Books from Harrogate

It's conference season and on Tuesday a colleague and I presented a paper at a conference in Harrogate. It went very well, apparently people at the session were talking about it for the rest of the conference, which was good as it is always nerve-wracking. And best of all, as we had some time before our train I persuaded my colleague to let me have ten minutes in a lovely second hand book shop, Richard Axe Books, the one that I had seen when I was in Harrogate for my graduation earlier this year but didn't have a chance to go into.
It is a lovely shop, and I quickly found a couple of books. First a collection of short stories by American humourist James Thurber, My World - and welcome to it. I read about James Thurber in a recent edition of Slightly Foxed and wanted to read him. He wrote for the New Yorker, illustrating the stories himself. The one story of his that most people will have probably have heard of is The Private Life of Walter Mitty which was made into a film starring Danny Kaye. The author of the piece in Slightly Foxed called it an 'execrable film', which I thought was a bit harsh, but the story is in this collection and I read it on Tuesday night. The film enlarges on the theme slightly, shall we say. The story itself is just a sweet, witty little piece about a man who daydreams to escape the humdrum parts of his existence - who doesn't? No spies or adventures, which I'm pretty sure I remember from the Danny Kaye film.
I also found The Nabokov - Wilson Letters 1940-1971, which I could not resist. They should be fascinating. That cleared out my purse though, so we headed off for the train at that point.
Currently my reading has gone from the fictionalised intrigues of the Caesars in I, Claudius which I finished this morning (I was surprised that it only went up to Caligula's murder but I have Claudius the God to read about Claudius' experiences as emperor) to the intrigues of the early nineteenth century with the letters of Princess Lievin, who was a political schemer.
She made a brief appearance in the Georgette Heyer I read the other day, which reminded me that I had a volume of her letters and made me curious to see what she was really like. Although I've only just started them the letters, with her sarcasms about the Duke of Wellington and George IV, are very entertaining.
Which I need, as this has been a sad week. Our sweet cat, who you can see at the top of the blog hiding under the bookshelf, went to the vet's for an operation and they found he has a tumour which has spread so far that they can't remove it. He is currently at home, happy as Larry and eating for England, seemingly oblivious to what is going on inside him, but the vet says that he does not have long to live. So until the worst happens and while he is still purring and happy, we are enjoying every extra day we have with him.

Second-hand books: a bit icky?

Here is a silly piece entitled 'Why I hate Second-hand books' from the Guardian Book Blog by a boy who needs untwist his knickers a bit, as he is missing out on one of life's great joys for book lovers.
In a similar vein though, I was once away in the country with a group of women, which included a group of psychologists, to celebrate a psychologist friend's impending wedding and we went on a shopping trip in the local town where I found a magnificent second-hand book shop. When we all met up for lunch I, of course, was clutching a bag full of second-hand treasures, which included, if I remember rightly, a collection of T E Lawrence's letters and Scott's Quentin Durwood. One of the psychologist contingent looked with disgust at the pile of books I was so proudly displaying, backed away a little, and asked 'But aren't second-hand books all dirty?'
Occasionally I may have come across a suspicious chocolate-like smear on a page in a book, although to be honest that is usually from my own previous reading. Usually the joy of holding and reading a book that you know a kindred spirit has also held and loved, and breathing in that old book scent far outweighs the occasional dessicated fly between the pages. These people need to loosen up and learn to love the second-hand book shop before they all disappear into history; they are missing out on one of the greatest pleasures I've found this world has to offer.

Comfort reading

I haven't been around much in the blogosphere lately, I realise, for a number of reasons. Mainly life seems squeezed in too tightly to give me the free time to spend on the internet at the moment, which is a shame as I've missed my travels around people's blogs, keeping up with what you're all reading and doing.

We are also coping with our cat's first serious illness in his nine years, which I'm finding very traumatic. He is probably going to have to have an operation next week once the vet figures out what is wrong with him. So at the moment a lot of time is being spent making sure he is as happy and comfortable as possible.

