Notes of a book dreamer

So why no more posts?

2009-04-04T11:56:00.017+01:00

I have been enduring the birth pangs of creative writing since September 2008 through a University course so composing a lot of poems, fiction and life writing. And active in a writer circle. I continue to post Twitter size stories and poems on Random Twitter Stories and 50 word stories with longer poems on Random Short Stories. So with this, and the course, not a lot of reading is possible at the moment. However, in keeping with the micro theme. I will from 2010 start doing 50 reviews and book inspired thoughts. Samples of this can be found on Random Reading Thoughts . This means that this blog is now mothballed unless needed for bigger book related thoughts. But I have also started, since August 2010, to turn some posts into spoken 'radio' casts on Audioboo and transfer a few edited posts to these blogs and to Scribbles and Diversions my more literary writing blog. Others I removed to my hard drive or just deleted. Did you really want to know how many books I had catalogued in 2007 - pfft get a life!

The free spirit versus the stern editor

2008-11-30T10:25:00.005Z

Edited and moved to Scribbles and Diversions with a recorded reading of the reflection at Audioboo

Cultural Amnesia by Clive James

2008-10-19T20:40:00.001+01:00

How do you define your humanity, your worth and the meaning of the good life? Did the last book you read, the last poem heard, the choir on Classic FM, the last serious piece of reportage in the newspaper make you think, widen the space for thought, help you engage more as a citizen? Did you make a note of the words that hit a spot? Remember to look that book up when next in the library, wonder what that old book of essays would be like you came across in the second hand bookshop. Perhaps as you get older do you see a pattern in what moves you in music, what is good writing and which political ideas increases the possibility of greater freedom of expression and those that close the creative spaces down?

One way to describe this book is to see it as Clive James 40 years exploration to make sense himself, his work and the world around him through works of the well-known, forgotten, cut-short or bogus mainly western intelligentsia. These are over but not confined the past 150 years. He also throws in 20th century film stars, fashion designers, TV broadcasters, jazz musicians and reporters. The format is over 100 individual pen-sketches grouped in alphabetical order of individuals that have aroused his interest with as sentence, comment, or thought and been inked over the years in his journal. From these seeds grows an essay that critically reveals more about the idea or the character or the context but done in his usually witty light foxtrot prose. Knowing that nothing worse then a judgement on writing style not seem here are three extracts.

Pierre Drieu La Rochelle (p.177)

`And above all, I am not interested enough in politics to let them encumber my last days’

On the face of it, Drieu’s valedictory testament was absurd. It was 1944, after the liberation of Paris; he had never made any secret of collaborating with the Nazis; his deeds were done and his time had run out. And his entire personal disaster had been because of his interest in politics. Already resolved to suicide, he was attributing a deficiency to himself in the very area where he had been most obsessed.

Chares De Gaulle (p.258)

After a life of misery, Anne de Gaulle, who had a severe case of Down’s syndrome, died choking in her father’s arms. She was 20 years old. At her funeral, de Gaulle is reputed to have said, “Now she is like the others”. The awful beauty of that remark lies in how it hints at what he had so often felt…For us, that overhear the last gasp of a long agony, there is a additional poignancy of recognising that the Man of Destiny lived every day with an heavenly dispensation he could not control. But to be faced from day to day with a quirk of fate not amenable to human will is sometimes the point of sanity for a man who lives by imposing his personality-the point of salvation, the redeeming weakness.

Miguel De Unamuno (p771)

The eternal, not the modern, is what I love: the modern will be antiquated and grotesque in ten years, when the fashion passes.

The quoted passage makes more sense when we trace what he meant by eternismo, the eternal. He didn’t mean an appeal to transcendental values: he meant attention to the profane reality that is always there. On the same page…he wrote the universal is in the guts of the local and circumscribe, and that the eternal is the guts of the temporal and evanescent … (memo to myself and younger readers: all guesses about tone in a foreign language should be checked with someone who speaks it for a living).

If you have gone… “er never heard of them” then that’s a major theme of this book which examines the fate of those intellectuals and their works in the fall out of the Red and Fascist terrors of the 20th centuries as well as the South American dictatorships. Voices lost as they are swept away to death camps, or corrupted to stay on the right side of the prevailing political winds. Books left as floating corpses as the Saloon life of St Peters, Vienna and Paris sank and burned in the 20’s and 30’s:a tradition with roots in a different form of Jewish prejudice. Another theme is the cant and empty postures by usually left wing intellectuals during the Cold War that would have resulted in a long death in the countries they claim to admire.

I have sympathy with this augment having seen at first hand the middle class student Trotskyites who saw the working class as the ideal except when meeting the wider trade unions membership and ordinary people. Who naturally were seduced by the media to not grasp the wisdom of their leaders in waiting. I was one of those who joined the Communists in the 80’s but had no illusions of what they were doing in Russia and China. I saw the dedication and faith that the little band of activists in wanting to change things by active mobilisation rather then electoral engagement alone. Of course we would have all been the first to vanish in any of the systems that we were assuming the UK to be. But read the book and you don’t see the poverty and lack of opportunity and social justice that creates the Left. I still see politics of changing the agenda more important then the politics of elections and would tackle the illusion of liberal democracy not with the charge that they are not democratic but that they see democracy stopping at the gates of the factory or school. Other notions such as Social Capital and Environmental Justice movements show currents shaking off traditional notions of Electoral Socialism.

These are minor quibbles for what is timely reminder what we are losing in this country with an Education system that fetishes churning out workers and not enabling citizens. Clive James reads many of the books he discusses in their original language, has a lively interest in how films, TV, poetry are creating our cultural life. He can judge and put into context what the writer or performer is offering. Can you? Would you try? See what you lose if you don’t try.

In a conversation on Picasso’s Guernica Matthews asked his students to…look at their inner response…what sound do you hear from the painting?... the room exploded in howls of pain and rage. The door flew open and two students from the hallway stuck their heads in, their expressions resembling the faces in the painting itself.

Said one participant, ‘Suddenly I saw that these art forms were making a claim on me. They were saying, “Wake up! Live your real life.”

Stanfield, R.B. (2000) The Art of Focused Conversation p.2

Sunday Salon: A quiz

2008-10-05T09:37:00.004+01:00

Removed to the Blog Dusty-box

50 Book Challenge read and completed from January to Mid September 2008

2008-09-26T21:14:00.007+01:00

Removed to the Blog Dusty-box

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

2008-09-26T12:49:00.001+01:00

Did The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson change my life, open eyes to a world unlived, sweeten my lips until my last breath, well no. But was it an enjoyable read, fading the world’s troubles ,to refresh for the grind of job, and family-you bet it was. The story is essentially a rewrite of Beauty and the Beast but fellows don’t dismiss it as chick-lit. It’s your turn to say “I'll have what she's having” as it’s also skilfully weaves in comedy and mystery with twists.

The story opens with the unnamed narrator, an adult movie mogul and porn stud high on drugs and liquor crashing and burning in a car accident. To describe the pain and the impact he asks you to put your hand on a live electric element:

And hold it there. Hold it there as the element scorches Dante’s nine rings right into your palm, allowing you to grasp Hell in your hand forever. Let the heat engrave the skin, the muscles the tendons; let it smoulder down to the bone. Wait for the burn to embed itself so far into you that you don’t know if you’ll ever be able to let go of the coil. It won’t be long until the stench of your own burning flesh wafts up, grabbing your nose hairs and refusing to let go, and you smell your body burn.

I want you to keep that hand pressed down for a slow count of sixty. No cheating. One Mis-sis-sip-pi, two Mis-sis-sip-pi, three Mis-sis-sip-pi… At sixty Mis-sis-sip-pi, your hand will have melted so that it now surrounds the element, becoming fused with it. Now rip your flesh free.

The honest story of recovery from severe burn trauma becomes one theme of the novel. He is crippled emotionally by depression and self-loathing rooted an appalling childhood and drug abuse. He fired only by the hope of getting out of the hospital to finish killing himself. A strange woman from the Mental Heath wards in for schizophrenia and bi-polar break down befriends him and he sees her as a way out,

So you ask, what about the mystery element? Well as the recovery progresses she starts telling a myth-story that reveal deeper secrets or madness. It remains ambiguous until the end of the story if this is a supernatural story of eternal love or a natural love of two very screwed up people. Each time you think you have the line it will slip away from you. As light relief you also have a comedy love story about another couple linked to different historical myth/stories. But pay attention, as all the themes and story strands knit together to give you an unexpected ending.

It’s not a hard story to hold in your head as I snatched reading time from travelling around the country meetings in a very busy week. The clever plotting meant that the move between the now and then and between the characters backstories keep you interested and the writing build pictures for your mind to play with, parallels of the now and then from the morality of the narrator, to the role of friends and livelihoods also help to keep the pages turning.

I would highly recommend it, and if you and partner get a copy( it’s the credit crunch so time to share so you have spare) you could cuddle up on a cold evening. Sip wine and read aloud to each other by candle-light (well I would so ask him). It’s cleverly aimed at a broad market so expect the film (once they have sorted out the nude scenes-some hot and some very yuk!) in 2010 with Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp in the lead roles. You heard it here first!

The Sound of Laughter by Peter Kay

2008-09-20T16:18:00.004+01:00

Edited and moved to Random Reading Thoughts

i, Lucifer by Glen Duncan

2008-09-20T12:22:00.003+01:00

How can I put this tactfully? If you are a Christian what is the nature of evil for you? Why does a powerful God permit the Holocaust? Well I hear the defence that it’s a consequence of us being given the freedom of choice. Hence the Devil and his hordes serve to tempt us away from the path of righteousness. But think on, in a world in which Good struggles with Evil we turn the terrorist and criminal into something less then human and that’s the path to genocide. Another defence is that God is not all powerful and needs us to make the world and so that love requires that we see the humanity in the paedophile and the holocaust stoker- condemn the sin not the sinner.

If at this stage you are reaching for your copy of 101 ways of dealing with Heretics i, Lucifer by Glen Duncan is not for you.(And if you thought you were getting a 60’s action thriller with Modesty Blaise kicking ass, are you in for a shock.) This book deals with the trials and tribulations of Lucifer as he gains the opportunity to experience human existence by living the life of a suicidal writer (whose soul is on hold in Purgatory) for a month. It’s told in a first person monologue with lots of flashbacks as he writes about the events in the Bible from his perspective for a screenplay.

The writing is funny, cheeky wicked and dark. Here Duncan manages to take a swipe at both the Christian Right and the PC brigade.

…Oh yes we got Mike downstairs. In fact now’s as a good time as any to tell you: if you are gay you go to Hell, Doesn’t matter what else you spend your time doing-painting the Sistine Chapel, for instant-knob jockey? Down you go( Lezzers are borderline; room for manoeuvres if they’ve done social work.) The entire masterpiece fuelled by the stiffened brush softened in the wrong pot. Another superb irony lost on His Lordship. Not a titter. Just consigned Michelangelo to my torturous care. Awful shame, really. (Had you going, didn’t I? Don’t for Heaven’s sake, take everything so seriously all the time. Heaven’s bulging with queer souls. Honestly.)

This is the Lucifer of Milton’s Paradise Lost (ok, yes I was an A’ Level nerd) consumed by Pride, charming, witty and the gift of the gab and yet in constant pain as doing evil hurts. So why does he do it? Well, if an Angel the deal is to sing and praise ** the Lord. If you want freedom of thought and action then you have to step into Evil as being outside of God’s Will as the only way to be “free”. The writing and story seduces to sup with the Devil (ok hands up those who know how Satin, Lucifer and the Devil differ myth-wise...and yes they do) even when we see him abusing his human body with sex and drugs and attempted rape. During the story is becomes clear that his version is not entirely true (yes I was shocked too) and that he is getting sucked into shaping, and being shaped by his Human host’s life. Nor is the offer by God as upfront as first suggested-what I hear God not playing a straight bat, I say it’s not cricket what.

Strangely, a soundtrack album with the same name as the novel was released as Glen Duncan lived in Clerkenwell with Stephen Coates of The Real Tuesday Weld (yes never heard of them either) while writing the novel so the two projects developed together. Even more off the wall is the proposed film version of the book, adapted by David Logan, starring Daniel Craig in the title role and Ewan McGregor as Declan Gunn. Given that the book is an interior monologue by Lucifer on flashback speed dial where we don’t meet the writer host except through the eyes of others, it’s going to be a case of enjoy the film but it ain’t the book!

So do I recommend it as a Book? Yes I do as an entertainingly wicked tongue in cheek comedy with some serious theological/philosophical overtones but only in the way that you can make serious theology out Charlie Brown (and they have!) Oh well, off to get the fire-proof clothing checked for the heretic lynch-mobs and do a bit niceness and love...just in case.

**Is it only me that see’s this account of Lucifer’s fall echoing Tolkien’s The Silmarillion?

“The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915-1918" by Mark Thompson

2008-09-07T14:40:00.005+01:00

I have just finished reading “The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915-1919" by Mark Thompson which is a study of a 1st World War front that is often forgotten but where Italy lost 689, 000 solders( Britain lost 662,000 + 140, 000 reported as missing). That we tend to associate the infantry war with the plains of Flanders and Russia reveals the common myth as this part of the struggle was mountain warfare albeit also with trenches.

The conduct of the war exposed the weak hold of liberal structures and politics on the Italian population and the defeat of victory quickly let in 20 years of fascist government. The collapse of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, and take over the successor national states by the communists has made it difficult to get a sense of what really went on: Italians and other non Germanic nationals did fight for the Emperor, many of the feature of Fascism (a puppet parliament, a muzzled press, a romantic nationalism, a militarised state) had their roots on the political conduct of the war.

What made the book an interesting read is that Mark Thomas does more then hold to the historical arc of the events from the turmoil in Italy leading to its ripping up of a long standing agreement to be allied with the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary ( It took on a secret 30 pieces of silver territorial deal with the Allies). And ending with the desperate mad dash to occupy land vacated by the collapsing Hapsburg armies-it made the most of the cock-up where as the armistice agreement ended the war one day earlier for Austria-Hungary. What he does is switch the narrative in cinematographic terms from wide/long shots, medium to close-ups as the narrative unfolds. So we take the long view at the ideas affecting Italian practice in politics, art and military such as Romantic Vitalism or the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche. Or the impact of how Italian unification actually unfolded. We then have medium shot accounts of how individual battles unfolded from both of the combatant’s perspectives or the power struggles and conduct at military and political levels. And finally the close-up accounts of artists, reporters, and survivors that expose the official accounts or help to explain the mindset of the elites.

It was this rounded and varied explanation that held my attention, as I tended to wander in the step by step of accounts of the battles(my attention span rather then the quality of the writing, although these are necessary to understand the appalling and arrogant way that the soldiers were used. For example, Military discipline justified the ancient Roman practice of randomly killing 1 in 10 solders if the platoon had infringed any rules which could be just turning up late from leave. The fact, with no interest shown in the reason was enough for summary execution. This is because the Italian army leadership took the most extreme view of all the armed forces in the 1st world war that the solders were only cannon fodder to do the will of the supreme commander. An attitude they paid for when Austria-Hungarian forces with direct support of Germany developed a forerunner of Blitzkrieg and took back all the territory fought over in the past three years and swept down to the pre 1866 national boundaries.

The resource imbalance between the foes and the deteriorating political realties for the Central Powers meant that this could not be turned into a knock-out blow. But with Russia out and embroiled in Revolution and no significant Allied victories, the collapse of the Central Powers as Germany struggled to avoid the fate of Austria- Hungary created the German Nazis myth of a stab in the back. It also confirmed the lack of democratic populist support for liberalism.

So why should you read this book? Well it gives you a clear account of one part of the wider First World War front that is only now becoming clear and even possible to study. (Attempts to clear the names of those summarily executed is still politically sensitive in Italy.) But a more important reason is that it offers insights into the conduct of events now. If History has anything to teach, its that we the ordinary people wont get a true picture what our masters have been doing in our name until we are pushing up the daisies.. In knowing what was going on behind closed doors then, we can question what the media, cultural elites, military strategists, politicians are doing now. But of course if you think we have the straight line on the War on Terror, or the credit crunch then give it a miss.

Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessle

2008-09-01T19:49:00.001+01:00

So the novel is brilliant, rubbish or what?

This famous Sufi story sums up the conflict around Marisha Pessl début novel "Special Topics in Calamity Physics":

A judge in a village court had gone on vacation. Nasrudin was asked to be temporary judge for a day. Nasrudin sat on the Judge's chair with a serious face, gazing around the public and ordered the first case be brought-up for hearing.

"You are right," said Nasrudin after hearing one side.

"You are right," he said after hearing the other side.

"But both cannot be right," said a member of public sitting in the audience.

"You are right, too" said Nasrudin.

So is it juvenile rubbish written by a writer who has… a tin ear for prose. There is a page-by-page cascade of dreadful extended metaphors and distractingly inappropriate similes. Or is it the…most flashily erudite first novel since Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated. With its pirouettes and cartwheels, its tireless annotations and digressions, it has a similar whiz-kid eagerness to wow the reader.

