Reviews and other ramblings
Merry Christmas folks!
As I have two whole glorious weeks off work, I have ambitiously set aside the above pile of books to work my way through, though I will no doubt get distracted by shiny new Christmas present books at some point. We do have lots of people to visit and sensible house stuff to do, so I’m not sure how much reading time I’ll actually get, but here’s hoping!
Happy holidays and happy reading everyone.
Is it really December tomorrow already? Time really does seem faster every year. It looks like I have read way more than usual this month because I read seven graphic novels/trade paperback collections of comics and let’s face it, they tend to be quicker reads than your average non-graphic novel. I read them for Graphic Novel Week and wrote short reviews of them all here.
This week I took Tim (as a late birthday present) to see one of his favourite authors, William Gibson, speak in Bath at an event arranged by Toppings bookshop. It was a slightly odd evening, in that Gibson just did a reading from his new book then a short Q&A and implied that the main point of it all was the book signing. Every other author event I’ve gone to has had either an interviewer or the author giving a short talk, but I don’t go to that many so perhaps I’m just discovering late in the day that author events vary quite a lot!
I suppose I expected something more because this year it’s 30 years since the publication of Neuromancer, Gibson’s first novel, which has achieved legendary status and had major influence on the world that reaches far beyond those who’ve actually read it (which I had done in preparation for the event). I had seen on the Internet that Gibson was doing/had done some events specifically about Neuromancer this year and therefore expected it would at least get a brief discussion. As it was, it was only mentioned by audience members in Bath (who, incidentally, had some very intelligent questions that provoked some interesting debate between Tim and I as we waited in the cold and wet for our delayed train home).
Certainly it was different at the David Mitchell event earlier this month, at which an interviewer helped Mitchell discuss his new book and past work for a good half hour before the Q&A and signing. It’s a style I much prefer, even if it did mean I took an hour and a half lunch break that day! But then I’m pre-disposed to prefer an event with an author I’m a big fan of, whose work I have read all of (or at least all the novels, I believe there are short stories out there I haven’t read).
Books
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris (review here)
The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell (review here)
Neuromancer by William Gibson
Transmetropolitan Vol 1: Back on the Street by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson
Transmetropolitan Vol 2: Lust for Life by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson
Transmetropolitan Vol 3: Year of the Bastard by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson
Transmetropolitan Vol 4: The New Scum by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson
Transmetropolitan Vol 5: Lonely City by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson
Serenity Vol. 4: Leaves on the Wind by Zack Whedon and Georges Jeanty
Ex Machina Vol. 1: The First Hundred Days by Brian K Vaughan and Tony Harris
Short stories
“Can’t and won’t” by Lydia Davis (Selected Shorts podcast)
“If at the wedding (at the zoo)” by Lydia Davis (Selected Shorts podcast)
“The party” by Lydia Davis (Selected Shorts podcast)
“The two Davises and the rug” by Lydia Davis (Selected Shorts podcast)
“The egg race” by John Updike (Selected Shorts podcast)
“Camilo” by Alejandro Zambra (New Yorker, May 26, 2014)
“The right sort” by David Mitchell (Twitter, collected together here: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/14/the-right-sort-david-mitchells-twitter-short-story)
“Sheherezade” by Haruki Murakami (New Yorker, available online: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/13/scheherazade-3)
“Here’s the story” by David Gilbert (New Yorker, June 9 & 16, 2014 )
“The adolescents” by Rachel Kushner (New Yorker, June 9 & 16, 2014 )
Happy December, folks!
As I mentioned last week, Kristilyn of Reading in Winter has declared 21–24 November Graphic Novel Week, which came just as I had decided to read all of the Transmetropolitan comics, so that was good timing!
These are the books I have lined up to read before next weekend. The top row are borrowed from Tim, the bottom row were bought today from Excelsior! comic shop.
Transmetropolitan vol. 4: The New Scum by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson
Transmetropolitan vol. 5: Lonely City by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson
Transmetropolitan vol. 6: Gouge Away by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson
Transmetropolitan vol. 0: Tales of Human Waste by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson
Ex Machina vol. 1: The First Hundred Days by Brian K Vaughan and Tony Harris
The Sandman vol. 2: The Doll’s House by Neil Gaiman
The Sandman vol. 3: Dream Country by Neil Gaiman
Serenity vol. 4: Leaves on the Wind by Zack Whedon and Georges Jeanty
You’ll notice that the only one of those that’s completely new to me is Ex Machina, which I picked up because I am impatient for the next volume of Brian K Vaughan’s current series Saga. I’m not good at this whole waiting game you have to play when you like current comic series.