I'm reading too, quite voraciously, there is a pile of books read recently sitting on my desk. And vet-visits last weekend meant that some serious comfort reading was in order, you know the sort of reading that just takes you completely out of yourself so you forget to worry about the worrying thing for a little while, but while still being good writing so you don't have any self-loathing afterwards. So first, on the bad vet-visit-day itself, I treated myself to the wonderful fluff of a Georgette Heyer, The Grand Sophy - much recommended by various people and thank you all, it was perfect.

Then I sank into the deep warm comfort of Wendell Berry with Andy Catlett: Early Travels. Berry's wonderful prose took my mind off waiting for the vet to call with blood test results.

I am beginning to suspect that Berry may be my favourite author, his books are so thoughtful, beautifully written and just plain enjoyable. I loved Andy Catlett almost as much as I loved Jayber Crow, and was almost breathless with the anticipation of meeting up with Jayber and Burley Coulter again, they are like old friends. It is a crying shame that Berry is not really sold in this country; I bought this novel from the Harvard bookstore last winter where I stocked up on Berry as I knew I'd never see him on bookstore shelves in the UK. That said though, I have seen one lonely little copy of a book of his poems in Waterstones recently, so perhaps there's hope. Thank goodness for the internet, where I can order all the Port William books, and I soon will. I was concerned Jayber Crow might have been a fluke, and the others not as wonderful, but Andy Catlett has put my mind at rest on that score.

I have bought the odd book too during my blogging break: I picked up a collection of Robert Frost's poems the other day, as he is quoted a lot in Timothy Steele's book on metre, and I wanted to know more of this American poet. Then there was a book I first read about on Danielle's blog, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, about a sensational murder case in the 1860s which inspired, among others, Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone. This was particularly attractive as it touched my favourite subject of legal history when the, at times, farcical legal hearings were described. That has already been read and is part of the 'waiting to be written about' pile. And Mathias Freese has sent me a copy of his short story collection 'Down to a Sunless Sea' which I am looking forward to reading very shortly.

Currently I am lost in the Roman Empire, as I have finally got round to Robert Graves' I, Claudius. I began to read it as a teenager and found it hard going but the intervening twenty years has included spending time with classical authors such as Suetonius and Tacitus, meaning the events and characters described are very familiar, and this now counts as excellent comfort reading too.

Scenes of Clerical Life by George Eliot

This is a collection of three novellas of varying length, all set in the same fictional area and concerning three clerical figures. The stories are very different: the first, The Sad Fortunes of the Reverand Amos Barton, concerns a rather weak curate and his family and the troubles they undergo with a small income and unfortunate friends. The next, Mr Gilfil's Love Story, is a story of a vicar, who was remembered fondly as someone 'who smoked very long pipes and preached very short sermons', telling the tale of his one love affair with his wife as a young man. The final story, Janet's Repentance, is quite a harrowing tale of a wife beaten regularly by her drunken lawyer husband who becomes an alcoholic herself but finds spiritual strength through the support of an evangelical minister.

All three are mixtures of amusing and charming scenes and hard social commentary. There are a number of moving episodes and all are fully developed in their own right. It is quite an extraordinary book. The first story was only 70 pages long but in that time made me care about the characters despite their shortcomings, laugh and cry, which is quite a feat.

The middle story is the lightest, and more of a romance than any other but is also very enjoyable. The final story was hard to read, with its scenes of domestic violence, and especially in the attitude of Janet towards her husband, as she still tried to love him even when he beat her and would not leave him despite the fear and misery she lived through.

None of the stories deal with particularly light subjects, but they are not depressing due to the way that Eliot weaves wit and gentler passages throughout, even when dealing with her most difficult subjects. At a point when Janet has been locked out of the house by her husband in her nightdress, the next day the scene of her servants discussing what could have happened to her and wondering whether she has been murdered is almost comic as the cook describes how she would act with such a husband. But it does not stray too far in this way and diminish the power of the horror Janet has gone through - it is not comic at the expense of the drama. The servants are portrayed as sympathetic to their mistress and understanding of why she drinks but hardened to the state of affairs in the household.

