouse community of the adults.'

Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan: Frances of Nonsuch Book sent me a copy of this collection of short stories after I won a give-away on her blog. This is garnering a lot of attention on the blogosphere and otherwise just now, not least because it is the latest choice of Oprah's Book Club. I actually had a copy borrowed from the library but was so glad that I could return it when I received my own copy. 384 pages.

Synopsis: 'Nothing interests Maman today, not even Jean, her favorite child ...She acts dumb, bewitched, like a goat that the neighborhood children have fed sorghum beer.' This extraordinary collection ranges from the depiction of a street family's poverty in Kenya, illegal trading of children in Gabon to inter-religious conflicts in Nigeria and Ethiopia and the terrible situation faced by a mixed Hutu-Tsutsi family in Rwanda. Say You're One of Them is fiction with real emotional punch and told from the viewpoints of children - the innocent victims - is powerful, vivid and deeply moving. Uwem Akpan's ability to capture a child's imagination and his skilful portrayal of the situations they have to endure makes this a truly compelling read.

This book comes with both a caveat and a concern. JoAnn of Lakeside Musing recommends taking this collection slowly, perhaps a story at a time, as it is emotionally draining so perhaps it is not the best choice for a short break. Furthermore, I would prefer not to read this consecutively with What is the What due to similar subject matter.

The Bell by Iris Murdoch: I have been meaning to read Iris Murdoch for some time and she comes highly recommended by Naomi of Bloomsbury Bell (the "bell" of her blog name is taken from this title) who suggested I start here. 352 pages.

Synopsis: Dora Greenfield, erring wife, returns to live with her husband in a lay community encamped outside Imber Abbey, home to a mysterious enclosed order of nuns. Watched over by its devout director and the discreet authority of the wise old Abbess, Imber Court is a haven for lost souls seeking tranquility. But then the lost Abbey bell, legendary symbol of religion and magic, is rediscovered, and hidden truths and desires are forced into the light.

Kieron Smith, Boy by James Kelman: I have been wanting to read this book for several months and seeing as I am going home to Glasgow, it seems a perfect choice. 432 pages.

Synopsis: Rejected by his brother and largely ignored by his parents, Kieron Smith finds comfort - and endless stories - in the home of his much-loved grandparents. But when his family move to a new housing scheme on the outskirts of Glasgow, a world away from the close community of the tenements, Kieron struggles to find a way to adapt to his new life. Kieron Smith, boy is a brilliant evocation of an urban childhood. Capturing the joys, frustrations, injustices, excitements, revels, battles, games, uncertainties, questions, lies, discoveries and sheer of wonder of boyhood, it is a story of one boy and every boy. It is James Kelman at his very best.

There are a couple more contenders -including a book or two that may or may not turn up before I go- but these are the front-runners. Any opinions either way? If this is me planning for a long weekend, think what I'll be like in the lead-up to Christmas when I'll be spending two weeks at home!

Mish-mash

2009-11-17T17:29:00.003Z

Bibliofreak is hosting an Everything Austen mini-challenge to win an action figure Jane Austen! The challenge is to write a six-word story (or haiku but I've stuck to story) describing any Austen novel or Juvenilia.

This was fun! I created five instead of one - can you guess which Austenite works these six-story lines each describe? Care to try yourself?

Gothic pastiche with love thrown in.

Epistolary freindship and parody; misspelling Austen's.

Universal truth: women seek rich husbands.

Matchmaking often results in broken hearts.

Pride and Prejudice for mature lovers.

In other news, I ordered my Persephone Secret Santa gift for me Santee last week and that should be winging its way to them now; I also received the name for my Book Blogger Holiday Swap recipient yesterday and planning what to send to them. I love planning bookish gifts for fellow bloggers! Choosing books for other people that you hope they enjoy is incredibly exciting.

Quote a couple of spoiler-free sentences from the book you’re reading to tempt others.

"Belinda was thankful Agatha was out of hearing. 'Yes, I thought the cakes were lovely."

Some Tame Gazelle by Barbara Pym p. 34

I Am a Cat Vol.1

2009-11-16T20:46:00.007Z

I am a Cat. As yet I have no name.

I Am a Cat by Sōseki Natsume began as a short story, which makes up chapter one of Volume one, but due to its success was extended into a three-volume book that is now a Japanese classic. Highly readable, I Am a Cat is narrated by a nameless stray who observes human nature. Amusing and delightfully originally, the satire and allegory are presently beyond me after only reading Volume one but I am looking forward to delving in deeper and learning more about the history, culture and society of the Meiji era (the installments of I Am a Cat first appeared between 1905 and 1906).

I Am a Cat is a scathing, observed piece that is very much a comedy of manners and intellect. The narrator -let's call him Neko- ingratiates himself into the household of an English teacher and his family with many scholarly friends of the schoolteacher visiting regularly and telling tall tales that the cat recounts. The device of cat as narrator is used cleverly as he is omniscient in his pride of listening place in a lap, privy to household conversations, and also, as a cat, can sneak undetected into other houses to eavesdrop on his light paw-steps.

Of course I am a cat-lover and I love to read about cats. Truth be told, I am a little cat obsessed and I highly enjoy the cat's meanderings and antics. I thought that this book would be the perfect companion read to I Am a Cat and I am coveting it accordingly.

I am enjoying the accessible, gentle and witty style of I Am a Cat and look forward to the subsequent volumes. Discussion of the first volume can be read at the dedicated read-along page at In Spring it is the Dawn.

A particularly favourite quote from this volume:

"He has no secret vices, but he is totally abandoned in the way he buys book after book, never to read a single one. I wouldn't mind if he used his head and bought in moderation, but no. Whenever the mood takes him, he ambles off to the biggest bookshop in the city and brings back home as many books as chance to catch his fancy. Then, at the end of the month, he adopts an attitude of complete detachment. At the end of last year, for instance, I had a terrible time coping with the bill that had been accumulating month after month."

So...

2009-11-15T15:15:00.005Z

... what do you think this pile of seemingly disparate books have in common with one another?
The person who guesses correctly will win a little something.

