dovegreyreader scribbles

Shipshape

So busy here that I've barely had a minute to think about the upcoming adventure.
Suddenly it dawns on me that I don't even have luggage.Steamer trunks are apparently no longer de rigeur on the cruise ships which is disappointing.
The Tinker (father of dgr) and Podge (friend of father of dgr since they were thirteen, now both eighty-two and you'll meet him in Bugle Boy ) are well advanced in preparations to the point where they have kit laid out pressed and ready for inspection, have sorted out  ship boarding passes online and are now busy with plane seating arrangements. Thank goodness they thought about dollars weeks ago and nabbed those greenbacks for us while the exchange rate was good.
They caught me dashing in to have my lunch in the Tinker's very handy town centre bijou apartment this week and sensing my fraught and frazzled demeanour sat me down and suggested I browsed possible activities whilst we sail around the Caribbean.They were trying to decide whether they fancied the climbing wall on the ship or the Scuba Diving at the Stingray Sanctuary trip. No end of cautionary Steve Irwin tales from me seemed to deter them.
So there I was trying to decide whether to go snorkelling off the coral reefs around Grand Cayman, or check out the Blue Mountain coffee plantations on Jamaica and suddenly it dawned, only three more days at work, three days to get sorted and then we're off.
We've checked out my stateroom with private balcony online and it looks sumptuous, and the cabins down in the bilges don't look too damp for the olds.They've perfected their Irish dancing (look out, that Flatley chap) and have promised me they'll check out where the ship's hospital is as soon as they have been piped aboard, slung their hammocks and stowed their kit bags.
Meanwhile I've been on a shopping trip to purchase crucial last minute supplies, headphones for the iPod and another memory card for my camera.
I'm going to have what I think is a sensible rest from the blog for a couple of weeks and it will be good to recharge my batteries with poolside reading in readiness for a concerted attempt on the Booker Prize longlist on my return.I shall keep a written journal because my brain has now become attuned to some daily writing and I don't think I could manage without it, so there will be shipboard happenings and holiday reading to share with you on my return.
It was only on reflection and a bit of an audit that I realised I'd posted at least daily for the last year, sharing my thoughts on about 150 books and authors in that time, as well as bringing you news of life in rural Devon.But it's all an interactive two-way process, 840 posts have elicited 3755 comments and according to my site meter,162,000 page views, so thank you to everyone for stopping by and if you visit but have never commented please don't hang back.Failing that e mail me off-blog, lots of people do. I love to hear your reactions to the blog, how it has related to your own life and I always reply (eventually!)
It all seems incredible when I only started it because I was fed up talking to myself about books.
Meanwhile leave a desk empty chez dgr scribbles and someone fills it, so Offspringette is stepping into the breach, change is good, she's looking forward to meeting you all and I know you'll all be nice to her.
Expect to get a twenty-something view on life and books, far superior photographs to mine, the occasional whacky and clever bit of computerised MP3 gizmology as befits a BBC trained person and doubtless memoirs of greyhound bus trips around America, skateboard trips around Australia, how the didgeridoo practice is coming along and everything else in between.

Long Barn Books First Novel Prize

I was so saddened to receive an e mail from Susan Hill this afternoon explaining in detail why she has decided to call it a day on the Long Barn Books First Novel Prize after this year, but I wasn't surprised.
Many of you will know that I sit on the Editorial Board for Long Barn for which I receive no payment.
Everyone on the board buys, reads and loves books but I'm the one who knows bog-all about the mechanics of publishing and so can make helpful suggestions like "well why not publish 20,000 of that one" and then things are explained to me.This whole thing is a business and a limited company and it would be a good idea to try and make a bit of a profit rather than a staggering loss. I'm learning slowly.
I also help to judge the entries for this prize and the last few weeks have been nothing less than hectic as I keep up reading for the blog alongside the submissions for the first novels.
But in a way that is good and I thrive on it.I might be rubbish at publishing budgets but I'm less rubbish at reading.
I trawl far and wide for my books and, yes I get some freebies now, but I still lavish nigh on the equivalent of the national debt on book expenditure. Like all of you, I work very hard to earn that money so I don't want it to be wasted and nor do I want you to waste yours, which is why I will only post about books I have loved here and I am constantly reading books of a really high standard, so why should the Long Barn Prize settle for anything less?
I have a benchmark for my reading and it's not based on elitism or snobbery, I can enjoy frothy alongside literary alongside classics as long as it's well-written, maintains my interest, and basically tells a good story.I have read ninety-three books since January Ist this year and don't anyone suggest for one minute that I may not read them all. I couldn't write about a book I hadn't read start to finish. I read every word (except for the Rebecca re-read and I told you about that)
Therefore I suspect I've read quite a good sample of what's out there.
So I have been reading every First Novel entry sent to me carefully, slowly and diligently and sent comments back to mission control on an almost daily basis and usually after midnight and an evening's solid reading.
It became clear at the last editorial board meeting that we had received nothing like the quantity of submissions or yet reached the high standard of last year's shortlist and so after much discussion the carefully thought-out decision was made to extend the deadline by a week and encourage that hidden work of genius to head our way.
We just all had a feeling those great books, probably written by unassuming writers, were out there waiting for us to find and we were desperate to find them, publish the best and place it before you and give a writer a solid start to their writing career.
It's not all about the two book deal on the back of the £*^~"*%! advance and then obscurity.
This was about true writing talent and longevity.
You couldn't invent what has happened since.
Decision misconstrued as everything received so far = total rubbish.
NB: NO ONE SAID THAT.
What has ensued is nothing short of heinous as the online writer's forums have really gone to town in the most vitriolic, personal and frankly shameful way (I've been reading it and weeping) and some of the most hurtful and nastiest of it to Susan herself via personal e mail. I've been hiding here with my head below the parapet for fear of making things worse or alerting the vitriolic army to my existence and having them all invading my blog. But time to stand shoulder to shoulder and stand up and be counted, they can head here now and read my thoughts.
There are some people who should be hanging their heads in shame at their comments and if they are planning to be succesful writers perhaps a reality check now and again might be useful.People are dying out there and you are all getting your knickers in a twist about your manuscripts, let's get real, you have just lost the chance for one lucky lucky member of your ranks to make it into hardback publication and mass-market paperback on an annual basis...that is if one of you had submitted a book that we all felt we could hold our heads up high and say to every reader out there, buy this book, it's fantastic.
Why should we settle for anything less on behalf of the reading public?
PS Currently still reading for this year's shortlist so watch this space.

The Thursday Night Letters

I have to say a huge thankyou to P.K.Monroe who this week sent me a copy of his book The Thursday Night Letters : A Stamp in the Wrong Hands, published by New Holland. Thankyou because he gave me the most hilarious evening's reading after one of those particularly unfunny working days.
If you have a bit of a quirky sense of humour as I sadly do, borne of years of being involved in the oddest strangest, often most bizarre events in people's lives, coupled with that black humour that goes with any medical job, then you may often feel a bit out of step with the rest of the world.
They know me and share that sense of humour at home and the one  place I find it regularly is with colleagues at work.It's all about not taking life or yourself too seriously and probably a mechanism for coping with the stress of the job and all its incumbent horrors.
I read The Thursday Night Letters and just fell about laughing as it would seem did Peter Jones that eight foot tall chap off Dragon's Den.
The book is a collection of P.K.Monroe's whackiest most eccentric ideas all pitched to the top names in the land, from royalty to managing directors many eliciting replies that are just as hilarious as the original letter.
It's virtually impossible to take these out of the context of the whole book and keep their originality but the Da Vinci Code range of housewares with the Turin Shroud sheets and pillowcases seemed workable to me so a shame that the John Lewis Partnership couldn't see any merit there. Idea shelved.
The Fiat car range named after grapes Fiat Merlot, Fiat Chardonnay etc didn't gain much mileage with Giulietta Calabrese from the Fiat Marketing Department who for some reason was concerned about the "inevitable association" with alcohol.Idea shelved.
The Pavarotti Bouncy Castle.Idea shelved
Pub Vicars. Rowan Williams, The Archbishop of Canterbury reluctant to impose a national policy.Idea shelved.
Middle Age Spread , a tasty dietary relish aimed at 40-60 year olds.Kraft Foods " may already be working on something similar". Idea shelved.
You have to commend Prince Philip's Private Secretary who has fielded some of the most hilarious requests for royal endorsement, all with the most elegant and polite replies.
All in all this is one of those wonderful tongue in cheek (I think) books that will just brighten any day  especially if you find yourselves in one of those jobs where you have to take everything very seriously ie most paid employment, except perhaps The Friday Project where I suspect they laugh and chuckle from dawn 'til dusk.
You''ll quickly start thinking up your own Thursday Night Letters or at least I did when I reached the proposal for a website, itsmyfuneral.com which is about planning your own departure with style. The National Association of Funeral Directors have frowned on it all but having my own views on all this I have immediately e mailed P.K.Monroe with my suggestions. He thinks it might be worth pitching so I've decided to donate it to him in return for the free book which will make me smile every time I set eyes on it.
Or ir would if the twenty four year old Kayaker (son of dgr) hadn't taken one look, eskimo rolled off his chair laughing and then "borrowed" it to take on his forthcoming white water river trip to Norway.That may be the last I see of that.
Meanwhile check out P.K.Monroe's website here and join in the latest high octane extreme sport of Celebrity Flanning.
All very silly? Yes maybe, but sometimes life needs some silly.

Restless

I belong to one face to face book group who read the same book for discussion and meet every six weeks or so and we take it in turns to make the selection.
Previously I've failed on other's choices of Dr Zhivago and a re-read of Frankenstein but I did declare my faith in Half of a Yellow Sun  by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and made it my reading choice for them all last November.
Tonight's book is Restless by William Boyd and I can walk in with head held high because I've read it though I'm not sure how much discussion can be raised from it.
It was a good page-turning wartime spy story, almost a thriller, but not quite. More an examination of the after-effects of a secret life kept that way and the fall out when that life is finally revealed.
It's quite a shock in the middle of the hot summer of 1976 when Sally Gilmartin reveals to her daughter Ruth that she is actually one Eva Delectorskaya.Even more surprising that she had been a Russian emigree living in Paris when war broke out and had been recruited to the British Secret Service.
Suddenly Ruth's comfortable if complicated existence in the Cotswolds is turned on its head as a life of misinformation and deceit is revealed. Her mother is not who she thought she was and neither had she been an ordinary spy in her day.
All quite a different take on the traditional young girl spy genre and you have to concentrate hard to figure out the double and triple who is fooling who state of affairs as the team that Eva is recruited to specialise in misinformation.Trust no one was never more pertinent advice.
Of greater interest almost is the afterlife of the spy.
What happens when life returns to some sort of normality because what becomes evident is that, having done this sort of work, life can never be normal again. Great and probably unanticipated sacrifices have been made; always that shoulder to be looked over and impossible to shake off the paranoia of being followed.
That life rears its head again for Sally in 1976 and mother and daughter set out on a quest to finally lay some ghosts to rest.
Perhaps there is more to discuss than I first thought which makes writing this blog quite useful because suddenly a whole lot more has jumped out at me.
Good read and as always William Boyd doesn't disappoint. It's a long time since I read Brazzaville Beach and The Blue Afternoon but on a recommend from a blog visitor I have Any Human Heart at the ready and I seem to recall it was rated higher than Restless so winners all round.
Things have come full circle and it's my turn to make the next reading group choice...

Action Bayeux

Take a look at this which I found via a link on the snowblog. Brilliant.