Although ostensibly about the male clerical figures, all of these stories are really about the women in these men's lives. The position of women in early nineteenth century society is shown clearly throughout the story, and not just in Janet's extreme case. In the first story the curate's friends that cause him problems are a brother and sister whom the local gossips have decided are, in reality, lovers pretending to be related, mainly because the woman is too glamourous for them to accept her version of her life. The second portrays a poor girl whose feelings are played with by the rich heir of the family she lives with as an amusing way for him to pass the time, while he intends to pursue an heiress for marriage. In Janet's case, although clearly the victim, the local people criticise her for drinking and her mother-in-law firmly blames Janet for her husband's actions because she was not a good household manager or a subservient enough wife in the early days of their marriage. There are also less important characters, such as the Misses Linnet in Janet's Repentance, both just past thirty and so considered useless old maids or in the first story where a poor unmarried niece of an old wealthy woman is forced to act as a companion to her elderly relative, is regularly demeaned and unknowlingly faced with the prospect of being cut out of her aunt's will. The opportunities for women in this society if they were above the servant class were limited to just one, to get married and have a successful life only through their husband. Society had a fixed idea of how a woman should behave and live her life, and the penalties, in terms of how they were treated by the community, if women did not live up to this are clear through the moving and real portrayals in this book.

Abarat and Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War by Clive Barker

These are the first two books in what Barker has said will be a series of four. I wrote a little about them when I was reading them, about how the first did not feel as though it was an entire book so I had to rush out and buy the second to feel like I had read a whole story, and I hold to that, having read them both. At the end of the second book I felt that it had ended enough to feel that I had read a full story but with enough left open to make me want to read more. So the first thing I would say is that I advise you read both of these together.
The books concern Candy Quackenbush, a young girl in Chickentown in USA, a boring town so named because of the chicken factory which supports it and which is the high point of any one's career expectations. Candy does not fit in. Her home life is quite miserable with a drunken and at times violent father and a mother who seems to have given up trying to cope with him.
Candy has visions of other lands and on one particularly nasty day she walks out of school, through the town and keeps on walking until she reaches the grassy plain on the outskirts of the town. Here she comes across the remains of a lighthouse (hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean) and meets a very strange man, or men rather, as John Mischief has antlers which carry seven other heads, each of which is one of his brothers - all variously called John and all extremely vocal.
As if this wasn't weird enough, this man is being chased by another strange-looking man, who is trying to kill him. Candy helps the brothers escape but ends up calling a mystical ocean which carries her and the Johns to the Abarat - an archipelago where each island is named after, and permanently sits in, a particular hour.
Candy is a fugitive in this land as the evil Lord of Midnight, Christopher Carrion, chases her to retrieve something which John Mischief hid with her. As Candy travels through the different lands it becomes apparent that she is more connected to the Abarat than she realises.
The stories are very inventive, with weird creatures and characters and the different lands' descriptions are fascinating. Six o'clock is a land called Babilonium, where there is a permanent fun fair, another is built into a giant statue. Candy meets different people along the way, making both enemies and friends, especially Malingo, whom she saves from a life of slavery and who becomes her travelling companion. The travel around the different lands is one of the main reasons the first book may not be enough on its own; I felt that not enough of the Abarat is explored in this book, but just hinted at and it is not enough.
The story is magical and light but this is still Clive Barker, and there is a dark undercurrent of malice throughout. For instance, the land of funfairs is all very nice unless you have the misfortune to be one of the freaks living a life of misery in the cages of the freakshow. There is a lot of evil in the Abarat as well as good, and blood is spilt in the fight against it which develops into full blown war during the second book. There are also some quite grotesque images, such as when Carrion's grandmother, the real villain of the story, appears.

'Two more creatures now came into view, to the left and right of the first. Each had a hand that bled darkness into the air, knotting itself into configurations from the beast in the centre. They were subtly connecting themselves... Their skulls seemed to lose rigidity, and they too issued filaments of shadow-stuff, which knitted themselves together. The three were becoming one, their bony heads congealing into a single being, its identity unmistakably human.'

