Genre limitations

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The general/literary section.
One of my general/literary fiction shelves.

As anyone who reads this blog/scans my reviews archive can tell, my reading leans heavily towards literary fiction. Sure, there’s a pinch of sci-fi and a touch of comics (an increasingly large touch) and a sprinkling of literary essays, but overall my reading has a clear leaning. I don’t necessarily want to change that – I enjoy most of what I read – but I would like to widen the boundaries a bit more.

A recent trip to my Dad’s house had me scouring the familiar old bookshelves and remembering how I used to read a lot of autobiographies (my Mum’s influence, I suspect) but also had phases of horror/thrillers, comic fantasy and historical romance, none of which I read a whole lot of these days. It could just be that my tastes have changed (I’m certainly more squeamish about graphic violence) but it could be that I have discounted whole sections of the bookshop through a combination of poor memory/one bad experience tainting the genre/snobbery.

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We all behave differently depending on the situation

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QuietQuiet: the Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking
by Susan Cain

I had been looking forward to this book for a long time. I watched and enjoyed Cain’s TED talk about introversion and I have seen many positive reviews. Perhaps I had overhyped the book to myself, but in the end I was disappointed – I felt the book was trying to be too many things and didn’t quite hit the mark.

As the title suggests, this book is about people who are quiet, or introverted. An author’s note acknowledges that Cain has followed the popular conception of introversion as an all-encompassing label for quiet people, rather than using one of the various scientific descriptions. (Personally I think that information would have been useful in the main text.)

“We all behave differently depending on the situation. But if we’re capable of such flexibility, does it even make sense to chart the differences between introverts and extroverts? Is the very notion of introversion-extroversion too pat a dichotomy…Aren’t we all a little of both?”

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Here ends the summer book bingo

Today is officially the last day of the Nights on the Bookstand Summer Book Bingo and I have failed to complete any more rows or columns. I tried!

For “Revolves around a holiday” I read Us by David Nicholls. For “With a happy ending” I read Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin, which, as I mentioned yesterday, might not strictly count anyway. For “By any Booktopia author” I’ve started but not finished Quiet by Susan Cain. And I hadn’t even chosen a book for the last square I was aiming to fill, “A presidential biography”. I was thinking of reading one of Barack Obama’s books, but Tim suggested I look outside the USA and I got completely stuck. Also I ran out of time.

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Late summer reads in brief

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As well as the proper serious books that I’ve read and reviewed lately, I’ve also been powering my way through lots of comics – and a kids’ classic. Tim keeps finding new comic series he thinks I’ll like – and he’s generally right – as he makes his way through the Marvel NOW relaunch. Which means my comic reading is almost exclusively Marvel at the moment. If anyone has any non-Marvel comic recommendations, please do send them my way! I’ve been reading single issues for the most part online, but I did splash out and buy the trade paperback volumes of Ms Marvel because it is awesome.

fantasticfour_nowFantastic Four issues 1–8
by Matt Fraction and Mark Bagley

I came to this reboot of the Fantastic Four – genius Reed Richards/Mr Fantastic, his wife Sue Storm/the Invisible Woman, her brother Johnny Storm/the Human Torch and Reed’s best friend Ben Grimm/the Thing – with my only pre-existing knowledge of the group being the 2005 film starring Ioan Gruffudd and Jessica Alba. Which is not a lot of knowledge. But Fraction does a pretty great job of summarising the current state of things before changing everything up. Essentially, Reed Richards and Sue Storm run a sort of school, the Future Foundation, for gifted children of all alien/non-human species as well as the odd human, including their own two children Franklin and Valeria. But the Fantastic Four are always off fighting evil away from the kids. And on their last adventure Reed discovered that his body is breaking down in some mysterious way that can’t be fixed with Earth technology. So he decides to kill two birds with one stone and suggests the Fantastic Four take Franklin and Valeria on an educational adventure across space and time. He doesn’t tell anyone that he is secretly searching for a cure that they may all desperately need. Matt Fraction’s stamp on this series is very clear, with gentle humour and genuine emotional complexity rolled in along with romping spacetime adventures. It’s a lot of fun.