The Needle in the Blood

I've already posted a few pre-reading thoughts about The Needle in the Blood by Sarah Bower here and it's probably a good job I did because now that I've finished it I'm speechless and bereft and at great risk of becoming a Bayeux bore.
Every book I've read recently has earned its 5* for reasons various, not least that each one will be worth every penny and more that you or the library may pay for them. So don't for one minute think that my free copy of  this one from Snowbooks might make me any less critical of it.
But that said, what's not to love and adore about this book?
I've made it last over two weeks because I couldn't bear it to end and now it has I was wandering around feeling a bit lost about what to pick up next until I opened  The Bayeux Tapestry The Life Story of a Masterpiece by Carola Hicks.
This is like moving onto Volume Two so I'm alright for a while.
Prepare to plunge into the world of January 1067 and the life and loves of Mr Charisma himself, bishop Odo of Bayeux, brother of William the Conqueror.Let's quickly establish that if there was a film of the book this would be Alan Rickman's part if I was casting, so now you know.Others may have different ideas.
It's a clever mix of slightly blurred actual history and fiction that Sarah Bower has created, and I was smitten from the very first page on finding myself right in the thick of battle, fire-tipped arrows and severed hands the lot.It was clear this was going to be a visceral read in all senses of the word but all against the backdrop of the creation of 240 feet of embroidered history which made me ponder afresh Odo's suggestion
"it is not what we see but the way we look at it that matters".
Sarah Bower is at great pains to point out throughout the book that it is not in fact technically a tapestry but an embroidery, and with that all the connotations of women's work.It is the women who have designed and created this view of history and inserted along the way all those extra things that the female eye sees.So few visual portrayals of history represented through the eyes of women but The Bayeux Tapestry would seem to be one. Carola Hicks is now busy correcting all my assumptions with regard to all this so more on that soon.
The research base for The Needle in the Blood is impeccable; you feel confident in what you are reading but it lays lightly on the whole which is always pleasing. Unobtrusive and all adding layers of interest to the plot without overtly implying that the author may have spent hours and hours in a library or on a cross channel ferry going over to Bayeux to have a look and then insisting that I am told every single detail.
It is indeed a love story of the highest order as Odo falls for Gytha in a most un-bishoplike way.You can only feel for the poor chap as he bewails his fate

"...unprepared, hopelessly unarmed; I never expected to fall in love, with you or your damned country"

Loyal to King Harold right down to her toenails and pretty upset about his final demise and the fate of his equipment (you'll have to read, I can't elaborate but it's on a par with Edward II's fundamental problems alluded to here recently) Gytha takes an almighty amount of persuading to fall into the plumped up fur-lined feather bed with a Norman. Once there it's all a terrible bother to extricate herself but the will-she won't-she dilemma as Gytha and Odo work up to an honourable finale makes good, solid, ignore-the-world reading. Meanwhile as a backdrop the tapestry is an ongoing piece of work, as we say in the NHS.
Odo's final words, as he reflects on the completion of his great commission, summing it all up perfectly

"a strip of moony ribbon pierced and puckered with the story of his life, its lies and moments of truth, its fears, its compromises, its moments of shame and savagery, its loves. His great enterprise"

Beyond that, if you want to read intelligent and incisive thoughts on The Needle in the Blood head here because all I can do is rave and swoon.
I loved every single word of this book so if you want a great read, an insight into the creation of this amazing embroidery, a fascinating journey through turbulent historical times and can cope with a bit of amputation here and there, look not a pikestaff further.
I can't make it any plainer than that.

Sunday Confessions on Tuesday

I don't think anyone can accuse of us of not constantly broadening our reading horizons here at dovegreyreader scribbles HQ.
My sojourn at Waterstone's Piccadilly a while ago was also a good chance to check out some of the books that have been recommended around the blogs in recent weeks.Armed with my Book of Books I amassed quite a pile to take to the sofas and peruse.I think little trolleys would be a good idea because I looked a bit like I was on Crackerjack.
Anyone else remember Crackerjack and the quiz where you got to stand on a drum and win armfuls of prizes and a cabbage if you dropped anything, but then the ultimate accolade, a Crackerjack pencil. I'd have tidied my bedroom every day for a year to get onto Crackerjack.
Anyway, back to the sofas and a good chance to look carefully at Hospital by Toby Litt which had come highly recommended but with a caveat of  'some confusion may ensue' from Jess over on the Book Bar.I started to read and was suitably involved and almost but not quite bought the book. The not quite was because it's a £14.99 posh paperback, ie stiffer covers, better quality paper and French flaps but none of that deflects from the fact that it's a paperback at hardback price.I did the obvious I'm afraid and came home and ordered from The Book Depository at £9.47 which felt better and I didn't have to lug it home on the train.
Books like Hospital make me feel that I'm reading cutting edge contemporary fiction which I love.If I end up as a casualty in intensive care as a result I'll let you know but I've made a start and I'm coping well.
The Richard and Judy Summer Read list is out so I was delighted to receive a copy of one of them, The House at Riverton by Kate Morton. 1924, glittering society party by the lake of a grand English country house, young poet takes his life.The only witnesses, sisters Hannah and Emmeline Hartford, will never speak to each other again...intriguing.
While we're on the subject I see Mary Lawson's The Other Side of the Bridge has also made the list, excellent.
Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin caught my eye and couldn't be resisted given my current bout of historical fiction addiction.Then I discover that Ariana Franklin is the nom de plume of Diana Norman, wife of film critic Barry.
Murder, mistrust and malice in medieval Cambridge, yes please.
This one shifted imperceptibly onto the Read Immediately Pile (the RIP?...perhaps not) on the strength of its cover (nice gold blingy bits) and a feeling of absence and loss on turning over the final page of The Needle in the Blood by Sarah Bower. Thoughts on that tomorrow.
Fifty pages in and I am not disappointed and guess what? My new reading friend Joanne Harris has read it and found it "entertaining, well researched and well written".
The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb arrived from Penguin.This one's going to require some intelligent concentration as I try and get my head around the principle espoused by Nassim Taleb. A Black Swan is defined as "a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: its unpredictability; its massive impact; and, after it has happened, our desire to make it appear less random and more predictable than it was." Easy to spot the obvious one but I'll need a holiday before I embark on my Black Swan moment.
The Swap by Antony Moore is described as hilarious black comedy meets superbly plotted thriller and is suggested reading for anyone planning to attend a school reunion.Too late, went to one and vowed never again but we'll see he makes of it all.
Imagine This by Sade Adeniran, the story of a young girl's journey from childhood to adulthood and London to Nigeria.Written in journal form and to be added to my Read Africa stack.
Finally I'm delighted with a parcel of Nawal El Saadawi titles from Zed Books.Woman at Point Zero, God Dies by the Nile and The Hidden Face of Eve. I am a blank page waiting to be written on as far as this author is concerned, but Nawal El Saadawi, now in her seventies, will be touring the UK in October so likely to be in the spotlight soon. My knowledge of Islamic society governed largely by the media to date so I'm looking forward to picking these up and exploring her writing in depth and sharing my thoughts on here.

Angela Carter

In need of slow-release but sustained literary genius this weekend I prescribed myself a dose of Angela Carter.
Several Perceptions was my selection and has had my literary senses sated and verging on overload over the last two days with its utter brilliance.
I read it slowly and deliberately.
This is not a feast to be thrown down the throat in record time.Even given the tiny mouthfuls I was almost choking on the constant stream of sheer originality and crystal clear imagery of Angela Carter's writing. Some of it so hopelessly funny yet finely balanced with tragedy and all way beyond clever.
This is gourmet.
This is how to write.
Less is more, high calorie intense flavours all carefully blended.No waffle, no padding, every word made to count and earning its place on the page.
No drizzled sauces to distract...enough of the food imagery, Angela would be cringing.
Except that now I dig and delve and discover Margaret Atwood's thoughts on Angela Carter because they were good friends, and I find that she sees her work as "a plum pudding" or "like a pound of Turkish delight, it's too rich for a single mouthful" so I'm in good company with my food analogy.
Then blow me down what does Margaret say but " Prose like glass, yes - but it's stained glass" so an extension of my crystal idea.
There's a consensus building here.
I had been browsing in the shop at the National Portrait Gallery in London a few weeks ago and was in instant-swoop-mode as they placed a pile of cut-price books right under my nose.
One was a bargain at £3, Interrupted Lives in Literature edited by Andrew Motion.
Literary lives cut tragically short so I anticipated a fairly predictable list. In fact yes Sylvia's in there of course but no Virginia. Instead Shelley, Katherine Mansfield, Edward Thomas, Christopher Marlowe and most fascinating of all a great essay on Angela Carter by Ali Smith.

"She died of lung cancer in 1992. She was fifty-one. It wasn't a young-and-tragic writer's death, like Plath's or Brooke's or Keats's, it was the loss of an artist at the height of it, an artist who...had always worked at the height of it, and whose power had, each time she wrote, and within the mere twenty-five years in which she wrote, revolutionised the literary landscape and made unthinkable heights possible"

I've been incredibly lax in getting to grips with Angela Carter's writing, a bit of a book here and there but nothing that has given me a true understanding of her writing.Her first novel Shadow Dance published in 1966, her final one Wise Children in 1991and inbetween a vast literary landscape traversed with scary words like magical realism thrown in by the critics for good measure.
As Ali Smith suggests, Angela Carter was

"Playful, fearless, fierce and brilliant...surprising and uncategorisable"

and the critics it would seem didn't know quite where to place her.
She was no shrinking violet either when it came to declaring her literary influences and nor did she stand any nonsense from fellow novelists who indulged in what she termed "self-inflicted wounds".
Magical realism to me often suggested bizarre and unintelligible writing until I read The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende and then I grasped it all. Now I'm comfortable with it, but hold on, Angela Carter disliked the label and felt it just couldn't apply to English writing so I'm going to forget that categorisation as I approach her writing anew.
I can't recommend this piece highly enough. Ali Smith gets to the core of this truly important writer and plenty of wonderful anecdotes along the way. Relating the tale of  Angela Carter's inclusion on the editiorial committee of Virago Books in the mid 1970's and the reason she gave for joining

"by the desire that no daughter of mine should ever be in a position to write By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, exquisite prose though it may contain.By Grand Central Station I Tore off His Balls would be more like it I should hope"

Sorry chaps that was then, but bless Angela, and I might even try my hand at Ali Smith again in gratitude for such an invaluable essay which has re-opened a welcome literary door and for telling me to

"Go out tomorrow and get Carter. Get all her fiction, all her fact, read it from its beginning all the way to its glorious open end...the world will be the same, yet absolutely altered"

More thoughts on Several Perceptions when I've digested it recovered my equilibrium though how I'll place this dish before you do it justice on here I really don't know so final words on Angela Carter to Margaret Atwood from Writing With Intent : Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose 1983-2005

"Many of her best effects are achieved by overloading. She piles the adjectives up into a towering chocolate-and-cherries mound, then pulls the tablecloth out from under it so the whole edifice comes crashing delightfully down.She loves blowing bubbles and she also loves bursting them"

Summer Holiday

No, haven't gone yet, but I just had to share this with you all because not everyone may subscribe to the Cliff Richard online newsletter and so you'd miss this.Cliff is now into perfume and here's the latest aromatic offering,

"Named after Cliff's 1963 Number One hit, the beautiful blue scent in holiday packaging is destined to be another must have for Cliff's loyal fans.
Summer Holiday is a fragrance to put you in the holiday mood. The scent was selected by Cliff himself and has been specially designed to wear in hot weather. It is light and delicate but upbeat and long lasting. Mediterranean citrus fruits, Bergamot, Orange, Lemon, Manadarin and Grapefruit can all be identified when the fragrance is first sprayed. These fresh notes soon blend into summer white flowers of Gardenia and Lily intertwined with Jasmine and Honeysuckle. An underlying note of Musk sweetens the base."

I'm not much of a perfume expert but am just a bit worried that I might reek of a combination of Earl Grey tea, a fruit bowl and a florist's shop with a hint of deer, when really with a perfume name like that I'd expect to smell of diesel fumes from that bus.
It was however one of my absolute favourite films at the age of ten and my mum had to use a knife to force 6d out of the Church Organ Fundraising collection box we kept on the window sill in the hall in order for me to go as she didn't have enough change in her purse.
With apologies to Mitcham Parish Church hope you got the new organ in the end.

         

My Book of Books

I keep alluding to my Book of Books and should probably elaborate. I imagine most bookaholics keep one of these, bit like a form book if you were a racing fan.
I wish I could remember when I started mine, sadly no date but probably this one breathed into life around the millenium when I was full of good intentions and this may be one of the few that has survived, grown and become an inseparable part of me.I rarely go anywhere without it and Bookhound will always ask me if I have my Book of Books when we set off on a journey.Though we may have forgotten my luggage before now, yes we did get halfway to the airport without my bag, but at least I had my Book of Books.
The book itself is the little Chatwinesque Moleskine, now very everyday but just a few years ago still almost unheard of unless you'd read Bruce Chatwin and in here goes every single book recommend.Alphabetical under author's surname so that I can start at the A's in a big bookshop and just work my way around.I'd be lost without it and wonder how people do manage to find books they might want to read without one. Perhaps you all have elephant-like memories? I do for babies names and what I was doing in 1963 but ask me to list books that I'm desperate to read and suddenly my mind goes blank.
Over the years I've added in 'extras' such as the complete ouevre of a favourite author or a list of prizewinners. One I thought may be interesting was the Femina Vie Heureuse Prize, an early winner Cicely Hamilton's William An Englishman and thence until 1939 some interesting authors, E.M.Forster, Mary Webb, Virginia Woolf, Stella Gibbons and many more.
One little obsession, it would be against my religion to write in this little book with anything other than a fountain pen filled with burgundy ink, don't ask me why, I haven't a clue.