The stories are a lot of fun and written well, although occasionally there seems to be the odd loose end or continuity error that suggests perhaps they were written a little too fast. For light reading, though, they are great and I am looking forward to the next two books.

Unsuggestions for me

Librarything has souped up its recommendations function, and included an 'unsuggester' - where you can see the books that, based on your library, are not for you - or so it thinks. This seemed quite fun so I had a look at mine. Here is my top twenty books Librarything thinks I am never going to read:

1. 1 Shopaholic Ties the Knot by Sophie Kinsella
   Queen of the chick-lit, which is just not me - yes, I will never read her books unless I am stuck on a desert island and desperate (we're watching a box set of Lost at the moment so I am considering this as a distinct possibility and will be taking many, many books next time we fly).
   
   
2. 2 Shopaholic Takes Manhattan by Sophie Kinsella
   See above
   
   
3. 3 Myra Breckinridge by Gore Vidal
   Now this is strange, as I've just bought a copy of his Selected Essays - perhaps I forgot to add it to my library.
   
   
4. 4 Insensitive Semantics: A Defense of Semantic Minimalism and Speech Act Pluralism by Herman Cappelen
   I'm not sure, does this sound interesting or deadly dull? - anyone have it?
   
   
5. 5 Bold spirit : Helga Estby's forgotten walk across Victorian America by Linda Lawrence Hunt
   This sounds interesting, I want it.
   
   
6. 6 My Sister's Keeper: A Novel by Jodi Picoult
   I've seen good reviews of her books and received one as a present but I expect LT's right here.
   
   
7. 7 Harry Potter Paperback Box Set (Books 1-6) by J.K. Rowling
   Oh Librarything, you so crazy! The only reason I wouldn't buy it is because I've already got them all.
   
   
9. 9 Dreamland by Sarah Dessen
   Where's 8?
   
   
10. 10 Daat Mikra Atlas by Yehuda Elitzur
    I suspect I wouldn't be able to read this, so probably right.
    
    
11. 11 New Moon (Twilight, Book 2) by Stephenie Meyer
    Twilight book 1 didn't make the list - wonder why?
    
    
12. 12 Sloppy Firsts: A Novel by Megan McCafferty
    Now this title is just nasty.
    
    
13. 13 Cookin' With Beans and Rice by Peggy Layton
    I'm not keen on beans, but I am a vegetarian so I could be persuaded to buy this. Wouldn't be my first choice for a cook book though, I must admit.
    
    
14. 14 Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality by Donald Miller
    I do like to read books about spirituality but tend to prefer ones written by people like St Augustine, so yes probably right.
    
    
15. 15 The Purpose-driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For? by Rick Warren
    This sounds like a self-help book which I'm allergic to.
    
    
16. 16 The Mercy of Thin Air by Ronlyn Dominigue
    No idea, but I'll take LT's word for it.
    
    
17. 17 Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Sisterhood of Traveling Pants) by Ann Brashares
    The title made me laugh but I suspect its either chick-lit or YA, neither of which I tend to go for.
    
    
18. 18 The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
    This makes me think it's a romantic novel about a girl with glasses being swept off her feet, not my sort of thing. Apologies to Stephen Chbosky if that is completely wrong but it shows the power of titles I suppose.
    
    
19. 19 Can You Keep a Secret? by Sophie Kinsella
    Here she is again, my number one author I'm never going to read!
    
    
20. 20 The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks

Never heard of it but I'm intrigued, a notebook... what is written in it?

If you are on Librarything I recommend checking this out, it's quite fun, although I was surprised to see Dan Brown didn't make an appearance until the 100 spot on my list.

