dovegreyreader scribbles

Everyman's Library

"Everyman, I will go with thee, and be thy guide,
In thy most need to go by thy side"
Can there be a sight more destined to gladden the heart of a bookaholic than a stack of new Everyman's Library titles?
Those little pocket-sized titles that line the shelves of second-hand bookshops revamped and reborn in 1991 into these editions which quickly found a place in my heart.
Affordable, beautifully presented classics "easy-to-read typographic design, sewn cloth bindings with top and tail bands and a silk ribbon-marker, acid-free paper which will not discolour with age, as well as substantial introductions by leading scholars and writers"
There is something worthwhile yet indefinable for me to have books I have loved in a handsome edition.I like but don't love Folio editions and have gathered a few on the way but these are hardly affordable. Everyman's Library editions are in another league for me and I have quite a few.
Thanks to Everyman I now have a few more and I'm afraid I've allocated an inordinate amount of time to stroking and browsing these since they arrived.
As well as all the old favourites, new classics are constantly being added and they have included Penelope Fitzgerald in these so I heartily approve because to my mind her name and work was a gaping omission from the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die compilation.
I've made a start on Scoop by Evelyn Waugh and already I'm in fits of mirth and Roald Dahl's Collected Stories are also going to get a daily airing. Kiss Kiss was THE book that did the rounds of Form Vc and kept us talking for weeks back in the 1960's, as we sat on our desks and played cards at lunchtime somehow persuading the Prefects on patrol that we were far too senior to be sent outside.
I now have divine copies of old favourites, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood and The Radetsky March by Joseph Roth which I will treasure, some more P.G.Wodehouse's and some new titles to read including my planned Dickens of a Christmas Read for this year - one must plan early for Christmas, it's nearly August.
Anyone else out there who would like to join in with this one please do, plenty of time to plan and any Dickens will do.
I'm known not to be a devotee of the great man, apart from Our Mutual Friend, we just don't love each other Charlie and I, but I am assured Bleak House will change all that and also assured that it must be read in the Everyman's Library edition to guarantee a 100% success rate. This could be where I slipped up with my old Penguin edition of David Copperfield last Christmas and was dying of something verging on ennui after 200 pages.
Prior to that A Tale of Two Cities had me plain confused.
A sin, a sin, I know but I couldn't get a grip on it at all.I'm sure an Everyman edition would have held my attention.
Meanwhile back to my Waugh anthology.
How I've missed Scoop after all these years I can't imagine  and in this edition it is followed by The Loved One, another spectre from the era of Form Vc at Nonsuch Girls, who now I think on it had an odd and very quirky shared sense in humour and books.

Mister Pip

Well someone made a huge clanger of a mistake throwing this review copy out pristine and unread to the Marylebone High Street Oxfam bookshop, except that Oxfam are in profit and so am I for having read it.
Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones published by John Murray and reviewed favourably already on Cornflower and Asylum.
I haven't been back to see what they've written because I've just put the book down and my head is bursting with thoughts that are probably not original but I have to write them down this minute.
A book about power in all its guises.
The physical brute power of civil war
...the power of the human spirit to conquer
...the power of the written word, of literature
...of the oral storytelling tradition
...of teaching and learning
...of memory and imagination
...of questions
...of dreams
...of fear
...of morality.."to be human is to be moral and you cannot have a day off when it suits"
...and ultimately of survival.
I thought perhaps I'd own up to the condition a book can end up in by the time I've finished reading and also how I mine the nuggets and remember them.Some people use notebooks but I'm afraid all my books have this sort of thing on the first page and throughout.
I find a pencil sits nicely across the top of my glasses, which I'm told looks unusual.
Matilda growing up on a remote Pacific Island finds herself trapped with her mother and other villagers in a brutal conflagration between rival forces.
Up steps a white resident Mr Watts to continue the children's schooling in the face of much trauma and adversity.
He reads Great Expectations to them and the children share it with their parents and in so doing imaginations are transported far and wide and away from the fears of day to day life on the island.
Pip becomes as real as the next child.
Mr Dickens a man they know.
Lloyd Jones is a New Zealand writer, this the first of his eight books to be published in the UK, and we can but hope that John Murray are picking up some more because I for one would love to read them.
He has nailed the young Matilda's voice so confidently and soundly in this book that you get the feeling whatever he tackles he'd do it well.The ravaged beauty of the Pacific island and the deprivations suffered by the inhabitants all keenly but not excessively illuminated; this is life as they know it and through the resilient unknowing eyes of the young Matilda it's par for the course.
There are a episodes of stomach-churning violence reduced by Lloyd Jones to a few simple sentences, nothing gratuitous and all reflecting Matilda's adult observations
"I remember feeling preternaturally calm. This is what deep fear does to you. It turns you into a state of unfeeling"
The matter-of-fact way this is all disclosed allowing me as a reader to experience a measure of that "state of unfeeling", but I was not to be let off the hook completely.Lloyd Jones quietly made sure the truth sank in, like a muffled sledgehammer, a few sentences later.
A mega-good read, sorry this one won't be going back to Oxfam and wouldn't it be good to see it make the Booker Longlist?
Dare we hope?
Coming soon a collaboration between Dovegreyreader and A.N.Other blog (you'll have to guess until they reveal) planning a joint Blog Bookerthon longlist read for your delectation any day now and it would really help things along if we'd read a few to steal a march, that's the first result to be declared...how many have we tucked under our belt already?
Secondly, am I going to be forced to read Chesil Beach?
Anyone else up for this folly in August?

Sunday Confessions

I must catch up with confessions. A nice stack of books waiting for me when I arrived home and some good reads in here.
The Secret River by Kate Grenville was one of my favourite reads of 2006 so I'm delighted with a copy of Searching For the Secret River published  by Canongate in which Kate Grenville recounts her journey of discovery whilst researching and writing the book.Also a copy of one of her earlier novels Lilian's Story. How does the daughter of prosperous middle-class family end up as an eccentric bag-lady living on the streets and quoting Shakespeare ? I'll report back.
Also from Canongate An Iliad by Alessandro Baricco translated by Ann Goldstein. I'm a confirmed fan of Alessandro after reading Silk and then Without Blood. Perfectly formed novellas that I can still recall several years on.An Iliad a recreation of the siege of Troy through the eyes and voices of each of the twenty-one major Homeric characters in turn.
Now I've owned up before, my knowledge of myth remains woeful no matter how much attention I give it. I suspect it's one of those things that should be introduced early in a reading life because surely it's the foundation of all storytelling?
Well I was too busy with Enid Blyton so n'er a myth did I meet for many a long year.
Karen Armstrong's A Short History of Myth plus the ensuing Canongate Myth series have helped enormously and now I think I might repair to Troy by Adele Geras before I graduate to Alessandro's version.
God's Spy by Juan Gomez-Jurado looks nicely Papal and Vatican-ish with a cold-blooded psychopathic serial killer mixed in.First line looks promising
"Father Selznick awoke in the middle of the night to find a fish knife pressed against his throat".
There's also some destroying of eyes and chopping off of hands which always bodes well I find.Quite a few recent reads have chopped off eyelids which seems a bit extreme I must say.That was probably Hospital by Toby Litt, not much stayed attached in that book.
Zed Books have sent me a copy of Afghan Women by Elaheh Rostami-Povey to complement my Islamic reading project coming up in the autumn.This will be a completely new trail for me and I'm looking forward to it.
Hybrids by David Thorpe was the winner of a Children's Book Writing competition run by Harper Collins in conjunction with Saga Magazine.The book has been tried and tested in the playground and found to be a great way of controlling the children at break time who wanted to do nothing other than listen to another instalment.We're talking about hysteria gripping the nation as a new virus which causes sufferers to merge with items of technology starts to spread.Looking forward to this one.
Finally David Baldacci is a name I saw all over Rhapsody of the Seas; up on Deck 8, down on Deck 5, by the pool, in the Schooner Bar, around the Windjammer Cafe, probably up on the bridge, everyone was reading a David Baldacci, so I was delighted to find a copy of The Collectors waiting for me when I arrived home. The heist of the century and the murky worlds of gambling, politics and espionage await.

The Book Quiz

Thanks to Eve's Alexandria I've just done The Book Quiz and look look look who I am!

I'd have to argue with one or two of the conclusions because you all know I get along with the Tinker famously (and with my mum when she was alive) and I think I'm slightly emotionally stronger than cottage cheese but yes I do spell my name with an "e" and I do say so.

If you trot off and do yours come back and tell us in the comments just who you are.

You're Anne of Green Gables!
by L.M. Montgomery
Bright, chipper, vivid, but with the emotional fortitude of cottage cheese, you make quite an impression on everyone you meet. You're impulsive, rash, honest, and probably don't have a great relationship with your parents. People hurt your feelings constantly, but your brazen honestly doesn't exactly treat others with kid gloves. Ultimately, though, you win the hearts and minds of everyone that matters. You spell your name with an E and you want everyone to know about it.
Take the Book Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.

Jamaica with Jean Rhys

Jamaica, first port of call after two days of blissful sailing down the Gulf of Mexico.
Yes, I was a tourist and I had to remain one for this trip ashore because for Jamaica we had been given dire warnings about going anywhere other than on a guided tour.
This is completely not what Bookhound and I do.
We do off the beaten track exploring but as I was effectively on my own for this excursion I decided to be sensible.
The bit of the country that I saw presented acutely visible contrasts between the "haves" and their fantastic villas all shuttered and locked behind security gates and the "have-nots" living up in the  mountains in shanties built with a few planks and some tarpaulins.
I'm not sure what had possessed me but I had booked to gorge walk the Mayfield Falls.
Can you believe that?
High up in the mountains I would be climbing UP a series of rocky fast-flowing waterfalls and swimming in the deep pools inbetween.The Kayaker does this all the time so I was probably just trying to prove a point.
Silly me.
As we drove for almost two hours up into the mountains through lush green vegetation along a narrow, single track, steep and very winding road it actually felt like Devon with bananas.
We are doing lush vegetation of our own this summer with all the rain we've been having; our single track lane is closing over as the hedges grow and we are starting to hack our way to the front door.
Thankfully there is no known photographic evidence of me "doing" the Mayfield Falls and should any see the light of day I'll have to pay whatever you ask.
It was hilarious and ungainly in the extreme but thanks to my Crocs I survived.I kept forgetting that the giant Texan I was following was truly about seven feet tall so pools where the water came up to his waist had me suddenly disappearing from sight up to my neck.
The big difference to Devon of course the sweltering heat and I've never been so glad to plunge into cold water in all my life and stay there.
It's not that long since I read Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys and her descriptions all came to mind.