I was intending to pick up some more literary graphic novels such as The Gigantic Beard that was Evil by Stephen Collins or Habibi by Craig Thompson but I think I have enough to be going on with.
It’s going to be a good week’s reading!
I’ve been a bit rubbish at reading again lately. Working too many hours, busy too many evenings and weekends; it’s all led to the inevitable crash that is the lupus flare. I curl up in bed or on the sofa with a stack of books and wind up watching TV or browsing the Internet instead because it’s all my brain can cope with. And I don’t mean watching good TV or reading good articles online either, I mean the mindless stuff. (Mostly. I have read some good stuff online lately. As long as it’s short I can cope with occasional thinking material.)
I feel bad for the books I try to read when I’m flaring, because I either give up on them or struggle through without really enjoying the process. I know all reading is about timing, but maybe I need to get better at identifying when to switch to the right kind of book for mid-fatigue. But what kind of book is that?
So far, I’ve found the best answer is comics and graphic novels. I’m not saying they’re all easy reads (I won’t be attempting any Sandman or League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in my current state) and I’m sure I miss stuff when I’m tired just as I do with novels of the non-graphic variety, but I do tend to find them both manageable and enjoyable when I’m ill, which is no mean feat and something I’m hugely grateful for.
By fortuitous timing, Kristilyn of Reading in Winter has declared next week Graphic Novel Week. What a great idea!
I will be taking part by reading my way through Tim’s collection of Transmetropolitan, which I started today. And I’m sure I can talk Tim into a trip to Excelsior! comic-book shop to pick up some more reading materials. If my lupus has calmed back down I might even try to write something intelligent about graphic novels. No promises!
Anyone have any graphic-novel recommendations? Will you be taking part in Graphic Novel Week?
I finish most of the books I start reading, but every couple of months something comes along that I realise I’m just not enjoying or I’m finding too slow/hardgoing to get into. So I stop.
I’m happy with that choice, but then I’m faced with the decision of what to do with the book. Do I just get rid of it, strike it off the to read list forever? (I’m pretty sure Tim is nodding furiously at this one, as we’ve already had to add another bookcase to the library!) Or do I keep hold of it for another time? Sometimes the answer is clear, but sometimes there really can be a right time and a wrong time for a particular book, and I’d hate to miss out on something wonderful because I made a snap decision when I was in the wrong mood.
With that in mind, here are the last three books I gave up on part-way through. These aren’t exactly reviews, because I read less than 100 pages of each. Have you read any of these? What did you think of them? Do any of them deserve another chance?
The Elegance of the Hedgehog
by Muriel Barbery
translated from French by Alison Anderson
This had been recommended in several places so I thought it was a great find when I spotted it in a charity shop. The synopsis – Parisian concierge strikes up an unusual friendship with a 12 year old in the building who has secretly decided to kill herself on her 13th birthday – sounded interesting, and I usually love stories set in Paris. Not so this one. More than anything I am reminded of Sophie’s World – it seems to be a series of short essays on philosophy and the arts (and not particularly good ones) with a thin veneer of story. The two alternating narrators are both intensely annoying. The concierge is obsessed with hiding the fact that she is cultured and loves to read, because apparently no-one would expect that of the working class. (I mean, really? Wasn’t that the origin of Penguin Books back in the 1930s? Perhaps it’s a French thing.) The 12-year-old rambles on about how clever she is and really has raised not one iota of sympathy in me. An unfortunate event has just happened (on p80 or so) so maybe it changes from here on in, but it would have to be a radical change to keep me reading.
Published 2008 by Europa Editions.
Ghana Must Go
by Taiye Selasi
Almost the opposite of the Barbery book, this is beautifully written and there’s plenty of story happening. I loved the language and was marking favourite passages constantly, but I kept losing track of the story. The book opens with the death of Kwaku Sai, a Ghanian doctor who moved back to Ghana after many years in America and has married a younger woman his children (now grown and still living in the US) don’t approve of. His death is slowly drawn out, filled with the memories of his life that he lingers on as his heart fails. There’s a whole life to tell, so it doesn’t feel dragged out, but I did sometimes get confused about past versus present. While I loved the language, I found it hard work and wasn’t drawn into the story. But I think I’d like to give this another try.