Plot, Genre and what the F**k is going on

To see which way I sit, let’s start with Plot. The novel is mainly about the senior year of Blue Van Meer at a yuppie private school where her Father teaches political science. She is very bright and heading for being the top of the year on her way to Harvard. Hannah a film professor who bewitches the clever/social elite of the college befriends Blue. They are bitterly opposed to Blue’s presence and this is made plain in her treatment over the year but she is attracted to one of the pack and perhaps its mutual.

And there was Milton, sturdy and grim with a big, cushiony body like someone’s favorite reading chair in need of reupholstering…He was eighteen but looked thirty. His face , cluttered with brown eyes, curly black hair, a swollen mouth, had a curdled handsomeness to it, as if, incredibly, it wasn’t what it’d once been.

But another loves her and she can’t see past him being a jock and nice guy. So here we have the elements for High School satire.

But she and her Father have been on the road, teaching at colleagues and attending schools around America since her mother died when she was five. So part of the energy of the book is the hilarious scatter-gun comedy of them both on the road and the Father’s I-am-so-right about all things views on all things

“Everyone is responsible for the page-turning tempo of his or her Life Story,” Dad said, scratching his jaw thoughtfully, arranging the limp collar of his chambray shirt. “Even if you have your Magnificent Reason, it could still be as dull as Nebraska and that’s no one’s fault but your own. Well, if you feel it’s miles of cornfields, find something to believe in other that yourself, preferably a cause without the stench of hypocrisy, and then charge in to battle…

Combine the High School satire and the need to assess her Father and we have a Coming of Age as the story is written a year after as the Narrator (Blue) reviews the events of the past year and what her future will be. Those readers not comfortable with mixed genres also have to contend with the fact that the novel is also a Mystery. Its stated in the first few pages that Hannah dies, how and under what circumstances is revealed as the story unfolds. After the death about 2/3rds into the story takes an unexpected turn as it shows that, none of the events and main character were, as they seemed.

Does the genre mix work? Yes for me, as I liked the way that each of the genres undermine and reinvigorate each other. It’s like watching a film that combines “Heathers”(High School satire) “The Crying Game” (political intrigue) and “American Graffiti” ( growing up), which would be a mess in the wrong hands. But having a single narrator with Blue’s personality keeps this from unravelling but it may not be for you. As this commenter makes clear... A fizzy fusion of prep-school escapade, Gothic murder mystery and revolutionary intrigue (...) Initially entertaining, such gimmickry swiftly becomes tiresome and, rather than adding depth, detracts from a plot

Structure and Voice reflecting story purpose and shape

The structure of the novel reflects the over earnest academic nature of the narrator and her teenage angst in that its structured around core curriculum reading which means that each chapter is linked to famous, novel, play, political essay or poem such as Moby-Dick, Laughter in the Dark, Othello. Part of the humour of the novel is see what the possible resonance of the quoted title is with the actual events in the chapter. The end chapter, Final Exam sums up the book’s themes in a series of multi-choice questions and should not be read until the end of the book! The introduction like any introduction sets out what is to be discussed and for those that read it after finishing the novel it does but you miss it the first time round!

The narrator is a hot-house intellectual cultivated by her father and never really having the opportunities to have child-child friendships. This is shown in the novel by her excessive quote of references (not real life ones-give an author a break) and of quoting her father (these have the impact of being a commentary on the characters actions and showing her naïveté).This passage describes the silence used by Hannah.

And the wasn’t premeditated, condescending, or forced (see chapter9, “ Get Your Teen to Consider You thee ‘In’ Crowd.” Befriending Your Kids, Howards, 2000)

Obviously being able to simply was a skill supremely underestimated in the Western world. As Dad was found of saying all Winners were in possession of a strident voice, which was successfully producing a country that was insanely loud, so, loud most of the time, no actual meaning could be discerned-‘only nationwide white noise.’

Writing and characterisation: Good or Bad

Well I was carried along by writing tricks of the trade such as the the rich wordplay in which the character gets complexly carried away with metaphors and similes so whole passages come alive with the joy of language.

I had not foreseen the stiff , clapboard manner with which she’d greeted me, the barebones welcome, the whisper of a frown-as if I ‘d been wired for sound all night…

On Friday, March 26th, with the same innocence of the Trojans as they gathered around the strange wooden horse standing at the gate to their city in order to marvel at its craftsmanship, Hannah drove our yellow Rent-me truck into the dirt lot of Sunset Views Encampment and parked in Space 52.

Or as one critic put it...(H)er mesmeric tale, even at its most over-the-top, feels true to the operatic agonies of adolescence.

The three main characters, Blue, her father (Her father in many ways dominates as a character and it will be wonderful to see how they play him in the film surely under discussion) and Hannah stand out and several of the minor characters as well especially the “June Bugs” Blue and her fathers description of the women who get drawn in and dumped when they stop being amusing. The possible weakness is the Bluebloods, the college elite, it is not always clear why they act the way they act. In part this is the muddled perception of Blue and the manipulations Hannah. But they do tend to be used as plot devices and foils for some of the satire rather then being independent characters in their own right. Some concern has been expressed that Blue is not convincing: an intellectual that doesn’t read, getting to the top of the class based on intellectual efforts only etc but lighten up, it’s a satire not an anthropological study.

So what’s the judgement?

So, if you read it, get driven by the energy of the writing to the end and be amazed how much you have been tricked about what was really going on. Enjoy the characters and social satire. It is an impressive debut novel that is fun and funny but it bears no relationship with "The Secret History" by Donna Tartt so ignore that red herring. And ignore comments like...Her exhilarating synthesis of the classic and the modern, frivolity and fate -- Pnin meets The O.C. -- is a poetic act of will. Its good but please it ain’t the second coming or one night alone with your secret desire- you know who I mean.

Oh and of course you too are right.

A reverse Etheree riposte* *

2008-08-28T08:02:00.006+01:00

Post moved to Random Short Stories

Holiday from Hell and Books from Heaven

2008-08-24T08:22:00.005+01:00

Edited and moved to Scribbles and Diversions with a recorded reading of the reflection at Audioboo

Its Superman by Tom De Haven

2008-08-23T19:54:00.003+01:00

You may have read one of the classical myths published by Random House. They invite contemporary writers such Ali Smith or Margaret Atwood to rewrite classical myths with modern concerns and twists. Superman by Tom De Haven is a rewrite of the comic magazine myth of Clark Kent, Lois Lane and Superman. On the face of it, two different projects but dig deeper and they are not. The energy that enables Superman last 70 years and expand into TV, films etc is Myth. The baby that appears in a rocket (Miraculous Birth) who as he grow older discovers his powers (Initiation) which leads to loss of family and community(Withdrawal) as he try and find himself(Trail and Quest) and so on.

But Tom De Haven faces a different additional challenge, in rewriting a modern comic hero, as unlike the Greek myths we have grown up with the story and character. Those of us of a certain age can remember buying Superman comics from paper shops along with The Beano and Eagle long before they were elevated to graphic novels and specialist geek watering holes. Or being amazed at Superman the Movie in the 80’s( of course those of us even more of a certain age can remember the 50’s TV series). It means that you tinker with our childhood memories at your peril.

To do the story justice it has to be driven by the power of Myth but also refreshed so we experience something novel from fare we know in our bones. Does he succeed? Yes, Jumping Jehovah he does with bells on.

The story is set in the 30s and focuses on the politics and society of Depression America including the normalcy of how Afro-Americans were treated. Clark Kent struggles to come to terms with who and what he is and isn’t the sharpest blade in the drawer. Lois Lane is, and in control her life and her men (and the life in her men!) The big city is New York and its corruption where we met Lex Luthor a shining reformer by day and a criminal Mr Big by night. Its how he deals with Superman that seals both their fates and Lois as we discover how the Legend finally begins.

This in fact draws more on the original comic storyline then the later camp versions, thinks of the dark versions of Batman rather then the kowpow 60’s. The focus here as then is more on domestic crime and fascism rather then the weekly super villain. What also makes it work is the writing. We move in and out of the characters seeing their take on things, major characters die and secondary characters move to centre stage so you cant take things for granted. And the style engages:

He watches it-more like glares at it-till the paper bursts in flame, dissolves in to granular soot, and quickly disappears

Same as always. Clark’s eyes are left feeling syrupy, almost liquid like the waterglass his mom would make in summertime to preserve surplus eggs. But the sensation passes in less then a minute. And it’s a small price to pay for such a-

Gift?

For the first time in a week Clark feels the muscles flex up at both ends of his mouth, It’s not much of a smile but for now it will have to do.

He needs to speak to his father

He needs to tell him good-bye

So pick this up, and revisit a retold Myth as ancient in its way as that of the Greeks you won’t be disappointed and this time you don’t have to wait for the film. Highly Recommended.

Beware of God by Shalom Auslander

2008-08-22T14:05:00.008+01:00

The rabbi was fed up with his congregation. So, he decided to skip the services on Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, and instead go play golf. Moses was looking down from heaven and saw the rabbi on the golf course. He naturally reported it to God. Moses suggested God punish the rabbi severely. As he watched, Moses saw the rabbi playing the best game he had ever played! The rabbi got a hole-in-one on the toughest hole on the course. Moses turned to God and asked, "I thought you were going to punish him. Do you call this punishment?!" God replied, "Who can he tell?"

Offended? Puzzled? Then best not to read the rest of this review as Beware of God by Shalom Auslander, a compilation of his short stories, moves you into dark, poignant, bittersweet, mocking stories where God has to kill you in order to keep the books straight, or monkeys suffer suicidal consciousness. In “God is a big Chicken” that what God is and Yankel Morgenstern back from the dead has to tell the truth or live the lie. “Holocaust for the Kids” is a montage of apparent quotes and facts and family comments that show up the horror of the Holocaust.

Some of the common themes are animals with human awareness, God dealing with human dilemmas, humans not understanding how God works (the near death experience is not God saving you but God’s aim being off that day), families struggling and relationships failing. Many of his stories are coloured by his upbringing in a narrow Judaism. As Shalom Auslander says about his highly acclaimed memoir Foreskin Lament, (which if you want to pass my way please feel free).

I was raised in a small ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in New York; picture a madrasa somewhere in Taliban Town, change the head coverings to yarmulkes, switch the Korans for Old Testaments and that’s pretty much it. The book is about my life under the thumb of an abusive, belligerent God, and the long-term emotionally crippling effects the fundamentalism of my youth has had and continues to have upon me. But funny. I suppose it didn’t help that my father on Earth was as abusive as my Father in Heaven. Good times, good times.

Its this self-depreciating, prick pomposity humour that drives these well written stories. Unlike many collections, this has diversity and surprise so it avoids the sameness of style or theme that weakens so many other collections. This is down to the quality and cadence of the writing as well as its humour as in this story when God goes to an Ad Agency.

They did concept testing of a number of preliminary taglines and position statements. Nobody in the focus groups like “The Original and Still the Best”, they were spilt on “The Porsche of Deities” and “Feeling Odd? Try God” met with consistent disapproval. One elderly woman took personal offence with the latter, as she understood the tagline to be suggesting that if she believed in God, she must be odd; a meaningful discussion nearly ensure, and an emergency plate of doughnuts was hurried in.

Highly recommended, oh and readers in the UK could rush down to their local Works as the HB is on sale for only 99p. Let me leave the last word to Shalom.

For general contact, comments, questions, requests, accusations, rants and tirades, email: Jackie@shalomauslander.com Please note that while I try to read all emails, I am quite busy with writing, whining, self-loathing, reading glowing reviews of the work of people other then me, complaining to my shrink, masturbating and intoxicating myself to be able to respond to every one, but I do appreciate them. The positive ones, anyway.

The Speckled People by Hugo Hamilton

2008-08-21T14:28:00.006+01:00

Hamilton is a journalist, and a writer of short stories and novels. His first three novels were set in Central Europe. Then came Headbanger (1996), a darkly comic crime novel set in Dublin and featuring detective Pat Coyne. A sequel, Sad Bastard, followed in 1998. The Speckled People came out in 2003 to critical acclaim It is an intensely personal memoir about very a political and public issue; what does language mean for national identity in democracies. His was a childhood of "lederhosen and Aran sweaters, smelling of rough wool and new leather, Irish on top and German below” so uniquely lived through two separate struggles represented by his parents. It is also about homesickness; for a dream Ireland, a lost Germany and a homeland of one’s own.

Hugo’s father wanted an Irish speaking self-sufficient Catholic Ireland. English if spoken by the children resulted in punishments including beating with sticks. He adapted an Irish name that no one could spell and pronounce and refused to answer even his work letters if they failed to write using his English name. Yet he also made toys, read stories and took his family on holiday to West Ireland (much to the amusement of the locals who were tired of the Dublin Intellectuals telling them they were the future when all they wanted was a decent inside toilets and jobs. His nationalism was driven by the shame of a father who had served and died in the British Navy leaving a service pension that funded his university education. He was always on the look out for the next big business deal to make Ireland economically free. But from crosses, toy wagons and tragic Honey they are failures, his only success is the size of his family as it grows year by year. They are the secret weapon to challenge the legacy of Empire.

His mother was a German Catholic, whose father was a conservative opponent of Hitler and whose family were passive resisters throughout the war although one sister was more active in being part of a network of safe houses hiding Jews. She herself as being “people of the head rather then the fist” so eventually rebels against her husband and destroys the canes but otherwise goes along with her husbands dreams and teaches her children German so they becomes fluent in three languages. She also has secrets that unravel as the biography unfolds.

The memoir is not a sentimental Irish story of hope crushed by poverty driven by the drink. The children have a comfortable and warm upbringing drawing on the richness of three culture’s music and literature. But being German meant that the children were bullied and taunted as Nazis and they were at a lost to say where they belonged. What drives the story is the voice of the narrator that uses simple sentences and childlike observations, gradually turning to what he knows and understands, as he grows older and so creating a quiet humorous yet honest account of two flawed humans struggling to make a better life for their children in the very different 50s and 60’s. An sequel called The Sailor in the Wardrobe was published in 2006. Highly recommended.
What others are saying

Childhood Memories of Libraries

2008-08-21T07:25:00.008+01:00

Edited and moved to Scribbles and Diversions

Tuesday Thingers. Who mentioned Shy?

2008-08-19T13:20:00.008+01:00

Edited and moved to Scribbles and Diversions

52 ways of looking at Poem by Ruth Padel

2008-08-18T12:09:00.004+01:00

In autumn, I start a creative writing course with the Open University. One of the assignments is to write an 80-line poem. I know you out there who dash off a daily Sonnet or Etheree ( yes I had never heard of it before either-this is what one is and this is one I prepared earlier ) wonder what all the fuss is about.

Well the fuss is that the last poetry I studied was back in 1977-8 when I started but didn’t complete English A’ Level ( I decided that living on a commune where naked women –some hippie idea of moon cycles- gardened was the better option... and dear reader it was!) And frankly apart from the last few weeks, I have not written poetry since the 60’s which was for some Cadburys Chocolate writing competition which I won but then so did the entire class. Clever marketing rather then good writing one suspects.

This is my fourth poem ever written-yes I know but it takes time to learn. Thanks to 52 Ways of Looking at a Poem by Ruth Padel, I now know that this 50-word poem is a free form (1) syllabic (2) verse with rhythm maintained by the use of enjambment (3) and an underlying 7-5-7 syllabic beat within an irregular 4 stanza form(4). And that it leans to metaphorical expression through the voice of an old woman. See what happens when you read Poetry books.

British readers may recognise Ruth Padel from her long since axed Independence on Sunday poetry section where she published a modern poet’s poem and then explored a way of reading or understanding it. This book pulls together 52 of those articles and introduces the reader to the who and what of modern English Poetry. I hadn't heard of one of the poets(no sniggering in the back please) so the book enabled me to read and catch a flavour of poetry today that… lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.

To illustrate what you are missing (and how so much more I have to learn) are two modern sonnets that caught my ear. Read them and then say modern poetry is so elitist and obscure.

Prayer

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer

utters itself. So a woman will lift

her head from the sieve of her hands and stare

at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth

enters out hearts, that small familiar pain;

then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth

in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales

console the lodger looking out across

a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls

a child’s name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio’s prayer-

Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisteree.

Carol Anne Duffy (1993)

Quoof

How often have I carried our family word

for the hot water bottle

to a strange bed,

as my father would juggle a red-hot half-brick

in an old sock

to his childhood settle.

I have taken into so many lovely heads

Or laid it between us like a sword.

An hotel room in New York City

with a girl who spoke hardly any English

my hand on her breast

like the smouldering one-off spoor of the yeti

or some other shy beast

that has yet to enter the language.

