Books

So this week I did finish a book, so I did. It was the third in Tony Macauley's series about growing up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, so it is. He writes it entirely in the dialect that we all spoke in Belfast at time, so we did, and yousns might not understand a blind thing in it!

He went to up Coleraine University; I went to Queen's here in town. He does rightly record the snobbery to which this decision would have subjected him! He rightly records everything I remember from my university days: coming from not particularly pleasant areas of Belfast to the ivory towers of academia, the insider politics of third-level Christianity, the angst and the inspiration, the legwarmers and Duran Duran.

It was a good read and I found it incredibly poignant, though I don't know how universal that would be. Mind you, he does have a big following in the States, where I suppose interest in Island Ireland and all her corners is high. Interesting to be reading a book so steeped in the consequences of Loyalism and Republicanism in the week where not so Island Scotland decided that maybe the time wasn't just right.

I think All Growed Up isn't just as gripping as the first book, Paperboy, and the second, Breadboy, certainly wasn't. I think the two sequels bring nothing new apart from the on-going narrative. Paperboy had all the freshness of a book written in this voice, from this persepective. So if you hadn't read any Macauley, I think I'd still recommend Paperboy.

I have started rereading Divorcing Jack by Bateman- a whole other outrageous depiction of Belfast! I should really get around to reading anything other than this first novel of his. Three years ago some of us went to a reading Colin Bateman was doing and took our copies of Divorcing Jack along with us. We told him we were reading one of his books for Book Club. He was happily impressed until he asked which one. I think he was appalled that after his prolific output, including very successful TV dramatisations for which he wrote the scripts, we were stuck on the first one. At least with Tony Macauley I'm keeping pace!

PC thinks that Macauley's next book will be about his move into peace and reconciliation work, for which he was already quite well known before the novels. That can be my token nod in the direction of Peace Day!

A bad book week

This week I haven't finished one single book. I did dip into one that I hope to finish for next week, but last night I gave up on one completely. I don't usually do this. I mostly have to keep going to find out what happens next. I did admittedly abandon The Shack. Literally. I left it on a bench somewhere between Guildford and Brittany. And I skim read the theme that interested me in a book about a girl from a bookshop who goes to work with a reclusive author.

However last night I realised in a liberating gust of breath that I did not have to spend one single more moment of my life being dragged through the morass of humanity's representation that is The Poet by Michael Connolly. No, I am not linking to it!

We seem to have gone crime fiction mad in book club. The Agatha books were missing from my tick-list and I was happy to have a go therewith; but this Connolly novel does exactly what I hate most with fiction.

We know that our world is an evil, dangerous, polluted pit. We know that men, and women, abuse the physical possibilities of our human bodies. We are surrounded now with tales that disgust and deplore.

I just find that sometimes with a novel, I'm not sure whether the author is taking my trust and engagement and dragging me through the dirt for the good of the themes within, or whether they are taking my trust and engagement and money and making for the hills.

So enough. No more. I shall finish the other book I started and then I shall find myself Something Good To Read. Probably starting with People of the Book as recommended by Dormouse! Warn me now, sweet mouse, if you think there is ANYTHING distressing therein!

What I did this evening instead of finishing my second book in two weeks was grab Master Heart, the Farmer's son, before he took up his usual evening position in my garden and demand apples. Mr Heart, the Farmer's Husband, had already sent me home a huge bowl of blackberries and my Good Housekeeping Cookbook tells me that blackberries and apples can be jam.

Round the corner and up the lane we all trotted, stopping to chat to our next-door neighbours, their goats. Through all the little gates, through the old garden, and into the orchard.

 We didn't need to send small boys up trees for all the apples, but it does help.

Then back down the lane and home. With clear minds and wholesome thoughts. Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

Books

 Goodness, I nearly didn't make it this week! Fifty-two books in the next year, and I just about read six short stories over seven days. This does not bode well! And to think that I deliberately started with P. G. Wodehouse because I associate him with the delicious practice of book-devouring.

 Growing up in Belfast in the seventies and eighties meant that the only place I was allowed to go to by myself, one of only two places I ever went that lay beyond the line in the tarmac at the end of our cul-de-sac, was the library. They had a whole collection of P. G. Wodehouse's Blandings books. So when I discovered this large print PGW at my parents' a few weeks ago I grabbed and ran.

I needn't have bothered. Give me pigs and castles anytime. I don't like Jeeves. I don't like him at all. One down, fifty-one to go...

