Keeping It Brief

After a slow few weeks, in writing terms, I’m back, hot on the tails of finishing yet another book. In the interest of keeping it brief (which both helps me keep up to date on my writing, and means you have to wade through less of my ramblings), I’m going to restrict myself to one paragraph per book (without producing three, page-long paragraphs...). With that goal in mind, I’m not going to go through the preamble of introducing each book; if you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out the below Wikipedia links.

The Plague

The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ

Slaughterhouse Five

The Plague was a fascinating book, containing many profound sentiments about human nature in unexpected contexts (which, I believe, is sort of the point). Perhaps as testament to this, it’s the first book this year for which I’ve resorted to highlighting (digitally, calm down you book-puritans!) so I can easily re-visit these passages. Thanks to Abbie for an excellent recommendation.

The Good Man... was a surprisingly short read. It clocks in at 245 pages, but it’s comprised of many short chapters, with a oddly high blank page count between them. I presume that this was an intentional authorial/editorial decision, but I’m still trying to work exactly what the significance behind it is. Part of a wider myths series, GMJ&SC provides an interesting underscore to Pullman’s atheism, in a highly inflammatory way. It's clear why it attracted such controversy (and threats), because it offers a highly irreverent take on the Jesus mythology.

Slaughterhouse Five was lying around on my eReader from a few years ago - something I never got round to reading at the time. I was familiar with the title and painfully aware of that fact that I had never read any Vonnegut, so I decided to go for it, without really reading up on the background to the book first. It turned out to be another quick read, one that is, fairly, heralded as one of the great novels of the 20th century (though, admittedly, by Modern Library). For all of its occasionally trite, disarming, or satirical style, it’s a highly though-provoking, philosophical work, rooted in a fatalist philosophy. I highly recommend it.

Well, that’s me up to date... I’m trying to forge ahead with some other short-mid length books to get ahead of my quota, so I can think of tackling some of the intimidatingly longer ones on my list (speaking of which, I will share my list as it stands at some point this week).

I’m also looking at instituting some achievements to round out the challenge, partly because I seem to love gamification in any form, and partly because it might give me some interest ideas of connections to write about. Please drop any suggestions in the comments, but here are a few for starters (a few of which I’ll already have achieved):

Fanboi (Read two or more books by the same author)

Well-Versed (Read 5 or more different formats: short story/novel/verse/non-fiction/drama)

Internacional (Finished a foreign language or dual-text book)

Genre-Savvy (Read from at least 6 different genres)

Strong Opening (Completed ten books)

Take A Leaf Out of My Book (Finished 5 recommendations)

You Have Excellent Taste (Finished 15 recommendations)

Let’s hear what you’ve got for me... Just a reminder that you can follow my occasional micro-updates on Twitter via #GRaBaW (usually tweeting from @mastergeorge). As ever, keen to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Week 12

13/52

Fragile Things - Neil Gaiman (2006)

The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern (2011)

The Revolution of Saint Jone - Lorna Mitchell (1988)

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - John Le Carré (1974)

I Can Make You Hate - Charlie Brooker (2012)

Looking For Jake and Other Stories - China Miéville (2005)

The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett (1989)

The Bloody Chamber - Angela Carter (1979)

Jobs - Walter Isaacson (2012)

The Plague - Albert Camus (1947)

Ready Player One - Ernest Cline (2011)

Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut (1969)
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ - Phillip Pullman (2010)

Currently Reading:

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (1931)

Georgia's List So Far

Because it was split into two posts, I decided to put up another entry summarising Georgia's full list so far, as of week 12. She's been reading more, so she's not actually behind, but this is what's been written up so far.

Week 12
10/52

The Lost Books of the Odyssey - Zachary Mason (2007)

The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (1937)

The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes - Neil Gaiman, (1991)

Facing Violence - Rory Miller (2011)

The Hypnotist - Lars Kepler (2012)

Stabat Mater - Tiziano Scarpa (2011)
Un Lun Dun - China Mieville (2007)
Open Secrets - Alice Munro (1994)
The Dragon Queen - Alice Borchardt (2001)
Tipping the Velvet - Sarah Walters (1998)

How The Other Half Read: For All You Fellas

This time, it's another guest post from Georgia. More George updates coming soon...

