dovegreyreader scribbles

R.I.P. Autumn Challenge

Head to Carl's blog for news of this autumn reading challenge around the book blogs, irresistible and thanks to Ex Libris for the tip off.
Readers Imbibing Peril.

 "pick out any 5 books that you want to read that you think will meet the very broad criteria of being scary, eerie, moody,dripping with atmosphere, Gothic, unsettling etc and vow to read them"

It's not a race, thank goodness, my blisters will barely have time to recover.No chance of me getting to them for a week or two yet but watch this space for my selection and in the midst of this Booker-thon madness I'd welcome any helpful suggestions, especially if the books were reasonably short!
That said,anyone looking for a longer read couldn't go far wrong with The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox, hot off the press.

Amazon reviews

I'm befuddled and bemused by this review of Kalooki Nights by Howard Jacobson which has just appeared on Amazon.I actually submitted a review of the book myself yesterday noting that there weren't any.
I haven't submitted a review to them in ages, the novelty wore off after I wrote five that never appeared and my Kalooki Nights one hasn't appeared yet either.If it does the contrast couldn't be greater.
But read this one and please tell me how you can write a coherent review of a book you have given up on after 150 pages, somewhere along the line you have to say mea culpa and give the author the benefit of the doubt?
By all means pan it once you've finished it but not on the strength of a partial read. I have plenty of books that get the partial read treatment but I don't feel I can then, in all honesty, offer a valid review.
This one got the "unhelpful" vote from me, and if there had been a voting button that said "very unhelpful" it would have got that one too.

Booker-thon 2006 The Nightwatch - Sarah Waters

More review page lines devoted to this book than it is humanly possible to read and there can be little doubt that Sarah Waters has written a fantastic book in The Night Watch and one that looks at the war from a very different and fascinating perspective.
Ordinary people's lives turned inside out by a war that changed everything while it lasted and for long afterwards.We rarely read details about the very grim side to WW II city bombing but we are spared none of the detail in The Night Watch and that gives the book a unique authenticity.
I grew up in the 1950's and find hard to appreciate now how recent the war had been, generalisations were frequent but nothing specific about how utterly dreadful it must have been to live through the Blitz.
Beautifully and seamlessly written as it moves unusually backwards in time, I was frequently reminded of Vere Hodgson's Few Eggs and No Oranges, a wartime diary that I read a few years ago and remarkable for its depiction of the realities of life in London.I was delighted to see that this along with a myriad of other fascinating books had been used in the research.
But I'm not sure this will make the shortlist.There are quite a few of these "tell it like it really was/is" books on the longlist and surely only a couple of places for them on the shortlist if it is to range across the spectrum.I'm going to be having huge arguments with myself here as a solo judging panel when I come to make my final decision.Perhaps Bluestalking >>>> and I will compile a list between us, can you hear me Chicago? What say you?
Incidentally it makes for interesting reading to compare Vere Hodgson's diary account of the war with Vera Brittain's diary of exactly the same period. There is one particular day when Vere is clearing up the rubble yet again and Vera Brittain is having lunch at the Savoy (or was it the Ritz?)
PS The Tinker tells a lovely tale of walking home to his parents via Balham to Tooting on leave from his ship.Air raids all around and a freezing cold night. He finally arrived in the early hours to find no Anderson shelter in the garden,gone, disappeared.My grandfather had uprooted the whole thing and moved it into the sitting room with the door opening right onto a coal fire roaring in the fireplace, they were all as warm as toast in there.If they were going to die they would at least die warm was the theory.

Watertight at Waterstone's

Just had a wander over to the new Waterstone's website courtesy of a very generous link from Scott Pack  over on his Me & My Big Mouth blog.Rummaging through the bowels (Waterstone's not Scott Pack's) of the place I came across the legalities of posting a book review on there which I will run by my legal team.
I'm sure it's all necessary but could this be why we blog?

If you do post content or submit material, and unless we indicate otherwise, you 1) grant Waterstones.com and its affiliates a non-exclusive, perpetual, royalty-free and fully sub-licensable rights to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, and display such content throughout the world in any media; and 2) Waterstones.com and its affiliates and sublicensees the right to use the name that you submit in connection with such content, should they choose.

You agree that the rights you grant above are irrevocable during the entire period of protection of your intellectual property rights associated with such content and material. You agree to waive your right to be identified as the author of such content and your right to object to derogatory treatment of such content. You agree to perform all further acts necessary to perfect any of the above rights granted by you to Waterstones.com including the execution of deeds and documents, at the request of Waterstones.com.

You represent and warrant that you own or otherwise control all of the rights to the content that you post; that, as at the date that the content or material is submitted to Waterstones.com: (a) the content and material is accurate; (b) use of the content and material you supply does not breach any applicable policies or guidelines and will not cause injury to any person or entity (including that the content or material is not defamatory). You agree to indemnify Waterstones.com and its affiliates for all claims brought by a third party against Waterstone's or its affiliates arising out of or in connection with a breach of any of these warranties.

Booker-thon 2006 Mother's Milk - Edward St Aubyn

"Our greatest living prose stylist", so said the blurb and I can't help but feel publishers do authors no favours with such largesse.It puts any writer at a disadvantage,let alone one who has only written a handful of novels.
How high must I set the bar for this one?
Mother's Milk was an enjoyable but not for me a superlative read, as I followed Patrick's mid-life crisis over a period of several years through fatherhood, mistress-dom and an inheritance rapidly disappearing down the swanee as his ailing mother bequeaths the family silver to a very dodgy New Age set up.
The prose is without a doubt solid and at times striking, often stopping you dead and forcing you to read again to take it in (does that make it limpid? translucent? dense? the blurb said 'luminous and acidic') but it hasn't impressed me as a great read.
This may be down to something which was for me a huge flaw, perhaps it was intentional, out of the mouths of babes etc and I have missed Edward St Aubyn's master ploy, but I of all health visitors was bound to spot it and be very distracted.
Patrick and Mary have two of the most linguistically gifted children ever born unto man. But not only is their speech and language development way ahead of the game, which isn't unheard of, but their comprehension,thought processes and emotional development were likewise impossibly advanced for their tender years.If you have small children for goodness sake don't hold up Robert and Thomas as the benchmarks by which to judge their progress, you'll be losing sleep and begging for an immediate paediatric referral.
I know it's fiction and anything goes but this stretched the credulity of an otherwise firmly realistic novel.I just couldn't reconcile these children with the rest of the book at all which was a pity.
Elsewhere and particularly good was the portrayal of Patrick's mother Eleanor, post-stroke and conversely struggling to speak.Also how could I fail to identify with any parents of a child called Thomas who was prone to dashing out in front of cars, thus requiring a search for a good old fashioned set of leather reins?
Call a child after The Doubting One and expect him to have to check out everything for himself including "Don't run in the road, you'll get run over", forget reins, we needed the bit,bridle and halter to match.
But that aside if Mother's Milk makes the shortlist I will be delighted for Edward St Aubyn but let's see what the rest of the longlist holds before I offer it a place on mine.