Warning: Picture of dead fish.

In the aftermath of torrential rain unlike anything we've seen in ages I dispatched the hunter-gatherer out to the river. All this pacing up and down and moaning that the water would be too brown after so much rain all became too much for those of us wishing to settle to a quiet afternoon's reading and Book Thoughts blog indexing (have you seen it? Offspringette has finished 2007>>>>>)
Four hours later he returned with a 2lb sea trout from the River Inny and a dozen and a half eggs from a farm on the way.

Birds and Bats

We have full occupancy in all garden nesting sites this year.
No vacancies.
All bird boxes bursting at the seams and the verandah swiftswallowhousemartin colony making the whole place out of bounds for the quiet contemplative sitting and staring at the view for which it was built.You can clearly see the extra layer they've added to the nest this year and the feeding frenzy has been at its height in the last few days. Though you can sit out there, the birds panic from afar and you feel dreadful.
They have a great system for dealing with stealthy felines.Firstly control tower spots as one approaches and they sound full red alert and make a terrific noise.Then two are called in from operational duties to zoom in and dive repeatedly at the poor cats who are terrified and scrabbling at the windows to be let in.
This all to protect these

Who have just started venturing out for some flying practice.Plenty of time for another brood this year so the verandah likely to remain useless for most of the summer yet again.We wouldn't dream of destroying the nests they really are welcome visitors, but sitting out on the verandah from October to April was not quite the intention.

We had a first the other evening too.
Bats proliferate outside but it was a new experience to have a large one flying around the sitting room which opens directly onto the verandah.Swallows fly in through the open front door all the time and quickly out again.
The bat suddenly flew out of a curtain giving us all a bit of a moment and wondering how long it may have been lurking there, then things got a bit gothic because it couldn't find its way out of the room and panicked slightly more than me as its radar bounced it off the walls.
After thirty minutes of fruitless attempts to guide it out of the door (have you ever tried to guide a bat?) we were thinking we may have to make it one of the family.
Ever the inventive one in times of his wife's stress Bookhound set off to find his landing net (to catch the bat not me) the mere thought of which was enough to make the trapped bat find the open door and freedom...we thought.
No one had witnessed the exit as I had long ago vacated the room.So it was the next day that dearest Batty  launched himself on us once again, but this time we did see him out of the door.

Book Thoughts

I am often asked how to track down a post on here about a particular book and I realise that I have failed miserably with my blogsatnav system. It's starting to look a bit like the cupboard under our stairs which is a disgrace. Open the door, cram something else in and force the door shut.Everything just piling in and the only way I can find anything on here now is to google it and if I could google the cupboard under our stairs that would be helpful too.
Tags are all well and good but they seem to get wildly out of control, bit like the hose to the vacuum cleaner which always snakes out as you try to ram the cupboard door shut.There's an art to this because the catch broke about ten years ago and now there's a stone you have to slide into place with your foot while you lean on the door.Then you run away and leave it to someone else to sort if it all falls out.
I should have been organised on the blog from the start but I didn't realise it would build up to the extent it has so I'm having a bit of an indexing moment and Offspringette took pity on my plight and has kindly offered a rescue mission.
You will see I've added a new column of links over on the right hand side >>>>>> called BOOK THOUGHTS. I decided reviews was a bit presumptious because let's face it I often get side-tracked mid way with thoughts about bath plugs or something. Gradually all the books and authors I've had "thoughts" about will appear on the list with the links to the original post alphabetically under the surname of the author.
Already I've shocked myself, having laboured over May and half of the June archives to find that I've "thought" about twenty books in that time and several authors so heaven knows how long that list will be and it may have to be split off into years or months or something and scattered around the place, but at least we'll all be able to find our way around.

Hyper-Bayeuxaemia

It's official, I have diagnosed myself with Hyper-Bayeuxaemia and a minor bout of Tapestryitis so now I need to research this incredibly rare and complex condition and find out all I can, in fact everything there is to know about it, perhaps link up with fellow sufferers and start a support group and that could well be possible with the most luscious looking book which arrived this week.
After mentioning The Needle in the Blood by Sarah Bower and published by Snowbooks on here a while ago, a flurry of comments came in recommending a book by Carola Hicks, The Bayeux Tapestry The Life Story of a Masterpiece and my copy has arrived. I am struggling not to start reading it this minute as I have quite a lot of reading in progress at the moment not least the book that started it all.
The Needle in the Blood was reviewed ecstatically and meticulously over on Eve's Alexandria and it has been a constant on my reading pile since it arrived. Often when I'm reading these days I may make a few notes in the front of a book, underline and marginalia-ise just to remind myself when I come to write up blog posts. Well I've been off with the fairies with this one, far too engrossed to stop and pick up a pencil. This book is  pure, self-indulgent pleasure, one of those you know you will feel bereft when you've turned the final page.Might even need counselling to cope with the loss.
I'm rationing and savouring it and reading some every day.
Meanwhile I'm fascinated to discover (well I did just sneak a preview of Carola's book) that a wartime message was deciphered at Bletchley Park in 1944 just before the liberation of Paris. Himmler was intent on seizing the tapestry and removing it to Germany only to be thwarted as the allies arrived. There is every chance it would have been destroyed completely on that journey.
My thoughts on The Needle in the Blood very soon.I have about 150 pages to go out of 575 and should be able to stretch that out over a few more days with a bit of diligent self-discipline and imposing a daily page limit on myself, thus putting off that awful final page moment.
You can guess I'm going to be in raptures, it will certainly make my top ten of the year. I'll be giving it five stars without a shadow of a doubt so you might just as well add it to your lists right now rather than hang around waiting for me to finish it.
Then you can all join the Hyper-Bayeuxaemia & Tapestryitis Society and we can discuss our symptoms.

Crow Lake

This supposed holiday reading stack is proving to be a bit like my "just had a baby" reading all those years ago, i.e. I've read it all before the event.The problem was that two of the babies (the boys of course) were late and I'd started reading great big fat books that I thought would keep me going for the ten day's rest and nurturing you used to get in our local maternity home, only to find the ten days had passed, I'd finished the books and nothing had happened, except I was approaching the size of the Hindenburg.
Crow Lake by Mary Lawson one such book which had been in my Book of Books for ages, purchased last week with thoughts of holiday reading and suddenly it demanded to be read.Odd how a book will suddenly translate into the very right book for that particular moment.
Annoying cover picture of blurred, slightly out of focus children, doubtless deeply significant but made my eyes water in a desperate attempt to get it into focus.I'm feeling bad enough about the advent of specs as it is, so no need to make me feel worse.
I'm always very blurb-conscious and you may recall I recently had a reading friend called Hilary Mantel. Hilary and I seemed to be reading all the same books a while back and her comments popped up everywhere.Well now I have a new reading friend because lately Joanne Harris and I are sharing our reading. Joanne read this "at a single sitting, then I read it again, just for the pleasure of it". This has me worried for her circulation as its 295 pages but I can see exactly why she didn't want to put it down.I managed it over several days, lunchtimes in my car, and inbetween dozes and Long Barn First Novels in the evenings.
I love small town American fiction and I love small town, backwoods Canadian fiction even more.This one set in the remote far north of rural Ontario and featuring the inhabitants of Crow Lake, a harsh and unforgiving landscape to those of us used to home comforts but beloved home to the Morrison family and several others who skirt  around the edges of the novel. Tragedy strikes when the four Morrison children lose their parents in a car crash and what follows is a lifetime of sacrifice and emotional attrition as Mary Lawson skillfully plays out events.
Little clues crop up in the to and fro of the narrative as gradually more and more is revealed. Hints about what may have happened almost build you up for something far greater but then you realise this is not a book about sudden and gripping revelations so much as a delineation of early grief and lifetimes of relationships all built on a foundation of tragedy.
I did some grief and loss training a few years ago which has come in handy in all manner of situations because loss doesn't just mean someone has died. Seven stages were established as potential steps in the loss process, shock, anger, denial, guilt, depression, bargaining and acceptance and not necessarily in that order except for the final one, acceptance.People can and often do unwittingly get stuck on one of them en route and recognising that is often very helpful in moving on.
Mary Lawson seems to cover every single one of those stages in Crow Lake before a final acceptance can be reached. This her first novel published when she was fifty five must offer some hope to those of us who fancy a go at Susan Hill's on-blog creative writing course later this year.I'd be well pleased to turn out even a quarter of an eighth of a Crow Lake.
An excellent and beautifully written book which flowed effortlessly off the page and has me dashing to that unread review copy of The Other Side of the Bridge which Bluestalking sent me during our grand Bookerthon 2006.

Sunday Confessions on Wednesday

In London last Monday for the Long Barn Books Editorial Board meeting and catching an earlier train home so just a little nip into Waterstone's at Piccadilly for a quick inhale of the bookish air. I'd gone via the Royal Academy where I tripped over Laurence Llewelyn Bowen tossing his curls into place as he was being filmed for something or other. He was being upstaged slightly by a huge crowd of people being photographed on the steps and he looked very fed up with being a TV presenter.
All life was there and to us country dwellers it's always fascinating to gawp.
But off to Book Heaven and a pile of books to the sofas as I pondered what to buy.
The impending holiday is focusing my mind towards good holiday reads and I came away with some possibles but not yet definites.
Crow Lake by Mary Lawson much heralded after her Booker long list nomination last year for  The Other Side of the Bridge.Couldn't wait a minute longer and am well into this, brilliant, should have read it sooner.
Kept by D.J.Taylor not least because it comes highly recommended in the blurb by someone who says "Never loses its grip, clever and intricate, Conan Doyle, Dickens and Wilkie Collins knew how to do it, and Taylor has learned his lesson well"...thanks Susan.
I have no plans to take The Road by Cormac McCarthy on holiday because after all I want to have a good time and be happy but it feels like one of those books you have a duty to read. So many great recommends with caveats about it's gloomy redemption.
Bluestalking Reader in Chicago talked up the possible merits of Anna Gavalda and I'm always intrigued by another French writer so Hunting and Gathering in the bag and a deliciously presented book of short stories left behind.Deckle-edged pages, nice size, great title I Wish Someone Was Waiting For Me Somewhere. Next time if I enjoy this one, but blogpower verified as a recommend from France reaches Devon via Chicago.
William Maxwell has hovered on the edge of the radar and I know not from where, but I browsed his books  and ended up with The Chateau. I must have read reviews or articles somewhere that left a footprint on my mind.
From Macmillan a hardback copy of a book I read in proof, Self Help by Edward Docx. I enjoyed it and I think they have high hopes for Booker success with it so that will be interesting.
From Peter Owen, two more Anna Kavan's to fuel my reading frenzy of her books, Asylum Piece and The Parson.
From Adele Geras A Candle in the Dark which she rightly thought might complement my reading of The Tiger in the Attic about the children of the kindertransport.This one a children's book from an interesting series Flashbacks.Living history and important events presented as fictional accounts through the eyes of children, for young readers.
It's been a great big book gathering week.

George no go.

I'm mortified and the eagle eyed among you may note that it's 7.30 pm and I'm not sitting in a George Michael concert.
I woke up this morning determined to go, come what may, but at 4pm the news came through that no tickets had arrived but our names were on a list at the Box Office and we'd need to get there at about 5.30ish because  20,000 other people were descending on Plymouth.
So I'm still stuck in my office at 5.45pm after a frantic day that had involved a training update on anaphylaxis and paediatric resuscitation, visits, meetings et al and Plymouth is an hour's drive away in one direction, home and my clothes are half an hour away in the opposite direction.
Sorry to disappoint you all but under those circumstances even I see sense.
Rumour is rife that Andrew Ridgeley was going to turn up and there'd be a bit of a Wham reunion and as last I heard he's married to a Bananarama and lives in Cornwall that could have been feasible and might have been quite good.
But sadly it's the CD's and a pot of tea and a book for me this evening and  if anyone at that concert reacts to a wasp sting it's a real shame because I'd have known exactly how to recognise the symptoms of anaphylaxis.