Enid

2009-11-14T15:58:00.004Z

I've just found out that on Monday of next week (17th) there is a 90-minute biopic of Enid Blyton starring Helena Bonham Carter in the title role airing on BB4 (apologies to those without access to the BBC or iplayer). More information about the programme can be found here. Enid Blyton's books were a huge part of my childhood and I would love to know more about the woman herself as I know little, if anything. I do know that I regularly pass a blue plaque commemorating her in Dulwich, South-East London, where she lived as a child. My first Enid Blyton books -the first few Famous Five- were bought by my aunt in the children's department of Harrod's on a visit I made to London many years ago, which is a fond memory. I am interested that this biopic focuses on her dual challenging roles of mother and writer, especially after having recently read a fictionalised account of that same struggle in The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt. This biopic is part of a three-part series entitled Women we Loved devoted to iconic artistic females in Britain: Enid Blyton, Gracie Fields and Margot Fonteyn; I am excited to see how the careers of these women and the issues they face are conveyed onscreen.

I know that after viewing Enid I will be wanting to reread some of my beloved Blyton favourites, most likely the school stories.

The below still of Enid having a picnic with young readers makes me want lashings and lashings of ginger beer.

The Well and the Mine

2009-11-13T17:30:00.004Z

"After she the baby in, nobody believed me for the longest time. But I kept hearing that splash."

Earlier in the week I teased you with the above opening lines to The Well and the Mine by Gin Phillips. It's an opener that immediately catches your attention and Virago have marketed the book well by quoting those two effective lines on the front cover. Without knowing anything about the book, you're not sure what those two lines mean but you know it can't be good; you may even guess that the splash comes from the well referred to in the novel's title and you would be correct in your surmise. The Well and the Mine is about the closely-knitted Moore family in a small coal-mining town, Carbon Hill, in Alabama. The novel opens with a unknown woman throwing a baby into the Moore family's well whilst Tess, nine-year-old middle child, watches on from the back porch.

A shocking act of seeming barbarity is the impetus given to propel a novel about everyday family life and struggle in the Depression-era South into a novel that challenges the characters' perspectives and commonly-held beliefs. The Well and the Mine is an authentic evocation of the rural South that rivals the best-loved of Southern literature. Although driven by the opening event as the family come to terms with the tragedy, each in their own way, the novel is equally about their way of life as it is about the mystery of the woman at the well; it is a story about family and being compelled to think differently when confronted with an act of unfathomable inhumanity. Being set in the American South, the novel also predictably tackles themes of race and endemic racism in a way that, although unoriginal, was challenging to the characters and, in my opinion, beautifully done. The Well and the Mine is gently told despite the horrific opener and I enjoyed its period detail and focus on the cruelty and danger of the coal-mines. There are also some wonderfully crafted lines of prose with intelligent and imaginative insights that immersed me in the story; I enjoyed the conversational style of the writing as much as the illumination it provided.

Structured through alternating passages told from the perspective of each of the five members of the Moore family, insight is given into the different compartmentalised areas of family life. The narrative didn't always work for me as I found some characters better characterised than others and found that one narrative strand did not fit (the character's perspective is given from the future so their reminiscences are outwith the time period of everyone else and when something happens to that character you know they are going to survive). However, I particularly enjoyed seeing events through the eyes of Tess, a child, and her older sister, Virgie, who is on the cusp of womanhood; I also thought that some of the passages from the point-of-view of their father, Albert, were the most beautiful, juxtaposed against the backdrop of an uncompromising life in the mine. Phillips is economical in her use of emotionally-charged scenes; the opening scene is intense enough to resonate throughout the novel with subtler, tender moments of realisation. instead. This is a novel very much about the best and worst of human nature and of people doing their best in harsh times.

The Well and the Mine is a well-written and engaging debut novel that, at first, struggled to be published; publisher after publisher in the U.S. rejected the manuscript until small-press, Hawthorne (in Oregon), published it. Gin Phillips has since won the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, with Penguin US subsequently picking up the paperback rights and Virago printing it here in the UK. I predict hearing more about this novel, potentially when next year's Orange Prize for Fiction longlist goes to press.

Favourite passages:

My mama died when I was four, and I remember her laying there with blood soaking the sheets and the sweat not even dried off her face. I saw the baby she'd had die two days later, its face blue and its body shrunk like a dried peach. I've seen men carried home from the mines with eyes torn out and arms just about ripped clean off still hanging by pieces of skin. None of it stuck in my head like that little swollen thing that used to be a baby hanging over the side of our water bucket.

But you work shoulder to shoulder with a man, push his cars with him, he pushes yours, that changes how you look at things. A few years back, five men were burned to cinders in a gas explosion, and when the bodies got brought out, they was all black as coal. There'd be a Negro woman and a white woman staring at the same body. When your wives stand next to each other trying to sort out if one of those charred logs is their husband, that means something.

I was not happy with that baby for turning me inside out, and I wasn't really inclined to help him out none. It seemed like he might be nicer to me - maybe give me dreams of soda crackers and peanut butter and lemonade - if he wanted me to comfort him. But then again, maybe if we gave him a name and a mama and a house and a life, maybe he would let go of our well. And then it would be mine again.

Little, Brown (of which Virago is an imprint) approached me a few months ago about reviewing The Well and the Mine and sent me a proof copy and updated it this week with the published edition (released November 5th); I am so very glad that they did.

Will Blog for Comments

2009-11-12T12:50:00.001Z

Today's blog post is somewhat of a departure for me and the title very much tongue-in-cheek. I have noticed recently that there has been a decline in the comments I receive but that the number of visitors I receive daily has increased. I find this curious and intriguing; I wonder how many readers I have that don't comment and whether there is anything I can write or do that will induce them to introduce themselves. I also worry that I am somehow losing regular commenters through something that I am writing or not writing, as the case may be. Now I know that some of the familiar faces amongst my readers are no longer regularly blogging due to life commitments, which is perfectly reasonable but I do worry that I am engaging others less in recent Paperback Reader posts, hence the lack of impetus for them to comment.

