Is for Ian Fleming

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

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

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

“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

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

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

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?