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August reading round-up

Happy Bank Holiday Monday to those of you having one!

I’m cheerful having spent most of the weekend celebrating 13 years with Tim. Tim gave me a night in a fancy hotel, I gave him a behind-the-scenes tour of Temple Meads train station and the SS Great Britain. I clearly got the better end of that deal (though the tour was a lot of fun too).

Secret underground

I’ve also read some great books this month, my favourite being The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard. What was your favourite recent read?

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Light travels differently in a room that contains another person

usUs
by David Nicholls

I’ve enjoyed David Nicholls novels in the past, but the hype around this one, partly because it was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, suggested it was something a bit different, a break from the usual. I was unsure how to feel about that, but I gave it a go and now I’m befuddled, because to me it felt exactly like a David Nicholls novel.

That’s not a criticism of the novel, only of the marketing. Well, maybe it’s a little bit a criticism of the novel, in that I’m not sure exactly why this was deemed more literary, more mature in style, because to me it’s not. It’s a sweet, easy-to-read tale that’s more about plot than the writing. It is often introspective and soul-searching and I very much enjoyed it. I just…thought I might get a little more from it.

The novel opens with middle-aged Douglas being woken by his wife Connie who says that she is leaving him. Or she thinks she wants to. Their marriage isn’t working for her anymore and in a few months’ time, when their son Albie leaves home for university, she will probably leave too. In the meantime, it’s the summer when they had intended to take Albie on the trip of a lifetime, an old-fashioned grand tour around Europe, or at least its greatest art galleries. Connie wants to go ahead and so Douglas throws himself into planning the best holiday ever, hoping that maybe this way he can salvage his marriage.

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TV shows based on books

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jeeves-and-woosterI seem to be watching several TV shows based on books at the moment. Not that it’s in any way a new phenomenon. I was raised on The Waltons, M*A*S*H, Lovejoy, Jeeves and Wooster, BBC Shakespeare and the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes. (To be honest, I didn’t even know those first three were based on books until recently.) And let’s not forget Woof! and, well, basically all children’s TV shows from my youth (or so it sometimes feels). Books, and especially series of books, are ripe for TV adaptation, where more time can be devoted to the plot than a film allows.

Of the examples I’m currently watching, I have read none of the books. There’s The Walking Dead (Tim is reading the comics and says they’re more graphic and violent than the TV show, which I can’t say appeals to me), Orange is the New Black (how have multiple series been made from one slight memoir?), Mr Selfridge (same question re this biography), Masters of Sex (this is one book I’d like to read, actually) and True Blood (I really can’t tell if I’d like the books but I lean towards not).

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Sunday Salon: So many things

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I seem to have spent this week endlessly booking tickets for awesome stuff coming soon to Bristol or somewhere nearby. My diary is now crammed with dates for theatre, comedy, music, author events and other cool stuff. Why does all the awesome bunch up like that?

I shouldn’t complain. I love living somewhere with so much going on that I want to do. Like a Metric gig! Super exciting. And Salman Rushdie! And The Crucible at the Old Vic. And a new Mark Thomas show! Bristol rocks.

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A man is no better for having made the worst journey in the world

worst journey in the worldThe Worst Journey in the World
by Apsley Cherry-Garrard

Wow. Just wow. Perhaps I’m biased by my pre-existing fascination with polar exploration, but this is an incredible book. Or rather, it reaches the very limits of credibility but does not overstep them, for I do not think that Cherry exaggerates at all. Humans beings have been through worse at the hands of other human beings, but not at the hands of nature.

This is a big book, but I tore through it in less than a week, foregoing most of my television and internet-pottering time because I just had to get back to this gripping story. For a day after finishing it I was reluctant to start another book or experience any other story. I wanted to sit with this tale of hardship and suffering in the name of science, of men who willingly endured that humankind might benefit. It is inspiring.

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