Salt and Honey

It's easy to miss a big instore book promotion when you live in the rural Tamar Valley but having read Salt and Honey by Candi Miller I'm not in the least surprised it was chosen to feature in one because it's a book to have and to hold and to savour.
Despite the fact I have some cracking good reads on the go at the moment, Salt and Honey flatly refused to be interrupted and so I read it straight off over several sittings. Each time I put it down I was desperate to get back to it.
The horrors of apartheid have been a part of life but from a remote distance, Ian Smith, Rhodesia, the Rivonia trial, Nelson Mandela all happened in the early 1960's when I was ten and too busy on my roller skates and reading Malory Towers to pay much attention.I picked it all up at the other end when Nelson Mandela was released and Desmond Tutu came to the fore.
Coincidence would have it that the HV I work with returned from three weeks holiday in S.Africa yesterday and was completely overwhelmed by the country, the people and the heritage.We talked for ages about her trip to Robben Island and Kruger when really we were supposed to be discussing all the new babies that had been born while she was away, all the lives I'd saved and how much NHS joy and happiness I had imparted in her absence (those last two are a joke by the way, I've been too rushed off my feet to blink).
So for me Salt and Honey has been quite an important book to read because I realise there is a wealth of unread African literature on my shelves that now deserves my attention.
Why have I never read Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton?
Or The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing?
Or The World That Was Ours by Hilda Bernstein?
What stopped me reading Disgrace by J.M.Coetzee or more by Chinua Achebe when I had been so impressed by Things Fall Apart ?
Well I have no idea, but Salt and Honey has proved to be the catalyst for an African literary journey and more suggestions welcome.
Koba belongs to a remote Kalahari desert tribe and, having witnessed the brutal death of her parents at the hands of white hunters, she is captured and taken back to the Boer farm. Here a blessing awaits in the shape of the loving and understanding Marta who sees the injustice of the apartheid system and fights against it. As time goes on Koba becomes dear to everyone's hearts and the ending had me biting my lip and on the edge of my seat, it is moving to say the least.

"Koba was neither black nor white, neither fully westernised nor tribalised in her attitudes or dress.To Marta, Koba was the future of South Africa"

I was completely and willingly emotionally captivated by this book.There are moments of excruciating agony and sadness, at times almost overwhelming but also moments of great wisdom, clarity and hope as Candi Miller focuses on the bigger picture.It's a well written story that demands attention and I needed frequent pauses to allow for some recovery time.
Even more fascinating is the background information at the end of the book, no not reading group questions thank goodness but a glossary.
Actually glossaries often irritate me too (sorry, honestly I'm always moaning) because I much prefer a book to give me a few clues to try and deduce what the word may mean, but that just wouldn't have worked here. So much Afrikaans is used to such good effect that you need the dictionary at the end.
This is followed by some very useful information on the click consonants in the San languages.It is only in recent years that linguists have developed a method of representing these in print so the book is littered with /Ton, N#aisa and Kh//'an with a helpful DIY click guide at the end.
I'm almost as proficient in clicking as I am in Icelandic, apart from my gutteral alveopalatal click as in !Xam which can sound and look as if I'm about to gag and would doubtless frighten most Ju/'hoansi and have them rushing to get me a bucket.I must search out some recordings of it because it must be magical and impressive to hear.
So 5* and thanks to Salt and Honey and Legend Press some more African reading is prescribed over the next few months and I think, before I set too on that pile, I might just start at the beginning with a re-read of Olive Schreiner's The Story of An African Farm, then perhaps Out of Africa by Karen Blixen.
Any other suggestions?

Listen Without Pneumonia?

Because he remains indebted to the nurses who looked after his mum during her final illness, George Michael circulates free tickets for his concerts to staff in local hospitals and for once community nurses don't get forgotten either.
So we all have  free tickets for the concert in Plymouth tomorrow night at the Argyle football ground and I could just fancy a gig and a bit of moshing.
There's only one down side, the weather forecast is terrible. We are in for torrential rain which we will then share with the rest of the country (and Glastonbury) in the days to come.
Now I happen to love George's singing, he's on my iPod, but like him I'm a bit older now, so the question is do I love George Michael enough to stand for several hours ( because I can't believe I'll get a seat) in the pouring rain, risk a bout of pneumonia and I do have a baby clinic at 9am the next day, or do I sit at home and put the CD's on?
Am I adventurous or am I boring?
What to do...what to do...

Happy Birthday to Raymond Radiguet...Raymond who?

A new name for me to conjure with and thanks to the publisher, Marion Boyars, for a copy of The Devil in the Flesh by Raymond Radiguet.
Raymond who?
You sometimes wonder how the flame can flicker on down the years for a writer of so little, who died so young.
Raymond Radiguet was born on this day, June18th 1903 and died on December 12th 1923.
Seemingly quite a controversial figure on the Parisian literary circuit of the time, befriended by Picasso and Jean Cocteau and perhaps not befriended by Ernest Hemingway, who made some fairly forthright declarations on just how Raymond Radiguet made such remarkable literary progress in such a brief space of time.
Jean Cocteau was his mentor and it is Cocteau's biography of Radiguet which gives a hint of the promise unfulfilled
"He belonged to the solemn race of men whose lives unfold too quickly to their close"

A mere book of short stories and two novels to his name and having just finished The Devil in the Flesh I can only begin to imagine how prolific and influential Raymond Radiguet may have been had he survived the bout of typhoid that killed him at the age of twenty.
Reading this book felt like reading a version of The Awakening by Kate Chopin but from an entirely different perspective, that of the young man who falls for the older married woman. This could easily be Robert and Edna's story apart from the fact it's a different country, different social milieu, different circumstances, different weather, in fact completely different but strangely and basically the same.
These would be superb companion reads for a book group, both short and succinct but emotionally charged reading that would create some fascinating discussions.
A young sixteen year old begins an affair with Marthe, an older married woman and despite his physical maturity he remains emotionally a child in many ways.As events play out towards tragic conclusions it becomes even clearer that this is the story of "a boy in a man's world"
Writing this when he was still a teenager himself Raymond Radiguet displays a precocious intelligence that would surely have produced some of the classics of the twentieth century.His other novel Count d'Orgel as luck would have it published in one of those perfectly dinky Pushkin Press editions.

Still time to dust off that masterpiece.

I've been doing secret reading that I can't tell you about this past week  because it's Long Barn Books First Novel Prize time.
Whole novels appearing from Long Barn in my inbox and occasionally the first four chapters of another to give the "do I want to read more of this" treatment.This is a really good way to do this because if you reach the end of the four chapters and are hyperventilating for chapter five what could be better?
It's been an unusual year for the first novel prize because considering the number of writers you come across who are grieving at the lack of an audience for their masterpiece the submissions have been fewer and at last week's Editorial Board meeting we all agreed it was going to be tricky to even shape up a short shortlist.
Even the gourmet lunch didn't help matters, you'd think sticky toffee pudding would be balm to all but the most beleaguered souls but still no shortlist materialising.
Announcements were made and the deadline extended for another week in the hope that more writers (and agents and creative writing teachers) would see the benefits of a prize that may not promise a huge advance but does guarantee hardback and mass market paperback publication.
That aside any winner also gets the benefit of Susan Hill's lifetime of experience in the world of writing and publishing and I would suggest this is not to be sniffed at. Honest and forthright, be assured you'll get your spade called a spade, but with a truly generous wish to help launch new novelists on their writing careers.
Helen Slavin and Chris Ewan can testify to that.It's a rocky road out there in the world of publishing and to have someone with experience to guide, advise and nurture must be a blessing for any would-be writer.
Still a few more days to submit that prize winner and we're all sitting here waiting to read it so hie thee to the Long Barn Books website for more details and the rules...for goodness sake read the rules.

Father's Day 2

I spent ages this week looking for a Father's Day card for the Tinker.
Ages and ages and we were all standing there in the shop, a load of strangers moaning about how uninspiring they all were and perhaps we'd make our own.
Pictures of cricket or fishing, bottles of vintage wine, boats and cars, pipes and slippers.
In the end I settled for a picture of a steam train but it wasn't right, all a bit bland and predictable.
I'd paid and was leaving the shop when I spied a stand of blank cards and there it was, the most perfect of them all.
The relevance of "Twiggy the water skiing squirrel" is just about nil to the 82 year old Tinker and the fact he's my dad, beyond the suggestion that he's always game for a laugh and will try his hand at anything.
But he'll love it I know and the Gamekeeper will certainly have something to say about it.

Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to all the dad's here and out there.Today's your day so just put your feet up until it's time to cook the lunch and then get your aprons on and get peeling the spuds...or lighting the BBQ in our case.
The weeks are ticking by and it's not that long until the Tinker (father of dgr for those that may have only just arrived here) and I leave the hordes behind and head off for that little jaunt around the Caribbean.
Bookhound is staying behind as he has fishing on the Tay to prepare for; flying and the idea of sitting still and floating around for a week or so in very hot weather being his idea of purgatory.Give him a set of waders and spey casting on a river in the pouring rain any day.
I just know when I come back he's going to surprise me though.
It's going to be just like Changing Rooms and he'll have painted the kitchen and the utility room and the bedroom and the bathroom, but I'm not going to let on that I've sussed his secret and so I'll walk in and look all surprised.
But me, well it's all my idea of heaven, I'm counting the days and my junior suite with private balcony is waiting for me.
I think it's about 42 years since the Tinker and I went on a cruise, our last was 1965 in Fowey and we were allowed to drive the boat and I wore an alice band.I think he's still got that jumper too, he rarely throws a jumper away, I have to sneak them out without him seeing.

Revivals

Just browsing the Virago website when really I'm supposed to be writing my next piece for newbooksmag or reading Long Barn First novels and I had a little gasp because I see they are re-publishing another of those books that "made me".
The books of years ago that had such a huge impact seem to be everywhere at the moment. I came across a shelf full of revamped Jean Plaidy's the other day, we adored Jean Plaidy almost as much but not quite as much as we adored Anya Seton.Katherine, Avalon and Dragonwyck did the rounds of class 4C.
So what's made me gasp?
The Thornbirds by Colleen McCullough first published in 1977. What made the most impact? Was it the book or was it the TV series?
I suspect it was the unusual combination of both.Rachel Ward and Richard Chamberlain in the days when we still saw him as the dashing Dr Kildare. Bryan Brown who popped up in every  Australian film ever made giving the impression he was the only actor in the country.
I lent my original copy to a friend when she was in hospital. A few weeks later she swore blind that I hadn't which seemed a bit excessive; she only had to own up that she couldn't be parted from the book and I'd have given it to her.
I dashed out and bought another one, now with the tacky red TV tie-in cover.I read a few more books by Colleen McCullough,The Ladies of Missalonghi comes to mind as a good read and I tried but failed with The Masters of Rome series, but nothing else seemed to match up to her epic.
Should I read it again now?
Probably not, but perhaps I'll just sit and ponder that beach scene for a while.

La Tapisserie de Bayeux revisited

I absolutely knew this would come in handy one day, really every home should have a full length fold out postcard-sized replica of the Bayeux Tapestry. Anyone reading Needle in the Blood by Sarah Bowers and published by Snowbooks will really really wish they had one.
We had almost arrived at Cherbourg to catch a ferry home after three weeks travelling with three children around Europe.The idea was noble in essence; to drive across France and up into Switzerland where we had a chalet booked for the middle week in the Bernese Oberland. Once we arrived there we'd be like the Von Trapps, tripping across the Alpine summer meadows, stay in nice little guest houses en route, off the beaten track, eat at nice cafes and restaurants and generally do a bit of a civilized Grand Tour, show the children there was life beyond Exeter that sort of thing.
The first "Are we there yet" was uttered at Okehampton (a mere 10 miles up the road).
The cafes and restaurants just didn't happen.When dgr children get hungry they want food yesterday, but we have eaten in more or less every Macdonald's in every big city from here to Interlaken and back again.
Despite some good planning the guest houses were mostly full and we ended up panicking and booking into the first motel we could find each day with three tetchy hungry fiends.The tent was packed as a reserve emergency dwelling, but you know me and camping.
The week in and around the Eiger was redemption, the sun shone, we did lots of walking, swam in that open air pool that used to be at the foot of the North Wall. I did get to sing the Hills are Alive high up in the Alps as I ran carefree through a flower-strewn meadow and the children got really into a TV series about a horse called Lucifer, in French and didn't want to come home because they'd miss the end. Redemption but for the fact we knew we'd still got the drive home and ends of tethers were fast approaching as we found ourselves about twenty three hours early for ferry boarding.
I know, let's go and see The Bayeux Tapestry.
Collective groan.
Mmm children, you'll love this, listen up, you can see Harold with the arrow through his eye.So in retrospect I see that might have been a slight misrepresentation of the majority of the experience.
Let me now declare that personally I loved the Bayeux Tapestry, I can't be responsible for the fact that everyone else was a bit bored after the first three feet, it wasn't my fault.
The gift shop at any tourist attraction is always a perilous minefield when you have children in tow and I know for a fact that this particular souvenir staved off a major rebellion, caused a ripple of applause in the school Show and Tell and has sat on the shelf folded up ever since, until now of course when I can't stop looking at it with new eyes.