Paul Muldoon (1983)

(1) meaning no set metre or end rhymes

(2) meaning you count the syllables rather then the stresses

(3) meaning the line or phrase carries over on the next

(4) meaning verses

What others are saying

An Utterly Impartial History of Britain: (or 2000 Years of Upper Class Idiots in Charge) by John O’Farrell

2008-08-15T12:30:00.004+01:00

You have a spare summer and fancy writing a book but can’t be bothered with all that creative muse malarky. It’s a bit too soon for the autobiography( still working on doing the X-factor and the Big Brother application and frankly not so hot on the sports front) so what do you do? Well you pop along to the local reference library and sort out a stack of What the Roman’s did for us, Great Kings and Queens of England, Prime Minsters I have known, and write a comic History of Britain for History refusniks. This is what John O’Farrell attempts to do in An Utterly Impartial History of Britain: (or 2000 Years of Upper Class Idiots in Charge). As you failed English know ( for Americans and other ex colonial types, local joke so ignore) when we mention Britain we really mean England except if one of you win an Olympic medal so you still have time to fit in one for Scotland, Wales or Ireland.

The question is, does it work as comedy, history or even comedic history? The gold standard is 1066 and All That and frankly, the book struggles in comparison. Both draw on popular memories of what is history and make it the raw material for humour. The historical factoids of the O’Farrell book do make it ideal for a bathroom read as you can dip in and out as nature calls. But the John O’Farrell humour of Blackadderish quips and asides* can grate unlike1066 and All That.**

Well does it work as History? Er…not really. If you had more interesting things to do at school, it does give you a simple overview of English History. If you paid attention then the lack of accuracy (Read the Terry Deary Horrid History series to see how its done properly) or the one-dimensional nature of the account soon irritates. One particular annoying clanger is the myth that the Anglo-Saxons wiped out the Romano-Celtic language and culture. The 0rigins of the British by Stephen Oppenheimer based on genetic evidence show that the SW and Wales, Southern England and the North had separate and long-standing separate waves of settlement. Meaning that the natives that the Romans met in the south were of Germanic origin and hence why so little Celtic influence in place names and English. I could go about his slighting reference to the King James Bible (an attempt to head off the radical puritans translations), his failure to address the social-religious movements of the English Civil War and their impact and don’t get me started on his nonsense of the first World War. Yes, I did pay attention in History and so what if you were more popular in school.

So any redeeming features? It does have several serious asides about the lack of social justice; we the working people rarely get a look in on political and social power until perhaps the English Civil war and then struggled to get universal franchise until 1948(when students having two votes was abolished). But, this was done much better by the classic Making of the English Working Class by E.P. Thompson.

If you do get hold of a copy, pass it on to your teenagers who might at last get a sense what Sir was droning on about. As for you, its raining so get down and write the history that John O’Farrell didn’t write. As for you few Americans still here, read about your own forgotten past in A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present by Howard Zinn.

Remembering that humour is subjective here are other viewpoints:

* Well researched, very funny book, which was a joy as holiday reading. Frequently laugh-out-loud. Highly enjoyable.

** a book full of silly upper-class-twit jokes. (Haw-haw! What will Master think!) .Anyway, for us who are more prosaically born and raised, this book offers no reward other than insight into the childhood of a frivolous (if Oxonian) class of recently and soon to be dead English aristocracy.

Booking Through Thursday: Olympics

2008-08-14T09:33:00.009+01:00

Removed to the Blog Dusty-box

Tuesday Thingers Meme Q with A

2008-08-05T20:06:00.010+01:00

Removed to the Blog Dusty-box

Weekly Geeks #13

2008-08-04T06:48:00.015+01:00

Removed to the Blog Dusty-box

Sunday Salon: Sunday thoughts

2008-08-03T14:48:00.003+01:00

Edited and moved to Scribbles and Diversions with a recorded reading of the reflection at Audioboo

Underworld by Don DeLillo

2008-08-01T20:54:00.003+01:00

Well...The opening chapter was stunning in the way it reads like in you were seeing the action in a film with the camera weaving around the stadium switching from wide shot to close up. It was also clever in setting up the themes and plot lines...the start of the cold war and its impact...loss...and the mystery/holy grail hunt for the baseball.., and waste(of human life and of the environment. This continues when we meet the main character at the end of the cold war and the planes of war being turned into art and start to learn about some major event in their lives some 40 years ago that is going to unwind and make clear the rest of the story. Which it does as you meet his brother, his wife, his partner, his science teachers and then the characters in their lives and so on. They begin to flesh out the political and emotional implications of the cold war and the waste internal and external this represents. Unlike a lot of the critical reviews I did feel that his characters were well sketched.

I did get 2/3s of the way through but the reason for abandoning it was that it didn't emotionally engage me. And the reason for this is that for me it lacked a dramatic drive that pushed me to find out if all the story lines were resolved. Because of this I was "analysing" its processes rather then able to live the story in my imagination. A important factor for this was the(have a stiff drink here!) basis of why it is a highly skilled novel...its Americanness. Getting around the book and knowing what period and location and so being emotionally engaged depended on getting the cultural/social history clues which as a non-American does not have the same resonance.

Here I am thinking of a similar story that was written from the British perspective. It would have a problem of finding a universal sport as cricket, tennis and football have class connotations and the nearest to a game having the 1951 spot was the 1966 world cup which was a very different era. So the British story would have focused on the loss of empire and the political and social changes this required over the same time period. Our crime patten is very different so the mobster angle would have focused on London and the London gangs. We could not have had a Texas Highway mass murder given our gun laws. Our mass murders are more domestic. We would not even had the popular TV stars of the 50's has we were about 10 years behind in TV access.

Hence as the story that is about American experiences and cultural perspective it dramatic weakness means it lost its hold over me. Just to sweeten the pill I moved on to Post Office by Charles Bukowski which is equally American as a British equivalent of this would be Saturday's night, Sunday morning by Alan Sillitoe but which grips from the opening lines as it types into universalise experiences of bad jobs, being screwed over, self hate etc. Its the first I have read of his but now a fan!

The year of the French by Thomas Flanagan

2008-08-01T20:50:00.001+01:00

Story of the attempt by Ireland in 1798 to follow in the footsteps of the successful revolutions of the USA and French. The Catholic and Protestant middle classes united to throw out the English aristocracy and create a republic of legally free citizens.

We follow through the eyes of different sections of society- protestant landowners, catholic gentry, English land agents, Irish farmers, landless peasants etc the trigger for the revolt and its tragic course as the revolt is aided by the French.

The weakness of the middle classes, and its reliance on the Irish peasants who want a Celtic Ireland free of all landlords tragically undermine the rebellion with serious consequences. Ireland looses its political independence for an 100 years and its Irish culture. And the failure of the French leaves the way open to the rise of Bonaparte as a key political General looses the ability to counter his rise to power.

Its not a dry historical account or an historical romance. The book uses live action with a range of letters, journals, histories etc to build up the complexity of motives, views of both sides so you the reader are involved as a judge of history to weigh up the whole picture rather then the myths of all sides.

I would recommend it but the different narrative formats require a concentration and can drag in places but if you pursue to the end it comes together in a grand sad ferocious sweep of a maybe moment in history

The Cold War by John Lewis Gaddis

2008-08-01T20:41:00.002+01:00

Have you stopped worrying about the Cold War and the threat for the end of Humanity? The Cold War by John Lewis Gaddis explains why you have and why you were right to worry. It gives an historical overview of the different phrases of the Cold War from its on set in the late 1940’S to its demise in 1989. It develops important ideas such as in an era of total war and destruction then a major war ceases to have any political relevance.

Access to the contemporary records shows time and time again that the political classes in the USA, UK, USSR and China came to similar conclusions when faced with the cultural conflicts of the 60’s , having to be in bed with unnatural allies, etc It also sets out that in the 20-50s it was not clear whose ideas of the state, politics, human rights etc would win. What saved us from the authoritarian states that 1984 fears is that liberal capitalism was able to deliver greater living standards then the controlled economies. Its food for thought what would have happen if the USSR had been able to become the economic powerhouse that communist china is now.

In the 70’s political activities focused on freezing the superpower relationship and the post war settlement as fact of life but in giving a legitimacy to human rights it quicken the demise of communist legitimacy that its economic failures compounded. In the 80’s the smoke and mirrors that kept up the illusion of the USSR superpower finally imploded.

The approach reminds me of the story from china in the 1960's when a senior leader of the communist party was asked what he thought of the success and failures of the French revolution. He replied its too early to say!

The origin of the book was a student's plea that he could update his massive history of the Cold War of the 50s and 60's so it covered the whole period but with fewer words. He succeeds with a well written, informative and at times jaw dropping account of the incompetence of our rulers!

Guns, germs and steel : a short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years by Jared M. Diamond

2008-08-01T20:36:00.002+01:00

Clear counter argument to assumptions that Western ascendancy is down to genetic advantage. At its simplest the historical decision of who turned right or left when the African Diaspora happen sealed the fate of many peoples. But this is being flippant about a serious issue.

The essential argument is that the availability of domesticatable plants and animals (and the level of benefit for switching from hunting-gathering)affected how early and successfully could food production kick off. A key to the availability and speed of transmission is the axis of the continents. Hence Euroasia with its west-east axis as the longest belt of similar temperature zones so skills and technology can move up and down with relative issue. This is not the case in say the Americas and Africa where the cultural hot-spots where both isolated from each other and lacked access to many of the key plants and animals.

Once food production took off then population increased which if with large scale animal production created a germ base that over time created a level of immunity not created for those societies less dense or with limited animal production. Again if limited transmission then limited immunity is built up. A lot of western conquests were down to having wiping the population out with germs and then importing the crops and animals that would allow for population expansion.
As population increases then the opportunity for technology and idea specialists develops and if ease of transmission then competition between communities/ states drives development. Lack of competition or isolation limited the drive to develop or use the technology. Japanese in the 16th century encountered and then improved the guns of the time but for 200 years withdraw and abandoned the technology that could have had serious consequences for the region. Or the central African tribes that independently discovered Iron and then Steel some 2000 years before the West.

Once he has established his thesis by examining each of the key continents, he explores a range of case studies to test if it can explain the different historical journeys of say China, Africa, and other major non western areas.

I think this is where some of the criticism comes from that the book is repetitive. He tends to do the lecture thing of telling you what he is going to say, say it and the summarizing what he has said. I found it useful as I read it over a number of days on trains, lunch breaks etc to keep the key points clear as they were "tested" with case studies.

The main criticism I would make of the whole argument which makes a lot of sense is that it tends to underplay the importance of social struggle within the constraints of the geographical base. He does mention that the social structure of Japan was a key factor in the isolation but misses that it was the struggle to create a central state and reject the rising Christian mission that drove the policy. Its geographical position enabled this to be a success. Likewise China kept frustrating possible technological or imperial leaps but less down to the whim of the Emperor but because those changes would have challenged the social order. But again I accept this as a policy was only possible because of the successful previous agricultural revolution that created a unified China.

For "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.

So You Think You're Human? by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

2008-08-01T19:41:00.001+01:00

Well known sign of really clever people is that they make the understanding of complex issue easy without resorting to simplification.

This book unpicks and exposes the arguments of trying to say we are not animals( and why we suddenly started to want that this distinction held). For example, if humans are tool-makers, builders, have a learned culture so are animals!

Then it moves on to expose the theories of why humans try to define humanity by excluding other humans on physical criteria. Being, black, big headed but no basis in reality.

He them moves to look at the various attempts at defining humanity by excluding humans according to social criteria. For, example, if they didn't have big ships, guns etc then not civilised so sub-human. (The Japanese beating the S**t out of the Russians in 1905 started to put the boot in that argument!)

Equally trying to argue that as Homo Sapiens we must be the top dog fails in terms of hominids and other animals in general but does throw up the issue that if you include apes etc with the fold humanness then you logically may then start excluding children with severe handicaps or adults in a coma

In the final chapter he explores what is humanness if genetically altered or machine built. The danger of a re-born eugenics is discussed.

His final conclusion is that we need look at humanness as a range of dynamically shifting factors that are historically contingent rather then fixed and he makes a plea for us to live up to our myths of being creative, self-aware, rational. moral etc

The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories by Christopher Booker

2008-08-01T19:36:00.002+01:00

Interesting but odd book! It puts forward a good analysis of the types of stories and their links to the hero/myth cycle. And so with a clear Jungian basis for its psychological insights, then it seems to lurch into a anti 60's rant as to this being the reason for the collapse as it sees of traditional stories. This is due to the rise of ego blocking the purpose of stories which is to transform. An example he gives of this terrible switch is that in Moby Dick the "monster" does not transform the hero and wins so under mines its traditional deep function. Yet Moby Dick as evil is only one interpretation. The white whale has also been seen as a metaphor for the elements of life that are out of our control, or God. The struggle is not about conquering a monster but his vengeance against the whale is analogous to man's struggle against fate and things they can't control. Starbuck, the young first mate of the Pequod is the only sailor to want to work with what is rather then be in pursuit goals that being impossible destroy your humanity. It’s no coincidence that he is a Quaker.

Booker ignores that the myth cycle is not a fixed pattern. And makes the same error in analysis that Freud makes, terms that explain internal processes are not generalisable to external processes. For example, my motives for my behaviour in a group are not the same as understanding how the group behaves. One of the criticisms that Jung had of Freud is that becoming a mature sexual being is not the only psychological goal of the individual. In practice, individuals compete for partners, status and growth as much as organisations can be seen in terms of power, function, shadow etc.

He also falls in to the trap of looking at stories from time x and ignores that many contemporary stories of the time would not had exhibited those features he praises. And then he ignores the stories of this period that do have the features he praises!

Self Matters: Creating Your Life from the Inside Out by Phillip C. McGraw

2008-08-01T19:27:00.003+01:00

Change yourself and change the world. True up to a point and if it gets you out of a poor marriage, bad job etc then go for it. The real test is making the bad marriage work or accepting that’s poor is what you have to settle for as nothing is perfect.

Can’t say I found the book useful. It’s along the line of those programmes that sell your house such as House Doctor. No matter the house the advice is the same. Declutter, think the buyer wants to project themselves into the house, make it light and feel roomy etc. This says be honest with yourself and others. Be authentic. Take responsibility! Never really deals with that failure may because you are not up to it or because you are not going to succeed while in that job with that boss and you cant get another job. Guess for me the question is what do you do when you have to face that life is a f****p some times and no being positive is going to change that?

Oh I should add I Love the show but then I am still suffering withdrawal symptoms from the only national radio agony phone in ( say like in Sleepless in Seattle) with Anna Raeburn which went off the air 10 years ago!

The Bardic Handbook by Kevan Manwaring

2008-07-28T18:47:00.002+01:00

One to read if its performance tips you are after. As the author says

...I believe in the power of words to transform, heal and inspire. It is immensely satisfying to communicate what one believes in an eloquent and entertaining way. Taking an audience on a magical journey, creating an enchanting atmosphere, making sacred the air – this is the joy of being a Bard. I love helping people express themselves, hone their talent and shine. I wish there had been a book like this when I started out (it would have improved my learning curve dramatically!) but I think The Bardic Handbook will make the road easier for you. Allow me to share my 15 plus years of experience and expertise, so that you do not have to reinvent the wheel, hit dead-ends or learn the harder way.

To summarise: the overall aim of this book is to empower people to find and use their true voice for the good of all. Its objectives are to:

• offer initiation for the budding Bard
• provide a practical 12 month training programme
• teach the art of storytelling
• teach techniques of poetic inspiration, composition and performance
• develop the power of the memory
• widen understanding of Awen
• develop awareness of the Bardic Tradition
• explore what it means to be a Bard in the 21st Century
• provide resources, such as a reading list, contacts, etc.
• connect with the wider community
• encourage respect for diverse global traditions and cultures
• foster 'mythic literacy' and an understanding of mythic levels in modern life
• act as a catalyst for new Bardic circles and the re-establishing of Bardic Chairs

I have worked with the author and tasted an introduction to his vision and "project". This book helps you to have a clear basis for your storytelling as it did for me

Good writing is all down to the effort you put into it

2008-07-28T18:37:00.004+01:00

Edited and moved to Random Short Stories

The Seven Deadly Sins: Jewish, Christian and Classical Reflections on Human Psychology by Solomon Schimmel

2008-07-28T18:27:00.002+01:00

This is a useful counter to narcissistic me personal transformation. " My marriage doesn't fulfil me" so my needs override that of my partner, family or children. Its gets you to think of duty and responsibilities rather then wants and desires.

I don't go with the conservative use that could be made of this.But when some people spend £1000's on the wedding only to feel let down afterwards enough to think about a divorce so they can plan for another wedding... Or young men can think its ok to risk creating life yet take no responsibility for the child...

I also don't buy that this means that women get trapped in a violent or stifling relationship for example. Both may need help to avoid repeating dysfunctional behaviour but if on balance its best for the individuals, children and families that the marriage ends then it ends. One size fits albeit a conservative or a liberal spin does not work. The situation calls for its own solution... but both wants, needs and duty has to be part of the reflection.

The Great Arch: State Formation, Cultural Revolution and the Rise of Capitalism by Philip Corrigan

2008-07-28T18:09:00.004+01:00

Unlike the pioneering Miliband Book, this builds on the far more sophisticated Gramscian Marxist insights based on the experience of the west rather then trying to say that the revolution would be as Russia or China. It starts from the premise that unlike these two countries the state was politically and culturally "legitimate". Hence how did the state arise and gain this legitimacy and what were the social forces that created it? So it covers both economics and cultural drivers as well as the notion of civil society.