 Now this is a book to savour. This was my main read over the summer. A rich, thick compendium of all the Irish magic you've ever heard and then some more. It is the story of storytellers, and it is the stories of storytellers. It is the legends of the famous and a legend of a few. I loved it. Read it now!

The rest of the summer I read Mary Berry's story. A jolly hockey sticks romp through life with parties, frocks and Agas. And a recipe at the end of every chapter. Lovely, darling. Nice behind the scenes peeks into GBBO too.

I did also read my Agatha Christie for this month's Book Club. I read the first Miss Marple which I liked very much. Then I read one of the Poirot books- the one about the dog and his bouncing ball. I think I'll have to put Hercule in the north-facing Blue Room with Jeeves in attendance. Miss Marple can sit by the fire with Mary, and Frank Delaney shall serve them coffee and delight.

I'll be in the study with a crowbar, thinking murderous thoughts about homeworks, swimming kit and music lessons.

Book Club

So, life must be getting back to something approaching normal, or at least settling in to a new normal, because I made it to my second book club all year. To be honest, the only reason I made it to either was because they both happened chez moi, but I'm getting there!

Not only was I there, but I had read the book as well! Goodness knows how many titles I've missed this year, but I'm glad I didn't miss this one. Now, I'm not generally a big reader of detective/thriller books, but last year one of you kind folk recommended Martin Edwards as a Lake District read, and we're hooked on that series now; now I fully expect to be hooked on the Back Road sequels too.

Like J. K. Rowling's Casual Vacancy this book revolves around a very well described cannon of characters. Unlike Casual Vacancy, however, it is not at all a waste of however long you spend reading it. In a more positive comparison, like Roasmunde Pilcher's Winter Solstice it has a house at the core of the setting that becomes as much a charcter as the people who move in and out of it. I like books with house you can nearly feel. Unlike Winter Solstice you don't feel the need to count the number of Belfast sinks, although you will end up obsessed with yellow roses.

The Back Road moves on from a very distressing opening chapter into some very intricate weaving of characters and plot. Deliberate red herrings will leave you nonplussed until the end, and the distress of the beginning blossoms into a clever twist. It's not Great Literature. My definition of Great Literature is a book that will open up your whole life to you. This is entertainment, not the whole plaire et instruire upon which my ingrained Moliere insists, but I'm becoming less of a book snob either as I get older or as holidays approach. Or both. Actually, the lure for these books for me is the relationship suspense. I only read on with the Edwards books to find out whether or not they've got themselves together. I turn out to be a sucker for a nice love story.

 A quick glimpse at the rest of the night. Book Club is all about the food and the wine ultimately, don't you think? We have some very clever folk in our little band. Themed food and drink most months, don't you know? So because the house in the book has a huge drinks party at one point, we obviously had to have lots and lots of canapes as well. You might even spot one sinister yellow rose in their midst.

And here are two of my partners in crime. I think my life would be not quite so much fun without these two characters. Apparently if you lend a book to someone you should take a picture of them with the book to remind you where it is. I wish I had done that with my very missing crochet books...

Top is Heather Boss. My one time Library boss, and now Hookery leader. She would like to state that her Agatha Christie, our summer read, is all her own. Below is Queen Niqi, domestic goddess who is quite aware that she is re-enacting a mugshot! The rest of us are borrowing Agathas from Helena. So, Helena, I have pictures of all of us and books will be returned!

BIP

Last year we had a Hungry Caterpillar calendar. How I loved it. Though I realise now that my attempt at drawing an eight for Jo's birthday was not entirely clear. Way back in the deep mid-last-winter I thought I could have a monthly blog on Books in Progress. Here we are ten months later...

September Book Club read was Les Miserables. Well done, Leigh and Niqi for getting to the end! I persevere, and revel in, and often laugh out loud. I console myself on my lack of progress by recalling the ambitious commitment to read it in version originale. When in fact it has more to do with my utter lack of commitment to anything requiring such discipline. The last very long book I read was The Children's Book and I loved every last word that I made myself read every day. I shall have to employ the same daily routine for this. The day it arrived it clearly inspired joy. Or maybe the mug was there for scale- to highlight the irony of this being the pocket edition...

The book that I am in fact reading most is my latest Barbara Pym. When I started reading her books in order I fell in love with the gentle satire, and the glimpse into post-war England, and the humour. But as I've read on the books have become more, dare I say, hopeless? Women in situations that they may, or may not, be making the most of; women stifled, unsatisfied. I'm not at all near the end of No Fond Return, but none of the female characters this time are triumphing over the twists and turns of their paths. (Don't tell me the end!) And what I am finding is that I may prefer these darker, sadder portraits. Although maybe I would like some warning if this trend is unremitting?