As an example, yesterday I wrote a post on Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, which promptly garnered a response of seven positive comments that were enthusiastic about my thoughts but those were the only seven comments that I received to date... Now I know that this could have been for a variety of reasons: the subject matter of the text, the fact that many people have reviewed it previously, that it is a book-review as opposed to bookish chat post but I am concerned that I am not engaging my readers enough and this is reflected in the lack of interaction. I chose the Wolf Hall post because the feedback I received complimented me on the review I wrote but I also know that one of the posts I have received the most comments on was my most controversial (and negative) post yet. There seems to be no correlation between popular posts (in the terms of writing and promotion of a book) and the number of comments received - is this normal or coincidental?

I do not blog for comments. I blog for myself as I enjoy a personal-space to write and to share my thoughts on books but I also enjoy being part of the bookish community. Am I alienating myself from that in some way? I suppose I wouldn't have a high readership if people weren't enjoying what I had to say but I would like to hear from you and what you do and don't like about my book blog. I will not compromise the content as I write honestly about books and bookish matters that interest me but I am willing to read constructive criticism and learn why you do or do not comment on my blog. Feedback of any kind is always accepted and if you are too shy to comment then feel free to email me.

eta: I'd like to say a big HI and thank you to Diana who sent me a lovely email to say that she enjoys my blog. I am thankful to everyone who takes the time to read my posts daily or saves them to read later, whether they comment or not.

Wolf Hall

2009-11-11T13:29:00.001Z

I will hold up my hands and admit that I had preconceptions about Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. The Tudor period of history was not one that I had much prior knowledge of, excluding the names involved, nor one that interested me; truth be told, I expected it to be as turgid a reading experience as The Children's Book by A. S. Byatt (my thoughts on that book can be read here). Although big books don't normally faze me, I found Wolf Hall daunting; I tried to put aside my negative feelings towards the book but from the outset -and the seven pages of the cast of characters and family trees- that appeared to be a challenge. However, a few pages in and I had set my prejudices aside and was engaged in the story of Thomas Cromwell, protagonist of Wolf Hall. Cromwell is not often portrayed sympathetically but Mantel creates a compelling hero in him and conveys a loyal man and subject. The novel, although preliminarily beginning with his early life, follows his rise from Cardinal Wolsey's man to confidante of King Henry VIII; chiefly Mantel charts the years 1527-35 and Cromwell's influential hand in the annulment of the King's marriage with Katherine of Aragon and his subsequent union to Anne Boleyn as well as the early stages of the Reformation.

Wolf Hall is overly-long; I state the obvious about a heavy 650 pages tome but it does drag and lag in parts. Some of the dialogue could definitely have been cut without detracting from the plot but the minute attention to detail weaves an intricate tapestry of the time. I was fully immersed in the period and have gone from having no discernible history in the era to now seeking out The Tudors and The Other Boleyn Girl to fuel my need for more.

Set in a period where flesh burns and heads roll, Wolf Hall has an engaging plot to propel it forward although I found it lost steam during the last 150-pages or so; once Anne had been installed as (current) consort and the attention was on the imprisonment of Sir Thomas More, my attention waned. The historical events are meticulously researched and often the prose became bogged down in the sheer wealth of information presented; I preferred the less rigid factual detail and instead the insight given into life at court. The bawdy (sixty years at least before Shakespeare) was entertaining with a lot of sex and sexual gossip or innuendo; everyone was apparently sleeping with everyone else, extra-maritally or occasionally incestuously (not incest as it is considered nowadays but the morally ambiguous sleeping with the sibling of a dead -and sometimes living- spouse or the wife of your son). Many parts were humorous with jokes about everyone being named Thomas and if they are not then they are seemingly named Henry I thought that this brought out Mantel's love for the period yet also a sense of humour about the historical facts she was presenting.

I have seen across a number of reviews people's issue with Mantel using "he" continually as a pronoun and confusion over whom she was referring to; I had no problem with this and found it obvious that it was Cromwell, unless otherwise stated. I find it curious that this was not apparent to more people but perhaps I had a better understanding of her style being forewarned. As for the writing itself, the prose is not glowing but it does transport and convey. However, if unlike me, you are aware of the story being told, then the book may fail to captivate you. I seem to enjoy historical fiction when I have no -or little- knowledge of the facts unveiled; I may have enjoyed The Children's Book more if any of what Byatt had told us had been new to me. Mantel was instructive in my case and she intrigued me. My only other criticism is that the title Wolf Hall shifts focus from Anne Boleyn to Jane Seymour, but that I am sure will be taken up in the intended sequel.

Teaser Tuesdays

2009-11-10T22:00:00.001Z

Quote a couple of spoiler-free sentences from the book you’re reading to tempt others.

"After she threw the baby in. nobody believed me for the longest time. But I kept hearing that splash."

Opening lines of The Well and the Mine by Gin Phillips

The Babysitters Club

2009-11-09T08:30:00.003Z

My Friend Amy is hosting a week's events in honour of The Babysitters Club series of books written by Ann M. Martin. I signed up to post today as the series of books were integral to my reading experience as a child. Between the ages of ten and twelve I devoured all of the books that were then published, which added up to seventy of the core series (funnily enough, they were ghost-written from just before that time) and ten of the Super Specials, which I adored. The only other series that I was likewise addicted to was the Sweet Valley Twins series by Francine Pascal, which I read at the same time, before I moved into my teens and onto Point Horror and the logical progression into Stephen King novels and my adult reading.

Regrettably all of BSC books that I owned as a child were left in a huge box in the attic of my old family home when my parents moved house along with almost all of my other books from childhood; if I had had any to hand I would have reread a couple in preparation for this week but I suspect that they would have lost the magic they held for me and perhaps it is better to cherish the memories. I read the books at a formative time but gradually grew out of them although I will always be attached to them.

I came across this fascinating article dedicated to the books on Mental Floss a few months ago, which was a lovely trip down memory lane and quite intriguing. I pity the poor intern/editorial assistant at Scholastic who had to create each handwritten BSC notebook entry for each individual member! For a while I too dotted my "i"s with hearts like Stacey to the chagrin of my teacher that year.

I enjoyed the diversity of the characters and although I couldn't compare myself in entirety to any of them, I most identified with Claudia and Stacey, who were my favourite characters. I think that the appeal of the babysitters was their universality; there were attributes of each that one could recognise in oneself and I don't think that any of them was solely a "type". Claudia Kishi's artistic creativity and her funky wardrobe were things I aspired for myself but not her atrocious spelling! Another fun BSC-themed Mental Floss feature is this diverting quiz: Kishi Creation or Fashionista Flop? I did quite well, even sixteen years on from reading the books!