Legend Press

I'm a bit tardy getting myself launched today because yesterday I received a big pile of books from Legend Press and in there a little treasure called Salt and Honey by Candi Miller.I gave it the first twenty pages treatment over my pot of Earl Grey this morning and seventy pages later I was a bit annoyed that really I probably should get out of bed.
Hands up I hadn't heard of Legend Press and I'm beginning to wonder how I might have done had they not contacted me. Except I have just been to The Book Depository and they have them featured as their Publisher of the Week.
I was at The Book Depository because I was kicking myself to read online this morning, on another Literary site, that a book I have eyed up for ages won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award yesterday.I do like to be ahead of the game but Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson a Norwegian writer, all with that suitably Nordic look about it, on its way to me after the event.
There is a great interview at The Book Depository with Tom Chalmers who set up Legend Press back in 2005 and I read with interest as he also defined something that I tried to earlier this week
"I hate terms like ‘x-factor’, but the writing simply must stand out, excite us and have that edge that snares our attention and interest."
So many books I rabbit on about here do exactly that and I find myself jumping up and down here in Devon (it's good no one can witness this) when I come across a book with that extra something, because I now know that I have lots of people I can share it with.
In the olden days pre-blog I might have had a conversation with the cats, but that was it because few people I meet in my day job are interested in reading or books to the extremes that I am.
The Independent publishers are storming ahead and if you look at the end of that interview piece there's a great long list of a load more I have yet to discover.
Another little touch that makes all the difference, a great personal intro letter from Legend giving me useful background on the diverse contemporary fiction titles they had sent and worded in a way that has me itching to read them.Small publishers are obviously making time and giving thought to this new world order.
Back to Salt and Honey and I gather this has had big bookstore promotions but I missed it (as you do in deepest rural Devon) One of the most compelling first seventy pages you could ever hope to read, set in South Africa during Apartheid and young Koba has witnessed her family, Kalahari tribesmen, being murdered by a party of white hunters. I will be back with much more about this one soon and I suspect another whole reading trail will make itself known to me because of course another prize winner this week, Chinau Achebe who has deservedly won the Man Booker International Prize and not forgetting Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and the Orange.Perhaps I was ahead of the game there because at least I did mention them both in the same post last week.
It's pretty obvious which country my armchair reading should take me to next, but with a diversion to Norway and meanwhile thanks to The Needle in the Blood by Sarah Bower I've also currently got my feet up in front of The Bayeux Tapestry.

In Search of Adam Day

The countdown is finally over because today is officially In Search of Adam Day and I want to send outsized helpings of good fortune and best wishes to Caroline Smailes as ISoA is officially released into the wild. Thanks for writing such an amazing book and to The Friday Project for finding it and publishing it.
I just couldn't make the launch event at Waterstones in Manchester tonight but I hope it gets a blog write-up somewhere.
The buzz is certainly starting to gather around the litblogs and so far incredibly positive feedback.People are reading this and understanding exactly what Caroline has pulled off.
Her "baby" is off out in the world now and fending for itself admirably.
Jude Williams is a little girl who I think deserves to become very famous, but as a US blogger has so rightly said, she/he could be any child very near you and it will be very difficult to ignore them once you've read this book. Caroline has brought a whole new raft of understanding to a very tricky subject and I hope that In Search of Adam gets the recognition it truly deserves and is read by the people that need to read it.
Someone send copies to people in high places currently wrestling with how to manage sex offenders in the community.Of course emotion can't come into the legal decision-making process but I sometimes think we pay lip service to the plight of the victims in all this as we strive to ensure human rights and civil liberties for the perpetrators.
My thoughts on the book here  for anyone who missed it first time around and head to animatedstardust to see just how impressed a US reader has been with the book.

A strange day

Life in the country is often strange, sometimes very subtle in the way it tells you something.
Vast acres of fields as far as the eye can see, quiet lane in front of the house only really used by us and farm traffic and yet we notice the slightest change, the vaguest hint of something out of the ordinary.
So we all commented on the vehicle that had woken us all up early this morning because it was going along our single track lane very fast. It wooshed past the house when most things go by at a snail's pace because the visibility around the blind bends is nil and there is nowhere to go but head on.
It was only when the Gamekeeper came home mid-morning with the saddest news that we realised what it was.
Our friendly farmer who works the land all around us here, had been found dead on his kitchen floor at crack of dawn by his wife and teenage children.
That was obviously the emergency vehicle en route to try and save him but sadly too late, he was already on his journey and we had only seen him out around the fields checking the stock last night.
Suddenly something like that puts life and all its tribulations completely into perspective.
Our thoughts are truly with them all today and over the coming weeks.

The Missing Person's Guide to Love

I may have mentioned here before that one of the things I find slightly irritating in a book is to turn over the final page and find I am faced with pages of reading group questions. It has always felt a bit intrusive to my swirl of thoughts as I close the book. I know it's easy enough to quickly shut the book and ignore them completely but they catch my eye and then I'm thinking someone else's thoughts not my own.
So I can't really explain why I was desperately really hoping to find them as I turned the final page of The Missing Person's Guide to Love by Susanna Jones.
Fickle is me but I ended this book in quite a quandary and in need of help. I just couldn't figure out what had happened at all.
It wasn't because I was reading too fast either because I'd realized things were getting complicated so I'd slowed down and back tracked trying to figure it all out.
The blurb says
"As Isabel's world unravels we finally realize the stunning, shattering truth"
Now I'm feeling like a bear of very small brain indeed and I hope someone else will read this soon and help me out because I can't sort out who's alive, who's dead and who might never have existed in the first place.I've ended up with so many possible scenarios that I'm wondering if that's all a part of the whole and I'm supposed to be confused.I've gone back to the beginning and I'm desperate to find out what went on.
The truth hasn't dawned on me at all.
Taking all that into account you may be surprised to know it's a good read.
The lifelong effects of the sudden disappearance of childhood friends, impulsive adolescence and its consequences all play out in a book that is well written and quite gripping.I was completely engrossed but now I'm feeling a bit stupid because it's probably completely obvious but I can't fathom it at all.

Karin Alvtegen

Blame Adele Geras because she recommended Shame by Karen Alvtegen so if you feel the need to read it it's all her fault...again.
I'm even more inspired to discover that Karin Alvtegen's great aunt was no less than Astrid Lindgren and so there's a great Pippi Longstocking connection.I loved Pippi she was a bit more of a rebel than Anne Shirley but they seemed to have similarities, not least red plaits.
I have had quite a ridiculous dilemma with writing in translation and my shelves of late. I'm not sure why I felt the urge to separate it all off from the mainstream and give it shelf space of its own but I did and it's done now.
The space left behind has disappeared, too much trouble to re-merge.
Then I thought perhaps I'd like to sub-divide into nationalities.
At this point I could probably have done with a friendly librarian popping round and declaring,
"STOP! What on earth do you think you're doing? May Melvil Dewey turn in his grave, this isn't Daunt's bookshop you know" because do I really have time for this?
No I don't, but too late, once I start book shifting it just goes on and on.
So I have French and German sections, Russian (off on shelves of their own) Italian, Japanese, Czech, Hungarian, Turkish, Spanish and suddenly and unbeknown to me I have a Nordic section.It does make geographical reading so much simpler, I'm sure all of you know exactly what's on your shelves, but I forget.
So in the Nordic section there's Halldor Laxness, Sigrid Undset and the Kristin Lavransdatter series, Kerstin Ekman and Blackwater.This still unread because every time I start it I think "oh no, wrong moment too scary".
Wilhelm Moberg's Emigrant series, one down three to go, big fat heavy engrossing sagas which also have a right moment for reading.Then recent discovery Tarjei Vesaas.
I should probably add in some Henning Mankell to the sub-section Nordic Crime, with Arnaldur Indridasson, which is where Karin Alvtegen now hovers, it's more psycho-thriller than crime, truth be told, but I haven't got a sub-section for those yet.
It's all got far too complicated.
However Karin Alvtegen surely deserves her place with Shame published by Canongate.
This is page-turning material as the clinically obese Maj-Britt, confined by her size to her apartment for 30 years, and the lithe but equally troubled Dr Monika Lundvall both face their inner demons of shame and guilt.
None of it founded on anything of their own doing but the effects are all cleverly explored.You have to marvel at Maj-Britt's tenacity with her uncontrollable fridge-clearance skills.
Then bring on the fiesty Vanja who has slightly more to feel guilty and shameful about but she's dealing with it.
The ensuing and various mental disintegrations are profound and well delineated by Karin Alvtegen and this is a book that's quite hard to put down.Not so much for the plot as for the fact that I desperately wanted to know how things worked out for all these characters.
Two more in the series, Missing and Betrayal which are now must read soons for me.

Who Are You?

It's Anna Kavan time again. I'm enjoying tuning into her writing so much and having just finished her 1963 novel Who Are You? I think there is no doubt I will now have to read everything by and about her..thanks Kit at Peter Owen!
117 pages packed with a contrasting heat-laden langour yet menacing intensity that it is difficult to find comparisons for.
Recently married off by her mother to an older man she nicknames Mr Dog Head, a nameless young girl finds herself deprived of her future at a university and locked instead into an oppressive and stifling life that is white, colonial and tropical. Her husband is brutal and uncompromising and his second favourite occupation is splatting rats with a tennis racquet.
I'll let you guess his first.
There now you know what you're in for, but nothing can prepare you for the way this book just shimmers so menacingly with the tension that rises inexorably with the temperature as the monsoon approaches.It's pure volcano-in-waiting as you stagger sweating and breathless to the conclusion.
The denoument is again clever in its own way and to tell would be to spoil, but be ready to cheer uncontrollably at something ghastly but completely deserved and then shout "oh drat" a few pages later. I love books that make me shout out loud and write things in the margin.The uncertainty this ending creates is unusual and thought-provoking and perfectly matches what has gone before.
There is something intangible and compelling to my reading of Anna Kavan so far, nothing is quite what it seems but not in a dissatisfying way.
No secret then that I'm beginning to see Anna Kavan's skills as remarkable and her powers of description matchless.When you subsequently learn that she herself longed to go to Oxford but was married off in 1920 at the age of nineteen by her mother to a thirty year old engineer on the Burma Railway whose favourite hobby was splatting rats to death with a tennis racquet then you invest deeper significance into lines such as
"It's no good inventing a happy future for her, since she's always been unlucky, and always will be"
There is nothing in the least bit relaxing about this book so it may help to read it with a gin and tonic to hand and probably wise to wear loose fitting mosquito-proof clothes and switch on the ceiling fans to help cool you down.
Keep a tennis racquet to hand just in case, which reminds me...no mustn't detract from Anna again, see next post.

As I was saying

....talk of tennis racquets and it must almost be upon us, Wimbledon any day now.
Great. Some years I get into Wimbers, some years I don't but have no fear, I won't deprive you because it will be time to share that fabulous poem by Janet Martin of Form Vb (where are you Janet?) from the 1970 Nonsuch High School magazine,
Ode to John Newcombe's Legs.
Who remembers John Newcombe?
Who can possibly forget his legs?
Here's the first verse

John Newcombe trains in vitamins
From milk and cheese and eggs
His tennis playing is supreme -
But I prefer his legs.
You absolutely won't might not want to miss the rest.