Published 2013 by Viking.
A More Perfect Heaven: How Copernicus Revolutionised the Cosmos
by Dava Sobel
I wanted to like this book, I really did. I loved Sobel’s breakout hit Longitude, which doesn’t deal with an obviously interesting to me subject, but Sobel made it fascinating. In this case there’s again a historical setting – the 16th century – plus the added interest of how Copernicus balanced his life as a priest with his growing interest in astronomy. I didn’t get as far as his controversial observation that the Earth is not in fact the centre of the universe. I didn’t even get as far as the fictional play script in the middle of the straight biography (which to be honest I was wary of). I’m afraid I was bored. Perhaps it’s an artefact of there being few primary sources of Copernicus’s life to draw on, but I didn’t feel that Sobel brought the period or Copernicus alive for me.
Published 2011 by Bloomsbury.
Ah autumn, time of cold weather and rain when the best thing in the world is snuggling up with a book. Well, we had two weeks of that and then it got warm again; weirdly warm. And then I wasted a week reading a book I disliked (more on that tomorrow), so my reading completed list doesn’t look too impressive this month.
I had planned to read some horror for Halloween, maybe some Daphne du Maurier, but the closest I got was making a start on David Mitchell‘s new book The Bone Clocks, which sounds spookier than it is, though I have a feeling that might change when I get further in. I did, however, watch the film of Gone Girl, which is super disturbing in an entertaining kind of way. I haven’t read the book as I’d heard mixed reports about it, but I think now I’d quite like to, even if I do now know all the twists and turns of the plot.
A quick catch-up on my reading aims/challenges for the year, as I only have two months left to get where I want to be with them! I’ve read nine popular-science books, so I only need to read one more of those. I’ve read seven books in translation, which is not so good. I was hoping for one per month but that would be more catching up than I have time left for. Must do better on that front next year. And as for science fiction, I’ve read six so far this year, which is as many as I read total in 2013 so I only need to fit in one more to achieve my aim of reading more SF!
Books
Seconds by Bryan Lee O’Malley (my review)
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov (my review)
Clever Girl by Tessa Hadley (my review)
Sworn Virgin by Elvira Dones (my review)
Short stories
“The magic barrel” by Bernard Malamud (from The Magic Barrel)
“The first seven years” by Bernard Malamud (from The Magic Barrel, available online here)
“The mourners” by Bernard Malamud (from The Magic Barrel)
“The bill” by Bernard Malamud (from The Magic Barrel, available online here)
“The girl of my dreams” by Bernard Malamud (from The Magic Barrel)
“The sexes” by Dorothy Parker (Selected Shorts podcast)
“In the throes: the precious thoughts of an author at work” by Dorothy Parker (Selected Shorts podcast)
“The standard of living” by Dorothy Parker (Selected Shorts podcast)
“The waitress” by Robert Coover (Selected Shorts podcast)
We have had a lovely, if busy, September. We started the month on holiday, which is a pretty good start to anything! I didn’t get much reading done there, but when I came home I started whizzing through books. I still haven’t posted about the second half of our holiday because I haven’t finished going through my photos still, but I’ll get there eventually. I think my next free evening is in about a fortnight…
What I did find time for this month was a giveaway of a new popular-science book called Sensation: the New Science of Physical Intelligence by Thalma Lobel, which you can still enter until midnight tomorrow. It’s a really interesting look at a new area of psychology, though I have a few caveats.
And finally, tomorrow sees the release of the For Books’ Sake poetry collection Furies, which should be a fantastic read as well as raising money for the charity Rape Crisis England & Wales. Check it out.
Books
The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (My review)
The Quiet War by Paul McAuley
Z: a Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler (My review)
The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe (My review)
Sensation: the New Science of Physical Intelligence by Thalma Lobel (My review)
Improper Stories by Saki
Short stories
“The assassination of Margaret Thatcher – August 6th 1983” by Hilary Mantel (available online)
“In dreams begin responsibilities” by Delmore Shwartz (Selected Shorts podcast)
“The lover of horses” by Tess Gallagher (Selected Shorts podcast)
Here’s to a wonderful October all round.
The End of Your Life Book Club
by Will Schwalbe
After this book received universally good reviews from people I trust/have similar taste to (there’s a strong correlation there; I should probably investigate that sometime) I knew I would read it eventually, but I worried it would be super depressing. The “end of your life” part of the title is not euphemistic; it really is about the end of someone’s life. But it was a surprisingly entertaining, easy read. I’m not saying I didn’t get sad at all; I’m not that cold-hearted.
