Fenland Tales

The Big Move

2010-01-02T17:01:00.000Z

Okay, so, I moved...

I've posted the last few reviews of the challenge as well - I made it!

I don't want to see anther book for a little while, especially as I ended up reading four books in two days, thanks to bad time management and a busy December.

Thanks to all of you, and hope to see you on Wordpress!

U is for Updike

2009-12-03T09:57:00.000Z

I have never read a book that grated on me like The Widows of Eastwick did. We got off to a bad start because I thought that the Widows of Eastwick was the book name for the film. When I began reading it, though, I realised it was the sequel. Boy, did I know it was the sequel – constant references to the first book and how depraved it was and how they killed poor little whatshername were irritating beyond belief.

The main story revolves around the three witches of Eastwick, thirty years older and now appropriately all widows.

Alexandra is the middle in age, a large hippy living in Mexico. She’s scraping through after her husband died, leaving with next to nothing.

Jane is the oldest and richest, living with her ancient mother in law after the death of her husband. Materially cared for, but not emotionally.

Sukie is the youngest and possibly least irritating. She’s moderately rich and moderately emotionally balanced.

After ignoring each other for decades, they decide that now they’re alone, they’ll visit a few countries together. This is the cue for cringeworthy, racist speech where the ‘small Asian couple’ lose their ‘L’s completely and the Egyptians are all filthy men with no teeth and Arab headgear. As if that wasn’t quite enough, a man unfortunate enough to be mistaken for a suitor for Alexandra is internally derided as ‘faggy’ as soon as he mentions his dead partner.

It’s got a horrible tone to it, a seething mass of bitterness and hatred for everything. I think the worst thing for me was that it pretends to be a feminist novel, but it’s written by a man and has far too many lesbian-ish scenes for it to be anywhere near true feminism. I’m not exactly the world’s biggest feminist (if we’re that equal, why are we shouting about it?) but I object to a ‘feminist’ novel which includes a scene with a magic circle and ‘sky clad’ women, just so he can write about flesh and wrinkles.

It was tiresome, repetitive and boring. All the women were old, widows, elderly, alone…. The townspeople of Eastwick were suspicious, wary… In three hundred pages, about two things happen which are actually of any interest, and even these are buried under pages of dead prose which can be easily skimmed with no detriment to the plot.

Before reading this, I was interested in reading the Witches of Eastwick. After this though, I don’t want to read another Updike novel, and would strongly advise against anyone else reading one.

Next book – Slaughterhouse 5.

T is for Thomas

2009-12-03T09:42:00.000Z

Scarlett Thomas is probably best well known for The End of Mr Y, the black tinged page book with the striking red cover. Popco is the re-issued 2004 novel – a blue tinged paged book with a striking blue cover.

Thomas has an odd tone of voice which won’t sit well with all readers. It’s hard to describe, but is generally slightly standoffish, almost patronising. Popco has a similar tone of voice, but Thomas obviously loves language so much that you can overlook this.

Popco is the story of Alice Butler, a twenty nine year old cryptanalyst/cryptographer. She lives in a tiny London flat with her cat, and works for toy company, Popco. The book opens with a corporate excursion to Devon, which Alice travels to alone, as she doesn’t enjoy crowds. From the outset, then, she’s a loner, someone who’s happy with her own company. It’s lucky that she’s a likeable protagonist.

The location of the majority of the book is an isolated mansion in the middle of Dartmoor, designed to get the creative juices flowing amongst the bright young creative things. Alice is quickly selected for a mysterious ‘secret project’, along with a few others she’s noticed in the crowd. I don’t want to write too much about the plot, but basically she realises that she is disillusioned with Popco and the principles at it’s foundation.

There are times where the story falls away slightly, and the propaganda undertones are exposed a little more forcefully than expected, but I never felt preached to. One conversation in particular has stuck with me, and that was one around why vegans are vegans. Milk comes from cows, but cows don’t produce milk without being pregnant, or in a state of pregnancy. It’s an obvious conclusion, but one that’s left out of the children’s stories. The milk we drink comes from cows who are pregnant for the whole of their generally short lives, who don’t get to see their calves. When you look at it like that, it puts that glass of milk in a whole different light, doesn’t it?

Apart from the anti-establishment message, Alice is concerned with solving a treasure map left by her late grandfather. A cryptologist himself, he taught her everything she knows about cracking codes. This part of the book is interesting as Thomas manages to teach the reader fairly complex methods of code cracking without being too heavy or boring. I’m not that great at maths, but I managed to keep up for most of it.

A couple of chapters in the book tell the story behind the treasure map, about two lovers I immediately dubbed ‘Dread Pirate Roberts’ and ‘Buttercup’ as the story seemed to be straight out of The Princess Bride. Despite this, there was enough of a difference to ignore the similarities. Usually I find intertwined stories to be a bit of a distrraction from the ‘real’plot, but in this case it worked really well.

Popco isn’t for everyone, but I found the story, coupled with well drawn characters and, of course, the pretty cover, came together to make a good book. I especially enjoyed the little phrases and idea Alice comes out with, such as the one where she talks about footsteps having a tune, or note, of their own.

If you’ve read and enjoyed The End of Mr Y, you’ll enjoy this too. If you like puzzle solving, you’ll like this.

S is for Süskind

2009-11-16T12:48:00.000Z

I actually learned how to create an umlaut for this review. I’ll probably forget as soon as I’ve finished, but there you go, at least I made the effort.

Patrick Süskind’s Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, has been around for a quarter of a century in published form. Although set in historical France, it was originally written in German, but handily translated.

The title gives a fairly accurate summary of the plot, but the book is so much more than that. Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born into a world of poverty and dirt, as his mother shrugs him off like she did the rest of his siblings. Unlike her previous children, Jean-Baptiste refuses to give up, and his newborn cries condemn his neglectful mother to the guillotine. This happens in the first six pages, which might give you an idea of how fast paced the novel is. From his ill fated mother through to the rest of the masters he has throughout the book, Jean-Baptiste is the Angel of Death, as all who take him in suffer a lonely or unwanted death.

Jean-Baptiste has the greatest nose in the world. He can pick out people from miles away, and unravel scents as though unwinding a scarf. Very early on, he begins to collect smells as other people collect books, gathering them together in order to make the perfect smell. While on his quest, he realises that he does not smell. He can tell what a customer has had for lunch a week earlier, but he cannot smell. This might seem to be a distinct advantage to most readers – no more money spent on deodorants or perfume in an effort to smell acceptable at all times. However, for Grenouille, it proves to be a burden as without smell he is invisible in a crowd. Worse than that, he is abhorrent face to face – people avoid him without knowing why. Grenouille manages to create his own scent, and finds more success from then on. Perhaps this is because he gains confidence due to the fact that he has a smell, rather than his application of a fake smell. Either way, he finds himself more socially accepted.

Süskind’s idea that a person’s unique smell is representative of their soul is quite interesting. I even found myself sniffing the inside of my elbows (the place where the scent comes out strongest, apparently) in an attempt to smell me. It didn’t work, and it was a good job I was at home and not out in public, quite frankly. It seems to make sense, though – everyone does have a certain smell, no matter what perfumes they use. It’s not about sweat or smelly feet, but deeper than that. Maybe what you eat or drink makes a difference. Perhaps happy people smell nicer, and so are happy as a result.

As far as his writing goes, Süskind’s prose is impressive. For a fairly heavy subject matter, the book dances along through Grenouille’s childhood and teenage years with a very light touch. He is succinct and articulate, with a pleasing tone of voice which never veers towards being patronising or boring.

His characters are impressive too – Grenouille is a murderer but he is made into a sympathetic figure because he is painted as lonely, in search of love but with the knowledge that he is too strange to be loved. He is described as a pet, a tick, a cuckoo in the nest – very rarely as human.

When Grenouille begins murdering properly, the narrator shifts to someone else, who reports on the killings. This is very clever as the reader is obviously aware that it’s Grenouille, but no-one else is. We are therefore in the position of knowing the mystery and being able to view it from the bewildered townspeople’s perspective.

I was familiar with the story as I saw the 2006 film of the same name. The story is fairly faithfully followed in the film, although understandably conversations and characters are jettisoned in favour of pacing. One of the main differences for me, though, was that Grenouille is unattractive in the book, with scars and carbuncles from slave labour and diseases adorning his face and body. In the film, he’s played by Ben Whishaw, who is not unattractive, in my opinion. I suppose that’s the difference between film and book – as his confidence grew, so did his social success. Perhaps he was not ugly, but felt so until he acquired new clothes and a scent of his own.

I’d recommend Perfume to people who enjoy an historical novel that’s a bit different. Don’t be put off if you’ve seen the film – I found the language to be easy to read and the description was kept to a minimum, allowing the reader to imagine items for themselves.

Next week – Scarlet Thomas’ Popco. It’s so pretty – I’m looking forward to reading it!

R is for Rivas

2009-11-12T13:32:00.000Z

Vermeer’s Milkmaid is a collection of short stories by Galician writer, Manuel Rivas. I had to wikipedia Galicia because, shamefacedly, I didn’t know where it was. To show off my new knowledge and enlighten those others who don’t know, it’s in Spain. North West Spain, to be exact, and according to the Great Encyclopaedia, an historical autonomous community.

Although Rivas writes in Spanish and Galician, the book I read had been translated into English, which was pretty handy. I talked about translation back in August, and I still believe that translator’s a hard job. You have to retain not only the meaning, but the style and inflection of each sentence. No pressure, then.

I’d like to be able to read Galician, so I can make a proper observation about the translation of the stories. In this absence, I’ll just say that Rivas’ writing came across as succinct but evocative, in all sixteen stories. These were indeed, short, as the book itself struggled to reach one hundred and twenty pages.

They all represented what I would call, good short stories. There was a clear plot and all of the relevant details were revealed about characters, locations, events, with just enough guess work to make them mysterious. The majority of them centred around male characters, searching for something from a long lost love to their bodies, which they have been estranged from. Most of the stories had an element of fantasy in them, from the tarot card reader who refuses to read after drawing a bad omen card, to the three page story following a conversation about murder amongst inanimate objects, from the Television to the Ashtray to the Darkness itself.

Another mark of a good short story, or collection of, is how they affect you. I read A Perfect Day for Bananafish, by J.D. Salinger, in a creative writing class years ago, and I still think about it. Due to their nature, they usually revolve around a short, sharp event in someone’s life. In Rivas’ collection, an old man recounts the time where he got so frustrated with his lover’s yappy dog that he snuck back to her house at night and murdered it by ramming a steel spike down its throat. She knew, of course, and he never saw her again.

The stories are haunting, full of dusty images of the Civil War and sax players. They come and go in a flash, but promise to remain in my imagination for a long time to come.

I’d recommend these to people who enjoy short stories with a darker, deeper side – ones which may need careful re-reading to see all of the layers. It might help to know where Galicia is as well.

Q is for Quinn

2009-11-10T12:03:00.000Z

Rory and Bruno live in the Venetian Vista gated community, in a luxurious house. They’ve spent the best part of twenty years together, since college. The Good Neighbor begins when the empty house next door gets occupants. In a coincidence (or not, as the writer wrote it that way, I suppose) the neighbours turn out to know them from college. Meg and Austin are a Baptist family with two sons – Noah and Josh. Within a few minutes, the kids have shown the adults up in the tolerance stakes, as they don’t bat an eyelid over Rory and Bruno’s obviously intimate relationship.

Predictably, Rory and Austin become close as they are the designated ‘house husbands’, cooped in over a humid autumn, with only their pools and pills for company. I was convinced that the story would end with Rory and Austin moving in together, and Meg and Bruno setting up house, as a lot is made of Bruno’s previous marriage to a woman. Although I won’t give the ending away, I will say that this doesn’t happen.

It’s quite a short book, which was handy as I’m still catching up from Pessl, but it does manage to fit a lot in. Quinn obviously enjoys writing, as it was easy to read and easy to distinguish between character voices, for the most part. The parallels between the heterosexual and homosexual couple are apparent throughout – the wage earner holds the power, both stay at home partners feel undermined, emasculated at times. Although it felt a bit forced, it was interesting that sex, as in gender, was not important.

Despite being interesting, I also felt that the concept of gay fiction is a bit strange. Perhaps I’m being naïve, but society today is comfortable with gay/lesbian/bi-sexual/transsexual relationships in a way that it wasn’t twenty years ago. My opinion is that, if it’s not that big a deal, why have a section of literature dedicated to how it’s not that different to heterosexual relationships? I suppose there are people who do not agree with lifestyles away from their norm (i.e., married at 18, 2.4 children etc) but I’d like to think that they wouldn’t read this, in which case, Quinn is preaching to the choir.

There’re quite a few references to the fact that Rory is Catholic, and the other couple are Baptist. There’s an irritating conversation where Meg lectures Rory on what Christians believe, where Rory internally comments that Catholics are Christians. I found this irritating because if you believed that your faith was the correct one, a gentle correction is going to enlighten the speaker and defend your position. Instead, he grumbles about it to himself, which is surely not the Christian thing to do. It feels a little bit like the author’s waving a sign around which reads “See!! Gay people are just like ordinary people!!”.

On the other hand, there are very few ‘mainstream’ novels that I am aware of which feature a gay couple as main characters. If I was gay, I’d like that there were novels (Jay Quinn has written a dozen of these) which concerned my lifestyle, from walking the dog to having sex. I’m no prude, but the intimate moments were unexpectedly graphic. It was obvious that there may be ‘scenes of a sexual nature’, simply because another of Quinn’s books that I picked up in the library came under the ‘gay erotic fiction’ label.

Aside from this, much of the novel revolves around Austin’s voyeurism of Rory and Bruno, as he watches them in their back garden. Again, perhaps I’m being naïve but I didn’t really see why it was necessary to strip each other in the pool, in full view of everyone. Intimacy isn’t displayed with half drowned blow jobs, in my opinion.

I know I’m in danger of sounding slightly Daily Mail, and I am finding it hard to articulate what I thought of this book without coming across as homophobic or falsely tolerant. I enjoyed the writing, and the characters were largely rendered successfully. However, no-one got away with occasional broad strokes about their personalities, from their sexual preferences to their alcohol tolerance.

To summarise, the main themes of the book – love, loyalty and independence – could all easily have been covered with any combination of couples, and often is. It was refreshing to see the main couple being gay, but in 2009, I felt guilty for being surprised. Although there were irritating affectations (such as Bruno telling Meg that nine year old Josh is gay, as ‘they’ can spot ‘em young) there were incidences of charming writing, which kept me reading.

P is for Pessl

2009-11-04T15:31:00.000Z

For P I read Marisha Pessl’s Special Topics in Calamity Physics. I’m disappointed in myself for this one, because I started reading it early and it still took me two weeks to read. Never fear, dear readers, I’ll catch up with the Challenge. Sometimes, though, life gets in the way, and this month has been an exceptionally busy one.

Despite this, I read for about the time I would normally read for – probably longer, as I had a couple of train journeys as well. It’s not that long, but it’s quite densely written and you can’t afford to skim sentences, as you’ll find yourself wandering around in the text, lost amongst the characters’ conversation.

Marisha Pessl (thank you, wikipedia) was born in the late 1970s, and after her parents split the family moved to North Carolina. Apparently she had an intellectually stimulating upbringing, with her mother reading aloud to her children before bed. This is perhaps the inspiration for Special Topics in Calamity Physics, where Blue van Meer is an intellectually stimulated teenager who moves around America with her professor father. Write about what you know, I guess.

The writing, although awkward in places, does it’s best to engage the reader with a fairly unwieldy plotline. Pessl clearly loves language, and playing with sentences. She frequently anthropomorphises inanimate objects, pets, even emotions, which is usually amusing, although it got wearing after a little while. The other aspect I found interesting was her ability to make the reader react – she describes facial expressions so well that I found myself copying the character’s, using her description.

Blue is an extremely intelligent sixteen year old girl, brought up by her father after the apparent suicide of her mother, when she was very young. Her thoughts, and indeed, the book’s prose, are littered with pop culture and literary references from all eras and areas – high and low brow. It reminded me a little of Gaarder’s Sophie’s World, that non fiction Philosophy textbook masquerading as an endearing (though slightly creepy) relationship story. It was quite fun to recognise references, although usually Blue explained them anyway, so don’t be daunted by this. The made up references were more confusing – writings by van Meer featured heavily, along with websites that I am more than half-tempted to look up, just to see what’s there. The other bonus with having books referenced is that you collect other books on your to read list. The snag is when there are books you want to read which aren’t real. I just spend ten minutes looking for the Charles Manson biography “Blackbird singing in the dead of night”, only to find that it’s fabricated. I suppose that’s the mark of a good writer, or one of them, at least.

The plot revolves around Blue’s senior year at a new high school, where she meets film teacher Hannah Schneider and an elite group of seniors – the Bluebloods. They’ve all been picked by Hannah to socialise with her in a faux study group. It reminded me of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History – a group of teenagers construct a secret society with dire consequences. Except, there weren’t, really. Although you find out at the beginning of the book that Hannah Schneider commits suicide, it’s not really until the end hundred and fifty pages that the story comes out about it. I think the book suffers from a stilted pace, as if Pessl didn’t employ an editor, but wrote everything she wanted to write before realising that nothing much had happened for three hundred pages and she needed to wrap it up. It also reminded me of Arundhati Roy’s God of Small Things, where Something Bad is going to happen for three hundred pages, and when it finally does, I’d lost interest in the Terrible Thing.

I was a bit bewildered by the third act, to be honest. I don’t want to give too much of the story away, but there are a number of plot twists in the last hundred pages which left me reeling with information. Other events in the story click into place as being finally relevant, but by that time I’d either forgotten where they’d been mentioned or they felt shoehorned in at the last minute. In this way, it’s a good book to re-read, and I think it would be great for a book club, as there are so many different aspects that a good discussion would be interesting.

In the same way that Blue’s life echoes Pessl’s, the book imitates itself. The film L’Aventura features heavily, which, we are told, revolves around a missing woman who is never found. A quick imdb search reveals that this too, is a fabrication of Pessl’s. However, although Hannah does not disappear, the book is not wrapped up and there is no pertinent ending. Some people may find this frustrating, which is understandable, but I enjoyed the confidence inherent in finishing a book without closure. The book also begins with Blue introducing herself (although you don’t know her name until a fair amount of pages in) and explaining that she’s writing a journal for her grandkids. This format does not continue all the way through, but there are some nice touches, such as the ‘hand-drawn’ visual aids which are sprinkled through the chapters.

I’d be interested in reading this book again as I’m sure there are loads of things I missed. It’s touted as the next The Time Traveler’s Wife, and my copy even has a quote from Niffenegger about how she couldn’t put it down. Sadly, I don’t think it’s going to enjoy that level of popularity, but it’s still worth reading if you fancy something a little more challenging and thought-provoking.

O is for Oates

2009-10-16T10:49:00.001+01:00

Rape: A Love Story is a deliberately provocatively titled novella by the prolific writer Joyce Carol Oates. According to wikipedia (which is always true) she has written over fifty novels, earning her Pulitzer Prize nominations. She is also a literary critic, professor, short story writer and a playwright.

The fact that she is a playwright explains why the book is written in a very specific way – half article, half perspective. It’s written in small sections called things like ‘If’ or ‘She had it coming’, similar to newspaper articles. In fact, the title of the book comes from a newspaper headline later on in the book.

The plot is tragic, shocking, and even more affecting because things like that happen every day. Teena Maguire is gang raped and beaten nearly to death while her twelve year old daughter, Bethie, huddles in a corner. The physical injuries are horrific enough, leaving Teena in a coma for weeks and Bethie with a dislocated arm, along with dozens of bruises and cuts. The worst injuries are, of course, the mental ones. Not only do the Maguires have to come to terms with the events of July 4^th, but also the fact that the town of Niagara Falls turns against them. Teena Maguire allegedly was drunk, high, a known prostitute – she deserved it, she was asking for it.

As the reader, we’re obviously on the Maguires’ side. Persecuted by the family members of the accused, threatened by the accused themselves, there’s nothing they can do to protect what innocence is left. That is, until Detective Dromoor comes along. For some reason, he’s drawn to Teena and her daughter. Perhaps it’s because he was first on the crime scene, or the sniper training he had in the army made him believe that justice should be done, even if the court fails. The court fails – some hotshot lawyer persuades the judge and jury that Teena Maguire was indeed drunk, high and a prostitute. The evidence found counts for nothing as it’s her word against theirs – they have the law on their side. Again, this is a shocking turn of events, made even more unbearable by the fact that this kind of thing happens all the time.

In the face of this injustice, Dromoor takes the law into his own hands. Some of the accused go missing, get shot, change their minds.

The questions raised are interesting. Is vigilante justice right? Should we rely on the law to protect us? Can we blame Teena Maguire for taking the shortcut through the park after midnight in July, after twenty four hours of celebrations?

I can easily see this as a play – there are definite scenes, turning points, character arcs. It’s told mainly from the daughter’s point of view, in a voice which is sometimes childish and sometimes too adult, as if she’s repeating things she’s overheard. Some of the snippets are told from the future, when Bethie is married. The ordeal still touches her though, she has never told her husband. Her mother never recovers – not physically or mentally.

It’s pretty bleak, to be honest. Despite that, I still enjoyed it. It was thought provoking and it made me angry – a sure sign that a book is well-written. Oates loves language, and plays with it easily and confidently. Her sentences are written with impact in mind.

I’d recommend this to anyone who enjoys Arthur Miller, Harold Pinter or perhaps Alice Walker. It only took me a couple of hours to read, but I have a feeling it’ll stay with me for a while yet.

N is for Noble

2009-10-08T16:05:00.002+01:00

Things I Want My Daughters to Know is one of those books, with the pastel covers and the potentially heart rending plotline. Elizabeth Noble is one of those authors, with a plethora of novels behind her with titles such as The Reading Group and Alphabet Weekend. I know I shouldn’t be dismissive as sometimes an author has little to no control over art work, and publishers know that shoes and pastels sell to women.

The plot is pretty straightforward – Barbara has died of terminal cancer, leaving behind four daughters and a second husband. It becomes almost like a modernised Little Women, with four very different characters vying for attention in different ways, as well as dealing with the absence of a parent.

There’s Jennifer, the oldest and most staid daughter. Her marriage is falling apart because the wanted child has failed to appear.

Then there’s Lisa, the second oldest and the former wild child. Her long term partner wants to get married but she is afraid of the commitment.

After that there’s Amanda, the wandering nomad who is so averse to confronting her issues that she wasn’t even present for her mother’s death.

The youngest child is Hannah, separated from her sister by decades and blood, as her father is her mother’s second husband, Mark. At nearly sixteen, the loss of her mother is perhaps most keenly felt by her as she struggles to cope with the teenage years without her.

The clever thing about the novel is that Barbara is a character of her own, despite being dead before the first chapter. She comes to life through letters she wrote to her family and a journal she kept throughout her illness. It’s full of anecdotes, memories and advice – the titular things she wants her daughters to know. It turns out, though, that there is a difference between the Barbara that her family knew and the one in the journals.

The one in the journals is full of secrets – she makes mistakes and gets things wrong. This is a departure from the saintly mum the girls remember, and the perfect wife of Mark’s memories.

The rest of the story ambles through the ups and downs of basically the first year without Barbara, as all of the women manage their own struggles, with their mum’s advice in mind. Her husband also manages to begin to make a new life by the end of the book, with some advice from her journal.

There was nothing really wrong with this book, I just didn’t really find it engaging. I also tend to be unaffected by so-called tear-jerkers (unless they’re the donkeys on TV, but I blame the anthropomorphic slant on the advert) and so got to the end of the novel dry eyed. The sisters were all consciously ‘different people’ but I felt that it was a bit too conscious. Maybe I’m just being pernickety – after all, it’s a fictional story, of course it’s going to feel like someone made it up.

People who enjoy an easy read, with familiar characters, will enjoy this. Personally I was looking for something more – deeper, more well rounded characters and less predictable plot lines.

Next week - Joyce Carol Oates' Rape: A Love Story. Looks like a fun read.

M is for Musso

2009-10-06T14:29:00.003+01:00

I’ve been waiting to read Will You be There? by Guillaume Musso for ages. I caught a very small review of it over a year ago, and for some reason I felt compelled to read it. I’m a sucker for a time-travelling relationship story. Before you go on, I’m probably going to tell you the plot so please only read the last paragraph and not the middle bits.

The basic premise is that Elliott is a sixty year old, incredibly successful surgeon who lives in San Francisco. He has a twenty year old daughter and a best friend whose friendship has lasted forty years. At first glance he has it all, until it’s revealed that he has terminal lung cancer. He has also never gotten over his first love, Ilena, who died in an accident thirty years before.