Booker-thon magic

The lengths Bluestalking Reader of Chicago and I are having to stretch to lay hands on these Booker longlist books is nothing short of incredible if not a little inventive.Between us we may just cover all bases (and she does work in a library) but not much more to come this end (because I don't, I work in a doctor's surgery)
I already had three and Picador very kindly sent two more but Devon libraries could only come up with five, and are now into the realms of twelve reservations for one or two copies.So my tally likely to be eleven out of the nineteen before the shortlist is announced.
It may be Christmas before I complete on this task.Don't tell me the winner anyone, I want it to be a surprise.
My delight was total when the parcel from Chicago arrived this morning with a discreetly obtained second hand advance reading copy of Mary Lawson's The Other Side of the Bridge.
Tucked in the envelope, a beautiful, leather bound blank journal notebook desperately begging to be written in and the Books section from The Chicago Tribune, I'd have been in seventh heaven if I hadn't had to go to work.
Thanks Lisa!

Booker-thon 2006 The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud

I've just finished The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud and I'm sorry but this post has got longer and longer, I'll be having bandwidth issues soon.
Scattered amongst this year's Booker reads are some very fine and important novels and, for me, this is one of them.
As I see it,focusing on the truth that every nation, people and creed carries around the millstone of its own unsayable, the subject less discussed, the subject you dare not mention other than in tones of reverence and awe, but the one that is often there, ever present like a haunting. Some have been pacing the corridors since time immemorial, some are very new ghosts on the block.
Howard Jacobson says as much in the inimitable voice of Kalooki Nights.

"For just as sinners pass on their accountability to generations not born, so do the sinned against.'Remember me' says Hamlet's father's ghost, and that's Hamlet fucked."

In The Secret River Kate Grenville delineates with a supremely even hand the unsayable that plagues the Australian nation, that of the Aboriginal people.There is no judgement passed, reader decide.
Sarah Waters presents a well concealed side of wartime London during the blitz in The Night Watch. Mea culpa, how often do I view this event through my middlebrow-literary-myth-coloured spectacles? Children of the 50's like me grew up on Sunday afternoon war films, The Dambusters, Reach for the Sky. Sarah Waters successfully pushed me into a greater honesty, a truer depiction of reality.
In The Emperor's Children Claire Messud fixes her novelist's gaze on the date that dare not speak its name, September 11th 2001.It is a difficult subject to broach without offending someone.
I happened to be on a third reading of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale at about the time and made what I thought was a sympathetic and tactful mention of the prescience of this about 3 years later in the context of an online reading list.I was roundly turned on by a US member of the group and very publicly chastised for my insensitivity in assuming that I could possibly have understood anything about the horrors of 9/11 because I lived in the UK. I was mortified and grovellingly apologetic for fear of an online bloodbath.
I'm actually a bit nervous mentioning it today to be honest and I hope upon hope I don't offend any of my US friends.
Explored through fiction perhaps the unsayable becomes safer, less threatening, a step removed, detached, easier to approach and discuss because after all it's not quite real, it's fiction.
A.N.Other's version of the truth served up in a palatable dish.
Claire Messud's utterly compelling and completely readable book follows a group of New York friends and families and their patriarch and figurehead, leading journalist of the day, Murray Thwaite, in the months leading up to 9/11. Into their midst comes Murray's nephew, the gauche, naive but utterly perceptive Frederick 'Booty' Tubbs. If truth is beauty then Booty has it within his grasp, not in his outwardly lardy appearance, but in his direct and honest vision into the lives of these people.
Think of the Emperor's new clothes and you are well on the way to understanding the legacy of a book entitled The Emperor's Children. In their hands rest the new ways of thinking if they can just have the courage to burst a few bubbles en route.
As always the author says it best and Claire Messud has summed up my perception of this genre on the Booker long list very succinctly with one incident in her book.
Booty is in the midst of trying to control a panic attack as he is stuck on a stationary train on the New York subway in the months before 9/11, others around him have their own methods for dealing with it too, but Booty has a eureka moment about his mission in life

"But his Earthworm Hour as he came to think of it, reinforced for him the opacity and isolation of his soul,and of everyone else's. It made clear to him the need to speak clearly, to try to be heard above all the blood rushing in people's ears. Nobody should be allowed to be the woman with the Walkman, wilfully blocking out experience and truth:it was Bootie's job to engage, and to speak.Not unintelligibly like the conductor, but in the clear voice of reason"

Poor idealistic Booty, he has so much to learn but his vision is 6/6 crystal clear on what must be done.
The 'clear voice of reason' resonates from the pages of the The Emperor's Children, confronting head on the 'blood rushing in people's ears' and, in the process, Claire Messud's book has the potential to open up some rational debates on aspects of the unsayable that surround 9/11 five years on.
Perhaps it even offers a chance to make this new ghost on the block a less burdensome and unsayable kind of haunting for future generations which makes it a very brave and important book indeed.

Booker-thon and Uncle Tom Cobbley and all.

So here's me, in the midst of this Booker-thon madness, and starting to think well what exactly is it I'm looking for? Late in the day to be identifying such important matters I know but it's starting to become clear.
The judges have most certainly put together a broad and eclectic list from which to choose and I'm currently feeling that, for all the bruising criticism that prize lists seem to attract, they do serve a purpose for the good.
This year's Booker list is as broad church as you could ask for, spanning as it does a vast range of cultural and ethnic diversity, time and place and literary style that reflects, to me, the contemporary literary scene viewed from the paying side of the cash till on which I stand.
Plenty of us readers out here who struggle to find what's genuinely good to read these days and then  to lay hands on it,so lists like this at least offer us a starting point.
Blogs incidentally are offering even more.
My personal shortlist criteria grew and expanded the more I thought about it, and these of course will be different from yours, yours and yours and of course the judges.We could likely come up with as many shortlists as maths allows from the permutations of the 19 books to hand.
That said, I am on the lookout for books that I, having spent MY hard earned cash buying...

• Will want to read beyond the first 50 pages
• Will constantly look forward to picking up and reading more
• Will be able to read without feeling I am stupid or inadequate for not understanding some elite literary connivance or should that be contrivance? Make it both.I want an inclusive book with the ring of an enjoyable challenge about it.
• Will engage me emotionally whether that be a laugh, a weep, hysterics, memories, reminders, a nice warm feeling, a bit of an uncomfortable feeling and the rest
• Will remember the moment I finished it and felt that little pang of regret that it had to end.
• Can recommend to friends and will then give us plenty to talk about.
  
• Might start me off on a new and exciting reading trail
• Will look at the cover in a year's time and remember what a good book it was
• Having been reminded will pick it up and read it again
• Might find out something about a world I knew nothing about
• Might recognise anew a world I thought I knew everything about

Perhaps it's a bit of a tall order and not the idea behind the Booker Prize at all but whatever the idea is (and that's a mystery to the likes of me) the winning book will, by the very nature of the beast, sell in its tens of thousands, make money for the author, the publisher, the bookseller and, as it's almost time for Widecombe Fair let's add in Uncle Tom Cobbley and all.
That will be my money and yours, parted with willingly in return for a good book (even if I reserve from the library it costs me 95p) and I for one don't want to be conned in the way that I think I may just have been in the past.

Marginalia and the hand of fate.

Mention of my marginalia pencil in comments here leads me to ask, "Do you?" or "Don't you?".
I do.
Six years of an OU degree in my 40's was far enough removed from a childhood where to write in a book was a mortal sin and I quickly learnt to marginalia-ise along with the best of them. The first mark was the deepest and after that it was such plain sailing that it has now become a habit.Something catches my eye, a line, a phrase, a word, the essence of a book and I reach for my 3B pencil.
Is it about just having to have my say? A running two-way dialogue with the author?
It's where I come unstuck with library books, reach for my pencil, scrabble for a scrap of paper, jot down the page number and the extract but I'm a step removed from the page and it just doesn't work.
Kalooki Nights was borrowed so ended up awash with bits of paper by the end and none of it making much sense after the event.Now I will have to buy a copy, it's too good not to have on my shelves, but I won't ever be able to marginalise it in the way that a first reading would have done.
Confession:My books are primarily for me, I give little thought to preserving the pages in pristine condition for loan, anyone who borrows a dovegreyreader book is most welcome but gets my inner thoughts as well, sorry.