One of the greatest male protagonists of all time has got to be the man of many turns: Odysseus. I've read the poem in translation and teach Armitage's version at school (for enrichment activities), though I'm still sad that I actually missed out on properly studying this epic at school and university - I was too interested in Vergil and the tragedians (both topics I do teach for A level, so it was probably a good call). I have read two great modern retellings of Classical epic: The Song of Achilles (Madeline Miller) and Lavinia (Ursula Le Guin); so I was very excited to complete the set by discovering a new take on the other one of the Big Three, namely The lost books of the Odyssey, by Zachary Mason. Rather than reworking the original, Mason works off the idea that, before Homer's epics were solidified in the eighth century BC by being written down for the first time, there may have been alternative endings and different stories told throughout the Aegean.  This collection of short stories, therefore, contains 44 apocryphal books of the Odyssey and it is brilliant. My favourites have to be The Stranger - where Odysseus meets a Trojan with the same memories as him, The Myrmidon Golem - where Achilles is literally a war-machine, The Iliad of Odysseus - painting Odysseus as the poet himself, and The Book of Winter - which has the most amazing last line. It's definitely one for those who are familiar, if not with the Odyssey itself, then at least with the main adventures of Odysseus, and it is a wonderful exploration of what-ifs.

Two books which were much better than I expected them to be were The Hobbit and The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes.  When the LOTR films came out I tried reading the books and never got past the first three pages; and so I decided not to bother with The Hobbit either. Again, Hannah is responsible for getting me to change my mind.  I loved it and sped through it. Of course, there is the irritation that there is nary a female character to be seen, but I still think it's a brilliant adventure and found myself growing to like Bilbo Baggins more and more as the tale went on.  In a strange way, it reminded me of a much-loved children's book: Pongwiffy! Must have been the goblins.  I also enjoyed The Sandman, especially for its reworking of classical mythology (yes, I'm aware I need to read American Gods) and its inclusion of John Dee, although I found the story-telling too fragmented for it to make for easy reading, and I'm not sure I'll continue with the series. (I know there may be some who would argue that a graphic novel doesn't count as a book, but I'm waving a merry two fingers at them.  If George can count audio-books, I can count graphic novels, so yah-boo-sucks to you!)

The last two books to discuss both focus on violence, but in very different ways. A really interesting book examining different types of perpetrators of violence and suggestions for what has worked for him is Sgt. Miller's Facing Violence: preparing for the unexpected. It contains more workable suggestions than the other book of his I have read (Meditations on Violence, which is still fascinating, but focuses more on the gap between martial arts training and real-life scenarios), and examines the social aspect of violent behaviour as well as the different personalities who commit violent crimes. Moving from reality to fiction, The Hypnotist by Lars Kepler (actually a pseudonym for a literary couple who have a special place in my affections, not just for their writing, but also because they're called Alexander and Alexandra) is such a gripping read that I read all c1000 pages of it in twenty-four hours. The protagonist is Joona Linna, Stockholm's answer to James Bond, though the really interesting character is the eponymous hypnotist himself, Erik Maria Bark, and his family. The story starts with Linna's investigation into the murder of an entire family, but quickly morphs into something much more personal to Bark. Typically Scandinavian in style, this is dark, gloomy and gory (fans of Stieg Larsson, Jo Nesbo and John Ajvide Lindqvist eat your hearts out - and if you're not a fan yet, you're missing out), and, most of all, this book is unputdownable. 

Next on my list of Scandi-thrillers is Disgrace by Jussi Adler-Olsen, but I've just has started The Strain by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan, so I may not get there that soon.  Please do give me your recommendations, especially if they have interesting female characters, as I fear that I've read most of them (Millenium trilogy, Sally Lockheart trilogy...) ...any ideas?

Literary Love xxx

The Lost Books of the Odyssey - Zachary Mason (2007)

The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (1937)

The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes - Neil Gaiman (1991)

Facing Violence - Rory Miller (2011)

The Hypnotist - Lars Kepler (2012)

Listen To Me Very Carefully...

Okay, listen up, because this post will be all about audiobooks. I thought about recording this rather than writing it, just to fit the general ‘theme’, but that seemed a bit excessive, and I know that many people don’t like audiobooks anyway.