"I went very early to the bathing pool and stayed there for hours, unwilling to leave the river, the trees shading it...it was a beautiful place - wild, untouched.."

Well the Mayfield Falls is hardly untouched but it is relatively unspoilt given the number of people who visit. Perhaps that's sad, but the tourist income must contribute vast amounts to the local economy.
That aside I never have a problem imagining a place devoid of people and this must have been exactly what Jean Rhys was describing.

"There are two pools, one we call the champagne pool because it has a waterfall, not a big one you understand, but it's good to feel it on your shoulders"

Actually it was heavenly and of course I came home with some of this.

Beating the Retreat

It was quite a dash after work but we made it over to Exmouth one evening this week to watch the Tinker escort the colours at the annual Royal Marines Beating the Retreat on the sea front.We even squeezed in fish (sausage for me, hate fish) and chips beforehand because how can you go the seaside and not?
If like me you didn't really know what Beating the Retreat meant then look no further, all is explained here
Traditionally played at sunset to recall troops from the battlefield at the end of a day's hostilities and still a wonderful bit of ceremonial that never fails to send shivers down my spine.
The Royal Marines Band from nearby Lympstone on top form and looking top notch in full regalia and the Tinker of course looking resplendent in medals and white beret. I managed a close-up of his chest, the jacket has had to be reinforced to cope with that lot.
Lots of good marching music, Corps of Drums precision stuff and then that moment right at the end when the buglers step forward and play Sunset.
All very shivery and tear-jerking as the sun set over a very wintery looking Exe Estuary.

Amazon rankings

The last thing in the world I could ever pretend to understand or know the first thing about are book sales figures especially when they appear as Amazon sales rankings. But I hear out and about and lately from an article in the review supplements last weekend, that Amazon rankings are watched closely on an hourly basis by many.
I have basically spent a lifetime ignoring them let alone being so presumptious as to think that perhaps anything I may write about here could have a positive and measurable impact on sales.
Recently it suddenly dawned on me that I do have an impact on sales because Legend Press told me so.They identified an upsurge in sales of Salt and Honey by Candi Miller after I had written a review of it here.
This week I decided on the spur of the moment to conduct a highly technical and well-audited bit of an experiment of my own.
Managers love "conducting an audit" in the NHS, any excuse and they'll audit you, so it's rare for me even to use the word let alone conduct one of my own.
Brings me out in a rash.
I wrote about a book that I suspect is quite obscure and lesser known but I agree with Ernest Hecht of Souvenir Press certainly deserves a wider audience; The Marvellous Adventure of Cabeza de Vaca by Haniel Long came and went on Tuesday and didn't generate that much debate.
Amazon sales ranking the night before 267,938.
I then forgot all about my highly technical and well-audited bit of an experiment until last night when I suddenly remembered and went back in to check, Amazon sales ranking now 46,098.
I have no idea how the rankings are calculated or what this hike of 218,840 places actually represents in solid book sale figures but it would be nice if it was half a dozen or so.
Now I suspect this is all more likely to be down to some great huge double page spread in a review supplement somewhere rather than a bookaholic in Devon but it does confirm for me the importance of honesty and integrity in the world of book reviewing per se and something which I think has become an unwritten code amongst us all here in LitBlog world.
Free books are lovely but as I emphasise time and again, they will only ever make it on here if I can put my hand on my heart and say I'd have paid the going rate for this one and would be happy to suggest that other readers might want to do the same or kill for it at the library.
The power of the masses to have their say still invokes heated debate all over the place.
The publisher, whose bi-monthly website letter ( a blog minus the comments by any other name ) faux pas about "yammering bloggers" caused the most unearthly amount of hurt and offence and hasty re-editing, is now drawing our attention to and recommending a book that a newspaper reviewer suggests
" is a shrewdly argued jeremiad against the digerati effort to dethrone cultural and political gatekeepers and replace experts with the wisdom of the crowd.”
I can hardly bear to assist sales by telling you the name of the book but take a look here and see what the "wisdom of the crowd" makes of it.
Nowadays I just smile inwardly and carry on regardless and if you want to read a great book that I think brilliantly examines, exposes and deflates literary posturing then look no further than The Intellectuals and The Masses : Pride and Prejudice among the Literary Intelligentsia 1880-1939 by Professor John Carey.
As we says down y'ere in Devon, us masses knows what us likes and all we does is tell it like it is, which for most if us is exactly what we want to know.

PS In response to those who have inquired, and for anyone who may have thought my blog name was in any way connected to said publisher, please be assured that of course I just stuck a pin in the Dulux colour chart, I was but a stab away from being BananaYellowReader.

Strange sighting

Strange events in the world of nature and climate this year in the UK and I feel it may all be my fault.
Last year was so sweltering that over the winter we installed some lovely blinds in the Book Room to keep the room cooler and the sun off all the books and my desk.
Huh.
Today Devon is getting the latest wave of rain and I only hope we soak up the worst before this lot hits Gloucestershire. We can take up a bit of slack here having endured nothing like the torrents up country.
Just day after day of above average but manageable rainfall for us so far, but of course always "far too much" or "not quite enough" or  "the wrong sort" for the salmon fisherman in the house (they are never satisfied are they?) He did catch a 14lb specimen yesterday though, so a glimmer of joy.
But here's a strange sight for you; Rocky Five Bellies in winter pose, stretched out in front of the Aga this morning, which is still switched on at the end of July when normally it would have been off for about eight weeks.He's been in a big fight again and we are all trying to avoid eye contact with him because sooner or later someone is going to have to take him to the vets and as you can see there is no basket big enough or strong enough and he knows it...oh cat heal thyself...please.

When the Astors Owned New York

When the Astors Owned New York : Blue Bloods and Grand Hotels in a Gilded Age by Justin Kaplan, the airport find that saw me home and quite appropriate after my luxurious Titanic top deck without the sinking experience. 
The Titanic link quite relevant because John Jacob Astor IV not quite so lucky as me and took that fateful voyage in April 1912. The story goes that JJ helped his wife into her life jacket, at which point she presumably also had the same trouble as me and couldn't see where she was going so he led her to a lifeboat and waved her off saying "I'll see you in the morning".
Good chap abided by the women-and-children-first law of the sea and went off to play a game of cards while the ship's owner jumped into the first available lifeboat (just let him try that in my lifeboat) Astor's body was eventually found floating erect in his lifebelt with a soggy $2500 dollars in his pocket.
It is amazing to consider the wealth that must have changed hands after the sinking of the Titanic because so many others on board had a bob or two to their name, Benjamin Guggenheim, Isidor Strauss the owner of Macy's store, rare book collector Henry Elkins Widener. Astor himself was thought to be worth about $150 million (translates to $2.4 billion now)
Cousins and enemies John Jacob Astor and William Waldorf Astor enjoying the massive private fortunes that enabled them to create the golden age of the hotel and accommodate the likes of Henry James in the process.The hotel became a great source for fiction and many of the writers of the day used it accordingly including Edith Wharton (think House of Mirth and Lily Bart ) Theodore Dreiser (Sister Carrie) Vicki Baum (Grand Hotel).
This is truly high society and wealth of unimaginable proportions and Justin Kaplan has written the most fascinating of books showing just how they spent it and ultimately how very little pleasure and joy it seemed to bring them.
The Waldorf-Astoria on Fifth Avenue "the epitome of fin-de-siecle luxury...a thousand guest rooms and half a hundred public rooms". Opened in 1897, demolished in 1929 and replaced by The Empire State building.
I knew that the Astor family have local connections to us here in Plymouth, Nancy Astor (daughter-in-law) MP for Plymouth and the first woman MP to sit in the House of Commons back in 1919.Their benevolence and philanthropy such that the name Astor still crops up around the city.
I was unaware how Nancy had arrived and that she had married into the William Waldorf-Astors who had decamped to England buying up Cliveden in Berkshire and Hever Castle in Kent and also the Pall Mall Gazette "written by gentlemen for gentlemen".
Page after page of fascinating reading in this book and factual revelations that filled in quite a few gaps for me, a really good read and some great photographs including a classic painting of Caroline, Mrs William Astor looking, with apologies to living relatives who may stop by here, a bit like she's just caught a whiff of something dead and decaying.

The Seventh Gate, mountains, some soup and a Grand Prix

Some books look so attractive on the shelf that occasionally a bizarre reverse psychology comes into play and I refuse to succumb, even given a persuasive blurb. This will all sound very confusing to those who know me as Mrs Easily-Persuaded-By-The-Cover but something makes me dig my heels in and I think no it can't  possibly look that good and be a good read into the bargain.
So even with a lovely dust-jacket concealing an even lovelier paperback cover I have replaced The Seventh Gate by Richard Zimler on many many occasions; even finding it in our local bijou W.H.Smith's wasn't enough to convince me.
I'm sure I've told you before, our local WHS is very bijou if not bijouette and regularly undergoes complete make-overs.I rarely, if ever buy books in there.
Recently someone has obviously been in to inspect and pointed out that there was a vast amount of high air space going to waste, consequently you suddenly needed crampons and ropes to reach the top shelves.
You see the staff permanently wandering round in pairs, roped up and  those little chalk bags to hand as they work out who's going to do the lead climb, clutching store plans from head office.
It's a full time job in WHS I reckon.
To be honest you'd be lucky to find anything on the shelves, it's all on the floor or being wheeled to its next destination.
All this is regularly put to the test by a very fiesty, electric wheelchair-bound stalwart of the town.
We're not talking ordinary electric wheelchair.This one is souped up with a turbo-charged engine, racing wheels, spoilers, deluxe fixtures and fittings on all sides, panniers, kitchen sinks you name it, so it's a spectator sport to be in WHS on the day that they assume pole position at the door, wait for the three lights to go green and proceed to test access for the disabled.
Card displays now the height of Everest tumble down in the slipstream and frantic shop assistants look on helplessly.Perhaps this is why the books have all been moved from front of store to rear of store and the first target, as our very own Sterling Moss drives in, is now notepads and pencils, so there is early but  inexpensive collateral damage.
The book selection is never quite up to the standard of Daunts so to find The Seventh Gate in there was quite a surprise but still I didn't fall for it. That book finally ambushed me in the Marylebone High Street Oxfam shop and of course halfway through now I'm kicking myself for waiting so long to buy it.
If you enjoyed The Book Thief by Markus Zusak then you may possibly see vague similarities with this one, pre-war Berlin through the all-seeing eyes of teenagers.
That's the only similarity now I come to think of it, so perhaps it's a bit more like Stones From the River by Ursula Hegi because there are a few dwarves in it, but then that's the only similarity there too.
No, it's a unique book and if you love an involving saga of wartime Jewish reading offering complete immersion in a lovely broth of plot and character with a flowing narrative thickened with a mix of history and intrigue then look no further.
I'm 200 pages in and slurping up every word (still time for it to go all consomme on me, we'll see) and am bracing myself for the Nazi backlash but am completely besotted with the look and feel of the book which all tells me I really should just follow my instincts in the first place and that would have spared you this entire post and its potage of mixed metaphors.