The insights from this perspective(but not in the book) help to explain one of the factors behind the rise of Nazi Germany in the lack of a German civil society in the 20-30's to root and legitimate the state. It also shows that one of the dynamics in African lack of stability is the lack of the forces that create the legitimate state. It also links to notions that one can do "politics" by creating movements that generate new notions of what is right. Examples of this could be how rape, incest, and domestic violence have moved from taboo subjects in say the 60/70's that were seen if seen at all as domestic rather then political issues. Now legal and institutional and social views of changed out of all recognition.

In short this book is part of the wider radical thinking that allows for change within and through the democratic process without liberal or revolutionary illusions

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.

2008-07-27T18:52:00.002+01:00

I did this post over a year ago when in China which was never posted to my blog because of the Firewall blocks there. Doing Sunday Salon. I came across a Mr Linky link and then discovered the year long oversight.

When thinking about reading this book, prepare yourself by abandoning notions on what a novel exploring the Holocaust, Nazi Germany, the war should be about. It cover all this through the bitter-sweet nature of family life, bravery and the kindness of strangers, small town and street life ... and Death.

We meet Death when he first sees Liesel Meminger as he comes to collect her Brother's soul. He is too early so gets distracted and intrigued by her life. And so he follows her story until she is 14 as he comes to collects the souls of these around her.

Lisa's parents are communists so long gone into the labour camps so she is is fostered by a working class couple- he a decorator and she a laundress. Her foster mother is one bad mouth, rotten cook and all time battle-axe with guts. Her foster father is barely literature but kind, honest and hard-working. Its him that sits up with Liesel every night when she has her nightmares. He helps her to learn to read from the book she had stolen from the graveyard as her brother was buried-its her only link to the past.

We meet Liesel friends and the gangs she gets involved in to steal food and her time in the Hitler youth movement. One boy falls in love with her and chases her for a kiss- it happens but...

During the story we learn that her foster father life had been saved by a Jew in the war 20 years before and now his son saved by his best German friend comes to stay, The family honour a promise even though discovery would mean their death.

Death helps Liesel learn more from the books she has stolen( each theft a fresh adventure and a new danger) until he has to leave when it gets too dangerous for him to stay- she meets him twice more. He keeps in touch with her because he is busy in war torn Munich which destroys and builds her world as she matures.

The writing is clear, simple and imaginative from how each death has its own colour to having a narrative that is from the point of view of Death yet also from the changing awareness of a growing child. This makes the horror and danger of the period more human and so more real. Its not sentimental and having read much about the social and political realities of the time is very accurate.

Would I recommend it? Yes its a quick read with imagery and lines lingering long after the book is closed

Sunday Salon thoughts from Bristol

2008-07-27T11:43:00.008+01:00

Removed to the Blog Dusty-box

I Remember by Joe Brainard

2008-07-26T18:47:00.002+01:00

One of the challenges facing us in the 21st century is that we have too many reading choices; each year (yes each year) around 320,000 books hit UK and USA bookstores alone. And the pace of this is increasing with smaller and smaller print runs meaning more and more specialised segmented reader markets. Don’t know about you, but over my allotted 70-80 years I may manage 1001 books to read before you die; meaning that over my life tsunami of published books, I will read a passing sip of around 0.1% only. Think about all those great books that you are going to miss because of the noise from the ones with the best marketing budgets. Or from reading, what you always read.

I Remember by Joe Brainard is one of those books that was buried with the fishes a long time ago yet deserving of a wider readership. Ok let us get to the killer; its poetry linked to the New York School of the 1950-60’s, which had a massive influence on contemporary music, art, dance, prose, and poetry. The ‘movements’ approach was observational, physical, using contrasting vivid imagery to shock the observer, listener, or participant into an emotional response that enables a revitalised experience of the world. The poetry of the ‘movement’ was a reaction to the confessional styles of poets such as Sylvia Plath who tended to write about their inner struggles.

Before you think, I sip Earl Grey tea in some fancy café jabbering on about the prevenient nature of the stanza or the catachrestical no-no, of the imagery let me tell you otherwise. My last experience of any poetry was 1975 when I did English Lit O level and although I enjoyed T.S.Elliot and Sylvia Plath, poems on seeing daffodils or Nightingales croaking did zilch for me-and rhymed couplets, please give a guy a break.

To my horror, I discovered I have to write an 80-line poem for my University Creative writing course in the autumn. Reading the course materials calmed me down. The course teaches you to start with an image or word and then free write a story. This triggers decisions on line, stanza, metre etc depending on the mood and scope of the poem. Suddenly it started to make sense so much so that I wrote my first poem in over 40 years. It was doing the background reading that led me to I Remember by Joe Brainard, which is poetry in ways you don’t imagine.

He was a major painter, as well as poet, with a keen interest in collage and assemblage. One of his central works was a collection of over 3000 postcard size images that reflected the public-private experience of living in New York. The book reflects this technique by assembling hundreds of lines starting with I Remember. You may recognise it as a well-known technique for teaching children poetry. The lines list the fashions and fads, public events and private excesses of his 40's and 50’s childhood as well as his creative life of the 60’s and 70’s in simple, honest and witty lines that spin off from each other. In reading, you are hooked into a poetry biography like no other.

You may never have given avant-garde 70’s poetry a thought before but make it one of your 1001 books to read if you get the chance. It’s only a 175 page slurp of a book readable in 1-2 hours as you surf through lines like this:

I remember when babies fall down “oopsydaisy”

I remember, with a limp wrist, shaking your hand back and fourth real fast until it feels like jelly.

I remember trying to get the last of cat food from a can.

I remember when a piece of hair stands up straight after a night of sleeping on it wrong.

I remember before green dishwashing liquid.

I remember a free shoehorn with new shoes.

I remember never using shoehorns.

Not convinced? Let me leave the final word with Paul Auster.

I Remember is a masterpiece. One by one, the so-called important books of our time will be forgotten, but Joe Brainard's modest little gem will endure. In simple, forthright, declarative sentences, he charts the map of the human soul and permanently alters the way we look at the world. I Remember is both uproariously funny and deeply moving. It is also one of the few totally original books I have ever read.

On being a Superhero

2008-07-22T14:06:00.006+01:00

Removed to the Blog Dusty-box

Spunk and Bite by Arthur Plotnik

2008-07-21T12:19:00.001+01:00

You want to write a Blog, an article… oh anything in public in fact, well in the USA you have to deal with the style police. In Britain, they are known as the green ink grannies and are gently ignored; we don’t do earnest. Well we almost did with A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, by Henry Watson Fowler which suggested about the split infinitive that the

…English-speaking world may be divided into (1) those who neither know nor care what a split infinitive is; (2) those who do not know, but care very much; (3) those who know and condemn; (4) those who know and approve; and (5) those who know and distinguish.

Thankfully this was by the 80’s revised away from prescriptive American style policing so we are free to keep to the high standards of writing where expression is more important then style. Hmm, may have to come back to this.

But write in America and you judged by the book of truth, the book of righteous writing, the book of correctness which all Americans know as The Elements of Style. Its roots go back to 1918 where William Strunk, Jr. wrote a 43-page booklet for the good students of Cornell University. And like all sensible guide for students was mainly ignored. But then in 1957, E.B.White, one of the top 20th century literary essayists (and yes author of Charlotte’s Webb) wrote a piece praising the now largely forgotten William Strunk defence of lucid English. This led to the first edition that originally detailed eight elementary rules of usage, ten elementary principles of composition, "a few matters of form," and a list of commonly misused words and expressions. By the 80’s and the 3rd edition, this had bloated up to Fifty-four pointers, along with a list of common mistakes concerning individual words: Eleven rules of punctuation and grammar; eleven principles of writing; eleven matters of form; and twenty-one reminders for a better style.

What Spunk and Bite by Arthur Plotnik (yes we get the pun but in Britain, you have now managed to create an embarrassed silence where we pretend not to have heard you) does is to challenge the prescription of dead white upper class Americans without arguing for do you own thing writing-see told you I would come back to it. To liven your writing, you need to know the rules, but then know when to break them. Be lucid but be fun and avoid at all times clichés except if they warm the cockles of your readers’ heart.

One of the tips I have taken up is to subscribe to various words of the day to build up my wordbank. Two of my rave faves are vindictivolence, the desire of revenging oneself, and pinkwashing. This is using support for b*east cancer research to market products, particularly products that cause cancer. All in all it comes up with 30 tips to sparkle up your writing that range from inventing words, changing the grammatical function of a word , having strong openings and closings, use semi-colons and dashes to break up sentence but above keeping in mind that the writing needs to make the content interesting.

Let’s leave the final words to Arthur Plotnik:

Perceived correctness can be comforting to the reader, like a tidy house. But what distinguishes a piece of writing is the ambiance- the environmental mood- the language we create…tend to be judged on…aptness, inventiveness, colour, sound, rhythm…Spunk and Bite is our shorthand for such qualities.

Country of the Grand by Gerard Donovan

2008-07-20T13:20:00.005+01:00

Gerard Donovan is that cliché, an Irish writer with a poet’s sensibility. His 2003 debut novel was Schopenhauer's Telescope: trucks arrive with frighten, crying villagers, one man digs a hole, one watches. The result is a stunning and moving discussion that covers everything from the life of Genghis Khan to what exactly, is a hole.

In contrast, his recently published collection of short stories, Country of the Grand, uses musical and witty language to convey the lives of ordinary people in a changing Ireland. Morning swimmers, it’s about the loss of old school friends becoming strangers but it’s also about the compromises we make in marriage to keep the hope of love alive. A theme picked up in How long until when a man driving seeing a Life Assurance advert is prompted to ask, how long would you wait before you slept with someone so revealing marriage fault-lines. In other stories such as Shop lifting in the USA we discover the awful lie that the relationship is founded on or in Archaeologists see a relationship in its dying moments. In the Country of the Grand we follow, the events of one evening in the successful and empty live of a lawyer as he acts on the impulse of trying to find the landscape of his childhood. Many of the stories move from the thoughts and actions of the moment to a reflection of the past or as in Glass looking at the pain of a widow through the eyes of her accusing teenage son.

Gerard Donovan is clearly a writer worth reading if you like poetic prose and imaginative stories based on intelligent thought. But the collection of stories suffer as any collection of short stories does by being a random collection of writing enjoyed in the moment of the train journey but once collected together the signature of the writer becomes that much more obvious so less startling or stimulating.

Gerard Donovan use of language and imagery, hover between poems and prose,an good example of this is By Irish Nights . You circle over Ireland following road travellers over one night including those who won’t return as this extract illustrates.

...But those three children. A small breath of water makes a sea of the lungs and sinks the breath.

They found themselves after in languid palms that rested upright in the still water, and they hadn’t drowned. They found themselves in hands sometimes covered in swans that floated, shaped in rain drops that shook the surface of the sky where it rested in the water, in the hold of a father as he taught them to walk, in a mother’s patience as she fed them from spoons and dressed them for the morning. And then they found themselves at last, carved into the endless hearts that lost them, waking every night to sleep.

Its an interesting paradox of our time that in the panic that we can only cope with flash-card writing, short stories are in long decline as we prefer the narrative depth of novels. However, these facts may not be in contradiction, as short stories as poetry require good writing and good reading (close attention to language and structure) to work. Read this collection and decide if its bad writing or poor reading that shapes its future.

Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips.

2008-07-14T18:44:00.006+01:00

So you have just seen Mamma Mia (you haven’t?- well I did with a back row chorus of soul sisters whooping, and clapping) and you had a hallelujah moment; its the white-beach-sun-kissed Greek island holiday or a divorce. Now that’s settled what are you going to read. You’ll want something raunchy, frothy, funny and light with a smidgeon of culture- and that’s what you get from Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips.

The snobs will sneer that Aristopaneous did it so much better and raunchier in the original Greek darling. You can counter by saying GBB is Deus ex machina to its core. And the killer put down is…can you hold the book in one hand and keep the story focused after the fifth chilled Mytilenian Ouzo? You can when the hardback is only 277 pages with big print.

The story is the gods of Olympus are alive and well in the twenty-first century, but crammed together in a London pile, broke and with ever declining powers. They do have day jobs: Artemis as a dog-walker, Apollo as a TV psychic wannabe, Aphrodite as a phone sex operator, Dionysus as a DJ and so on. Do you geedit! In keeping with the Olympic modus operandi, the gods squabble and use humans (OCD cleaner Alice and wet Engineer Neil) as their playthings. Soon the petty fight becomes a struggle for the survival of humankind. To save the world these two decidedly ordinary people have to become mythical heroes-can they!

The book’s prose is fluffy rather then tripping the light fantastic and could flag in the middle except that’s the bit where the writing got interesting for me. And my raunchy is your seedy and vulgar. So you pays your money and takes you choice.

Here’s a final thought for you as you sizzle in the sun, reading this afternoon beach-read, what sort of world would it be if the Olympic shenanigans were true: the gods did make the Moon and Sun move, we were the playthings of Fate and Christianity was a man made mistake. Hmm, best to turn over and sink the next glass, afterall you are on holiday.

Pashazade by Jon Courtney Grimwood

2008-07-13T17:56:00.008+01:00

If you think that murder mysteries need vicars or tortuous plots, where the last chapter reveals all then put the kettle and I’ll finish before you come back. But if you are open to Chandler film-noir stories please stay as this review is for you.

The context is an alternative future where the 1st world war ended early so the Ottoman Empire is modernised rather then dismembered. Aristocrats still have political and social power within a liberal monarchy. Think of Jordan being the norm throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

This is by way of back-story as real focus is the arrival from an American Jail, of Asref Bey in El Iskandryia(Alexandria in our timeline) summoned by his Aunt who is a mover and shaker in the local politics to marry a cousin he has never met. His refusal and the death of his Aunt soon have him fighting for his life in a world he struggles to understand. Intertwined with this story are flashbacks to why he is confused about his past and future.

The story is plot not character driven but the setting makes for freshness to a familiar story. Given my interest in history and politics, I found it difficult to see why this society has more advanced technology then our timeline but that’s a Geek thing.

Anyway, the kettle is boiled and the tea-tray is on the way so let's go before we have to find out what Professor Plum did in the Library. And if you have not read it, go and do it now!

Me and the top 100 books on Library Things

2008-07-02T18:02:00.010+01:00

Removed to the Blog Dusty-box

Sunday Salon: another week gone

2008-06-29T12:40:00.014+01:00

Removed to the Blog Dusty-box

Alternative Scriptwriting by Ken Dancyger and Jeff Rush

2008-06-29T08:52:00.011+01:00

I like reading books on screenwriting as they teach you how to install the skeleton of story...have three acts, a clear premise based on conflict for the main character, someone or thing to fight against and you are away once you have chosen the genre. So in a western it’s the lone flawed hero against the cattle baron struggling to find his place between the call of the wild and the lure of the town as he fights his way to the big showdown before riding off in the sunset. Or in a horror film, it’s the lone victim and her family/friends trapped in the house on the hill fighting against evil sub-human monster who kills indiscriminately until finally defeat as the dawn of a new day breaks.

What Alternative Scriptwriting by Ken Dancyger and Jeff Rush does is to show the rules so you can break them. They give a detailed breakdown of 14 genres and how they use the individual building blocks before discussing such things as how to:

mix and match genres and what works and what doesn’t;
change structures so 4 Act or two Act stories;
reframe the roles of passive/ active characters; and
use tone or narrative voice.

Its not done in a dry way as the discussion is linked to case studies or comparisons of different Directors and international styles but it does help if you have seen the films or have them on DVD! The important thing is that they argue that screenwriting is part of the tradition of storytelling/writing and so need to draw on the full range. Its not a book to read if you want a how to layout a film script but it is one if you want to explore the narrative force of a book.

An interesting alternative take on genres and the film narrative is The Writers Journey by Christopher Vogler. He explores how the mythic Hero’s journey shapes plots and characterisation and so genres are merely different aspects of the journey. Again the rule is know the rules to break them.

So read both and enjoy the Saturday movie more but also check why the book works or doesn’t

The Collector of Worlds by Iliya Troyanov

2008-06-28T13:42:00.006+01:00

When a book opens with a single cinematic sweep, moving from Sir Richard Burton death through the reluctant giving of last rites, to a sharp focus on a burning photograph of the 22-year-old Richard Burton that pulls you into his 1840's Bombay, you know you are in for a treat. This book is The Collector of Worlds by Iliya Troyanov just published in the UK translated by William Hobson but originally published in Germany in 2006. The book is not a Biography, History or a novel but a biographical fiction meaning as the author says that the live and works of Sir Richard Burton inspired him because all

…individual lives are mysterious, particularly those of people one had never met. This Novel is intended as personal approach to a mystery rather than as an attempt at definitive revelation.

This approach shapes the unusual structure of the novel. It is divided into three sections: first is Burton's service in India in 1842-49, second is his travels in disguise to Mecca and Medina as a pilgrim on the hajj (1851-53)and concludes with his journey from Zanzibar to Lake Tanganyika in 1858 as he attempted to discover with a fellow explorer the source of the Nile. So we don't know his life before or after this period or even during this period when away from waving the Flag.