I think looking at this, I started pretty young. Sweet and innocent I may have looked in that very fetching smocked frock and don't be fooled by that doll, they made me hold it and as you can see I was not impressed. In my mind and quite possibly in reality I was wearing my roller skates.
But, be that as it may, I bet I landed in a whole heap of trouble for this defacement of my favourite copy of Peter Pan.

Socks in progress

Knitting up deliciously, the Silkwood, hand dyed wool from Cnyttan and about to turn a heel.To think the supposed horrors of this manouevre frightened me off sock knitting for so long.
Details for Mary in Spokane, 60 stitches on 2.75 double pointed needles and 3mm 30cm long circular needle.

Sunday Confessions

Two words cover a multitude of sins this week, Joseph and Roth.How awful if they had gone out of print/stock before I had acquired.
Here are the titles to compensate for my poor pixels, too busy with the Booker-thon to focus the camera properly.

Zipper and His Father
The Spider's Web
Right and Left
The White Cities:Reports from France 1925-39
Collected Shorter Fiction
What I Saw:Reports from Berlin 1920-33

Booker-thon update : The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud

I'm being very strict and saving all printed and online reviews until I've finished the books,so firmly closed yesterday's Times Book supplement on a piece on this one when I glimpsed the cover.
But I'm itching to know what it says because, sticking my neck out after 150 pages, I don't see how The Emperor's Children can fail to end up on my shortlist.
So far, throughly engaging characters, superbly readable and of course I think I know where it's heading with that picture on the cover though there is no mention of this anywhere on the book jacket blurb, just this clue
"how the events of a single day can change everything for ever"
If that proves to be the case then it's going to need to be good because, to my albeit limited knowledge, the world of fiction has barely had the courage or the will to turn its head and fix its gaze objectively in this direction.
And I am now a nervous wreck writing anything after Headmaster Mr Charkin's knuckle-rapping, chalk throwing disciplinary on the subject of misplaced apostrophes and Deputy Head Mistress, Ms Hill, marching in and lobbing the board duster across the classroom.I fully expect to log in and see my post with a mass of red ink circles all over the place and those words of terror, "See me" at the end:-)
But even worse I'm wondering if this book might be one of the Headmaster's pupils.Publisher genealogy is all too complicated to figure out from where I sit these days,imprint of imprint of imprint begat imprint of imprint. And by the way when and how did Penguin morph into Fig Tree?
Rest assured you can expect nothing but impartiality and complete honesty from dovegreyreader, but I do quite hope  this one doesn't go belly up and if it does, (should that comma be there?) that I can at least punctuate my deliberations correctly.
Tomorrow I intend to be completely brave, as in foolish, and try to give this baggy Booker-thon project some shape.Time to define exactly what I (that's as in me and only me) am looking for in a Booker Prize winner, it's folly I know.

River's up a bit

Psst, he's gone fishing.
Last night a very big salmon was pulled out of the very Tamar pool the bookhound had fished with no luck that afternoon, but, and there is a very big BUT, it was caught with a worm.
I could hear warm congratulations being offered over the phone."You didn't really mean that" I said.
"Psshaw, anyone can do that, the salmon will pounce on anything that looks like food especially if it actually turns out to be food."
The art is in the deceit of the cleverly and delicately cast, hand tied fly and the ensuing battle of wits between man and fish.
Be sure if the one that usually gets away is finally captured it will have been caught in a most gentlemanly fashion and you will be the first to see the pictures.

Birmingham, Festival of Quilts...

...last Thursday was fantastic and with the bookhound butler in attendance all food and beverages miraculously appeared as appropriate. You have to know that he can produce fresh coffee in a cafetiere from the back of a Land Rover, that's clever.Most days four dogs jump out or it's full of fishing paraphernalia.
Festival of Quilts was a complete wallow in acres and acres of superb craftmanship that took your breath away.The scale and the intricacy and sheer artistry of some of the quilts was awesome and plenty that  just had you standing, staring and wondering "how on earth.."
I'm feeling dreadful about featuring this quilt without the maker's permission but it is so clever I'm afraid I just had to (forgive me craftyperson).Here's someone who has completely understood colour values and must have worked that Ruby Beholder to a frazzle. For those who missed it first time around, look at colours through a red lens and they are reduced to values of light, medium and dark.The RB is the standard tool, the rest of us use the cellophane wrappers off strawberry Quality Street chocolates.
Bumped (literally) into Kaffe Fassat too who was signing his new book (didn't buy) and I eavesdropped as he did a tour of his quilts, quite the charming man and a knitter too of course.We didn't talk socks.
Discovered The British Quilt Study Group who are constantly busy doing research into the UK's quilting heritage, much of it buried unknown and forgotten in museums across the country and no finance to unearth it properly, but one interesting snippet.
A good deal of research is being done using one woman's diary and if ever we doubt the value of what we write now for the use of future generations, whether it be about books,sewing, gardening or whatever here's a fine example of why we should and must.
Barbara Johnson, born in 1738, kept a diary of all the clothes made for her from when she was a young girl almost to her death in 1825.The dresses were described with dates and costs and swatches of the actual fabric all pinned into an album with engravings of the fashions of the time.
This diary is yielding unlimited treasures today with information about design trends, fabric quality, suppliers, dyes that were used and much more.I came away with copies of all the B.Q.S.G.Journals to date and some fascinating reading to hand.
Finally these miniature Swedish quilts were magical.

Booker-thon- Kalooki Nights by Howard Jacobson.

If there is a truth universally to be acknowledged about this whole Booker-thon reviewing caper beyond the complete subjectivity of the exercise then it is this, today A.C.Grayling and I are in complete and perfect harmony in our thoughts about Kalooki Nights by Howard Jacobson.
Writing in The Times, ACG probably, no make that definitely, says it far more eloquently than I can
"In this age of lazy reviewing, facile judgment and inflated rhetoric, how is one to convey news of the arrival of a work of genius? This powerful, troubling, moving, profound novel is nothing less.... It is the most intelligent and important novel to appear in this country in years...." follow the link for the rest of this brilliant and spot on review. Would you just look at me telling ACG he's got it right, but actually he has.
Back to lower case dgr scribbles. Howard Jacobson dissects every aspect of the Jewish faith, culture and people from within the "self-made immigrant shtetl" (ACG again) that is Crumpsall Park in Manchester and all told through the self deprecating, side-splittingly humorous voice of cartoonist Max Glickman that has you almost crying with laughter.
But reader beware, Max's father, Jack "the Jew", was a boxer and this book regularly gives way to a perfectly timed upper cut that lands fairly and squarely, Maxie "Slapsie" Rosenbloom style, bang on your jaw.Then it quietly steps back and watches as you reel on the ropes.You want to cry for very different reasons.
Back to ACG to help me out here
"This is a novel of debate, and it is extraordinary how Jacobson achieves every point of view, every possible nuance of attack and defence on the question of the essence of Jewishness — its endurance, the implacable enmities it has suffered, its self-inflicted wounds and obsessions, its unutterable sorrows."
The result was for me (and for ACG) an astounding book that I can hardly bear to return to the library and I agree, it almost transcends any prize list.My understanding soared as it just drew me in willingly at every conceivable emotional level.The humour is definitely within the context of the whole book yet you want to read bits out to someone and have them laugh.The bookhound smiled politely but I think was a bit worried because it can all come across as a bit anti-semitic when extracted in this way.The book is far from it.
My paced Booker-thon run through the long list was forced to slow to a jog, I couldn't bear to miss a single word, but of course this is only what ACG and I think, you may all hate it. We'll cope.
For me there is one book to which Kalooki Nights inevitably directs and compels you, in fact commands you to read and that is The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman. Brace yourself and read Maus, for me it was a unique experience and one that will stay with me forever.
Thanks to the offspringette it was my introduction to the graphic novel which I had marked down as something a bit unsavoury until it was explained to me.Then of course you discover Neil Gaiman and you're away with the genre and occasionally the fairies.
Shortlist for Kalooki Nights please Hermione & Co. or ten Yorkie bars + very big chocolate induced tantrum down here in Devon, I'll scweam and scweam and...

