I’ve just spent a wonderfully calm evening with the author Rumer Godden.
I’ve just started reading the first volume of her autobiography and after my evening with Rumer I think I should read her children’s books.
One of them is called “Holly and Ivy” and the film “The Wish that Changed Christmas” is based on her book.
I know that I’m not the first person to mention Christmas. The local garden centre is already unpacking Christmas decorations which seems a little premature but it probably isn’t too soon to start gathering ideas for books to buy for family and friends.
Grubson Pug’s Christmas Voyage by Jane Anne Hodgson, published by Whistling Cat looks like it may well be an ideal Christmas present that could become a family favourite to be re-read every year as the Christmas anticipation builds.
Whistling Cat Books is a new publisher, based in Oxfordshire, that “believes in nourishing children’s imaginations through amusing, engaging, original stories which are traditionally illustrated (hand-drawn rather than computer generated) and produced with care and attention to detail.”
…a rush of wind comes up the alley and almost pushes me over, the noise is like the sea crashing onto rocks. I steady myself against the damp wall and turn to see Korakas. He stands tall, blocking the feeble light from the houses on the street. He has his arms raised, as I had done and he is screeching at them. His eyes are alight, his hair is flying in the strange wind and his features seem angular. Suddenly he is beside me and holds me close to him, snatching me away from the two men in front of me. He sweeps his other arm in front of his face and sends one of the men sprawling to the floor, where he lies limp, blood trickling from a cut on his head. The other man drops to his knees and crawls towards his friend, sobbing and begging. The others are crossing themselves and half run half crawl to aid their friends at our feet. Korakas sweeps his coat across in front of my face and moves towards the American. The men scrabble to get out of his way. He holds me around my waist. I can feel my legs weaken and I am glad of his support. . . . . . . . . . .
from: Korakas by Anne Holloway – a novel about control
I’m still not sure what to make of this book. Apart from the main protagonist, the artist’s widow I just didn’t really believe in any of the characters. The book was published in 1998 and set in the preceding year. there can be no doubt about that as the final few pages fit the events of the story around the death of Princess Diana on 31 August 1997. It just didn’t come across as a rounded portrayal of that decade.
As far as I’m aware, I haven’t read anything by Shena Mackay but her name is very familiar and I don’t know why. I wanted to abandon this back but I couldn’t. Now I’m trying to work out exactly why I couldn’t put it down. The story wasn’t compelling. Nothing really happened. A woman’s artist husband has died and she is still alive and misses him. Apart from a few glimpses of their life together this is not the story of a marriage, rather the tenuous connecting thread of the widow allows us to be introduced to a range of stereotypical characters. So perhaps that was the point? But if that was the point it didn’t sit well with the more rounded portrayal of Lyris Crane, herself an artist but now seemingly existing only to others as ‘the artist’s widow’.
Though the book was not a page-turner I had to read to the end and I will certainly pick up other Shena Mackay titles if I stumble across them. And as an aside I wonder if anyone, anywhere has compiled a list of books that refer to iconic moments in popular history such as the death of prominent people or momentous events?
Our local scout group has a jumble sale twice a year, once in March and once in October. As there is only the church standing between our house and the scout hut we have no reason to stay away. Unlike the supermarket the scout jumble always has the same layout. Bric-a brac on the right, men’s “special” clothes to on rails to the left and women’s to the right. Tables in the middle have the usual heaps of clothes divided into men, women and children. And… in one of the side rooms… there are the books.
We didn’t go to the sale till almost the end , so our two bags of books came to the princley sum of £2. The other half did slightly better than me, as you can see because his two Ian Rankins have crept onto my pile. Not a bad haul is it?
How do you choose which books to read? I know what the answer should be. Cast a glance around at loaded shelves, pick out those that bear the TBR label and read. But it doesn’t work like that, does it? We need to be tempted and lured into reading a book.
Sometimes the cover does the trick or in my case it works the other way around. I can’t really choose to read a book if I don’t like the cover. It’s one of the reasons that I don’t usually read the same books that my other half dips into. His reading matter would fit into the bookcase called “Airport Books”. You know the ones I mean, don’t you? They have a tendency to be foiled, embossed and probably sporting a silhouette if one can be squeezed onto the cover.