In each section, Burton’s reveals his thoughts through a third-person monologue whilst other narrators offer context or even contrasting views. Burton acts as the antagonist to these characters where as his is the culture or landscape of India, Arabia and Africa. In the Indian section, these others are Lahiya, a professional letter-writer, to whom Burton's one-time servant Naukaram goes to have his story written up, in the hope of gaining further employment. It’s soon clear to Lahiya that Naukaram is not telling the whole truth and as we see neither is Burton. In the Arabian section, a script like exchange between various Islamic officials, suggests that he spied on military positions. Perhaps he did, or perhaps they fear the loss of rich pickings as the long slow decline of the Ottoman Empire gave opportunities for the politically unscrupulous. The African section narrator is another historical character Sidi Mubarak Bombay, we meet him as a old man telling stories to his friends and relatives. He was a slave working in India before gaining his freedom and returning to Madagascar and becoming a key figure in most of the big exploratory expeditions of the time into East Africa. Through him, we explore the conflicting motives and styles for the Speke and Burton expedition to find the source of the Nile.

The language is poetic with scene after scene evoked with powerful physical detail and a constant parade of realistic characters from a long faded 19^th Century that engage us in both Burton’s life as well as the other narrators. Together each section reveal a complex ambiguous man who loved language, disguises, adventure, learned to love sex, and wanted to understand cultures for the wider benefit of the Empire without perhaps realising the irony that Empires once they see the worth of other cultures the right to rule begins to crumble.

I strongly recommend the book for a highly enjoyable read and an introduction to a man well worth reading and in many ways a man ahead of his time.

Booking through Thursday: Flavour

2008-06-21T22:19:00.004+01:00

Removed to the Blog Dusty-box

Sunday Salon 15th June Review

2008-06-15T18:16:00.008+01:00

Removed to the Blog Dusty-box

Booking Through Thursday-Book Clubs

2008-06-12T18:21:00.003+01:00

Edited and moved to Random Short Stories

Yellow Fever by Steffan Piper

2008-06-12T16:12:00.006+01:00

Yellow Fever is a self-published book by Steffan Piper sent to me for review by the author some weeks ago. As such, I have gone into more plot detail then usual, as you are unlikely to come across the version I have read.

The story is about denial, obsession and its consequences. Don’t expect weepy mismatched love or hopeful redemption but do anticipate a skilful portrayal of one very mixed up complex woman who in many ways is bigger then the novel. Qianqian (pronounced chin-chin) is a young Asian woman, who is a stripper and lap dancer. We meet her, debating the rules for her first working appointment outside of the strip club. She thinks along the lines of you can knock at the door but not open it. Well that her intention but by the end of the evening she is knocked, opened and well and truly entered. Result: large dollop of spending money, duped boss, suckered self and betrayed boyfriend.

She may be a working girl but Steffan is no Richard Gere. (The hotel room she goes to is from the Pretty Woman film so clearly warning no fairy-tale endings as echoed throughout the book by references to The Princess Bride, a 1987 film which Steffan loves and Qianqian hates). He is Los Angeles cop involved in dodgy official undercover telephone tapping and illegally writing anonymous celebrity gossip. Oh and divorced from his Korean wife (an ex stripper) who happens to be Qianqian best friend. We are definitely in the underbelly of American Life.

A core of the unfolding tragedy is that Steffan thinks he knows the worse that Qianqian can be-he is mistaken. By the end of the story, her behaviour results in the death of one lover and the ruin of another, her parents reject her (Incidentally, this scene is very powerfully written) and she is on her journey to being a headline corpse.

The structure of the novel is a series of mainly well-written scenes told from both Qianqian and Steffan’s perspective as their lives cross and part over several months. You find out about their back-stories as they meet other characters or play bedroom games. This results in detailed characterisation that has the fascination of car crash TV.

But does it work? Yellow Fever has some minor flaws and two serious flaws. Clearly, still work in progress explains the sprinkling of typos and the irritating initial rash of film star names or the overlong chess references. (NB sport like cultural references assume that the reader shares the same knowledge, if they don’t that’s an audience lost!) One personal niggle for me is page 15 where Steffan talks about a Felixstowe described as being known for its Norman Churches…on the eastern seaboard! Please, it’s a run down Victorian seaside town, home of one the biggest ports in Europe on the East Coast. And did we drink Earl Gray in the 1980’s?

The serious flaws are its lack of resolution and audience focus. Part of this for me is calling the main character after the author. This sets up a dashed expectation that the novel is going to about the act and art of writing as in a John Barth or Peter Auster novel. As suggested at the beginning, Qianqian develops into a compelling character whose behaviour links to past traumas. The reason for Steffan’s behaviour is less clear but the fundamental flaw is that the storylines remained unresolved, Qianqian drifts and Steffan chases and…and?

Now in real life this happens, we live with loose ends unresolved but in a novel, it makes for a loss of dramatic tension. If this is the purpose of the book then reflect it in the novel’s structure. For example, have the narrators talk about their past and so we gain a glimpse of the future whatever it is. It may work out for them, Qianqian may break her destructive pattern or not, or make her fortune in the sex industry. This lack of resolution for me raises the second flaw, who is the audience for the novel? It’s too well written for sex summer blockbuster, too raunchy and gloomy for chicklit, and too character driven for action-bonk supermarket fodder. Steffan can write and even this flawed novel is worth it for much of the writing but more attention is needed for what is commercial, do this, and we may yet see his name on the bestseller list.

Writing tools by Roy Peter Clark

2008-06-10T21:15:00.016+01:00

Removed to the Blog Dusty-box

Booking Though Thursday: Reading Tastes

2008-06-08T16:52:00.004+01:00

Edited and removed to Scribbles and Diversions

Tuesday Thingers: Why LT

2008-06-07T22:27:00.003+01:00

Removed to the Blog Dusty-box

Favorite Authors Meme

2008-06-07T17:02:00.007+01:00

Andi has tagged for a meme so all in a tiz to find out what I do! It was a good time for asking, as all my random word stories now have their own blog, soup and bread and an episode of Enterprise consumed and Dr Who two hours away.

1. Who’s your all-time favourite author and why?

Difficult one, it all depends! Well, how about having all or most of their books? By these criteria, Karen Armstrong, who I love for her refreshing take on Christian history, thought and faith, is a clear winner. Another contender is Ian Banks whose literature and SF is enjoyable for his imaginative use of Language and storyline. But then I have always enjoyed any book by Charles B. Handy, which attacks the assumptions of big business. Finally, I supposed I would have to put Bill Bryson at the top as I have and have read all but one of his books. Together, this gives a flavour of what I look for in authors, are they clear and innovative thinkers, imaginative, funny and readable!

Who was your first favourite author and why?

Easy, the one thing that I read repeatedly until I switched to SF as a Teenager was the Andrew Lang series of Fairy-Tales. As a journalist, poet, critic and historian, he made a reputation as one of the ablest and most versatile writers of the late Victorian and Edwardian period. But his reputation remains because of the twelve-book series of fairy tale collections, especially as he used foreign-language sources, giving many of these tales their first appearance in English. I just go to the central library in Leicester and work my way through them in a cycle, over and over again. Yet, I haven’t seen or read any of them in well over forty years. That they have never been out of print shows the quality of the writing.

3. Who’s your most recent addition to your most favourite authors and why?

John Barth. I read The Sot-weed factor, which is one over the top 18^th century style romp, breaking all the narrative conventions and a hilarious re look at the Thanksgiving Myths. I also read the Tidewater Tales, which are the sailing adventures of a yuppie couple told over a fortnight through a whole raft of genres. He has to be the post modernist American author.

4. If someone asked you who your favourite authors were right now, which authors would first pop out of your mouth? Are there any you’d add on a moment further reflection?

Yes this lot!

Kobo Abe, Walter Abish, Nelson Algren, Martin Amis, Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, Paul Auster, William Blake, Lionel Blue, Alain de Botton, David Boulton, Bill Bryson, Italo Calvino, Julia Cameron, Michael Chabon, Raymond Chandler, Gideon Defoe, Bart D. Ehrman, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Jasper Fforde, E.M. Forster, Stephen Jay Gould, Ursula K. Le Guin, Dashiell Hammett, Tim Harford, Ted Heller, Bohumil Hrabal, Panos Karnezis, D.H. Lawrence, Laurie Lee, David Mitchell, Blake Morrison, Haruki Murakami, Ryu Murakami, George Orwell, Elaine Pagels, Jeremy Paxman, Mervyn Peake, Terry Pratchett, Philip Pullman, Edvard Radzinsky, David Rakoff, J.K. Rowling, Geoff Ryman, Louis Sachar, Saki, David Sedaris, Aleksander Solzenitsyn, John Shelby Spong, Olaf Stapledon, James Thurber, Sandi Toksvig, J.R.R. Tolkien, Vernor Vinge, Evelyn Waugh, Jiri Weil, Edward M. White, P.G. Wodehouse, Emile Zola

Now as I understand the rules, I now have to link this back to the person that tagged me and then tag at five others. I have chosen these lucky people at random to tag.

Becky’s Book review

Out of the blue

Steven Laura

Fantasy Books

Out the loop

Family Life and The Sunday Salon

2008-06-01T07:42:00.011+01:00

Good morning, I hope your Sunday morning is going well mine is not! Away in a dream (since you ask, some film noir version of my childhood no doubt triggered off by last nights 50 word story**) until jolted out of it by a pre 7am phone call. Naturally, deaths of family households or the need to make one King of England as half of the UK has just…well you get the picture… sprang to mind. Wife went into confused polite mode and I groped around to find watch and glasses and the flee the country overnight bag. It was a friend of the Wife wanting to know if she could come to lunch (the Wife, not friend to us…I think). I got the stare when I dared to mutter a faint protest so out of bed, made a cup of tea and decided time to do the Sunday Saloon blog…shush, wife’s gently shouting for tea, need to whisper as wife-blogging is forbidden, something about you talk to strangers but not to me followed by door slamming, way over my head).

Anyway, another mixed reading week, as I have failed yet again to start Yellow Fever by Steffan Piper although a review calls. I also now have the latest Librarything Early review, The Collector of Worlds by Iliya Troyanov on the must read list. Naturally, I get distracted so instead I am reading Writing Tools by Roy Peter Clark but have only read tools 1 to 4 which of course you have noticed applied in this post. All about use and order of verbs so far, and apparently dear reader Ian Fleming has this sorted so buy a James Bond novel and gasp in amazement. Added to the enjoyment of reading, I have just started to do meme’s (didn’t even know what the word meant at the beginning of May!) I did posts for Booking through Thursday, Tuesday Thingers and Weekly Geeks.

I have read The Pirates! in an adventure with Whaling by Gideon Defoewhich was a fun short read but not as good as The pirates! : in an adventure with scientists. My main read of the week was Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore , which is a brilliant reconstruction of the early years of Stalin which challenges a whole range of myths of a man you would be foolish to have irritated. Strangely, I was reminded of man who I worked with once…charming, paranoid, bully and vindictive who sacked or exiled any one( I was exiled) who was a rival or failed to deliver that day’s “the thing that must be done”. Any problem was always down to poor quality workers never the vision or leadership. Irritatingly, down to the last two chapters and the book went missing somewhere between Bristol and London so had to buy a replacement.

I have a heavy workload next week so although having hours on trains I also have to do a lot of writing and workshop design for work so unsure, what reading will be done so...Oh My God. Guess what, just turned round and finally noticed something odd about my home made bricks and floorboard bookshelf. Its collapsed and yet been reassembled with books stacked rather then racked and the surplus piled on the floor. It appears, after a frank and open exchange with the teenage Son, that it’s my fault and that he has helped me by exposing flaws and showing what improvements needed…sigh. Time for more tea, opening the book and listening to Wife and teenage Son doing Bob Dylan duets and so dear reader, another Sunday gets underway.

PS well almost, it appears that none of my Hyperlinks worked but for the one below so I had to remove them so just look at the label lists if you want...mutters, and scratches head.

** I try to write a Random Short Stories with a picture to illustrate it inspired by the daily post on First 50.

Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore

2008-05-31T15:21:00.009+01:00

One of the unexpected consequences of the Soviet Union collapse is the exposure of a reality hidden away in dusty files and failing memories. Simon Sebag Montefiore with “The Court of the Red Tsar” and now “Young Stalin”, the Winner of the 2007 Costa Biography Award, reveals the messy realities behind the manipulated legends. Read books in the past, and the “truth” was the betrayal of great Trotsky and Lenin vision of Socialist Russia by the grey mediocrity of a bureaucratic opportunist. As ever was life so simple. In reality, his shadowy Party work was, only known to a few and suppressed after the Revolution to ensure his national role in the Party. Not known by him, Trotsky who wrote well, created in defeat the picture of Stalin we know. Stalin was in fact a dangerous but effective mixture of classically trained intellectual, poet, singer, effective organiser, street gangster and conspirator per excellence, who was cruel, ruthless, brave, cold, paranoid, witty, calculating. You could enjoy his company but be swimming with the fishes as he wept with your relatives in the morning.

Simon Senag Montefiore uses unpublished, censored 20’s and 30’s memoires and interviews with surviving eyewitnesses to make clear where the man and the cut of the age clash to create Stalin and the USSR. Soso, short for Joseph, suffered an appalling childhood of a drunkard father and a domineering, suffocating mother. Yet his mother’s various lovers protected him so he gained a middle class intellectual education. He was born and reared in a long vanished Georgian culture where Russians, Persians, semi pagan Mountain tribes, Jews fought, loved and traded. A popular annual festival was the town brawl when any active man from three fought each other to a standstill. It was also a world in which in Georgia, that had held the Ottoman Empire at bay for centuries, fall in to deeply resentful annexation by the Russian Empire a generation earlier. To grasp his early days think of Italians crossed with Spanish gypsies living to a code of honour and revenge that would make the Mafia a bunch of boy scouts.

He rose up the Party by being the man who could rob and steal to bankroll Lenin’s political ambitions as well as organise mass strikes. More importantly, he unlike Trotsky and Lenin was active in Russia with the regular members of the party. As we say now, he could talk the talk and walk the walk. Trotsky was clearly important in the 1917 revolution and in the later civil war but was vain and a snob, a great orator but mistrusted by many activists because of that. Stalin was not a showy speaker but knew how to play the simple plain worker to these crowds. This created adoring followers (many of which he killed in the 30’s) who enabled him to take control of the party when being in the Government had more status.

The book tackles the view that Stalin was a double agent traitor. He was clearly a double agent working on Party orders but examples given of his double-dealing fall flat. In reality, riddled with spies and traitor, the Party was monitored daily by the Tsar’s Secret Police. So Stalin betrayed by a double agent Party cadre spent 4 years in bitter Siberian exile. The traitor when exposed in 1918 shook the party to the core as it was akin to discovering that J.F.K (for our American cousins) or Atlee had been a communist double agent. And, if he could be a traitor so could anyone so paving the way to the show trials of the 30’s.

I must confess I am a sucker for anything about the rise and fall of the Communist Party as a long term Marxist. My interest came from my involvement in the revolutionary Left in the 70s and 80’s where the Trotsky-Stalin battles were still alive and kicking. Fear not American reader, I would clearly have been shot in the first days as one of those Quaker-Papist socialists who babble about the sanctity of human life. One of the few things that Trotsky and Stalin agreed on!. Hence, I have read in and around the ideas and history of this period for many years from the actions of the mule-headed Court, the oppressed peasantry and workers and the struggle of the intellectuals over the 19^th

century to make the political ideas of the West live in Russia. But the book is well researched and clearly written. It would appeal to anyone trying to understand the period or wanting an insight into a complex man you would be foolish to slight in any way. Yet you can see it was his iron will that made the USSR and caused it eventual failure.

What is Reading, Fundamentally?

2008-05-29T19:15:00.006+01:00

Removed to the Blog Dusty-box

Weekly Geeks 5# Other forms of story telling

2008-05-27T19:18:00.004+01:00

My form of story telling is to tell adults… legends, myths, fairy tales, riddles, urban tales, and moral fables from around the world. Sometimes, I tell listening stories, sometimes sharing stories and sometimes stories they grow. Cinderella is a listening story, the Turtle of Koka is a sharing story (I chant some lines, they respond to what is chanted) and a growing story asks questions of the audience so they shape what is told. When you do story telling you pull at the roots of human language and consciousness. If you want to be real fancy, talk about the historical role of stories in breaking down a bicameral mind in which cognitive functions, divide the brain, into "speaking”, and listening/obeying sections. Think facing a problem and hearing a “god” giving instructions rather then reflecting on your choices. This view draws on the controversial theories of psychologist, Julian Jaynes.

But I wander away from story telling that for me draws on two separate traditions, improvisation and Bardic telling. The show to see is Whose Line Is It Anyway, (comedians create characters, scenes and songs on the spot, in the style of short-form improvisation games) for getting an idea of the skills needed. If you want to know more then the guru is Keith Johnson and his book Impro for Storytellers. Try the what happen next game in which the audience gives a negative and then a positive suggestion to build up a story, its fun.