A funny thing happened yesterday...

Offspringette emerged boggle-eyed from reading HP & the Deathly Hallows in a day and looked perplexed and vexed in equal measure,
"Oh dearest child what ails thee?" said I
"But Mama, the end, it maketh not sense"
"But my sweet of course it does... this happens... then this... followed by that"
"But no Mama, you are wrong, you didn't read the whole book you cheated you can't possibly know, I have read all *%$"£^* seven of them and I'm telling you it doesn't make sense"
"My child look again, I am most certain that these things came to pass"
INTERLUDE OF TEN MINUTES
After however many years of following the boy wizard and his chums, queuing for the book at midnight, watching the films and living for that final moment in the whole saga, THE END, how disappointing then to discover that the next to last few pages have stuck together and one has failed to read them.

The Marvellous Adventure of Cabeza de Vaca

I always feel it is my good fortune to find myself reading books that allow some meandering off down the trail away from my normal route, new thoughts, new ideas and waiting for me when I returned from holiday was a very brief e mail from Souvenir Press asking if I would be interested in reading some of their list.
Googled as usual and not a lot came to light, so with little idea about their list I said yes please.
One day this is going to get me into serious trouble and a stack of complete unsuitables will appear on the doorstep, but by return I had a letter of introduction, a catalogue and a neat little book to get me started.
The Souvenir Press list by the way is as eclectic and varied as you could ever wish to find.
Ernest Hecht has run it for fifty-six years, remained independent and continues to come up with fantastic titles.
He's also a football fanatic of which I approve wholeheartedly but an Arsenal fan, which isn't his fault.
The Marvellous Adventure of Cabeza de Vaca by Haniel Long couldn't have come at a better time.
It's not often I set foot in the land of the conquistadores but I just had, however briefly and so if nothing else I knew about the scorching heat though I did get slightly more to eat than poor old Cabeza.
Haniel Long, a poet born in Myanmar in 1888, died in Santa Fe in 1956 and this novella is his best known work. Likened both to Khalil Gibran's The Prophet and Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince (there's a book I've yet to read) it is a tiny gem of a book.
Haniel Long takes the true story of a group of Spanish soldiers washed ashore in the Gulf of Mexico, it is thought near Galveston, from where they spent eight years travelling across North America finding their way home. What they endured defies belief but what they learnt about themselves and their fellow man was worth any amount of Inca gold.
This edition has an introduction by Haniel Long who has garnished this story with his own eloquent narrative that seeps around you and into every pore.It's the most humbling of reads

"Possibly the capacity to survive depends on courage of spirit to accept one's fate"

Translated for me that means simplistically, you can't change what has happened so get on with it, and I spend a great deal of time at the day job explaining that to people in the nicest possible way. Often couching it very gently but once you have your head around that premise you can perhaps move on rather than dwell.
Also a preface by Henry Miller full of bright shining insights that bring the narrative alive for a 21st century reader.
For him Cabeza de Vaca's central message was his transformation from ruthless warrior to idealist

" I shall teach the world how to conquer by gentleness, not by slaughter"

Reduced to the barest existence, hardships that defy belief, a diet of powdered straw at best - colleagues at worst (or perhaps that should be the other way round?) and inexorably separated from "the thoughts that clothe the soul of the European", Cabeza de Vaca is stripped and reclothed eloquently at the pen of Haniel Long into a man who sees that to relinquish individual responsibility is to lose one's humanity

"The power of maintaining life in others lives within each of us, and from each of us does it recede when unused"

The novella itself the most powerfully condensed amount of humility and wisdom you are ever likely to find crammed into a mere thirty-nine pages and having read it twice I know I'll read it again.
Looking forward to more Souvenir Press titles if Mr Hecht forgives that cheap Arsenal jibe.

A Lesson Before Dying

The one and only read of the holiday A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J.Gaines and hardly light and joyously uplifting, in fact quite the opposite but perhaps it's good to read books like this in this environment. Some amelioration of the traumas and much easier to identify the positives and hints of redemption as the sun shone, had I read it in the relentless English rainy season I'd have probably wanted to plug myself in and throw the switch.
Ernest J.Gaines born on a plantation in Louisiana in 1933 and now writer-in-residence at the University of Southwestern Louisiana in Lafayette.
This a death row - dead man walking book of the gentle variety. Each day I'd manage a chapter that took Jefferson nearer and nearer to the electric chair.
Set in the 1940's in a small Louisiana community, a black worker Jefferson has been in the wrong place at the wrong time and finds himself convicted of robbery and murder. Most telling in the scheme of things are his defence lawyer's early attempts to plead with the jury.
"Do you see a man here?...do you see a modicum of intelligence?...anyone here who could plan anything? No gentleman this skull holds no plans.What you see here is a thing that acts on command..a thing to load your bales of cotton, to chop your wood...you do not see anything capable of planning a robbery or a murder...I would just as soon put a hog in the electric chair as this"
Reading that again and I'm reeling.
Branded a hog, Jefferson becomes one in his cell and it is local teacher Grant who is asked to go in, talk to Jefferson and help him to die like a man.Eventually Jefferson writes a semi-literate but deeply moving diary and everyone but everyone learns lessons about themselves and life in the process.I suspect I would be even more affected by this book were I to read it again.

"sun goin down an i kno this the las one im gon ever see but im gon see one mo sunrise cause i aint gon sleep tonite im gon sleep a long time after tomoro"

Ernest Gaines nurtures and shapes a deep sense of place and people in his writing and much of the racial injustice handled as an aside rather than an in-your-face attempt to shock, far more subtle as I deduced for myself and then just wilted at the sheer awfulness of it all. Deeply perceptive but economical insight into the minds and lives of the main players, often one sentence enough to tell me all I needed to emerge armed with the feeling that I knew many of them well and would remember them.
Brilliant less-is-more writing.
Thankfully we don't witness Jefferson's demise but we do walk around Bayonne with all the inhabitants as it's happening and that is as profoundly a real reading experience as if you were watching, especially if you've watched The Green Mile.
Not a gruesome book by any means but plenty to think about for long afterwards and a writer I shall return to.

Guess what happens in the end...

I've done a TERRIBLE thing.
The book was just sitting there unopened on the table all day.
Glowering at me menacingly with a rather scary looking Harry, Ron and Hermione (hope you all say this like me, Hermy-one) flying towards me off the cover.
By midnight I'd had enough... flicked nonchalently through a few pages, furtively looked around and over my shoulder, nobody watching...
so I picked it up and read the end.

U.S.book buying confessions

Beyond Galveston, bookshops were sparse on my travels I must admit but I did find one on Grand Cayman which held the joy of a couple more titles by Ernest J.Gaines, Of Love and Dust and In My Father's House both of which look eminently readable.Jonathan Yardley of Washington Post to the rescue "Gaines knows how to tell a story...with humour, a strong sense of drama and a compassionate understanding of people who find themselves in opposing posotions".Indeed he does and the fairly langorous Deep South pace of these may well be just the ticket as life speeds up again here.
Never one to shirk a Borders opportunity, and with four hours to kill at George Bush International Airport Houston...I wonder if we may start honouring our premiers in this way here in the UK, Tony Blair International? Nah, let's stick with Liverpool John Lennon.It was a long haul across to Terminal E but all worth it to breath in the air of U.S. bookshelves and a browse through some new titles.Plus fascinating to see how the U.S.market publishes some of our U.K. authors and as always I have to say I much prefer a U.S. paperback edition to a U.K.one.Floppy and friendly and stay open at the page with no spine cracking necessary.
I went round the shelves four times and also stopped to look at the Sony e readers.
Though I'm a confirmed book in the hand person I'm not ruling these out and they do look like a neat way to carry eighty books around with you.Page sized screen with a nice choice of leather holders.I've done all the reading for the Long Barn First Novel Prize judging this year on my laptop and by the end I was getting quite used to it.
New technology, I didn't even ask the price or the book downloading availability but it's all bound to shake down into something accessible eventually and I'll probably go there.
I was pleased to see another Per Petterson on the shelves In the Wake. Apparently this one will "hold me in its hypnotic thrall" and I believe it will. Out Stealing Horses had me entranced, there is something to Per Petterson's writing and translation by Anne Born that creates a special atmosphere around you as you read.
The Last Nightingale by Anthony Flacco, a thriller set in the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake was bought on blurb and cover alone and would have been my plane home reading had it not been for the subtle allure of When the Astors Owned New York: Blue Bloods and Grand Hotels in a Gilded Age by Justin Kaplan.
Having just spent a week being waited on hand and foot in the most opulent of surroundings it seemed fitting to see how the idle rich managed it on a daily basis a century ago.This was sufficiently good to keep me reading on long into the night (or was it day?) and thus forgetting that it is nigh on impossible to sleep comfortably on a plane.