 

Levenger Lust

Some off blog discussions about book pillows and I just couldn't describe mine so here it is, and what a friend indeed.
It's the Levenger Webstore Thai Silk Book Pillow and I have a feeling they are now sadly obsolete. I coveted it from afar, baulked at the $60 postage for something that is as light as a feather and then took up the kind offer from a US friend to bring one over for me on her next UK trip.
Made in Thailand and I can't help wondering whether this was one non-essential industry decimated by the tsunami.
If you have never heard of Levenger then it seems unfair to deprive you any longer of the drool-inducing trip around their online store sub-titled "Tools for Serious Readers". I blame Bluestalking in Chicago for peddling me this one.
Browse through Levenger and covet all those blank notebooks, bookends, bookmarks,pens, inks.
Fountain pens and ink have a complete allure for me and what is it about a blank notebook ready and waiting for your reading thoughts?
..oh hang it, the whole catalogue should be mine.

Das kunstseidene Madchen by Irmgard Keun

Staying in translational mode and how I wish I could read this in the original but here at last is Irmgard Keun's The Artificial Silk Girl,she who lived for some time in exile with Joseph Roth.
Irmgard Keun was born in Berlin in 1905, this, her second novel was published in 1932 and became an instant best seller. Her writing was banned in 1933 and all remaining copies of this book were destroyed.A book made even more interesting by reading with this in mind in 2006.
Literary portraits of women living in this period between the wars are, to my knowledge, unusual. Arthur Schnitzler attempted something like it in Fraulein Else (published in a delectable Pushkin Press edition) but few were written by women.Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos is usually mentioned in the same breath and I've yet to read that but will.
Irmgard Keun gives us material girl Doris's view of life in Berlin in the 1920's as she attempts to script her life along the lines of a glamorous movie star.It all goes hopelessly wrong as reality hits the beguiling and amazingly perceptive but dizzy Doris.There is plenty of foreshadowing of what was to come and of course none of it could be known by Irmgard Keun in 1931,yet,as with so many writers of the time,she sensed it and noted it. Doris is the original non-political girl caught up in it all and like many others only realizing when it was far too late to do anything about it.
This edition is firstly a perfectly presented little book, binding, paper quality, cover, all gorgeous.An American translation,and inevitably a few incongruous colloquialisms creep into what is essentially a beautiful mid-European text. Ignore these and just be as grateful as I am that Kathie von Ankum took the trouble to translate a book that has not been available in English since 1933.
Also ignore any attempt in the cover blurb to liken Doris to Bridget Jones, Doris is memorable in her own right as Doris and that will quickly become apparent as you read.

 

The Demon Roth

Requiring some sanity in the midst of all this Booker-thon madness and an acute craving for that mood of mid-European translational melancholy I seized and read The Legend of the Holy Drinker by Joseph Roth almost straight out of Jim, our long-suffering postman's hands.In fact now being a Rothaholic I've just ordered another six for fear of supplies running low and to keep Jim in employment.
I was much in need of a shot of Roth as it turned out.These aren't gloom-laden they are magical.
This edition, published by Granta, has helpful biographical notes on Roth from the translator Michael Hofmann.
Let's not forget the translators.For linguaphobes like me with a smattering of O Level French and one useless Italian phrase that just gets me into trouble, they are the conduit for this endless source of fantastic reading.It would seem from this interview that Hofmann is translating more Irmgard Keun which can only be a good thing, possibly a great thing.
In his afterword Hofmann shares details of Roth's sad demise.
Roth was a "committed hotel dweller" and this is how he had lived in Paris for many years.The Legend of the Holy Drinker was his final work of fiction, worked on slowly for the first four months of 1939 prior to his death in May that year at the age of 44.
I hadn't given much thought to the plight of the exiled writer but Hofmann does and small wonder Roth had turned to drink,
"Being an exiled writer was attritional, and beyond that it was perspectiveless. Politically, economically, emotionally and physically, Roth was under threat. Alcoholism had destroyed his health...he advanced a sophisticated argument that while drink shortened his life in the medium term, in the short term it kept him alive - and he worked hard at testing its logic"
Armed with that information and you read this simple but wondrous little book in a new context.
Andreas is an inveterate drinker living the life of a homeless vagrant beneath the bridges of the Seine. A series of fortuitous financial gains offer the glimmer of hope for new beginnings.
On reflection and with the information about Roth to hand it's clear when you read the final line of the book that he wrote the ending for Andreas that he must have hoped would be his own.
Sadly it was not to be.Hofmann tells us that Roth collapsed and was hospitalised and died after four days of bungled treatment.
I now can't wait to hear from Rhys who tells me he knows Roth's final words.
Any guesses?

Booker-thon:Gathering the Water Robert Edric

Well here's a grim 'un to get me started with the Booker-thon 2006.

Robert Edric,in Gathering the Water, takes as his setting the bleak and very Bronte-esque Yorkshire moors in 1847 and the first person narrative of outsider Charles Weightman, employed as the overseer in the final stages of a project to flood the Forge Valley.
Weightman has serious doubts about the motives of his employers and the ethics of his project, plus a whole heap of emotional baggage of his own, as he  sets about the eviction of the last inhabitants of the valley.
Winter closes in and the waters rise steadily as does the emotional intensity of the book, almost.
There was a good deal of Yorkshire grit and determination about all this and frequent bouts of that curt old Yorkshire way of using few words,all masquerading as gaps and silences for the reader to fill. Some of the book's potentially emotional moments just about engaged me, but only just, and for this reader the characters sadly stayed firmly rooted to the page.The sun does not shine in this book, to my recollection not a single moment of joy or delight, so if the gods of fortune have been smiling down on you for a while here's one to remind you just how awful life can be.
But hold on, what if  that was the master plan? Because I did care more about the devastating take on progress and its effect on the lives of ordinary people and this perhaps is where Robert Edric's less is more strategy came good.
Interesting review in The Guardian which leaves me mystified. At times faint in its praise of the book and then that final twist,
"...nearly all the novel's procedural drawbacks are redeemed by the subtlety of its design. Always avoiding the bold declaration for the sideways glance, forever exchanging the promise of resolution for a lingering disquiet, its sparse materials can sometimes seem inadequate for the task in hand. Once again, though, Edric's architectural skills have produced an unexpectedly durable structure. Booker judges take note."
Difficult to make a shortlist verdict before I've even reached the wet sponge table in the Booker-thon 2006, but I'll stick my neck out and say this is not a strong contender and I'll eat a whole Yorkie bar if it makes the cut.