This is a memoir written by American publisher-turned-journalist Schwalbe about the books he and his mother Mary Anne read together when she was dying of cancer. They knew from her first diagnosis that the cancer was terminal, so there is no question how the book will end. This gives the book a largely matter-of-fact background of chemotherapy, pain relief and other palliative care, but also the emotional side of dealing with and preparing for death.
“I was fine until right after I fastened my seat belt. For me, there’s something about planes that isolates and intensifies sadness, the way a looking glass can magnify the sun until it grows unbearably hot and burns.”
The gradual change (for both Will and Mary Anne) from denial to anger to acceptance is clear without being overtly discussed. By which I don’t mean that they ever deny her diagnosis or expect a magical turnaround, but initially they don’t discuss death at all, they just get on with the surgery and trying out different chemo drugs. However, it is of course there the whole time. In fact, when Mary Anne is diagnosed, her daughter, Will’s sister Nina, is about to move to Switzerland with her family and must make the decision whether or not to go, which of course boils down to: does Mary Anne have weeks left or years?
This uncertainty is something I haven’t really read about before, though I know (and have known) people for whom it is true, and it is in some ways harder on the family than the fact of death itself. How far ahead do you allow yourself to plan? Do you book holidays? Do you throw great big birthday and other celebratory parties because they might be the last one with her? Following Mary Anne’s lead, the family slowly figure all these things out – while she can, she wants to do everything she can, including continuing to work and travelling abroad. As her health worsens and her energy levels drop, plans simplify and are built around what she can and can’t do.
“Those extraordinary chemicals, with their remarkable names, now sound totally different: Gemcitabine. Xeloda. Before they sounded like harsh detergents. Now they sound cool and magical, like a new rock band you’ve come to love.”
Mary Anne was a wonderful, inspiring woman. In fact, the whole family are and made me feel quite inadequate at times, but Mary Anne especially. After responding to an unsolicited begging letter from a nun, she quit a very good, secure job as the head of a New York girls’ school to start a charity for women refugees. She travelled to many of the least desirable parts of the world to meet for herself the people she was helping. The danger that she had put herself in time and again is brought home by the fact that during the timeline of this book, a friend and colleague of hers is held hostage by the Taliban in Afghanistan.
But most importantly, of course, at least for this to be the book that it is, Mary Anne and Will share a deeply ingrained love for books. They discuss the books they read in depth, which appears to be something they have always done, but the difference now is twofold – they are choosing to read the same books, even calling it a book club, and they are spending more time alone together than perhaps ever (Will is the middle of three children, after all) as Will accompanies Mary Anne to the doctor, to chemo and spends more time with her at home. (I should add here that so too do Will’s father, brother and sister and all their partners, but this book is about Will and his mother and their time together.)
“In the summer, Mom and I had read slender books. Now we were reading one long book after another. Maybe that was one way of expressing hopefulness—you had to have a lot of time left if you were going to start reading Bolaño, or Thomas, or Halberstam…I remarked to Mom how all the books we were reading then shared not just length but a certain theme: fate and the effects of the choices people make.”
The books they read are many and varied, though fairly firmly literary. Each chapter is named after a book that was of particular significance but the full list of books discussed is provided as an appendix and is six full pages long. You don’t need to have the books to follow the discussions of them but when it was a book I’ve read, I did feel a little glow of “I’ve read that! I could join this conversation!” The book discussions tend not to be so much about the style or quality of writing, but more about the subject matter. Often Will uses a book as a jumping-off point to tell us about Mary Anne’s life or anecdotes from earlier in their life together.
Ridiculously, considering the situation, I found myself at times jealous of the relationship Will and Mary Anne have through books. Not that I’m not close to my Mum. In fact, she gave me this book, which at the time I didn’t twig was especially significant. But currently we have very different taste in books. She likes memoirs/biographies to the exclusion of all else, so I don’t think we could come up with a very long list of books to share. Then again, this is of course a memoir and I really liked it, so perhaps I should lend it to her and have a mini book club next time we see each other. Hmm… But back to the review…
This feels like a very honest book. We learn about Will’s life, about the books he didn’t finish reading even though Mary Anne was eager to discuss them, about the blog that Mary Anne wrote in Will’s name to keep their extended family and friends up to date with her health (she felt it wouldn’t be suitable for it to written by her!) and about Will and Mary Anne’s different attitudes toward religion, plus of course about the long slow decline of terminal cancer. In the end, it was sad but not heartbreaking. I’m not sure if this is because Mary Anne was in her 70s and had lived a rich and full life, or if it is down to the way Will writes about her, about how intellectually sharp and full of hope and kindness she remained to the end.
