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.

Idyllic II

or Reasons to be Thankful 705-762

 Thank you for Sandycove, a quiet and plush beach outside Dublin with two of my favourite quirky spots in Ireland- Joyce's Martello tower being the second. Forty Foot deserves a post all of its own, and yes, it is getting one!

 Thank you for beaches to play on and rocks to climb and walks to be had in the warm evening after a smooth drive down fast roads. Thank you for PC who just decided that we would go, that we would all go, and that we would all go for the whole weekend, and it just sort of happened and was just sort of perfect!

 Thank you for the sweeping beauty of coastline and waves and intrepid human spirit. thank you for people who swim in the sea, wetsuits or no! I so wanted to be one of them on Friday night!

 Thank you for unexpected and never quite believed fabulous weather, for blue skies and sun-drenched dusk. That's the top of the tower just to the right of the tree. I've still never made it inside, though I've read those opening pages of Ulysses three times now- once for every time I've tried to read the book- yes, a post coming on that too!

 Thank you for the National Museum- and for the fact that it's free to get in-  a frugal post coming up on Dublin too...- and for the novelty of getting off the Luas at the front gate! Thank you that we found both sites, and persuaded the strawberries inside them as well! Thank you for the heritage that is Ireland's, that Anglo-Irish mix. Is it a Chinese blessing or curse to live in interesting times?

Thank you for Molly Malone, and Trinity and Grafton Street and bikes and crowds and bustle and street performers and flower sellers and sun!

Oh thank you for two days of pure, unadulterated hot sun and blue skies and basking opportunities in St Stephen's Green. Thank you that we did think to buy suncream on the way down, and that we did pack sunhats- untouched in three years! If that was our Irish summer, thank you nonetheless!

 And the rugby- well, thanks for an interesting experience! I have now learnt all sorts of chants though the "Are you Clancy in disguise?" one seemed a bit unfair to Clancy (apparently a linesman who does occasional and ineffective stints as a referee) because even I could see how rubbish the referee games official was!

 Thank you for the hilarious crowds and the atmosphere and the craic! Thank you for the two hilarious Leinster supporters who talked to us all the way there on the bus. They were right to commiserate with us in advance!

 Thank you for dry weather all through the day, as that terrace would have been no fun with two strawberries under a deluge! Thank you for that blue sky into which the Stiletto in the Ghetto Spire of Dublin seems to disappear. Thank you for how long we all stood with chins in the air. I thought the Garda would come and move us on, as they did with the skateboarders!

 Thank you as always for Dublin Zoo. It's flat. No hill to climb- not that Belfast Zoo can do much about its mountain, I suppose! And it's gorgeous. And there are playparks and ice-cream kiosks and shady benches everywhere! And lots and lots of feeding sessions.

 But finding out that Africa Day was happening in the same place on the same day, well, that was a bonus. And that was interesting! So much celebration of diversity and community and identity. So much music and colour and kindness of strangers.

 I think there would be a lot to learn on the subject of kindness in the whole field of identity and culture and community and flags.

 And speaking of kindness, thank you for Ang of Tracing Rainbows. Thank you for her great concern, and kindness, and thoughtfulness, and sheer generosity. Their Great Stash really does have the perfect solution for every dilemma- even my virtual reading one! I can get further than the second page of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry now. It really has been a time of unlikely pilgrimages for me over the last week or so. Thank you for that. Let's see where they go!

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!

Reading along the map book

I did pack two books when we went on holiday. More of them if I ever get around to finishing one and starting the other. What happened, in fact, was that as we drove across Bodmin Moor and found ourselves ensconced in a hidden Cornish cove for a week I wanted to read stories that recorded the crashing sea outside my window, reflected the beauty edged with awe, and that were maybe even a little bit scary after dark with strawberries abed and PC across the Bay for his nightly tipple. The cottage had no phone signal, adding to the sense of timelessness, but did boast Kindle-friendly wi-fi, so down the Whispernet came Jamaica Inn. It actually came second, but we're going in the order in which I physically encountered the setting of the books that became my perfect holiday reading!

I read Notes from an Exhibition a long while ago, but because we were visiting Tate St Ives and the Hepworth House and Garden this was such an apt book. Gale's description of Hepworth felt sacreligiously irreverent compared to the hushed respect of a visit to her home. But this is an exquisite tale of families and love and emotional distress. Of the damage that we can do to each other and ourselves. I love many things about this book, but the tender importance of the peace found by all the characters in their Quaker connections is very moving. At the minute I'm reading a book of Gale's short stories, Gentleman's Relish. I lifted it off the library shelf as soon as I saw that it included a story of a bored housewife. I wasn't disappointed!

Our journey from Cornwall into Surrey took forever and a half because of a flooded road. So I had lots of time, not driving I hasten to add, to look in detail at the map. And decided that the great and most surprising length of Chesil Beach merited a dip into the prolific McEwan library. If you have been reading Fifty Shades of Grey*, well, this is the book for you. It will purge you of all those images immediately! This is the third McEwan book that I have read. I very much enjoyed Enduring Love but having endured Solar to the very end couldn't say the same of it. Chesil Beach is a gem of craftsmanship.

Finally reaching Southampton for an overnight stay we skirted the edge of the New Forest. Last week one of the BBC commentators said that the Olympic Opening ceremony was his kind of history lesson. Children of the New Forest is mine! Fans of Cromwell may not agree. I think I'll try this with the boys as a bedtime read in a while. Very strong descriptions of the wholesomeness of quiet, industrious, faithful living.