Socks- random

Sunday Confessions

One family almost single-handedly responsible for this week's transgressions.
More Joseph Roth,The Radetzky March, Job and The Legend of the Holy Drinker and what a lifesaver Roth has been in amongst all this heady Booker reading.Nothing like grounding yourself every so often.
I'm hoping Rings of Saturn will be a good route into the writing of WG Sebald after my Austerlitz failure.
A rarely seen Irmgard Keun, After Midnight.These are difficult to find in translation.
The Hatbox Letters by Beth Powning was flagged up by craftyperson who found a great write up on it.
Finally, a book I can't wait to start and mentioned on Jessica Ruston's Book Meme as a favourite and endorsed in comments there by Adele Geras, House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski.
This looks very different and very exciting and I'm really looking forward to the challenge of the unusual.
There's also a book missing which I've already bought in my head and it's the latest from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun, expect it to feature in next week's stack.

Yorkie bar explained

For the benefit of Bluestalking Reader, this is a Yorkie bar.
Beneath that wrapper lies a particularly must-have bar of chunky chocolate, I've decided to make the Booker penalties as pleasant as possible, no hats being eaten here.
Poor Scott Pack,hat recipes to his blog asap,no Tom McCarthy's Remainder on the longlist.

The Adventures of Hawk

Just glanced up from my desk, which as the crow flies is about 25 feet away from this field, and I notice we have a new neighbour complete with harem.

He would seem to be called Hawk and we are obviously to be entertained as Hawk displays his credentials and expertise over the next few days.He's been pretty busy already.

The fence suddenly seems a bit flimsy.

Booker-thon NEWSFLASH-Theft A Love Story- Peter Carey

NO, NO & thrice NO!
If THIS makes the SHORTLIST I will eat 3 whole YORKIE bars, if it wins I will BUY 10 and eat them slowly.
I'm not shouting but Peter CAREY did start this CAPITAL letter thing.
Review of Gathering the Water by Robert Edric coming on Monday and more coherent thoughts on Theft: A Love Story by Peter Carey when I have them.
Congrats also to Devon Libraries who came up with 5 books in 5 days.

Freedom Fields by Seth Lakeman

Not a book but some music today.
Us old folkies have to welcome in the new especially when we've known about them for ages and the rest of you may not have done.
Local lad Seth Lakeman hit the news with a Mercury Prize nomination for Kitty Jay last year and has landed a well deserved recording contract in the process.This probably saves him having to record tracks in his brother's kitchen just up the road from here, but I bet the acoustics were good.
Seth was born and brought up on the Dartmoor folk tradition and has added his own unique style of fiddle playing to the mix.He's worked and slogged hard with his music over the last few years and at last it's happening for him. Richly deserved.
We all loved his last album, Kitty Jay.
What do you mean you have never heard of Kitty Jay? Where on earth have you been? London? New York? It was launched at a concert for the inmates of Dartmoor Prison, weren't you there? Me neither, but we all bought the album.
His latest album Freedom Fields is being re-released on the new label on Monday August 21st and head to Seth's brilliant website for a preview of the single, Lady of the Sea.
Don't worry, you can hear the words and the tune is nice and he doesn't put his hand over his ear or sing through his nose having hummed first to find the note. All because he jumps around, sings and plays the fiddle at the same time, this is clever.
Freedom Fields was the site of a famous battle in Plymouth during the English Civil War and the city then commemorated it by building a maternity hospital of the same name nearby.
Many of us have fought bigger battles of our own in there, thanks for reminding us Seth!

Blog referrals

As being discussed over in Jessica's Bookbar blog, one of the fascinating things about having a blog is the stats, hits per day, where in the world they originate and specifically the referrer summary which logs the searches via Google that lead to your blog.
I think I may be way out front for originality for the following and can only apologise for the acute disappointment the visitor must have felt when they walked in the door here having typed in
intermittent-startup-problems-ford-fiesta-1994

Booker-thon update

Hmm. well she's off and building up a fine lead everyone, Bluestalking Reader over in Chicago is approaching the first drinks station in the Booker-thon well ahead of the rest of the field. This is largely due to the fact that she literally has her finger ON the inter-library loan button and has the books breezing in from all over the Windy City, while the rest of us have to wait for things to happen in RDLT (Rural Devon Library Time)
Now don't ask me how but I have managed to put a direct feed to the Bluestalking blog (and the Hill blog) in my right-hand side bar over here >>>>>> which will keep us all posted on her Booker-thon progress as we chase her round the course.My race plan which is logged over to the left <<<<< is a measured and stately pace in the hope that I make it to the finish without blisters or chafing of any description.
I gather pacemakers Edric and Carey are waiting for me anxiously at the library this morning, but me, well I'm still stuck at the start line pulling on my new plimsolls and, despite intensive training, fully expect to hit the wall very early in the race.

Second Friday 6pm-7pm

I know it's the third Friday in the month but let me tell you about the second Friday evening each month. You'll find me at the Library Reading Group and this one is unique amongst book groups and the reason I love it so much.
Nothing cliquey or exclusive about it at all, everyone welcome and that's a treat. I know of so many that are quite the opposite and they are not for me.
Here's the 1830's town library which probably had less trouble with a leaking roof than the new one.

Progress? But no complaints.Inside, this new building is spacious,comfortable and warm.
We worked hard as a town to get it and we love it and use it now we have it.With twelve libraries in Devon under threat of closure we never take it for granted.It's the hub of much community activity in the town.
We are a mixed group of readers from young mums to grandmothers, young dads to grandads and all stages in between. We all pitch up with a few books that we have read, some borrowed from the library, some of our own.We sit round a big table and report back accordingly.
We only have an hour all told so we've all learnt to be succint and to the point.This time I took along The Highest Tide by Jim Lynch, Room For a Single Lady by Clare Boylan, The Miniature Man by r.muir and was persuasive enough about all these for my copies to now to be out on loan (I thought the library was supposed to do the lending). Then I introduced a pile of Amelie Nothomb and despite entreaties all round, these I couldn't loan, I keep going back to them.But everyone has gone scurrying off to find some.

But as always there was a coincidence and having never heard of John McGahern myself until recently
(I know where have I been...Devon is the answer) someone else reviewed his autobiography Memoir and had loved it.Someone else was reading W.G.Sebald and I'm about to start on him too.There is a constant cross current of ideas and suggestions as you pick out and note the ones you want to pursue.
Then my favourite bit, like the waitress with the sweet trolley, the librarian wheels in her trolley of book surprises and we all pounce and choose a book or two.
It will often take several months for a book to have done the rounds but each month it will be talked about from a different reader's different perspective.Each time you see it anew, in a way that you may not have done had we all talked about the same book at the same time.
All this is done in an hour, no messing about, just fantastic, concentrated and very enthusiastic book talk.

Booker-thon 2005

I'm really grateful to Mark at Mostly Books who reminded me about a distant and very lonely blog post last October on a now defunct blog in those days of early uncertainty about the whole venture.
It's a review of my Booker-thon last year, an attempt to read the entire longlist and written BEFORE the winner was announced.
It's all coming back to me now.Things were going badly verging on terribly and this with Banville, Mantel, Ishiguro, Aw (saving grace), and the lesser part of Smith in the bag, but I'll let dovegreyreader nouveau bloggeur 2005 take up the story.