A title can be tantalising. A word, a quotation, or words that sound like a quotation, can be as successful as dangling a fishhook in a stream. OK, I know nothing about fishing so I’d better stop that analogy before I even pack my ..um.. what do you call that fishing basket thingy? So, this lapsed reader was doing her usual wandering around the web instead of ironing, polishing bathroom mirrors, re-upholstering the doormat or even reading a book, and came across references to a book called, “Inspector Singh Investigates: A Bali Conspiracy Most Foul” by Shamini Flint. Immediately I recalled a book that I read many years ago after stumbling across it when I wasn’t looking for anything to read.
So what do I do now? Do I go on a book hunt and look for the H R F Keating book that pleased me so many years ago or do I succomb to buying just one more book?
As usual I seem to gain my inspiration from fellow bloggers. Over on Stuck-in-a-Book’s most recent blogpost, Simon has put up a list of one person’s favourite books. I couldn’t sleep at 0330 this morning so left my bed and started to read my usual blogs. I couldn’t resist putting Simon’s list of books that the late Mary Ann Shaffer, author of “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society” had considered her favourites, into a spreadsheet and seeing what sort of book she read. My first thought was that I hadn’t read many of them and indeed had never even heard of quite a few. So here is the list re-ordered into 4 groups (see final column A,B, C, D) with one odd-man-out at the end.
[this table is also available as a pdf file here]
Mary Ann appeared to have an interest in novels set in the First & Second World Wars. However, on reflection I would say that the greatest number of books on the list show an interest in pioneers, settlers, immigrants, those who leave one culture/race and attempt to make their way in another. Some of the books, of course, should be included in at least two of the categories.
Other than “My Antonia”, which was published in 1918, all the books were published in 1945 or afterwards.
There are thirty-one books on Mary Ann’s list. If we saw your thirty favourites what would we summise about you?
“The third week of June, and there it is again: the same almost embarrassingly familiar breath of sweetness that comes every year about this time. I catch it on the warm evening air as I walk past the well-ordered gardens in my quiet street, and for a moment I’m a child again and everything’s before me – all the frightening, half-understood promise of life.”
“Spies” by Michael Frayn is one of those books that lurk on the TBRBOH (to be read by other half ) pile. TOH spends a large part of his day travelling on public transport and so consumes vast amounts of the written word during hiis progress. Our reading tastes hardly ever overlap, the works of Brian Moore being one notable exception.
The one-word title “Spies” coupled with “Germans” and “infiltrated on the back-cover blurb led me to believe that this book’s rightful place was on the “his” rather than the “her” TBR pile. How wrong could I be. The blogosphere has been rumbling with mention of this book recently with one much-respected blogger threatening to read this in the next few days. So realising that I was probably missing out on a good thing I picked up my forked stick and went book-divining around the book stashes. Having a dim memory that the cover was green I set out on the trail of this book determined to discover its secret.
The writing is deceptively simple. Once we have moved from the adult world of the narrator to his child self we could be forgiven for assuming that we were now in an Emil and The Detectives or a Nancy Drew mystery. For half the book we remain in this world until almost imperceptively the emphasis shifts and our eyes are opened. With the advantage of age our suspicions are well ahead of our child protagonist but this does not shield us from the anguish that we will feel as intently as he as our initial suppositions are overturned.
To say anymore would be to run the risk of publishing too many spoilers, so just take my words of advice. As well as avoiding the pitfall of judging a book by its cover be sure not to judge a book by its title.
I’ve been chatting to my sister about the book she is writing and she said she was afraid that it might head off to chicklit territory if she wasn’t careful and lose the MAGICAL REALISM element. Now call me me ignorant but I didn’t know there was such a genre. She was trying to get her youngest to bed so couldn’t give me an idiot’s guide to the genre so just gave me an example you have to accept the magical things that happen if a book also contains such mundane things as people getting on and off a bus.
Well of course I went off a-googling and found this:
Felix Grant (http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824/magreal.htm#beginning ) says:
Magical Realism is, like all such categorisations, impossible to define precisely. It also overlaps other genres — including “fantasy” and “science fiction.”
He then proceeds to list 7 books widely considered to belong to the canon of magical realism and a further 18 that he teaches about on his lit course. I didn’t do very well with the list. I own 3 of the 25 books, started two, put them aside: bought another for the woodcuts rather than the book but DID read and enjoy it. I’m wondering if I should gather some of these volumes to my ample bosom and take them with me on holiday next month and explore a new genre. Anyone else up for exploring new territories? You can see the full list below with my notes about my scant knowledge of the books listed.