News Flash:Stonewylde usurps Potter

Just thought I'd buck the national obsession and tell you that I am not reading Harry Potter today because just yesterday I remembered that actually I'd run out of HP steam on number five (Goblets?) and never even bought number six ( Half Blood?) so I'm way behind with Potterdom and may be some time catching up.In the end there may be no point because I'm sure all beans will be well and truly spilt before the end of the day.
However I did receive my copy from Bookhound who was delighted to find it in Morrison's for a whopping £4.99.
Meanwhile a book arrived this morning from Kit Berry who contacted me earlier this week to ask if I'd be interested in reading the first in her Stonewylde series.
Yes says I because by chance I had spotted it in Waterstone's just this week.This poor book must have travelled through the postal system all on its own hustling and bustling along with millions of Potters to get to me so the least I could do was open Magus of Stonewylde and read...and read...and read and now I'm off to read a bit more.
Thanks Kit and how I love the mere name of Moongazy Publishing all fuels my fascination for moon-gazing hares, so here's one of my favourites and before anyone asks you can buy these tiles here and they must have sold loads via this blog.

Piatkus & Love is a Mix Tape

I've had a leisurely time catching up with my post and a big thankyou to everyone who has sent me books recently.
So many books to write about but a big parcel from Piatkus has kept me busy and some books nicely out of the ordinary for me.
A revelatory book Richi$tan by Robert Frank,delineates the new wealth of the dot.com billionaires and how the nouveau rich have made and spent their millions.I read about half of this which was enough to reveal that the money rarely brings happiness and it would seem butler-ing would be a good career move.They can't get enough butlers and once you've been through butler school you're made.
Bit like Norland Nannies I suppose. In the end I was completely sated by the wealth and the sheer extravagence, one can only own so many private jets.
A good autobiography, One Train Later by Andy Summers which all lovers of The Police (the band not the force) should head for. I've dipped into this and it's well written with hints of humility and self-deprecation that we don't often expect from the world of rock 'n roll.
One book in particular that will appeal to all rock music lovers out there Love is a Mix Tape : A memoir by Rob Sheffield.
"The times you lived through, the people you shared those times with - nothing brings it all to life like an old mix tape..."
Mix tapes being those compilations of favourite and meaningful songs of the moment that we all used to spend hours over just to get what now takes about ten seconds with an iPod.
We had a Philips reel-to-reel tape recorder that did valiant service through the 60's and Alan Freeman's Sunday night Pick of the Pops.You'd sit in hushed silence while the music recorded, go ssshhh when anyone walked in the room and press the buttons fast to avoid Al's voice overs, waiting with bated breath to hear what was Number One.
This used to be the moment of the week, there was no other way to find out.
Once Sing Something Simple came on my brother and I would be off with our treasured recordings to try and copy out the words (lot of stop-start-rewind) then perform our weekly show. We invented karaoke.
We'd mime to all the songs. I got all the duff parts but was allowed to be the girl drummer in The Honeycombs and was also allowed to do that harmony part in The Fortunes song, You've Got Your Troubles...If I said to you my friend that I ain't got nobody but you...I did of course make Sandi Shaw and Mary Hopkin my own.
Rob Sheffield is a rock pop and culture critic for Rolling Stone magazine and this book is his musical journey through his life and the tragic sudden death of his young wife Renee in 1997.
Hands up, Rob and I have slightly differing musical taste barring the fact that he also revered Micky Dolenz as his favourite Monkee.
Mix-tape compilation lists appear at the start of each chapter much as Nick Hornby gives us books in The Polysyllabic Spree and someone somewhere has to help the likes of me out and put these together as an MP3 download to accompany the book because I could manage that and then I'd know what or who are Pavement and Tindersticks. Meanwhile I was relieved to find the likes of Peter Green, Leonard Cohen, Van Morrison and plenty of others in there I knew.
I was quite taken with the compilation entitled Jumping Sylvia Plath it's a gas gas gas.Sorry about that.
This was a good read, I settled down to it over an evening and heartily agree it is a story about "lost love and music's ability to guide us through the most important moments of our lives".Music sees Rob through his grief over Renee's death and beyond to a life afterwards, his memories of Renee are a wonderful tribute to a girl who was clearly so full of life and love.
I'm not sure the book needs to be likened to "the tragic punch of Dave Eggers", that could have killed it for me, but it is a great mix of joy and sadness all permeated through one man's lifelong love of music and a must for all you pop pickers out there.
Camper Van Beethoven? Are they any good?
Would I like Psychedelic Furs?
What about Rollerskate Skinny? Should I try some?

A muggy-muggled London day

Not wishing to let grass grow under feet it was off to London for the day yesterday and a very smart lunch at La Caprice which was very fine and dandy. I hid my flip flop clad feet under the table but it was that or bare feet. Funny how loath you are to wear shoes again after a week or two of flip flopping.
For research purposes I did my usual round of bookshops.
It goes like this
Daunt's in Marylebone High Street which I rate among my favourites.
Huge range of books you just don't see down West and all very tempting but I resisted because I have stacks here to read at the moment.I love to wander around the country by country shelves, such a great way of helping me to travel by armchair and I'm really spoilt for choice about where to go next.
Three doors along from Daunt's is possibly one of the best Oxfam bookshops in London. Shelves just bulging with new unread proof copies.
I suppose publishers know that this is where they end up and if Oxfam benefit that's all to the good, but they could probably just give Oxfam the money and send the books out to people who would read them, write about them and pass them on to others who would do the same, and we all know where to find those!
Many books still with letters of introduction and publicity blurb inside and this is where I came unstuck and transformed myself into a beast of burden for the rest of the day.
Within seconds I'd found two little Pushkin Press books that I'd been wanting, Count D'Orgel by Raymond Radiguet who you may recall I read and loved on here a few weeks ago. This his only other published novel. Also The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant and The Pearls by Isak Dinesen.
I'd actually rather cheekily asked for a copy of Jane Feaver's book According to Ruth from the publisher ages ago but received no reply so I was pleased to find a new, unread copy and just to show there are no hard feelings I'll blog about it soon.
Cornflower placed Mister Pip  by Lloyd Jones into my consciousness reinforcing frequent sightings of it in the U.S. so a hardback copy of that with publicity also mine.
I have picked up and put back The Seventh Gate by Richard Zimler countless times recently so a new copy at half price seemed like a good idea.1930's Jewish Berlin and ancient secrets all made for a great first fifty pages on the train home so this one looks promising.
Lastly a copy of Seizure by Erica Wagner and I have read good reviews on this one.
Erica Wagner has pride of place on my Ted & Sylvia shelf with her excellent commentary on Birthday Letters, Ted Hughes final collection of poetry (besides Howls and Whispers that is).Ariel's Gift recreates and explains the journey that Ted Hughes made with these poems and it makes an excellent companion read to the poetry.I'm very sniffy about all Ted & Sylvia literary outpourings.I have just about everything ever published and some of it makes me want to scream.
I'm reminding myself that I'm due a return visit to the world according to Ted but meanwhile I'm looking forward to what looks like Erica Wagner's first novel.
After lunch there's just time to wander into Waterstone's in Piccadilly and trawl around what's new and do my regular hygeine inspection of the facilities.You may recall I gave them a nil rating on a previous visit but this time I sense an improvement, less evidence of Clostridium Difficile and I sensed they may have taken steps to eradicate the Ebola Virus that looked rife last time round.
To get to the door of the shop was the thing because the Harry Potter queues had started and there were Harrys, Snapes, Dumbledores and heaven knows what else for this muggle to wade through.
I'm still undecided about whether to dash off at midnight for my copy or whether dovegreyreader will be an HP-free zone.
It does feel like a moment in publishing history though so I suppose I should be there.

Galveston, oh Galveston

Houston to Galveston was done by bus and it was no surprise, given the Tinker's travelling track record, that the clutch went on the bus halfway there and we rolled gearless into a shopping centre car park.
Sadly not long enough for me to get to Barnes & Noble before the rescue bus arrived.
I realise this post will not be of any interest to any Galvestonians who might visit here but bear with me because you have the honour of being the first and only place that dovegreyreader has visited in the whole of the U.S.ever. I will be back to do the rest of course but as bookhound is a non-flyer it will be on one of those solo travelling treats that we have agreed I am going to introduce for myself on an annual basis with his blessing.
Plenty of  U.S.cities that would keep me occupied for four or five day hops.
Galveston full of character and there was me thinking these trolley rails were defunct and nicely historical as I stood (probably illegally) in the middle of the road taking a picture

only to find this trundling right up behind me.

I don't have an architectural clue about style or form but the buildings were magnifique and all that combined with the hot hot weather was enough to tell me I was certainly not in Devon, I was on holiday.
This is always a very good moment when it happens and one to savour so thankyou Galveston.

Books on the ocean wave

So what about the books I took with me?
Carefully chosen, nay anguished over in the build up because I panic if I go too far with less than four books with me let alone half way around the world.
I know airports sell books but what if nothing leapt off the shelf at me? Fat chance of that in any bookshop actually.
I had spent ages cogitating over what to read as I travelled and in the end two books got me most of the way across the Atlantic via Greenland, Labrador, Canada, Detroit and on to Houston.
This, by the way, seemed like a very long way round; had it been a London taxi I'd have been asking questions.
Cry of the Justice Bird by Jon Haylett alternating with The Book of Names by Jill Gregory & Karen Tintori did me proud.
Then I arrived, the heat and the humidity hit me like a sack of spuds, my hair frizzed and suddenly holiday mode kicked in.Keeping my eyes open became a big challenge and instantly I wanted to read something local.Having boarded the ship at Galveston there was time to unboard it and walk into Galveston before we sailed, humming the song of course.
"Galveston, oh Galveston, I still hear your sea winds blowin'..." then I couldn't remember any more words so that had to do.
This was really my one and only foray onto US soil for the whole trip and so I was lapping up the place, shopping already and of course looking for a bookshop and luckily I found two.
The first just second hand books and this was where I picked up twenty books, regretfully put eighteen back but came away with a copy of Eudora Welty's Losing Battles plus an autobiography by Eudora Welty One Writer's Beginnings. Years and years ago I saw a Melvyn Bragg South Bank Show on Eudora Welty, born in Jackson, Mississippi (Yeah I'm goin' to Jackson, isn't that another song?) and thanks to Bluestalking Reader I read The Ponder Heart last year and loved it, so more Eudora on the agenda for me.
Then I strolled around the corner and found a cool haven in the Galveston Bookshop because by this time frizzed hair had gone to lank and I was wilting just a little and sailing time was drawing near, and which way was the ship?
As I perused, strangely picking up and putting down the very same book on the Galveston hurricane that Susan Hill has mentioned over on her blog this week, I came across a pile of books on the counter.The bookseller was a man of few words, in fact the fewest words I met on my whole trip because as of one the American people were polite, warm and friendly and always happy to chat.
"Is this one good?" says I, possibly asking the obvious as it was clearly labelled Bookseller's Pick of the Week.
"Pardon" he said, obviously finding my English accent a bit of a shock on a sleepy Galveston Sunday afternoon.We keep our vowels tightly reined in I now see in comparison to the Texan accent and our table companions at dinner eventually sent us off fluent in exchange for some cockney rhyming slang. Apples and pears (= stairs) will be all over San Antonio by now.
"This one, is it good?" I annunciated clearly
"Yeyes" he replied.
I was hoping for a bit more background but it was probably his most stupid question of the day so I bought it anyway and it turned out to be the book of the holiday and a strange and unexpected choice and subject matter it was too, A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines.More on that soon.
And what about Possession by A.S.Byatt which had me hooked before I left? Well I can tell you it just didn't work in the Caribbean at all.