By far I enjoyed the extended Super Specials more than any individual book and I reread these over and over. Oh how I wished to be an American middle-schooler from Stoneybrook, Connecticut, going to summer camp and ski lodges! The Babysitters Club books undoubtedly began my long obsession and love affair with Disneyworld and New York City; last year I finally visited Disneyworld for the first time but NYC still remains destination number one (the first special featured the babysitters on a cruise to Florida and the Bahamas and the sixth, New York! New York!, saw them visiting Stacey's father in her home-city).

I noticed recently that Graphix, a division of Scholastic, have produced graphic novels of four of the earliest TBC titles. Apparently these are contemporary yet faithful illustrated versions of the books, beginning with Kristy's Great Idea. This modern update of a series that defines part of my childhood intrigues me; I approve of attempts to bring the series to the bookshelves and library loans of a new generation of young girls.

One last point: I LOVED the UK cover-design of the books! The logo for which I had included above but here is a link to one of my favourite Super Specials (the quality is quite poor, otherwise I would have included it in post); each of the covers provided the window-glimpse into a scene from the novel, whether it be the group or the individual babysitter the book revolved around.

Were you a fan of The Babysitters Club or were your children or siblings? What was your favourite aspect of the series?

Penguin Modern Classics

2009-11-08T09:30:00.000Z

Do you remember my silver bookshelf? If you do (or if you click on the link to refresh your memory) you will know that I possess silver Penguin Modern Classics in abundance and have more than an entire shelf-full. Of the newer white Penguin Modern Classics I have only added three -photographed above- to my collection this year and two only because they are new releases and unavailable in the silver.

I do like the new white Penguins but mainly for their tactility; the paper is pleasant to the touch and I like the matte finish. Aesthetically though I prefer the glossy silver Penguins. I have tried to convey with my choices above the richness and diversity of the cover art (photographs and paintings) available in the silver; in my opinion the bottom Penguins pop more as they are vivid and striking whilst the white ones above are muted. Granted, the white ones have a more classic and uniform design and I do like the boldness of the author and title. I'm not sure ... is it change that I am averse to? I admire Penguin's development through the years and their trailblazing progress in book cover design but are the white Penguins really more modern and fresh than the silver? Are we as consumers more attracted to an understated, classic design nowadays or do we not judge by the book cover at all?

Anyone for Pyms?

2009-11-07T16:57:00.003Z

I have discussed Barbara Pym and the funky new Virago Modern Classics editions of her work in a previous post. Since then I have accumulated two more titles, Excellent Women and A Glass of Blessings (the latter forthcoming in December), which Virago generously sent me. I now have a lovely little stockpile of Pym novels, which excites me as I have the feeling that I am going to love them and delight in Pym's ironic tone. What does concern me, however, is that I don't know where to start; I fully intended to read Excellent Women during November as I have heard that this is her best book but do I really want to start with the best? Isn't it more enjoyable to build up to the best novel in an author's canon and start with her first novel, Some Tame Gazelle, instead?

Please help! I desperately want to read one novel at least from the those above this month and value your input. This doesn't have to be based on personal experience, if you have none, but from the synopses below please vote which one you would read if given the choice.

Jane and Prudence: If Prudence Bates and Jane Cleveland seem an unlikely pair to be walking together at a reunion of old students in Oxford, neither of them is aware of it. Born a decade apart, their pupil and tutor relationship has circumscribed their lives and cemented their friendship.

No Fond Return of Love: Dulcie Mainwearing is always helping others, but never looks out for herself - especially in the realm of love. Her friend Viola is besotted by the alluring Dr Aylwin Forbes, so surely it isn't prying if Dulcie helps things along? Aylwin, however, is smitten by Dulcie's pretty young niece. And perhaps Dulcie herself, however ridiculous it may be, is falling, just a little, for Aylwin. Once life's little humiliations are played out, maybe love will be returned, and fondly, after all...

Some Tame Gazelle: 'It was odd that Harriet should always have been so fond of curates. They were so immature and always made the same kind of conversation. Now the Archdeacon was altogether different ...' Together yet alone, the Misses Bede occupy the central crossroads of parish life. Harriet, plump, elegant and jolly, likes nothing better than to make a fuss of new curates, secure in the knowledge that elderly Italian Count Ricardo Bianco will propose to her yet again this year. Belinda, meanwhile has harboured sober feelings of devotion towards Archdeacon Hochleve for thirty years. Then into their quiet, comfortable lives comes a famous librarian, Nathaniel Mold, and a bishop from Africa, Theodore Grote - who each take to calling on the sisters for rather more unsettling reasons.

Excellent Women: Mildred Lathbury is one of those 'excellent women' who is often taken for granted. She is a godsend, 'capable of dealing with most of the stock situations of life - birth, marriage, death, the successful jumble sales, the garden fete spoilt by bad weather'. As such, she often gets herself embroiled in other people's lives - especially those of her glamorous new neighbours, the Napiers, whose marriage seems to be on the rocks. One cannot take sides in these matters, though it is tricky, especially as Mildred, teetering on the edge of spinsterhood, has a soft spot for dashing young Rockingham Napier. This is Barbara Pym's world at its funniest and most touching.

A Glass of Blessings: Wilmet Forsyth is well dressed, well looked after, suitably husbanded, good looking and fairly young - but very bored. Her husband Rodney, a handsome army major, is slightly balder and fatter than he once was. Wilmet would like to think she has changed rather less. Her interest wanders to the nearby Anglo-catholic church, where at last she can neglect her comfortable household in the more serious-minded company of three unmarried priests, and, of course, Piers Longridge, a man of an unfathomably different character altogether.

What do you think? I'm at a loss and may resort to playing eeny meeny miny mo without your assistance... Which -if any- are you most intrigued by and does Barbara Pym appeal to you as a writer?