The bardic tradition combines music, poetry and storytelling based on a pagan love of nature. You tell classical Celtic stories such as The Sons of Tuirenn that lasts 20-30 minutes or even an hour. The Bardic Handbook by Kevan Manwaring gives you an idea of how to tell stories within a modern Celtic Bardic tradition as part of a contemporary pagan life.

My style combines the two forms. I use the Dragon teeth technique. Essentially, you break a story into nine images related to a 3-act structure. You then use this to improvise the story to or with the audience. I also take traditional stories, and adapt these to another period or situation. For example, I adapted a Persian story and set it in the Chicago gang politics of the 1920’s and a Celtic story and told it as if describing the gang fights of the early Edwardian London East End. I look for real gangster stories and incidents and then adapt them to the structure of the traditional story. The Dragon teeth approach is also good for taking stilted 19^th century accounts of traditional stories and giving them back to an audience again. I also want to retell the stories with three-dimensional characters as works of fiction … one day, one day. As they say, may my story live in you for your telling.

The Pirates! in an adventure with Whaling by Gideon Defoe

2008-05-26T13:45:00.004+01:00

The Pirates! in an adventure with Whaling(or with Ahab if American) draws it humour from slapstick, Monty Python, Carry on and Blackadder. Its not for children, as much of the humour relies on an adult appreciation of cliché and irony, though children may well enjoy it. This one is one long mickey take on Moby Dick.

When they are not belting out a lusty sea shanty or arguing about the best way to prepare ham, there's nothing pirates like more than a rousing adventure. And this is what the Pirate Captain, (the best leader in the Pirate world because of his beard and rugged good looks but not the sharpest cutlass in the armoury) and his shipful of variously named pirates--the scarf-wearing pirate, the pirate with an accordion, are going to get.

It also only 180ish pages long in a hand size paperback so its not going to be a heavy read. Highly recommended second of series and according to Aardman Animations website, author Gideon Defoe is working with producer/director Peter Lord on the screenplay and with writers Andy Riley and Kevin Cecil Hyperdrive (TV series) to turn the first two books from the series into a movie.

What others say about the book.If you have blogged about the book please free to load your link below

The Sunday Saloon: how to stare defeat in the face

2008-05-25T13:20:00.002+01:00

The week started with such high hopes. It was the week of the big book. The choice was David Foster Wallace’s Infinitive Jest. Given it fluffs up to over 1000 pages and get your glasses out print, this was seriously big. Not a problem… snitch to read over a fortnight max… right? Wrong, a clear case of the Hubris blues. Try snatching the odd chapter and page on trains and between meetings and the enormity of the book’s themes and construction soon hits you between the ears. When reduced to running a spreadsheet on the POV, format, period… (you get the picture) of each chapter, you know its time to throw in the towel. So crawl away and abandon? No, I retreated and retrenched to order Elegant Complexity: A Study of David Foster Wallace's 'Infinite Jest’ by Greg Carlisle. Yes, it is over 500 pages but I get a bird’s eye view of the book and explanations. As they say…Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure.

Sadly, to defer left me in crisis… no book to face the two-hour journey home. Summoning up the loins (no sniggers in the back please) I went fourth to buy a book (yes I know 900 books at home unread but give a guy a break). This forced me to have to spend time in bookshops and one of these was at the LSE (a seriously prestigious university). What caught my eye was Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore. This examines the early history of Stalin before entered the Soviet Government. The failure of democratic politics in Russia fascinates me as much as its counterpart of the failure of Western revolutions. And don’t get me started on why the USA alone failed to create a political party of labour in the late 19th.

Finishing Young Stalin book and reading yet another LibraryThing Early Reviewers book is the plan this week. I have The Collector of Worlds by Ilya Troyanov which is about Richard Burton- translator of 1001 Arabian Nights not … Other reviews in the pipe line is the free Henry James penguin classic when it finally comes(Surely not a publicity sham?) and Yellow Fever a book sent by the writer for me to review.

It’s a public holiday weekend here so its weather warning rain of course. Hope its better where you are and that you have a great week.

How to avoid making Art (or Anything Else You Enjoy) by Julia Cameron

2008-05-24T18:28:00.009+01:00

Julia Cameron says we are creative but we so often say not. The Artist's Way, her first book, kicked this excuse in to touch with its guide to defeating inner demons and rewarding creative angels. In a nutshell, write a morning journal on anything for three pages to ambush your inner critic and go out alone weekly to any artistic event to refresh your imagination. It works…honest! An Art Exhibition got me thinking about writing in these ways.

A picture with images falling out and in…so why not a story of characters and events that fall in and out of the main plot

Victorian prints mixed with photographic images and unnaturalistic stencils combine to create eerie and disturbing images… so create a story by taking a random handful of images cut from magazines as a starting point

Pictures of ordinary objects made macabre… have images in the story at odds with the readers expectation, make the corpse of a women erotic, the murder comedic

Don’t get it? Then read How to Avoid Making Art (or Anything Else You Enjoy) which attacks those inner demons with witty cartoons. Recognize any of these…

Read all the forwarded emails from your friends instead of writing your novel

Choose someone feels their dreams and goals are more important then yours

Understand no circumstances make any art just for fun

Play and creativity follows is what she wants you to accept. Writing or painting class are still needed to learn the tricks of the trade but your imagination is already waiting to burst out.

What others say about the book.If you have blogged about the book please free to load your link below

Books verus Movies

2008-05-22T19:37:00.004+01:00

This weeks question from Booking Through Thursday is:

Books and films both tell stories, but what we want from a book can be different from what we want from a movie. Is this true for you? If so, what’s the difference between a book and a movie?

Just back from a long day of 8 hours of a round trip from Bristol for two one hour meetings at either end of London to this question. (Yes I have done how was your day with the wife, and made a fuss of the dog so no raised eyebrows and muttering about men not knowing what a real day work is like) So got my pint mug of Red bush tea and loaded up Last.fm to play at random anything labelled French music in its data base and these are my random thoughts:

When I read a book I am its cast director populating the book from the script but when seeing a film of the book it often down to what star will get the audience in and it so rarely lives up to my imagination(Strangely enough when I read books I suddenly see characters as specific actors and scenes in particular film styles)
Imagined worlds and creatures with today's special effects are outstanding in films- imagine a Lord of the Rings or a Harry Potter say 20 years ago...shudder
Books are great for inner monologues and for the play of language so tell me how they could film Money by Martin Amis(didn't they and it was crap?)
Films are great for visual imagery and depicting the grand natural order of things but then again Casablanca is neither but a great film(Yet compare 2001 to the story it was based on!)
Books are portable and accessible in any environment(ok so perhaps when not whitewater rafting but you know what I mean)
Films often loose so much by not being shown on the big screen (tell me that Gone with the Wind doesn't suffer when shown in the TV.
Yet I find a lot of 19th century novels work best in Films, the endless descriptions of scenery and character gets stripped down to images so we can focus on the plot and the essential of character( Jane Austin for me works as a book and a Film but Dickens is only bearable as Film)
Its harder to find Art house films then it is to find cutting edge novels
Its harder for authoritarian regimes to suppress books then it is Films
Its easier to be a writer and spread your work through self publishing or via Blogs then be an independent film maker( So it easier for me to support and encourage new writers then new film makers)
I find obscure theories of films easier to understand then those of literature...honest
You can snog when watching a film and still keep an eye on the story (but you lose the page and even the book if you snog reading!)
Easier to eat when watching a film as got both hands free
When reading a book you have to at some time stop and appear to be listening but when watching a film (in a cinema) they have to keep quiet.
Nothing beats the experience of being let loose in a bookshop with gift vouchers so you get to touch, smell and look at new books(Or the joy of finding a second hand shop that just put books in vague order so you never know what gems you may find)
For those in the UK point me in the direction of the film version of the 2nd hand book capital of Hay on Wye
Reading a book can never duplicate the experience of 300 people engrossed in a film so for moments we are humanity not individuals.
I can see a French film but can't read a French book( unless I can read French as 2nd language) and so experience another's culture that the translated book waters down.
I have 2000 books and no danger that new technology will mean that they could be inaccessible if the video/blue ray/film projector breaks down.
I can read books with disguised covers on the train that others may find objectional but could be seen on a train if watching an unapproved film

Where I'm Calling From by Raymond Carver

2008-05-18T20:06:00.005+01:00

Have you ever had one of those Blair moments when after weeks of being nice to everyone you have to finally make a decision which means that enemies are made as they see a must have dismissed? Well this is one of those moments. I have been struggling with Raymond Carver’s “Where I'm Calling From” a collection of thirty-seven stories chosen from several previous collections published over 20 odd years which should therefore be an ideal introduction to his work. And… wait for it… I am going to abandon it unfinished half way despite him being seen As "the American Chekhov or the laureate of the dispossessed”

Let me say up front, that his prose, ear for dialogue and depiction of the ordinariness of every day life masking unexpressed pain and joy is the best. His stories are like photos that capture the moment frozen with no past or future with all the ambiguity that the unknown allows the reader/observer. The opposite of Norman Rockwell homeliness, more akin to the photos of Walker Evans of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. But they have no plot, twists, surprises, or surface complexity of character. These are often blue collar workers in small-town or rural settings struggling with jobs, partners, children and booze and it’s the unsaid that reveals more then the fractured words.

The stories reflect his own drink problems and failed jobs and marriage in his 20s so he turned to writing to escape and short stories could get something in quickly to pay the rent and get food on the table. His life did begin to turn around and his work started to get critical alarm in his 40’s before he died of lung cancer. His accessible prose, realistic situations and comprehensible characters are seen as a counter to egghead experimentalism

But for me, I was left all too often thinking yes and what happens next even while the image created hung in my head. I also think that stories ripped from their original magazine context make the stories work harder then they needed to. I would have welcomed an edition that merged the stories with a set of photographs worthy of the writing. However, if you want to dip in and perhaps read a couple a stories a week or if you enjoy short stories then this is a book for you. As you say at the end of a failed relationship its not you it’s me, and lets remain friends. Knowing it’s really about the lack of passion. Yet the spurned has the chance of real love else where…will that be you?

Other points of view:
Isolation and the short stories of Raymond Carver
It snowed today
Alysson’s Weblog
Bryan's Book Blog

The Contractor by Charles Holdefer

2008-05-18T17:37:00.010+01:00

To appreciate this book you have to ignore the misleading hype on the cover that suggests that The Contractor by Charles Holdefer exposes the secret detention and interrogation system expanded and ran by the Bush Administration outside of US and international law. It is political book but not at the level of who is doing what to whom. Instead, it goes to the heart of the western moral and ethical war aims as raised in this passage:

Then the LORD said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?" And he said, "I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper?"

It is clear that George Young, civilian interrogator contractor and a veteran of the first Gulf war would say no. His reaction when he comes across the burnt out remains of the Revolutionary Guard convoys is to argue:

…Because that day, I learned the price. Sure, I was shaken and sickened, and it is something I’d rather not think about or dwell on, but it also taught me something, steeled me, gave me the resources necessary to understand politics in the grown up world and later to become a contractor. This is what I learned: what we take for granted, hold precious, and celebrate remains viable because of our willingness to do this…To let those men get away would’ve been a serious strategic mistake…Any other description is special pleading or making excuses. Or simply lying to oneself. It gives me no satisfaction to say so, but not only will innocents die-they must die.

The story starts with the consequences of this when in a powerful opening scene we discover how prisoner #4141 dies. The humanity of the Prisoners are denied, as they are merely oranges being crated when they arrive or faceless numbers.

George Young is not a monster, which would let us off the hook so the story needs to show us why a good man would get to that position. It does in that we discover the economic and family pressures that lead systematically to meaningless death. We learn about his poor business track record and happy second marriage (which is being slowly killed by his need to keep secrets). The political playing out of the theme is also examined in his personal life as his big brother is his keeper at key points.

Away from the heat of the desert island and in the cold of a mid west winter on a family Christmas visit we have the amusing and poignant scenes of having to tackle the Father in Law( think of Spencer Tracy at his most grumpy) a minister of a struggling flock and a die in the wool fundamentalist. The family idea of fun is Bible Baseball ( questions are asked with the harder they are the more runs they are and George and his son are clueless). At one level this as they are trapped by the snow falls illustrates the horror that prisoners have to face. Unlike them, he escapes and answers a call by his brother, which sets of a chain of events where he finally does decide that he is his brother’s keeper.

The story moves between George’s professional and family life in the now and with flashbacks so that we understand his actions. The other characters are sketched in nicely which make the horrors of the camp and the choices he has to make even more chilling. The use of language and jargon is also clever and the first person POV gives you the reader chance to understand his world whilst questioning it.

If it makes more of us aware of the travesty of a war on terror for Democracy, and Human Rights based on lies and torturing rather then the politics of being my brother’s keepers then I hope it gets the wider readership it deserves.

Other points of view:
One persons journey through a world of books
Writing...writing...writing...what else is there?

Sunday Salon whilst listening to Wes Madiko

2008-05-18T11:30:00.003+01:00

Not been a very productive reading week as been distracted by discovering a range of book blog networks to join. Apart from Sunday Salon I have now caught up with Booking Through Thursday and the emerging Librarything book ring which is yet to be formally named but can be tracked down at Tuesday Things. However I have finished The Contractor by Charles Holfefer(sent to me by the writer!) which I shall review later. And I decided that as good as Raymond Carver's short stories are they confirm why I don't like short stories. His photo a moment in the lives of various dysfunctional relationships so you are left with a unresolved emotional image. I also intend to review him later today if time.

I plan to read and finish today the fun The pirates! in an adventure with whaling by Gideon Defoe. If you have not read any of these rush out and grab one you are in for one hell of treat...oh you have to get British humour and irony,

For the rest of the week I have two ARC to read. One is the self published Yellow Fever by Steffan Piper and some Henry James book sent by Penguin Classics if it arrives as it was bagged some weeks ago. If it doesn't then fancy either The Bear Comes Home by Rafi Zabor or Blood Kin by Ceridwen Dovey. Click on my poll and let me know!

What do other reviewers think

2008-05-18T09:16:00.005+01:00

One of the joys of reading other blogs is that you come across ideas to use for your own. I can across Weekly Geeks who are suggesting that you list any blogs links that have reviewed your book. Well easy said then done as I have just spent the last 30 minutes trying to work out how they have nice neat names and I have long internet links. Yes I know read the instructions...did so and now know to create hyperlinks!

So what I intend from now is to do a search and make a link to any book blog that has done a review within that book challenge period. And also invite any reader to comment and leave a link if they have done a review on that book. And so the ripples go on

Manual Labor Redux

2008-05-16T06:21:00.004+01:00

Removed to the Blog Dusty-box

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

2008-05-11T22:19:00.001+01:00

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay was an instant popular and critical success when it came out in 2000 being nominated for a raft of awards. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001 and Hollywood has been sniffing around it ever since. Michael Chabon the author wrote the only known screenplay, which struggled to reduce a 635-page book to a 2-hour film. At one point, the cast was Toby Maguire (Peter in Spiderman) to play Sam Clay, Natalie Portman (V for Vendetta) to play Rosa Saks and Jude Law to play Joe Kavalier.

The difficulties for the film is what makes the book a joy as it starts in 1938 as Superman bursts on the scene and ends in 1954 as the Kefauver Senate hearings delivers the death blow to a declining comic book industry. A central theme is the roles of the Jews in the comic book industry: it explored the mythology of comic hero and its impact Joe and Sam own struggles and personal journeys form the stories of the Escapist which in turn shape their lives. Sam struggling to come to terms with being Gay and Joe trying to rescue his family stuck in an increasingly bleak Nazi run Prague. It also explores the historical rip off the artists and writers of the period. Superman’s creators did not come into the real money until the blockbuster Superman movies and a court case prised the money out of Hollywood’s coffers. Historical characters from the period from the comic industry and the movie, art and political world some in and out of the story. The Escapist also draws on Joe Kavalier’s training and experience of magic and Houdini type tricks and the impact this has on his life.

The writing is a tour deforce so that you hear, touch and smell the period. Each character has their own voice and even minor characters when they enter the story in a few paragraphs you have their back-story and motives seamlessly woven in so they become real characters. The point of view moves from character to character and no easy option or resolution is allowed as the story builds to the magic trick ending. Scenes are comic one minute and bitterly tragic the next as you join in the roller coaster of their lives. Yes I am going say it…if you only have the chance to read one book this year make it this one, you wont be disappointed.

The end of an Era

2008-05-11T20:06:00.002+01:00

I know that you Americans are busy with starting or ending Mother day lunches so of course wont have time to read this until I am in bed. But its time for my pity party...

Its official, I can't fit in any more books in to my office/study. I now have brick and floorboard shelves between rows of IKEA bookshelves with books stacked on the top of any free shelf roof. Valuable book space is taken up with work files and boxes. I did suggest that I could give up work to read more books and the wife go full time instead. Call me a new age man but I did pick up a certain coolness with the idea. I think the thrown tea gave it away. Likewise, the idea that we switch the study/office with the main bedroom may not have gone down well. I had a simple solution: get a smaller bed and downsize the clothes to a single under the bed trolley-drawer. I couldn't hear all the answer because of the screams, I did catch ...mentally ill...hoarder...grounds for divorce. So what do you think, a runner or not?