My great project was beginning to fall by the wayside until I picked up A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry. “Savage WWI detail” said the blurb, trepidation crept in, gas, trenches, rats, bodies, this was going to be dreadful, could I face it? However quite unexpectedly, what followed was one of the most quietly moving and emotional reading experiences I have had in a very long time and if you only read one book off the Booker list please make it this one.
If you are the mother of sons as I am then prepare to shed a lot of furtive, gentle but angry tears. Mine are 22 and 20 and I saw so much of them in the character of 19 year old Willie Dunne. As WWI erupts in Europe, Willie enlists with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers and heads off via enforced army action against his own countrymen in the Easter Rising in Dublin, to serve for the King of England in the trenches of France.
This is a book replete with defining moments in which to compare Willie with your own sons but there is one moment of seemingly mundane simplicity that stopped me in my tracks .Willie’s mother has died in his childhood and he arrives home on leave from France  lice-ridden and filthy. His father hauls out the zinc tub and baths him. For me it was one of those scenes in a book of such heart stopping emotion that you come across only once in a while and never ever forget.
At that moment I understood with crystal clarity and in a way that no other novel I’ve read about this era has conveyed to me (no, not even Birdsong) just how much those families loved their sons, of course as much as we love ours, this was no easy sacrifice for duty, king and country, this was agonising pain and as a reader Barry allowed me to feel it to the core.
Everything else that I’ve read off the shortlist has paled into insignificance in comparison to this book.I have no idea about the criteria that the judges may use in arriving at their final decision but for me, if we are talking about choosing a beautifully written, readable book that for once really enters into an emotional collaboration with the reader then it has to be A Long Long Way by a mile.

Asking for trouble

It said on the cover "For boys from eight to eighty" which means of course he's just too old for it, but I bought this in a book sale for The Tinker today.I dropped it in at lunchtime and his eyes lit up.
I'm not sure whether I may live to regret it and as he pops in here inbetween merrymaking and mirth octogenarian style (they know how to have a good time believe me) I just want to say, don't get any bright ideas PLEASE, absolutely no go-karts, you don't need a tree house and you'd have told me off if I'd made a tripwire.

This week's trip

To Birmingham and we head for this tomorrow at the NEC, the UK's biggest Quilt Show.Not quite up to the standard of Houston I expect but it will be big enough.
I have had a very unusual bout of motorway-itis exacerbated by the ten pile ups I heard about on Monday between here and there.It's August and silly season on the roads.
To this end we will travel in the Centurion Tank not the Bean Can and it will probably take us twice as long and use three times the fuel.
There is no vehicle more designed for discomfort than a Land Rover, It rattles and shakes and the air conditioning is a joke, you slide a knob and a hole opens up in the dashboard displaying a clear view of  the road ahead of you.However you do feel safe and if there are queues of traffic, that's fine. we'll just head off across the fields.
The bookhound will deposit me and go off bookhounding while I wander around this paradise of quilts, get some inspiration for where my stitching goes next, add to my fabric stash because, like most quilters, I just don't have enough and of course take a few photos.
In fact I know exactly where my stitching is going next and it's well and truly off the beaten track with Alicia Merrett and a day course at Cowslip Workshops in September.

A Levels a la 1972

Apropos of nothing and with no intention whatsoever of comparing standards between then and now because I have no idea about 'now', I've just given myself a bit of a fright by finding these...

My A Level English Literature exam papers from 1972 wherein "Candidates are reminded of the necessity for good English and orderly presentation in their answers"
The fright is manifold.
Firstly, I'm sure this was yesterday but actually it was 34 years ago.
But worse, here's the question I actually answered on the poetry of Robert Browning

'The two chief charges against him were a contempt for form and a poor pride in obscurity'.
Defend or prosecute Browning on either or both of these charges.

I'm struggling to get the gist of that now but never mind, it'll come to me, here's the one I answered on Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens.

'Dickens delineation of Headstone's passion for Lizzie Hexham is certainly overwrought, but just as certainly it is powerfully tragic' Discuss.

Hmm, moving swiftly on, what about this on the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins

'Hopkins is very much more important as a poet than as an innovator' Discuss this statement.

Well of course I can, but perhaps not today, better luck with this one on The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler

' The Way of All Flesh is an exercise in demolition - nothing more.' Is this how you see the book?

The Chaucer paper is frankly too terrifying even to open.

UPDATE:Book Bloggers Book Prize

A practice run over on the Hill Blog for next year's Book Bloggers Book Prize, just to try out the format and see what will work best. So nominations now being accepted for books published in English and in the UK THIS year (Jan-Dec)
That's the bit to check because it rules out quite a few that are on this year's Booker list for example, not that we would be influenced by that in any way shape or form here in blogworld.
E mail any nominations to Susan Hill and she will do a running commentary and put up nominations as they come in.

Lying Awake by Mark Salzman

I've been doing plenty of hype reading of late and that always has me yearning to get back into some good,solid,grounded soul food. Looking at my book stack it seems to be emerging from the books with the monochrome covers at the moment.
However,get thee behind me Blog of the Hill.
Lying Awake by Mark Salzman was another Persuasive of Longbarn recommend.Roth and then this, it's too much temptation for this weak bookaholic's soul, but two perfect reads in succession.
Unlikely I know, but if perchance Pof L left you with any shred of doubt, dispel it forthwith, it's now a Definite from Devon too. Spend that £6.99 with impunity.
These are books to read and read again.
Sister John of the Cross lives in a Carmelite Monastery on the outskirts of Los Angeles.The discovery that her religious visions may be the result of an operable and curable brain disorder leaves her in something of a spiritual dilemma.To proceed and risk the essence of her vocation or continue in this possibly false state of grace.
This was a peaceful and yes, it has to be said, contemplative read on the manifold struggles of the religious life; no leanings towards religious vocation or faith required but there is an all-night vigil that will move you to wonder.Ultimately one of those books you are delighted to have discovered.
We had a Carmelite Monastery in the town for many years and I now understand that the one we called "The Trolley Nun" was the Extern (in our case the one we always saw going for the shopping with a wheely basket).I only ever saw one of the enclosed Sisters, in fact I nearly ran her over, as she glided across the road from the monastery to the cottage hospital opposite. It was that sort of unexpected vision in the middle of the road on what is, unfortunately, the most dangerous, uphill blind bend in the town.Incidentally it's no advantage to be run over outside the cottage hospital, an ambulance still has to be summoned 15 miles away from Plymouth to carry you inside.
But I digress, sadly over the years, and thankfully through no fault of my distracted driving, the Sisters diminished down to three, so it was no contest between keeping their sanctuary versus the prime location on which it sat becoming an estate of new houses, tactfully now called Carmel Gardens.
More Nun reads to follow, they have a certain mysterious allure, especially for those of us who didn't go to Convent school.

Booker pundits get it right...

Well, OK, I'll agree with a hint of uncertainty.Taken from comments yesterday in case anyone missed them.Wonder if Hermione stopped by just to get confirmation?
Any more predictions required?
Shortlist? Hmm tricky, I've barely heard of most of the others. And neither it would seem have Devon Libraries, nine of them "not in stock" and of those, four not even due for publication until September.So pronouncements may be lean for the reading majority out here.