A chance meeting with an old Cambodian witch doctor (in Cambodia, not San Francisco, so not that chance, I guess) leads Elliott to ten small golden pills which will grant him his final wish – to see Ilena again. Once ingested, each of the pills transports him to his thirty year old self for around twenty minutes. His thirty year old self is a bit taken aback. Sixty year old Elliott ends up blurting out that Ilena dies to his younger self, who immediately demands to save her. A furious tangle of time and emotions ensues, where Elliott at 60 doesn’t want his daughter’s life compromised (as she is not Ilena’s) and Elliott at 30 wants Ilena back more than a daughter he’s never met.

I know. Haven’t they ever seen Back to the Future? Don’t they know what meddling with the past can do? People disappear! Actually, they don’t. Ilena is saved from a killer whale type animal biting her head off because young Elliott keeps an appointment he’d cancelled the first time around. However, part of the pact with his double was that he had to save her and break up with her, to make sure his daughter would still be alive. The break up results in Ilena throwing herself off the Golden Gate Bridge, and miraculously surviving. This is probably because old Elliott is there to point out the blood leak in her brain which they missed the second time around, so she died anyway. So, third time around Ilena is alive but every one of her limbs is crushed. And Elliott isn’t allowed to see her anyway. Brilliant.

Added to that, he falls out with his best friend Matt because for some unfathomable reason he isn’t allowed to tell him anything more about his double or the pact they made. As if time wasn’t messed up enough already.

So, in the present time Ilena’s alive but alone, Matt’s married and rich and Elliott’s a terminally ill single dad. So far, so good. With only thirty pages left though, Musso needs to wrap it up to a slightly happier ending pretty quickly. So Elliott dies of cancer, leaving Matt with a journal which explains everything, quite handily. Through a convoluted pathway Matt finds the LAST golden pill and realises that Elliott meant for him to take it. Matt drives to Ilena, gives her the diary, explains to her what he’s going to do (bring Elliott back) and then takes the pill. He finds himself in hospital where his younger, former best friend is far from amused. He’s on the roof, smoking, so Matt has just enough time to warn him against cigarettes and stub it out before being dragged back to the present. At which point, Elliott is alive and walking along the beach, where Ilena meets him. Yay.

It felt like a long ASH advert. I felt cheated. As if stopping smoking would mean he’d be alive thirty years later – he could’ve been hit by a bus, exploded with stress or taken the gateway drug to heroin and overdosed. I also didn’t care about Ilena and Elliott.

It was a novella, really. The story felt too big for this but too small for a proper novel. It could have made a cracking short story, nestled in amongst others along similar lines – fate, destiny, love, life. There were really only three characters in the story – Matt, Ilena and Elliott and to be honest, I kept waiting for the wife swapping to happen. It never did. Perhaps that would have made it more emotionally involving.

The story was interesting though, but I felt that it’d been semi-covered so many times before that I may as well watch Back to the Future.

There were some odd points in it too, though. Time travel aside, I expected the older Elliott to recall when he was younger Elliott that the older Elliott came to see him nine times. Except he didn’t, or at least he didn’t appear to. Matt’s memories changed, but Elliott’s didn’t. Old Elliott talked to old Matt before being told that they hadn’t talked in thirty years. There didn’t seem to be a solid theory for how memories work in the ever changing timeline.

I’d recommend this to anyone who fancies a bit of a departure from standard boy meets girl, boy cheats on girl pastel covered novels, but don’t expect a philosophical masterpiece, will you.

What I want to be when I grow up...

2009-10-06T13:49:00.003+01:00

I want to have this job.

It would be pretty cool, although stressful. How embarrassing would it be to shortlist 12 completely different books to everyone else?

What's your dream job?

L is for Lehane

2009-09-28T17:32:00.003+01:00

I promise to try to keep the film versus book review to a minimum in this review.

However, there will be a bit of it – I’ll try to keep it to this section. Gone, Baby, Gone, is a book written by Dennis Lehane. Lehane also wrote Mystic River, directed by Clint Eastwood and with a galaxy of stars. Gone, Baby, Gone was the directorial debut of Ben Affleck. If you’re in the UK, you’ve probably never seen it as it got a pretty limited release. That’s because the missing child in it looks a little bit like Madeleine McCann. Nevermind that the book was written in 1998 – I reckon that if The Two Towers came out now, it would also have a delayed release.

Anyway, so the book is about two private investigators, Angie Gennaro and Patrick Kenzie. Apparently it’s a sequel, as all the way through there are references to another case which the two were involved in. This was slightly annoying, although I think I’d find it more annoying if I’d read the other book and then had to put up with repetition of prior knowledge in this book.

Amanda McCready is a three or four year old girl who is reported missing by her good for nothing junkie mother. The police, the neighbours and the rest of the family aren’t doing enough, so the PIs are hired to chip in by the aunt and uncle. Over the next few hundred pages, a story unfolds with lots of shady characters and corners for Gennaro and Kenzie to poke around in.

There’s nothing technically wrong with Lehane’s prose, but I found it to be sludgy and slightly boring. After reading Kesey last week, it was disappointing to read Lehane’s clunky dialogue and awkward exposition. Amanda’s age changes between pages – she’s referred to as a three year old on one page and four two pages later.

Besides that, he repeats himself a lot. Like a lot. Like, enough times to fill Wrigley field ten times over. And he loves Boston. And Ireland. Like, everyone’s a Boston Irish. And they love America. And Ireland. Well, you get the idea. Probably the worst part of this was that Lehane thinks he’s a good writer, evidenced in the swagger of his paragraphs.

I also found the characters difficult to tell apart. From the cops to the villains, they all had a 2D, cookie cutter feel about them which meant it was hard putting a personality to the name. Even for the big reveal, I struggled to remember was involved. Helpfully, Lehane reminded the reader of who everyone was. Even the main characters were difficult to pin down – at the end of the book, I knew nothing of Pat and Angie. I had no emotional investment in them because all I knew was that they were private detectives who semi-lived together.

The plot was let down by the sketchy characters and sludgy dialogue, but was still interesting. I can’t go into too much detail because there’s a pretty big twist at the end. Basically, it’s a morality tale about how sometimes justice fails and normal citizens find that they have to do things they think are right, but the law doesn’t. The most pleasing aspect of the book was this grey area between good guys and bad guys – you don’t get very good or very bad guys (or gals), but a caricature of what normal people are.

Another thing that turned me off Lehane was how negative the book was (I know, just read the review for a bit of irony, right?). Of course, in a book about child abductions it’s not going to be rainbows and lollipops all the way, but there were needless niggles and character aspects built in to random people’s personalities. Bubba’s hatred of The Smiths seemed to transcend the character and come straight from Lehane’s mouth, and so didn’t seem relevant or appropriate. Also, I love The Smiths. There were other examples, which have been buried elsewhere in my brain.

Gone, Baby, Gone is not a bad book, but there are millions of better ones out there. My recommendation, if you like crime, is to read Marshall Karp or Christopher Brookmyre.

K is for Kesey

2009-09-28T16:43:00.002+01:00

Everyone knows the story of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. If you haven’t seen the film or read the book, you’ve seen one of the parodies floating around – Spaced’s being the best one, in this reviewer’s humble opinion. The main character, Randle P McMurphy, draws everyone around him like a moth to a flame, dominating the narrative. Right? Wrong. The book’s narrator is Chief Bromden, the apparently deaf and dumb Indian revealed to be the eyes and ears of the mental hospital.

This angle for the book gives it a whole new level, another perspective that I wasn’t expecting. McMurphy is larger than life, and Jack Nicholson’s performance in the film one of his best because the character was so well drawn by Ken Kesey. The fact that the reader does not get to know his innermost secrets works really well, as Chief idolises him in the same way as the other inmates do. In fact, he’s probably closest to him as their beds are next to each other’s. McMurphy figures out that Chief is not deaf and dumb, but has simply got used to everyone assuming that he cannot speak, and therefore cannot hear. McMurhpy gives him his voice back, and gradually moves him out of the fog that has engulfed him for so many years.

For those who don’t know the story, McMurphy breezes into the ward as a convict in prison for assault and battery, who decided that he would be better of serving his sentence in a comfier mental hospital. While there, he galvanises the other patients as far as he can, setting up poker tables, monopoly, televised sports games and even a fishing trip. Nurse Ratched presides over the ward, and is not pleased that everything is changing. There follows a battle of wills between McMurphy and Ratched where the reader is not always sure which is the patient, the clinically insane.

Mental health is obviously a big theme for the book, and it’s hard to decide sometimes who is struggling with serious issues and who is simply a ‘normal’ person, dealing with everyday issues. Chief sees everyone as machinery, being ‘fixed’ by the faceless Combine until they fall into line in the outside world. Amazingly, this way of looking at things becomes normal very quickly, although there’s still the nagging feeling that Chief is seriously damaged from years of electro shock therapy.

McMurphy validates his hallucinations quite late on in the book. Chief hears a noise under his bed, and looks down to see one of the aides scraping off chewing gum from the bed. I thought it was another one of Chief’s waking nightmares, until McMurphy props himself up on his elbow and asks what he thinks he’s doing down there. This small exchange makes the reader question each episode that the Chief has described – is he really certifiable, or is he seeing things the way they really are?

On the flipside, Nurse Ratched is clearly a few sandwiches short of a picnic. This is even pointed out by one of the ‘sane’ adults, another nurse who runs the Disturbed ward. If Nurse Ratched is meant to be normal and is clearly not, what does that say for the people in her care who are meant to be insane and don’t appear to be?

Kesey is described in the introduction (yes, I read those too) as being part of the Beat generation – Kerouac, Ginsberg and so on – but to be honest I felt that this was more because he was in the right place at the right time (he had a van they could borrow, for example) and less because of his writing. Maybe that’s being unfair – if anyone knows more about Kesey’s involvement with the beats, please feel free to share it. Whether he was on the periphery or not, the writing is beautiful. Chief conjures up nightmare images of people carved open to reveal machinery underneath, clouds of cotton enveloping and disorientating all of those inside. The characters are all sharply defined, from the hapless Billy Bibbit to the closet homosexual and McMurphy’s rival, Harding.

If you’ve seen the film, read the book. If you’ve seen clips of Jack Nicholson as McMurphy on E4’s 100,000 Greatest Actors Ever Countdown Part 5, read the book. If you’re interested in mental health, read this book. I cried like a small child at the end because Kesey created his characters so skilfully and subtly, I didn’t even realise I cared until I finished the last page.

J is for Jewell

2009-09-18T12:45:00.000+01:00

I went for a very easy J – Lisa Jewell’s Vince & Joy. I object whole heartedly to labelling or pigeon holing anything from music to films to books, but very generally speaking so-called chick lit is far too successful. There are some authors I like who are smeared with the chick lit brush – Meg Cabot has written some fun stuff, Jodi Piccoult tends to be tarred with it and Marian Keyes is capable of writing interestingly. Unfortunately Lisa Jewell does not fall into the category of ‘worthy chick lit’, if you will.

Vince & Joy follows the love, losses and tribulations of Vince and Joy. They meet as teenagers in a caravan park in Hunstanton (yay, East Anglia reference) where they enjoy two weeks of intense connection, and both lose their virginities, to each other. One morning, in fact, the morning after, Vince wakes up to find a soggy note from Joy where all he can make out is ‘I’m so ashamed’. He assumes that this relates to their night of passion, but of course the reader knows that it’s something to do with Vince’s pretty mother and Joy’s pervert father. When this is finally revealed, five hundred pages later, it’s a bit of an anti climax.

I read the whole thing so I obviously didn’t detest it. The story begins with Vince at a friend’s house, while they cheer him up from the latest dumping. They begin to talk about their first loves, and from there Vince tells the story of Joy. I liked this way of getting into the story, as contrived as it was.

The whole thing rattles along pretty well, lots of near misses, disastrous relationships on both sides and lots of fate/destiny moments to keep romantics happy. The other thing I liked about it was that it was told in the majority from Vince’s perspective. His voice is slightly feminine, but then his character is a bit wet so it fits in quite well.

Vince and Joy were obviously the main characters, but there were hundreds of other people involved who flitted in and out. Most of them were pretty well drawn, but a couple were confusingly similar. Vince and Joy both end up with kooky, hippy housemates at one point. Later on in the book, the woman I thought was Joy’s housemate has a revelation when she spots joy in a magazine. Of course, it’s Vince’s ex housemate who’s never met Joy, just knows about her. Maybe that’s just me not paying proper attention, but I did find it confusing.

Although the flashbacks are interesting, the five hundred odd pages propel the reader through inevitable relationship failures towards the end, where you know that Vince & Joy are going to end up together because they’re meant to be together. Of course, when that finally happens, the book ends. I was a bit disappointed with this – I wanted to see them get married and have kids and grow old together. I think that’s probably a compliment for Jewell, that I wanted to see more of the characters and wasn’t thoroughly bored of them.

I’d recommend this book, or any of the other near identikit pastel covered novels, if you’ve got a couple of hours to kill. Or you find it in a train station. Nice, but not really satsifying. The literary equivalent of a big bowl of vanilla ice cream. Good to have but you regret it when you’re starving later.

I is for Irving

2009-09-18T12:06:00.004+01:00

The I and J authors have been surprisingly difficult to find, although it’s been easier with surnames than it was with first!

My I is John Irving and his book, The World According to Garp. For me it’s one of those books, like The Fountainhead, which is always mentioned but very few people have actually read. I’ve had it for a while but hilariously, haven’t read it. The interesting thing about it is that I couldn’t find out what it was about – the back of the book gives nothing away and I didn’t want to use Wikipedia because that tends to give a page by page plot rundown, with no spoiler alerts.

So, for those of you in the same situation as me (fearful of spoilers but interested in the plot, here goes. It’s about Garp. And the world according to him. Ta dah. The book begins with Jenny Fields, a war nurse who wants a child but not the hassle of a husband. In the early pages of the book she slashes a would be paramour with her scalpel, which she carries in her bag for just those situations. At this point I thought the story would follow her life. She gets pregnant by a dying gunner called Garp, whose brain was so damaged by his injuries that he can only repeat his name. She names the resultant son Garp. Just Garp, at the beginning, but eventually giving in and bestowing him with initials – T.S.

She and baby Garp move into an all boys school where Jenny is the nurse. At this point the focus changes from Jenny to Garp as he grows up with the rest of the live-in children. The rest of the book follows his loves, his children and his running, entangled with subjects such as what makes a successful book, feminism, monogamy and the overall responsibility we have for other humans.

Garp’s an author, but much to his dismay Jenny becomes an author first, when her highly feminist novel A Sexual Suspect, becomes an international bestseller and a bible for disillusioned ladies. After that, Garp lives in Jenny’s shadow and the more she becomes the figurehead for beaten and bruised women, the more resentful he gets.

The World According to Garp is well written and interesting. It’s made more interesting by the inclusion of some of Garp and Jenny’s) writing throughout, defined by different font. Normally this irritates me in a book, but this time it helped to move the pace along and show the reader that there’s a change in environment. These books within books serve to deepen the layers of the novel, without meaning to sound too pretentious. When reading it I had dreams of unicycling bears and starving French armies, which I always think is a good indication of how good a book is – when it gets to you on a subconscious level, and leaves you thinking about it for weeks afterward.

Aside from being a story about a man who’s also a writer, lover, father, son, runner and wrestler, it also has a couple of stand out tragic episodes, tinged with really dark comedy. I don’t want to give anything away but the story builds and builds to a complex climax interwoven with all of the previous markers in the book. It made me read an extra thirty pages before going to sleep just so I could find out what happened. Unputtdownable, I guess you’d call it.

I’d recommend this to anyone who fancies a memoir/life story that’s a bit different – more thoughtful, thought provoking and well-written. I’m looking forward to reading more John Irving, in fact I think The Cider House Rules will be the next one.

H is for Hornby

2009-09-18T09:39:00.002+01:00

There must be some kind of zeigesty thing going on as my friend Owen wrote a blog this week on High Fidelity. Either that or he’s just nicking my ideas…

I’ve read this before, and obviously seen the film a few times, but I felt like reading something familiar. For those of you who don’t know, it’s the tale of Rob Gordon, a man recently dumped by his long term, live in girlfriend. It’s a single focus story which means, as with all first persons, that you can’t quite trust the protagonist. In this case, however, you feel that he’s more honest than most. Be warned, there might be spoilers ahead.

Rob’s not a very likeable person, but like any normal human being he has good and bad points in his character. He owns a record shop, Championship Vinyl. A quick google turns up about 60,000 hits for ‘Championship Vinyl shop’, and one site lists it as ‘the greatest record shop that never was’. Other than that, he’s in his mid thirties and still thinks he’s a student. He’s also obsessed with the past, and quite a large part of the book’s taken up with him tracking down all of his ex-girlfriends in an effort to prove that he’s blameless for his recent break up with Laura. Perhaps I’m being harsh, but that’s just the way I see it.

Despite this, though, I still like Rob Gordon. If I met him, I’d probably have a drink with him (not in that way) although he’d no doubt bore me to tears within about twenty minutes, talking about his top 5 songs not to drive to (Number One: Leader of The Pack) or quizzing me on my five first gigs, then cringing at choices I made more than a decade ago.

Music is a big part of the book, and it’s satisfying when you recognise the song being discussed, although it’s equally dissatisfying when you don’t. It’s the same with everything, I suppose – books, food, film… You’re part of a club when you know the reference, and when you’re not, you nod along and pretend you know what’s going on.

Another big part of the book is the location in London. Not the square mile, but the Zone 6 areas. It’s dingy and rundown but it grounds it in a reality that I felt the film lacked with an American setting. Don’t get me wrong – they did a good job transferring it, but everything was made a bit more shiny, glossy, hopeful. Marie LaSalle in the book is peaches and cream, slightly rounded, whereas in the film she’s Lisa Bonet – lithe, sexy and more coffee and cream. To be honest, these are minor gripes and I think both the book and the film stand up well to scrutiny. I have to wonder though, how happy Nick Hornby is at least two of his London based books being transferred across the Atlantic, the other one being Fever Pitch, which morphed from a football focussed book into The Perfect Catch, a baseball loving Jimmy Fallon wooing Drew Barrymore. I think the rights money probably eased that pain a little.

I’ve read a few of Nick Hornby’s books now, and High Fidelity is the most appealing one to me, probably down to the amount of music and the effect it has on Rob’s life, from teenager to middle-age. I’d recommend it to anyone who’s found themselves arranging their music in chronological order, or their films by director’s chronological order.

G is for Graham

2009-09-17T17:16:00.001+01:00

The Unfortunates follows mustard heiress Poppy Minkel through life as she dodges family obstacles and tries to be everything she wants to be. It begins with the sinking of the Titanic, as young Poppy searches for her father and comes upon their ‘Irish’ instead – the maid who her father was evidently having an affair with.

Books which have child narrators tend to suffer from the same fate – there’s a knowing tone from the author where the child describes what they see without context, leaving the reader to figure out what’s really going on. Sometimes this can work quite well, as in The Time Traveler’s Wife, where the voices of Clare and Henry are distinct from their adult selves but equally recognisable. Luckily Poppy isn’t a child for very long, as the story skips through her teens and early twenties, including WWI in the process.

She gets married, has children, moves from Paris to England and back to America in a relatively short space of time and without a lot of hassle – although by the time she comes back it’s the middle of WWII, she’s only really affected because she can no longer fly her bi-plane. This is another section of the book where you read between the not very subtle lines - Poppy is Jewish and so she finances the escape of a number of Jews from Paris, with the help of her artist friend. It’s frustrating because Poppy is not stupid – she has a number of businesses throughout the book and knows what she wants in other places, and yet she seems to be wilfully ignorant of huge issues, such as the German occupation. In one scene she re-visits the hotel she stayed in in Paris in order to re-claim her furs, left twenty years before.

Perhaps I’m missing the point – just because Poppy seems to care only for her furs and hats, does not mean she doesn’t care. There’s a fine line in writing characters, a balancing act where you want your reader to get to know your cast, without having their peccadilloes forced down your throat at every opportunity or conversely, knowing only what they say and not what they feel. Personally, I feel that Poppy was not written sympathetically enough. Parts of her story were tragic and heart breaking, but as a reader I tend to follow the character’s lead and as she soldiered on with her candelabra and boots, so did I.

I’ve read a couple of Laurie Graham books (the other being Gone with the Windsors) and I find that there’s a knowing, slightly smug humour which revolves around political in jokes, which I don’t generally get as my knowledge of early 20^th century royalty/American presidents isn’t great. Maybe that’s my fault for knowing more about Katie Price’s family than our Queen’s, but either way I’m not keen on feeling like I’m missing out on a book because I don’t get the references.

I understand why people like this and other Laurie Graham’s but for me she’s not a favourite author.

F is for Funke

2009-08-17T16:56:00.002+01:00

Three things you should know about Cornelia Funke and Inkheart:

This was translated from German
She is the second bestselling children’s author in Germany, behind she-who-shall-not-be-named
Inkheart is the first in a trilogy

So there you go. Number one is important because sometimes, I felt that some of the prose was a bit strange. I put number two in because I was surprised she was number two (because I didn’t think it was amazing) and I was surprised she was behind what’s her name (because Funke deserves better than that). Number three because, I found it interesting and it tells you a lot about a book before you even begin.

There is a huge tradition of fantasy novels which come in long, drawn out series. HP fans may well believe that it started with their mistress, but it started long before then. You could argue that Doyle’s The Lost World is the first in a series of fantasy books with Professor Challenger in (it has dinosaurs, it counts as fantasy) and that was written nearly one hundred years ago. Besides that, there are the more obvious choices of Lord of the Rings, Lemony Snicket, Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea, Pullman’s His Dark Materials and Garth Nix’s Sabriel/Old Kingdom. I wish sometimes that fantasy writers could write a story in one book, from beginning to end. Diana Wynne Jones does that pretty well, but most of them (let’s face it, most writers, no matter what genre it is) can’t resist a little overhang, a snippet of plot to hang onto and pull the reader into the next story. For those who like fantasy trilogies – any of the aforementioned come highly recommended, along with Marianne Curley’s Guardians of Time. As far as the little wizard and the precocious dragon riders go, I don’t recommend them.

Anyway, back to the plot. Meggie Folchart’s twelve year long life is turned upside down when a mysterious stranger turns up at her home, which she shares with her father, Mo. An adventure ensues where people and books get kidnapped and rescued, villains are met, stories unravel and so on.

Number one on the list features quite heavily in the next couple of points I have to make. I got very confused about the geography of Inkheart as quite early on in the book Meggie and Mo set out for Italy, which they claim will take about a day. Obviously my British arrogance was quickly uncovered because they don’t live in the UK, being German. Silly me.

The addition of relevant quotes from (mainly children’s) classics at the beginning of each chapter was a lovely idea, and I really enjoyed reading them and trying to guess where they were from before I read the bottom line. I also added a couple of books to my ever-increasing ‘I want to read that’ pile – TH White’s The Once and Future King being one of them. Ooh, I might read that for W.

I know it sounds daft, but I got the character names muddled in my head so I called Meggie ‘Maggie’ for 90% of the book, and Farid ‘Fraid’. I even managed to arrange Resa’s name to spell… well, you get the idea.

I realise I haven’t spoken about the story at all. Basically, Mo can read characters and objects into existence from the pages of books. The rules appear to be simple – it has to be aloud, it has to be meaningful and if a real live person appears, someone from our world disappears. A sort of less witchy The Craft type energy balance deal. Mo once read a real villain into existence, along with the mysterious stranger who first appears at the window at the beginning, and a couple of others.

One thing that bothered me was that when Mo read from Inkheart and made the fantasy characters into flesh, only one person vanished – his wife, Meggie’s mother. Perhaps I missed it, but I didn’t see a solution apart from ‘the two cats’ which don’t count later on in the book and don’t even match the total of three men and a marten.

I loved that books in Inkheart weren’t just things to do, but places to go. I know when I read a book I’m really enjoying, I actually go with the characters. I can see the Nine Lives of Island Mackenzie and Susie Salmon’s ‘heaven’ and the whole assortment of characters in Pippi Longstocking. This was literally true in Inkheart, where small boys spring to life and tin soldiers drop from the sky.

The idea is a good one, but I remembered that it’s not wholly original. Influences and influencers have always been around, which is fine, but it seemed like that was the one magickal part about the story. Characters come to life in Garth Nix’s Keys to the Kingdom trilogy and in the film of Young Sherlock Holmes (“Young Sherlock Holmes”, I believe) the stained glass window comes to life and tries to run the children through with his big sword. Remember that bit? Brilliant.

Still, I would have been more eager to read the other two books (Inkspell and Inkheart) if there was more to the story. I also felt that some of the phrases were a bit stumbly, which may be down to the translation from German. In some bits, especially the quotes at the beginning of chapters, words were even missed out which made it… interesting to read.

At the end of the book there’s an interview with Cornelia Funke, which is pretty cool as there’s quite a big section in Inkheart about how most people think that authors are dead and buried, rather than living. I reckon that was aimed at kids, in a not so subtle attempt to get them to read more and make celebrities out of the authors. I can’t remember the exact question or her answer, but Funke says that it was her daughter’s idea to put in the romance between Meggie and Farid. I had to double check on the romance, which had a couple of mentions where they look at each other. I reckon it’ll develop into something more over the next couple of books but really, could she not have fitted it in to one book?