Animal Farm

2009-11-06T19:51:00.004Z

These scenes of terror and slaughter were not what they had looked forward to on that night when old Major first stirred them into rebellion. If she herself had had any picture of the future, it had been of a society of animals set free from hunger and the whip, all equal, each working according to his capacity, the strong protecting the weak, as she had protected the lost brood of ducklings with her foreleg on the night of Major's speech. Instead-she did not know why-they had come to a time when no one dared speak his mind, when fierce, growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes.

I didn't read Animal Farm by George Orwell at school nor did I manage to fit the novella into my reading in the ten years since so when Nineteen Eighty-Four was chosen for this month's book group, and I had an opportunity to re-read it, I seized the opportunity to read Animal Farm at the same time as a companion piece.

The satirical allegory of Communism and the scathing attack on Stalin in literary form is an intelligently crafted piece; it is also blackly humorous in parts, which I did not expect. Like Nineteen Eighty-Four it is dystopian fiction at its finest but I would say that Animal Farm is better done. Where Nineteen Eighty-Four is terrifying in its nighmarish future imaginings, the totalitarianism of Animal Farm is brutal in its portrayed corruption of the greedy, myopic leaders of Animal Farm, the pigs.

The Manor Farm run by the cruel farmer Jones is subject to rebellion when the farmland animals rise up against their dictator. Upon the success of their revolt, the farm is renamed Animal Farm and the animals live in harmony for a little while working the farm under the leadership of two of the pigs, Snowball and Napoleon (Trotsky and Stalin, respectively) but with the philosophy that all animals are equal. Napoleon overthrows Snowball with the help of the army of dogs that he has raised from pups and quickly becomes tyrant of the farm. Napoleon has the support of the other pigs, notably Squealer who acts as propagandist and manipulator; Squealer's twisting of the truth are the parts that I found most alarming and yet conversely also the most amusing as he is a typical political spin-doctor.

This is an intensely clever novella and I am glad that I finally read it. Until now I knew the premise of Animal Farm and its cultural significance but did not fully appreciate its historical -as well as literary- importance. This is a skillful and powerful political satire and I urge you to read it if you have not already.

Nineteen Eighty-Four

2009-11-05T18:30:00.000Z

I was in a bookshop with Simon T of Stuck in a Book last month and one of us picked up or pointed out the newly reissued, latest dust-jacket art of Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. I commented that I read it about a decade ago but that it was fairly fresh in my mind. The following evening, at book group, it was suggested as November's book. I decided to reread it for the less salient details but I found that the majority of it had remained with me.

Tonight is our book group meeting but due to a sudden family event I am unable to attend; instead, I am scheduling this post to publish whilst the others will be discussing the book. I look forward to reading what the others think and how the discussion went from tomorrow onwards. For most of us it was a reread so it will be an interesting dynamic. I didn't think that Nineteen Eighty-Four suffered any reading it second-time-around although I did find the first half of the third section quite dry although Room 101 was just as effective (albeit without the shock-factor).

I love Dystopian literature and the Orwellian model is the father of the Science Fiction sub-genre; I recall it as the first Dystopian novel that I read and it still resonates, especially as it has been immersed into popular culture and contemporary vernacular (which we should just call everydayspeak and have done with it). Orwell's nightmarish vision of the futuristic totalitarian government, the oligarchical inner party of Big Brother with their oxymoronic party slogans, may be outdated in the age of technology but its claustrophobic society of surveillance, where not only Big Brother via the telescreens but everyone else is watching you and waiting to betray you by accusing you of thoughtcrime, is still effective and disturbing.

Winston Smith, protagonist of Nineteen Eighteen-Four, is a member of the outer party who perpetuates party propaganda by altering historical documents so that the past becomes fiction. Meanwhile Winston is in inner turmoil, rebelling against Big Brother without actually doing anything until he meets Julia. Winston is not an orthodox party member, devoted to Big Brother; nor is he an acute threat to Big Brother. His passivity infuriates me but what could he have done? Was Julia right when she asked him if it mattered the evidence that he found -but destroyed- as what could he have done with it anyway? His helplessness is well-evoked and it is that which makes Nineteen Eighty-Four so powerful and terrifying: the inability to act against a totalitarian regime even if you wanted to.

I was struck whilst reading this time by the portrayal of women in the novel, or more strictly their treatment by Big Brother. Women are denied their femininity, they are made to dress asexually and forbidden to wear make-up or fragrance; males and females are sexually repressed with relationships between party members outlawed. Julia regales in her sexuality, she is proud to enjoy sex and embraces the opportunity to be free and wear what she likes beyond the view of the telescreens. Feminism is freedom of choice, not what you wear or how you look.

I enjoyed rereading this classic; it was a welcome revisit and one that reminded me how good a book Nineteen Eighty-Four is. Tomorrow I will have a follow-up post on Orwell.

Waiting On...

2009-11-04T15:49:00.006Z

Earlier I read this latest post by Mrs. B. of The Literary Stew, which is a Waiting on Wednesday post, a weekly event hosted at Breaking the Spine. Waiting on Wednesdays spotlight forthcoming releases that we are anticipating.

I thought this would make a fun post today. I am most excited about the publication of Jasper Fforde's latest book -and the first in a new series- Shades of Grey, due to be published by Hodder & Stoughton in January 2010. I have been waiting for this from early last year when I finished reading his Thursday Next and Nursery Crimes books and now the end is sight.

From Amazon.com: Part social satire, part romance, part revolutionary thriller, Shades of Grey

Eddie's world wasn't always like this. There's evidence of a never-discussed disaster and now, many years later, technology is poor, news sporadic, the notion of change abhorrent, and nighttime is terrifying: no one can see in the dark. Everyone abides by a bizarre regime of rules and regulations, a system of merits and demerits, where punishment can result in permanent expulsion.

Eddie, who works for the Color Control Agency, might well have lived out his rose-tinted life without a hitch. But that changes when he becomes smitten with Jane, a Grey Nightseer from the dark, unlit side of the village. She shows Eddie that all is not well with the world he thinks is just and good. Together, they engage in dangerous revolutionary talk.

Stunningly imaginative, very funny, tightly plotted, and with sly satirical digs at our own society, this novel is for those who loved Thursday Next but want to be transported somewhere equally wild, only darker; a world where the black and white of moral standpoints have been reduced to shades of grey.