Infrequent flyer moments

That's it, a good night's sleep and my clock is all sorted thanks to advice from the Octogenarians who insist that jet lag is a modern invention just so that people can show off that they've been on holiday.Never had it in their day.
Apologies to all and sundry for the next few days, a few bookish posts but a few travel ones thrown in and apologies now to frequent flyers for what follows, this will be dead boring but as an infrequent flyer I never cease to be over-awed by the view from a plane.
Getting to Galveston and our waiting ship was a mighty trek fraught with the sort of things that always seem to stalk the Tinker on his travels so I should have guessed that getting seated and settled on the plane at Heathrow was no guarantee that it would ever take off.
I'm always slightly phased by the fact that planes look so sturdy from afar but get close up and personal and there is really nothing to the wing of a plane, sort of wafer thin and all flimsy and wobbly (don't tell bookhound, he's a confirmed non-flyer) Years ago my flatmates and I bought a package holiday to what was then Yugoslavia for £48 all in. We flew with Court Line; from a distance the planes were pink, close up you could see the words Royal Mail underneath the paint, very disconcerting.
Back to Heathrow and I was in two minds about the announcement from the pilot that his stabilisers were faulty.
Personally I'd have been happier if he'd been able to fly without the assistance of trainer wheels but perhaps it was all for the best to own up to the problem whilst on the ground.Good call I'd say.
Anyway, it was everyone off the plane and back into departures while they found another 767.
Having found another one and got everyone back on board we then had the missing passenger scenario. That of course means missing passenger's luggage must be located and removed so by this time Heathrow was seriously losing any attraction it might have had.
I do however love that moment at the top of the runway just before take off when the engines rev up and this time it was a clear day and I had a perfect view of Windsor Castle, a bit of the River Thames and probably Pack Mansions as we gained height and my stomach lurched back into place.

It was only when we reached the U.S. that it occurred to me how neat and tidy America looks from the air compared with the U.K. which is a complete disorganised higgledy-piggledy patchwork hotch-potch.
I think this might be somewhere over Oxfordshire, messy messy place.

But just look how immaculate if a bit hazy Ohio (I think) is from 33,000 feet.

Best of all flying down from Detroit to Houston in the late afternoon were the most amazing and impressive views of the Mississippi River and this of course is finally where A Level Geography at last comes in handy, my it's been a long wait.Yes I spotted all the ox-bow lakes, Miss Cassell would have been astounded.

And if I don't win the travel section of the photography cup at the village show this year I will indeed be very upset, I have to be able to beat "A view of Polzeath Beach" with something from this trip surely?

Back Home

So what's been going on here then?
Cats on sofas!!!!
I've just staggered in the door back here in Devon and it seems not five minutes (but in fact it's possibly about 36 hours though I'm in a complete state of confusion about days and times), since we were caught in the most torrential of storms on the pier at Galveston as we disembarked from Rhapsody of the Seas.
Here's sunrise on Saturday crossing the Gulf of Mexico.

I have so much to tell y'all not least that I'm now fluent in Texan.I've just spent a week with 1800 of them and a funnier, more polite and entertaining crowd you just couldn't wish to meet.I almost know all the words to Deep in the Heart of Texas too and I certainly know the right place to clap four times.
I've also had the most fantastic time visiting Galveston, Montego Bay, Grand Caiman and Mexico.
Life on board ship is something else and already I'm struggling because I haven't eaten anything for at least twenty minutes.I'm mildly tanned based on being of that light English complexion that would end up in intensive care without lashings of Factor Thirty but the Caribbean was everything and more, the Gulf of Mexico just awesome and I only read ONE book, can you believe it?
Just couldn't take my eyes off the sea or failing that the backs of my eyelids.
I did buy a few books though so expect confessions any day.
I must say a big thankyou to Offspringette who has kindly blog-sat for me very capably and is now dancing round in her very dazzling Caribbean trousers and her Bob Marley bandana.
More soon and of course pictures to bore the pants off y'all but this sight is currently still imprinted on my mind; the most spectacular sunset last night as we flew over Detroit.

Offspringette Over and Out.

For my last post, I thought I would return to a book which I procured on my travels in Australia. That trip was a very intense time and to be honest, it was the shopping that got me through sometimes. And so it was at the end, with a day to go, I took a little swish round downtown Sydney and stumbled upon quite possibly one of the most interesting bookstores I've ever been in: Books Kinokuniya

I was looking for a book which firstly, my mother wouldn't have read, and secondly, would be a nice reminder of Australia to me as I passed by it on the bookshelf. I struggled between a book of Australian Short Stories, and this one:

Murray Bail's 'Eucalyptus' is one of the finest love stories I've had the pleasure to read. DGR has already reviewed it here, but I'll just give you an idea of the story in Oz-speak to see if takes your fancy again (apologies to any offended Australians but these are real words I've heard some of you use):

In a small one-horse one-tooth Aussie town, a bloke has a problem. His daughter is a beaut, and has grown up in the public eye since she was an ankle-biter into the town hottie. So pops is stumped. How will he ever find a bloke good enough for this Sheila? The only way an Aussie fella with a passion for ukies would, that's how. He sets a challenge (a bit of a toughie) to all the potential suitors out there - put in some hard yakka, name every single ukie tree on his plantation, and the girl's yours. He gets some real larrikins, he gets a couple of fair dinkums, but who will win out?

Now, if that doesn't whet your appetite, I don't know what will.

It's been a pleasure posting here this week (my own blog will need a dust off), but it's time for this Jillaroo to hand the reins back. And as BAA are now telling me via their interweb portal, DGR is once again on native soil.

Thanks again,
- Laura (Offspringette)

They're On Their Way Back

I'm astounded. Somewhere, on the internet, I can type in a flight number, and somehow it pops up with a picture showing me where they are, and enough detail on the plane to tell me it has a groundspeed of 554mph - fortunately they're doing that out of the way at 36,000 feet. I have not yet found the part where it tells me what they're having for breakfast or what film they're watching, but I might not have ticked the right box for that. Even after a good ten years online, I still find this exciting!

The Trials Of Being Tessie.

It has been over a week now since DGR and her octogenarian sidekicks left these hallowed shores for warmer seas, and I have to say, standards appear to be slipping. As the days have drawn on, I have increasingly caught young Tessie attempting to sit on the precious leather reading sofa which is 'out of bounds' to all but the most honoured of souls (for honoured, read 'Anyone that doesn't have rivets or zips which may harm the sanctity of said sofa').

The thing is, Tessie knows she's being bad. She hops up, ever hopeful that her incredibly vibrant colouring has escaped my Facebook-addicted gaze. She perches on the tiniest of cushions, completely uncomfortable but determined nonetheless. However, all it takes is a look from me, sat in the DGR control centre, and she knows her place again. For about a minute. Oh well, at least none of them have decided to start using the sofas as an emery board yet, I suppose. There's still time for that.

So, young Tessie decamped. She found another place to hide. Now normally, with Mumsie around, such behaviour would be unheard of, but seemingly, with her big brother Rocky taking up the most room, perhaps she feels that the punishments will be less. I'm assuming her logic is, 'He's the furriest, and the fattest, I'm home and dry!'

She's coming back on Monday, young Tessicat, and mark my words, she'll know. It doesn't matter how many lint rollers I get through trying to save you, she'll know.

It's funny how I seem to assume that cats also read this.

Have a good afternoon everyone!

- offspringette

Moomin Mania!

With my mother's blessing, I recently delved into a random pile of books she received (of the many piles it seems these days - keep them coming!) and came out with a boxed set of the collected Moomin stories by Tove Jansson. And what a revelation they turned out to be.

I never for one instant thought I would become so hooked on these little Scandinavian critters, but to my surprise, I found myself reading page after page entranced. The books are beautifully presented with incredible illustrations throughout, totally transporting me into a very strange but safe little world I'd never been to before.

In case you've never before been partial to a bit of Moomin (does sound rather like a nice afternoon tea cake), they are a family of trolls who live in Moominvalley, although their other homes have been in some strange places, such as the disused floating theatre which became chez Moom (doesn't it have a nice ring to it?), during a terrible flood of all things.

Having done a little bit of research into Jansson, I found out that her own family life was very similar to that of the Moomins - freethinkers, adventurers, and incredibly diverse. I think the thing that affects me most about the books is that constant spirit of acceptance between the characters. Each creature is celebrated for its own unique existence, and allowed to get on with the interesting business of living. I particularly found myself drawn to Snufkin, the loner of the extended family.

'...All his life, Snufkin had longed to pull down notices that asked him not to do the things he liked to do..."

Even as an adult, I still get a little spark of youthful glee when I spy that last unread book in the set on my shelf (she's not getting them back). The world of the Moomins is worth looking into. I'm sure I could extol its virtues for a very long time, but you all have teas/breakfasts/families/jobs to attend to, and I must return to calling bingo (a new skill) at my new, less nationally broadcast, place of work.

- offspringette

And The Winner Is...