It’s quite hefty, at nearly six hundred pages long, but I believe that Cornelia could’ve stripped about two hundred pages out of that at least. There’s a lot of repetition, and while I appreciate that you don’t want to read the same name hundreds of times, when she’s still called ‘Silvertongue’s daughter’ at page five hundred, it just looks a bit strange.

In conclusion, I probably won’t read the rest. Some parts of the book were lovely, especially the tin soldier section and the evident love of books. If I was twelve, I’d probably have loved all of them AND the film.

E is for Ellis

2009-08-17T15:54:00.003+01:00

I feel like I miss the point with Bret Easton Ellis. I’ve read half of American Psycho, all of Rules of Attraction and now all of Less than Zero, and it feels like a joke I don’t get. I couldn’t read American Psycho as all of the identikit businessmen were getting me down. We get it, everyone’s the same, we’re not individual etc etc. I enjoyed Rules of Attraction because it had more actual plot and better characters. Less Than Zero unfortunately falls into the first bracket of Ellis books.

Clay is a thin, blond, tan college student who’s come home for the holidays. All of his friends are thin, blond and tan. Most of them are college students, some of them are drug dealers but the majority of them combine the two lifestyles, while remaining thin, blond and tan. You get the idea – Clay’s rich parents don’t pay him enough attention, but neither do the parents of his thin, blond, tan friends, so it’s all okay.

There really isn’t a lot more to tell about story. I like the verbal motifs that crop up throughout the novel – Clay picks up on a phrase his friend says about driving (people are afraid to merge) which he builds on until it becomes a chorus of mis-matched, out of context and meaningful words on how shit life is.

Ellis reminds me of Douglas Coupland, but he lacks any of the wry humour and downright humanity present in JPod, for example.

Some things I learned from Wikipedia and imdb: Less Than Zero was Ellis’ first book. There’s a film of it too, released in 1987 and starring John Hughes muse Andrew McCarthy as the aforementioned Clay. Robert Downey Jr and James Spader also appear in the cast list, as fairly prominent characters. Interestingly, none of them are blond, thin and tan.

Seriously, if anyone can explain to me why I should like Ellis’ writing, please do. I don’t dislike it, and I can appreciate that his style may be loved by many, but for me he just doesn’t press the right buttons. There are only so many business cards, lines of coke or blond, tan people I can stomach without reading something else.

D is for Doyle

2009-08-17T15:52:00.003+01:00

For my D I read “The Lost World” by Arthur Conan Doyle. According to my trusty tool, Wikipedia, it was first released in 1912, which is pretty cool when you think about it, as it’s quite a long time ago and people can still read it! Unlike this new-fangled internet thing, where people skim read/look at pictures once and then forget about it. However, I shouldn’t bite the hand that’s feeding me, so to speak, so I’ll move on.

The Lost World tells the tale of Edward Malone, a journalist roped into meeting the awesome Professor Challenger by his gruff Scottish boss. Challenger challenges (arf) accepted scientific theories about evolution by maintaining that dinosaurs are alive and well in a remote part of the Amazon jungle. He’s also a bit of a livewire, which is a bit like saying that Mother Theresa was quite nice. Challenger is described almost exactly like Brian Blessed, except that he’s quite short. On Malone’s first meeting, Challenger rassles around his study and eventually out of the front door, where he is admonished by a passing policeman.

In a relatively short space of time, Malone finds himself agreeing to be a neutral party on the expedition to (dis)prove Challenger’s theories once and for all. Unsurprisingly, he volunteers for this mission to win the heart of a lady. When you think about it, there are lots of books and films where the driving force is love. James Bond’s raison d’etre is arguably to avenge the death of his wife. It also explains his rather offhand way with women in subsequent stories. Gladys tells Malone that she wants a man who’s adventured, experienced and can basically sweep her off her feet with a pinky.

I couldn’t help equating Challenger to Doyle himself while reading the book, mashed in with Brian Blessed. This was even harder to do when you add in what’s on Doyle’s epitaph:

STEEL TRUE
BLADE STRAIGHT
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
KNIGHT
PATRIOT, PHYSICIAN & MAN OF LETTERS

…which is basically what I want, along with Oscar Wilde’s “Wit”. Maybe a ‘Woman of letters’ instead. It is interesting that he has patriot on his tombstone but is buried in England. Perhaps he’s a British patriot. Either way, I reckon Doyle was a bit of a ‘character’.

Once the intrepid explorers actually arrive at the location, they pick up some guides to help them on their way. Aside from the phoenetic Scots accent, this is the bit that made me a bit uncomfortable, as my PC conscience started shrieking at me. The ‘natives’ are jolly nice red fellows, while the nonedescript cowboy types are villains, caught up in a blood battle which endanngers all of the nice white men. I suppose the book was written nearly one hundred years ago, and perception has changed a lot since then. It does beg the question though: Should I turn a blind eye to that part because Doyle created Sherlock Holmes and was a pretty decent writer, or should I shun all of his work because he didn’t think as equally as the majority of people do in this century? Rather like Fleming’s work (Mr Charming should be happy, lots of Bond references) , I don’t believe that you should ignore a body of work because you don’t agree. It represents a snapshot in time and society which can be kept forever, if we’re careful.

Aside from that, reading The Lost World’s a bit like reading a Famous Five novel where they are all tipsy from lashings of ginger beer. Proper beer, not that wimpy fizzy stuff. There’re lots of “jolly odd” and “fine chap, that one” as well as an Awfully Big Adventure in the form of a long journey, betrayal and obviously – dinosaurs.

Two things impressed me about this book. The first thing is that there was what appeared to me to be a plausible explanation for a previously undiscovered land where dinosaurs roam. In a nutshell, it’s that earthquakes moved the tectonic plates at some point, so that a section shot skywards. The animals stranded on the high clifftop went happily about their business for hundreds of years, rubbing shoulders with two sorts of humans and lots of creepy crawlies. That may not seem likely now, but there are still sections of the Amazon we do not know about, along with Australia, Russia and indeed, the sea. I like that idea more than the amber theory, anyway.

The other thing that impressed me was the sheer eloquence of the written words. Doyle manages to pack a lot into a relatively short novel – around three hundred pages. The characters begin in London, travel all the way to The Lost World, spend months there and travel all of the way back to London. Added to that, they also relate their tale to sceptical Londoners and there’s even room at the end to set up a sequel! Not a word was wasted, and I never felt like I was reading the same things over and over.

It’s not really my cup of tea, but I did enjoy it and would recommend it to people looking like a good old-fashioned adventure story, akin to Verne.

C is for Tim Clare

2009-07-29T15:41:00.005+01:00

This week I read We Can’t All Be Astronauts, by Tim Clare. Just like Joey D’s Submarine, I feel obliged to say at the beginning of this review that I know Tim, although I feel I know him better now than I did before I read his book!

The memoir makes for a compelling read as Tim stuggles towards his life long dream of becoming a published author, while his uni friends and colleagues breeze past him in the publication race. Conversely, you as the reader know that Tim’s dream will be realised because you are holding a published book, and without that you wouldn’t know about his struggle at all…It’s a little bit like watching something about the Titanic – you already know the ending but the story’s interesting, so you don’t switch over. In this case, it’s the race that matters, not the finish line.

Although it is a memoir, it doesn’t follow a linear narrative, choosing instead to move about in time. I enjoyed this approach as it kept everything fresh, as well as making the successful encounters more of a surprise, as they weren’t all at the end. Some of the stories told are funny, some are insightful and a few are really sad, such as the one where Tim’s grandfather dies in the car en route to the holiday destination.

There were two things I realised about the vignettes in the book. One is that Tim’s personal dialogue is always witty, concise and thought through. Knowing Tim, I can believe that 99% of the time, the dialogue was true, but as Memento taught us all, “Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the color of a car.”. Personally, I have trouble remembering what someone said to me ten minutes ago, let alone months or years.

The second thing is that hindsight is always valuable, and Tim’s approach to some situations was frustrating. Many people feel uncomfortable in social situations, and knowing that other people feel awkward can make it easier for you to deal with. In the book at least, Tim suffers from severe depression and that will make everything ten or even a hundred times more difficult than it should be. Walking into a pub on your own (with your friends on the othser side) will seem like climbing Mount Everest. I still found what seemed to be wilful self destruction frustrating at times.

I thought it would be weird to read a book by a friend, which features other friends, but it actually wasn’t. Far from feeling like a stolen journal entry, I giggled at nickames and drunken nights out, perhaps more because I know the people that were involved. The few celebrity sightings were placed at welcome points too, such as Amy Winehouse trapped in a human cage. Although it can be difficult to inject your own writing style into a memoir (or a review, for that matter) he does it very well through description – of scenes, of people, of emotions and so on. The Amy Winehouse scene stands out for me, perhaps because it made me realise that she is a human being. Not that I’m constantly chasing after her in my Shogun with my telephoto lens in the passenger seat, but celebrity publications have cast her in demon drug addict/voice of an angel roles for so long, I forgot she gets scared and happy and sad, just like everyone else. She does have horrible tattoos though.

We Can’t All Be Astronauts is compelling. I was worried that I wouldn’t have enough time to finish it, as it clocks up over three hundred pages and I didn’t begin reading it until I had recovered from Latitude, on Wednesday. Luckily, I found that it had such a nice pace that I finished it on the Friday evening. Bonus. I am definitely looking forward to a fiction book – perhaps something about dog faced boys, in the fantasy genre?

B is for Bennett, Alan

2009-07-24T12:11:00.001+01:00

I feel like I cheated a bit this week. The Uncommon Reader is definitely not one of Bennett’s longest novels, clocking in at barely one hundred and thirty pages. In this case, the old ‘good things come in small packages’ adage rings true, and I thoroughly enjoyed the foray into Our Majesty’s psyche.

So, the story begins with a travelling library in the grounds of Buckingham Palace. The Queen stumbles across it after chasing a wayward corgi into the bins. Feeling obliged to borrow a book owing to the etiquette instilled in her all her life, she does so. This opens the floodgates on her creativity and she begins to devour books at an alarming rate, alarming, at least, to the rest of her household. She employs one of the kitchen boys who she met in the library van to be her adviser, pointing her towards books and authors which she may be interested in. The Queen discovers a world she never knew before, where her status does not immediately command deference from the words itself. For the first time in her life, she’s treated like a normal human, the same as everyone else.

This new found interest causes discomfort for her public appearances – she’s late for appointments, disinterested in previous hobbies (shooting, walking etc), wears the same clothes day after day and is so passionate that she deviates from the ‘script’ when talking to her subjects. This last set of behaviour appears mortifying to her staff, who find themselves having to contend with a trolley full of books given to HRH by the public, once they’d caught on, as well as embarrassing, stilted conversations which would have lasted forty five seconds previously.

Eventually her reading leads to other things, and she begins to write instead. It’s oddly heart-warming – the Queen finally finds her own voice among the bloodline and is inspired to write. Not just a memoir but a fiction novel, much to her household’s horror. Bennett writes superbly as in a few short paragraphs he conveys the claustrophobia that she feels in everyday life – she is the freest woman in the kingdom but at the same time, she cannot do anything alone or without itinerary. Books help her escape, as anyone who reads can agree with. Her only sorrow is that she started too late to read everything.

I found her encounters with authors interesting, and the accounts of that were darkly comic, such as the one with TS Eliot. She reveals that she wishes she made more of her connections while the authors were still alive, as then she would have found something more to say than: “Good journey?”.

It’s a strange blend of real and fantasy, as Tony Blair (unnamed, but pretty obvious), the UEA Creative Writing department and even the Queen herself spring from the page, fully formed and human. At times it seemed real, as if Alan Bennett had squashed into a corner behind the curtain to write about the events at the palace.

I would recommend this book to anyone with a couple of hours to spare, who can identify with how consuming reading can be, especially in the face of a really good read.

A is for Jane Austen

2009-07-14T16:32:00.002+01:00

Reading Jane Austen is like watching The Wire. Bear with me, I have evidence to back this up.

Both The Wire and Jane Austen inhabit a completely different world to myself and the average watcher/reader. From location to dress to language to the complex social hierarchy, it’s a bewildering place to be. Stick with both, though, and you’ll find that in no time at all (four our five episodes and approximately a hundred pages in ) you find that not only do you understand what’s going on, you want to find out what’d going to happen next.

Both are ultimately rewarding, and for first time watchers/readers there will no doubt be a period where you recommend either/both to everyone you meet.

“Pride & Prejudice” is one of those books. You know, those ones, the ones that everyone has read at some point so there are lots of pieces of mis or half remembered plot all over the place. Personally, I read this at uni but reading it again, I fear I may have skipped over some parts as, quelle surprise, I hadn’t started my reading early enough.

I’ve seen the movie(s), caught some of the spin offs and read both Bridget Jones’ diaries, which owe a very large debt to Miss Austen. I’ve even seen Becoming Jane, with Anne Hathaway. Before last week, however, I don’t remember ever sitting down and reading an Austen from cover to cover for entertainment.

It was worth it. Pride & Prejudice is tense, exciting, emotionally involving and, above all, funny. I would like to have met Jane Austen, she sounds like one cool girl to go out with.

A quick plot rundown: Elizabeth Bennet is the second eldest of five sisters, daughter to mother and father at the bottom of the rung in society. Daughters are bad news as the estate gets left to the nearest living male relative, as girls don’t count. Their mother spends most of her time trying to marry off all of her daughters to the highest bidder, ruining an already precarious reputation. Their father keeps himself to himself most of the time, trying to avoid the tantrums of his nervy wife and younger daughters.

From oldest to youngest: Jane is the good, kind one, Elizabeth is the heroine – feisty, independent and generous, Mary is the dull middle one who only likes reading books, Kitty follows whatever Lydia says and Lydia is flighty and foolish.

Elizabeth would like to marry, but for love and not money, although money would be nice. Jane would like to marry for love, and nothing else. As the eldest, these are the girls who have more page time.

Like The Wire, there is a cast of thousands and everyone’s called ten or fifteen different names. Confusingly, Jane is also always called Miss Bennet even though there are four other Miss Bennets. Whenever someone marries they are referred to as their married name without transition, so if you’re not paying attention you need to go back and re-read. That’s another thing in common with The Wire – there can be no skimping on attention, as you won’t have a clue what’s going on if you do.

I was afraid that the love between Darcy and Elizabeth would turn out to be like the ‘love’ story in Wuthering Heights – two people who tortured each other to death ain’t a love story to me – but it wasn’t like that. There were beautiful explanations for everything, from Darcy’s aloof manner to Bingley’s sudden withdrawal from Netherfield. If you’ve read it, that’ll make sense. If not, it probably won’t but I don’t want to explain the whole plot – go and read it for yourself!

It took me a long time to read three hundred pages, a lot longer than it would have normally. Normally I can read about a hundred pages in an hour, depending on interruptions and subject matter. Instead it took me the best part of a week, including all of Sunday, a little bit of the following Monday and Tuesday morning. I think this was because the language was so different to what I was used to, and the type was tiny. It’s also quite dense – the paragraphs are quite long. As I’ve said already, though, about a hundred pages in you settle in and realise that you’re going to have to read everything, and maybe aloud, to understand what’s going on.

What Austen should I read next? I feel like it should be Persuasion, but I’m open. It might not be for a while but I’ll try to fit it in around the challenge!

Next week I’m reading “The Uncommon Reader” by Alan Bennett. We’re also off to Latitude so it’s lucky it’s a short book…

Half way point

2009-07-14T16:21:00.003+01:00

Can you believe I’m half-way through? Where have the last six months gone? I’ve settled into my new job, seen my brand new niece, celebrated countless people’s birthdays (including my own) and managed to read more than twenty-six books on top of that. Pretty cool.

Here are five things I’ve learned in the past six months:

1. There are TV or film adaptations for a lot of books. A lot. I haven’t got exact figures, but I’d estimate that about 60% of the books I’ve read so far will be adapted, have been adapted or, in the case of Dickens, have been adapted so many times that people read it with a certain adapation in mind. For me it was the Muppets.

2. I’m not very good at pacing myself. Every single week I tell myself that I will start reading on the Monday and leave myself with the weekend free, and every single week I read ten pages in the week and end up reading hundreds of pages on Sunday. Poor Mr Charming, our only day off together and I spend it reading. I will get better!

3. The length of the book does not dictate the time needed to read it. Just as in the old adage “Never judge a book by its cover”, I have also found that you cannot judge the time needed to read a book based on number of pages. At barely two hundred pages, Dorian Gray took me pretty much the whole week to read, and I made a good attempt at mid week reading too. Marian Keyes, a whopper at seven hundred pages, took me an afternoon, basically. Font size and depth of message counts for a lot, in that case.

4. Books are all about people. Even when it’s a lack of people (The Life of Pi) it’s about people. Even when you think there are no people in it (Buffalo Gals) and only animals, they are anthropomorphic animals.

5. Author names, first and second, seem to cluster around certain letters of the alphabet so I’d have hundreds of choices for ‘S’ but only one for ‘L’, for example. I suppose this is just like ordinary, non writer people names, but it does make the book challenge difficult!

So now I have the easier six months – weekly by author surname. This is where you lovely people come in.

I need suggestions for authors whose second names begin with the letter D onwards. I thought of Charles Dickens, but I read him for C so I’d like something different. I can read poetry, plays, non-fiction and so on, books I’ve read and books I haven’t – the only stipulation is that the surnames are in alphabetical order from Jane Austen. I would like it if I didn’t read the same author twice this year, and it would also be nice if the books weren’t too long/heavy i.e. Les Miserables or Vikram Seth’s tomes, which are all about a thousand pages long.

Thanks in advance!

Z is for Zadie Smith

2009-07-14T15:39:00.003+01:00

This was approximately my third attempt at reading Zadie Smith’s “White Teeth”. I’d tried before, and failed. Perhaps I found the neon cover too gaudy, or was put off by the five hundred plus pages the story filled.

After reading the whole thing, I think it may have been the fact that it just wasn’t very interesting. It basically tells the tale of Archibald Jones and Samad Iqbal, and the unlikely friendship that sees them through war, wives and the struggle with the new world as it springs up around them. The thing that confused me was that it begins with Archie trying to kill himself, with no Samad in sight, and then suddenly they’re the best of friends and will always be there for each other. Maybe that’s a bit harsh, after all, Samad does advise Archie to find a wife, but I didn’t really believe their undying friendship. Instead I felt that they were friends out of habit and because they were both too boring to have any other friends.

As small sketches, Smith does well with her characters. I liked the women of the story – Alsana Iqbal, Niece-of-Shame Neena and Irie Jones, but they weren’t allowed enough page time for me, and remained relatively two dimensional.

Despite the book racking up over five hundred pages, it felt rushed in places. The Clara and Archie relationship was born and over within fifteen pages, where it was relegated to the background for the rest of the novel. The climactic ending, where fate/coincidence/whatever brings both families together in one place on New Year’s Eve, lasts about five paragraphs, where Smith explains what happened to everyone. I found that to be very disappointing.

Interesting wikipedia information nugget #1 : there was a TV film adaptation in 2002, where Om Puri was Samad and James McAvoy was Josh. Josh? As in, the lardy, geeky Chalfen with a crush on Irie? That seems to be a bit of a mis-cast to me – McAvoy’s forearms are definitely not geeky or lardy. Naomie Harris is Clara though, which is cheering.

Anyway, back to the book. My main point is that, I didn’t really like it. Perhaps I’ve read too many books done after this one which tried to copy the time jumping, generation bending style, but I found it to be a little clichéd. If you want a generational story, read Kate Atkinson’s Behind the Scenes at the Museum. Everyone gets a say and most importantly, every story is actually relevant.

With Zadie Smith, I felt that every important part of the story was highlighted, red circled and underlined in gold marker so that none of us readers could miss it. The rest of the stuff felt like filler – the way Hortense lives (underground), how Irie feels (yes, we get it, she’s fat and unhappy but if she could only see how beautiful she is, yawn yawn) or Archie’s dead-end job.

I like to connect to characters, I want to root for them and cheer them on, cheer them up when they’re down and boo when they’re being moustachioed villains. I want to get to know them well enough that I don’t need to be told how they react to a situation or respond to a remark – I know that already. With White Teeth, I often got conversations between Clara and Alsana mixed up, and the kids were nigh on impossible.

There were scenes I did like though, like one between the kids and the old man they try to donate food to. I also began liking the Chalfen family as a fresh introduction, but got bored of them when they only ever seemed to do one thing each (Josh is jealous, Joyce is a mumsy flirt and Marcus is a flat out pervert, yawn).

Maybe I read it too fast, like when you watch too many episodes of Scrubs and start noticing the repetition of their catchphrases, like Dr Cox’s “Ahmjusgonnagorightheadan”, and it gets annoying very quickly. Maybe I read it in the wrong setting, perhaps it’s better suited to a beach somewhere. Whatever the reason, I don’t recommend this. Read On Beauty if you need to read Zadie Smith, for a book challenge or something.

Next week I’m reading Jane Austen. Although I will have finished it by now so that might be a bit late. Whoops.

Y is for Yann Martel

2009-06-29T17:08:00.006+01:00

I can't believe I'm on Y already. This year has disappeared - nearly half way through 2009...

Anyway, my Y book is Yann Martel's "The Life of Pi". I've read this once before, about six years ago.

For those of you who haven't read it, it's the story of a boy called Pi (Piscine Molitor Patel) who finds himself stuck in a boat with a 450 pound Royal Bengal tiger. The obvious irony is that he's called 'Swimming pool' in French and a large part of the story's spent in the water, but actually that didn't irritate me at all.

I don't want to tell you a lot of the plot, as I hate reviews that give away too much. However, I will say a couple of things.

Firstly, a lot more of the book is on land than I remembered. In fact, the whole first part is in India, where the reader gets to know Pi and his family life, as well as his love of God in his many forms.

Secondly, you know what happens to Pi from the beginning of the book, as his adult self narates the story. This takes the tension out, but it's intriguing to know how he conquers the tiger, and stays alive on the ocean for so long.

I found the character arc to be brilliantly written. Pi is forced by circumstance to inhabit a brutal role, one where he kills whatever he can to keep him and the tiger alive.

The imagery in these sections is breathtaking. When Pi kills a big fish, he describes how the colours of it's skin change rapidly, through all of the camouflage it knows. Pi likens this to 'killing a rainbow', an incongruent metaphor that drives home the brutality of his actions while maintaining the 'Pi' character.

Apart from Pi, the rest of the 'cast' are colourfully rendered and well rounded - surprising in a story which is about a boy and a tiger, trapped in a boat.

Pi is deeply religious, and follows Hinduism, Islam and Catholicism to the point where he is the subject of an argument between three holy men. This underlying faith runs through the whole book, allowing the reader to question and believe to a point where they ultimately make the same leap of faith as Pi does.

It was my birthday last week, when I read Life of Pi. I looked up Yann Martel in good ol' Wikipedia, only to find that his birthday is the same day as mine! Just as in the book, life contains strange coincidences that you can either put down to life, or make that leap of faith which elevates them to miraculous.

Next week, I'm reading White Teeth by Zadie Smith. I've tried reading it before, and it's pretty hefty, so wish me luck!

Have a great week, lovely readers.

X is for Xiaolu Guo

2009-06-22T14:58:00.004+01:00

My X is for Xiaolu Guo. 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth is the second book I've read by this young Chinese author, and the second one where I've read it as if written by a man. It's strange how it affects how you read books when you don't know who's written it (ah, Barthes will be having a field day) in the same way as you watch films differently when you don't know anything about the actors/actresses in it. I for one, am wholeheartedly with Daniel 'James Bond' Craig, when he says that he prefers his private life to be kept private.

When I read Shopgirl, I said it was difficult for me to divorce what I knew of Steve Martin, funnyman and Oscars host, from what he was telling me as the writer.

The other book of Xiaolu's I've read is A Concise Chinese-English dictionary for lovers, where part of the joke was that the title is obviously not concise. For both books, the main characters are female, and I was going to applaud the author for managing to express himself in a feminine voice, without reverting to standard male tactics to prove how sensitive they are. Of course, that backfired on me because I didn't check first.
Perhaps I should commend her instead on how well she writes as an emotionally detached woman - modern and sometimes shocking in her language, without being needy and dramatic. No Jimmy Choos or Louboutins in sight!

In 20 Fragments of Ravenous Youth, Fenfang moves from her village to Beijing at seventeen. She then writes in snapshots of her life as she encounters boyfriends, cockroaches and menial jobs. It's written beautifully - it's stark and startling at times. One episode sees Fenfang visit her parents, and the journey takes her three days and three nights. It's then that the magnitude of China itself, and Fenfang's decision to come to Beijing, sinks in properly. I enjoyed that you don't see every twist and turn, every lights out or first meeting for Fenfang. People come and go without fanfare - just as in real life. At the end of the novel she is ten years older - physically and mentally.