My decision at the beginning of the challenge that audiobooks would be acceptable and count was one that raised a few eyebrows when I mentioned it to a few people. I was pretty adamant that they should be counted, firstly because they were an integral part of the crazy challenge that inspired this one, but also because - why not? 

One argument that I’ve heard is that you’re not getting the same 'reading' experience as you do from reading a book (ie. it's not reading). Fair enough; I agree that the relationship with the text is different, but, though with audiobooks you can drift slightly in and out of listening, with written text, you can end up skimming sections or pages depending on what, when, and where you’re reading (and I know that I’m not the only person that does this!). 

In any case, I was never much of a fan of audiobooks, which is surprising, given the rate that I go through podcasts. Well, now, I must say, I’m totally converted. So - onto the books.

I finally finished the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson. If you’ve been following the blog to date, you’ve probably seen it cropping up on the ‘stuff I’m reading’ at the bottom of posts since the beginning. The audiobook clocks it at around 24 hours, and took me more than two months to complete, listening to it mostly when walking on my commute. 

The second Google autocomplete was 'Steve Jobs was a dick'

The book itself was pretty great. I’ve not generally been a fan of biography as a genre; I’ve never found it particularly enjoyable to read and have never really stuck with it. Taking on this reasonably-sized book as an audiobook was a sensible strategy (though I have the hardcover at home, which was great to flip back through, and for the pictures). 

Regardless of your opinions of him or his products, it’s difficult not to concede that Jobs was a fascinating man, deeply talented and deeply flawed, who achieved some incredible things. If you have any sort of sustained interest, I’d definitely think about picking this one up. It’s not light reading, but it’s very well written (and read! (by Dylan Baker)), which manages to balance the colour, facts, and mythos of Jobs’ life to paint a very interesting picture of the man. 

I'm aware my blog has been a bit image-light lately, but I've been having finding pictures to illustrate things well; so in the mean time, here is a picture of my hero, grumpy cat.

The second audiobook took me less than a week. It was two thirds of the lengths of ‘Steve Jobs’, and was significantly lighter, which should explain how I got through it so much faster. This was ‘Ready Player One’ by Ernest Cline, and if you’ve got even the slightest geeky leanings, I highly recommend picking this up. This came as a suggestion from Will at work, and when I saw that Wil Wheaton read the audiobook, it was a snap choice. This was a rip-roaring romp through a collection of extreme pop-culture references (mostly from the 80s), hung together by a highly enjoyable plot set in a dystopian near-future, heavily dominated by an MMO-style virtual reality called the Oasis. 

As I said, I’m now a real audiobook convert, and am somewhat distressed that my Audible membership plan only gives me one book a month! For the skeptics among you, I’d urge you to give it another try (perhaps sign up for an Audible account, seeing as you can get at least one book free without any payment required), and see if you come around to the idea. It depends a lot on the book and who’s reading it. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts, for and against, in the comments.

Amongst these two, I actually ‘read’ a book (with my eyes), which I’ll update on next time for the sake of space (ie. not boring you to death with another compendious post). Seeing as it’s been asked for a lot, I’m also going to be putting up my current reading list, with the recommendations/additions so far. 

Until next time, keep on listening!

Week 12

13/52

Fragile Things - Neil Gaiman (2006)

The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern (2011)

The Revolution of Saint Jone - Lorna Mitchell (1988)

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - John Le Carré (1974)

I Can Make You Hate - Charlie Brooker (2012)

Looking For Jake and Other Stories - China Miéville (2005)

The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett (1989)

The Bloody Chamber - Angela Carter (1979)

Jobs - Walter Isaacson (2012)

The Plague - Albert Camus (1947)

Ready Player One - Ernest Cline (2011)

Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut (1969)
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ - Phillip Pullman (2010)

Currently Reading:

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (1931)

How The Other Half Read: This One Goes Out to the Ladies

My other half, specifically. We have a guest post from Georgia, who is going through the same challenge as me. Let's hear some support!

Hi everyone!