From Amazon.co.uk: No one could cheat the Colourman and the colour test. What you got was what you were, forever. Your life, career and social standing decided right there and then, and all worrisome life-uncertainties eradicated forever. You knew who you were, what you would do, where you would go, and what was expected of you. In return, you simply accepted your rung upon the Chromatic ladder, and assiduously followed the Rulebook. Your life was mapped. And all in the time it takes to bake a tray of scones . . .

Eddie Russett lives comfortably in a world where fortune, career and ultimate destiny are rigidly dictated by the colours you can see. Until he falls in love with a Grey named Jane, and starts to question every aspect of the Rulebook. Why are spoons illegal? And what actually happens to all those people who are sent to the Emerald City to Reboot? tells of a battle against overwhelming odds. In a society where the ability to see the higher end of the color spectrum denotes a better social standing, Eddie Russet belongs to the low-level House of Red and can see his own color—but no other. The sky, the grass, and everything in between are all just shades of grey, and must be colorized by artificial means.

Which book are you most looking forward to?

Blueberry Girl

2009-11-03T08:30:00.002Z

Blueberry Girl by Neil Gaiman is a poem illustrated beautifully by Charles Vess. Ostensibly a picture-book, the poem was originally written by Neil for his friend Tori Amos and her daughter, Natashya (Tash), Neil's god-daughter. Written the month before she was born, when she was known as "Blueberry", Neil was asked to write her a poem and/or prayer, the hand-written version of which was hung by her bed once she was born; Neil kept a copy that many friends requested and which he copied out for them. He never intended to publish it, he intended to keep it private but the Blueberry Girl took on a life of her own and became "a book for mothers and for mothers-to-be. It's a book for anyone who has, or is, a daughter. It's a prayer and a poem, and now it's a beautiful book" (a quote from Neil's online Journal).

It is a truly wonderful book, beautiful and inspirational and something to cherish. As a daughter I appreciate that. There a couple of imminent babies entering my life and if either of them happen to be a girl then I will be gifting the proud parents and their new daughter with a copy of this book. It is uplifting and it makes me happy, as does this video of the illustrations from the book with Neil Gaiman reading his poem and lyrically lulling us into peacefulness with his dulcet tones .

Blueberry Girl is rich in wonder and dreams for the future daughter, who should be blessed with the freedom to pursue her dreams.

Grant her the wisdom to choose her path right,
free from unkindness and fear.

Whimsical, sweet and moving, this is a book for blueberry girls everywhere. May we be free to fulfill our dreams.

Blueberry Girl is published by Bloomsbury in the UK and I thank them for sending me a copy for review.

I am considering this my first book read for the Women Unbound Challenge as I cannot think of a children's book more hopeful of equality and the fulfilling of potential.

Rockin' Around the Swaps

2009-11-02T13:13:00.008Z

Nymeth brought to my attention the annual Book Blogger Holiday Swap and I've signed up. This seems like a wonderful way to spread the holiday spirit, participate in the blogging community and discover new bloggers. Besides, I LOVE Christmas. Even though I am taking part in the Persephone Secret Santa and also a Virago one on LibraryThing,

I couldn't pass this one up; I love choosing and or making gifts for people and the delight of giving. I love to give books and playing Santa to a book blogger will probably allow me to do that! That's a good segue into mention an other holiday and blogging initiative run by My Friend Amy: Buy Books for the Holidays. I often do give books as gifts and this year is no exception. Giving (and receiving) books is wonderful and I encourage you to treat any readers in your life with a well-intentioned read this Christmas.

Women Unbound

2009-11-01T13:32:00.000Z

During the week, I briefly joined in a Twitter conversation originating with Eva about a potential Women's Studies challenge. I commented that I would enjoy reading more nonfiction in this field and that the choice of fiction to meet the challenge, which is wide but subjective, could be justified in the participant's review. I then went to bed and when I woke the challenge had been defined, named and a website had been set up complete with buttons, readings lists, rules etc. That's women unbound for you!

The Women Unbound challenge runs between this month and November 2010 so that is a whole year to read any book that focuses on women and their issues. As Nymeth pointed out to me, Virago and Persephone books more than meet that criteria and when do I need an excuse to read those? This challenge will allow me to finally read books of my one that have gone unread and potentially reread some feminist favourites. I have decided to participate at the Suffragette level, which involved reading eight titles, three of which have to be nonfiction. A list of potential reads is not required but I have compiled a pool of potential reads but not some of the rereads I may embrace.

Also, if you are joining in and seeking out titles (and even if you are not) then I cannot recommend The Group by Mary McCarthy highly enough. I read and reviewed it a few months ago and it would be the perfect read for this challenge.

Nonfiction:

Bluestockings by Jane Robinson (I don't have this one of my shelves but it is already on request from the library after reading Nymeth's review).

Feminism is for Everybody by bell hooks

Gender Trouble by Judith Butler

Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Sex and the Slayer: A Gender Primer for the Buffy Fan by Lorna Jowett

Cunt: A Declaration of Independence by Inga Muscio

Everything I Needed to Know about Being a Girl I Learned From Judy Blume ed. by Jennifer O'Connell

Married Love by Marie Stopes

Women in the House of Fiction by Lorna Sage

Fiction:

The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman by Angela Carter (one of only two books by Angela Carter that I haven't yet read; I have been rationing them).

The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan

The L-Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks

Fear of Flying by Erica Jong

Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy

Lady Oracle by Margaret Atwood

Novel on Yellow Paper by Stevie Smith

Invitation to the Waltz by Rosamond Lehmann

Save Me the Waltz by Zelda Fitzgerald

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (third time lucky?)

Heartburn by Nora Ephron

The Woman Destroyed by Simone de Beauvoir

Carol (The Price of Salt) by Patricia Highsmith

St Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell

Sophie's Choice by William Styron

Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

A number of Colette, Anais Nin or Jean Rhys novels on my shelves.

What do you think of my list? Have you read any? Which are you looking forward to reading about? Do you have any further recommendations?