Trust you to know when the longlist is announced. I didn`t. I don`t take any notice of Booker or Orange now and I`m a bit behind on this year`s literary novels anyway so I can`t even remember what people have published. What have they ? Help.. oh yes, there`s BLACK SWAN GREEN... er.. and .er....eeek. can`t think of any more. So that`ll make for interesting reading tomorrow then.

Posted by: SUSAN HILL | August 13, 2006 at 02:06 PM

I'd hate to even try and second guess this year because nothing is jumping out and slapping me between the eyes.Will Sarah Waters Nightwatch be literary enough? If Commonwealth is included then The Secret River by Kate Grenville, but was that this year or last?
Clueless of Devon here but I expect Hermione Lee has it all under control.

Posted by: dovegreyreader | August 13, 2006 at 02:28 PM

Hotel Savoy - Joseph Roth

Thanks to Persuasive of Longbarn for the heads up as they say across the way.
Give me much, much more Joseph Roth, in fact as much as has been translated.To that end Radetsky March, Job and The Legend of the Holy Drinker are on their way to fulfill the craving,
There is nothing to beat a quiet Sunday afternoon curled up with one of these mid-European, between the wars authors and Hotel Savoy written in 1923 was perfect.
In so many of these books not a lot happens, that's almost the point. Plot is subsumed by a dense and precise but gentle narrative that belies the turmoil  in progress.
The shadows of fascism are ever present and read with hindsight these books are all the more compelling. We know what happens next, Joseph Roth didn't, but he telegraphs it all with a fine sense of unspoken prediction.The signs are there and he detects them, littering them for us like clues, gaps we can fill in only too well.
There is something melancholy and haunting and quietly addictive about all these books and the mood they leave you with and Hotel Savoy must be added to the list.
It is a book replete with parable as the Hotel Savoy, in an unnamed European city, slowly fills with the refugees of the Great War, some penniless some with their wealth intact and overseeing it all from the 7th floor is Gabriel Dan returning from a Siberian prison camp.The poorer you are the nearer the top floor of the hotel you live, nearer to heaven you could say, while the wealthy occupy the lower rooms.
Austrian-born Joseph Roth was a prolific writer and journalist in the Weimar Republic eventually dying of alcoholism in Paris in 1939. He lived for some time with another favourite of mine, Irmgard Keun, the writer of The Artificial Silk Girl and that must surely feature here any day now.
As I read Joseph Roth I'm starting to see the influences.

Amazon suggests

Amazon have just suggested I might like this and I think for once they could be right.
To be published by Hesperus Press on August 17th.

All ablog for...

Own up, we're all ablog for the Booker Longlist tomorrow and whatever current thinking is about lists/prizes etc it will come as no surprise that I for one will be frothing round the edges to see what has made the first cut.
Scott Pack has come up with a great list of reads over on his blog and rates Remainder by Tom McCarthy as a strong contender for the list.
I'm reading it now, will that be the second year in succession that I'm reading a longlisted book on the day the thing is announced? If only I could remember what it was last year...
oh yes, Arthur & George by Julian Barnes.
I already had A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka and Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel tucked under my belt after slavishly reading the Orange Prize shortlist.I still haven't read Ian McEwan's Saturday and gave up on The Accidental by Ali Smith after 50 pages.I read most of the others and the world and its mother knows my favourite was A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry and my turkey was The Sea by John Banville.
There really is no accounting for my taste.
There was one book that I did start and purposely put down again, despite being engrossed, because I knew I was going to love it and it needed to be saved for a long winter read, This Thing of Darkness by Harry Thompson.Perhaps this winter.

Sunday Confessions

Trigger happy finger clicking this week, some fortuitous charity finds and some gift from across the way.

Firstly a couple of Donna Leon's. Discerning reader's the world over are reading Death at La Fenice and then rapidly buying the other 13 in the series, or is it 14? How can I not at least investigate the fuss and likely catch the bug?
Amazon coughed up at my behest the latest Margaret Drabble The Sea Lady, plus a couple of recommends from Persuasive of Longbarn, Lying Awake by Mark Salzman and Hotel Savoy by Joseph Roth. Celandine, Steve Augarde's sequel to The Various also sneaked into that order at last.
Then two lovely packages from across the way.One from Graywolf Press in Minnesota who responded magnificently to a pathetic begging e mail from me and sent The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee. A book parcel from my Ohio bookaholic kindred spirit revealed a copy of The Sound on the Page : Style and Voice in Writing by Ben Yagoda, here's some blurb.
"This is an ingenious and memorable exploration of writing's soul, a small book that challenges us to look past some of the operative 'rules' of the written word and to bravely examine what many writers consider ineffable - the matter of style"
Interviews with more than forty authors including coincidentally Margaret Drabble.

Rain dance request

Please will someone do a rain dance? I'm sorry if you are here in the West country on holiday and enjoying endless sunny days on the beach.If it rains go off to The Eden Project, it's lovely.
But I cannot stand another day living with a thwarted salmon fisherman.

Shared Fantasy

Just wanted to share my Lana Grosse Fantasy with you.
Don't panic, it's only a ball of wool,
45% Cotton 42% Wool 13% Polyamide.

Village Show update, the nation expects.

Who am I kidding? The nation expects nothing but the pressure here in the village is rising inexorably towards the annual gladiatorial conflict that is the Village Show.
Last year for the first time it would seem since 500BC the date was moved to early September from early July.There was uproar, inter-cottage conflict and and mutterings of boycotts.It was all about giving those of us who need time to gather ourselves a chance to think about it over the summer months and it seemed to do the trick. Lots of family input and a bit of a resurrection for something that was in danger of dying out.
I need to borrow some children,don't you just love the miniature gardens with the mirrors for ponds and everything looking a bit limp and wilty, and the animal made from a vegetable.The kayaker stormed home one year with his marrowsaurus.
Now to update on the state of play for this year's dovegreyreader entries.Three weeks to go and sock one is complete and hybrid version aka sock two is coming along nicely.They look short and broad and oddly random but then so do my feet.These will be the prototype Croc-Socks.
The quilting entry remains in a parlous and very unquilted state because, to be honest, I can piece all year round but hand quilting is a winter occupation.I plan to exhibit a past endeavour, probably my MacKenzie Star quilt or a Colourwash wallhanging.
I'll be up against some stiff competition to retain the W.I. silver salver awarded for highest points in Handicraft Classes 67-75 and am wondering if I can muster up something for another class to bolster my chances,
Class 71 Any hand made article...plenty of scope there
Class 74 Item of papier-mache...too messy
Class 75 Wrap a present for a lady on her 80th birthday, size of a child's shoe box...
am I taking this too seriously?

The truth is out

The truth about dovegreyreader scribbles is out there today.
Thanks to Norman Geras for asking me to do a Friday Profile and I see on the register of surnames I'll be pretty near to Hussein, Saddam.
Oh yes, and Hill, Susan.