Her time in Beijing has been difficult, but somehow you feel that she is better for it - more fulfilled than she would have been if she'd stayed in the village she grew up in. Incidentally, in the book she describes this as so small it's not even on the map, but she mentions that it's home to thousands. It's the little comments that mark the location out as different, and yet Fenfang wants the 'shiny' things in life - just like the rest of us.

I would recommend this to people who enjoy Murakami - it's definitely the 'lite' version, but has the same minimalist feel to it. It's also really quick to read - this took me a couple of hours on the train to read.

W is for Wilkie Collins

2009-06-22T14:57:00.001+01:00

Okay, okay - I haven't finished this one either (see V) but as soon as I do, I'll replace this placeholder with a proper review. Apologies, dear readers - I have been reading other things though! x

V is for Virginia Woolf

2009-06-22T14:56:00.000+01:00

Okay, okay. You've got me. I haven't finished this yet. I'm about halfway through, and as soon as I do finish, I'll replace this with a proper review.

x

U is for Usrula Le Guin

2009-06-22T14:48:00.004+01:00

My U is Ursula Le Guin, legendary fantasy and science fiction writer. I wanted to read The Dispossessed, but the library didn’t have a copy of that, so I ended up reading Buffalo Gals, and other animal presences instead.
Buffalo Gals is an anthology of short stories and poetry, centred around animals and their effect on us humans, along with our impact on them. The first story is the most intriguing, and tells the tale of a young girl who finds herself alone and injured after the plane she was in crashes. A coyote takes her under her wing, and treats her like one of her own cubs. In the course of the story, the girl sees the coyote as human and not as a wild animal. When they go to the coyote’s house, the other animals who live nearby also appear to her as humans, but with animalistic traits and characteristics. The owl, for example, is wise, while the small mammals like the rabbits have lots of children. The other stories and poems range from a tree observing the development of roads and cars to rock sonnets. I mean, actual rocks, not like : rawk sonnets. Speaking of music, thanks to my love of It's a Wonderful Life, I couldn't stop singing Buffalo Gals for the entire book. That's not a bad thing, but it is still six months from Christmas. Boo.

Ursula K Le Guin, as she is sometimes known, was born in 1929 and has written countless numbers of books, poems and papers on a variety of subjects. According to her biography on her website, she’s also been winning awards since 1968. Now nearly eighty, she has yet to see a satisfactory adaptation of her work on the small or big screen. Sometimes I think that this is the mark of a great writer. The purpose of writing is to express something that can’t be expressed (which is probably why there are so many love songs) and ultimately, cannot be translated visually or as everyone has envisioned it. Roald Dahl has ‘enjoyed’ lots of adaptations of his work, but I have yet to see something that comes even close to capturing the spirit of his books. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory comes close, but still no cigar.
Some of you may remember the Studio Ghibli film Tales of Earthsea, which is an adaptation of Le Guin’s series of Earthsea books. She reportedly agreed yo this as she had seen Miyazaki’s My Neighbour Totoro. However, being the curmudgeon that she appears to be, the fact hat Hayao’s son, Goro, did it instead, did not hold well and she expressed “mixed feelings towards it”

I’ve never managed to read a whole Le Guin book before – I find them to be a bit dense and impenetrable. I’ve tried reading Earthsea, but it’s quite long, the text is quite small and her love of science fiction peppers the prose with unintelligible vocabulary. Like most authors, though, there’s a rhythm to her writing which is rewarding and almost soothing, once you get used to it. Once this challenge is over, I would like to begin with A Wizard of Earthsea. It’s strange and a bit unknown, but after reading Buffalo Gals I want to explore the world she’s written over the last forty years.

What about you? Is there a prolific writer that you’ve never read anything of because one thing put you off? Are you a Le Guin lover and have recommendations to ease me in gently?

T is for Tony Parsons

2009-05-22T09:40:00.001+01:00

I chickened out with my T this week – it was meant to be Thomas Hardy but I had a flick through Jude the Obscure, carried it around for a couple of days and then decided to read Tony Parsons’ My Favourite Wife instead. I will read Thomas Hardy, but I think it’ll take me a bit longer than a week to do it, and I wanted to read it under less tense conditions. I might start off with Far from the Madding Crowd or Tess of the D’Urbervilles anyway.

I’ve read most of Tony Parsons’ books before (you know, the ones with Darth Vader on the cover) and to be honest, they’re nearly instantly forgettable. I know I’ve read all of the Man and boy type ones, but when I read the synopses on the back I didn’t remember anything about them.

He’s got an obsession with Japan and the East which borders on unsettling, and induces a kind of impatience in me where I end up thinking “if it’s so good, then why don’t you bleedin’ live there”, which is perhaps a bit uncharitable, but there you go. He does have a Japanese wife, and by all accounts he visits a fair amount. Wikipedia comes to the rescue again. Another fun fact I learned was that he was married to Julie Burchill. I cannot stand Julie Burchill – she’s one of those snotty, smug and spiteful feminist journos I try to avoid at all costs. In fact, I was under the impression that her and Cosmo Landesman had had a lesbian-ish love affair all of their lives. I also dislike Cosmo Landesman. I can’t stand condescending film reviews, where they’re all one star unless there’re subtitles.

Anyway, enough about my personal likes and dislikes.

My Favourite Wife is the story of Bill Holden, hot shot London lawyer, who moves to Shangahi with his wife and child, amidst warnings of doom and gloom from family and colleagues alike. For a little while, it looked like the high life was being lived – limos, flowers, servants… As soon as the band of foreigners arrive at Paradise Mansions though, they realise that there are a lot of well dressed young Chinese women who get picked up by older men in nice cars, if you catch my drift. This immediately rankled with me – why would a successful law firm house a young family in a known spot for mistresses? Predictably, Bill falls in love with one of the girls, JinJin Li. Conveniently, his wife and child move back to Britain and she also has an affair/nearly affair, which makes it okay for Bill to have an affair.

This was the biggest problem for me. Perhaps I’m too black and white, perhaps I’m missing the point, but I always find it difficult to feel sorry for philanderers, no matter what their gender, age, circumstances etc. In this instance especially, “My wife doesn’t understand me” is not going to cut it. Bill spends a lot of the book wracked with guilt over his bit on the side, but I found these sections tedious. If he feels that guilty, why can’t he tuck it back in his pants and talk to his wife?

Aside from this, I enjoyed Shanghai as a character of its own (although I was cursed with singing the Ed Harcourt song all the way through the book) and I do want to visit China one day. I was disappointed with the heavy handed clumsiness around the sections dealing with factory workers in China, and the sheer difference between the rich and the poor. It was the equivalent of being poked in the face with a sharp stick: “See how bad you are, all you westerners with your money and your penchant for Gap jumpers, you’re killing the children and the country’s flooding and you’re up there in your ivory tower”. Like seeing adverts about African children – it makes me switch off. Unless there are starving puppies involved, then I weep like a little girl with a skinned knee.

Read My Favourite Wife if you can sympathise with adulterers, appreciate a clear message and aren’t looking for something you’ll remember in a week.

Next week I’m reading Buffalo Gals and other Animal Presences, by Ursula le Guin. Guess which song I’ll have in my head.

S is for Steve Martin

2009-05-21T16:50:00.002+01:00

My S is for Steve Martin. Yes, that Steve Martin. He of Planes, Trains and Automobiles and The Jerk fame. According to the internet he’s written no less than three, which I thought was pretty impressive, probably more so because I’d only heard of Shopgirl. Of course, this will come as no surprise to Steve Martin fans, who will know that he’s written a lot of scripts, including Three Amigos and The Man with two brains. (Thank you, imdb)

Shopgirl is the story of Mirabelle, a girl who works in the glove section of a department store in Los Angeles. She keeps herself to herself, although her inner monologue reveals someone who wishes she could create and maintain the kind of relationships she sees everyone around her having. Her friends appear to be disinterested, even cold, as they constantly forget about her. They even neglect her on Thanksgiving, after they made plans. I felt sorry for her, but it’s difficult to know how much is the way she portrays it, simply because it’s told from her point of view.

However, there’s a strong sense, from my point of view anyway, that she could make her life better by just being ‘normal’. This is probably not as sympathetic as I could be, considering the girl’s on heavy duty anti-depressants, but I couldn’t help feeling that a short, sharp “buck up” would have helped.

Mirabelle gets involved in a relationship with an older man called Ray Porter, who I predictbly envisioned as Steve Martin. He’s described as trim, graying and rich. He’s also besotted with Mirabelle, which makes for interesting reading. Martin is able to write from a woman’s point of view with apparent ease – none of Mirabelle’s thoughts jarred with me and I even identified with some of them. One criticism of the tone is that there wasn’t enough difference between Mirabelle’s internakl dialogue, and Ray’s. Perhaps this was a deliberate attempt at showing the reader how similar they were internally. Maybe it was to show that everyone feels like Mirabelle, on the inside, at least. The other possibility, of course, is that Steve Martin isn’t particularly good at changing tone for his characters.

If I had to describe the overall tone of the book in one word it would be: wistful. There’s a sense of loss, of missed opportunities and faded memories throughout the book from all of the characters, which I found hard to shake off once I’d finished. This, by the way, did not take me long – it’s a slip of a thing at barely 160 pages long. Despite it’s brevity, I don’t think the plot suffered.

I have to say; perhaps because I imagined Ray Porter as Steve Martin, I found the matter of fact sex scenes slightly uncomfortable. Ray’s basically innocent daydreams of a square inch of Mirabelle’s skin, glimpsed through a gap in her blouse, didn’t sit as well as they could have done when Inspector Clouseau’s narrating. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t disgusting or anything, but I definitely found the odd use of profanities, especuially sexual ones, more shocking coming from Steve Martin’s mouth.

Shopgirl wasn’t all doom and gloom – there were darkly comic bits too. Mirabelle has a cat which lives under her sofa, as it’s too shy to come out. The conversations between Ray and Mirabelle are comical too, as they’re an exaggerated version of chats that men and women have been having for centuries, where neither party gets the message properly.

I suppose one of the main questions that Shopgirl asked of me was: should she be pitied for her loneliness or envied for her independence? I would be inclined to say that she pitied herself for her loneliness, and this pity prevented her from seeing the good in her independence, and crippled her socially so she could not forge new relationships.

As you may know, there’s a film version of Shopgirl, which may well be another reason I identified Steve Martin as Ray Porter. I actually haven’t seen it yet, but I’d probably say that it’s worth taking a couple of hours more to read the book first, and then watch the film.

R is for Roald Dahl

2009-05-09T01:27:00.003+01:00

This week I read the double whammy of "Boy" and "Going Solo", in one volume. I read this countless times when I was younger, so it was very familiar.
Boy tells Dahl's story from birth to the end of school, when he was 18 and went to work for the Shell Oil company. Going Solo continues directly on from Boy, when Dahl ships off to Africa to work for Shell, all he way through until the end of WWII.
Roald Dahl writes brilliantly. I've read a large number of his books, for children and adults, and his writing is compelling whatever he's talking about. His stories always have a touch of magic in them, from Matilda to his adult short stories. In his autobiographies he applies the same approach - his anecdotes, especially his schooldays ones, tell tales of dead mice and grim headmasters - characters you can recognise from his fiction.
The best books are ones that can take you anywhere. In both of the books, his easy and descriptive prose transports you to wherever he is - swimming in the fjords of Norway, getting caned at school or flying fighter planes in WWII - the reader is right with him, all the way through.
Reading it again, probably more than ten years later, there are things I noticed for the first time. One is the lack of love interests, throughout both books. The next is the difference in writing between Boy and Going Solo - -the first is definitely written for a younger audience, while the second, which tells of snakes and lions and crashing in the desert, is aimed at an older audience. Both are accessible and friendly enough to not alienate either demographic.
If you like Roald Dahl and you haven't read these, I recommend them. I have a copy which has them both in if you'd like a borrow...

Next week I shall be reading "Shopgirl" by Steve Martin.

Q is for Quentin Crisp

2009-05-09T01:07:00.002+01:00

The Q is Quentin Crisp and his autobiography, "The Naked Civil Servant".
Quentin Crisp recounts the hardship of being a flamboyantly gay man in 1920s London, while carving out a living by writing, life modelling and designing adverts.
There were major two problems with this, the first being that I found it hard to relate to his situation, as I am neither male nor gay. Of course, I can empathise, but not easily for a couple of hundred pages. The other problem was that the structure was very close to George Orwell's "Down and Out in Paris and London" - both are poor and in London, basically. Comparing Crisp with Orwell's writing means that Crisp loses, unfortunately.
The parts about his appearance were interesting, but he writes himself as so self-involved that the rest of the characters are sketchy, pale - see through. There's barely a mention of his parents or any other family, and certainly no love interests. Crisp stumbles through fifty years of his life, describing it as a struggle and declaring himself to be largely useless. Based on his fame, this is either modesty or negative capability taken to the extreme.
Crisp has a gift for the one liner that's reminiscent of Wilde, and these made the book bearable. One that stuck out for me came near the end: "an autobiography is an obituary in serial form with the last instalment missing". This seemed fitting for him - he can't even complete his autobiography, by his logic at least.

P is for Peter Falk

2009-05-09T00:46:00.004+01:00

My P is Peter Falk's "Just One More Thing", his autobiography.
I'll bet everyone knows this already, but in case you don't, Peter Falk is an actor who's most familiar as Columbo, the bumbling detective. As I learned in the book, he's also an accomplished film actor and started out in theatre. Oh, and you can't forget 'Grandpa' in "The Princess Bride", obviously.
The book is quite short, and it's written very conversationally. In the opening chapter, Falk informs the reader that he doesn't really get on with long books which have long chapters, so his is full of anecdotes which are perfect for reading just before bed. This was a nice touch, and definitely came in useful before bed when I was too tired to concentrate for longer than ten minutes.
The downside to this is that the colloquialisms became a bit repetitve, but he's evidently such a nice man, you can forgive him for that.
Apart from the repetition, the anecdotes are fascinating. Falk reveals lots of juicy details about directors, actors and the role of Columbo, like when he talks about "The Godfather". At the time, he was getting a lot of gangster roles, so he was sent the script for "The Godfather". The way he tells it, the part that he was marked for didn't have enough meat on it, so he passed.
That's the next thing. With autobiographies, you take the author's word for it. In every single action or story in life, there are three sides - yours, theirs and the truth. It's not necessarily that you (or they) are lying, it's just that everyone tells it differently, and that's what makes autobiographies interesting.
Reading this made the recent news that he has Alzheimer's (although this is unconfirmed by the man himself) all the more poignant. Wikipedia lists his birth year of 1927, which is pretty amazing.
This is a nice, light read and is written so comfortably that you can almost imagine being in the Fred Savage position - having your Grandpa read his stories to you.

O is for Oscar Wilde

2009-05-09T00:25:00.002+01:00

So for O I read Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray".
I've read half of this before, when I was at uni, but never go to finish it. To be honest, I struggled through this. The story is too familiar to be surprising, and not engaging enough to be interesting.
For those of you who haven't had the pleasure: The Picture of Dorian Gray tells the tale of a man who makes a bargain that changes his whole life. An artist paints his portrait - a beautiful moment captured in oil, at the height of Dorian's perfection. Wilde conveys his Adonis-like stature well - the description is all broad brush strokes, leaving the reader free to fill in the detail for themselves. When Dorian sees the finished portrait, he immediately laments the inevitable loss of his youth and strength, which becomes the bargain, where the painting grows old but Dorian does not.
I like Oscar Wilde, I like that his blue plaque on his childhood home in Dublin has "Poet. Dramatist. Wit" on it I would like to be a Wit. I think the book suffered for being read in a week, though. In a week the quirks and phrases of a writer are amplified more than they would be if you read it in a month, and, just as if you spend a lot of time with someone, these quirks begin to grate.
Obviously, Oscar Wilde was a gay man who wrote in the 18th century, so girl power isn't going to be prevalent. There're only so many references and flip judgements about how women are only useful when they're not thinking or speaking, before it gets tedious. Good writing should surpass time and society constraints, but there are other things missing from the story.
Character-wise, I found Dorian to be a compelling person, but I also found that Wilde didn't paint him as deeply as he could have. Although the book spans decades of his life, the sense of time isn't there. Dorian's meant to afflicted by immoral urges, which show on his painting, but the instances of these, although shocking, are few and far between. It felt to me like an abridged version, as if it should have been a play instead, where the gaps could have been filled in with meaningful looks and pregnant pauses.
One aspect I did find interesting was the idea that the painting was the visual representation of Dorian's soul - not just the place where his wrinkles go. For each mean spirited action or thought, there is a marker on the painting. It made me wonder what my own Dorian Gray portrait would look like. Maybe I would regret it if I did see it.

Ni is for Nicholas Sparks

2009-04-18T12:25:00.001+01:00

My N is Nicholas Sparks, who seems to have a knack for writing books that are easily adapted for the silver screen. His bilbiography reads like a list of Most Tragically Romantic Movies Ever Made – “Message in a Bottle”, “A Walk to Remember”, “The Notebook” and “Nights in Rodanthe”.
I decided to read “The Notebook” for a couple of reasons. Number one – it’s really short, barely topping one hundred and fifty pages. Number two – I’ve seen the film, so I knew what the basic story was.
For those of you who’ve never had the pleasure of the book or the film, here’s what it’s about. It’s told from the point of a view of an old man in a nursing home, reading The Notebook to his wife, who has Alzheimer’s. He reads her the story ever day in the hope that she will remember him and their life together. The Notebook is the story of Noah and Allie – teenage sweethearts who are torn apart by class and time, but return to each other later in life. As the story wears on you realise that the story is about the old couple in the nursing home, a fact that isn’t immediately obvious because their names are different, explained by not wanting to upset the woman with Alzheimer’s.
I know that a lot of people love The Notebook, and have heard stories about strapping, macho men crying their eyes out at the strength of Noah and Allie’s love, pushing against their mental and physical constraints to snatch a few more minutes together.
Personally, I remain unmoved. Maybe it’s because the attempt to tug at the heart strings is blatant throughout the film and the book, or maybe it’s because there just isn’t time to get to know the characters and get involved. I think it’s more likely that it’s because I, as the reader, am told through the book that Allie and Noah love each other, when all we get are recounts of long distant memories, a few snatched days in the middle and a day at the end.
Please bear in mind, by the way, that I cry at absolutely everything. Last week, I welled up watching a portly Greek bloke and his chubby son dance around in harem trousers and blonde wigs on “Britain’s Got Talent” and the merest hint of animals in trouble (“Fido was found tied to a gate post, watching as his beloved owners drove away. All he ever wanted was to be loved back”) and I’m drowing in my own salty water. Not with The Notebook, though.
The fact that Noah’s the narrator for most of the book is a bit strange, too. It’s not that I’m against a male point of view, I just don’t think it works – I found it a bit forced, to be honest. His devotion to his wife was undoubtedly touching, but there was a part of me who wished he’d stop torturing her and leave her alone.
The good news, for people who like the story, is that there’s a sequel! It’s called The Wedding, and tells the tale of Noah and Allie’s daughter and son-in-law, as they struggle with their marriage and living up to the inexplicable love story that came before.

M is for... Marian Keyes

2009-04-06T16:05:00.001+01:00

This week it’s the turn of Ireland’s favourite writer – Marian Keyes. I read her newest novel, “This Charming Man”. In interviews, Marian Keyes exudes a kind of mumsy warmth with just the right level of sauciness – like an auntie, I suppose. Her novels are peppered with delightful Irish oddities such as “ride” as in: “He’s a ride himself, he is”. It’s Roddy Doyle without the depressing wife beating. Except, this one has that in spades.

The story is about Paddy de Courcy getting married, and the women he’s affecting by his announcement. He’s a politician ride, with sights set firmly on the Taoseich job. There are four narrators – Lola, his current girlfriend, Alicia, his fiancée, Marnie, his ex and Grace, Marnie’s sister. The different narrators are easy to deal with as they all have quite distinct voices. However, someone must have deemed the general reader as too thick to notice when a new narrator begins (generally the beginning of a new chapter) so each one is blessed with a font of her own. Lola, the kooky stylist with purple hair, has Comic Sans. I kid you not. It made my eyes bleed, especially when Lola got far and away the most page time.
The gist of the story (and I hope I don’t give too much away here – my advice is, if you want to read it, don’t read on) is that the women are devastated when Paddy announces his engagement to the unsuspecting Alicia. However, as the book wears on nasty memories are uncovered about Paddy and his preference for kinky toys and cigarette burns, which makes all of the women realise that he’s a bit of a cad, to be perfectly honest, and we’re all better off without him. The girls get their day and Paddy (boo, hiss) gets his comeuppance. Girl Power all round. Complete with the hand sign.

The other notable thing about “This Charming Man” (apart from having the same title as The Smiths song, which I sang in my head for the whole thing) is that it’s seven hundred pages long. That’s right. Seven HUNDRED. Admittedly I got the hardback copy, but reading the thing was pretty tough. I had to prop myself up with a cushion under the book, which got a bit uncomfortable after a while. Nevertheless, I managed to read it in four evenings, which is pretty cool and perhaps says more about the writing style than is polite. Despite the subject matter, it’s quite conversational and is really easy to read. Disconcertingly, on the back of the book there’s an intonement from Marian/Marian’s publishers: “Funny. Honest. Reliable. Trust Marian”, which further cements her position as mumsy but slightly saucy, what with all the kinky sex stuff and the domestic abuse. Hard hitting, if you’ll pardon the pun.

A Marian Keyes novel is the literary equivalent of Casualty – things go wrong, your favourite characters may be in danger but ultimately, you know that they’ll be okay and you’ll end up safe and sound.

Next week it’s Nicholas Sparks' “The Notebook”. Read it and weep, because I probably will.

L is for Louis de Bernieres

2009-04-03T18:00:00.001+01:00

I’ve been trying to read “Captain Corelli’s Mandolin” by Louis de Bernieres, for years. I remember about ten years ago, when everyone was reading it. On their holidays, on the bus, train, in the car and so on. So, I tried. I got as far as the old man with the pea in his ear, and then stopped. For people who’ve read the book, you’ll know what I mean.

The tone is stuffy, smug, pretentious. There are numerous changes in narrator which leads to confusion for the reader and a lack of involvement which makes it hard to carry on. The Challenge gave me the perfect reason to read it – I wasn’t allowed to stop! So I picked up my battered copy, which I think has been read by about a million people and travelled round the globe at least a couple of times, and began again at Dr Iannis and the old man with the pea n his ear.

De Bernieres manages to conjure up the Greek island through his prose. He never points things out and the character image is built up through offhand comments and sense you get, rather than a head to toe description. I suppose this is the mark of a good writer, strictly speaking. However, the effect was slightly ruined for me by my imagination being over-ruled by Nicolas Cage and Penelope Cruz, who played Corelli and Pelagia in the film. Incidentally, I’ve never seen it but have heard it’s pretty awful and not at all faithful to the book.

I struggled through the first hundred pages, which took me about a week. Eventually though, I got the rhythm and got more involved with the characters as the story began to unfold. I didn’t particularly like any of them – although their voices differed they all had an underlying tone of superiority that I found offputting. My favourite character was the pet pine marten, to be honest.

On Sunday I managed to read the remaining four hundred pages. It took a lot and I nearly fell asleep in the middle, but I did it. Only to find that it wasn’t worth it. It’s a great big let down. It wasn’t that I wanted a happy ending, and the fact that the story’s based around the occupation of Greece by the Italians and Germans, I definitely wasn’t expected sunshine, lollipops and rainbows, but a bit of a reward would have been nice. For those of you who’ve read it, you’ll know what I mean. For those of you who haven’t, you can read it if you like but expect a massive anti-climax. Huge.

It did make me want to visit Cephalonia though.

K is for Kate Atkinson

2009-04-03T17:39:00.001+01:00

My ‘K’ is Kate Atkinson and her book, “Behind the Scenes at the Museum”. I hadn’t heard about her before a friend suggested it to me after I’d told her the Book Challenge story. That’s one of the best things about the Book Challenge - people are generally interested and more than happy to provide suggestions for the tricky names. At the moment, I’m trying not to think about the surname ‘X’. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. It is nearly a year away though, so I’m not going to worry about it now.

So. “Behind the Scenes at the Museum”. It begins with Ruby Lennox’s conception, and unravels time and memory by tracing the matriarchial line through Ruby, to her mother Bunty, to her mother Nell, to her mother Alice. Surrounding them are the other women and menfolk which make up the family – vivid pictures of boys going to war (and not coming back), creepy identical twins and all the levels of relationships between unhappy and ecstatic.

I don’t want to reveal too much about the story, as usual, but if I were to describe it it would be bleak and depressing. It runs through both world wars and numerous family disasters. Ruby advises quite near the beginning that family members are prone to getting run over or blown up. I think this device keeps the story from getting too heavy – we know well in advance who will die an untimely death, and snippets of information are fed to us from Ruby all the way through the book. This keeps the shocks to a minimum while managing to maintain an, admittedly, dark comic tone.