The Haunting of Hill House

2009-10-31T13:17:00.002Z

No human eye can isolate the unhappy coincidence of line and place which suggests evil in the face of a house, and yet somehow a maniac juxtaposition, a badly turned angle, some chance meeting of roof and sky, turned Hill House into a place of despair, more frightening because the face of Hill House seemed awake, with a watchfulness from the blank windows and a touch of glee in the eyebrow of a cornice. Almost any house, caught unexpectedly or at an odd angle, can turn a deeply humorous look on a watching person; even a mischievous little chimney, or a dormer like a dimple, can catch up a beholder with a sense of fellowship; but a house arrogant and hating, never off guard, can only be evil.

Happy Hallowe'en! In preparation for the spookiest day of the year, I read The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. Dark and oppressive, this haunted house story is a tense and thrilling study of fear. Dr Montague invites three strangers to join him one summer in the mysterious Hill House for an experiment that would explore potential paranormal and supernatural incidents. What begins lightheartedly soon turns malevolent as the personfiied Hill House begins to manifest itself in the house's inhabitants. The Haunting of Hill House is a deft and effective exploration of fear and how it changes people and guides their actions. More a subtle and disturbing haunting than an out-and-out tale of horror, this was yet another gripping read by Shirley Jackson.

Jackson is a master of suspense and weaves an intricate tale of creepiness. One wonders whether events actually occur or are manifested within the minds of the characters; there is an insidious undertone to the text where the reader does not trust what they are being told. To say any more would be to spoil The Haunting of Hill House, as saying much about any of Shirley Jackson's work is detrimental to their effect on the mind and senses. Suffice to say, this was the perfect reading material in the lead-up to today.

There is a short article online at Jezebel posted yesterday in praise of Jackson and her suitability to read during Hallowe'en.

This completes the R.I.P. IV challenge for me in which I read four books that could be categorised as mysterious, suspenseful, Gothic, thriller or supernatural reads (I apparently avoided Dark Fantasy and Horror). In terms of the fear factor I have ordered them from least to most frightening and, coincidentally, this is the order that I read them in:

1. The Blank Wall by Elizabeth Sanxay Holding
2. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
3. Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
4. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackon

Thank you to Carl for hosting another deliciously creepy season.

Jane Austen's Emma

2009-10-30T21:36:00.006Z

I first read Emma by Jane Austen a decade ago when I studied it in my final year of school. I have never seen an adaptation -not even the 1996 film version with Gwyneth Paltrow- but being a devout fan of the 1995 BBC mini-series of Pride and Prejudice, I was intrigued as to how well they would treat my second favourite Austen novel. I was not disappointed. Although it will never surpass the Pride and Prejudice adaptation in my esteem and affection, I did enjoy Emma and found it, for the most part, well done. I did have initial reservations and mild criticisms whilst watching; I found it flawed in some respects but it is was a faithful adaptation if a little ... unreserved. The language was modernised, not fully but enough that it jarred, and there was an altogether looser tone to their speech, mannerisms and interactions with each other.

Romola Garai made a suitably flawed Emma, and was more mature than her portrayal of Cassandra Mortmain (another of my much-loved literary heroines) that I could separate them in my mind's eye. Her vanity and snobbery were well depicted and, as always, I had a soft spot for the well-meaning Emma. However, I did take issue with Garai's exaggerated facial expressions that did not seem fitting with the period; her eyes were far too wide and it began to irritate me some. I had misgivings about Johnny Lee Miller's suitability in the role as Mr Knightley and their relationship was more of a brother and sister one in the first episode, but he overcame my prejudices to fully embody the role, so much so that I developed something of a literary crush on him; oh how my heart ached for him during some scenes and fluttered when he gentlemanly saved Harriet Smith's shame at the dance.

The casting of Michael Gambon as Mr Woodhouse was inspired; he was lovably vulnerable, only slightly infuriating and shared a touching and tender chemistry with his on-screen daughter. Tamsin Greig played Miss Bates to an exceptional standard and I sympathised with her exceedingly whilst also finding her amusing. The other exceptional comical character, Mrs Elton, was unbearable and testimony to Christina Cole in the role (she also played Caroline Bingley wonderfully well in Lost in Austen). I wasn't too enamoured by the casting of Frank Churchill nor Jane Fairfax but I suspect that is due to my lack of affection for the characters.

Watching this diverting adaptation, although enjoyable, compels me to read Austen's own words again and I will seek the time for a reread of the novel at some point. I will probably rewatch this at some point but I doubt it has the longevity of the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, which I happily watch over and over.

This is the second of six Austen-related items completed for the Everything Austen challenge.

The scene I anticipated most to see acted was the one from Box Hill, where Emma is at her most flawed, and I share that below.

Are You Dreaming of a Grey Christmas?

2009-10-29T09:19:00.006Z

Yes, Christmas will soon be with us and I know that I love nothing more than giving and receiving books as gifts. The only thing that can top that is a Persephone book. Book Psmith is arranging a very exciting Persephone Secret Santa, which I think is a wonderful idea and should be a lot of fun. I know that I will be participating, what about you?

Fun Home

2009-10-28T19:08:00.000Z

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel is a memoir in the form of a graphic novel. I decided to seek it out after Audrey Niffenegger named it as her favourite graphic novel at a reading and signing a couple of weeks ago. I had read mention of it across the blogosphere prior to that but it was more a sense of it existing and being held in esteem rather than knowing anything about it. After reading it I then noticed that it was included in the family section of the Guardian's 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read and am I right in thinking that it is the only graphic novel to do so? I haven't read many graphic novels myself, only a handful (although I am beginning to incorporate them more into my reading lately), but Fun Home reminded me of one that I had read: The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi; both are memoirs of the female authors' coming-of-age in dramatic circumstances but both are recounted with wisdom and wit.

Alison grew up in a funeral home -known as a fun home- with her mother, brothers and closeted gay father who dies when Alison is at college, perhaps by his own design. Her father was a highschool English teacher who had relations with some of his male students and with his children's babysitter. This is indeed a tragicomic tale. I pitied Alison's father but I also found his betrayal of his family and the implied betrayal of younger boys abhorrent; curiously Bechdel doesn't comment (with hindsight) on her father's actions but through the book comes to terms with her own uneven relationship with him. Alison and her father connected via books and some of my favourite sections were those were literature was alluded to and employed as a means of commenting upon and making sense of Alison's upbringing and the poignant relationship with her father based on their mutual love for books. Meanwhile Alison is also coming to terms with her own lesbian sexuality and gender, often a source of contention with her father when she was younger but a subtle bond they shared as adults.