When We Were Romans

This is going to be the least helpful book post I've possibly ever written about a book that has readily earned a constellation of star ratings here for that extra special buzz factor. I can't describe this add-on je ne sais qoi thing, it's quite intangible but I know it when I read a book that has it.
It's a feeling that just surfaces as I read.
When We Were Romans by Matthew Kneale arrived a week or so ago and the first thing to mention is the book's unusual size.
It's tall and narrow. Usual width but about 2cms extra on the height and now I'm trying to think of a reason for that, perhaps there isn't one but I'd hate to think I'd missed something, like it's trying to be a lego brick or a brick out of the Coliseum or something clever like that.
That aside Lawrence and his little sister Jemima find themselves uprooted and off to a new life in Rome with their mother who has decided they must leave England. Life becomes a catalogue of sofa-surfing homelessness and uncertainty for the family, with all the hopes and anxieties of the children acted out in a city dominated by its history.Lawrence embraces that history with the schoolboy enthusiasm that he also reserves for his galaxies of information on the solar system.
As is my wont I didn't read any detailed reviews beforehand, just plunged straight in and this is ABSOLUTELY WHAT YOU MUST DO.
Don't read any reviews, ignore all those literary critics who dig deep and say "the underlying themes in this book are of course....it's not a book about this....it's a book about that..." just start reading because the gradual unfolding of events is part of the effect of the book.
Have no fear, you'll know what it's all been about by the end.
It was important for me to read seven year old Lawrence's first person narrative as if I was him and only with his degree of belief in what was happening and his understanding and interpretation of it all.
So you see there is so much I could wax lyrical about because there's so much more going on, but I'm sorry I just can't tell you. I couldn't bear to spoil the complete When We Were Romans experience for you.
The childish spelling was a high risk strategy in my mind and my initial thoughts were of the heart-sink variety, but it paid huge dividends and constantly worked to increase my immersion in the book.
I can't begin to imagine how young Matthew must have felt after a long day's writing and thinking like a seven year old. It's all pitch perfect so I expect he had to go off and play with his fort and toy soldiers for a while to just wind down and get out of character. Probably a bit of foot-stamping and sulking helped and a nice bowl of ice cream might have put everything right.
Hats off to Matthew Kneale who has pulled off something quite remarkable with this book and now I'm wondering what I may have missed in not reading English Passengers.
Now I'm going to be bold because the Booker approacheth and I have sensibly made not a single prediction about possible longlisters but I'm feeling really rash so I'm going to suggest two and there's going to be an almighty muddle and a mix-up if perchance they both make it but here goes....
When We Were Bad by Charlotte Mendelson
When We Were Romans by Matthew Kneale
And the caveat, even if they don't make it...after all who knows, some madness may have meant they weren't even entered, but for goodness sake read them anyway, oh yes and then read the literary critics or we'll be in terrible trouble again here in litblogland, and I'm off to get my hands on English Passengers.

The Subversive Stitch

How fatal it is to pick up a book when it arrives and just open it to see.
Em at Snowbooks very kindly sent me a copy of The Needle in the Blood by Sarah Bower after I'd read such great and good things about it over on Eve's Alexandria.
Suddenly I wanted it yesterday, but so it seems had everyone else, there wasn't a copy to be found anywhere.
Now I have one in my hands and I doubt it will be leaving my hands until I've finished it, I may be gone sometime as it's almost 600 pages but so far it has dragged me in and seems unlikely to put me down.
Set in the aftermath of 1066, and you don't want to know what else happened to Harold besides the eye business, trust me. Now there's a tapestry looming and life breathing into a great cast of memorable characters.
Alongside this one there was an obvious book to reach for and I've had a pleasant hour revisiting that old favourite of mine The Subversive Stitch, Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine by Rozsika Parker. Written in 1984 I feel sure embroidery and the allied crafts have since travelled a long way from the confines of women's lives, which is where they were still firmly situated back then and I'm sure I will have plenty more thoughts on all that as I read The Needle in the Blood.
Olive Schreiner's 1927 quote asking for needlework to be " recognised as art, as a creative expressive activity" (Parker) perfectly placed in both Sarah Bower's book, Rozika Parker's book and perhaps dovegreyreader's blog,

"The poet when his heart is weighted, writes a sonnet, and the painter paints a picture, and the thinker throws himself into the world of action; but the woman who is only a woman what has she but her needle?...Has the pen or pencil dipped so deep in the blood of the human race as the needle?"

Now excuse me whilst I dash off and get threading.

Sunday Confessions

I'm as pleased as punch with one book in particular this week.
A blog commenter in the US suggested I might be interested in The Tiger in the Attic by Edith Milton and perhaps might try requesting a copy from the publisher as the book seems to have sunk without trace here in the UK. Perhaps it was reviewed but it certainly passed me by.
I was bold as is my wont,did just that and was delighted that the University of Chicago Press very kindly sent me a copy.
A quick diversion here, it arrived in a package from the US that had clearly been deliberately opened somewhere along the line and not taped up again, so I was relieved to find the book still safely inside. Obviously not a book loving thief then.
This book is sub-titled Memories of the Kindertransport and Growing Up English and Edith Milton tells how she and her sister Ruth left Germany in 1939 on the eve of Hitler's invasion of Poland.They came on the Kindertransport along with 10,000 other Jewish children who sought refuge in England.
Edith and Ruth then lived with an upper class British foster family for the next seven years.
I'm looking forward to reading it because it would seem this is no misery memoir.Edith and Ruth landed on their feet and Edith tells a "hopeful story about the kindness and generosity of strangers" as they grew up as outsiders in a foreign country.
I seem to have quite a collection of books on and about this subject.I'm drawn to anything that offers a child's eye view of history, though inevitably many on this subject make harrowing reading.
Hitler's Children by Guido Knopp
Into the Arms of Strangers by Mark Harris & Deborah Oppenheimer
Out of Harm's Way by Jessica Mann, the crime writer and sister of Nicola Beauman of Persephone books, who tells how at the age of  two she and her four year old brother, children of exiled German parents, were then sent to further safety in the USA.
No Time to Wave Goodbye by Ben Wicks
and finally Witnesses of War by Nicholas Stargardt which I haven't even been able to open.

Amo amas amat amamus amatis amant...testing testing

A very funny thing happened last week.
Those who follow this blog may remember my mild but pronounced aversion to Latin at school. It all went bellum upwards when I changed schools at thirteen and found the new lot had got off to a racing start and were a year ahead.My imperative passive present never quite became disentangled from my subjunctive passive imperfect and my conjugating never quite recovered.
Now I'm thanking my lucky stars that I try not to slight anyone on here because guess what?
I've had an e mail from my Latin teacher of forty years ago who had stumbled on my blog where I had mentioned her name in passing.
And guess what again?
She lives but a few miles up the road and has done for years and bearing in mind the school is in Surrey, 250+ miles away that's quite a coincidence.
We are meeting for coffee later this week and first things first I have to call her by her first name...how difficult will that be?
Hopefully we'll agree to gloss over remarks on that 35% exam result and just to prove I haven't forgotten a word of it

A valde funny res venio permaneo week.
Qui insisto is blog may memor meus mitis tamen denuntio fastidium ut Latin procul schola. Is totus went campana sursum ut EGO changed schola procul tredecim quod instituo novus sors had got off ut a racing satus quod erant a annus imperative obduco tendo nunquam per quoniam extrico ex meus subjunctive obduco trunco quod meus conjugating nunquam per revoco.
Iam I'm gratias ago meus felicis astrum ut Conor non ut tenuis quisquam in hic quoniam coniecto quis?
I've had an e mail ex meus Latin magister of quadraginta annus abhinc quisnam had offendo in meus blog qua EGO had memoratus suus nomen in obduco.
Quod coniecto quis iterum?
Is ago tamen pauci miles sursum via quod has perfectus pro annus quod gestum in mens schola est in Trado miles absentis ut per a congruo.
Nos es placitum pro capulus laxus is week quod primoris res primoris EGO have voco suus per suus primoris nomen. quam difficilis mos ut exsisto?
Hopefully we'll congruo ut gloss super ingens in ut 35% probatur praecessi quod EGO can iam probo EGO didn't mereo mereor.

Laissez-faire garden progress report

Just an update on the laissez-faire minimal intervention garden progress.
As you can see things are going prolifically in the ox-eye daisy meadow / mown path department.We had no idea this lot was sitting waiting to take over.It's difficult to convey just how amazing this is all looking with no assistance whatsoever, swaying drifts as far as you can see.

 

Bless the campanulas, they need no attention whatsoever.

We had a rare if not unheard of combination of apple blossom and calm storm-free weather, this means the fruit has set in glut proportions.Still many a blight twixt now and the fruit bowl so it will be a long-haul to get this lot to harvest.These are on the espaliered Cox's Orange Pippin which covers and hugs one side of the house.We planted it ten years ago and it's known as Nanny's Tree because the Tinker bought it for us in memory of her.

We have multitudes of honeysuckles all over the place.Early flowering, late flowering varieties. I can't resist the scent and the blossoms are starting to work their magic.

Bloomin' neighbours, nosey as ever.

Even buttercups have their place, those welcome splashes of bright yellow

With no mowing the clover is feeding our neighbour's bees all day long.

And finally, here come the elderflowers, just a question of picking the most cordial moment.

Blogs and publishers

In these tumultuous days of blog v literary critic controversy, which by the way we are now avowed to steer clear of here when we have Cornflower and Random Jottings taking up the cudgels so efficiently, perhaps I can turn my little spotlight on publishers.
Every which way you turn publishers are being urged to court the free marketing opportunities that blogs provide.I aim for transparency so all free receipts declared.The welcome gift of a book may result in a post on here if I've enjoyed it. No guarantees about that and if I haven't for whatever reason then it just doesn't feature and I don't enter into any debate about it because that doesn't seem right either.
I'm an ordinary (a bit prolific I know) reading health visitor not pretending to be a literary critic and not a publisher,so I'm not qualified to dissect a book and pronounce on exactly why it might be badly written because my thoughts are purposely subjective and readerly and therefore probably unhelpful and not in the least constructive to a writer.
Leave that to those in the trade who know about these things and also know enough about it to suggest  remedies, rewrites, good editors, better agents, different sources of help and positive ways forward.I suspect that it's something that needs to be done with great skill and sensitivity if you are not to kill someone's writing instinct stone dead or worse catch them on a bad day and send them scurrying off to the the gas oven.
I'm better skilled at other things

• Being cross-examined by five barristers in court.
• Sharing with parents that their baby may have a developmental delay.
• Standing toe to toe with the powers that be when I want services for special needs children.
• Suggesting to families that we have to get social services involved because I'm concerned about them.

but as for letting a writer know they may have penned a turkey, absolutely no way.
So yes, I'm aware that I offer valuable free advertising but that's just the way it is, no money changes hands, only books and I have no problem with that in any way, shape or form....mostly.
So I was delighted when a publisher offered to match my recent BAFAB prize with another signed copy of the same book to a second lucky winner. It was a book I had really enjoyed and posted about with great enthusiasm here so big kudos and lots of Brownie points already for the publisher and doubtless a few more sales on the back of such a kind and generous gesture.
So far so good.
All went smoothly with the draw, even with the understudy cat judge called in at the last minute, just before curtain up.Two lucky names drawn and one in California received her copy of the book within a week, from me, bought and paid for by me in the true spirit of BAFAB and she was absolutely delighted with it.
Sadly, nine weeks later, the other winner is still waiting.
All details sent to the publisher...nothing.
Several e mails to the publisher...nothing.
Finally a polite but fairly stiff e mail to the publisher intended to shame a response out of them...nothing.

This an independent publisher who benefited second time round in the free marketing because I made much of their generous offer on here, so doubtless a few more sales.
That's why I can only apologize for being a bit tetchy about it all and much as I look on dovegreyreader scribbles as a sea of tranquillity in the midst of my workaday world of other people's turmoil and strife I decided to pronounce on here because I think it matters.
Perhaps this was all unimportant to the publisher in question, but out here in the real world someone was thrilled to have won, and because where I come from, out here in the real world too, honour is all-important I have now offered to send that second disappointed winner a book of her choice from The Book Depository.
I have established a lovely rapport with all the publishers who send me books and I would just want to radiate a little thought back to any others thinking to use the blog world as part of their marketing strategy.
I speak for myself only, you really are most welcome here, and I mean that, I love you all and the postman loves lugging all the parcels from his van and only goes off sick with a prolapsed disc about once a month, but please, please honour pledges made or don't make them in the first place, because I think out here in litblogland we are more than keeping our side of the bargain.

PS If ****** ****** ***** the publisher now mysteriously finds all my messages in their junk file, or they've all been struck down with ebola virus, all is almost forgiven but please please just send the book to Nan.

The world according to iPod

It's now becoming apparent that buying an iPod Nano is only the beginning, iTunes for a start is a whole new and wonderful  world.
It's a sweet but fragile looking thing that would die a thousand deaths in the depths of my bag so it needed a case and it now has a very fetching one.
The headphones that come as standard are those bog-standard basic in the ear ones that give me earache  after about ten minutes so the search is on for something comfortable yet portable, on the ear not in the ear, and altogether matching.Don't need much volume, my iPod will be barely whispering after all that audiology training in recent months.Do you know how easy it is to flatten those squillions of little sound-receiving hairs in your ears? And they don't recover either, it all scared me stupid.
Then I sat and thought about how I would charge it when I was several thousand miles away from my laptop in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico (sorry to labour that point, not long to go) so it was apparent I would need a charger.To save messing about I bought one compatible with the whole world, Antarctica, Outer Mongolia, Patagonia, Margate...who knows where I'll be wandering off to next.
Now I've been sitting looking at the charger in its packaging for days on end now and I just can't see a safe way in.The last thing I bought that was sealed against mankind was an electric toothbrush.It took that long to achieve a safe extraction I was beginning to think I would no longer be needing it.
My teeth would have fallen out long ago.It was a close call that I didn't end up in casualty with multiple lacerations. On the plus side, more acceptable than a child with a bath plug chain threaded through his tongue I suppose.
How are you supposed to open these?
How do old people safely open the chargers for their iPod Nanos?
I've decided on a lateral midline incision at the base of the packaging and then I may have to go and find some padded gloves to prise the thing apart and rescue my charger from the jaws of death.
Ridiculous.