Assuming that the lottery isn't going to come up (need to start doing it for a start!, I want to switch my focus from swapping books** to reading and reviewing them. For RISI it means only responding if asked and for Bookmooch it means only mooching if the book appears in the UK. I am also weeding out my swap stock that is down to 4 banana boxes (it was 27!). The intention is to weed this out to say one box, which is I top up with my non-keeper reads because I still intend to build up the wishlists...well may still come across a must have.

In addition, I am now getting book requests directly from authors to review their books some of which are self-publishers so more signs of the changing book market. With this change of focus in mind I came across an interesting site, its called the The Sunday Salon:

Every Sunday the bloggers participating in that week's Salon get together--at their separate desks, in their own particular time zones--and read. And blog about their reading. And comment on one another's blogs. Think of it as an informal, weekly, mini read-a-thon, an excuse to put aside one's earthly responsibilities and fall into a good book.

Of course I have a dream...digitalize my books and store them either on a online server or in a memory stick for e-book reading...60's white space minimalism come back all is forgiven

**Combining the RISI and Bookmooch swaps I have exchanged and received over 1000 books in 18 months

Mannual Labour

2008-05-11T13:02:00.005+01:00

Removed to the Blog Dusty-box

Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn

2008-05-05T19:21:00.004+01:00

Ella Minnow Pea is a first novel by Mark Dunn who is in fact a successful writer of over 25 plays. The novel structure is epistolary, which means that the story unfolds via letters between the characters. This is supposed to add greater realism to the story and demonstrate differing points of view without recourse to the device of an omniscient narrator. The approach was a popular 18th century device but mostly abandoned for most of the 19th and mid 20th century with the notable exceptions of Dracula by Bram Stoke and the Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis. Recently it has a bit of a popular revivable with works such as The Boy Next Door (2002) by Meg Cabot and We Need to Talk about Kevin (2003) using the format.

Ella Minnow Pea is a slim 200-page book about Nollop, an isle off the coast of South Carolina, and home to Nevin Nollop, the supposed creator of the well-known pangram "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." The island folk are best imagined as a type of Amish or Plain People who are happy to be in a pre industrial idyll. Then one day tiles fall off Nevin Nollop’s statue knocking off a letter. This sets in train events in which that letter is forbidden in speech and writing on pain of punishment and eventual banishment.

The story is more then wordplay although the letters read aloud are a joy to hear. It also explores how an open accepting community gradually falls apart as neighbours turn on neighbour and as willing followers gradually also become victims. This is explored politically as free speech is lost and an increasingly power hungry elite take over and theologically as rival cults emerge and the emptiness of worshiping idols is shown. Alongside these important themes, we also see a love story unfold and a race to find a new pangram before all freedoms are lost that will reveal that Nevin Nollop’s is a fraud.

In the end, you will either like the book because of the fun wordplay and important themes or you dislike the format and the limited characterization. I am of the former camp and so strongly recommend it.

The Wanderers by Richard Price

2008-05-05T15:16:00.003+01:00

The Wanderers by Richard Price was a first novel written in 1974 and draws on his teenage years around the Bronx street gangs of the early 60’s. It became a successful movie in 1979, which like the book went on to be a cult classic. Richard Price went on to write many other street crime stories such as Clockers and many successful screenplays as in The Colour of Money..

The story follows the last months of members of a teenage street gang called The Wanderers. These are an all-Italian gang comprising of 27 members. They wear bright yellow/brown jackets and blue jeans. Their leader, Richie, is dating Despie Galasso, the daughter of an infamous mobster, so The Wanderers have connections We also get involved with the fights and alliance of the other local gangs such as

The Fordham Baldies: As their name suggests, they are all bald, reportedly to prevent their hair from getting in their eyes during a fight.

The Del Bombers: The toughest all-black gang in the Bronx.

Ducky Boys: An all-Irish gang , all short- 5'6" and under and the most vicious

The Wongs: An Chinese gang, all with the last name of "Wong" and highly skilled in Jiu-Jitsu

But it’s more then being in a gang as we explore their relationships, schools, neighbourhoods and often dysfunctional families. Its not a book for the politically correct or maiden aunts, you get unfiltered real street language and behaviour and no moral judgements by the author. The bad aren’t punished and the good rewarded, its left messy as in real life. The story whilst a novel is structured like a series of inter connected short stories so characters pop in and out of the set events as we move through the lives of the gang members. I should add apart from the high energy dialogue many of the scenes are funny,( ask me about the lasso, stone and what was tied to the rope when thrown over a bridge!) sad and even chilling. Well worth reading

The Giver by Lois Lowry

2008-05-05T12:37:00.001+01:00

The Giver by Lois Lowry a children’s SF for 8-12 year olds written in 1993 is part of a loose set trilogy set in the same imagined world but not necessarily with the same characters. It deals with a world where your life is one of conformity and happiness. The short novel honestly faces why a society such as this would arise with its benefits and essential failure explored. The core of that failure is that…grief is the price you pay for love. Without sadness, can love and laughter really exist?

We discover a community of unlimited happiness and good manners set in a green and pleasant paradise of high but largely hidden technology. In this world, only 50 children per community are born from genetically approved placements in birth mothers. Regulations define your clothes, toys and your role in society from your first year. From eight you have to volunteer for a range of community duties so that your life long occupation from twelve can start. We join Jonas as the ceremony for 12’s is near for the allotment of his calling. Much to his and the communities shock he is not allotted a job but is selected to be the Receiver. In learning what this is, he discovers the hidden pain and dark side of unlimited happiness. This sets off a chain of events as Jonas discovers what being released really means. He faces what growing up means, and consequences whose meaning you have to decide.

The book has over 3000 ratings on Amazon.com alone so we are talking popular and critical success (it won the Newbury Medal- the USA children’s literature award). Even so, it is banned in several USA State’s School and Library systems because of the dark emotional issues dealt with. Surprisingly doesn’t to have attracted the same attention in the UK. If you or your children have not read it then you have missed a classic. But if you have read it then you know why it’s enjoyable and highly recommended!

Top 106 unread books on LibraryThing

2008-05-01T17:45:00.004+01:00

This is a extract from a Librarything.com blog about the top 106 unread books on their system (106?...I don'tknow either). Below is my take and the overall assessment which suggests that I only have 10 books that have been on my TBR pile for more two years

We've been meaning to blog this for a while, so here it is! This meme has been going around for a while now: Top 106 unread books on LibraryThing. People are going through the top 106 books tagged "unread" on LT, and then marking which ones they've read, which they read for school, which they started but didn't finish, which are on their to read list, which they loathed, which they read more than once...

Read and Enjoyed: 41 Awaiting: 6 Never/Abandoned 20
TBR<> 29 TBR> 2 years: 10

The ultimate hitchhiker's guide by Douglas Adams (43)

Read and enjoyed but having read his biog not sure if he is talented as the hype says

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke (236)

Read and enjoyed and it is not slow!

The kite runner by Khaled Hosseini (19)

Sigh… have but no urge to read

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (211)

Read and enjoyed several times

Life of Pi : a novel by Yann Martel (17)

Over hyped twaddle and abandon

Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra (152)

One day...one day

Crime and punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (176)

One day...one day

One hundred years of solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (183)

One day...one day

Vanity fair by William Makepeace Thackeray (115)

Read and enjoyed several times

The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien (155)

Read and enjoyed several times…yes really

Ulysses by James Joyce (135)

One day...one day...maybe

War and peace by Leo Tolstoy (132)

Read and enjoyed several times-just skip the long essays he drops in

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (132)

One day...one day

The brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (136)

One day...one day

Catch-22 a novel by Joseph Heller (158)

Read and enjoyed several times

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (162)

Read and enjoyed several times

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (110)

One day...one day

Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle I) by Neal Stephenson (92)

One day…one day

A tale of two cities by Charles Dickens (124)

Run a mile away from reading any Dickens

The satanic verses by Salman Rushdie (88)

Unreadable rubbish

Middlemarch by George Eliot (96)

Tried three times and have never got past half way

Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books by Azar Nafisi (96)

One day...one day

The name of the rose by Umberto Eco (120)

Read and enjoyed several times-the film is ok too

The Kor'an by Anonymous (11)

Er… don’t we know who wrote it?...but have not read

Moby *** by Herman Melville (119)

One day...one day

Odyssey by Homer (136)

Read and enjoyed…rosy fingers of dawn etc

The Canterbury tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (108)

Yes…and in Middle English!

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (114)

One day...one day

The hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo (75)

Never had any interest in wanting to

The historian : a novel by Elizabeth Kostova (108)

Read and enjoyed

Foucault's pendulum by Umberto Eco (101)

One day...one day

Atlas shrugged by Ayn Rand (102)

Over dead body- men in white coats territory

The history of Tom Jones, a foundling by Henry Fielding (67)

Dreary may work as an audio book

The three musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (87)

One day...one day

Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (95)

Never had any interest in wanting to

The sound and the fury by William Faulkner (94)

The One day...one day

The Iliad by Homer (117)

Read and enjoyed… friendship, love of men for war etc

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (97)

One day...one day

Emma by Jane Austen (117)

Read and enjoyed

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak (64)

Read and enjoyed…several times

Sons and lovers by D.H. Lawrence (69)

Read and enjoyed…several times

Gulliver's travels by Jonathan Swift (88)

Read and enjoyed

The house of the seven gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne (62)

Never had any interest in wanting to

Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies by Jared Diamond (104)

Read and enjoyed

Dracula by Bram Stoker (100)

One day…one day

Lady Chatterley's lover by D.H. Lawrence (73)

Read and enjoyed

A heartbreaking work of staggering genius by Dave Eggers (97)

Read and enjoyed

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (83)

Argggggg Dickens

The once and future king by T. H. White (81)

Read and enjoyed …several times

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (82)

Yes but a bit theological

To the lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (83)

One day…one day

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (88)

Read and enjoyed

Oryx and Crake : a novel by Margaret Atwood (78)

Er… never heard of it

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (106)

Argggggg Dickens

Labyrinth by Kate Mosse (56)

One day…one day

Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (83)

Loathe Hardy even more then Dickens

Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed by Jared Diamond (76)

One day…one day

The corrections by Jonathan Franzen (84)

One day…one day

Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe (58)

One day…one day

Underworld by Don DeLillo (64)

Lost the will to live about a 1/3 of the way through

Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott (63)

The same ilk as Dickens and Hardy

The grapes of wrath by John Steinbeck (99)

One day…one day

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (124)

Read and enjoyed

The Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake (47)

Read and enjoyed several times

The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells (66)

Read and enjoyed

Jude the obscure by Thomas Hardy (65)

Loathe Hardy even more then Dickens

The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (62)

One day…one day

Tender is the night by F. Scott Fitzgerald (66)

One day…one day

A portrait of the artist as a young man by James Joyce (89)

Read and enjoyed

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain (59)

Read and enjoyed

The divine comedy by Dante Alighieri (63)

One day…one day

The inferno by Dante Alighieri (84)

One day…one day

Gravity's rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (66)

One day…one day

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (83)

Over dead body- men in white coats territory

Swann's way by Marcel Proust (59)

One day…one day…if can over find all the volumes

The poisonwood Bible : a novel by Barbara Kingsolver (91)

One day…one day

The amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay : a novel by Michael Chabon (83)

One day…one day

Sense and sensibility by Jane Austen (96)

Read and enjoyed many times

The portrait of a lady by Henry James (62)

One day…one day

Silas Marner by George Eliot (57)

Never had any interest in wanting to

The picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (89)

Read and enjoyed

The man in the iron mask by Alexandre Dumas (43)

Never had any interest in wanting to

The god of small things by Arundhati Roy (80)

Read and enjoyed but strange prose

The book thief by Markus Zusak (67)

Read and enjoyed

The confusion by Neal Stephenson (61)

One day…one day

One flew over the cuckoo's nest by Ken Kesey (82)

Read and enjoyed

Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (97)

One day…one day

Bleak House by Charles Dickens (63)

Argggggg Dickens

The system of the world by Neal Stephenson (55)

One day…one day

The elegant universe : superstrings, hidden dimensions, and… by Brian Greene (60)

One day…one day

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson (78)

One day…one day

The known world by Edward P. Jones (53)

One day…one day

The time traveler's wife by Audrey Niffenegger (105)

Read and enjoyed

The mill on the Floss by George Eliot (54)

Never had any interest in wanting to

The English patient by Michael Ondaatje (64)

One day…one day

Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon (47)

One day…one day

Dubliners by James Joyce (78)

One day…one day…maybe

Les misérables by Victor Hugo (73)

One day…one day

The bonesetter's daughter by Amy Tan (56)

Never had any interest in wanting to

Infinite jest : a novel by David Foster Wallace (54)

One day…one day

Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad (53)

Read and enjoyed

Beloved : a novel by Toni Morrison (77)

One day…one day

Persuasion by Jane Austen (82)

Read and enjoyed

A clockwork orange by Anthony Burgess (83)

Read and enjoyed

The personal history of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (69)

Argggggg Dickens

Tropic of cancer by Henry Miller (54)

Read and enjoyed

Do you use fan and professional reviews to choose books?

2008-04-26T16:11:00.002+01:00

Well confession time, I have RSS feeds to various review pages of UK and US national papers and magazines( The Guardian, San Francisco Chronicle, The Daily Telegraph, Washington Post, London Review of Books, New York Review of books,) I also belong to various book swap sites such as Bookmooch, and ReaditSwapit that have book reviews in their Forums and RSS feed them. Finally I also have RSS feeds to 50 book challenge and email alerts from Goodreads.

So daily scan( yes daily and several times a day...who mentioned OCD?) for any reviews of books mostly to alert me to books that I have missed that I would like. If it’s a fan review I quickly get a sense if I would like the book sometimes from why they didn't like it!! Once a book has caught my attention I will go on to Amazon, Librarything and Goodreads to see what the community consensus is. Scanning the reviews soon gives you an idea of how well the book matches the ambition and skills of the writer.

Yes what type of review tips the balance for you? It has to be said that a lot of the fan reviews are too often the book page blurb and a paragraph on why I like/don't like it. Even worse are the reviews on some sites that are a list of titles and one liners why I like/don't like it. On the other hand, too many of the professional reviews are on the other side of the camp in that the writer shows how much they know about the subject or theme of the book but you also struggle to know if the book is any good.

So the ideal review for me puts the book in to context...what genre, what traditions are they writing in, what's interesting about the author and this book. Secondly, I like to see an outline about the plot, characters, factual content etc so I can get a sense of what the author is trying to do. Thirdly, in the light of the first two factors, a review of how the author has managed to make it work in terms of characterisations, styles, plot credibility etc

I supposed it’s akin to a good review of say of a play by Shakespeare. I am told what's the Director's interpretation is and the past history of interpretations as well as what this means for the choice of set, costume, period, casting, lighting, staging etc. And then its discussed how successful this was and why. Here as in the book review I want to read a critical analysis that illuminates why the play/book works/doesn’t work.

Yes you say but this is still only one persons view but by knowing the assumptions and perspective of this reviewer( this one likes experimental, cutting edge but this one low brow easy reads) you can quickly spot if you are on the same wavelength. I also love the notion of aggregating the responses of reviewers, I don't think we have a booksite that is akin to the http://uk.rottentomatoes.com/site that collates all the film reviews and gives you the reader a community consensus. The Sunday papers sometimes do a pick of the critics which gives you the consensus on a book, or film. In books its more likely to be the readers rather then critics consensus that is aggregated. For example like Goodreads and Library thing.com aggregate the ratings. As do the Amazon sites with the possibility of manipulation (see this link for what dirty tricks may lie behind a books rating http://muse-books.livejournal.com/47745.html) but we don't have a poll of the polls.

And what do you do with all these reviews you may ask? Well I wishlist all the books that catch my eye on to my book swap sites and then wait until they pop up free. Well that's the theory, in practise I also buy some as well...oh and of course at some time read them!

Jasmine's Tortoise by Corinne Souza

2008-04-25T15:31:00.005+01:00

Jasmine’s Tortoise is the first novel of Corinne who has written non fiction books about her family’s involvement in spying and her experiences as a lobbyist during the Major-Blair years. It is clear that much of Corinne Souza life is woven into the novel’s mix of fictional and historical events that unfolds from1965 to 2002. Souza’s father is clearly used as a source for Jasmine’s father and she like Jasmine owes her British passport to the spy trade.

The book covers 40 turbulent years from the ellipse of the Puppet Hashemite monarchy by secular Arab nationalism to its eventual challenge by Islamic militancy and Kurdish nationalism. These local changes are shaped if not controlled by the ebb and flow of the big three imperial powers: Britain, America, and Russia, who gradually became the big two and then finally in the 90’s just the big one. These complex social and political changes are explored through the fates of three families: the Palameries- Roman Catholic Indian traders, the Solomon’s, the last of Bagdad’s old Jewish families and the El-Tareks- a well heeled Muslim family with a presence in the old and emerging social-political elites.