Fun Home is literally graphic in its occasional full-frontal nudity and not for readers with any qualms about forthright discussion of sex, sexuality and masturbation. Fun Home's frankness and intelligence should make it a recommended read for teenagers, especially those making sense of their own sexuality. It is also an exploration of death and grief and Bechdel uses it to come to term with her father's death and possible suicide. In appropriating her and her family's tragicomedy (which is ethically ambiguous, I feel) she produces a beautiful and touching deliberation on familial bonds and the pains of growing up. Incorporating the literature she and her father discuss and references to myth into the graphic novel imbues it with a richness that bibliophiles will adore and I found it highly interesting and educational as well as entertaining, at times morbidly so.

Hello Japan!

2009-10-27T13:59:00.005Z

For the first of Tanabata's Hello Japan! monthly mini-challenges (where we focus on Japanese literature and culture) we were to read or watch something scary, spooky or suspenseful. I opted to watch Battle Royale (Batoru rowaiaru, 2000, directed by Kinji Fukasaku); I fully intended to read the book by Koushun Takami and then watch the adaptation but the best laid plans of men and readers... Now I am not altogether sure whether I will read the book at all, or at least any time soon. That's not to say that I didn't enjoy the movie because I did, a lot, but I'm no longer in the mood to read the book.

The premise of the book (from back-cover): Koushun Takami's notorious high-octane thriller is based on an irresistible premise: a class of 42 junior high school students are taken to a deserted island where, as part of a ruthless authoritarian program, they are electronically collared, provided with weapons of varying potency, and sent out onto the island. If they are in the wrong part of the island at the wrong time, their collars will explode. If they band together to save themselves a collar will explode at random. If they try to escape from the island, they will be blown up. Their only chance for survival lies in killing their classmates. Criticized as violent exploitation when first published in Japan - where it then proceeded to become a runaway bestseller - Battle Royale is a Lord of the Flies for the 21st century, and a potent story of politics and survival in a dog-eat-dog world. Made into a controversial hit movie of the same name, Battle Royale is already a contemporary Japanese pulp classic.

I can tell why this has become a Japanese pulp (and, I take it, cult) classic as it is intelligent and fun. Yes, I find ridiculously gratuitous scenes of blood and gore humorous rather than scary and the plot more socially interesting than thrilling; think of the staged bloodbath onscreen as Tarantino-esque (controversial, I know, as Tarantino has often been accused of copying Japanese film-makers, but he is the best mainstream example to indicate the style of the film). Classmates are pitted against one another and petty highschool jealousies, resentments and crushes are played out with weapons and subsequent slaughter. It is all about survival of the fittest injected with black humour and some oxymoronic kitsch (the scene where the government's experimental battle programme is explained to the teenagers forced to take part is explosively funny (literally). I enjoyed the running tally of kills plot device (subtitled onscreen) and found this film wonderfully hyperbolic in the tense circumstances; it is powerful in its subtleties and its cultural commentary on a Japan obsessed with youth, fashion and cuteness. Battle Royale should not be taken at face-value as an overblown violent film but as a fantastically exaggerated cultural comment.

Highly recommended.

I wonder how the book compares...

Unseen Academicals

2009-10-26T17:00:00.001Z

A new Terry Pratchett novel is always an exciting thing and for the last few years I have always bought a copy for my boyfriend, the gift being a pretext for the opportunity to read it after (although once sneakily before) him. This year I actually received a review copy from Doubleday, which was very exciting; I had already pre-ordered and received (a day earlier) a copy but sold that on so a big thank you to Doubleday of Random House. Unseen Academicals is the latest novel in Pratchett's Discword series and satirises the game of football (or foot-the-ball) whilst focusing mainly on the below-stairs workers rather than the wizards of Unseen University. The introduction of these compelling new characters works mainly because they are supported by the wizards (Ridcully, the Librarian and Rincewind all appearing), the conniving Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, Vetinari, and the obligatory cameo from Death in addition to a few other familiar faces. Glenda -cook in the Night Kitchen, maker of famous pies and a woman with a penchant for romance novels- and Nutt -a highly intelligent and articulate candle dribbler who is shrouded in mystery- join Discworld lore and its cast of other intensely well-characterised and amusing characters.

I know that not all of you are Pratchett fans and some of you have found the Discworld inaccessible. To discover what I myself love about the universe Pratchett has created then you can read this post. As for accessibility, I will share my boyfriend's experience: it took him until his sixth attempt at reading the Discworld series (a new book each time) until he was hooked; he now considers Terry Pratchett his favourite writer, has read and reread all of the Discworld novels and has read everything else he has written. For those of you who are completely averse to attempting to read any of the Discworld series then I would recommend Nation, which is a deeply intelligent and entertaining novel with one of my all-time favourite quotes across literature.

As always I enjoyed reading Pratchett; I find him very comforting and he brings me out of any book slump that I occasionally fall into. I find that he is exceedingly difficult to review; I've summarised what Unseen Academicals and my response but the joy of reading Pratchett is inexplicable to describe. You do not need to be a football fan to appreciate this novel as it is not so much about the cult of the sport but the societal observations surrounding the game; it is easy to see the humour in the making of the offside rule without the need to understand it oneself. It also isn't essential to have read any other Discworld novel previously although it is bound to help (the frequent "(no relation)" allusions after Bledlow Nobbs may be mildly irritating otherwise). I will leave you with two of my favourite quotes -both featuring Glenda, whom I loved- and the sheer intelligence of the first one in its allusion to Virginia Woolf is why I love Terry Pratchett.

A couple of graduate wizards were working in the university boatyard nearby. One looked at her and said, 'Are you supposed to be walking on the university lawns, madam?'
'No, it is absolutely forbidden to kitchen staff,' said Glenda.
The students looked at one another. 'Oh right,' said one of them.
And that was it.
As easy as that.

Very slowly, Glenda raised her right hand into a fist and lowered it into her mouth, and bit down very hard in at attempt to somehow retrieve the last fifteen minutes from the records of the universe and replace them with something far less embarrassing, like her knickers falling down.