Barker and Smart

After all my recent whining and whinging about the review pages holding little attraction these days something suddenly caught my eye in The Times review supplement last Saturday.
I read these at random depending on supply, which is erratic and based on how soon after dawn the bookhound gets to the village shop, and whether it is in advance of the porter from our divine but newspaper-guzzling neighbours at that lovely hotel I took you to yesterday.
I have long been intrigued by the life of Elizabeth Smart and her infatuation with the poet George Barker, so the news that their son Christopher Barker has just written a memoir of their love and life, The Arms of the Infinite had my full attention.
I bought a volume of Elizabeth Smart's Journals Necessary Secrets at a Book Fair a couple of years ago and on the way home determined to read, and more importantly finish, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept.
Coincidentally, as is often the way, I had just read a piece on it by Toby Litt in which he "examines the emotionally pompous, yet entirely endearing poetic peachiness" of this book with the helpful suggestion that one way to ensure success is just to sit down and read it in one go.Don't stop, slog on and in Litt's words "let your soul hold its breath from first page to last".
I'll admit to the occasional gasp for air as I valiantly struggled on with a book that still leaves me bemused and in that familiar state of negative capability that is my poetic and Keatsian excuse for anything I don't quite "get".
I suppose you have to accept that some books just leave you with a mood or a feeling rather than any depth of understanding or a shift in outlook.That's fine and different and for me this was one of those.
In contrast the extract from Christopher Barker's book was perfectly clear and lucid, readable and intelligible and enough to make me want to read much more.
"George's temper flashed often, fuelled by attempts to extract Benzedrine deposits from his lighter-fluid residue, and wreaked havoc in the huddled household. His mood only improved when he was at last, surprisingly, able to source a supply of Methedrine from the local doctor that his trip to London had failed to secure...mum even had to chop up furniture to have a fire in the open grate"

The Mystery Plant

Talking of plants,here's a teaser, what is this?
I'll give you a clue, not indigenous to Devon but growing very happily on my sunny windowsill and may yet offer a crop that could be useful.

Endsleigh

I'm spoiling you with all these lovely excursions but the weather's too nice to stay indoors so today we're going to walk along to here.
I've arranged for the coffee to be served when we arrive as it's now a very splendid hotel but it has always been known locally just as Endsleigh and originally Endsleigh Cottage.
The inscription on the foundation stone tells you all you need to know
"Endsleigh Cottage was built and a residence created in this sequestered valley by John, Duke of Bedford, the spot having previously been chosen from the natural and picturesque beauties which surround it by Georgiana, Duchess of Bedford.The first stone of the building was laid by her four eldest sons, Wriothesley, Edward, Charles Fox and Francis John, Sept 7, 1810"
.
Picturesque was the order of the day to the extent that the Duchess had a cottage built in these woods on the opposite Cornish banks of the Tamar. It was uninhabited but every morning a fire was lit in there so that the smoke could be seen coming out of the chimney.It's still possible to stroll along the Upper and Lower Georgies, Georgina's favoured walks.Imagine the family moving down here for the summer, the servants travelling ahead to prepare the house, one man being paid 14 shillings for the three days it took to plump up the feathers in the beds.

Just before you walk into part of the 1000 specimen arboretum you stumble across the most astonishing little shell house grotto crammed full of specimens from all over the world. Astonishing in that it would now be unthinkable to snaffle some coral and use it in this way, but this was the 19th century, specimen collecting was all the rage.

Rachel Trethewey has written an excellent account of Georgina's life, Mistress of the Arts: The Passionate Life of Georgina, Duchess of Bedford wherein you learn that her eventual fall from grace came about through her lengthy affair with the artist Edwin Landseer.
However my favourite account of Endsleigh and its environs comes from the late great author Penelope Fitzgerald who loved the area around us here.Her family lived in the village and she was a regular visitor. To think I probably stood behind her in the queue at the post office and never knew.
She gives a wonderful account in her piece entitled The Moors in one of my most treasured volumes, that of her collected writing A House of Air. She calls it "a site in a thousand" worked on by Wyatville and Humphrey Repton "who aimed at creating an earthly paradise".They didn't go far wrong.

Buzz books

Talking of buzz books as we have been over on the Hill blog this morning, my copy of The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee arrived from Graywolf Press in Minnesota yesterday. This was much heralded by bluestalking reader and so far I can see why.It's a treat that any bookaholic will just settle down into and feel completely at one with.
There was one passage that caught my eye early this morning as Lewis Buzbee traces his own reading history and I thought it would translate perfectly into a blog thread

"For those who are afflicted with book lust, those for whom reading is more than information or escape, the road to our passion is quite simple, paved merely by the presence of the printed matter.
It's a common story; fill in your own blanks:
I was --------years old when I happened on a novel called----------, and within six months I had read every other book by the writer known as ------------"

For Lewis Buzbee he was fifteen and the book was The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.
I was fourteen and for me the book was Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier.
How about you?

Pen Pusher

Having read about Pen Pusher I was mightily upset to discover that I could only lay hands on this free literary magazine by travelling 250 miles to one of London's Independent Bookshops.
I sort of understand cost issues and this one flaunts not a single advert so I'm wondering how it is funded (I expect someone will tell me) and I definitely understand distribution problems (delivered by bicycle apparently) but I always have to flag up literary neglect down here in the backwoods,so I briskly tapped out a "Disgruntled of Devon" e mail.These invariably get me into trouble.
By the next post my copy arrived and with it a very friendly hand written letter from the editor, Felicity Cloake. This was probably far more than I deserved because "Disgruntled of Devon" is usually exactly that when vexed.
Anyway, Pen Pusher Two looks very promising not least because it's printed on good quality paper and the print smells nice but it has a varied mix of reviews, interviews,short stories and incidental pieces.
An interesting article on how far authors will go to offer authenticity for their readers,citing the A Million Little Pieces v an apopleptic Oprah Winfrey furore.
Samuel Beckett and I have never really hit it off but great insight into the man in another piece.
Sickeningly tempting profile of a bookshop 250 miles away,a funny quirky little list of banned books and plenty more, all for FREE you lucky Londoners.
Cometh the hour though, time to loose the chains of the literary hub of the universe and treat us ravenous hordes to the occasional morsel.From Pen Pushers to Pedal Pushers, if you set off on your bicycles now I'm sure Issue 3 could be down here in plenty of time.
Air's clean, scenery's lovely,wish you were here.

The one we've been waiting for

As blogs go this has to be the one we've all been waiting for.
The truth is out there and I have a feeling this will be one of the places to read it.
I have an abiding online memory of Scott Pack.Last year I e mailed him (it's like when your washing machine goes wrong, forget the ranks inbetween, make a beeline for the head honcho) with a Waterstone's Whinge or two and attached some early book blathering when I was nothing like as shameless and brazen as I am now.
He took the trouble to put his feet up on his desk, pour himself a cup of coffee and read it all AND write me two very lengthy personal replies.
That's what I call being bothered and listening to the masses.
Good luck to Scott Pack in this shark-infested sea, check out his blog comments after one day, heck there are some very nasty people out there.

To Setterfield at last

Rapidly back to bookish blathering and at last I reach The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield and just about everyone from Chicago to Colchester has read it before me and it's not even published yet.
The hype has been enormous for this one, from the announcement of the £800,000 UK deal onwards.Diane Setterfield, a Yorkshire based French teacher must be in an advanced state of hyperventilation wondering how on earth the book will fare once it's on the shelves.Or perhaps writers don't worry about this?
It must be simpler, but possibly not so lucrative, to be a word of mouth runaway best seller than a much-lauded first timer.So much to live up to, though not quite as much as Wayne Rooney who got paid a whole lot more.So keep calm Diane, breath deeply, just think how nervous poor Wayne must be?
120 pages in tells you that the book has passed the dovegreyreader 50 page test and the deep crater in the sofa tells you that I haven't moved since I started it.Only the thought of a deep vein thrombosis has encouraged me to come and tell you this much.
I'm going to reserve further thoughts until I've finished this one so not a word will cross my bloglips until p400.