I found “Behind the Scenes at the Museum” fascinating. For some people it may be a bit too ‘lady heavy’ as the main characters are all women. There are also plenty of men, but inevitably they’re unsuitable husbands or they get blown up/run over while doing daft things. I’m not a raving feminist at all, but the story made me proud to be female, in a weird way.

Ruby is undeniably the protaganist, but it’s amazing how her family history spirals back from itself for generations. The same mistakes are made, the same awkward situations to get into and the same personality characteristics crop up again and again. When I finished it, the first thing I wanted to do was trace my own family history – dig out genealogy charts, old photographs and keepsakes to see if history does repeat itself and what makes me, me. That sounds a bit cheesy, but I’ll bet that most people who read this feel the same way.

On another note, my friend Mrs D introduced me to the best website ever. No, not that one. It’s called Read it Swap it, and revolves around a kind of global library. You put a list on there of books that you want to get rid of, using their handy ISBN database, then other people look at your list and choose something if they like it. Then, you get notified and choose something of theirs. You send your book, they send yours and voila – you get rid of that book you were never going to read again and gain a shiny new one for the price of postage. Genius. You do have to trust people but there’s a pretty robust feedback mechanism so if you do have a problem the admins will help out. It won’t get you a book back but at least it won’t happen to you or anyone else, again. It’s especially brilliant for me as I have about fifty books I’ll never read again (“The Manny”, anyone?) and am obviously reluctant to spend £6.99 a week on a book that I will more than likely read once before relegating to a bookshelf. Also, the people on the site are lovely, lovely people. There’s an ‘Introduction for New Members’ section on the forum, so I introduced myself and talked about my Challenge. I got dozens of replies, and loads of requests to swap, in a matter of hours. Everyone’s supportive, helpful and most useful of all – book lovers!

J is for Joe Dunthorne

2009-03-19T16:48:00.002Z

First off, I have an admission to do with this book. I know the author – we went to UEA at the same time and were in pretty much the same social circle. That said, I’ll try to write the review as if I don’t know the author (lovely boy that he is) so it’s as unbiased as possible. I just wanted to get that off my chest, and now I have – let’s carry on.
“Submarine” by Joe Dunthorne is a bit like Adrian Mole, but not. It’s a bit like my teenage years, but not, because mine weren’t ruled by the penis. It’s like nothing else I’ve read, in a nutshell.
Oliver Tate is a fifteen year old boy (at the beginning, at least) who’s having a few issues with his parents. They don’t understand him, but he understands them enough to know that they need reassurances that he’s okay. Unfortunately for Oliver, these reassurances have a habit of going awry. He goes to a therapist to show his parents what a grown up he is, and also so he can tell them that the therapist said that they need to talk to him more and tell him all of their secrets. Instead, the therapist turns out to be his allegedly pan-sexual neighbour whose car he vomited on after the alarm kept him awake all night. Oliver, in a fit of maturity, tells his neighbour what he did. Of course, the neighbour tells Oliver’s mum who’s obviously even more worried than she was before.

This is the interesting thing about the novel. As it’s Oliver’s diary, everything he says and does, along with everything he says happens, is subject to scrutiny because he’s acting as a natural filter. He writes like most people write diaries – by pretending someone else is reading. That means there’s another censor on his tales, along with the fact that his girlfriend, Jordana, is actually reading his diary (although he knows about this).

Oliver’s experiences reminded me of how I felt at sixteen – nearly an adult but, quite patronisingly, so very far away. It also explains a lot about the boys I knew at sixteen – how they seemed to think about things completely differently, and approach everything in a weird, underhand way. There were times when I wanted to shout at Oliver, and tell him to ring Jordana if he liked her, rather than not think of her at all. It does explain a lot though, and it helped that I’m ten years older and a different gender to the voice of the story.
His parents have problems, which is a problem for Oliver because really, he’s a child in a man’s body. It was difficult to tell whether they were as irritating as they were drawn, or if the teenage filter was tainting Oliver’s view. That didn’t really affect the story, as it’s meant to be Oliver’s tale, from his perspective and coloured with whatever opinion he has at the time.
It made me want to know Oliver as an older person – to see how he turned out and whether he retained his love of words and the keenness to fit in social situations, regardless of the consequences.
I liked that Wales was a character all on its own. Swansea and the surrounding areas were a big part of the diary, but not a conscious one. The reader can see that Oliver loves Wales and his hometown but isn’t yet aware of it. The beaches are lightly sketched with enough detail so they’re easy to visualise. I think it might have been easier for me because I spent my teenage years in Plymouth, which isn’t too far from Wales and has a pretty similar coastline, from what I’ve heard.
Apart from anything else, “Submarine” is funny. It’s the comical touches that prevent the parent/sex stuff from getting too heavy. It’s hard to describe, and my witterings won’t do the subtle nuances of Joey’s book justice, but sometimes Oliver says things or thinks things that I have thought too. Usually he says things out loud that I’ve thought, but have had the tact to keep internalised.

So. I’d recommend this for people who’re feeling a little bit nostalgic, or who want to read something a bit different.

Next week: Kate Atkinson’s “Behind the scenes at the museum”. If Amazon deliver on time. Eep.

Is for Ian Fleming

2009-03-18T17:16:00.001Z

The book for ‘I’ is “From Russia with love” by Ian Fleming.
It was recommended by Mr Charming, as he loves Bond and I had never read a Bond book. Wikipedia tells me that it was the fifth Bond novel, and Mr Charming tells me that Fleming thought it’d be his last.
I’m really glad I read this book – it’s not one I would have chosen normally, partly because I can never remember the plots of the Bond films, only the title songs. I’m also not a great lover of spy/espionage/crime stories.
However, in the spirit of the book challenge (and bearing in mind that it’s only a couple of hundred pages long) I threw myself into the Russians Vs the British.
Fleming’s style is quite formal and you can tell he wrote it in the 1950s. Everything’s quite proper, with an atmosphere of change, like bated breath. The women are more vocal, the hotels he stays in are crumbling and there’s an air of decay throughout the book.
Aside from this, there are a few uncomfortable passages around slightly inappropriate views on women, races and groups of people which make it feel like your grandad’s just popped round and begun a conversation on those people who’ve just moved in down the road.
Still, you forgive him for being of a different generation, just as you forgive Bond. One of my favourite passages describes the Bond girl (who I called Thingybob Onatop for the whole thing – see, mixed up my plots again) Tatiana Romanov. Fleming describes her as a young Greta Garbo – beautiful, slim and fit through her ice dancing, but she’s done a bit too much of that so her behind is flat, like a man’s. Brilliant. I would swear that a woman had written that passage.
The story (for those of you who don’t know or, like me, can’t distinguish between Goldfinger, Goldeneye or Gold Member) is fairly simple. The Russians are annoyed that the rest of the world aren’t taking them seriously, so they decide to kill someone in an impressive way. This someone has to be suave and sophisticated and important to the English (the US was dismissed as being a bit rubbish – too much money) but not so important that they get a big, media slap on the wrist. They decide on their target as being a 007 agent called… Bond. Surprise! The chess champion and the manly matron come up with a plan to basically prostitute a girl to Bond, lure him into a false sense of security, and then someone else kills him. That way they have evidence that Bond was double agent-ing on good ol’ Blighty, which they can wave around in front of MI6.

Bond and M are frustratingly egotistical when it comes to dealing with the ruse. Tatiana Romanov pretends that she has a crush on Bond, and she wants to meet him with a stolen decoder as a kind of dowry. Instead of weighing up the options and considering that the Russians may well be up to something, Bond and M go haring off down the greed and arrogance path without even considering the tax payers’ money which will no doubt be wasted on the trip.

The interesting thing is that the story starts with the bad guys – Red Grant, SMERSH’s chief executioner, takes up a large chunk, along with Rosa Klebb. Bond doesn’t appear by name until chapter 5 (thank you, wikipedia) and the man himself follows a good few chapters later. This Bond is not the one from the films. The ladykiller charm is still there, but Bond has a scar down the left side of his face and on his shoulder which he is quite self conscious about. Herein lies the single oddity about reading a Bond book – you get to know what he’s feeling, what he thinks and what his insecurities are. It’s a little intrusive. The Bond dialogue fits with the films – there are the same witty one liners and quips – but the internal thoughts display an insecure man who dislikes getting older.

I’m not going to say any more about the story, as I’d like you to read it without the twists and turns ruined.
Fleming writes with authority and an ease which puts the reader straight into Istanbul, or on a shaky plane on Friday 13th, or in bed with a lady. Once the book challenge is over, I may well read the previous four books.

A begging note

2009-03-15T20:41:00.002Z

Hello,
This is a book plea.

Does anyone have any of these books that I can borrow for one week in the next couple of months?
If anyone has any other suggestions for a first name author beginning with 'U', feel free to tell me - I don't really want to read Umberto Eco!

Marian Keyes This Charming Man
Nevil Shute A Town Like Alice
Quentin Crisp The Naked Civil Servant
Sophie Kinsella Confessions of a Shopaholic
Umbero Eco The Name of the Rose
Victor Hugo Les Miserables (the abridged version please - I can't read 1200 pages in a week!)
Wilkie Collins The Woman in White

I promise I'll look after them and you'll get them back within ten days!

Thanks in anticipation.

H is for... Helen Fielding

2009-03-11T09:32:00.001Z

Books read this week 1.5 (vg) cigarettes today 1 (vg but 9am so not that great) units 0 calories (not telling as is not diary but online blog)

Everyone in the whole world must have heard of Bridget Jones. Amazonian tribes will no doubt be able to pick out Ronald McDonald and Rennee Zellwegger faster than Jesus’ likeness. I’ve read this before but it was about ten years ago and I fancied something light after George’s trek through destitution.
Light I wanted, and light I got. It’s a couple of hundred pages of fluff, where an apparently podgy girl (overweight at 9st? How tall is she, 3foot nothing?) battles with life, love and her basic lack of willpower as well as a failure to recognise a good thing where she sees it.
Fielding has coined a couple of phrases which have made their way into our everyday language – “Smug Marrieds” for people who happen to have got it together enough to get married is one example. I suppose “Singleton” could be atrributed to Fielding too, but don’t quote me on that.
The fact that it’s a diary gives me the reason I dislike it. Bridget is whiny, self obssesed and generally useless. She stumbles from job to job, failing to learn from past mistakes and expecting someone to come along and swoop her off her feet. Of course, it’s only told from her point of view, and how reliable is that? However, if she comes across as whiny in her own diary, I’d hate to think how she comes across in real life. I’ll bet she’s the Sloane at the bar drinking cocktails and shouting to her three equally Sloaney friends sitting three inches away.
Perhaps I’m not being entirely fair. Bridget and the rest of her saga (which continues into Bridget Jones and the Edge of Reason, fact fans) represents a large part of the population, no matter what gender or job or accent, even if it’s a fleeting thought or a bad decision you once made.
The annoying thing about it is that she is, in face, swept (swoopt?) off her feet by the rich, handsome and successful Mr Darcy. One thing I do enjoy about the BJ (teehee) series is that she loves Pride & Prejudice, where Colin Firth played Darcy, which Bridget watches regularly. In the films, Mr Darcy is played by Colin Firth… Meta-textual overload…

No matter how irritating Bridget is, I just can’t help enjoying her stumbles through life and, as always, the slightly abhorrent protagonist is saved by her friends. Countless times, Bridget’s friends come to her rescue. In one episode, she offers to make birthday dinner for everyone, fails to prepare (prepare to fail, as the old adage goes) forgets all of the ingredients, burns everything and basically gets in amassive muddle. Her friends, knowing her as well as they do, collect her from her disastorous flat, tidy up the mess and take her out for a slap up meal. That’s what friends are for, and she can’t be that annoying if she has friends like that, can she? Can she?

For the eagle eyed readers, the half book I read was Haruki Murakami’s “The Wind up bird chronicle”. I read Fielding first, and thought I’d tale advantage of my six hour travel to read Murakami too. Unfortunately, I didn’t bargain for a) a hefty tome of 500 pages and b) four hours of sleep the night before the journey back.
I will definitely finish it soon.

G is for.. George Orwell

2009-03-11T09:28:00.002Z

“Down and out in Paris and London” by George Orwell was his first full length work. It’s essentially autobiographical and tells the story of Orwell being poor in the late 1920s. basically. When he talks about poor, it’s not your average, nowadays poor of I can’t afford a pair of pretty shoes or I might have to forgo that Starbucks, but a state where everything depends onfood. Finding a penny in the gutter could make your week, as that would mean you can afford a hunk of stale bread, surviving for another day.

For the first half of the book, Orwell’s in Paris, scraping out a living amongst the whores and restaurant workers. It’s a complicated existence where he has to pawn his possessions to get money, but not too many to look destitute, or the boarding house managers will throw him out, rent paid or not.

His narrative style is odd but definitely Orwell – although he’s outside of the situation simply by it being his past, he manages to convey his emotions and feelings throughout, without being sentimental.

The second half of the book concentrates on him being homeless in London, after a job he returned for fell through. It describes a world where the homeless are provided for in the form of prison-like shelters, but most come with caveats. The Salvation Army ones demand prayer, which seems ridiculous as the men (the majority are men) barely have faith in themselves, let alone a deity who they can’t see or hear and is content to let them starve to death. Other shelters subject the ‘inmates’ to an intrusive full search, confiscating money, tobacco and anything else before they’re allowed to sleep on the concrete floor, with their boots as pillows if they’re lucky.

This all sounds pretty bleak. It was, and yet, Orwell carries you through his story with hope by painting vivid pictures of the characters he met along the way. It helps that he went on to become one of the greatest writers ever, and future echoes of “1984” are recognisable in the anger Orwell feels at being treated like cattle in the face of the establishment, and the despair of the men he mixes with at being trapped in a cycle they can’t get out of.

This is all relevant today – if you’re homeless, you can’t get a job and if you can’t get a job you can’t get a home. There are many choices to be made before you become homeless, but there are millions of people in the UK alone who are, or who have been, living on the streets. Orwell even proposes a solution – turn the ‘shelters’ into a self sufficient farm. The people who live there could be allowed to stay for longer than one night on the proviso that they farm the land to grow vegetables and raise animals. The people get food, shelter and a sense of self worth they may never have had. I’ve seen stuff on this sort of thing recently, but it’s a great idea that could work now – a half way house between the streets and a home.

Of course, this is a pretty Guardian view – there are people who feel more comfortable on the streets, they fit in there and have spent decades building up their lives based around a routine.

I don’t normally read books like this, but was highly recommended by Miss F and, at the end of the day, that’s what the book challenge is all about. I’m glad I read it though, and look forward to re-visiting Orwell soon.

F is for F Scott Fitzgerald

2009-02-19T13:00:00.002Z

I have a confession to make. For this week’s book, “Tales of the Jazz Age” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, I didn’t manage to read it all. Boo. It is entirely my own fault, and nothing to do with Mr F. Scott’s writing or anything like that. My social life got the better of me and I ended up trying to read the majority on Sunday evening, under pressure. I’m not very good under pressure, so I found that I read about twenty pages and then fell asleep. Whoops.
However, I only have about forty pages to go, so I have decreed that it’s enough to review and I’ll try to finish the rest in the next couple of weeks.

“Tales of the Jazz Age” has been published under a variety of titles. More recently, it’s been published as “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”. Go figure. For those of you who have seen the multi award winning film, it might surprise you to know that the story is a mere twenty nine pages long. Evidently, the writers extrapolated a lot. I don’t want to compare it too closely with the film, but suffice it to say that there are a few crucial differences, along with many additions. The main one for me is that Benjamin is born as an old man – physically and mentally. In the film, he looks old but is mentally young. This is an important distinction which colours your view of either the book or the film. As far as the film goes, it gets them out of sticky ‘paedophilia’ situations and allows for a romance to grow that does not happen in the book.
The fact that Benjamin is born as an old man means that he dies as a baby. His world gets smaller and smaller, reducing from his career in the army to college at an Ivy League to being looked after by his son to being looked after by his grandson’s nurse and so on. His memories deteriorate gradually and peacefully, so he does not miss what he can’t remember. Apparently, the story stems from a quote which pondered why all the good stuff in life is at the beginning, when we don’t have the maturity to appreciate it.

F Scott Fitzgerald has a distinctive tone in his writing which always makes me think of languid summer days filled with Long Island Iced Teas and hi-balls full of gin. Maybe that’s why I fell asleep while reading…
His characters are never particularly likeable but are always human.

Out of the other stories I read, the one that sticks out the most is one about a cut glass bowl. This bowl is described as three and a half foot wide and was given to the protagonist of the story by an unsuccessful suitor. He curses the bowl, which sits in the story like a silent, malevolent villain who watches while the bad luck unfolds. It’s so oppressive that the mother’s feeling of being trapped within the confines of the crystal are not kept to the pages, but envelop the reader too.

The beauty of the short story is that it contains a novel in twenty pages. Characters are painted with wide brushstrokes, leaving the reader to fill in their own gaps. A well written short story isn’t a truncated novel, but a condensed one where nothing is lost. That probably explains why there are so many films that started off as short stories, including Stephen King’s collection “Different Seasons”, where a staggering three out of four stories have been made into films.

Are there any other collections you go back to? I like Roald Dahl’s numerous contributions – adult and absorbing with that air of macabre present in all of his books.

E is for Elizabeth Goudge: The Little White Horse

2009-02-19T11:45:00.002Z

Elizabeth Goudge’s “The Little White Horse” is one of my favourite books. I picked it up when I was about ten in a Waterstones, chiefly because it had a unicorn on the front cover and I was obsessed with them.
It was first published in 1946, but is set in the late 1800s. Newly orphaned Maria Merryweather, her governess Miss Heliotrope and spoilt spaniel Wiggins travel to Moonacre Manor in the first chapter. It’s a long journey from London to deepest Cornwall, in a rickety carriage far removed from Maria’s comfortable life in London. The first chapter is a fantastic introduction to Maria herself, who gets through the long, uncomfortable and boring journey by taking solace in her new boots. A girl after my own heart, then.
When they finally arrive in Moonacre Manor they are introduced to Maria’s second cousin, Sir Benjamin. The picture that Goudge paints of all of the characters is so vivid you can almost touch the scene. The gardens of Moonacre Manor, bathed in moonlight and full of menacing yew trees in the shape of cockerels and knights, roll out in front like a film. Everything is so well described that there are characters everywhere – the house itself, the valley of Silverydew and the menagerie of animals that make up a large part of the cast.
This is a large part of what makes the book so charming. The Merryweather family, as we find out with Maria, have a long history of being bold, passionate and stubborn. They have driven out friends, family and made enemies of their closest neighbours, the so-called Men of the Woods. Maria concludes that in fact, the only people to have any sense are the animals in the family – the little white horse in the title, the dog Wrolf, the pony Periwinkle, Zachariah the cat and Maria’s addition – Serena the hare. Goudge artfully gives the animals personality and communicates their feelings without resorting to cheesy manufacturings like telepathy, or Maria imagining what they feel like. Zachariah in particular is a very clever, very large cat who gives messages to the rest of the house by drawing hieroglyphics in the hearth ash – simple drawings which don’t require a huge leap of faith to believe that Zachariah drew them. Add that to the fact that the cook, Marmaduke Scarlet, laments Zachariah for eating all of his birds, and he’s simply a cat who can draw.
Even the house itself is a character, and is definitely the best house ever. It’s described basically as a castle, complete with towers. Maria’s room is in one of the towers, and is just big enough for a thirteen year old girl – she has sugar cookies in a box given by a mysterious benefactor, and clothes laid out for her every day.
Although it’s set in the 19th century, it’s still relevant today as Maria struggles with her family temper and other vices such as greed, pride and selfishness.
I wasn’t going to mention the film, but I think I should. The plot for imdb says that Maria has to save Moonacre before it falls into the sea, on the five hundredth full moon. This is not what happens in the book. Apart from anything else, Ioan Gruffudd as Sir Benjamin is all wrong, along with Natasha McElhone as Loveday Minette. The problem that Goudge wrote for herself is that her characters are so detailed (right down to their buttons) that the film makers either had to follow it to the letter, or make their own way. After reading the cast list and the plot summary, I think they chose the latter.
“The Little White Horse” is a lovely book – well-written, well-rounded and one I can read time and time again.

D is for Diablo

2009-02-02T15:17:00.002Z

I love Juno. This is relevant because Diablo Cody wrote the sublime view of the teenager I wanted to be in a situation I could never imagine being in. It’s sweet without being saccharine, funny without being stupid and the soundtrack is just the right side of cool, without being pretentious. Well, overly pretentious, anyway.

“Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper” is a memoir (operative word here, people) about her time as a stripper. My own pre-conceptions tripped me up here, as I expected her stripping to be a necessity for survival, rather than a life choice. It was a bit of a shock for her to give up her stable job (where she does reasonably well) to strip, especially as she’s a new step mum to her new boyfriend’s little girl. I think I got defensive at this bit because she consciously rejected what is, essentially, my life.

Still, that’s me being all judge-y and I try not to do that. I guess I just didn’t understand why she wanted to strip. She has huge insecurities over her body but still manages to run around naked from practically the first night without any qualms. While stripping, she didn’t really enjoy it that much but she not only continued, she ‘graduated’ to a sex shop where she masturbated in a glass box for customers.
Basically, the main problem I had was that I expected the Juno writer to be like a friend I never had. Cool, quirky but generous and fun to hang around with. This character was way too cool for me, didn’t explain her life choices and liked bragging about her ‘day job’.

Nevertheless, the intricacies of stripping are fascinating. Some titbits I knew already, such as the fact that pole dancing gives you thighs of steel. Others were more surprising, like the way the strip clubs do not sell alcohol. Then you get into the murky underworld of her customers: foot fetishes, nun costumes, panty dances, curtained rooms and the person who licked the plastic booth clean of you know what.

Another thing I got defensive over was Diablo’s assertion that girls look down on strippers. Personally, if anyone has the focus to do so much stuff to themselves, top to toe, they should be applauded. The job itself – not something I’d want to do right at this moment, but I don’t look down on/get jealous of/hate girls or boys who do. It’s a bit like that time where I watched a TV programme about Jordan, who I’d been ambivalent about up until the point where she said “Girls don’t like me because they’re jealous”. If I recall correctly, she was wearing something in a shocking shade of pink which revealed her veins and lipo scars. She also had approximately three tonnes of make up, all in unflattering shades. I don’t dislike her because I’m jealous, I dislike her because she’s so arrogant she thinks everyone wants to look like her.

This book made me want to read a book about Diablo as a real person, rather than a stripper tourist who swings from loving it to hating it extremely quickly.
In summary, if you want to read an explicit book about the sex trade, read “The Secret Diary of a Call Girl” – she loves it, and when she stops loving it, she stops. Now, Belle would be a cool lady to hang out with.
Also, as I wikipediaed Diablo before writing this review, I found out that Diablo is not a birth name (pretty obvious, when I think about it) but neither is it her given name – it’s a pen name! However, she has published as Diablo so that’s what I’m using.

My E book is Elizabeth Goudge's "The Little White Horse", soon to be known as "The Secret of Moonacre", the film starring such national treasures as Ioan Gruffudd, Tim Curry and Dakota Blue Richards in the title role. Fancy reading with me?

C is for Charles

2009-02-02T15:15:00.002Z

I have a confession to make. I’ve never read a Dickens novel. My stockings were always filled with abridged versions of classics, partly because I loved reading, even then, but mostly because it kept me occupied when I woke up at stupid o’clock on Christmas morning. There were a couple of Dickens in there and I definitely remember getting Great Expectations one year and maybe Oliver Twist too. I read all of them but as the abridged version, all of the tough stuff was taken out.
I tried reading “A Tale of Two Cities” a couple of years ago, but ended up carrying it round in my bag for a couple of months and reading magazines instead. So, as part of the book challenge I decided to read “A Christmas Carol”. I love Christmas like a little kid loves Christmas, and I get more excited every year. That means that I get more disappointed every year when it only lasts one day. Reading this meant that I got to prolong Christmas for a bit longer and, as some sort of omen, I got a Christmas present that week as well!

Everyone knows the story. Reading it, for me, was like coming home and settling into your favourite saggy armchair with a cup of tea. Actually, it was probably more like settling into your favourite armchair only to find that a spring has broken free and poked you on the bottom. Either I didn’t understand it as a child and skimmed over it, or the more gruesome parts were left out of the abridged version. The encounters Scrooge has with the spirits were more vivid, scarier and altogether more tense than I remember. There was a bit with the first spirit where Scrooge jams the candle extinguisher onto his head, putting out the light completely. Another with Marley where he unravels his bandages and his jaw falls off. For me, by far the most stark section was the one where the rag and bone people were discussing how much they’d get for Scrooge’s belongings, and the woman confesses to not only stealing his curtains, but his nightshirt and even the ferryman pennies. I don’t remember reading that as a six year old.