Watertight agreement on a “canon” is difficult to obtain, and I wouldn’t claim it for my list. Perhaps the first seven titles below could be said to belong within the canon; beyond that the borders are hazy.
These seven are generally accepted and quoted by a range of authorities as definitive examples of Magical Realism:
* Carey, Peter (Australia) Illywhacker
* Carter, Angela Nights at the Circus
* Kundera, Milan (Czech) Immortality
* García Márquez, Gabriel (Colombia) One Hundred Years of Solitude
* Rushdie, Salman (UK/India) Midnight’s Children and Shame
* Swift, Graham (UK) Waterland
I think I STARTED Illywhacker but put it aside
Heard of Angela Carter but not Nights at the Circus
Heard of Milan Kundera but not Immortality
Heard of Salman Rushdie and Midnight’s Children (started it, can’t remember finishing it) but not Shame
Heard of Waterland but not Graham Swift
A lot of fiction which predates the term Magical Realism is nevertheless recognised as falling within its definition. The most obvious example is Kafka, and in particular:
* Kafka, Franz (Czech) Metamorphosis
Yep heard of that
I teach my own lit courses on the basis that the following are indicative examples of the range covered by the Magical Realism label, and my immediate colleagues are in general agreement, but they are not sanctified by universal acceptance! I’ve limited myself to one book per author only for brevity and clarity.
* Allende, Isabel (Chile) Of Love and Shadows author but not book
* Aitmatov, Chingiz (USSR) The Day Lasts More Than A Hundred Years NO
* Doctorov, E L (US) Loon Lake author but not book
* Eco, Umberto (Italy) Foucault’s Pendulum heard but not read
* Fowles, John (UK) A Maggot heard but not read
* Gearhardt, Sally M (US) The Wanderground heard but not read
* Golding, William (UK) The Paper Men author but not book
* Greenland, Colin (UK) Other Voices NO
* Le Guin, Ursula K (US) Threshold author (thought she was scifi / fantasy)
* Hesse, Herman (Germany) Magister Ludi author but not book
* Hoban, Russell (US/UK) The Medusa Frequency NO
* Hoeg, Peter (Denmark) The History of Danish Dreams author but not book
* Hospital, Janette T (Australia) The Last Magician NO
* Lessing, Doris (UK) The Memoirs of a Survivor author but not book
* McEwan, Ian (UK) The Child in Time author but not book
* Read, Herbert (UK) The Green Child YES – READ IT -GOT IT – bought it for the woodcuts!
* Ransmayer, Christoph (Austria) The Last World NO
* Saxton, Josephine (UK/US) Queen of the States NO
Less than an hour to go before Sunday is over and I’ve just read the first six pages of my next book. This one was recommended by my baby sister.
See you all in the salon next Sunday. Happy reading if you manage to get any done in the week. Be strong those of you who are on a book-buying diet.
So I have done hardly anything today except read. You could say that Ruth has been drowning in “Drowning Ruth”. I’ve already seen a comment from someone who said that the they were annoyed by the book but that it redeemed itself by the twist at the end. Someone else, Ann, I think said that it split her reading group. I seem to remember that a lot of people raved about this book a month or two or a year ago. So where will I place myself or will I just sit on the fence? I can’t explain what it was that kept me reading so avidly. Maybe I just needed a reading day. Maybe I’m just back in a reading phase of my life, after all I did find it difficult to put “The Brief History of the Dead” down or have the really good books just worked their way to the top of the TBR pile? I have a penchant for books that are set in a Noman’s time. You know what I mean. It’s Little House on the Prairie time, Little Women time. Heidi time. We know the characters wear petticoats and don’t drive around in cars and a woman’s place is usually in the home apart from our heroine who is a bit tomboyish or feisty and knows deep in her heart that women are equal to men. So although the book clearly starts just after the end of the Second World War because Amanda tells us that “if I had not gone home that March in 1919, Mathilda my only sister , would not be dead” it is also in my favourite Noman’s time. The way that the protagonists deal with what arises is of course all due to social expectations and mores of the time but it isn’t really what people do but rather the feelings and relationships that feed into the situations that arise.