Ang, thank you for lending me your Edith Schaeffer: finally I am reading, and no longer covering in jam, Hidden Art! I will definitely have it back in your safekeeping by Christmas! The title is misleading, is it not? I put off reading it for so long because I was trying to read Les Mis convinced that I was unworthy to read a book about creating domestic bliss, and feared it would be another Jane Brockett invitation to more accomplished domesticity than I shall ever achieve! I was wrong. This is all about creative spirituality, about nurturing your gifts in however small a way, about reflecting the Creator God in whatever acts of creation you can, whether they be just slicing apples from your little tree in the garden into braised pork or apple pie, or reading stories aloud to two boys, or colouring in your to-do lists in your notebook. I'm finding it very encouraging.

We went to my favourite autumn place today. Can't say where. It has the best conker tree in Ireland and it's all mine! Anyway, because we had hid and sought the suns all through what is also the best hide and seek venue in Ireland, and then filled every pocket we had with conkers, and then gone on a long tree identifying walk (as a total townie the actual tree identifying amounted only to three...), and then played hide and seek again, finally we were able to go to the little second-hand bookshop in the courtyard. I bought this. It seems to be an unashamed re-writing of the story of Heinrich Schliemann which takes me right back to sixth form. Those were days when I devoured the legends of Troy, the archaeological ones included. Admittedly these were the days of Michael Woods' TV series "In Search of the Trojan War". I still have the book. I was going to marry Michael Woods. We were going to climb Mount Olympus together and explore Troy by sunset. I obviously knew that he wouldn't stay with Jenni Murray, though I was genuinely sorry when I heard that they had separated. I was beginning to love BBC 4's Woman's Hour at much the same time. Sigh. I'm sure I'll get back to you on Les Mis for November's BIP, but for the rest of this holiday week I'll be firmly you know where.

Books, by popular demand

Since you asked! John Boyne's House of Special Purpose is a very interesting read. It is the story of a couple, of a nation, of a revolution. It is a love story, a history lesson, a mystery all rolled into one! If you've been to St Petersburg it is a delight, and if you're thinking about going to St Petersburg it will be an inspiration.

We read it for Book Club last year, and I don't much recall the thread of the discussion, but certainly I remember devouring it. I like books set in two time zones, as this is, and I like characters who recall their own actions and motivations, just as they are working out their destiny. I'm coming back to this with Julian Barnes.

If you want what I remember as synopsis: a retired London librarian looks back on his youth in Mother Russia, before, during and after the Revolution, as he travels in and out of hospital to visit his dying wife. He has worked for the Romanovs at the time of their arrest and confinement. Anastasia? Yes, she features! Rasputin? Him too!

We had book club last Friday night, and it was an interesting one. I've talked about All the Beggars Riding here already, but I have to say that what I appreciate about book club, apart from discovering authors I would never have thought to read, is the mellowing that others' experiences bring to your own conclusions. I found Beggars an occasionally frustrating read, but I came away last week with more of an admiration for what Caldwell tries to do in the reconciling of an unhappy past to the possibility of a less hampered future.

I only mention this because last night I finished The Sense of an Ending. I think I could say that I might actually be depressed today. Caldwell seemed to want to re-address a personal history, turn it around and examine it, to fill in the blanks that remain painful to the child left living in the absence of understanding about her past.  Barnes does the opposite?

Here is a man who has let his understanding of his past settle comfortably about him, fitting in with the ideas he needs to maintain his vision of himself. Like Caldwell's book, Sense of an Ending is in two parts. Beggars has one section floundering in the jagged quest for truth, then a second section where the child's mother has a fictional story woven from the possibilities, and this is supposed to free the child to ride aloft, like a beggar given a fine steed. But Barnes has a first section where we read the very plausible memories of a man whose friend committed suicide at university, but then a second section where the man must piece together jagged fragments of discovery to find a wholly different version of his past.

It is a brilliantly skilful book. It is gently and beautifully narrated, but goodness, I had to read it slowly. It is a story to savour and ponder, because like all good literature, it is not the story of one man, but everyman. Certainly everyone who grows older and might see their ages and stages in all their transitory folly. It is a book about history- your history, my history.

If it's uplifting you'd rather have as a summer read- look no further than Harold Fry! Now, Isabelle and I have differing views on this one- do pop over to the erudite place that is In This Life and scroll back to her post on books a few days ago. I didn't think this was so much Pilgrim's Progress as Canterbury Tales- colourful, story-full characters coming and going, but never taking its eyes off the phenomenon of Harold Fry. There is great sadness in this book, so beware if your time is a fragile one, but what I loved and adored was the celebration of the ordinary, small little lives of ordinary, small little people up and down the country who could yet do great good, make significant differences to the greater cause, with a cup of tea or a roll of duct tape.