A Whole Week

After a day working at home on a conference paper, which I always expect to be relaxing but actually ended up in eight solid hours staring at the screen writing and re-writing the same passages, I am now at that wonderful point - the first morning of a week off.
J has big plans for the house, and is currently four storeys high up some scaffolding looking at the roof, which is terrifying, so to calm me I am thinking about what reading I want to get done this week. A whole week with nowhere to go is a rare treat, and I want to make the most of it.
Don't hold me to this but at the moment I am planning the following:
Finishing books I am half way through: Pale Fire by Nabokov, which I am really enjoying, and All the Fun's in How you Say a Thing by Timothy Steele, the latest stage in my quest to learn everything there is to learn about poetry. This was a book recommended by Stephen Fry at at the end of his book.
I also ought to finish Pandora in the Congo, which I am not enjoying as much now. I think I need to lower my expectations and then finish it on a lazy afternoon.
Scenes from a Clerical Life by George Eliot, which caught my eye the other day when I was looking through a pile of books. I have an up / down relationship with her, Mill on the Floss was dreadful, Middlemarch was wonderful. So I'm always a bit wary of her. I want to read it this week as the edition is a lovely old Everyman, with the gold leaf on the spine, and I hate carrying those in my work bag, they never look quite as good afterwards.
I'd like to get quite a way through Hans Holzer's Ghosts which has been sat on my desk for the past few months. It is a huge volume of descriptions of hauntings and paranormal investigations carried out by Holzer; I like to read big books when I'm on holiday, the sort of book that is an effort to carry around.
And on that theme, a large Folio edition I would like to read this week is Montaillou, about the Cathars - a group deemed heretical in the fourteenth century, when the Catholic Church launched a crusade against them. I have found heresy a fascinating topic since reading The Name of the Rose.
I want to spend some serious time with some poetry books, e.e.cummings is my favourite at the moment. He wrote such beautiful, funny, and often, despite how they first appear, very formal poems. One I read last night ended with this phrase:
'Spring)and everyone's
in love and flowers pick themselves'.
Poetry like that takes my breath away.
Then I hope to get through a couple more of Plutarch's Lives, and there will of course have to be some Columbo time and maybe, if I can get away with it without my husband noticing, some Hart to Hart - I know its bad but I love it so much, I'll do my penance in the garden. I also hope to catch up on writing about the ever-increasing pile of books I've read recently before they slip from my mind for ever. Should be a good week.

Oriental Ghost Stories by Lafcadio Hearn

This is yet another excellent collection in the Wordsworth Mystery and Supernatural series. Hearn is an American writer who moved to Japan and wrote stories from his adopted homeland that depicted Japanese and Chinese legends and folk tales.
This collection is very interesting and a different sort of read to the typical Western ghost stories of the same period (end of the 19th, start of the 20th century). The introduction talks of how the stories are reminsicent of fables and this is true, but there is also a streak of horror that makes them something unusual. As well as looking back to traditional folk tales, these stories show where the modern Japanese horror that we are familiar with now, through films like The Ring, comes from.
The main difference with the stories I usually read that stood out is that Western ghost stories have backgrounds; there is a history behind the haunting that is explained, for example a tragic event has left its mark, a person wronged returns from the grave for vengeance, or some elemental force has been unwittingly unleashed by a curious innocent. The explanations may not always be rational but they are there. These Japanese and Chinese tales are different: things just happen. Spirits, demons and goblins (but don't think cute little green creatures with big eyes; these tend to be disguised as human and hungry for human flesh) are an accepted part of life. Walk down the wrong road and you will fall prey to them. Act wrongly in your life and you will become them.
The influence of Buddhist mythology is strong in these stories and they reminded me of Wu Cheng'en's Monkey (in the translation by Arthur Waley), a collection of stories about a Buddhist priest trying to find enlightenment in the company of Monkey (anyone who was a child in the 1970s and '80s will know the TV series that they inspired). In these stories Monkey comes across many an ogre or monster who will happily devour any passing human and these ghost tales are the same.
The writing style is similar to Monkey; the tales are simply told, however they often containing stark and shocking images such as a ghostly samurai ripping the ears from an inoffensive musician. There is little attention to creation of spooky atmosphere or time given to lavish gothic descriptions. The shock of the story is often the point of these tales, not the atmosphere created along the way.
And it is these flashes of surreal horror that make them stand truly apart from Western ghost stories. For instance this from Mujina:

'"O-jochu, do not cry like that!... Tell me what the trouble is; and if there be any way to help you, I shall be glad to help you." (He really meant what he said; for he was a very kind man.) But she continued to weep,- hiding her face from him with one of her long sleeves. "O-jochu," he said again, as gently as he could,- "please, please listen to me!... This is no place for a young lady at night! Do not cry, I implore you! - only tell me how I may be of some help to you!" Slowly she rose up, but turned her back to him, and continued to moan and sob behind her sleeve. He laid his hand lightly upon her shoulder, and pleaded:- "O-jochu! - O-jochu! - O-jochu!... Listen to me, just for one little moment!... O-jochu! - O-jochu!"... Then that O-jochu turned around, and dropped her sleeve, and stroked her face with her hand; - and the man saw that she had no eyes or nose or mouth,- and he screamed and ran away.'

The stories are a fascinating glimpse of another land's culture and history; Samurai warriors meet with ghosts and goblins while on missions for their lords, wandering buddhist priests are given shelter which turns out to be not so well meant. Hearn explains all the points that will puzzle a western reader in expansive footnotes; I feel I have learnt a lot about Japanese and Chinese culture from reading these stories. Hearn is a writer who is not now well known but I would like to read more by him and learn more about Japanese and Chinese culture and folklore.

A Thrilling Weekend

After finishing Edward Hirsch's How to read a poem I felt like reading something that I could just lose myself in with little demand for thought, so what better than a thriller or two for the weekend, full of hardboiled manly detectives and femme fatales?


Now, is that a cover, or is that a cover? I have no idea where I picked this little gem up from; a pulp fiction collection from, I would guess, the '50s or '60s. The very first page of the first story contained the phrase 'ace detective', so I knew this would fit the bill perfectly. When I finish it and write about the stories perhaps some more experienced thriller readers will be able to tell me if any of the 'popular authors' are known at all.
First, however, there is a more modern thriller that has claimed my attention. Regular readers may remember that I have a small obsession with that friendly neighbourhood serial killer, Dexter Morgan, and while on a payday-treat mooch around the bookshop yesterday I heard his siren call and was unable to resist the latest book any longer, Dexter in the Dark by Jeff Lindsay.


It is my perfect escapism, a hundred pages slipped down last night without any effort but it is well written and witty enough so that I don't feel that I have to take my brain out of my head and leave it on a shelf to go mouldy to be able to read it. So far it is just as good as ever, and I am enjoying the fact that the books are now completely divorced from the TV series (which is inspired-by these days rather than based-on) as it just means I get Double Dexter.
I have also bought a couple of more serious books but this weekend I am losing myself in the murky world of crime and punishment, and glamourous women pointing guns at ace detectives.

Six Random Things meme

Thanks to Eva who tagged me for this meme. Six random things about me: now to try to think of things a bit different that I haven't already talked about a lot, without getting too personal - here goes.

Random thing 1: As it has felt like summer recently: I can't stand beach holidays. I find the idea of laying in the sun for hours at a time quite deadly dull; I could take it for maybe a lazy hour, but a week? Forget it. The idea of lots of reading time is attractive but I'd rather not be on a beach to do that, but at home with easy access to the kettle for cups of tea. For holidays I prefer to be in a city, with galleries, museums and churches to visit, and some good restaurants afterwards.

Random thing 2: I have a tattoo - a solar eclipse in black, red and yellow done ten years ago and still looking quite good, mainly because, as above, I am not a sun-worshipper, so it hasn't faded much. I never did any sort of biology at school and therefore have no idea how the tattoo stays put on my arm when I thought all our cells died and were replaced on a regular basis. I'm going to go for the 'it's magic' explanation.

Random thing 3: I once mentioned how I have a favorite one of Heff's girlfirend's, being an avid (and slightly ashamed) fan of Girls of the Playboy Mansion - but I have to update it. It was Holly, but now it's Bridget. She seems the most sorted and likeable. And she has a cat.

Random thing 4: I'm a vegetarian, and have been for eighteen years now, but don't really like that many vegetables. This can be a problem. I t