Look thy last on all things lovely

Hesperus how do I love thee? Well I've counted the ways on here in recent weeks and the books continue to have that extra bit of publisher's magic.
There is an essence of something special to the paper quality, the binding and those simple but emphatic cover designs with the French flaps.
So much work done already to make me love it.
But we must be discerning, there's got to be a turkey in there somewhere.
Well it's not Missing by Walter de la Mare that's for sure.
Cover first, empty pebbly beach on the front cover and then over on the back two empty deckchairs.
Susan Hill recently used the line
"Look thy last on all things lovely, Every hour ..."
which I, in my ignorance had assumed was something Shakesperian that she and the SP exchanged as they looked over their cherry orchard as the blossom dropped.
Silly me, it's from Walter de la Mare's poem Fare Well and there you have it. I only really know of Walter de la Mare as a poet not as a story writer.
Another very amenable aspect of all things Hesperus is the forewords and for this book they have enlisted Russell Hoban who quotes the poem as a form of explanation for all these short stories.In this compact volume just three, Missing, The Almond Tree and Crewe.
All about disappearance, something tangible suddenly no longer there and there are strange happenings to be reported in all of them. Unexplained events that have you sitting pondering long after you've read because the meaning is buried deep in the writing and somehow you know it's there but tantalizingly just out of reach.
Russell Hoban describes it thus
"These narrations are not easily described:I think of a lighthouse sweeping the sea with an occulting beam of obscurity and intervals of clarity...of a train passing between me and what I'm looking at so that I see the rhythmically interrupted view through its windows."
Perfectly spot on Russell and yes, that constant feeling that you are missing something.I trot across to the blessed Oxford DNB and there I discover this about Walter de la Mare's short stories of which he wrote a hundred or so.

"They can be obscure, built up as they are by fine-spun suggestion and the same embroidered, often archaic expressions he used in poetry, indifferent to modern fashion. Danger, enigma, and transience closely dog their most homely or commonplace settings. The accepted is everywhere disturbed by warnings that this universe exists unsafely to bring news of something far more important."

Yes indeed,another unique little reading experience from Hesperus and one worth catching.

...AND THE WINNER IS

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and if she gave an acceptance speech which I jolly well hope she did then sadly I missed it, but a truly worthy winner.

Orange Prize Ceremony Live

So I'm listening to the awards ceremony live on my laptop, gosh this is exciting, and have sat through a big sell for Orange, now the thankyous, and the winner is....
More thankyous, the website designer, the person behind the scenes who does all the work...music in the wrong place, oh dear
Harper's Orange Short Story Prize announcement, more thankyous, winner gets £1000.Cue loud music and, oh no more thankyous, winner is Joanna Reed.Very loud music.
Acceptance speech? No
Prize for New Writers, Bursary £10,000.More thankyous, fellow judges all lovely and have stayed friends.The winner is ...no not yet, rundown of books, passionate, charming, extraordinary, grim subject matter, uplifitng, blown away, Karen Connolly for The Lizard Cage.More loud music.
Acceptance speech? No but bit of off microphone banter...heck she's come back to make unscripted speech about Burma, organisers must be cringing, timing up the swanee, all going a bit Pete Tong but clearly a prepared polemic from the winner who wasn't to be denied her moment of glory...going on and on a bit longer...as I was flying over from Toronto...still going on about books, readers, people who care about books...speech had been written and Karen Connolly obviously meant to speak it. Still going on...thanking the people in Burma, thanking her husband, thanking all of you...applause, she might have finished now? Yes.
Here's the moment, the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction...here's Muriel.
So honoured to have been chosen to chair, disappointed as got on well with the judges,no slapping, inciteful, a joy to judge, lovely lovely here some the shortlisted authors
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie VERY LOUD ROCK MUSIC
Rachel Cusk VERY LOUD ROCK MUSIC REPEATED
Kiran Desai REPEATED
Chinese name ,can't spell REPEATED
Jane Harris...
then silence...because Karen Connolly with her very long speech has messed up the podcast timings
Quick stutter from Muriel...oops no that's it gone off air just as she was going to announce the winner....

The Ice Palace

I'm letting Doris Lessing have the first and last word here today because I need a bit of help with this utterly remarkable book.Cue Doris,

"The superlatives are all worn out; we have used them too often while trying to make some good book visible among others clamouring for attention,'Unique!' 'Unforgettable!' 'Extraordinary!' But these words are used of any old rubbish. Peter Owen says The Ice Palace (Isslottet) by Tarjei Vesaas is the best novel he has ever published, and that is saying a lot"

Born in 1897 in the wilds of Telemark in Norway, Tarjei Vesaas who died in 1970, is by reputation one of the leading Nordic writers. At this point I'd better clarify that I'm not an expert of Nordic literature but I do love a good atmospheric trip to the snowy wastes.
My first and only mistake was to pick The Ice Palace up and begin to read it during the evening and then to take it off to bed and carry on reading quite late into the night because I absolutely could not stop.
It was deeply compelling.
Sadly I was then awake for hours and hovering in that half-sleep twilight zone where you think you're really awake and then you alternately roast and freeze
Or does that only happen to me because my thermostat's gone haywire?
I vow this may be one of the most impressive and haunting books you are likely to read this month, this year, this whatever.
Living in rural snow-bound and ice-laden Norway, two eleven year old girls, Siss the outgoing and extrovert class leader and Unn, the shy and retiring outsider, develop a friendship of opposites.Unn goes missing having taken herself off to the nearby waterfall, now deeply frozen into its winter form and known as the ice palace.
I'm not even going to begin to tell you what happens but it all reminded me of a trip years ago and a visit to the inner depths of the glacier at Grindelwald in Switzerland.
I'm not a particularly claustrophobic or panicky person but even I had a tinge of fear deep inside those tunnels. There is something unforgiving, inanimate and very eerie about walking inside smooth, solid blue-green ice. Caves and pot-holes seem to have a quaint warmth of character and personality by comparison (not that I'd know because I wouldn't go in those either) but ice seems just plain bleak and scary.You wouldn't think you could invest it with much beyond its solidity but Tarjei Vesaas certainly knows his ice.
I'm having a bit of a hyper-ventilating moment just recalling this part of the book.
Anyway I then had the common sense to finish it in daylight hours and was indeed  mesmerized by the whole thing. As the winter progresses the ice is covered with layer upon layer of heavy snow and this really serves its literary and geographical purpose to perfection.
Has someone done a thesis on this yet?
If so I'd love to read it, because snow does a great job on the emotions as they are concealed and repressed, blanketed and muffled.The community gathers and closes around Siss silently embracing and protecting her through her grief as she endures her winter of discontent, refusing to disclose anything about her friendship with Unn or the secrets shared or not.
But cometh the spring cometh the thaw and with it the winter run-off taking all that has happened in its flow and leaving in its wake new beginnings for all those involved.
I will most certainly take Peter Owen's word for it as the best book he's published.
The Ice Palace has to be up there with the greats here and gains automatic membership of the elite special books shelf and it really deserves a new audience.It's a timeless read.
I know for a fact it's a book now etched on my memory, I for one will never forget it and neither it seems will Doris Lessing who,as promised, gets the final word,

"How simple this novel is. How subtle. How strong.How unlike any other. It is unique.It is unforgettable. It is extraordinary"

Orange Observations

Lastminuteread.com here before the Orange Prize is announced this evening.
I haven't had time to read Arlington Park by Rachel Cusk so there's every chance that will win, because Kiran Desai was the only one I hadn't read in the run up to the Booker, so you see how this works.Sandra over on Book World rates it highly, it's clearly in with a chance.
The Observations by Jane Harris had some mega-plaudits in comments here and I'm in agreement it's a good read.
The narrative voice is the feature that everyone mentions and warms to and it is impossible not to love the down to earth, tell it like it really is voice of maidservant Bessy Buckley.Bessy is very much larger than life, leaps off the page and her honest and hilarious turn of phrase is priceless and carries the whole.
Arabella,mistress of the house compiling her own observations on the serving classes and reminiscent for me of the Hannah Cullwick diaries.Plenty of Victorian goings-on and a page turner of a read though I felt it sagged a little towards the end with not quite the degree of villainy I had been expecting.There was an intentional and noticeable change in the narrative voice as events drew to a close but somehow I wanted the Bessie I knew and loved to go on forever.
Minor niggles because Jane Harris deserves an award for Bessie alone and the way she sustains the voice and character. It must have been all-pervasive because I now find myself using some of Bessie's choicer epithets.
But still not an Orange prize winner for me when Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is on the table too. One of those books that had to be written and deserves to be read. I've searched back for my initial thoughts on this book posted here on November 13th 2006 and I thought I might as well air an edited reprise if you can bear the repetition.

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

It would seem more and more often these days, that I am reading books which I just feel so fortunate to have found
Last year I read and was completely awestruck by Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, it's etched in my memory, so I have been on the look out for her second novel ever since.Half of a Yellow Sun was published here in September, I bought it immediately and there it has sat on the shelf waiting for the right moment to read it.I had second-novel nerves
Any fears I may have had quickly dissolved as I made a start on this book and how can there have been any doubt when the book is so firmly endorsed by the likes of Chinua Achebe,

" We do not usually associate wisdom with beginners but here is a new writer endowed with the gift of the ancient storytellers".

What an honour and, not surprisingly, one that Adichie treasures.
I read Achebe's Things Fall Apart years ago and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is certainly carrying the baton for excellent post-colonial writing with Half of a Yellow Sun. Biafra happened in the 1960's and has entered our consciousness and our language as a byword for starvation.We were all acutely aware of what was happening "Eat your dinner, children in Biafra would make that last a week" but until now I must confess I didn't really know the background. From Christine Patterson's interview with Adichie,

"In May 1967 the military governor, Colonel Ojukwe, renamed the region Biafra and declared it an independent state. Three bloody years later he was forced to back down"

Adichie's parents lost everything in the conflict and both her grandfathers died.
As often happens, the core message of a book emerges in one succinct statement that leaps off the page and resonates through to the last page. Adichie touched the heart of the matter for me as Odenigbo a radical university lecturer remarks,

"The real tragedy of our post-colonial world is not that the majority of people had no say in whether or not they wanted this new world; rather, it is that the majority have not been given the tools to negotiate this new world"

The rest of the book is witness to his observations as we follow Ugwu the house boy,Olanna the teacher and Richard the Englishman and a wealth of other characters as they struggle to cope with the new order.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie achieves the same deep sense of place that she established in Purple Hibiscus.The gradual decline in food supplies in Biafra and the increasing hunger is dealt with in such a subtle way that it creeps up on you as a reader, much as it must do for any nation facing a famine.It was gradual but inevitable.The sense of fear, chaos and violence is handled as well as it was in Purple Hibiscus, you read it and yes, it horrifies you but you still read it and somehow Adichie offers a redemption that enables you to assimilate it all safely. It's not disturbing or gratuitous, it all has a clear purpose.
Final words to Adichie

"My responsibility is to be truthful. I love Nigeria, but I want to be clear-eyed about it. It's so imperfect. But, we don't choose where we are born"

Oh not quite, final final words to me. As is my preference, I've now read the reviews after the book and it would seem we are all of one accord, here's a powerful second novel and a book that I just feel very privileged to have read.

" We do not usually associate wisdom with beginners but here is a new writer endowed with the gift of the ancient storytellers".