The story is so well known and so entrenched in our Christmas culture that some of the phrases have entered into common parlance. As Bill Bryson says (thank you, book B) Shakespeare donated a staggering amount of words and phrases, which perhaps is indicative of how influential an author is. “God bless us everyone” is obviously Tiny Tim’s mantra, along with Scrooge’s catchphrase of “Bah, humbug”, instantly recognisable. Scrooge himself has transformed from a man to a personality trait, especially around Christmas.
This can be a blessing and a burden. What people expect is not necessarily what the story actually is. When I was reading the Dickens version, I couldn’t get the picture of Michael Caine, Kermit and Gonzo out of my head, which was a bit distracting!

Aside from the well-known story, Dickens’ prose is rich and powerful. It conjures up a Victorian Christmas with ease – the people, the food, the presents and the goodwill to all men (I think we have Dickens to thank for that too, but don’t quote me on that) are all as clear as when you watch The Muppets’ version, but with fewer strings. I loved his approach to conversation too – he avoids massive sections of quotation marks by describing what’s being said sometimes. On other writers, this might not work but with Dickens his characters are painted so brightly that you can still hear their voices in your head, word for word or not.

Everyone should read a proper Dickens – he’s still around a couple of centuries later, because he’s brilliant. I think I’ll read Oliver Twist next – there won’t be that many differences from the abridged, children’s version, will it?

A is also for...er...A

2009-01-23T16:29:00.008Z

Somewhat belatedly, book number one in my alphabetical literary journey is A Gathering Light by Jennifer Donnelly.

I’d like to tell you that it was a recommendation from a close friend that moved me to buy this book. That, or maybe a knowledge of the author and her work. Possibly a desperate love of semi-fictionalised historical fiction for teenagers? I’d like to be able to say that any of those things were true, but unfortunately I can’t. No, the first thing I saw on picking up a copy of A Gathering Light in Waterstones was this quote from the Sunday Telegraph:

If George Clooney had walked into the room I would have told him to come back later when I had finished.

This book is better than George Clooney. That’s what the reviewer at the Telegraph told me, and though in my opinion, there are several other things I would count as better than George Clooney (mulled wine, snow, dark chocolate digestives), I was curious. So I bought it, read it, and found that I absolutely agreed with this bold, dare I say controversial statement.

Mattie Gokey is a girl desperately trying to keep everyone happy; her father, who needs her help to run the family farm after her mother’s death and her brother’s disappearance; her best friend Weaver, who intends to study law on day but can’t seem to stop getting into fights with people who call him a nigger; her school teacher, who has read some of her stories and has persuaded her to apply to college in New York; and Royal Loomis, the handsome boy from the farm one over, who has taken her out driving and suddenly seems to be imagining a future for the two of them.

As I stand here on the porch of the Glenmore, the finest hotel on all of Big Moose Lake, I tell myself that today – Thursday, July 12, 1906 – is such a day…
…I believe these things. With all my heart. For I am good at telling myself lies.

The story opens as Mattie is working as a waitress at the Glenmore Hotel, where a woman has been found drowned in the lake. Everyone assumes that it was simply a terrible accident, but Mattie is beginning to suspect differently. The man who went out on the lake with her is nowhere to be found, and in Mattie’s apron pocket is a bundle of letters, thrust into her hands earlier that day by the drowned woman with the desperate plea to burn them.

The novel alternates between this thread of the story, based around a real murder that took place at the turn of the century in New York state, and a thread set months earlier, which follows Mattie as she attempts to be everything to everyone, looking after her father and sisters, worrying about her impoverished neighbours and trying to figure out exactly what Royal sees in her, while also secretly harbouring dreams of her own to write and to get a proper education. It’s only really when the two threads of the story meet that Mattie finally figures out what to do and takes action.

Based in part around real events and places, A Gathering Light recreates in amazing detail what life was like for people like Mattie in turn-of-the-century rural America. The extent of Jennifer Donnelly’s research really shows, not least in the three page bibliography at the end, and yet it manages not to fall into the old “I spent all this time researching; let me tell you EVERYTHING I’VE LEARNT” trap. Never having written a historical novel, I may be talking out of turn, but I imagine that this must be really hard to do. You want to research enough so that you don’t get your editor, or worse, your readers pointing out the fact that your heroine couldn’t have flown to New York because planes hadn’t been invented yet, but neither do you want to give the impression that your story has taken place in the middle of a Simon Schama documentary. The little details, however authentic, shouldn’t overshadow the story, but in this case, Mattie’s story is just so interesting, and the writing is so light and beautiful that it’s only once you get to the end that you realise how much you’ve learnt.

One of the things I love most about this novel is the fact that the letters, which Mattie reads in a desperate attempt to find out who the drowned woman was and why she died, are the actual ones written by Grace Brown, who died in Big Moose Lake in 1906. Discovered, in reality, in her hotel room after her death, the letters paint a terribly bleak picture, but in giving them to Mattie, and allowing her life to be changed by them, Jennifer Donnelly has given Grace’s story something of a happy ending.

I suppose that honestly, I chose this novel to begin with because I had read it before and knew I loved it. I hope that I shall read many books for the first time this year, but wanted to start, like Miss R, with an old friend. As I read it though, it occurred to me that it was a good book to start with for more reasons than that. It’s about someone who loves words, and writing and reading. It’s about someone who dreams of being something more than they are. Most of all, it is, after all the sadness and intrigue, an incredibly hopeful book, which seemed like a fitting way to begin the year.

B is for Bill

2009-01-19T17:25:00.003Z

hello dear readers,
This week's book is "Mother Tongue" by Bill Bryson.

I think that choosing a non-fiction book for my second week was a mistake on my part. Firstly, I do want to make it clear that I love Bill Bryson, in a fatherly/grandfatherly way. In fact, in an uncle-like way. He’s the cool one who lives hundreds of miles away but would give you presents/alegandawing/money when he saw you twice a year.
Mother Tongue deals with the origins of the English language, the reasons it’s become so powerful internationally, and the places it’s going in the future. According to Bill, the answer to all of these is “America”. Okay, I’m being a bit flippant. After all, even I couldn’t read a couple of hundred pages where the word “America” was repeated over and over, and I read Marian Keyes. It comes pretty darn close though.
Bill liberally sprinkles the tome with amazing factoids such as explaining that the reason we call the live animal (cow,sheep,pig) and the meat (beef,mutton,pork) different things is to do with the peasant language of Anglo-Saxon versus the court language of French, i.e. boeuf, mouton and, erm. Porque? *Checks google* Apparently, it’s porc. So there. Anyway, I thought that was pretty cool and solved a niggle that I’d had for a while.

There are others, such as the Japanese renderings of some words which were originally English but now sound Japanese. These weren’t particularly amazing, but it did give me the opportunity to say things in an hilarious accent. Of course, the fact that the book was written in the late eighties doesn’t help the vaguely uncomfortable finger pointing that Bryson does throughout, including the entire chapter he devotes to what can be called, for ease, as ‘engrish’. He does make a good point in this, which is that there are a lot of people who would class themselves as English speakers, but actually cannot string a sentence together and lack the skills to articulate their basic needs, desires and wants. It struck me as I read that this description (or, at least, Bryson’s hinting at this) could very well apply to so-called “English patriots”. A quick perusal of facebook sites with names such as “I’m English forever and if you don’t like it/aren’t white/don’t have the St George tattooed on your arse go home even if you were born here and your parents were and your grandparents and in fact you are more English than I am” or something to that effect, will reveal a staggering low literacy level among the members.

That was definitely something that I expected from Mother Tongue, and never got. I wanted a study of the so-callled decline of literacy – is it real? If it is, should we be bothered or is it simply the evolution of language, as it’s been evolving for the last 2000000000 years (give or take)? There was a chapter on Shakespeare-isms. Bill said about four times that Shakespeare himself didn’t even know how to spell his own name. He also says that the OED spells it Shakspear, but no-one listens to it. There was also a chapter on silent letters and various Americans who tried to change the spellings of some words (dwel was one, I think) and succeeded in changing some others: catalog, program and so on. He spends an awful lot of time on this, which iI thought was strange as he is now not only a self-confessed Anglophile, he also lives somewhere around Wymondham (not exactly bustling and cosmopolitan, it has to be said) and is the Green Sherriff of East Anglia, or something. In Mother Tongue, he comes across as positively Anglophobic. There’s a lot of that classic defence tactic: “they started it”, which obviously means that he’s allowed to be downright mean about some parts of the world that aren’t American.

Another thing is that I felt like he bends the rules. At one point he writes down a long list of American words that a Briton wouldn’t know what to do with. He even invites the reader to cover up one side and try to identify the other. Shamefully, I did it. Some of the words are now easily recognisable, such as diaper and sidewalk. Some have fallen out of use altogether – I watch a lot of American TV and don’t remember a seesaw ever being referred to as a ‘teeter totter’.
There are other instances where Bill asserts that ‘no language apart from English has swear words’, or something along those lines. They’re just wrong, and that makes me doubt the fun “isn’t that amazing? I never knew that before!” moments elsewhere in the book. Just like that time that you found out your favourite uncle has a gambling habit, not a petting zoo. You just can’t trust anything else he says, and it makes you uncomfortable.

Next week it's Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol"

A is for Audrey

2009-01-13T16:53:00.007Z

Book Number One is….

The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

I thought I’d ease myself in gently to the Book Challenge ’09, by starting with one of my favourite books. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve read it, but it must be closing in on a dozen times. Every time I read it, something new pops out at me.
It reninds me of an argument I once had with a thankfully now ex-colleague. When I said I was in the process of re-reading Watership Down, he snorted derisively and said “Why bother reading a book more than once? Bloody English students”. His reaction really surprised me – coming from a family of self-confessed (or should that be self-obsessed? Arf) readers, it never crossed my mind that other people only enjoyed a book once. My answer was “Why not? Would you listen to a CD once?”, which I thought was pretty quick, even if I do say so myself. I find myself gravitating towards certain books time and time again – the aforementioned rabbit saga, A Proper Little Nooryef, Phillip Pullman’s saga, Black Beauty and a couple more that I’ve forgotten.
Each time I read them, there’s something new. Re-reading a book for me is like welcoming old friends in and enjoying a classic song. It’s like coming home, in the cheesiest way I can think of.
Is it just me that reads good books countless times? Don’t get me wrong, I also read lots of new books. If you do re-read them, what books do you go back to?

Anyway, on with the review.
The Time Traveler’s Wife tells the story of Henry and Clare. Theirs is an epic love story spanning nearly a hundred years. It involves difficulties experienced by countless people all over the world, and difficulties that only Henry and Clare encounter. Henry is a time traveller. He finds himself inconveniently naked in different places at different times. Sometimes he ends up with Clare at various points in her childhood, whereas sometimes he’s running for his life after being accused of theft/burglary/bestiality.
As the blurb on the back of the book says: Clare and Henry first meet when Henry is 42 and Clare is 6. So far, so paedophilia. I’ve been thinking about this lately, especially in the last time round, as a couple of people have mentioned this aspect. Is it grooming to spend your wife’s childhood with her? Bear in mind, they meet in the present through chance – Henry never tells Clare his last name, birth date or anything that can identify him. Is that Niffenegger telling us it’s okay? The arguments and the friction felt between Clare and Henry when they first get together in ‘their’ time (as opposed to hers) is telling – Henry is not the Henry Clare knows, but a younger, rougher model. In reality Henry is eight years older than Clare.
Personally, I think that the way they are together is recognisable in every couple you meet. Sometimes you wonder why they keep going, why they torture each other on a seemingly daily basis. But love is something which cannot be explained in a novel, a film, a pop song. That’s why humans have been trying to capture the intangible for the last dozen centuries – the fascination draws them in.
There are other players in this story – their best friends Gomez and Charisse, where Gomez loves Clare and is apparently biding his time until ‘something happens to Henry’. Lesbian wannabe Celia Attley adores Henry’s ex-girlfriend Ingrid, who colours his view on life and himself. In a pleasing twist, Celia and Clare become friends – something that pops up on a couple of occasions.

It’s hard to describe the story without it sounding twee and trite. Essentially it’s boy meets girl/girl and boy fall in love/boy time travels to girl’s childhood. But it’s so much more. Niffenegger deftly explores the themes of loss, union, families and the struggle of life alongside different ideas of fate, religion, art and poetry. One of my favourite sections is when Clare and her sister Alicia are watching It’s a Wonderful Life. Somehow Niffenegger manages to interweave the most ridiculous points of It’s a Wonderful Life into the narrative of The Time Traveler’s Wife without missing a beat. In fact, the first time I read it I had never seen It’s a Wonderful Life, and was adamant that it was Niffenegger’s fanciful re-drawing of it – how does she expect me to believe that Donna ends up naked in a bush while George Bailey threatens to sell tickets?
Beneath the love story runs a dark vein of chaos, anarchy and a feeling that life sucks, then you die. This is helpfully illustrated by the punk devotees, including Clare and Henry. Henry is not always a great guy, as Clare is not always a great girl. Henry beats people to a pulp and Clare orders the kidnapping of a classmate without regret. This again comes up for criticism – how are we supposed to like Henry when he’s a womanising drunk who likes beating the shit out of people? In my own opinion, this reaction comes from someone who either didn’t have time to read the whole book, or has forgotten that real people aren’t 100% nice or nasty. This is another of my favourite things about the book – Clare and Henry are the loved-up couple, torn apart through no fault of their own but destined to be together. But their romance is harsh, physical and, at times, brutal. Romance here doesn’t come from Jane Austen or Mills & Boon (although there is a place for each of them, elsewhere) but instead from the world we know, where people fight and play and shout and cry and experience life from beginning to end and sometimes something inbetween.

To prepare for this review I perused Amazon’s entry. I found no less than eight hundred and thirty nine reviews. All of them are written honestly and baldly – six hundred and two are five stars, forty five are one stars and the rest are spread out between the rest. What does that say? That there are over six hundred right people and forty five wrong ones? That lots of readers want to jump on Richard & Judy’s bandwagon?
To my dismay, I found myself reading the one star reviews. Many of them make good points – the first person narrative makes it difficult sometimes to tell who is speaking i.e. Henry or Clare. It’s true – on occasion it is hard to tell who has taken over the literary reins, but perhaps that’s because Clare and Henry are connected on a molecular, intimate level. Clare as a six year old is certainly easy to pick out, along with Clare at sixteen. Other comments are just strange – along the lines of Henry conveniently never travelling to somewhere he doesn’t know, or that he is the only time traveller. Firstly, Henry explains that he thinks his time travel is contained within his sub-conscious, which means that as he has never gone abroad, he doesn’t time travel abroad. Secondly, why criticise a book because he is the only time traveller? That sounds like the reviewer expected a literary adaptation of Jumper or Tru Calling, and is marking accordingly. Again, the prose explains that Henry has always felt lonely because he expected to meet someone else like him and never has. If it’s constrained by your own consciousness, why would you travel to someone else’s memories? Given that Henry faces daily problems around hiding his ‘disease’ from those around him for fear of being carted off to a mental hospital, why would another time traveller advertise it?

I love this book. It touches me on levels I cannot explain, and do not wish to. If you enjoy an easy to read, multi layered novel about life and death and union and separation with a million other things mixed in, read this. Don’t think it should be more than it is and please, don’t expect Dostoyevsky. That’s not fair on Dostoyevsky…

On a side note, for those of you averse to reading (I appreciate your time but really, you may be on the wrong blog) the Hollywood re-make's looming at some point, possibly this decade : imdb entry.
Book Number two is: Bill Bryson’s Mother Tongue.

It's a new dawn, it's a new day...

2009-01-01T20:13:00.003Z

Hello dear readers!

I hope you all had a Merry New Year and a wonderful Christmas. In some ways, for me, it's been a long holiday but in others, as always, I need another week to recover and do all of the things I needed to do! Oh well, there'll be time to sort out my filing cabinet and get new bookcases soon.

I must have been a pretty good girl for 2008 as Santa brought me lots of nice presents, including Mamma Mia! and

Wall-e. Mr Charming and I got a couple of joint presents too - a breadmaker and Trivial Pursuit. Yay.

So, anyway. On to business. Today is the first day of the Book Challenge. I will begin with The Time Traveler's Wife, carry on with a BIll Bryson, Charles Dickens and a David Mitchell. That's January taken care of. I've decided to do it a month at a time, rather than the whole six months, year or whatever as I don't want to rule out a book I might get along the way. My good friend Liz has decided to join me on the journey, which'll be lovely. Hopefully she'll be able to read some books and write a few blog entries too. I'll tell you which book I'm reading about a week in advance, then maybe we could do a virtual book group thing. That would be cool.

I pledge to read each book between Monday and Sunday of each week. This gives me a little bit more time this week, admittedly, but will have less time on some weeks so basically it'll all work out in the end.

After reading each book I will write a review within a week of reading it. Hopefully it'll be within a day or so but it depends what else I'm doing!

Any comments, feedback etc will be more than welcome. This is just a bit of fun so I can maintain my reading and carry on writing, but book suggestions will be especially useful.

Have a fantastic 2009, everyone. It's going to be ace.

Independence Day

2008-12-16T12:05:00.001Z

I have lots of news since I last wrote. Firstly, thanks to all of those who helped out with ideas for my books - much appreciated! Of course, I’m going to need ongoing help throughout the year… I think I’ll wing it so I’ll know the books for about a month in advance. Hopefully I’ll be able to get my blog fixed too so it looks prettier! (Miss S, if you’re reading… J )
I might even be able to do something fun like get a bit of a book theme going on. Book wallpaper to make it look like a library. Hmm. Hints and tips on how to store and organise books.
Someone suggested I read the Bible, which is a great idea apart from the dubious authorage… It might take me more than a week to read as well!
I am being decidedly rubbish at the moment with books. I’ve been reading “The Lollipop Shoes” for about six weeks. Well, I’ve probably read for about six hours in all of that time. I’ve read about a million magazines and blogs inbetween too, but it’s still taken an inordinately long time for me to read a medium length book. It doesn’t bode well. I have three other books from the library I want to finish before the end of the year, too – Hallam Foe, a Sherlock Holmes one and another I’ve forgotten. Lots of reading for me over the next fortnight!

My first book, the ‘A’ is going to be “The Time Traveler’s Wife” by Audrey Niffenegger. I urge anyone who hasn’t read it, to read it. I don’t know anyone who has read it who has disliked it. I know a couple of people who have managed the first chapter and no more, but they’re quitters. Quitters! The plot sounds a bit schmaltzy but basically it’s a love story between Henry and Clare, where Henry is a time traveller. One of the things I love about it is how brutal and physical his time travelling is – it hurts, it uses up a lot of energy so he’s perpetually hungry and it’s nearly always inconvenient. A bit like having an unusual form of epilepsy.

I had a half day off work yesterday to sit my driving test and I passed! I have to admit, it was the second time. It was different this time – I was nervous but not terrified, like I was the first time around. It helped that some plonker decided to walk out in front of me and wave through the window, and I dealt with it like a pro. As in professional, not prostitute. Still, I suppose that’s what happens when you sit your test in Lowestoft.
I still can’t believe that I’ll never have a driving lesson again. It’s been over a year of a two hour lesson every Saturday, which has been nice but I’m very glad to have my Saturdays back. Mrs Mum Charming has offered to teach me how to knit and other crafty stuff, so I probably will go over on Saturdays anyway – just not every Saturday and I can drive myself! I haven’t driven by myself yet – boring insurance type stuff. I’m a bit nervous to, to be honest. It’ll be fine once I’m in though. I’m very pleased that I’ll be able to help out Mr Charming with the drive down to the West Country at Christmas, though. The last time we went the car had four people in it and only Mr Charming could drive – now if we went there’d only be one person who couldn’t! Still, that was about four years ago now so it was about time.

Last weekend I hopped on a plane to Edinburgh to see my sister and my nephews. As I’m not spending three hours a day travelling and I’m in Norwich all week, it seemed crazy that my sister lives an hour away (by plane) and I haven’t seen her since my brother’s wedding 18 months ago. It was a whirlwind visit but definitely worth it - it’s made me determined to go and visit more often. I also saw my Dad and my wee brother for lunch on Sunday, which was nice too. Not to sound like an old lady, but it’s amazing what we can do now. My family are scattered far and wide but technological advances like the internet means we can keep in touch as if we were round the corner. Of course, nothing’s as good as a face to face chat and a good hug.

Mr Charming and I watched “Elf” while we hoisted the Christmas decorations last week. Very festive, I think the next Christmas film we watch will be “Love Actually” on Saturday while we wrap all of our presents in preparation for the West Country exodus. Yes, you may congratulate me on my organisational skills. *Smug* However, it’s down to necessity more than anything else – Saturday’s the last day we have to wrap!

I am most looking forward to Sunday. A big group of us are visitng the region’s premier independent cinema to see the best Christmas film in the whole world. In fact, it’s a serious contender for best film in the whole world. “It’s a Wonderful Life” and by Jove, it is. That’s another reason I love “The Time Traveler’s Wife” – there’s a big section where Henry and Clare watch it and describe what’s happening interspersed with conversation. The first time I read it I hadn’t seen the film, so I had to question if there really was a swimming pool under the gym floor and a moon on a stick and a violent Old Man…
That’s not all we’re doing on Sunday. Those who can/wish will be dining at a pub along the road from us and exchanging Secret Santa presents, huzzah. We decided to do that this year instead of worrying about who to buy for, and what to buy for them.
Basically, “It’s a Wonderful Life” makes me cry from the very beginning. You know, that bit where all the people are praying for George Bailey as he’s a good man, fallen on hard times? I’m welling up just writing this, big sap that I am. No doubt I will win the contest over who cries first, this year at least!

So what’s on you Christmas wishlist, dear readers? I will be sending out Christmas parcels asap (darn those of you who live far away!) so hopefully Royal Mail will deliver. Ha.
Apparently I want quite a lot of stuff. It’s all bits and pieces though – Mamma Mia DVD, Vampire Weekend CD, a year’s worth of books...

I hope Santa brings you what your heart desires.
Merry Christmas lovelies, and a Happy New Year for 2009!

xx

On your marks

2008-12-03T14:38:00.000Z

A new year’s looming ahead – 2009.

With a new year comes a new challenge. While drunkenly contemplating the decade that some people wish never was (the 90s, for all you wonderers) my friend set me a challenge for the 365 days in 2009.

It began as reading a book a day and reviewing it on the blog. When I reminded him I actually have a full-time job, we agreed it was something I could only achieve if I split my time between working and reading – none of that pesky life stuff. That was then amended to a book a week. Easily do-able. I thought there should be an element of measure in it too – something to mark off every week as a little victory against the long haul. Happily, there are fifty two weeks in a year – and twenty-six letters of the alphabet.

With this in mind, I decided to read a book according to author first names and surnames. I will attempt to cycle the alphabet twice – once according to first names and once according to surnames – in order. This means, dear readers, that I need some help from you. Suggestions for any of the alphabet would be much appreciated – especially the tricky ones like X and Z. Zadie Smith, will do for one, obviously.

I'd also love recommendations from your own favourite books.

Apart from that, the rules are simple – read one book between Monday and Sunday each week and post a review within a decent timescale. They can be fiction or non-fiction and much-loved, well-worn copies or never read before.

Wish me luck!

Voila!

2008-11-26T22:08:00.000Z

Not a great photo, but you get the idea!

What's the verdict?

Ch-ch-ch-changes

2008-11-25T10:51:00.001Z

After the snow fall that Norwich had this weekend, I’m suddenly feeling a lot more Christmassy than I was. Let’s face it, I wasn’t exactly scrooge-like before, so I’m basically an elf now!

The snow even inspired me to buy some Christmas presents, huzzah. My spreadsheet’s coming along nicely, especially since I employed the traffic light system… I still have no idea what to buy some people, though. I find it pretty hard to buy presents for other people that aren’t secretly (or not so secretly, in some cases) for myself. In fact, I am one of those people that has to buy themselves presents when Christmas shopping so they don’t get jealous. Sad, I know. Maybe I didn’t get enough love in my childhood or something! I’m kidding, of course. I definitely didn’t! (boom boom)

Of course, I’m not going to tell you who I’ve bought for and who is causing problems. Suffice it to say, I should have managed everything by mid-December, which’ll be nice. I like being super organised for Christmas – and we need to be this year as we’re leaving for Plymouth early on the 23rd, so we need to have finished everything by the weekend before. That’s because we’re off to the cinema that weekend and then my work Christmas do is on the Monday.

Well, I say work Christmas do. What I actually mean is ‘one of the work Christmas dos’. At the last count, we’ve got four. Four! One huge, department event at Carrow Road, a smaller team one at a pub in Norwich, a small team one somewhere else and another one which I’ve forgotten the reason for and no doubt will be in a pub in Norwich. Phew! This does mean that I need a new drrrrresssss. I want a strapless, electric blue prom dress, perhaps with a bow at the back. I also want a tux jacket to go over the top. Any ideas? I’m going shopping with Miss S this week so hopefully it’ll all be sorted out in plenty of time. To be honest, I could scrape by with what’s in the wardrobe, but where’s the fun in that?

