Ignorance

I’ve spent the week bemoaning how badly read I am.

I give away books every week. I read, on average, a book a day. And yet I will never read, or come close to reading, all the good novels that will be published this year or any year. That’s a bit depressing.

Never mind the good books published this year, but what about the classics? I’ve got through a fair few of them: the Brontes, Austen, Dickens, George Bloody Eliot…I have never understood the fuss that people make about Middlemarch. Dorothea and her inherent goodness bother me.

And that wouldn’t even begin to dent the canon.

During the summer, for instance, I got very annoyed when Vintage did that big ‘21’ reissue of all their ‘good’ books. I hadn’t read quite a number of them; one I’d actually not heard of. It was the same when Penguin brought out those lovely Essentials books. To my shame, I’d never heard a whisper of Cats’ Cradle. The English Department would have me stoned.

The problem is surely quantity. If you go into a big high street bookshop, you’re surrounded by more books than you could ever hope to read in a lifetime-hell, in two lifetimes, realistically. A girl has to eat. And sleep. And apply glittery eye shadow. There are great books published every week. How can you ever hope to read all the ‘good’ books? And I don’t just mean the ones that get loads of attention. There are that many decent works of fiction in print that you’re guaranteed to miss some of the great ones.

This fills me with a cold sort of fear. What if there was a great book out there, one that had exactly what you were looking for, and you missed it because there are so many books jammed together on the shelf? How awful. What if I’d never read a book by Penelope Lively? Or my beloved Susan Hill? Surely I’d be dead by now.

Then you have literary snobbery, and that’s a whole other kettle of fish. Some of what I read is classified by high brow types as ‘rubbish’. Books are not rubbish. Empty milk cartons are rubbish. My cooking is, by and large, rubbish. Books are not. Books are good things. Any book is better than no book at all.

Spent the weekend in work bored to tears and trying to read under the counter without getting caught. Harder than you might think!
Got through a couple of good books though. As well as a bit of Virginia Woolf and Baudrillard for college (epic sigh) I also read Texas Gothic by Rosemary Clement Moore and Velvet by Mary Hooper.

Velvet was very sweet. A bit young perhaps, but the story was excellent. The plot concerns a young orphan called, you guessed it, Velvet, who works in a Victorian laundry. One of her clients, a medium of some repute, takes her on as a personal maid, along with the very handsome manservant George. It quickly transpires, however, that things in the house are not all as they seem and Velvet doesn't know who she can trust...
If you like historical fiction, give this one a go. I'd never realised quite how covert an operation Victorian mediums ran, or how popular they were. The book is excellently researched and well written; a nine out of ten I think. I've also received a copy of  Grace by the same author and I'm looking forward to giving that a whirl.

Next up was Texas Gothic, and I made my self laugh a bit as I started reading it because I really do seem to come to books in themes. TG is another novel with a historical slant, though this one is set in the present day with the historical detail woven into the plot. The Goodnight sisters (you just know they can't be fully normal) are house sitting on their aunts Texas ranch when the younger, Amy, is visited by a ghost who wants to give her a message. There's been the discovery of a burial ground on a neighbouring farm and it seems to have stirred up all kinds of supernatural trouble. Aided by the handsome rancher Ben, Amy quickly discovers that something icky is brewing in the state of Texas...

I liked this lots. Clement-Moores' last novel, The Splendour Falls was also excellent so I was expecting great things from this, and I wasn't disappointed. Like Velvet the novel was incredibly well-researched, and because of this the characters and the plot felt authentic. Most definitely worth a read. See links to both below!

Velvet: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Velvet-Mary-Hooper/dp/0747599211/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1329261975&sr=8-1

Texas Gothic: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Texas-Gothic-Rosemary-Clement-Moore/dp/0552564931/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1329262036&sr=1-1

Happy Reading!

Uni Update

University update.

This semester we’ve been required to do a critical theory module. This means we have to read lovely books and essays by people who wrote about people like Marx and Engels. Basically we could all go into the final exam in January, write ‘capitalism is bad’ on the answer book and get good marks.

Well, we might want to throw in some stuff about men and nipples, just to cover the Judith Butler part of the course, but stick to a good rant on the evils of consumerism and you’re on course for a solid upper second.

There’s a fairly hefty seminar element to this module, which means that I must spend odd hours sequestered in a windowless room with lots of girls arguing, bizarrely, over DH Lawrence. Don’t really see what he has to do with capitalism but hey…

Anywho, the lectures on the module are taken by Dapper who has the mature student ladies all of a twitter. Dapper wears tweed sports coats with elbow patches. He speaks in a lilting Northern accent that sends Matron, Superior and Pleased to Be Here into a sort of sexual frenzy. He is an attractive man, we’ll give him that. He is also a very snappy dresser; the tweed sports coat is very on trend.

I, however, must endure my seminars with Matron, Superior and Pleased to Be Here, and their love of him is all rather tiresome. Now, when Superior isn’t wittering about how she sometimes only speaks to her children in verse or has themed Shakespeare nights for her friends, she’s on a tirade about the wonders of Dapper. She’s aided and abetted no end by Matron, who thinks her sixty plus years on the planet lend her a kind of authority when it comes to men. Please to Be Here is never allowed an opinion, which just goes to show that clique-iness doesn’t die with age. She is only ever allowed to agree with the other two, but she does this well.

Thus, Beige, our put-upon seminar leader, is now forced to endure having all her opinions countered with ‘yes, but Dr. Dapper says’…it’s exhausting.  I’d expect it from teenagers but these ladies are surely old enough to know better. Poor Beige. She spends most of the classes trying to steer the conversation back to DH Lawrence, but that’s not even what we were supposed to be discussing in the first place. Mind you, the Mature Triumvirate could probably teach Lady Chatterley a thing or two.

I can’t wait to see what happens when the essay titles are released.

Eliot must die!

Stupid TS Eliot. The man may be umpteen years dead but he's taken over my life in a major way this month. Him and his Waste Land. Since when are poems fifty pages long?? Thus, actual books read have mostly been college realted because of my lovely essay about TS Eliot being mad. His wife was having an affair with Bertram Russell, fact fans.

Anyway, I have managed to buy a massive stack of books but only a couple have actually been read: Siren by Patricia Rayburn, Divergent by Veronica Roth and The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson. Siren was excellent, as was Divergent but they've been reviewed to kingdom come so I won't review them now. Even though I loved Tris and Four a ridiculous amount and have already ordered the sequel to Siren (it'll be here sometime next week, along with my copy of Jekyll Loves Hyde by Beth Fantaskey).

The Name of The Star I hadn't heard of til I picked it up on my way into work last weekend. I'm amazed I hadn't; it was a great read and worthy of much more attention than it's getting here in Dublin. I know Maureen Johnson is much more popular in the US though, so maybe that's why.

I'll give you the basics: the story is about a girl from Louisiana who moves to a London boarding school at the same time that a Jack the Ripper copycat killer is stalking the city. Then it emerges that the killer may be a ghost. Sounds a bit out there but honestly, give this one a go. I loved it. It was all very Torchwood in the second half, according to my friend who is a huge fan of the series. I'm inclined to agree, even though it was so much more than that. The characters in this book are so believeable, too. Always a bonus.

I'm also on the hunt for any other novels that feature Jack the Ripper. I like to read in themes, see. I read Lost by Gregory Maguire a while back and that was in the same vein, but I'm on a mission now.

Next in my reading pile: By Midnight by Mia James, Starcrossed by J.Angelini and about forty modernist novels for college. Wish me luck.