Initially the “cast list” is small, almost claustrophobic and for the majority of the novel it feels that it will stay that way but as we learn more the doors open up, it feels as though a breeze from the lake will blow some of the stuffiness away but disconcertingly this breath of new air just complicates the truth that we have come to believe or suspect.
Once again it is demonstrated that secrets hardly ever remain so. Once again we learn that a small adjustment of the truth leads to compound untruths and that every action we take is likely to have repercussions that can be good or bad.
This is just the sort of book that I would be pleased to find if I was on holiday in a remote cottage somewhere and the weather turned nasty. Pile the logs on the fire, heat the milk for the cocoa and be pleased that Aunty Mandy isn’t sending you out to move the sheep.
Aaaah!
I’ve already confessed in a comment on my sister’s blog www.anneholloway.wordpress.com that I bought two books while doing the weekly shop at Sainsbury’s. I never look at the books in supermarkets because there is no ambience in those places. The lights do my head in and in some of them (certain branches of Tescos, Safeways + M&S I actually feel sick if I subject myself to more than a few minutes instore. But she tempted me by saying she’d picked up a certain book and couldn’t put it down. So I looked and found .. and was also lured in by the cover of another book. Subliminal recognition and I didn’t even know it! When I got home I realised the cover was by Petra Borner about who I waxed lyrical a post or two ago.
I didn’t need the book, I have a TBR mountain range but I bought the book. But I have been punished. Now that I take the book in my hands I see that the “Richard & Judy’s book 4 club, Galaxy British BOOK awards 2008” sticker is NOT a sticker but is printed ON the book all over my beautiful Petra Borner cover. WHY?????? The words “Mister Pip” and “Lloyd Jones” need no explanation or apology they are after all the title and author of the book. I have no complaints about the discreet “Shortlisted for THE 2007 man BOOKER PRIZE” but I feel that Richard & Judy, Galaxy et al owe me that circle of cover that they have denied me. Please don’t deface my books it’s bad enough that there are so many tacky covers out there.
OK – rant over …… for now.
I spent all day Saturday at work from 0935 till 1905 and I was shattered. It’s bad enough doing 5 days but my body complains if I ever do a catch-up day. I fell into a wonderful hot geranium-scented bath, slipped into a cuddly pair of pajamas, made the old man and me (everyone else out till late) cheese & Worcester sauce on toast and a bucket each of hot tea and then …
I settled down to finish the last few pages of 98 Reasons for Being by Clare Dudman. I won’t say anything other than if you felt the slightest bit tempted by my blog entry about a few days ago, then don’t dally any more, grab yourself a copy and get stuck in.
As I was heading towards the end of Margaret Foster’s “Private Papers” (see my previous post) I stumbled upon reference to a fictitious account of the life of Heinrich Hoffman during the period when he was doctor in charge of an asylum. Dr Heinrich Hoffman wrote the popular “Struwwelpeter” (Shock-headed Peter) a set of cautionary tales warning of the fate of children who literally played with fire, were Stuck-in-a-book or wouldn’t eat their soup. My mother, born in 1926, was given a copy of the English translation of this wonderfully illustrated volume which was one of the books that my sisters and I inherited from her. The book was published in 1845, over eighty years before my mother was born and I think I understood that it was not of our time but I probably enjoyed it all the more for that very reason. By the time I was born in the late fifties I’m sure that moral tales were not what they once had been, even if they existed at all. So Johnny Head in Air and Fidgety Phillip felt as though they friends of Mrs Do As You Would Be Done By who I believed to be a personal friend of Mamgee, my maternal grandmother. The engraved and coloured-in illustrations thrilled me and there there was no end to the number of times I could have the book read to me whilst I soaked up the pictures.
Once I knew this book, 98 Reasons for Being, by Clare Dudman, existed I had to have it and so I ventured out to Waterstones, in the Bentall centre, Kingston, at lunchtime and luckily they had a copy sitting on the shelf. So far it seems to be tale of poor Hannah who does not talk, rather than poor Harriet who played with matches. Dr Hoffman is asked to take in young Hannah who is probably suffering from severe depression but has been labelled as suffering from Nymphomania. We meet her as she enters the asylum and Hoffman decides upon the best course of treatment.