Welcome to my guest-post which gives an update on my own 52 book challenge. At the end of week 10, I am keeping up, having just finished reading my tenth book this morning. Since I have ten books to talk about, and since George and I have had Anita Sarkeesian videos playing on the Apple TV all afternoon (these also are highly recommended - I first found out about this lady through her Tedx talk about the online harassment she suffered for her Kickstarter project - to create a series of videos exploring the role of women in video games. She has some amazing ideas; watch her stuff), I have decided to split my list into subsets based on the gender of the protagonist. First up, the ladies:

I've read some great books with female protagonists and a few really not very good ones. My favourite has to be The Dragon Queen, by Alice Borchardt. Being a Classicist, I love a good epic, and this Arthurian tale, with the eponymous hero actually being a heroine, is fascinating. Skin-changers, journeys beyond the realm of the real world, including the mandatory trip to the underworld, and a child raised by wolves all set in the Dark Age following the departure of the Romans from Britain make this a very interesting and enjoyable read - despite it being a long hefty book which required the purchase of a larger handbag to cart it around! If you like Vergil, Homer, George RR Martin, give it a try! 

The worst book in the set was Stabat Mater, by Tiziano Scarpa. I received this book as an Xmas present from my mum; she thought it would be pertinent as I love stories about Venice (Jeanette Winterson's The Passion is one of my all-time favourites), I play the violin and the title is in Latin. The book is set in an orphanage in Venice and focuses on one orphan's questions about her history and how the arrival of Vivaldi as new director of music shakes up her life. Or so the blurb says. I didn't enjoy the stream-of-consciousness style with no chapters at all, and the first fifty pages are just the protagonist complaining. I'd much rather read The Passion again. And again. 

Speaking of passion and lesbians (J Winterson's most famous work being Oranges are not the only Fruit - also brilliant), I also read Sarah Walter's Tipping the Velvet. Remember the sexy BBC adaptation a decade or so again starring the fabulous Keeley Hawes and Rachael Stirling? Yes, we all love a good Victorian, lesbian drama, but mostly this book is a love story, following the heroine, Nan as she follows her pash, Miss Kitty Butler all the way to London, onto the stage and then struggles to regain her self-belief after a huge betrayal by beloved Kitty. This is easy-to-read romantic fiction at its best.

Open Secrets by Alice Munro is a series of eight short stories loosely linked by the characters' connection to a small Canadian town called Carstairs, spanning the years ab urbe condita to the present day. I found this selection more and more enjoyable as I read on. At first, I was somewhat stumped by the way the author seems to set every story inside another story; in 50 pages this just seems too much to cram in. Especially when at least 50% of the female characters in the first half of the book have names beginning with 'M'. However, there are some great stories in here, from the tale of a woman abducted in the Albanian mountains, to the orphan who is handed over as wife to a man who needs a woman to look after him at the frontier, to the heartbroken and discarded wife who follows her cheating husband all the way to Australia so that she can inveigle her way back into his life.  All in all, if you're paying attention, there is some really enjoyable story-telling at work here.

Last, but not least, is Un Lun Dun by China Mieville. Hannah (an old friend from school and uni who works in children's publishing) suggested this when we were discussing how much we enjoyed Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere. I was hooked immediately, but lost interest slightly when I got past the number of pages that Neverwhere had taken to finish the whole story and then got more and more into it towards the ending. It's a great reworking of the Buffy-style "chosen one" concept, where the heroine turns out not to be the blonde who was destined to save the world of Un Lun Dun, but her friend whose only appearance in the book of prophecies is indexed under "sidekick". Well-written, interesting and fantastical.

Stay tuned for the male protagonists section - which contains some very different books! Please do send me any recommendations you may have!

Literary Love xxx

Stabat Mater - Tiziano Scarpa (2011)

Un Lun Dun - China Mieville (2007)

Open Secrets - Alice Munro (1994)

The Dragon Queen -Alice Borchardt (2001)

Tipping the Velvet - Sarah Walters (1998)

The Short and Long of It

More like short and long overdue, m’aright? 

Seriously, though, it’s been a week or two since the last update. I’ve been too busy to type things up, but rest assured, I have still been reading! I’m now going to have to recollect exactly what I wanted to talk about for the two books I’ve completed since my last post. The first of these was The Bloody Chamber short story collection by Angela Carter; the other The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett (recommended by @littlebentley). 