What an honour and, not surprisingly, one that Adichie treasures.
I read Achebe's Things Fall Apart years ago and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is certainly carrying the baton for excellent post-colonial writing with Half of a Yellow Sun. Biafra happened in the 1960's and has entered our consciousness and our language as a byword for starvation.We were all acutely aware of what was happening "Eat your dinner, children in Biafra would make that last a week" but until now I must confess I didn't really know the background. From Christine Patterson's interview with Adichie,

"In May 1967 the military governor, Colonel Ojukwe, renamed the region Biafra and declared it an independent state. Three bloody years later he was forced to back down"

Adichie's parents lost everything in the conflict and both her grandfathers died.
As often happens, the core message of a book emerges in one succinct statement that leaps off the page and resonates through to the last page. Adichie touched the heart of the matter for me as Odenigbo a radical university lecturer remarks,

"The real tragedy of our post-colonial world is not that the majority of people had no say in whether or not they wanted this new world; rather, it is that the majority have not been given the tools to negotiate this new world"

The rest of the book is witness to his observations as we follow Ugwu the house boy,Olanna the teacher and Richard the Englishman and a wealth of other characters as they struggle to cope with the new order.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie achieves the same deep sense of place that she established in Purple Hibiscus.The gradual decline in food supplies in Biafra and the increasing hunger is dealt with in such a subtle way that it creeps up on you as a reader, much as it must do for any nation facing a famine.It was gradual but inevitable.The sense of fear, chaos and violence is handled as well as it was in Purple Hibiscus, you read it and yes, it horrifies you but you still read it and somehow Adichie offers a redemption that enables you to assimilate it all safely. It's not disturbing or gratuitous, it all has a clear purpose.
Final words to Adichie

"My responsibility is to be truthful. I love Nigeria, but I want to be clear-eyed about it. It's so imperfect. But, we don't choose where we are born"

Oh not quite, final final words to me. As is my preference, I've now read the reviews after the book and it would seem we are all of one accord, here's a powerful second novel and a book that I just feel very privileged to have read.

Digging to America

Nothing like a last minute flurry of Orange shortlist reading and delighted this one didn't pass me by.Truthfully I don't think the moment ever passes with Anne Tyler; her books seem to stay on the shelves, in print and make timeless reads whenever.Incidentally I present this older cover for your delectation because the one that I have is, well, in my humble opinion,too contrived and posed ...hrmmph.
Two very different families gather at a US airport to greet two Korean baby girls as they arrive for adoption into two very different cultural environments.
The all-American Donaldson's strive to maintain little Jin-Ho's heritage, the Iranian Yazdan's immediately change their baby's name to Susan and introduce her to a mixture of Iranian and US traditions.As the extended families become involved it's all a proverbial melting pot of identity, foreigness and confusion about who really belongs where and where exactly is home, balanced with the all-consuming sense of a dominant and all-powerful US culture.
I probably had more than a passing interest in the subject matter because of my flatmate from student nursing days. Her family had adopted Vietnamese twin girls from the Hoi Duc Anh orphanage in Saigon via a Christian charity known as Project Vietnam Orphans, and so I knew them well and all the tribulations and subsequent joys of the process.
Ly Thi Tam and Ly Thi Thu, renamed Angela and Gabrielle, were the subject of a fascinating book by James Davidson Ross, Children of the Ashes, and now in their late 30's.Initially they were terrified at the sound of aeroplanes going overhead but they were a delight and the quiet Yorkshire village were they lived didn't quite know what had hit it as these little bundles of energy settled into their new life.
Digging to America is written in Anne Tyler's wondrously wry and funny style and there are moments of real comedy as the annual Arrivals Anniversary Party becomes a bigger and more competitive event that strays further and further from its original intentions.The geeky nephew announcing "Many Happy Returns" for a start and the annual rendition of She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain as the welcome song for want of a better idea.
Perfectly and intimately observed and total command of a great cast of characters made this an enjoyable read and worthy of the shortlist but ...out on a limb here...not an Orange Prize winner when you have Chimamande Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun to contend with.
But I do still have The Observations by Jane Harris to report on.
Might that pip it to the post?
More tomorrow and just in time for the official announcement of the winner tomorrow evening and for more detailed reviews of this book and others head to Eve's Alexandria here and Book World here.

Sunday Confessions

Lots in the door this week but always a moment of glee to be had finding a book that's been languishing on the "to find" list for ages.
The reading list for Woolf For Dummies wasn't extensive, tutor Mrs Hill-Wells was very sympathetic to our busy lives but she did recommend Bloomsbury Pie by Regina Marler (Ruth is this a relative? I've not heard you mention Aunt Regina I must admit) which is out of print. I've been on the look-out ever since so I swooped a bit noisily on this brand new copy in the second-hand bookshop at Ashburton this week.It's that pent up searching that all comes out at the moment of discovery I find.
There have been many acts of book-giving kindness this week too and in the interests of transparency I'll set them out here.
Philippa at Macmillan took pity on my lack of Dissolution by C.J.Sansom, which seemed to have mysteriously disappeared from the bookstore shelves, and sent me a copy. I have made an immediate start based on a sudden need for something in the historical fiction department and a suspicion that this series will carry me nicely into holiday reading.So far very good indeed, and very apt after yesterday's visit to monastic setting. Tonsures and pax vobiscums abound and clearly I'll be onto Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose in no time (that's a joke)
I can't tell you how long I have been meaning to read English Passengers and never quite got around to it so when Emma at Macmillan sent me a copy of the latest Matthew Kneale When We Were Romans ,it was all the help I needed to make a start on his writing.
Transita always send me their latest books so Blue Slipper Bay by Wendy Harris has arrived and I'm sure its moment will come.
Knowing how much I had enjoyed The Winter of Enchantment by Victoria Walker, Vanessa at Fidra very kindly sent me the next in the series The House Called Hadlows. Victoria Walker writes the best introductions ever, I loved the last one so I was into this one before the envelope had fallen from my hand. She's refreshingly self-effacing and you like her the minute you read her.
Oh heck, you'll be thinking I've given up book-buying at this rate because next in the post a copy of The Spoken Word Revolution Redux edited by Mark Eleveld.This is an anthology of poetry in the oral tradition and to that end it has a CD included.Performance poetry and all its many styles and this came from Sourcebooks in the US.Billy Collins is in there, that's good.
I now shamelessly beg from Peter Owen.Honestly what has happened to me? They took instant pity and came up with a lighteningly quick copy of A Stranger on Earth, The Life and Work of Anna Kavan by Jeremy Reed to help fuel my Anna Kavan-fest.
More Anna Kavan soon (ahem, I seem to be running low on these...)
Lastly, Possession by A.S.Byatt. I PAID real money for this.I have a big old heavy hardback edition so I needed a paperback for holiday reading, but the big question is will I join the YES YES YES team or the NO NO NO team?
If it's a NO NO NO this might end up in the Gulf of Mexico.
No of course I wouldn't throw it overboard, I was joking, besides it would find its way back on the Gulf Stream, isn' t that what keeps us warm here in the UK?
I shall perform an honourable Book Crossing desertion in Montego Bay to match my less honourable dumping of The Secret History by Donna Tartt in Barcelona.

Monks and trains and Jenny

We went on a jolly to Totnes yesterday, always a nice jaunt across High Dartmoor and by the time we've reached Princetown the debate about where to have lunch has begun.
Cranks at Dartington very nice.Self-service queue often painfully slow and restaurant frequently full to capacity, often a bit macrobiotic for us carnivores, so if it's a hungry meat-eating day then there's always Buckfast Abbey.
A working Benedictine community where honey and Buckfast Tonic Wine abounds,Offspringette assures me that Bucky is the also the neds alcohol of choice in dear old Glasgow city.
Now I have no idea what the monks get to eat but even if it's the leftovers from the refectory where the public can dine they will be faring well and getting plump.This is THE place to go if you are in the vicinity and want to stop somewhere where you can park easily in nice surroundings, find plenty of seating in the refectory, and then have your plate piled high and I mean high with beautifully cooked simple but wholesome home-cooked food.No ornate nouveau cuisine here, you will get six ladles full of whatever you choose and we can recommend the chicken curry.
Then if you can still walk you can wander off and take a look at the Abbey if you want and don't miss the modern and stunning stained glass window inside.For a self-build I don't think this is a bad effort.

Then you can take a turn around the herb and physic gardens

It's only a few miles up the road to Totnes and here you almost feel as if you need an inter-galactic passport as you enter another planet, another zone.Totnes is famed for being alternative, ethnic, free-spirited and quirky (and do be careful how often you inhale) but it also sports the best range of unusual shops for miles around.
Therein lies a huge temptation which I have learnt is best resisted.
Somehow the spirit of the place moves you in that sandal and baggy-trousered dreadlocks sort of way and you will buy a piece of very garish clothing that would see you blending in with the masses in Totnes like a local.
Then you wear it down Tavistock High Street and everyone gives you very strange sympathetic looks
"Hmm been shopping in Totnes then?"

Then on the way home we had one of those rare moments which makes you wish you had all the children in the car and it was about fifteen years ago. For some way the road travels along the usually desolate Dart Valley Railway line, plenty of trains running in the summer but the Law of Sod must dictate that it is never when we are driving past.Except yesterday our luck was in and we chased the train.

I am reliably informed this is the traditional rhubarb and custard British Rail livery with the traditional chocolate and cream Great Western in front.

By this time I'm hanging precariously out of the car window, camera in hand and urging Bookhound to get a move on and catch up with the train, which he did.

Sadly I'm afraid to confess that the sight of a steam train is the cue for Bookhound's impression of Jenny Agutter in The Railway Children and there followed a great deal of "My Daddy, my Daddy" as the train sped off round the bend in a cloud of steam. Fortunately I wasn't wearing my red flannel petticoats so I resisted my star turn.
What is it about that film that is etched so firmly on our consciousness?
Probably the fact that our children were the first generation of video children and I do believe we may have watched it a hundred times.

Yeeeessss! Youtube arrives at dgr scribbles...

A walk on the wild side

Armed with my trusty Observer's and I-Spy books of Wild Flowers I think it's safe to say I was the Queen of the Hedgerows from a distance when I was about 8 years old.
From a distance in that we only spent about two weeks a year in the country and wild flowers were in shortish supply in the London suburbs.
So I ambled out with my camera this week just to see what is sprouting now and to check my rusty diagnostic skills.
Currently, and as this picture suggests, we are inbetween seasons out in the hedgerows.The last bluebells are fading and whatever arrives next hasn't quite made it in abundance yet but if you look closely there's enough to see.Firstly I love the grass that grows up the middle of the lane, this must make us a D class road if ever there was one.Every so often the council deem it necessary to come and scrape it all up but it's back within weeks. I wish they wouldn't bother, there must be more important things to do.

I haven't done ANY looking up I promise so you will all soon put me right I know but I think these are Bladder Campions

I think these might be something Speedwell-ey.

I'm completely clueless about this pink and seemingly indeterminate and quite insignificant flower until you look at it via the macro on the camera

This little chap looks like a moth in the making but I fear for a happy outcome, because just after I spotted him the biggest lane-width bit of farm machinery you ever did see trundled along .I had to dash into the gate, I don't know where he dashed to.

Ferns also quite mundane until you see them in close-up

Then a glance upwards and there are the Foxgloves towering above the hedge

and these always stand up favourably to close inspection too.

On the way back just a few dog roses

It's almost like the calm before the storm because after so much early warmth and then plenty of rain I suspect everything is just ready and waiting to join the parade.

Marina, Kiran the Orange and me

I know lots of you have the same problem and we're all agreed on how we deal with this.
You're reading a book that has been lauded, crowned, sung from the rooftops by people whose judgement you trust but for you it is going nowhere, to the point where it starts to drag you down. Suddenly all your reading slows to a snail's pace and you lose your impetus with everything else because of this one book.
It stares at you threateningly and gradually you don't even want to pick it up, but you slog on, because you're bound to like it soon.
Happens to me quite a lot as you know and recently very publicly because my failure with Two Caravans by Marina Lewycka is now in The Book Magazine for all to see. The book group for this magazine works as an online list, everyone is sent the book and a deadline and once you've read it you add your thoughts by e mail to the list. I watched everyone else's praise start to roll in, it really was a tide of love for the book and I started to panic because I was not enjoying it at all and I was going to have to say so.
I tried so hard to like it, started it three times in fact, the third time with a bar of Galaxy to help me along.Finally surrendering at p69 to satisfy the Prof. John Sutherland Law of Book Testing but still nothing would happen so eventually I owned up.
The only one out of seven not to enjoy it.
I've recently had another Book Block in progress and it's come off my Reading Now list and gone right back on the shelf after a whopping ninety seven pages. That's an awful lot of time for me to give a book that hasn't worked an ounce of magic on me.I've read slowly and deliberately to try and savour the language, of
"the best,sweetest, most delightful novel I've read in ages"
"a terrific novel. Read it!"
" lit by a moral intelligence at once fierce and tender" and I know plenty of you have felt that way about it too.
I feel like a complete philistine but Booker Prize winner The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai and I have failed again.Its moment hasn't arrived here yet. I'll get over it and I expect Kiran will too.
Perhaps I'm just sated with books of this ilk, who knows?
I would love to see Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie win the Orange Prize but in the interest of fairness I am busy squeezing in last-minute reads of a few others too.