I think Schwalbe found the right combination of topics here, so that it isn’t all about pain and suffering, or sorrow and self-reflection, or a biography of a great and inspiring woman, or even just about great books, but instead it’s a book that pays tribute to Mary Anne and appeals to the intellectual and emotional draw of books, while also dealing with a tough subject that we will all have to face up to at some point. He also found the right balance between writing about the pain and difficulty of his mother’s slow death and the positive side of the situation: he had the warning to start spending more time with his mother, and had rich, rewarding times with her at the end of her life.
I don’t think Schwalbe is himself a great literary writer, so this doesn’t have the writerly quality of Joan Didion’s memoir The Year of Magical Thinking, say (which in fact is one of the books discussed), but I suppose that makes this book more accessible and serves as a reminder that not every avid reader is also a great writer. I can’t see myself checking out Schwalbe’s book about e-mail, but I do think that if I read books covered in The End of Your Life Book Club I might well come back to it to remind myself what Will and Mary Anne had to say!
First published 2012 by Hodder & Stoughton.
Source: A Christmas present from my Mum.
A week after getting home from a fortnight in France, it doesn’t quite feel like I never had a holiday at all, but the holiday relaxation is certainly fading fast.
As I mentioned while I was away, I didn’t get much reading done on holiday. I don’t know if that was because the books I read weren’t very absorbing, or because I was distracted by holiday stuff (Places to see! People to spend time with!) or because I’ve given myself too much reading that had to get done this year and not enough reading for fun, so that relaxing on holiday meant doing less reading. Whichever it was, I was disappointed to have only read a book and a half in two weeks. But since coming home I’ve powered through two and half books, all of which have pulled me right in and been a delight. So was it the choice of books after all, or did I need a reading break?
What about you? Do you ever need a break from reading? Does it worry you when it happens?
One of the good things about being home is that we can throw ourselves into the life of the city again. Friday night I went to see a production of Macbeth at Bristol’s Tobacco Factory Theatre. It was innovative, using electronic music and other modern effects to heavily cut the running time and really concentrate on the themes of madness, ambition and guilt. It was strange, intense and moving. Kudos to Filter theatre company for such a bold adaptation.
I’m going to get back to reading now. Maybe I can make it three books in a week!
I’m posting this a few days late as I’m on holiday, which unusually has so far decreased my reading, not increased it. I think I may be discouraged as I’ve been reading The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing for book club for about three weeks and it’s a huge book so I’m still barely a third of the way through. I wonder how many of us will have made it to the end when book club meets next week? Also, Tim recommended one of his books for me to read on holiday so I’m about a third of the way through that as well. Between them I’m sure I read at least as much as one normal-length book last week!
Still, this week is a quiet one with the in-laws, so I’m hoping to get plenty of uninterrupted reading time. As long as I don’t get too distracted by photographing wildlife! More on that next week once we’re home again.
Books read
Sun Alley by Cecilia Ştefanescu (review here)
The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett (re-read for book club)
Sex, Drugs and Rock’n’Roll: the Science of Hedonism and the Hedonism of Science by Zoe Cormier (review over at For Books’ Sake)
Faces of Love and the Poets of Shiraz by Hafez, Jahan Malek Khatun and Obayd-e Zakani (review here)
Fighting on the Home Front by Kate Adie (review here)
Short stories read
“Yesterday” by Haruki Murakami (New Yorker, available online here)
“Picasso” by César Aria (New Yorker, available online here)
“Last meal at Whole Foods” by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh (New Yorker, available online here)
“Apple cake” by Allegra Goodman (New Yorker, available online here)
“You can find love now” by Ramona Ausubel (New Yorker, available online here)
“The waitress” by Robert Coover (New Yorker, available online here)
“The fugitive” by Lyudmila Ulitskaya (New Yorker, available online here)
“The man in the woods” by Shirley Jackson (New Yorker, available online here)
“Box sets” by Roddy Doyle (New Yorker, available online here)
“Pending vegan” by Jonathan Lethem (New Yorker, available online here)
Happy September!