We visited Chartwell on our one rainy day in Surrey. (Betty, maybe Chartwell isn't actually in Surrey?) I haven't finished yet, but Churchill has just been thrown from power in the Election that immediately followed WWII. This is a very moving book, very interesting indeed. Mary Soames is writing from her diaries, and from the letters and diaries of her father, mother and friends, and it is a fascinating insight into the life and politics of that time. I can't help imagining that the balance Mary Churchill maintained between horrified service and champagne receptions was not the experience of my maternal grandmother, racing with two babies to her bomb shelter which lay right beside Belfast Docks, prime bombing site for planes wanting to blow up the many ships under construction and repair just yards from her home. But still, it's great book!

The Kindle copy was significantly cheaper than the paper copy, which is prominently displayed in the very lovely National Trust shop at Chartwell, where they also have very nice cream teas. The Kindle copy of everything I've whispernetted so far, despite the VAT, is significantly cheaper than the paper copy. Not that I think anything does replace the tactile pleasure of pages, but for spontaneous holiday reading the Kindle really came into its own. Not least because two of the books were free. I had imagined that this was because they were "classics" but last night I was able to get a handful of titles free from Amazon's list of 100 Free Kindle Books, so all in all I'm deciding that it's a useful reading tool. As is Carrickfergus Library to which I fear the strawberries will be decamping. Don't tell Diane in Grove..

* I have not been reading Fifty Shades of Grey!

Hooks amid books

Is it snowing where you are? Gosh, the weather from England does look wintry! But still snowless here. Lots of cold rain and grey skies, I gather from the safety of windows, not having been out all day! Did I ripple? No. Did I read? Well, yes, a bit. I finished The Blessing this morning while men were at rugby and I had gone back to bed with two croissants and a refusal to open curtains. Mostly since then I have avoided the presence of copious boys and school-friends playing hide and seek all over the house!

My utter lack of ripple progress was plainly seen on Wednesday night. Three of us are crocheting at breaktime now. Patricia is our guru, and Heather Boss claimed to be the novice. However, I think we can agree that I am sternly in the catch-up category, given that HB's blanket (hanging below my sad attempt) is now finished and she was that night working on its successor, and Patricia's blanket is actually her third project since we all started hookery in the bookery shortly before Christmas.

Come on, Mags, give yourself a shake!

Aspirational Holiday Reading and the Reading Revolution?

Last year I had a very great deal to discuss. This year it is all a very great Work in Progress!I noticed when I opened Ulysses in Cork that my first and last attempt had managed 150 pages out of its 933. I thought I could read it in the week before arriving in Dublin- I'm up to 100 now, a week after arriving in Dublin! We did that hop on hop off tour of Dublin this day last week, and were right beside the very witty guide who asked if anyone had read Ulysses. Of course I said that I was trying to! He was most encouraging and I could hear him announce incredulously to the bus as we eventually got off, "She's reading Ulysses!!"

It helps if you've been to very Martello Tower which opens the thing, and once even swam in the bay where Daedelus and company swam. That was in a former life though- this trip consisted of rock climbing, if you can spot the scrambling strawberries..

I don't mind the stream of consciousness, even though I do have to have to re-read at least a page every time I pick it back up. I like the falling into and out of thought, place, memory, must-do list, smells, dreams. I find it reassuring that the chaos of unordered thought can be enshrined in literature, as a talisman for all unordered thinkers! And it does include the most fabulous descriptions of the sea for anyone on an Irish beach holiday!

Now. Confession time. When asked what I had wanted for my birthday I had reasonably, I felt, requested the DVD of Fergal Keane's Story of Ireland. Instead I got- here it comes- a Kindle! Oh! Controversial! So all the rest of the books I am either reading or trying to read have been downloaded via Whispernet (oh but you have to LOVE that word) to what officially comes up on my non-reflective screen as Mags' Kindle.

I am loving Robinsoe Crusoe- chose this one a: because the original Crusoe- an adventurer called Sedgwick, set sail on that voyage from Kinsale, and b: out of copyright it can be downloaded free, gratis and for nothing as can many, many other titles, like Pride and Prejudice which was my first ever Whispernet arrival.

Is it possible to impregnate prose with one more charged syllable of dramatic irony? I think not. If you have ever struggled to teach this, as I have, look no further. Chapter 1 of RobCru. Or practically every other sentence in all the chapters I've read so far (these amounting to two and a half..)

When done with that set of voyages and strange islands, I'll be straight into another with Travels into Several remote Nations of the World in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships. To give it its real and very full name. a: Because we were all around St Patrick's Cathedral and the house where it was written and b: because being out of cpoyright.... And to my shame, c: despite having lived and worked in the city of Saints and Scholars, close to Gosford Castle where Swift holidayed, I haven't ever actually read it.

And this is the next on the contemporary list- downwhispered to Mags' Kindle to demonstrate to Cooking Catherine how frighteningly easy it is to spend money when your Kindle already holds all your details in its little Amazon cash register! Also because she highly recommends it, and Cooking Catherine is never wrong about books! She's actually never wrong about anything as far as I can see, but she is very good on books!

So, off to bed for another page of Ulysses, not including the one I'll have to read again... And that will leave only 832 to go!