This is yet another book of alternate accounts. Life in the asylum is recounted with particular reference to the treatment of Hannah. In between are glimpses into Hannah’s thoughts. Far from being simple, her thoughts appear articulate and we begin to see something of her life before the asylum. The treatment she receives encroaches into Hannah’s private world but actions and people are transformed. I may have reached out for this fictitious account for the wrong reasons but I will continue to read because it stands up as a book in its own right even once the Struwwelpeter link is laid to rest.
Once upon a time I was a lapsed reader but with the kindness and encouragement of a few good women I was brought back from the brink and felt able to participate all year round and not just on high days and holidays. I was welcomed into a caring group and was shown the way. I was tempted with old familiar themes and stories, words I knew and charming dwelling-places of the word. My old appreciation of virago-green and genteel paintings was rekindled and I could hold my head high and call myself a reader again. I carried the word with me in my bag and in quiet moments I sought solace with lovingly-crafted phrases. I read in public and felt no shame. I was proud to be a reader.
I will never be one of those who will sit in the front row. I am the reading equivalent of one who slinks into the back row of a service and leaves before the priest appears at the door to shake the hand of the worshippers. I have progressed from merely attending at Easter & Christmas and weddings and funerals but my practice is humble. Some days it is only a few words but if the train is delayed and I meet no friends on board I have been known to read more than a chapter a day.
I have just finished “Private Papers” by Margaret Forster which features the alternate voices of a mother and daughter. Rosemary, the daughter is reading what her mother calls her “private papers” which gives the book its title. Her view of events varies considerably from that of her mother ably demonstrating that there is no one version of any story. That is all too common in families. In my own my baby sis’s infamous tantrum in Mevagissey is legendary. Middle sis and I could not understand what set baby sis off. We laid out our reasons for considering her behaviour to be unnacceptable and smugly put her exhibition down to being spoilt. Years, even decades later, baby sis was articulate enough to put her side of events and at long last we had to admit that she had a point. Private papers doesn’t reach any such admissions. Orphaned mother Penelope’s lifelong yearning for a “real family” is never satisfied. Thinking her marriage will bring her wish, Penelope is sorely disappointed as soon after the birth of her third child she is left a young war widow with a disapproving yet demanding mother-in-law. The one daughter who gives her what she most approves of in theory is also the one who disappoints her the most.
Each episode of family life is seen in turns from the viewpoint of the mother and then the daughter. This puts me in mind of the extracts of my baby sis’s novel in progress. She also alternates between mother and daughter though her narrative differs in that mother’s voice tells of the past and daughter’s is more or less in real time. We learn from the daughters account what has become of the young girl in the mother’s account. There is much more to this oeuvre than an alternating voice but as it is very much a work in progress each version I receive via email has shifted to become something slightly different. I can’t wait to read the final version and maybe if you pop over to my baby sis’s blog she will drop the odd hint about this exciting project.
Oh, and if you want to find out what this lapsed yet born-again-reader is consuming now then you will have to look out for my next post. Watch this space.
Do you remember a while ago that I told you I had paid good money for NEW books. I devoured one immediately but the second one had to wait. I have been doggedly reading “Pelagia & the White Bulldog” by Boris Akunin on my brief train journeys to and from work whenever there is no “trainfriend” present. Consequently this book is taking a long time for me to finish. I’m still not sure about it. Is it because I am so easily confused by those Russian names, so many bits of a name for each person.
In case you are a scholarly type, and I’ll have you know I know a few, then maybe this explanation borrowed from Paul Goldschmidt will help:
In modern Russian, names consist of a GIVEN NAME (imia), a PATRONYMIC (otchestvo), and a SURNAME (familiia), but as Tumanova notes quite well: “Russian naming conventions for early period are first name (baptismal name, usually that of a Biblical saint), followed by the everyday or common first name, patronymic, and rarely a surname. Russian naming conventions for mid to late period are first name, patronymic, and surname” (1989: 4). More precisely, Russian names started only as a given name, adding the patronymic around the 10th century, and finally the surname (from the patronymic constructions) only in the late 15th or early 16th century. The surname did not become common, in fact, until the 18th century (Tupikov, 1903: 21-22).1
So is it the vasy array of names for each person that confuses me or is it that my powers of concentration are so very feeble.