Well, the BAFAB results are in. We had a hard time getting Rocky to stay still for the set up shot, not helped by my father's insistence that he feed the cats halfway through. Hence a rapid decampment to Grub Up for four fluffballs. We lost quite a few early on, but the stragglers made it into the pantry, with two particularly steely competitiors hanging for grim death...but in the end, the winner is, and forgive me, as I am only going by usernames written down... Margaret46Simpson !

Well done, and no doubt once DGR returns from the beautiful briney sea, that book will be winging it's way to you. If you could send some postage details to the usual DGR email address, that would be great.

- offspringette

BAFAB Results...Imminent.

This gorgeous afternoon will bring one lucky reader a mystery book! I am under strict instructions NOT to divulge its title ('a secret one this time'), and I think I have as thorough a list of all of you who entered as possible, so after a brief luncheon, Rocky shall be summoned. He's getting quite demanding now he's started reading NME magazine - there is now a rider. 'Milk, cheese with the holes taken out, lightly scented candles...'

- offspringette

Tales From The Big Dog

With all this transatlantic voyagery going on, I am reminded of my own travels to the land across The Pond. In my late teens, taken by the idea of meeting all my internet penfriends, I formed a 'watertight' plan to spend the summer criss-crossing America by bus meeting my glamourous new acquaintances. The idea was to experience life in another culture where television is a family shrine, deep-fried goods are a food group unto themselves and the landscape causes as much arrest as the celebrities often seen crashing their cars into it.

Armed with one text on the matter, I stealthily researched my options. This book, 'The Great American Bus Ride' by Irma Kurtz, filled me with wonder - where might I find myself if I was unlucky enough to catch the wrong bus, sit next to the wrong kind of person or eat the wrong offering at a roadside stop? Dear Irma knew, and being young and impressionable, I simply had to find out if she was right. She was. In case I had you wondering to the contrary, I do like to test my parents.

Kurtz took the journey across America to revisit her past life, old friends and memories, turning up some interesting family revelations and meeting some very strange characters. She visited almost every state on the American mainland and if you take a look in the first pages of the book, you'll see her route is quite dizzying. I would love to give you some pictorial idea of it, but whilst I know how everything with the blog seems to function, DGR didn't leave instructions on how to use her scanner. And after an express move down from Scotland in March, my copy itself seems to have gone on tour!

It's very easy to write a book on bus travel if you think about it. Considering you're sat there for hours at a time, with very little to do, it's the perfect writing environment. Why not sit and scribble furiously? It puts people off sitting next to you (a trick Kurtz suggests, and it works) and means more sleeping space in the end. Win-win! Those big buses are approximately twice as wide as a National Express coach and probably at least four times as long (or that's how they feel), and the ride is incredibly smooth. No pen shakes there.

My own diaries became a constant source of comfort when faced with such gems as: downtown Chicago at midnight on a Friday for a one hour layover (cue wibbling and oft-harked back to phone call to parents), the delights of a group of extremely guttermouthed truck drivers, a mother on the run with her children, a child on the run from her mother, and a released prisoner on the run from no one, finally.

I am aware that not all of the USA is like this, and I'm sure the Americans amongst you will pipe up if you think I've misrepresented your land in any way. It just seemed to me that the most 'interesting' people were the ones I'd end up sat next to, or tried to avoid being sat next to. Everyone has a story on a Greyhound, no one just gets on one without an aim, including myself, and good old Irma.

I am a big fan of travel literature, and whilst I will try not to let it take over this week, I may refer to a few choice texts, and in turn, I'd also like to open up the discussion and ask you what your favourite travel books are. I'd love to hear if there's a particular book that made you stop and think 'Oooo, I'd love to go there.' The 'Oooo' is optional, by the way.

I trust all is well in the particular time zone within which you reside - if you're in a Greyhound right now, reading me on a laptop leeching wireless from somewhere, put the computer away (leave a nice comment first though). The only way you're going to get two seats tonight is if you scribble, with gusto!

- offspringette

They've Made It!

A brief update on DGR's current status before I begin this evening's post. I will avoid strenuous detail as it might spoil my mother's chance to explain it in her reliably witty fashion upon her return:

Plane broke, got another, customs in Detroit caused great 'entertainment', storm in Houston caused delayed landing, bus broke en route to ship, only Brits amongst hundreds of Texans, have taken on the drawl already, ship not sunk yet.

With two ex-Marines on board, give it time.

- offspringette

Offspringette Lands, Shamelessly Plugs.

Is there anyone out there? Anyone at all? Oh, there you all are - do come out of the corner, I promise to make this week pass as painlessly as possible!

I have to admit though, you will sadly be left to fend for yourselves this weekend. Whilst DGR commences sipping cocktails at sea, I shall be yomping amongst the undergrowth and puddles of music fans in the fields of Darkest Cornwall, stewarding my freshly purchased hiking boots off at the Lowender Festival.

This is a new festival for the Wezcundry, and with a stellar South West lineup, we are expecting at the very least 800 souls to try their luck in these autumnal conditions. I do not expect anyone to stay dry, or my boots to look even remotely new by the end of it all. Roll on, Monday!

So, to return to matters of a bloggish nature. Coming up we have the eagerly-awaited BAFAB competition results to attend to, and whilst I stand, ripping tickets in a muddy field, I shall be dreaming up a new, revolutionary judging technique which may well have our Independent Adjudicator, Rocky, quaking in his fur.

All the very best for the weekend, and the week ahead - hopefully we can churn up some interesting discussions from the 'varied' programme I have in store.

Quoth Wikipedia: "A mojito is traditionally made of five ingredients: spearmint, rum, sugar (traditionally sugar cane juice), lime, and carbonated water."

We'll get through this, friends.

- offspringette

Hospital by Toby Litt.

Right I'm posting this and by the time you read it I'll hopefully have left the country which is probably wise.
I'm completely bamboozled again, this time over Hospital by Toby Litt as Jess over at The Book Bar warned me I might be and I've taken a vote with myself and elected to stop reading it at p298 because sad cliche though it is, life really is too short and I think I'm just too long in the tooth for this book, even given the fact mine is a very broad-minded nursing tooth.
You bright young twenty-thirty somethings can embrace this one but I'm out.
Unfinished, therefore whatever I write can't offend anyone, because they can now say that things take a different turn on p299 and I'm the loser.
What a strange, bizarre surreal book and I can't decide whether it's a case of emperor's new clothes or cutting edge contemporary literary fiction?
A work of staggering genius or a complete load of old rubbish?
The product of a tortured mind or someone who has bizarre dreams?
Whatever I'm definitely in need of treatment myself because I was worryingly transfixed by it in that rubber-necking way that has you shamedly watching gruesome events unfold. I think it was the nurse in me that kept me reading on and on through ghastly scenes of slightly unreal medical mayhem blended with satanic ritual, headless babies, voodoo in the basement and a touch of Mills & Boon thrown in. It's relentlessy ghastly and vile, there are no other words for it and I hesitate to call it literature but I fully expect others will be fulsome in their praise.
It was all compounded by the presence of senior surgeon Sir Reginald St Hellier.
I had my appendix out in St Helier hospital in Carshalton back in 1970, a week after my O Levels had finished. I thought I'd eaten too many strawberries actually but I was wrong and fortunately for me my mum also disagreed with my self-diagnosis.Every time I heard the name Sir Reginald St Hellier I was reminded of sitting up in bed feeling wretched, listening to Wimbledon on hospital headphones and trying to figure out who'd just hit the ball because radio commentary used to be sparse...clunk - clunk - grunt - clunkclunkclunk- CLUUUUNCK - great smash there from John Newcombe.
I wouldn't even like to try and second guess possible hidden meanings or be so daft as to gush intelligently on what Hospital is really about and I'm not even sure whether to recommend it to you as a readable book or not.
I didn't actually hate it but in the end hated myself for reading it and by just over halfway I'd had enough especially as it looked like more of the same to come.
If you do decide to read it you'll need a strong and preferably empty stomach, though after a while you'll be fine to raid the fridge and eat raw liver sandwiches with grated pancreas and a drizzle of bile.You become so immune to the horrors, because it so cannot be real, that the next time a pickled specimen comes to life or another body gets sawn into pieces or heads get chopped off you start to accept it all as completely normal for this particular hospital.
All very worrying if only for the realisation at how easy constant exposure to horrors can make you immune to them.
But it wasn't real was it? So it doesn't really matter does it?
Do also bear in mind that if you enjoy hospital drama this is nothing like One Pair of Feet by Monica Dickens.
Do you ever wish you'd never read a book? Could somehow unread the horrors that you've read no matter how tongue in cheek or spoof they may be? It may be some time before I'll be ready for another Toby Litt, but when I am I think I'll probably approach it all with an open mind and not hold Hospital against him.
I've suddenly had a very worrying thought; the Booker long list will be out soon...surely not...no they wouldn't...
Meanwhile I think I deserve a medal for reading 298 pages or at least a complimentary session with a counsellor....or perhaps a holiday will suffice, see you all soon.
It's all yours Offspringette!

The Literary Review and a bit of a back track.