On holiday reading- last year I took a bag of books away to Cornwall and touched none of them so much had Cornwall touched me. The advantage of that old Kindle is its ability to whisper down tomes like magic, and I have to say I revelled in reading my way across England. Jamaica Inn and Notes from an Exhibition in Cornwall, Children of the New Forest and On Chesil Beach as we drove past Chesil Beach and the New Forest, A Daughter's Tale as we wandered around Chartwell.

So, recommendations, please? Apart from books on the Pre-Raphaelites, lots and lots of Wordsworth, and the Collected Works of Beatrix Potter- what should I be taking to the Lake District?

ps Pom Pom, I'm thinking of having a Cold Comfort Farm blog reading event- what do you think? Or maybe we should just get together and read it ensemble? You have to be wearing green and marching through the countryside.

Monday Thanks 763 - 787

I am very thankful for the fabulous weather we had last week. Lovely! It is today so dull that I have the lights on in the dining room to mark. Both my nice summer tops are now in the washing machine, ready to packed away for next May! Sandals are safe from wear and tear for another year! 

Speaking of marking, I am nearly half-way through, and feeling most relieved about that. Thank you for bloggistes' kind wishes x I am admittedly just over half way through my time to mark, so thank you for the impetus that working under pressure brings!

Thank you for the full house we had this whole weekend, and for all the hours we spent catching up with good folk. Thank you for food and wine and chocolate and all such delights. Thank you for princes who will go to the supermarket with child and bring back the goods.

Thank you indeed for children. Thank you for their health and vitality and creativity and fun. Thank you for their energy and inquisitiveness. I am sure that this pushing of the boundaries thing that we are struggling with just now is very normal and a sign of something constructive. Thank you for faith- being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see!

Thank you for the friends who help me to hold it all together. Who come down and sit beside me while I make the invites and send the email and create the facebook page! Who will drop everything and come to town with me just to keep me company in the buying of piano books! They know me so well! Thank you for groups of creative women who include me in their doings, and furnish me with things to look forward to- so thank you for Hookery's first birthday party on Wednesday, Book Club on Friday, and Creative Arts and Spirituality in September. I am blessed x

Reading and meeting

Pom Pom noted recently that reading and meeting are what I like to do. So true! 'Tis not surprising then that books for Book Club are mostly what I'm always catching up on, especially given that I'm not always exactly early or best organised! Birds without Wings was our read for months ago. I was reading it on Kindle, so it was consigned to the waiting for boys or waiting with parents school run and hospital appointment times.  Until I realised that it was obviously as much a tome as Captain Corelli and gave it undivided attention.

It doesn't, I think, have the compelling attraction of Corelli, but I do love very much the stories told from so many perspectives. I love the richness of de Bernieres' tales, the intertwining of distressing, and shamefully, forgotten periods in time with the eternal preoccupations of women, and men, and us all. It is increasingly poignant. He builds up to the sadness, the loss, the brutality so beautifully that you fully anticipate the atrocities of war-torn Turkey, without losing sight of the delicate twists of fate that may somehow land you whole on a new shore.

On the Kindle front, incidentally, my second Kindle has died a death of the screen, in exactly the same way as the first one. This seems to be a recurrent Kindle fault, at least with the dinosaur ones. It posed a dilemma: not wanting another such Kindle, not wanting to lose all those Kindle books. Ang has been my guardian angel- and more of that anon.

The title of Birds without Wings is as linked to poetry as Lucy Caldwell's All the Beggars Riding. I will confess, even with the pages of Beggars still slightly imprinted on my fingers, that both references are temptingly forgettable. I am afraid that I am hoping for much the same outcome with the protagonists of this one.

Belfast has now, in May, the concept of One City, One Book, and challenges its citadins to read the one book in the one city and discuss it in book groups, book readings across the town. Unlike last year's wonderful book, Beggars has a tenuous link to Belfast. And exploits perhaps two of its troubled atrocities for the mere purposes of plot. These two families could have been set in any two places at all, but Lucy is from Belfast after all. (I didn't teach her, because she was leaving the Prestigious Establishment as I was leaving, but I did teach her youngest sister...)