Occasionally I stumble into a room to find “My Little Darling” watching such cultural delights as “The OC”. She has long ago lost all patience with me when I exclaim how they all look alike and that I have no idea which dumb blonde shopaholic tart is which or which tousled-haired hunk is going out with her whilst she is secretly sleeping with his millionaire thrice-divorced steely-haired virile step-grandfather. I have managed to get the settings of the book into my head and have already employed the location finders and props buyers to ensure that my in the head film looks stunning. Casting is not so straightforward as so far I’m not even sure how many actors I need to employ. I rather think that this is not going to be a film but a TV version made in two parts where it doesn’t really matter if you saw Part 1 or not. A bit like Midsummer Murders. More or less the same setting but with a different name. More or less the same characters but with different names.
The book is strangely a book of two parts. We have the setting up and our main protagonist arrives and seems to be doing her job and then it is all over and we are only halfway through the book. Maybe all will be made clear but as I have only just ventured into the beginning of Part 2 you will have to wait for my verdict.
If this had been one of my usual charity shop purchases I may well have put it aside but as I said I paid good money for this and I don’t want to waste any pages though I do have to confess, and I can probably do that to Sr Pelagia in the absence of the Bishop, that I have been tempted to skip a few.
I was so caught up in and entranced by “Light on Snow” (see previous post) that despite now having a stack of Shreve’s from which to choose I couldn’t find one that called to me. I read the first few paragraphs of each, flipped to the middle, flipped to the back but, like the person desperate for sleep who tosses and turns all night rather than lying quietly, I just wouldn’t allow myself to settle. Eventually I was so exhausted that I just grabbed the nearest volume and began.
“Where or When” is a very different book from “Light on Snow” though we do see parts of the book through the eyes of children. Two middle-aged people who knew each other for barely a week as children, renew their acquaintance and the inevitable happens. It is the way that Shreve writes that draws me to her. She has an eye for small details, her characters are sensitive to the play of light on the landscape, the subtle colours of their world, she makes the ordinary extraordinary.
Though plot is important I don’t feel that it is the driving force in her books. Have you ever been to a church fete and had a go on one of those “machines” that are just a wriggly thick wire attached to a battery? You have to manoeuver a metal ring with a wooden handle from one end of the “wire” to the other without allowing contact to be made. If your hand slips a buzzer rings and carries on ringing till you manage to break the connection. Sometimes you are so shocked by the contact that the buzzer sounds continuously as you drag the ring back to the beginning. But things can never be the same, the peace and quiet has been broken by that momentary (or lingering) contact. Whilst the buzzer is sounding you are unaware of anything else, unaware of what was happening before and should have happened afterwards. Everything has changed.
My baby sister is doing an MA in creative writing. Currently she is supposed to be looking at the work of Anita Shreve as people have suggested that their writing has common elements and styles. This set me off on a treasure hunt around the charity shops in my lunchtimes to see if I could gather her some research material. I hit the jackpot and almost dislocated my shoulder carrying home my booty.
My sister and her tribe are heading south to stay with us over the Bank Holiday next week so I will be parting with this newly acquired stack in just under a week. Nothing for it but to get stuck in. Light on Snow bobbed its way to the surface and so I began and I couldn’t put it down. I even resorted to reading in bed before I went to sleep, something I NEVER do. Then yesterday morning, instead of reading DGR, HD and SiaB, something amounting to a cardinal sin as far as I am concerned, at 6 am I made myself a drink and crept back to bed to read. I was at work before anyone else as usual but instead of shuffling papers and attempting to prioritise tasks whilst the computers did their early morning calisthenics, I READ, all the time with one ear cocked for the sound of footsteps at the front door. I didn’t go for a walk at lunchtime, I READ and finally finished Light on Snow.
My problem is that I think I may have started with AS’s best book. I have glanced at pages of the others and they don’t sing out to me the way this one did. A seemingly ordinary book that starts:
Beyond the window of my father’s shop, midwinter light skims the snow. My father stands, straightening his back.
‘How was school?’ he asks.
‘Good,’ I say.
He puts his sander down and reaches for his jacket on a hook. I run my hand along the surface of the table. The wood is floury with dust, but satin underneath.
‘You ready?’ he asks.
‘I’m ready,’ I say.
My father and I leave his workshop in the barn and walk out into the cold. The air, dry and still, hurts my nose as I breathe. We lace up our snowshoes and bang them hard against the crust. A rust color is on the bark, and the sun is making purple shadows behind the trees. From time to time the light sends up a sheen of pocked glass.