There's nothing like a review by a respected writer to alter your perceptions of a book you may have misunderstood, or worse not even understood at all, so I must correct and enhance my thinking on The Missing Person's Guide to Love by Susanna Jones which I posted on a few weeks ago here.
You may recall I had enjoyed the writing but just hadn't understood what had happened at all. In my mind this was most certainly becoming a fine example of The Author - Reader Theory of Misunderstanding espoused by Zadie Smith; I'd foolishly stepped up to play the Grade 8 music placed before me by the author when I'd only just passed my Grade 3.
The Literary Review arrived on a wet and windy Saturday morning and with the delivery of croissants, tea and the post I could come up with no good reason to stir for a few hours so I rested up and read my favourite review magazine which I've now been subscribing to for eleven years.
I always read the Editorial piece first. For many years From the Pulpit by the esteemed Auberon Waugh and since his death the pulpit has been filled by a succession of leading literary names. This month Kathryn Hughes, Professor of Life Writing at UEA with a warts and all take on the author's view of the Literary Festival plus helpful hints about what you might chat to Salman Rushdie about when you find yourself sitting opposite him at breakfast.
Now I read that last line I see it could be misconstrued so please don't jump to conclusions, that's how gossip and rumour starts. Poor Kathryn just found herself having to fill the only vacant seat and that was it. Now I'm thinking why did no one else want to sit next to Salman?
Once I've had my fill of editorial I head for the index and see which fiction titles the magazine is covering this month and who has written them and there it was, a stunning review of  The Missing Person's Guide to Love.
Written by Martyn Bedford, who is something of an authority on her writing (perhaps because he lectures on the MA in Creative Writing course at Manchester University and Susanna Jones took an MA in Writing at Manchester) was able to explain in some measure that Susanna Jones speciality is "deliciously disorientating fictional worlds". The likelihood is that her writing will leave you "enthralled and disturbed". So reading on I discover that Martyn Bedford considers this book to be "by far her most audacious sleight of hand in terms of a storyteller" and that when the revelation comes it is "breathtaking".
It would seem this is a book about far more than I had detected on first read and some internet delving reveals these thoughts on Susanna Jones from another reviewer Garan Holcombe

"a sharp mesmeric intelligence which she uses to shock with subtlety, in throwaway detail and quiet changes of direction. She cuts her stories from the finest cloth. Before presenting them for inspection she ensures the stitching is not only beautiful to look at but does exactly what is required of it in a practical sense: holds everything in place. There is something undeniably exquisite about Jones’ writing; it has a crystal clear beauty.  She is an extremely gifted writer and it is only to be hoped that there is much more to come."

There is clearly a great deal that has passed me by here so I plan a return to more of Susanna Jones writing soon, especially The Earthquake Bird, but all that aside I still don't understand what happened in The Missing Person's Guide to Love and I wish someone would tell me, anyone, just e mail me and put me out of my misery, because I'm feeling as thick as two short planks.

Long Barn Books First Novel Prize

If you nip over to Susan Hill's blog you will see that we got there in the end and the shortlist announcement for the third annual Long Barn Books First Novel Prize had been made with the winner to be announced next week.
Congratulations to all those who made it onto the shortlist and commiserations to those who didn't.
In the end it wasn't difficult to ignore all the mayhem going on and just focus on the task in hand which was to read more books in a matter of weeks than can be good for me and sift out the good ones.
No different to the Booker Prize I'm sure.
Good thing I'm a nurse and know how to prevent pressure sores.

Several Perceptions

How easy to take a title like Several Perceptions by Angela Carter and write something pithy based on the name of the book?
Wish it was that easy but I've nothing easy to say about Angela Carter other than I wish I'd read more by her and sooner, but perhaps that's the whole point?
Now may be just the right time in my life to appreciate and love her writing.
I'm thinking I might lurk in the back row over on Susan Hill's Autumn Creative Writing Course because who knows, perhaps I could come up with something, though I have spent a lifetime saying I don't have a book in me. The Tinker (father of dgr) said that and look where he's ended up.
I wouldn't like to second-guess any writer that Ms Hill may suggest we read on her syllabus but I'd put money on Angela Carter being up there on the list of choices.I know of one or two writers who profess to be very slow readers preferring to focus on their own writing and thus attaining an unadulterated and untainted unique voice to their work and if that's the case then I definitely don't have what it takes.
I can see the sense in Jane Smiley taking time out to read a hundred novels and Louise Doughty in the Daily Telegraph sending everyone off to read read read.I heard her on the radio recently and was struck by this generosity of spirit that many writers seem to have.Plenty who'd rather the rest of us didn't know the tricks of the trade and others who are only too happy to share.
Imagine not reading Penelope Fitzgerald or Angela Carter if you were a writer ? It would be somehow like finding out the winning lottery numbers in that Back to the Future way and then not using them.
Several Perceptions is a slight book at 148 pages which should already speak volumes in the less is more category and as I started reading I felt a sense of rising wonder at the way the words were just arranged on the page in the order they were.
It was as fundamental as that and I had to keep reading and re-reading to check and double check to believe just how clever and unique and original the writing actually was.
It's a book about the 1960's and young Joseph, disillusioned and of the flower-power ilk but not really quite sure how he fits into it all or what he should be protesting about. There's plenty to choose from with Vietnam being top of his list but he stops short of anything too radical and releases a badger from the local zoo instead.
Much of this book is out and out witty and funny but with moments of real seriousness as Angela Carter must have taken a step back from the world she was living in and cast her wry eye over it all.
The imagery is beyond splendid and to pull it out of context and try and quote would do it no favours but I have to mention Mrs Boulder's hands
"smooth and white as pillows...her Dunlopillo hands".
Dunlopillo, for those who may not be familiar with it is a dimpled latex carpet underlay and the imagery suits the plump and traditionally built Mrs Boulder to perfection.She has also just been spotted processing about "in the stately manner of one about to launch a ship or open a fete".
It's all bliss and delight to the reading soul.

Beautiful Books

One of the interesting things about going away is coming home I always find and I have some lovely things, not least a pile of books to look forward to when I do.
A chance and wonderfully funny e mail from an author did the trick this week.
Angela Young did a clever thing because she must have speculated on my wicked sense of humour and wrote accordingly in high, but tongue in cheek, dudgeon asking why on earth I hadn't suggested her novel for my reading group.
In fact it was all quite outrageous that she had been overlooked.
Because I'd never heard of it I replied and where on earth had she been all this time while I've been blogging my guts out here and she had only just found me to tell me about it.
The upshot was that I then discovered a new independent publisher and after a quick e mail exchange with publisher Simon Petherick, a parcel arrived with the said book and more.
Angela, if you're reading this (and you better had be) it's alright, you can rest easy. Speaking of Love has arrived and I love the fact it's dovegrey AND has a ribbony bookmark because those always impress me. I can only apologise for not taking it on holiday with me (Angela will want an explanation) but the luggage limit would seem to be in excess already and I'd hate to get suntan cream all over it or spill a mint julep on that lovely cover.
The publisher is Beautiful Books and the books are indeed that and more. I will read and post more about all these when I get back but I'm particularly enthused by one of their imprints, Burning House; modern, commercial fiction with a real edge:novels you'd grab from a burning house. We've talked about those here before and now someone's giving us all a helping hand.
Meanwhile just to placate Angela, who is not to be messed with, here are the books:-)

Rosamond Lehmann

It must be years and years now that I've been meaning to read Rosamond Lehmann, several times nearly, but never quite until it came up as my Hesperus of the Week.
I have a ready pile of Hesperus titles and now start to feel a bit unsettled if I don't have one on the go.Apart from the book in the hand and the convenient bag-sized proportions, it's the reading experience itself. You absolutely know you are going to get something not run of the mill, very out of the ordinary, always breaking the mould.Altogether unusual.
So next up was The Gipsy's Baby, a selection of Rosamond Lehmann's short stories and I'm scurrying off to the Oxford DNB right away to read up on a novelist I know of but not a lot about. Except now I'm dredging up from the dark recesses of my mind the fact that I went to a talk on Rosamond Lehmann by a recent biographer. It was a hot sultry afternoon and I was in that nodding-off mode that I so dread when I'm at anything like that.Your eyelids start to feel like lead, then you think, I know, I'll just make the next blink a bit of a longer one, then a longer one, then it's the embarrassing jolt as you emerge from a blink that's gone on for about ten minutes.It's one of the reasons I take notes at these events, the act of writing keeps me awake sometimes.
So if I could have found those notes right now how useful that would be, sadly no.
Born in 1901 into "an affluent and gifted" family Rosamond Lehmann was educated at Girton, always knew she would be a writer and hovered around the environs of the Bloomsbury set as did her brother John.Quite a chequered romantic life and an affair with Cecil Day-Lewis for Rosamund which definitely ended in tears.More tragedy when Rosamond Lehmann's daughter died of polio at the age of twenty-four and this would seem to have been a pivotal turning point in her life and possibly an event from which she never quite recovered.
The short stories in The Gipsy's Baby are meticulous studies in people-watching that it would be difficult to better.The story of the book's title is a searingly honest and transparent delineation of class prejudice; the upper class,affluent, nursery-bound family versus the large, working class Wyatt family of vast numbers of scruffy free-ranging children, disturbingly likened to vermin,

"The younger ones could not be said to be dressed in the accepted sense...I saw the baby in a pink flannel hot-water bottle cover.There was something sharp, gnawing, rodent about them; a scuttling quietness in their movements"

Just how the children cope with the sense of apartness and difference imposed by the adults is effortlessly revealed by Rosamond Lehmann and her clever use of the posh but marauding canine go-between, a Dandy Dinmont dog.
We had friends who had one of those, Hamish was an irrepressible rogue of a thing that would have your ankles one minute and then grin and expect you to adore him the next.
When Jannie dispatches the working class cat to that land where mice abound and sun-puddles await, a strange bond is forged between the families and the Wyatt's burrow their way through the defences

"They worked away noiselessly like termites, and in the end our foundations collapsed and they were in the nursery."

This of course can't be tolerated but tragedy strikes and again half-truths and misinformation abound as all the children try to abide by the unwritten rules and make sense of the bit of this social world they have been born into.

Then The Red-haired Miss Daintreys, "four daughters all six foot and over" and their ageing parents minutely observed at the seaside hotel.I almost feel like I know Miss Viola,

"and she did her hair I never could discover how in a low-lying amorphous swarming way over her ears and forehead, without a parting. She wore artistic clothes, peacock-blues and coppers, and she moved
languidly, and her expression was ironical, fin de siecle."

I still have a few more stories to read  but each a microcosm of a bygone age I suspect and thus a social record of the times which I always find as relevant as any other source.
Another lovely Hesperus title and I think probably a great introduction to the writing of Rosamond Lehmann, as is a chapter in Clare Hanson's excellent book Hysterical Fictions, The Woman's Novel in the Twentieth Century in which Elizabeth Bowen, Elizabeth Taylor, Margaret Drabble, A.S.Byatt and Anita Brookner also get a good airing. Sadly published as one of those prohibitively expensive Palgrave Macmillan academic titles thus putting it out of reach of most pockets including Devon Libraries it would seem.
I must have won the lottery that week.