Aside from the numerous, multiple work dos, I have a hugely busy week this week. Not that I’m complaining, but here’s how my week looks: Monday: Tim Minchin, Tuesday: hair makeover/football match, Wednesday:dress shopping, Thursday: The Vagina Monologues and Friday: The Waterfront for 90s night. Sheesh. It’s only Monday and I’m shattered already. Oh. Dear.
Still, I do enjoy being busy. I also have a driving lesson at 09.30am on Saturday, so I’d better make sure I only have one or two pints – there’s nothing worse than learning to drive with a hangover! The last time I did that we went to the beer festival, which was really good fun but drinking different, very high percentage ciders for 6 hours and then getting up at 7.15am to drive was not the best morning of my life.

O, we found out last night that the showing of “It’s a Wonderful Life” is being shown in the technicolour version. Boo. We were all set to haul fifteen of us to go and see it, exchange secret santa gifts and enjoy a roast dinner the Sunday before Christmas. If anyone has seen it in colour and black and white, I’d love to know what you thought. The stills I’ve seen in colour just look horrible – uber bright and basically, just plain wrong. So, we need a change of plan. Personally I think a pot luck at someone’s house (the one with the biggest living room) would be pretty cool – we could borrow a projector from somewhere and camp out on the floor. Pot luck would be cool too – it would mean the host(s) wouldn’t have to worry about feeding fifteen people and everyone could pitch in. I’m singing “Buffalo Girls” just thinking about it. Yay.

I spent six hours last Saturday reading “Breaking Dawn”. For those of you who don’t know, it’s the fourth in the Stephenie Meyer series about the love story of Bella and Edward. They’re ace. They make me feel like I should be sixteen again in order to read them and appreciate them properly, but in a way they make me feel like I am sixteen again. They’re well written and well thought out – it doesn’t try to hard to be clever and the most important thing – they’re funny. Bella spends the series trying to convince Edward to turn her into a vampire to stop her getting wrinkly (and so they can be together forever, blah blah blah) and Edward spends the series tying to get her to marry him before she’s a vampire, so she can have the human experience he never had. There’s more to it than that, of course, but it’s pretty funny. I recommend them to anyone who enjoys Buffy, Angel – any Joss Whedon stuff, mixed with a bit of Gossip Girl.
The other great thing about Stephenie Meyer is that (apart from having FOUR Es in her name) she lists her music playlist in all of her books, the bands that inspire her to write. I think this is great as I believe that music is extremely inspiring and can alter our mood in an instant. Just think about when you’re walking down the street listening to your i-pod and something with a fantastic beat comes on – The Clash’s Should I stay or Should I go, Kaiser Chief’s “Yours Truly, Angry Mob”, anything by Soulwax etc etc. I don’t know about anyone else, but my pace automatically speeds up, my head raises, I stand straighter and it makes me nearly dance. Anyway, the point is, Meyer’s inspirations appear to be taken directly from my CD collection – Arcade Fire, Muse and Interpol to name a few.

There are four books in the Bella/Edward saga. I enjoyed every one of them. If you’re stuck for a Christmas present, I recommend them. For you or someone else. Thanks to my good friend Miss B for introducing me to them and for having such good taste in books (and music and film!)

Say goodbye to my brown hair, friends. Tomorrow (Tuesday) I will be getting my old colour stripped and a brand new colour laid on. I’m jonesing for a white blonde. I’ve wanted to be white blonde since I crushed on Dash-X from Eerie, Indiana.
The downside is that the only person I can think of with the right kind of blonde is this guy:

Although the suit is amazing, I am worried about his expression and the fact that it may rub off on me if I dye my hair his colour. I don’t think that will happen, though. It’s more likely that the hairdresser will refuse to make it that colour. Never fear, bleach savvy friends – it’s organic colour so it will be much better for my hair. I’m quite excited, though.

Wish me luck! I may post a photo on Wednesday…. Happy week, dear readers.

Walking in a winter wonderland

2008-11-03T15:03:00.000Z

Firstly, my apologies to you. I’ve been meaning to write again for weeks but seem to run out of time.
I’m in the third week of my job and I really enjoy it. It feels like I’ve been here for about three days in terms of time passing – the weeks fly by as there’s so much to do. Everyone’s really nice – I’m sure that’ll change as I settle in more with the team, but so far it’s all been a smooth transition. As a whole, the team are really busy which means that I haven’t really had a chance to get to know everyone yet. As usual, smoking helps with that as you get to recognise people and have chats with them outside of work. The hierarchy disappears when you’re a smoker – if you (on the bottom rung) and the Director-General-President smoke, you’ll find yourself swapping nieces and nephews stories in no time, bumming fags from each other and co-ordinating breaks. In terms of the other people, we have a few Christmas lunches coming up so that’ll be a chance to get to know them properly.
I love working in Norwich. I’ve met a few friends for lunch already, which is great. I also get home in time for Neighbours, which I haven’t done for at least a year. Luckily, I have great friends who update me on what’s happening to who. It definitely looks different on Channel 5, though. Still, it’s nice to have the option of watching it if I want. Hollyoaks is on so late! When I used to work away it’d be a bit of a rush to get home in time for the E4 ep, nevermind the Channel 4 one. Now I have a clear hour to toddle about before the early episode comes on. Simple pleasures, eh?
There are only a few cons, neither of which go anywhere near outweighing the benefits. The first is that I don’t have time to read anymore. I used to spend nearly three hours a day reading when I was on the train, and now I spend an extra hour in bed and an extra hour watching the telly or doing something a little more productive. I know what you’re saying – I could easily set aside an hour or two at night to read. I’m just too lazy to. I am reading eclipse at the moment though, which is the third book in the Edward/Bella vampire saga. It’s pretty ace. Definitely a specific audience, but still ace.
The other con is that I’m spending far too much money! Popping out for lunch leads me into Topshop, where I buy things like this : Shiny hat of joy
Or I go to somewhere expensive for lunch and end up paying a tenner a day. Not to mention the damage done to my waistline… Still, it’s all worth it. I just need to exercise my willpower a little bit more in the monetary and subsistence ways.

I have a bit of an axe to grind this week. How much does it cost for an overdue book? My library is upwards of £1 per book, per week. That means that I’ve regularly paid £8 for four overdue books, late by ten days. Please, tell me if it’s an over-reaction from me but I resent paying a new book for a couple of overdue books. I think my problem was that I was under the impression that you could get books out for six weeks, when it’s actually three.
That is an oversight on my part. However, I still think that the charges are pretty steep. That means that people who check out the maximum allowance of fifteen books end up paying £15 a week – more, if I’ve calculated incorrectly.
That’s another thing that’s irritating me. The fees and charges aren’t clear at all. On the website, in the library – ask a member of staff and nine times out of ten they give you a different/vague answer.
I wouldn’t grudge it so much if 1) the library was not equipped with dozens of computers complete with scanners, printers etc, none of which I use on a regular basis (ie more than once a year) 2) if the charges were clearer 3)if the library was not already funded with council money, paid for by council tax payers.
When you can get a book from HMV for £3, it seems pointless to waste money on the library.
Don’t get me wrong – the responsibility lies with me. I’m not moaning about the charges themselves – just the sheer expense of them. I’d like to complain but can’t think of a way to do it without sounding like a whiny teenager.
What do you reckon?

Anyway, on to nicer things. Christmas is just around the corner! YAY! I’m always excited about Christmas. I think, if it’s possible, I get more excited every year. We watch Christmas films, eat lots of yummy Christmas stuff (although I don’t like Christmases Cake, Pudding or mince Pies) and generally have lots of fun. I wrote a present list today. In fact, please don’t laugh or disown me due to excessive geekery, but I wrote a spreadsheet. It has people, shops, budget, items and status on it. There’s also a things to do list and a deadline. I might even incorporate some formatting so it can be pretty, shiny colours. Oh. Dear.
I’m also seeing The Black Keys in the next fortnight, in London. I saw them at UEA a couple of years ago and they were amazing. This is going to be cool. Another benefit to working in Norwich – when we got the tickets I was in Cambridge and was going to have to battle through rush hour on the train to get to London and then somehow meet Mr Charming and friends at the venue. This way we can all go together and it’ll be much more relaxed.

Speaking of relaxed – our new bed is amazing. I love it so. The top of the mattress is two feet off the ground, which is amazing when you’ve been sleeping about six inches off the ground for three years. It’s so big as well – I can stretch out and not worry about my feet sticking out the bottom. The duvet’s lush too – we got a Silentnight all seasons tog, which is basically a 9 tog and a 4.5tog duvet which you can stick together with heavy duty Velcro. It’s lovely. I can’t believe it’s taken us this long to get another bed. Of course, now we’ve done that we need to get bedside tables and a couple of tall bookcases as the rest of the house looks out of place… It also took us three hours to get the old bed dismantled and drag the new one upstairs. We live in a cosy mid-terraced house – fairly standard in Norwich. The less than average thing about it, the feature which made us plump for that house in the first place, is the unconventional staircase. It runs parallel with the outside alleyway and is hidden by a door which looks like it should belong to a cupboard. This is great, and it looks lovely, until you try to get something slightly bigger than a lunchbox up the stairs. They take a sharp turn after the door, which led to a pretty stressful forty five minutes. Still, it was all worth it in the end. Suffice it to say: we’re not going to be moving soon.

And now, the end is near...

2008-10-17T11:01:00.000+01:00

This is definitely not a complaint. First class is really quiet. It’s what libraries used to be, before turning into emo youth hangouts they are today. People in first class whisper – they even cough quietly.

Which means that when people are loud, it’s really annoying. It doesn’t help that it’s an enclosed part of the carriage either, so the noise goes nowhere. The other day I was ensconced in my book when I became aware of a hideous, grinding noise. I looked up and the gentleman beside me had decided to eschew his fruit salad to chew his spork instead. Personally, I would have plumped for the fruit.

The train was really, really full in the middle of the week because, basically, there’s never enough room for the amount of people who want to get on. Loads of people commute to Cambridge from Ely, which is only fifteen minutes away and has a really pretty cathedral. It looks like quite a nice place, but the scallies to normal people ratio is a bit high for my liking. I suppose the same could be said for Norwich, though.

Just before the train pulled off on the way home, a woman popped through the first class doors. These doors are motion sensitive on the inside but they have to be button operated from the outside. Which is cool, as then there are no pesky draughts/standard class people to bother us… So, the woman darted through and sat in a seat. At this point there were only two people in first class including me, so that was fine. Plus, my lefty guilt was seeping through as I watched the rest of the passengers struggling to stand in the crowded carriage. The conductor came round almost straightaway – pretty unusual for such a packed train. The woman immediately said “I don’t have a first class ticket, there wasn’t room to stand and no seats left”. The conductor asked where she was getting off, which was Ely. He said it was fine and then extended the question to myself and my first class companion, asking if we’d mind if some other people were to come in – just until Ely. Naturally I said yes, that’s fine. Until Ely.

In the end, only one other woman came in, who joined myself and the other woman at the table. They immediately struck up a conversation about how incompetent the train company was and how annoying it is to have bought a first class ticket and have standard class people sit there. I had to gawk at the clanger one woman came out with.

“We were de-classified once on a train from Twickenham – the train was so full that anyone was allowed to sit anywhere. Of course, it meant we had people coming in and talking loudly when we’d wanted peace and quiet”

Some people are so unaware of themselves, it’s astounding.

The other thing (this is definitely not a problem, not in the slightest) is that you’re unavoidably drawn into other peoples’ conversations. You know that Steven is going to be late home and Martin is on the 17.12 train (thanks Martin, I knew that already) and that he’s having stew for tea. I was privy to a conversation about a young lady who gets on at Thetford, the other day. Two middle aged men were talking about work – one of them called the other a muppet as a joke and his companion said” Easy, I am two grades above you”. What a horrible man! Anyway, he followed this gem up by commenting on the girl that got on – “She’s pretty”. The unspoken comments hung in the air. In fact, his eyes said more than his mouth. The disappointment was tangible that she wasn’t in a sheer negligee. Ick.

I discovered that first class does not have mere strip lighting like standard, oh no. Most of the time there is a funky Orient Express lamp and a spotlight! I have not yet used either as it has not been dark enough. I may use he spotlight today, though. Or I might try out the lamp.

I am leaving work early today. In fact, I am leaving work today. This morning was the last time I had to get up at 06:25am unless it’s Christmas. Rather fittingly, this morning was the first time I’d gotten up with the moon. I honestly thought that next door had left their security light on again (seriously, brighter than the sun and able to shine through no less than three walls into our bedroom) but on closer inspection, the moon was out. I had to check three clocks to make sure I hadn’t gotten up an hour early. Unfortunately, I hadn’t. Walking to work with the glimmers of the moon and the sun is weird. Walking home at 6.30pm in the pitch black is weird too. I won’t be doing it for much longer, though!

Honestly, it’s a bit sad that I’m not going to be here longer. At the end of the day, though, I had to do what was right for my own career rather than try not to offend some people by daring to hand my resignation in. Oh well.

I’m reading new moon at the moment, which is quite a hefty tome. A full 500 odd pages, although there’s a bit of a cheat as the first chapter of the next book is nestled at the back. Darn their tricksy ‘buy the next book’ moves. I have to go to the library anyway so I’ll have a look for Eclipse then.

I haven’t finished yet, but I’ve only got a chapter to go. Here’s what I think: not half as good as twilight. This is more forced, rushed, less sure of itself. There are some horribly glaring grammatical errors that make me wince, which could easily have been avoided by a careful proof reader or editor. Books with typos, spelling errors and grammatical errors annoy me as to me, it shows disrespect to the reader. If ‘they’ can’t even be bothered to make sure everything is spelled properly and the reader does not have to do extra work to understand the novel, why did I bother spending x hours reading it or spend my hard-earned cash on it?

In terms of the plot, though, it’s fun. Predictable and it could definitely have been 200 pages shorter, but still enjoyable. There are two more books to read after this one, and the film comes out soon! The writing is a bit laboured in this one but there are flashes of twilight’s ease and natural conversation that peek out every now and then.

I will watch the film and probably love it, although I feel that I am betraying myself by watching a film with a Harry Potter actor in it…

I’m definitely Team Edward though!

Who’s been watching Hollyoaks?

The last week or so has been brilliant . I’m not even being ironic – it’s the climax to a slow build-up which has seen a villain torment the McQueens under his own irrational sense of injustice. They’ve been unaware of this conductor of their poor fortunes. Until now. Exploding churches, dead people, people who are meant to be dead but aren’t, people who are meant to be schizophrenic but aren’t (for those episodes, anyway), family betrayal, secrets… How will they recover from their physical and mental wounds? Will anything be the same again?

See what I mean? It’s brilliant.

I’m off paintballing this weekend so I may not be with you again… If I succumb to the enemy, remember this. Be good to yourself, and each other.

Operation Neon

2008-10-13T15:15:00.000+01:00

“We flying the first class
Up in the sky
Poppin' champagne
Livin' the life
In the fast lane
And I won’t change
By the Glamorous, oh the flossy flossy”

This has been in my head for a couple of weeks. All blame lies on Gossip Girl… In some episodes there’s a slightly camp madrigal type choir who seem to always sing slightly inappropriate ditties. A case in point – Fergie’s masterpiece. The excerpt begs the question: what the hell is ‘flossy, flossy’? If anyone knows and would like to explain, I’d be most grateful. Don’t even get me started on the atrocious grammar… Young people these days.

To be honest, there haven’t been any stand out characters on the train recently. Perhaps I’ve stopped noticing because it’s been a while now, or perhaps I’ve stopped noticing because I’ve become one of Them . It’s a good thing this is my last week, if that is the case.
I bit the bullet and bought a first class season ticket. (I wanted to keep the accidental alliteration going there but couldn’t think of a b for ticket, besides billet, that would make sense…) It was extremely expensive but I was determined to treat myself. I was even more determined when the woman who sold me the ticket confirmed twice with me that I wanted the first class (oh the flossy, flossy) season ticket and explained that sometimes trains don’t have them and I wouldn’t be able to sit in first class if it wasn’t there. I don’t know whether to be flattered or insulted on being spoken to like a five year old. Oh well, the upside is I spent over one hundred pounds before 7.30am today. That must be a record.

Speaking of spending money, as an FYI, I logged onto Amazon today and my beautifully spangly converse have doubled in price, from £25 to £50! Boy, do I feel smug now.

Anyway, back to first class. It was like heaven. Slightly worn out heaven, but still, I recognised the signs of Elysium right away. First – the seats were larger, more cushioned and shaped to hold you lightly in their palms. Second – the space to chair ration was vastly different to that of the normal carriage. There are ten first class seats in the space of about a third of the carriage, which probably holds about twenty seats. Third and definitely, absolutely, the most important – there was no-one else in there. For the entire journey. Well, the conductor came to check my ticket and occasionally sauntered through to get to the little room tacked onto the end of the train, but apart from that – pas des personnes. I highly recommend it. The only thing that would make it better is to have the complimentary drinks trolley. I actually got off the train in a good mood! Un-jostled by fellow commuters and not tutted at for getting up to put my coat on and stretch. In fact, I could have done calisthenetics in the space quite comfortably, if I’d wanted.

Mr Charming and I finally got round to ordering our new bed! The last one has been good to us but it’s time to part company. We’ve had it for about 4 years and it was from the medium priced range at Argos, so it’s amazing that it’s lasted so long, I guess. We went window shopping (bed shopping?) for the bed about a month ago, and saw one we liked. It’s pretty big and about three feet off the floor, which means that you have to step up to get into it. Also, there’s loads of storage underneath, which is good news for us as we need somewhere to put our spare bedding, towels etc. The perils of renting… It’s black framed with gold knobby bits on the headboard and the foot(board?) thing. Apparently we should expect it within a fortnight or so. I’m not holding my breath – we bought it from Harveys and I had the misfortune of stumbling across customer reviews online while I was looking for a picture. There are definitely some positive reviews in there, but they’re dwarfed by the sheer volume of negative ones. Furniture takes months to arrive and when it does it’s damaged and/or the wrong thing. Eep. Still, it’s a bed frame and a mattress – how wrong could they get it?
Of course, getting a new bed means that we also need to get new duvet, pillows and duvet cover set(s). Darn. The only issue about that is that I fancy something other than plain colours and feel like it’s time we got into patterns. Of course, I’m veering towards floral and Mr Charming errs towards geometric. If only we could get geometrically floral, or florally geometric. Update soon…

I’m off to paintball next Saturday. I’ve never been paintballing so my knowledge comes from Ant being blinded by those girls and Spaced. I’m also reliably informed by friends who’ve gone that it is fun because you get to shoot people. Now, I play computer games. However, I tend to gravitate the ones with the puzzle element or the scrolling platformers like Mario and Sonic. I have no wish, no desire, to shoot people – real or otherwise. I think I’ll enjoy it but I also feel like I’m lacking the mandatory killer instinct to get the most out of it. I’m also a bit scared of the bruises. It’s my first day at work next Monday and I don’t think it’ll be a good idea if I turn up battered and bloodied. Oh well – you never know – I might discover my true calling!
Black Ops going deep – will report back when out of enemy lines. Or something like that.

Who am I?

2008-10-07T11:46:00.001+01:00

Hello dear reader (s),

This week is my last full week working in Cambridge. My last day is actually Friday the 17^th, but I’m using my half day holiday on that day. It’s Tuesday already! I thought it might be fun/scary to work out how much time I’ve spent on the train from the time I started in July until the time I’ll finish in October.

Here goes…

A grand total of 72 days, which works out at 144 journeys at approximately 1 hour and 18 minutes each way which means I will have spent 187.2 hours on the train. Eep. That doesn’t count the time taken to get to the station and back, which would add another 72 hours on to the total figure. If I assume that it cost me £65 for five days’ travel, altogether I’ve spent (or will have spent) £936. That’s a lot of shoes.

Assuming I have read three books each week, I have read 43 books since July 2^nd.

Enough numbers, it’s starting to creep me out.

Actually, one last number –I asked how much a first class weekly season ticket would be. £104. Ouch. I expected it to be about £90, but to have a two third increase is a bit steep. No wonder they’re always empty. Still, it would probably mean I’d break the £1000 barrier!

My long weekend was lovely – I firmly believe that everyone would be more productive with a three day weekend. In fact, I wouldn’t mind working ten hours a day for the rest of the week if it meant I could have Fridays off all of the time. On the other hand, it may mean that Thursdays become the new Fridays and it’s even harder to come in to work on Mondays. Still, a girl can dream, can’t she?

We definitely didn’t look like this playing badminton on Sunday, but I rediscovered the simple joys of running around a court after a bit of plastic. It was fun and got us out of our pyjamas on a Sunday afternoon, which was nice. The only downside is that I worked some muscles in my bum and upper arms that had forgotten why they were created. Cue lots of stiffness and feeling like an old lady – even now!

We continued our energetic streak to bop down to The Waterfront to see Roots Manuva. Nice juxtaposition. The Waterfront must have been nearly sold out – I haven’t seen it that full for an awfully long time. Still, Rodney was good and I enjoyed the change in pace from normal Sunday evening.

I’m attempting to get a ticket for Noah and the Whale in November – if anyone has a spare or knows where there are some left for sale, feel free to let me know!

I was a model Jane Asher last night. Somehow baking soothes me from whatever mood I’m in – maybe it just re-focuses my attention onto something else, or something. Like when you stub a toe and someone offers to punch you in the face. A distraction tactic. Anyway, I attempted to make muffins that rise and aren’t rubbery. They didn’t rise but they weren’t rubbery – yay! They’re actually really yummy, although you’llhave to excuse me blowing my own trumpet, so to speak. I made the ginger loaf first, where my aim was to make it so that the top didn’t come away from the bottom. I’ve made it three times and each time it tastes nice, but on two occasions the top’s fallen off before I can get it out if the tin. This time I was determined not to end up with a Tupperware box of crumbs, so I lined the tin. Hey presto! That seems to be the secret. Personally I can’t believe it took me so long to think of that.

So the muffins were made second in the same bowl as the ginger loaf, which gave it a bit of a gingery tang. I also mashed up some plain chocolate in lieu of actual chips. They were very flat but nice. Does anyone know how to make ‘em rise? Perhaps I need to put more air in the mixture. I might try peanut putter and chocolate muffins next.

I have a feeling that people may receive baked goods for Christmas this year – so much more personal than a music voucher. I could make them pretty, with bows and sparkle.

After mourning the death of Scrabulous, I have found another addiction.Gossip Girl. I know, I know – I’m way behind the rest of the demographic. I’ve had season one to watch for a while but just haven’t had the time to watch. I got the opportunity on Saturday night, when I caught up with Samantha Who? and Gossip Girl up to and including the dare episode. Then, last night, I watched Victor/Victrola and Seventeen Candles. Hooked! It’s brilliant, like a sassy, young and cool Sex and the City. I actually like the main characters, which is nigh on a first for me. I’m currently a Serena girl but that may change. I also do not have crushes on any of the guys, but again, that may change. Three episodes ago I disliked Chuck Bass intensely – now I think he’s misunderstood.

The episodes I’m watching have French subtitles on them too, which is definitely interesting. I now want to say “bises” and I’m also brushing up on my conjugation skills. Passe Compose? Eat my dust!

Needless to say, I’m looking forward to watching the rest of the episodes. I may even be able to get Mr Charming interested…

Bises!

Ideas above my station

2008-09-30T14:43:00.000+01:00

I am going to miss writing about the train when I walk to work. Well, I will miss writing about it but I’m definitely not going to miss getting up at 6.25am, leaving the house at 7 to walk a mile and a half in 25 minutes and then doing the same thing 12 hours later, in reverse. I may even get to see Neighbours! Although since the move to Channel 5, it looks weird. Plus, I don’t recognise anyone in it. I suppose the point is, I could watch it, if I wanted to. More to the point, I can start running again, huzzah. Theoretically I could run now, but I get up as early as I can bear now and I get home so late that I’m absolutely ravenous when I get in the door. Running as well would either mean going on an empty stomach and not having the energy to enjoy it or waiting until I’ve digested a little bit which would mean me having enough time to run, return, shower and go to bed. This does not a happy commuter make. My start date is yet to be confirmed but I assume it’ll be around the last week in October-ish as I finish in Cambridge on the 17^th, which is a Friday.

However, I will still keep up with the writing – I find it really soothing and it’s great to be able to write without it having to be technical or useful or reviewed by the team. It’ll probably have more reviews though!

I got on the train at Norwich this week to find two people fast asleep on the seats. One person was hidden in a hoodie and the other had music on and was middle-aged. It wasn’t even half seven yet so I guess I’d sleep on the train too. I’d also just watched the train come in and everyone get off, so I knew that I was the first person in the carriage getting on at Norwich. Most importantly, the hoodie was in my seat! I exchanged glances with one of the quiet Natives, a guy who gets off at Wymondham and also occupies the same seat each morning. He shrugged. After a bit of deliberation I decided to wake the older gentleman by poking him in the shoulder. It took a couple of tries – he was sound asleep and dreaming, bless him. When he woke up with a bit of a jump I explained that the train was at Norwich, to which he grabbed his stuff, thanked me and got off. Hoodie followed as he’d woken up by then too. It was definitely a fun start to the morning.