Nothing prepares you for the rest of the book that works like a two-ply yarn. Each strand can exist on its own but when combined the two have an incredible strength. The two stories intertwine in a way that some might feel is too contrived at times. Surely events and occurrences ARE more meaningful because of what we ourselves have experienced. Incidents that would pass by another cause us to have eyes filled with tears and to react to others in a particular way. Our experiences give us the skills needed in a particular situation. Our presence in a place, at a particular time can, and quite often does, make a difference. We can be responsible for causing someone else to take a different path, not necessarily a better path, just different.
Most of the time we see events through the eyes of a twelve year old girl, share her acceptance of her way of life. If this book only causes us to momentarily think about how our behaviour and actions influence the way a child has to live then it will be reason enough for it to have been written.
You will have to forgive me for not posting a pic or anything interesting but I have the final furrow of “A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian” in my sights now….
Life, mainly work, has been so hectic recently but I am still here.
Nothing much made recently apart rom several pairs of socks, including a trial toe-up pair and a real toe-up pair. I appreciate that working this way you won’t run out of yarn, you can just stop when you don’t have any more. The trouble is that I found it required more brain cells per sock.
Meanwhile, I have actually started to read a book this year, see above. So far I’m up to page 80 and thoroughly enjoying it. My mother-in-law married a younger man very soon after she was widowed, though the great age difference was not as big as in “A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian”. Some of the comments of the two daughters in the book by Marina Lewycka could have been lifted straight from conversations in our family.
Saturday morning brought ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ from DGR in deepest darkest Devon so you can guess what I did next. Yes, large mug of tea in hand, and a refill a bit later, I sat down and read SKELLIG by David Almond, cover to cover. By the end my T-shirt was dripping wet and the box of tissues empty. I must be getting soft in my old age. I don’t think I want to read any other books by DA for fear of them not living up to this.
Oh I forgot to say, this is a children’s book, whateverthat means.
I joined the “Woolf for Dummies” class over on writer Susan Hill’s blog. I bought the books: two biographies and The Voyage Out to start with but of course, as we all know, having the coloured pens and a nice new ruler doesn’t magically mean you can do Maths or Physics or whatever your worst nightmare is. Life is too short. Maybe I will go back to VW, in fact the postman dropped a second-hand copy of Moments of Being through my door yesterday and a cursory glance promises that this will be very readable. So I have been searching around for something to read when I do read, which these days is very little. It’s not that I don’t WANT to read, in fact I gaze admiringly at the “big girls” who plough through piles of books AND manage to write something interesting, instructional and pleasurable about them.
Top of the list of big girls is DoveGreyReader. Other people can’t start the day without a cup of coffee or a cigarette but there is no way I can get on that train to work or do what I should be doing at the weekend without my daily dose of DGR. How she manages it I don’t know although she has recently posted hints about her methodology, much of it involving the sensible use of her spouse’s talents and her own skill of knowing when NOT to interfer (see her comments about staying well clear of the kitchen when the three men in her life are doing manly breakfastly things).
Oh dear, typically me, I’ve wondered off the point. Where was I? Talking about what I am reading now, I think. I dipped into Kate Atkinson’s Behind the Scenes at the Museum. I haven’t actually abandoned it because I am enjoying the way it is written. It alternates between the autobiography of a girl from the moment of her conception, mentions trivial objects in the narrator’s life and then procedes to give the backstory of the object. I have a penchant for books that are mainly about women, especially those written in the first person and preferably with nothing TOO nasty in the woodpile. So far An Experiment in Love (see review by Margaret Atwood) is fitting the spec exactly with the added bonus of a touch of convent schools and nuns. Oh my goodness, I’d forgotten about nuns. There are quite a few of us who have a thing about them. What a wonderful blog subject. I feel like going off at a tangent but I must save that for tomorrow or whenever this dilatory blogger gets round to blogging again…
I’m feeling a little like Ronnie Corbett when he sits in his chair at the end of his show and rambles on then gets back to his original point by saying, “anyway, I said to my director…”
I started writing this blog entry because I am so enjoying An Experiment in Love that I thought I would have a look for a review to see what others thought. Up popped Margaret Atwood’s review and that’s what made me realise that… if you can write you can write!
C r a f t y P e o p l e ---- confessions of a lapsed reader 