The story starts in Bagdad when the British niceties of Masonic lodges, Horse Racing, dances and formal parties, are in the final throes of death with a family party. Tragedy is triggered when Jasmine is given a tortoise by her grandfather. Peter Ligne, the local MI6 bureau spymaster claims it from him. This hurts her grandfather’s feelings so his friend Nico Stollen, the KGB spymaster, is pulled into a rivalry to protect Jasmine. Thus starts a struggle for her “soul” that will see betrayal and death rip the families apart mirroring the wider betrayal of Iraq. Forty years later the younger generation and older family survivors fight for Jasmine’s redemption as Nico Stollen and Peter Ligne pull the strings to the final moments.

The book is structured with a prologue setting out all the main characters and their relationship in 2002 before diving back to Bagdad in 1965. It then jumps in linear stages to 2002 and we follow the twists and turns of the characters as they die, marry, betray and manipulate with bitter and unintended consequences. Expect lots of twists and unexpected turns as the plot sets a good pace as you keep a track on who is who. If in doubt dip back to the prologue as the characters and their relationships are set out as if a route map.

Clearly an ambitious and multi-layer story so does it work? Only partly has to be the honest answer. The flaw is that the writing does not match the ambition of the story. The characters are often two-dimensional, and clichés with barely distinguishable voices but they do serve as effective pegs to move the plot on at a quick pace. And who complains when Fleming and Agatha Christies characters serve the same purpose?

We also have a POV that switches character within the same page as well as an irritating habit of the writer as untended narrator explaining words and actions. This would have been fine in a historical account but not in a novel as it all adds to effect of the reader being distant and observing rather then participating in the story. Again fine as long as the reader is interested in plot rather then character driven stories.

So is the plot credible? The opening prologue is over complex and slows the introduction to the story; this could have perhaps been better handled perhaps as a press interview of Jasmine so become a narrative that intrigues us. Nor do we have the back story of why key central characters are so loyal to each other. The importance given to British Intelligence, Masons and Employer associations stretches credibility. But Lodges were in the British Middle East until closed down in the mid 60’s, and until the 90’s employees with a radical past were black-listed and British intelligence did play dirty tricks with the Labour Party. And as for the corruption of the Government sponsored arms trade just read the latest news headlines! So the story is an exaggeration and simplification of the truth which will irate some readers but not all.

In the end, the potential fatal flaw of the novel is who is the intended readership? In wanting to explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world, it suffers in comparison with Graham Greene who managed to combine serious literary acclaim with wide popularity. Yet it lacks the technically detailed espionage and military science storylines of say a Tom Clancy or the focus on one heroic man, or a small group of crusading individuals, in a struggle against powerful adversaries of say a Robert Ludlum. Despite these reservations and limitations it is still a good holiday read but given a good cast, and screenplay it would really work as a mini commercial TV series.

2008-04-19T13:09:00.001+01:00

A member of my UK book swap site (ReaditSwapit) raised a question of which gender writer did you prefer. Naturally this generally gave rise to good liberal platitudes of reading books for the content and of being gender blind when choosing books.

But I think its one of those questions that you have to actually check what you read and have on your shelves rather then assume. Being a leftie of long standing, I would say that its the book and its content that interest me and the gender of the writer is of no or limited interest, As they say a lovely theory ruined by the facts. In checking my TBR piles of 782 only around 10% of them were women writers!!!!

So how do I explain this clear gender bias? Well I don't read much genre literature except for SF which will tend to have a male writer bias. I tend to read a lot of foreign and cult books and only a handful of foreign books get translated in to English so I suspect a gender bias creeps in here. And looking at my rough guide to cult fiction book less then 5% are women authors. Another strand of my reading is cutting edge literature as say in the Pen-Faulkner award which has been running since 1981(see the link below if interested) and from 1981 to 1996 it looks like around only 30% were women writers.

http://www.penfaulkner.org/awardforfiction.htm

So what does the evidence of your bookshelves and TBR really reveal rather then your intentions?

The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly

2008-04-18T18:57:00.003+01:00

Which do you think will be read and savoured in 100 years time, the fairy stories of the Grimm Brothers with their roots in the old darkness of firelight nights or the latest Jodi Picoult about a life that the children of parents yet to be born will have no knowledge or interest in. Yet the same children when meeting the stories of world long faded even when written down by the Grimm Brothers will still be amazed and scared. Don’t believe me? Well I do story telling in pubs to adults and have known an entire bar go quiet and listen intently as a story of woods, princes and monsters enfolds in their mind.

It is from this deep well that John Connolly’s The Book of Lost Things draws on as he tells the story of 12 year old David’s losing fight to keep his mother and family he knows a alive. His anger and grief causes him blackouts and a wish for revenge as his father deals with grief by marriage and work. David discovers the presence of the Crooked Man who can move between the world of living and story. Books start talking to him and boundaries blur so that when his anger and that of his struggling step-mother collide it sets into train his explosive entry into land of story.

Once there we meet traditional fairyland characters but from an adult and darker angle… Red riding Hood hunts out the wolf for sex and worse! It becomes clear that the adventures reflect David’s fears and the choices he must make as he struggles to deal with his grief and anger. To make the wrong choices will leave worlds destroyed but so will the right ones as he learns that happy endings are for fairy stories. But as heaven is what we make it, his death when it comes is not the end of the story.

This is not a children’s story but an adult story about when childhood ends and what life is made as we grow up. Its portrait of David trying to keep his mother alive and his feelings made me cry in the first 10 pages such was the lyrical nature of the writing. The stories within stories are not distractions as some reviewers suggest but insights into the characters that David meets and his own feelings and choices that he has to make. It has lots of comic moments as well as the Snow White and communist dwarfs’ episode shows. However, ultimately it’s a story about growing up and letting go of illusions, which makes it very sad and poignant. So if it gets to be a film think David Lynch or Tim Burton rather then Disney and you are on the right track about the tone of the book. Recommend for an easy enjoyable and moving read.

The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes

2008-04-15T19:07:00.003+01:00

The book has its roots in stream punk or gothic horror with a dark brooding picture of late Victorian London full of grotesques, human monsters, corruption, dystopian nightmares and sharp contrasts of poverty and wealth. It draws on Dickens and Wilkie Collins with character names drawn. Another clear homage is Arthur Conan Doyle as the set up of Private Investigator (Edward Moon with loyal assistant (The Somnambulist) and long suffering housekeeper (Mrs Grossmith clearly draws on Sherlock Homes. A clear nod to 19^th century literature is a narrator who judges and questions the actions of the characters and your motives as the reader.

It has three major plot lines: first is a murder-mystery in which Moon tries to discover how a rich wastrel died at the foot of a strange tower which leads him deeper into a vast cultish plot to remake London; the second is a political thriller in which the English secret service( The Directory) is locked in a deadly struggle with the Russian Secret Service and for its own survival and the third is an historical fancy with London itself as a character as well as a key character who is living back into time from the future. Each of the stories interacts and shapes the other until the climatic struggle for the soul and future of London of the final chapters.

The characters in The Somnambulist are just as much fun as the story. Obviously, Edward Moon the magician detective, the Somnambulist a milk drinking giant, the creepy Human Fly, the cold but cunning Albino, the curdling supernatural Prefects, the 100 year old Chairman of love, Mr Cribb, the embodiment of London, Barrabas, the bearded-lady whore... the list goes on and on. Each has a part to play in the story from beginning to end, and each person's story is, for the most part, tidied up by the end of the story.

But many of these characters are broad-brush stroke and as the plot lurches in all direction without given time to settle they often fail to engage. The novel could have been done best as a three book series or one 800 page book. The relative shortness of the story leads to lots of issues not being explained or to sudden resolutions. One of the approaches of suggesting a back story of some 20 years of work and fame now fading especially since the failures of the Clapham case (hint Jack the Ripper) is one of the few area of depth in the story. As you can see, it’s not a conventional story by any means and you do have to read carefully in parts. But to the relief of many I must make it clear that this is not in any way literature but rather pure escapism or “eye candy for the brain”. So want to switch off and dive into over the top escapist fun then this is the book for you!

Fresh by Mark McNay

2008-04-13T09:20:00.002+01:00

This is Mark McNay’s first novel and clearly draws on first hand knowledge of the day to day grind of a certain working class life where a full belly, a warm fire and a good woman is perfection. It fits within a British tradition of “kitchen sink realism” kicked of by John Osbourne’s “Look back in Anger” in the 50’s that looks at the dreams and anger of the working class man and woman. Think of Alan Sillitoe’s Saturday night and Sunday morning or the film work to the current day of Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, both of whom continue to create powerful films unafraid of tackling head on current social problems.

The story follows a day in the life of Sean working in a chicken packing factory**, who discovers that his Brother Archie has come out of jail early ( in for violence and drugs related crime). This sets up a chain of events with tragic consequences as Sean has spent most of a money clip he was banking for his brother. He desperately struggles during the course of the day to borrow the money from family and from the firm. The novel also by flashbacks reveals Sean’s and Archie’s childhood and life up to the events of the day. Sean is no angel; he gambles, takes a more or less willing part as a pick up in his brother’s drug’s network and will use his fists. But unlike his brother does with his family needs in mind- his own and that of his uncle and aunt who gave him a home when his father left and mother died. And it’s for his family that he has to fight for as the day develops.

The story unfolds through a lot of dialogue and switches between first and third person perspectives rather then description although we get’s Sean’s flights of imagination for colour. The dialogue is written in Glaswegian but it doesn’t jar and often it’s in the silences between characters that speak more. The speech patterns (expect sentences where F**k can be a noun, verb, adjective and have several meanings from love to hate! and the mundane events of the day convey tenderness, violence and humour in scene after scene with warm believable characters.

It’s remarkable that the author started a creative writing course in his late forties in 1999 which lead to this award winning (Arts Foundation New Fiction 2007) novel. Hope for all us yet! It is by no means perfect, as the ending is a little flat and the characterisation of Archie teeters on the edge of caricature but it’s an easy page turner and I can’t wait for the Ken Loach channel four adaptation that surely must be in pre production talks as you read this!

** and you may want to rethink eating cheap value chicken after reading the book!

The Tidewater Tales by John Barth

2008-04-06T21:28:00.001+01:00

Peter is a working class successful writer who has become blocked and so begs his well heeled wife (Katherine) who is 8 ½ months pregnant to set him a task. She does which is to tell stories as they sail around the Chesapeake Bay (a 200 mile long estuary on the Virginia and Maryland coastlines) in their boat called Story. During of which we discover how they fell in love in the 60’s but not met up until the 70’s and why they are having babies now as they hit 40. But this is only one of three other love stories in the novel. One is the love of landscape and the other is of sailing. Both of which are powerfully evoked throughout the novel. Their love story, landscape and sailing are then effectively linked to their families. Hers being local old money who have shaped the land since before the USA was founded and his being boat builders who have shaped access to the water since coming over in the 19^th century.

Katherine’s family are open, generous friendly and sophisticated so accept and support the whims of Peter and Katherine to sail around the Bay. Likewise Peter shy and intense and Katherine open and bright are deep friends and in love so we like the characters and join in the physicality evoked by the writing. However these are but three of several strands in the novel, two others are a political thriller and an eco-mystery. The first explores the CIA-KGB spy games as the SALT talks dirty tricks play out in the local area. The second looks at the environmental damage being done by illegal dumping. Both story lines are linked firmly with Katharine’s ex husband and her charming but wastrel brother but not as you expect.

But all this are themes for the real focus of the novel which is about the art and mystery of writing and story telling. So over the 14 days of sailing we move in and out of the stories of Don Quixote, Huckleberry Finn, 1001 nights of Arabian Tales, Odyssey as they shape and are shaped by the love story landscape and sailing. We meet the narrators as characters finishing their own stories and shaping the novel as we do as reader-characters. This means that the narrative moves through a whole range of formats (plays, short essays, monologues, puns, wordplay etc) and genres (love story, social comedy, thriller, family saga, etc) with us and the unborn babies as narrator commentators along with the characters who know they are in a story. And we know their fates outside the story itself.

Don’t expect a quick read as its 655 pages and small print but do expect an intellectual tour de force and a page turner for what is mediation on writing that races along driven by the reader’s identification with Peter’s writers block, and their immediate parenthood while the multi-layer story entertains and stretches. Clearly a banquet that lingers in the memory when many beans on toast novels have been long forgotten so highly recommended.

Lang by Kjell Westö

2008-03-21T19:52:00.000Z

Lang by Kjell Westö was published in 2005 for English readers and his is first crime/suspend novel. Kjell is a Swedish speaking Finlander author of several novels and books of poetry since 1986. Lang is psychological mystery with its polar opposite being Roseanna which is a Police Procedural story by the husband-and-wife writers Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. In Lang a crime is committed but the focus is on the why and its consequences rather then on its detection. The story is driven by the question what redemption is possible if your life is driven by fame and success rather then by love.

Lang is the host of Finland’s premier chat show-think Michael Parkinson crossed with Jeremy Paxman and started his rise to the top of the cultural heights by being a successful highbrow novelist. But his second marriage has just failed, and his son from his first is on drugs. He hasn’t written in over ten years and his TV ratings are slipping as viewers switch to new Friday night formats such as Big Brother and How to be a Millionaire. Worse still, he is in is 40’s going grey and fading physically.

A chance encounter with Sarita in a bar starts an obsessive lust affair complicated further which it becomes clear that she is equally locked in an unhealthy relationship with the violent father of her son. Yet it’s like a drug that initially gives the high of a revitalised career but then destroys it as the addicts needs to have more of what he craves leads to murder…but also redemption.

The story is not told by Lang but his best friend who is contacted in the opening scene for a spade to burry the body. Lang browbeats him to get the spade but when arrested keeps his friends involvement secret. The story then unfolds with the friend trying to discuss and write up Lang’s version which we gradually see is more his then Lang’s. We lean more about their friendship and Lang’s abuse of it and how he neglects his mentally ill sister. It also becomes clear that whilst Lang is clearly a charming but nasty piece of work, his friend and Sarita are not merely victims as they are playing their own games. Even Saritia’s violent drug-seller ex husband has more redeeming qualities then first appearances would suggest.

So does it work? Well don’t expect a nice simple bad-guy versus good-guy as nothing is easy or simply resolved and you are left with perhaps more questions then answers. It rings psychologically true and the writing and structure works well with memorable characters that haunt you even when you are not sure if you enjoyed or loved the story. Strongly recommended.

Closely Observed Trains written by Bohumil Hrabal

2008-03-16T15:25:00.002Z

Closely Observed Trains written by Bohumil Hrabal is considered one of the greatest Czech and European writers of the 20th century. His books are translated into 27 languages. The short novel was the basis of one of the most popular new wave movies made in the 60’s. He died in the late 1990’s possibly by suicide and had to struggle through the long oppression of the communist regime with many of his books having to be smuggled out to be published.

However this is not some worthy political diatribe but an earthy sensual satire that contrasts the bumbling humour of the Czechs and the crudity and repression of the local Nazis as the German front collapse at the end of the war. The opening scene is of a shot down aeroplane wing fluttering into the town and causing panic in the streets. From this we learn about the Hrma family, Great Grandfather who had a war pension from 18 and would drink a bottle of rum and smoke a pack of cigars a day in from of the local workers to show how easy he had it until finally beaten to death in his 80’s, a grandfather who tried to hypnotise the Germans invaders to stop, and a father who had served on the railways for 25 years before he retired to be the village holder of lost and abandoned objects.

And finally we meet Milos Hrma the teenage railway apprentice on the way to work at the local railway station after a 3 month sick leave. He is acutely aware of the town’s view that the whole family are scroungers and wastrels. The sick leave was because he had tried to commit suicide after failing to “rise to the occasion” with his first love as he feared that the eyes of the town were on him.

Milos is one of Hrabal's "wise fools" - simpletons with occasional or inadvertent profound thoughts - who are also given to coarse humour, lewdness, and a determination to survive and enjoy oneself despite harsh circumstances. As he rejoins work he walks into a crisis. It appears that the station dispatcher –a sex mad woman’s man had used the entire official stamps one night to stamp the bum of the female telegraphist. As these were in German, this prompts the investigation of the way that the station was being run much to the frustration of the bumbling pigeon fancier station master ambitions. In the resulting chaos of events Milos gets to achieve sexual maturity and political maturity as he finally makes a moving and heroic stand against the Germans.

The novel is less then 100 pages but each of the characters spring of the page and the underlying politics are hinted rather then laid on with a trowel. For example the horror of this time is mainly conveyed with subtle quiet descriptions of the trains and their passengers passing through the station- a hospital train from the front passing a train with fresh troops on the way to the front or the state of the animals stranded on delayed trains. Its real targets were off course the Communists and the need to take a stand against them which the Czechs did in 68 and in the 90’s to gain their freedom in the velvet revolution. But don’t worry about the politics. Instead enjoy the story and writing that paints pictures in your mind with memorable scenes and humour leaving you desperate to see the film and read more of his books. Highly recommended.