I had the chance to employ some of this social responsibility I’m always talking about the other day. I can’t stand the way everyone’s happy to let everyone else wreck our communal spaces because they’re bored/stupid/whatever. In the current climate I’m definitely more careful about what I say to people, but if someone walks into me or drops rubbish, for example – I’ll let them know about it. Anyway, I was on the train at Cambridge and a boy sits in the vacant seat of the pair I’d occupied. He dumped his schoolbag at his feet and took out a card. I admit it. I peeked – it was a birthday card for his dad. He disposed of the rubbish by releasing the table, shoving everything on it and then closing the table on it. I spent the next ten minutes quietly fuming. There are bins between seats and at either end of the carriages on those trains and if there weren’t any – take it home with you! It was a bit of plastic, not anything smelly or heavy. Why should the people who empty the bins on trains and clean up after the rabble have to check every table to make sure some wide-boy hasn’t decided to squeeze their litter in there? I had therefore decided to remind this sixth former about social responsibility and consequences of actions. He got off at Ely and I waited until I knew he was going to leave his rubbish before freeing it from the table, poking him in the back and handing it to him. He took it without grace but he did take it. Score one to the responsible (and perhaps a little busybody-ish) citizen. He may have dropped it off the train, but I hope he didn’t.

I overhead a couple of hilarious phone conversations in the last week. One was from the biggest man I’d ever seen – he was TV fat and I worried about how he was going to fit in the seats, to be honest. It was snug but surprisingly easy, in the end. He got on with an equally proportioned (well, near enough) friend but the train was quite full so they had to sit apart. That didn’t stop them though – they were the loudest Geordies I’ve heard for a long time. That was entertaining in itself, but then his phone went off. The ringtone was a police siren. I kid you not, dear reader. He then proceeded to tell whoever it was that someone or other had no right to take away her money, which sounded interesting except that it wasn’t. He then enlightened the carriage with his knowledge of the local geography, announcing at Attleborough that he was “in Cambridgeshire”. In case you’re as unfamiliar as he certainly was, Attleborough’s firmly in Norfolk. I suppose, to give him some credit I wouldn’t know all of the counties in other parts of the country, but I’d at least have the sense to realise that the train would’ve crossed at least one border after an hour and keep quiet about it.

I was most fortunate to sit in front of an extremely Norfolk young man on the phone to what I can only assume was his beloved on a different journey. I can’t remember the exchange word for word, but it involved him trying to get her to meet him at the train station by employing all manner of tactics. One was emotional blackmail “Don’t meet me, I’ll walk on my own” , while another was threat “Well, I may as well just turn around and go back again”. The best one was when he said he’d get a taxi from the station and then changed his mind almost immediately, going back to his “I’ll walk on my own” effort. The funniest thing was the high pitched shrieking I could hear on the other end which increased in intensity when he started the conversation with “What you so moody for?”. The climax was definitely near the end of the call, when he said “I luv ya Chelsea” with a straighter face than she could have hoped for from me.

I’ve been thinking about treating myself again. Ooh, the cons have arrived but they’re waiting at the sorting office, boo. Mr Charming hasn’t collected them yet (it’s Mr Charming because I am as yet unqualified to drive) as the books haven’t arrived yet either and I couldn’t stomach two trips to the sorting office in a week. I hate that place. The staff seem hand-picked to be the rudest , most unconcerned employees they could hope for. I’ve had to endure numerous conversations about their weekend while they wander about looking half-heartedly for my parcel/free lightbulbs/under stamped letter and three thousand others wait behind me. They always ask for id when you could give them a train ticket and they wouldn’t care and they don’t accept debit or credit card. Who doesn’t accept card? It’s no wonder Royal Mail are in trouble. There’s a crappy hand written sign in black marker which states “Credit or debit cards are not accepted” in capital letters. The sight of that sign makes my blood boil.

I digress. I think I may treat myself to a week’s long season ticket in First Class for my last week. The seats in there are easily double the width of standard, twice as comfy and even better – there’s never anyone in there! It all depends on how much it is, obviously. I would estimate a 50% increase in the standard ticket which would make it about £95. Hmm, that’s quite steep. It would be fun though.

I read my second Philippa Gregory last week: The Other Boleyn Girl. I don’t like her writing style at all. I struggled through the monotony of the first hundred pages and managed to actually get to the end in a decent amount of time, but really I only finished it because I like the costumes. The characters are badly written and if I ever see “gleam” attached to people again I’ll kill someone. Their voices were indistinct and I had a hard time telling who was speaking, especially in scenes with the Boleyn family meetings. I found the ‘history’ aspect interesting, but I think I’d be much better off reading the actual history books referenced at the back. Or wikipedia. I remember people raving about all of the Philippa Gregory books and about how great they are. To me they’re bodice rippers with a tinge of history, which elevates their status slightly. I suppose the same could be said for Harry Potter, which is just The Worst Witch re-worked for modern audiences. That’s not to mention the countless other ‘nods’ Ms Rowling included from Diana Wynne Jones to Ursula LeGuin to Tolkien himself. While we’re on the subject, does anyone else ever feel like not jumping on the bandwagon? As if Ricky Gervais was actually marching down Oxford Street naked, and everyone stands and applauds? I’ll never understand the fawning over that man’s stand up. The Office and Extras I can go some way to appreciating, but that’s for everyone else and nothing to do with Gervais.

Anyway, enough celeb bashing. I hope to read some of my new books soon, the aforementioned Middlesex is high up there, along with New Moon and Twilight Watch. Huzzah. I should make more of an effort to look like I’m working, I think.

No ticket

2008-09-23T15:45:00.000+01:00

Phew, doesn’t time fly when you’re enjoying yourself?
Apologies it’s been so long since I last wrote anything – I haven’t forgotten, I’ve just been busy with other things.

GM is still being a pain. I’m really trying not to let him affect my walk as that makes me as pathetic as he is being, but it’s a bit hard sometimes. Last week I was walking a short distance behind him, but to the left, when he decided to cross the whole path in order to stand right in front of me. I wouldn’t have taken any notice but he managed to time it so I was too close to move by the time I passed him, which meant I had to “excuse me”. I looked like the villain of the piece, basically.

Speaking of which, where does everyone stand on fare dodgers? I’ve noticed in the past few weeks that there always seems to be at least one passenger who does not show their tickets when the guard passes through the train. Now, some may reason that it’s a victimless crime (akin to prostitution) but I would beg to differ. I believe, perhaps incorrectly, that the absence of cash leads to a rise in ticket prices that wouldn’t have occurred if everyone paid their rightful fare.

Yesterday I was on the homeward journey when two men got on at Ely. This station is not equipped with gates, as Cambridge is. The men sat in a double seat across the aisle from and behind me. When the guard walked through the carriage and called for tickets, neither of them moved to get theirs out. I caught the eyes of one, who looked really guilty, to me, anyway. The guard didn’t notice them sweating and ignored them.
I resolved to do something about it the next time the guard came down the carriage, for the reason I announced before. In the meantime, I thought about what I could, or should, do. I could advise the men that if they didn’t show their tickets to the guard, I would ask the guard to see their tickets. I could catch the guard and ask about procedure when dealing with fare dodgers. I could point at the two men and loudly declare “I don’t believe you’ve had the pleasure!”. The possibilities were endless. In the end, it didn’t matter because the guard didn’t appear back in the carriage between then and Thetford, which isn’t a long journey – only about 25 minutes. Regardless, I still felt that I should have done something else. I pay £16.00 a day for my train journey – why should I pay for the people who are too lazy/tight to buy their own tickets?
Just as an FYI – a single adult ticket from Ely to Thetford is £7.60*. Which means those two men lost the train company £15.20 in that twenty minute journey.
To add insult to injury, a man got on at Attleborough who obviously didn’t have a ticket either! That’s a whole £4.80* down the drain.
What can we do? Count people? Take photographs of every passenger? Have a conductor stand on the platform for every train and count the passengers who get on, then let the on board guard know how many to expect? It’s tough. But there must be a more efficient way to make sure the law abiding citizens don’t end up paying for the shirkers. Hmm, a bit Daily Mail there, I think. Still, my point is valid.

Ah. Operation Hush update – goal achieved! I have informed my employers so I feel comfortable writing about the bare bones in the public domain. I have been offered a job with a well-known employer in Norwich, which I have accepted. Among other things, it means that I will be able to set my alarm clock later than 06.25 and still get to work before 9am. Bliss. Of course, this also means that I will no longer be able to blog about the train journey to work now. However, as Miss F correctly pointed out “I can blog about the walk to work”. The posts may be shorter.
I have a notice period to work but I should be able to start my next job within the next month.

I treated myself to some things. A bit naughty, I know, but soon I will not have to spend £250 a month on travel, so I felt that I was allowed.

Blue sparkly ambrosia resides here...

Aren’t they beautiful? Thanks to Amazon for providing that link and for pointing me in the direction of shoetopia. Ha.
I also bought some books that I’ve been meaning to buy for a while, including Eugenides’ “Middlesex” , which I think sounds fascinating. Ooh, and I bought “The Fountainhead” as the last three books I’ve read have mentioned it, and how great it is. Seriously. I haven’t read anything amazing for a while. I really enjoyed “The Handmaid’s Tale” *which mentions Ayn Rand) although I’m shocked to remember it being on the GSCE reading list. Did anyone study this for GCSE and find themselves traumatised by it?

Okay, I must rush off. Thanks for reading, as always. As soon as my html whizzkid is free there will be a new blog, complete with the spangly things I have envisioned.

*prices correct at time of print.

In the bleak midwinter

2008-09-11T14:41:00.000+01:00

Isn’t that photograph of Norwich RC Cathedral beautiful? Norwich is amazing. This is the smaller of the two cathedrals in Norwich! It won’t be long before we see that kind of weather again – I do like snow as it looks so beautiful, but it’s terribly inconvenient.

The nights are definitely drawing in. It’s colder, wetter and I even had to dig out my winter coats this week. I know it’s a generic thing to say but really – where did the summer go? Did it ever arrive? I remember a fortnight in May where it was beautifully sunny. Never fear – next year I shall venture abroad to somewhere I can lie next to a pool on a sun lounger and do nothing. I may read a few books. Ah, the sunshine. How I miss thee.

I got my results back – I am not diabetic or anaemic. I am allergic to some nuts, which wasn’t terribly helpful as I knew that anyway. The weird thing about the results was that the test showed an allergic reaction to peanuts and not almonds, when in fact it’s the other way around. I discussed this with the doctor, who told me that my IgE level was so high that it could, and probably did, produce false positives. Eep.

In other news, Mr Charming and I have our fifth anniversary coming up soon. We have the day off from work, which is always nice. We’re not sure what we’ll do but it will involve dinner in the evening. I can’t believe it’s been that long already, to be honest. It feels like it should be no more than about three years. It’s all good.

I had another encounter with Grumpy Man the other day. He appears to have taken rather a shine to making my walk from the train station to work as difficult as possible. He’s there when I walk to the gate, out of the door and along the road to the office. I know, this does sound arrogant but honestly, the guy just doesn’t have anything else to do. So, there I am, walking to work and I cross the road to turn into the road that my office is on. Out of nowhere, GM appears and nips in front of me. He’s so close I almost trip over his heels. I tend to walk fast and I’ve noticed that people, especially men, dislike it when I overtake them. Once, a guy even ran onto the road to get round me when I’d overtaken him. Seriously. It’s not my fault that I’m usually cutting it a bit close to be wherever I need to be.

Anyway, GM had positioned himself so he was in the most awkward place possible. Directly in front of me, on a path that would be wide enough to cross on if he hadn’t insisted on walking like a gorilla. When I moved onto the grass to get past him, he moved over too. After about thirty seconds of this ridiculous dance I shouldered past him, muttering “Excuse me, please”. As soon as I did this, he crossed to the other side of the road. Basically, he’s an absolutely giant ass. It’s a shame, because there are a few Natives like him who walk the same way and get the same trains. It’d be nice to have a bit of company. Apparently he’d rather make a fool out of himself than act like a normal human being.

Speaking of which, I had company on the train the other day! It was the homeward bound train, rather than the morning one. A little early for a shopping trip, I feel. Anyway, Miss F and I rendezvoused under the station clock... Well, outside the train station, at least. It was really nice to have someone to speak to for a change. I was a bit aware that there were a couple of passengers who were particularly interested in our conversation, like the guy who came on clutching a can of Strongbow and then proceeded to stare at us for the half hour he was on the train. When he finally got off we were treated to a whiff of him as he swept past us – it’s really hard to describe the smell – old clothes, stale BO, alcohol…. You get the idea.

A little after he left two blokes stormed down the carriage. They were typical Bad Men – loud, proud and the types who would fly off the handle if someone looked at them the wrong way. As they walked past us Miss F had the pleasure of a corner of the last one’s jacket on the shoulder. He turned back. I have to admit, I held my breath for a split second. Then he said “Sorry!”. It was all a bit confusing, really. They proceeded to have a rip roaring barney peppered with suitably Northern words like ‘div’ as well as the usual suspects (begins with mother ends with... well , you get it) but then one of them announced he was going to sit down, stormed back down the train and sat down. Politely. Quietly. He even leant across to ask me something when I was making a cigarette (“Excuse me, love?”) but then decided not to and apologised instead. I reckon he wanted to ask for some tobacco but then saw that it was Cutter’s Choice and thought better of it.

It was still strange, though. I do think that either one of them would have a go at anyone who looked at them the wrong way, but they were also aware of the social environment they were in, and nodded towards that from time to time. It was a bit like the Friends kitchen phenomenon, where anything said in the kitchen can’t be heard in the living room.

Operation Hush is full steam ahead – there will be a decision around Tuesday next week, and the likelihood of the outcome being agreeable to me is 50%. Not bad odds – not as good as I hope right now, but we’ll see.

The Human Affliction

2008-09-02T16:21:00.000+01:00

Ah, another three day weekend. A much needed one, too. In fact, I’ve come to the conclusion that every weekend should be three days long. I wouldn’t mind taking a month’s less salary for a three day weekend all year round. We could have Fridays off which would mean we’d still have that sinking Monday feeling, but that would be alleviated by the half a dozen or so bank holidays scattered throughout the year.

By the way, while I remember – my apologies if there are typos in some of these posts. I do endeavour to keep it proper, but for some reason my version of Word has decided to set the default language as Welsh, which doesn’t appear to recognise any typos or come equipped with any sort of spell check at all. Any tips would be welcome, although I have already tried the obvious ones (like setting my language as English UK and making that the default) but to no avail.

Ooh, I finally got a haircut! It’s just trimmed as I’m still lusting after long, beach combed tresses. I wish my superpower was to grow my hair really fast, as well as it being thick and obedient. I just read this book which is called “Superpowers”. It’s actually pretty good.

It tells the tale of five college students who wake up with more than a hangover after a stormy night on the moonshine, and how they and the people around them cope with the changes. It lacks the clichéd superhero plot about the villain and how they have to save the world, but that’s addressed quite wittily. I’d recommend it if you harboured fantasies of flying when you were younger, or the other standard hero powers. It has a nice, shiny cover too.

I seem to have been on a bit of a superhero tip on my last library visit, as I’ve also read the book by the lady Shauna Reid, “The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl”. Her site can be found here. It’s an account of how she lost a shedload of weight and gained a husband over a period of about seven years. Wait, it’s more interesting than that... If you’ve ever thought about the way you look at food and decided it’s not that healthy to treat it as comfort/affection/your best friend quite as much as you do, you’ll probably identify with this.

I got to ponder the human affliction again one day last week. I reckon it was Thursday morning. We’re just pulling into Cambridge and I, as usual, politely ask the person beside me to let me out. I like getting up a few minutes before because it gives me a chance top stretch and generally get sorted before I have to get off the train and hotfoot it to the office. Plus, I shouldn’t have to justify myself! Over the past two months and eighty something journeys (ick) I’ve had a couple of people who object to me getting up three minutes before we pull into the station. The most recent was, as I’ve previously mentioned, Thursday morning.

There’s one man. He gets on at Ely, and is always wearing a black leather jacket and a rucksack. There are normally a couple of seats free in the end carriage by Ely (which is the last stop before Cambridge) but he tends to eschew them in favour of standing up. The last time I had a run in with him, he almost walked up my behind when I dropped my ipod outside of the station. Flustered, I snapped something about not actually helping and then overtook him as we walk the same route. He objected to this so much that he tried to block me overtaking on FOOT and then tried to trip me up when I passed him. Average Grumpy Man, then.

So, this Thursday, I ask the person next to me to let me out, and she gets out but goes the way of the doors. We do an awkward dance until I get past and she can sit back down again. When I reach the end of the seats (and the beginning of the door section) there is a queue of people. This consists of the GM and another passenger. There is about an acre of space by the doors, so I tap the GM and ask him to move forward, so the other passenger and I can get out of the way of the other passengers who were trying to get out too. I received a fairly typical reply in answer, where he correctly asserted that the train was stopping in a minute. I can’t remember exactly what I said, but it was along the lines of a repeat of the first request. He moved, grumpily and didn’t even respond when I thanked him. After all, he didn’t have to move. It made more sense to and there was no reason he needed all of that space to himself – he still got out first, after all.

The other responses I’ve had when I’ve asked people to move to let me out of the seat range from sighs to feigning deafness. One woman even sighed loudly, moved to the other side of the table and snapped at her new seat mate, when she asked to move: “It’s the terminal, everyone gets off here anyway”. I had to bite my lip on that one – the poor girl looked heartbroken and I wanted to tell her that no-one has the right to tell her when she could stand up. But it’d probably be less “Dead Poet’s Society” and more “Coronation Street”.

Which leads me to the next thing I’ve been thinking about lately.

We’ve all seen them. The people who manage to maintain a double seat for one the whole journey. This relies on finding an empty pair of seats or table, and is not designed to hound people out of their seats! Here, just for you, I’ve collated some top tips on…

How to keep your seat

When sitting in an empty pair of seats, ensure you sit on the one nearest the aisle. Anyone who wants to sit down will therefore have to talk to you or climb over you.
Make sure anything you have that can play music, is playing. As loud as you can bear it and preferably with one ear piece hanging loose, beside your chin. This is to provide maximum volume for the rest of the carriage.
Eat. Something smelly and/or messy is preferable, such as a banana sandwich or a McDonald’s.
As soon as you get on, call someone. Talk as loudly as you can for as long as whoever you’re calling is free. Make sure that your ring tone is as obnoxious as possible (akin to the Nokia ringtone) and that your keypad tones are on full. Continue to call and text as many people/chat lines as possible for the duration.
Grab loads of stuff and put it on the empty seat. Awkward items like paddles or big items like rucksacks are best for this situation.

Any or all of these are not guaranteed to allow you to keep your sacred space free of Other People. They will, however, make everyone in your vicinity hate your guts.

DISCLAIMER: I do not partake in any of the above practices. Nor do I condemn or condone.

On a side note, on my day off yesterday I enjoyed a bit of sunshine and a blood test. I actually had three vials taken out, which looks like an awful lot if it’s yours. There were two reasons for the test. One was for to check for diabetes, as I’ve had all of the symptoms and family members have diabetes. The other was to determine what nuts I’m allergic to and how severe the allergy is. When I have certain nuts I experience allergic reaction type symptoms – nausea, hot flushes, constricted breathing and stomach cramps.

Fun. So I should find out the results within the next week or so, I guess. I had to fast for fifteen hours before the test, which you wouldn’t think would be that hard. I could still smoke but I could only drink water, which got boring really quickly.

The other project will have an outcome within two-three weeks, too. First stage: achieved. Second stage: complete. It’s all out of my hands now, anyway.

All you wanted to know about seating

2008-08-26T11:22:00.000+01:00

Well, it’s been a little while. I’m definitely part of the “If you don’t have anything to say” school of thought, which I realise might be an adaptation of the conventional philosophy, but you get the gist.

There have been very few mental passengers, the Natives are still strangely absent (like the calm before the storm) and no engineering works to damp the general spirits.

Last Friday a group of what I thought were girls but actually turned out to be boys, jumped on the train at Cambridge. After five minutes of general noise, one of them remarked on the fact that there are people trying to read. At which point, Captain Bigmouth here pipes up with “TRYING to read...” After that a stabbing ensued – significant as the first one outside of London and to someone over the age of twenty-five. Not really – this isn’t the front page of The Sun, after all. We had a light hearted conversation about what to do about the one extremely loud male foetus. I suggested gagging. His friend elaborated by throwing “with a sweaty sock” into the mix. Added to that, they got off at Ely, a mere fifteen minutes from Cambridge. Bless ‘em, they were good boys – just a bit sugared up from their trip away from the ‘rents.

I have a lot of time to think, on the train. I generally fill up the time with reading and/or music (depending on the background noise and the fullness of my own brain) but it’s impossible to escape the idle thoughts. Such as – when a conductor checks your ticket for the second time in an hour long journey, why do we put up with it? Isn’t it rather like patronising the cinema only to find the lights up half way through the feature while they check you’re allowed to be in there? I realise it’s hard to keep track of everyone especially if they move around, but I always thought it was a vital part of the conductor-y type job. That and serving tea at 100mph without spilling a drop. Amazing.

You know what else is amazing? The tables on trains. How can it be that the train lurches around corners and topples passengers onto other passengers, but your full, large coffee doesn’t even break a sweat? I don’t understand. I can only conclude it must be magic – something to do with lightweight velcro. They could probably stand to make the carpet out of the same material, though.

I did have a brilliant run in with Grumpy Lady today though (hereinafter referred to as GL) who I have sat next to before, or rather, she sat next to me. You know who she is. She’s the person who makes you feel like you should apologise for not curtseying when she enters the train. As if you should throw yourself prostrate on the ground so as not to sully her eyes with having to look at your face. She also has a hell of a lot of Stuff. As in, plastic bags, laptop bags, handbags... Basically a bit of a nightmare ot sit next to.

There I was, on a half empty train, enjoying my book and whiling away the hour with odd thoughts, when the train stopped at Brandon. Before I knew it, a terse voice barked “Excuse me” while a veritable holiday’s worth of crap got dumped at my feet. Bewildered, I raised my head and pointed a slightly trembling finger to one of the empty pairs of seats nearby. When I say nearby, I mean actually directly behind her. “That one’s free” I offered, “If you don’t want to sit next to anyone”. She muttered something unintelligbile apart from the tone and sat down bad temperedly at the empty seat. The one in the aisle, so no-one else could sit down next to her. Seriously. Why would you WANT to sit next to someone when you didn’t have to? This was made all the more relevant when she spent the next half hour applying make up. After that, she compounded my hatred of trainers with a suit by changing her racy red stilletos for fugly black trainers.

Rather like the urinal etiquette, I believe there is a strict code of train seat etiquette which could perhaps be applied to any seated even i.e. cinema, gig etc.

The idiot's guide to seating etiquette.

Do not sit directly beside, in front of or behind someone unless there is absolutely no room. If this means walking the length of the train/stadium, so be it.
When you wish to sit down at a seat which already has an occupant (but enough room for you and/or companions) you ask the occupant if you may sit down. This may only be a perfunctory gesture, but it counts for a lot and will save your elbows on the ensuing journey.
Armrests. There is one word to remember when dealing with an armrest hogger – SHARE. Very often those who sit next to the window do not have an armest – something nice to consider if you happen to be sitting on an aisle seat.
Tables. There are definite pros and cons to sitting at a table if you are a lone traveller. The extra room is a bit of a con really, as you share about the same amount of space with three other people, as you would have with a dual seater.

My guideline is basically to esnure your feet do not encroach past the half-way line on the table. However, please remember that some people have longer legs and may need more room.

The final rule, the last but not least, if you will – remember the person next to you is actually a human being. If you don’t have enough elbow room and want to get the pointy bits out or fancy playing mean footsie because your toes are a bit squished and you’ve spotted they’re wearing sandals – ask yourself how happy you’d be if they did it to you. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been elbowed, trodden on or barked at just because someone else isn’t 100% comfortable. Believe me, I give as good as I get. But I’m so much more relaxed if someone asks me nicely to move my feet or my bag.

This is by no means an exhaustive list. In fact, if you think of any more that should be added – feel free.

Ooh, this is the first of my four day weeks. Bank holidays are pretty cool, and I have another Monday off next week,. For reasons unknown.

Book recommendation of the week: “twilight” by Stephanie Meyer. I’m a sucker (ha, no second pun intended) for teen vampire books. I definitely blame Buffy and all her scooby gang. If you haven’t heard of “twilight”, it’s about a girl called Bella who moves to a small town to live with her dad, and encounters some kids at the high school who... are a little bit different. Beautiful, dangerous and exciting – can Bella handle the pace?

I know, I know. I should write the blurb on the back of books. Before I’m thirty I want to realise my ambition of writing a Millls & Boon novel. Of course, it will probably be about high school vamps.