As the title implies, this was a tale of two books; Carter’s short stories being a mere 126 pages - though packing some of the deepest writing out of anything so far. More so than anything else I’ve read so far this year, I was aware of constant subtext and careful, exacting thought in how a lot of the sentences were constructed, each carefully contributing to the overall ‘feel’ of the stories. I could see that I could have spent a lot longer reading and re-reading this book to really appreciate it further. It’s a book that screams to be studied as well as enjoyed. 

By contrast, Pillars clocks in at 1332 pages (as the iPad flips), but is much more ‘macro’ in every sense - the book spans several decades with its ambitious plot, and you can tell that Follett is a thriller author; the writing is compelling in a very different way,without the same slavish attention to the finer details. What’s enjoyable here is the roaring plot populated with interesting (although largely characateurish or archetypal) characters. You'll laugh, you'll get physically angry with hatred of certain individuals, and you will just keep reading it. 

I'm keeping the update short so that there's a chance I'll actually finish it. I fell a bit behind last week, facing for the first time an urgent desire to catch up with what I do with my downtime/commute normally - catching up with articles, news and podcasts on a whole host of topics. Fortunately, I got a 'free pass' in the form of finishing the audiobook I've had on the go - Steve Jobs. I'll update on that soon (another post I need to do). Suffice to say, while I’ve never been hugely sold on audiobooks in the past, I’m now already into another (though, in my defence, this one is narrated by Wil Wheaton). 

So, another update to follow, much sooner than the last one. Keep on reading!

Week 10

9/52

Fragile Things - Neil Gaiman (2006)

The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern (2011)

The Revolution of Saint Jone - Lorna Mitchell (1988)

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - John Le Carré (1974)

I Can Make You Hate - Charlie Brooker (2012)

Looking For Jake and Other Stories - China Miéville (2005)

The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett (1989)

The Bloody Chamber - Angela Carter (1979)

Jobs - Walter Isaacson (2012)

Currently Reading:

The Plague - Albert Camus (1947)

Currently Listening To:

Ready Player One - Ernest Cline (2011)

6 Down, 46 To Go

China Mieville is certainly an interesting writer. Looking for Jake and Other Stories is the second short story collection I’ve read this year. It’s definitely a slightly unfair comparison holding this up to Neil Gaiman’s work, given my sheer, unbridled love for Gaiman as an author (I refer you to my gushing here), but Looking for Jake... is a mixed bag. 

The first couple of stories were interesting, but didn’t really grab me. I could see the skill at work and the technical quality of the writing, but it lacked that real ‘hook’ that makes the story dig in your mind and resonate in a memorable way. That said, there were several standouts - The Tain, Reports of Certain Events In London, Details, and Entry Taken From A Medical Encyclopaedia were my particular favorites, intersecting somewhere between Gaiman and Lovecraft. 

Reports of Certain Events In London had a brilliant concept (which I won’t go into here, because: spoilers), and an interesting presentation style - told through a series of partial, recovered ‘documents. Entry Taken From A Medical Encyclopaedia is a fantastic description of a fictional disease - originally published in a collection of such stories, in which a Gaiman story included in Fragile Things was also included (Diseasemaker’s Croup). The Tain is the biggest, most striking set piece of the book.

Mieville (who, I learned, also went to Clare College) groups his work under the category ‘weird fiction’, picking up the thread of Lovecraft, among others, and this is very much evident (and I do love me some good/pulpy Eldritch fiction). The other thing that pervades almost every story is Mieville’s obsession with London (which seems to extend to his other works as well).

I’m currently blasting through another (short) book of short stories - The Bloody Chamber - which I’ll write up in due course. I’ve also set up an account on Goodreads to provide a quick summary of what I’ve read - and I’ll start adding some of my listed recommendations on there as well, to give you a view of what I’ve got coming up. I’ll post the link on Twitter in due course; check out #GRaBaW to find it, if you like.

Week 6

6/52

Fragile Things - Neil Gaiman (2006)

The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern (2011)

The Revolution of Saint Jone - Lorna Mitchell (1988)

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - John Le Carré (1974)

I Can Make You Hate - Charlie Brooker (2012)

Looking For Jake and Other Stories - China Miéville (2005)

Currently Reading:

The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett (1989)

The Bloody Chamber - Angela Carter (1979)

Currently Listening To:

Jobs - Walter Isaacson (2012)