Bookaholics Blogring update

The Bookaholics Blogring was something I set up when I first  ventured into  blogworld and it would seem to confirm what we all know; book addicts abound. I've just been in to check and update on any new requests to join and can report that there are now no fewer than eighty bookblogs linked by the code that is hopefully evident on every blog.
Mine's over this way somewhere <<<<<<<<<
You could spend hours just hopping from one to the next and read about great books all day long.
Apologies to anyone who has been waiting ages to join, you're all in now but the whole thing gets plagued by spam and nasty sites so I have to filter those requests out and then check the others to make sure you are all addicted enough.
If Minko, Slinky Monkey, Deiter and Red should drop in here, you have a different addiction and we can't help you with that, so you could probably stop asking to join now because it's not going to happen despite your twenty requests each.

The Birthday Party

Recently published by Jonathan Cape, I'm not too sure how I came by this copy of The Birthday Party by Panos Karnezis but I'm really grateful that I did because having started to read it I just had to finish it.
The plot sounds bizarre, an ageing Greek shipping tycoon and his over-indulged and problematic daughter who has a birthday coming up.Marco Timoleon plans a party for her on his private island and, having discovered that daughter Sofia is also pregnant, he invites his personal physician along to the celebrations and sets up a private operating theatre in the house so that she can have a termination.
That's a kind thought isn't it?
But Panos Karnezis then controls his material  well as he seamlessly moves between past and present to bring you the back story on a man with a very chequered past.Full of his own importance and treading on whoever he needed to along the way, Marco has risen from humble beginnings to a position of immeasurable wealth
"In the end, his success came not from the stars but from his ingenuity, his talent for challenging tradition and his messianic powers of persuasion"
A life built on falsehood, imitation and fakery,
"All his life Marco Timoleon liked to confuse friends, associates and strangers who thought they knew him or what to expect from him"
and everyone jumps to his command, except his daughter who sort of hops around it all trying to be defiant but quite enjoying the benefits of a filthy rich father.
Little imagination needed to make the leap to real life characters, I can only name one Greek shipping tycoon.
It is Marco's biographer who starts to make some inroads on the reader's behalf as he "peeled off the layers of deception slowly, one by one"
Sympathies extracted kicking and screaming from this reader who grudgingly felt sorry in the end for this deeply religious yet spiritually impoverished and lonely man left sitting in his Biblical arboretum (every genus of tree mentioned in the Bible) as his grip on life starts to wane.
Drat, I wanted to hate him right up until the final page but I just couldn't do it in the end, life's too full of angst without expending energy hating a fictional character in a book, so thanks to Panos Karenzis for sparing me that.
A good read and one that I think will do even better when it gets into paperback.
Meanwhile as we're on the subject of Greeks and Jonathan Cape, it's not long until they publish  God's Behaving Badly by Marie Philips.I'll be posting about this nearer the time because I read it as one of the novels for last year's Long Barn First Novel Prize. Although it was wrong for Long Barn, in the interim it has proved very right for Jonathan Cape and it will be brilliant to see it on the shelves in gargantuan quantities at last. Check out Marie's now less aptly named blog, Struggling Author for updates and news of her website.This book will be worth every penny of a hardback purchase.If you can't run to that no worries, just start nagging your library now, you will laugh until you drop when you read it.

Out Stealing Horses

Still a few days left to bring you my most recent reads.
Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson and a truly deserving winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2006 and more recently the Impac Dublin Award and in keeping with recent acknowledgments on here mention must also be made of Anne Born's translation from the Norwegian original.Good to see that that translator shares in the prize money for both of these.
Out and about everywhere else long before it made it to the UK last November it would seem, and the book is getting stellar reviews from all quarters.
That can mean but one thing, it was going to have to work doubly hard to impress me.
I hope you put the books I rave about on here under the cosh too, it does them and me no harm and it's so good to get other points of view.
Starting with the cover, I'd say Nordic backwoods perfection barring the use of the words "limpid prose" which always have me cringing slightly.Why do those words annoy me so much? Perhaps because I'm still not sure I'd recognise limpid prose if I trod on it even given definitions such as transparent clearness, pellucid, calm and untroubled, serene.
It's too pretentious by far for this book.
But I really couldn't fault Out Stealing Horses because it's in that snowy, ice-laden melancholy genre that warms the cockles of my heart as if I'd just filled a literary hotwater bottle.
Nothing warm about the far reaches of snowy Norway or the cold, sparse and isolated cabin that Trond has moved to in his latter years as he reflects gently and quietly (alright, limpidly) on his life and the events of his childhood.
"All my life I have longed to be alone in a place like this"
The numbing cold interspersed with plenty of warming references to the lighting of the woodburning stove and that sudden pervasion of heat which happens very quickly once it catches, unless it's me lighting it, in which case expect to wait hours. At these moments it was as if Per Petterson was inviting me to draw near and rub my hands together with my mittens under my arm and sit alongside Trond as he told his story.
It's all desperately subtle and understated (OK limpid) and therefore enormously powerful as one man recounts the huge and life-changing events in that almost matter-of-fact way bestowed with increasing age. The invasion of Norway by the Germans, the undercover activities, the dangers, the joys, the tragedies and the infidelities that have shored up Trond's life as he now settles into his final days. Real analogies between him recounting his store of untold memories and the great pile of timber chopped, balanced and stacked ready to be levered into the river and released on its journey.
The atmosphere and sense of place giving so much to a book that demands and allows the reader to be surprised and caught slightly off balance at every turn.
Trond's life gradually unfolds and many questions left hanging in the air, always a good sign I think when a writer doesn't feel obliged to tie up every single loose end, leave a few threads dangling I say unless we're talking about The Bayeux Tapestry.
A fantastic read and one that lingers long after the final page and would allow for frequent re-reads and new discoveries every time.
Limpidly brilliant I suppose.

BAFAB week again!

I can't believe it's BAFAB week again already because I seem to have only just sorted the traumas of the last one, but many thanks indeed to the publisher in question who did honour their offer of a free book and in fact sent two by way of an apology and to a.n.other publisher aka The Friday Project who stepped in to alleviate the distress of my winner waiting for a book parcel and sent a now increasingly valuable first edition of In Search of Adam by Caroline Smailes.
Carving the year up into BAFAB weeks makes me feel like it'll be Christmas before I know it but no matter.
The book is chosen, a suprise one this time, usual rules apply, leave your name in comments here if you'd like to be entered in the draw for a free book and I'll keep reminding you through the week.
The draw will probably take place on Sunday July 8th, if not very soon after, and will be devised and conducted by dgr support crew who may opt for a completely different selection process, cats aren't the only creatures around here.

Sunday Confessions

Considering that we've had a postal strike this week there doesn't seem to have been any shortage of parcels arriving and in amongst them I think a few in-flight novels that will be just the ticket.
I have been up to my eyes with life and lists so apologies to anyone who hasn't received a thankyou message from me, I'm as grateful as ever for everything received.
Em at Snowbooks sent along The Book of Names by Jill Gregory and Karen Tintori and this is first on the in-flight reading pile; intelligent suspense thriller which looks so good and has a gorgeous sprinkling of subtle gold book-bling dust on the cover.
Next in the flight pile, The Black Tea Experiments by Ray Atkinson which is billed as one that can be read  "during a single average airline flight".
The Tinker and I will test it out.
In the same parcel Infamous Eve A History by May Sinclair.This will require application but looks like an enlightening trail around all the legends, stories and folktales that have surrounded Eve down the years. I think it will yield some gems.
Kate Williams very kindly sent me a copy of England's Mistress now out in paperback and I hot-footed off to my book group (we are called Goldfish, best not to ask for explanations, I'm not sure we really know but the library needs a collective name and we were in quirky mood) with this as my recommend for the next read.There's always a nerve-wracking moment before the chooser of the next read unveils their selection.
We ask around, who's read any great books lately?
Anyone read anything awful?
So you sit there having palpitations in case anyone trashes your choice before you've announced it.I wasn't in the least bit worried, this was one of my best reads of 2006 and I'm quietly confident they will enjoy it too.
Hesperus kindly sent their latest books and I have had a hard job not to carry on reading The Calligrapher's Night by Yasmine Ghata but I'm being disciplined and trying to clear the reading slate of all unfinished reads before I go away.It gets off to the most beautiful, lyrical start but it will be waiting on my return and make a useful addition to my Islamic reading project.
Zed Books have kindly sent a couple more general background non-fiction titles to give this project a bit of variety, Iraqi Women by Nadje Sadig Al-Ali and From Homebreakers to Jailbreakers : Southall Black Sisters edited by Rahila Gupta.I had to read some of this once I'd opened it and read the words "Victoria Climbie". These names become synonymous with child protection, when I first started health visiting it was Maria Colwell, but currently let no one be in any doubt, a great deal has been implemented since the Victoria Climbie inquiry.Sometimes almost too many lessons to be learnt.
The Darkroom of Damocles by W.F.Hermans originally published in 1958 and now back in print again thanks to Harvill Secker. Wartime assignments during the German occupation of Holland and the aftermath once the war is over.
Despite the postal strike a parcel from John Murray arrived at a very odd time of day and was mysteriously left under the doormat.Polly must had nipped down from London with it herself I think.A paperback copy of The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox which I'm delighted with as I only have a hefty proof copy. I read this as part of a reader's opinions survey before the book was published and I really enjoyed it. I know plenty who have hated it, nay loathed it, but I just found it a really entertaining read, start to finish.Then a wonderful contrast The Diplomatic Corpse  by Anne Marshall-Zwack.This is the diplomatic wife who discovers her husband's worldwide infidelities after his death and heads off on the revenge trip of a lifetime.
Good poolside read I think, this one's in.
Free from newbooksmag who are worth the subscription alone for any number of cut-price and free books you can get hold of, Wild Mary A Life of Mary Wesley by Patrick Marnham.An unusual and colourful life is what I'm expecting.Mary Wesley synonymous with my reading in 1988 the first year my journal began. That year we had a seven, a five and a three year old. I read thirty-one books (heaven knows when) and five of them were by Mary Wesley. Time must have been even more at a premium in 1989 when I only read twenty.
Finally I bought a book.
You didn't think a week could go by without expenditure did you? I missed Be Near Me by Andrew O'Hagan on last year's Booker longlist but it came highly recommended by many visitors here and it's just out in paperback.
Two books I left behind and now wish I hadn't, The Seventh Gate by Richard Zimler and The Lightning Keeper by Starling Lawrence, am I right? They both looked good.