I didn't like the halting, apologetic style of the narration in the first part. I wasn't wholly convinced that the premise of a burdened daughter who seeks redemption in unravelling her mother's story excused the excessive degree of disjointed soul-searching. There were many interesting passages on writing and telling though, and certainly the chapter where Lara finally comes to Belfast as an adult I did love.

Dissatisfaction has, however, abounded in more than my reading. Tonight we finished this version of The Seven Voyages of Sinbad. I was pleased with the suns' quick grasp of the formula, and more pleased with their disapproval of Sinbad! Rich man becomes bored at rich home, sets sail to increase riches, ship wrecked, sole survivor, often watching other companions die grisly deaths, sits astride a convenient plank. escapes own grisly adventure, ends up in palace of another rich man who takes him in and promotes him, and marries him off twice, makes lots of money after losing everything, returns home and gives Sinbad the Porter another ten (or is it one hundred?) gold dinars.  We were not amused.

Last year Book Club read Cold Comfort Farm. I had never read it before. I have now lost count of how many times I have read it since. I read it often and regularly! I know it's about trauma in the wood-shed, and milking shed, and that it was a parody of which Gibbons grew tired, but I cherish it. I dare to say that it has been one of those books that will have shaped my thinking. When all threatens to engulf and worry and o'erthrow, I'll put on something green, think about washing curtains, brew some good tea, and then go for a brisk walk.

Reading and meeting, tea-drinking and fresh air. I know what's good for me!

Letters to PC II

 

Dear Prince Charming,

 

I am very glad that you are home. I know it was only for one night, and that you were technically still in the country, but that little old Irish Sea makes such a difference somehow.  Thank you for carving my pumpkin before you left. Everyone at Book Club was very impressed with its welcome at the door. And I was very impressed that you got not only the number but also the window from the title.  Also quite impressed that Ulster won. Must be the icing on the rugby trip away cake.

It was good that we had Book Club, I think. It kept us all busy. You would have been very proud of your boys, who opened the door for arriving folk, and helped serve food, and amused themselves manfully, and went to bed eventually with not (very) much protest.  It was a great night at Book Club.  Not everyone had hated the book, always a worry when you've chosen it!  It maybe wasn't everyone's cup of tea/coffee/hot water/sugar free lemon and lime stuff, but it did remind me of all those innocent abroad journey books I read at university, and there's such licence to mock all, and indeed all the century, therein.  We hadn't all thought it was a hilarious satire also on the Larsson genre of horrific violence in Nordic countries, but we had all loved the bit where the elephant sat down.

 

Anyway, you're back in the Land where all is golden and good, and that makes everything all right. There's such a hole in the whole when one is missing.  It makes me wonder at my beautifully justified jaunts away.  Not that getting away from it all is bad. Just that with you is better than not. I am very glad that you are home x

Show and Tell 2012

We have just one more week of evenings in the Library- it goes down to daytime opening hours over the summer holidays. So Hookery in the Bookery had its end of year Show and Tell last night! Plans are to decamp to Heather Boss's house over the holidays, so hopefully the ripple will make some progress! Full details of frankly amazing output in seven months, none of it mine, over at Hookery in the Bookery blog! Or if you'd rather read about book clubs, look at this article. A friend read it and thought of me- and indeed I recognised myself more than once...

Day 17: I made it!

I made it to the end of today- this is cause for great celebration; please have even a little whoop of something on my behalf! After work we made gingerbread men. (The flying elephant is so Chagall, n'est-ce pas? Not to mention the dancing Matisse lady on the right!!)

Then we played Junior Scrabble, and I made it to the end of Divorcing Jack in between goes! Then I made it eventually to Book Club, Divorcing Jack ringing in my ears as I drove. Not quite hot off the press- in fact, when we met Colin Bateman last night I felt quite sheepish when he asked which book we were reading for tonight, and we said Divorcing Jack (published in 1994) and he said, "Oh. The first one."

It has been a veritable rollercoaster of a day in my land- I do hope your weekend is beginning with much more peace and tranquillity! And speaking of peace and tranquillity (Yeats reference alert) tomorrow I must arise and go then, and go into town to find a fabulous Father's Day present. No. I'm not making one! If I make up the paper bunting for my giveaway I shall be extremely satisfied- last chance to comment here!

One year old this month!

Our Book Club has been meeting for a year! So well done, us! And well done and enormous thanks to Lorraine who hosts and holds us all together! And well done to my Library boss, Heather-

- for being this month's model. Seen here most appropriately in white coat to take us all away. The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox- great discussion material and great read. Not overly obvious in food inspiration, so thankfully Niqi produced The Book Club Birthday Cake. And what a cake! How many have you read- or eaten??