Christmas Presents

Christmas has resulted in an embarrassment of riches. I now have books piled up on every available surface in my bedroom, as well as some hidden behind various articles of furniture so that my parents don’t trip over them and demand another book cull. The memories of the last one are still too fresh.

On the list of new acquisitions are several novels by David Lodge, the new Cassandra Clare book (which I can’t even start as I haven’t finished the first book in the series yet), two books by Nancy Mitford and oodles more.

I made steady progress. Between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day I finished How Far Can You Go by David Lodge, and The Seven Sisters by Margaret Drabble. The Lodge book was brilliant; as a bit of a lapsed Catholic myself I could identify somewhat with the sense of Catholic guilt that pervades the whole novel. I’ve also had many conversations with my Nana about the revelation that was Vatican II, so those sections raised many a chuckle. The Drabble was also a good read, but I found Candida, the narrator, very difficult to warm to. I think that’s supposed to be the point though; you empathise with this cold, bitter woman in spite of her flaws.

I was also on the receiving end of some teeny-bopper novels, for which I have a great fondness. The best of these was Haunting Violet by Alyxandra Harvey, which I read in one sitting and loved to bits and pieces. The eponymous Violet lives in Victorian London and is the daughter of a sham medium. Her mother is an absolute weapon, as my Nana would say. She uses her daughters’ beauty to further her phony career, wrangling an invitation to perform a séance at the house of a landed gentleman in the country. Violet, her mother and Colin, the Irish manservant, depart to the manner where Violet quickly makes three discoveries; she really can see ghosts, the daughter of the neighbouring manor house has been murdered and she may or may not be in love with Colin.

This was a lovely little book. I’ve been having a love affair with period drama novels of late and this was right up my alley. I imagine anyone who has read Cassandra Clares’ Clockwork Angel would enjoy Violets’ story, as I’m told they are in much the same vein. Sadly, the aforementioned Clare novel is still in my to-be-read stack and probably won’t be touched this side of Uni exams.  Oh well. I have a week of before the second semester starts in February…we’ll see about it then.

Delayed Post

This was written a couple of days before Christmas but with all the excitement I forgot all about posting it

This weekend I fell home from work with three bags of books to be given out to friends, relations and neighbours as Christmas presents. My mum got books (to go with the very desirable boots she emailed me the sales link for). My brothers got books, in addition to a Playstation 3 game I couldn’t dissuade them from. My baby neighbour, who is one and cannot read yet, is getting a copy of Owl Babies. Start ‘em young.

My reasoning for this? The print book is dying. While Amazon (who I do buy from, I won’t lie) are counting the squillion pounds they have made from their Kindle, three bookshops I used to frequent have closed down. Nearly sixty people, all knowledgeable and endlessly helpful, are out of a job. This is why I am trying to single handedly boost consumer spending with my book buying, and have also hidden my mother’s Kindle charger; I don’t have anything against them on principle, but they just aren’t books.

Books have a smell. The paper of a fresh, unread book has feels lovely as you open it for the first time. Know what else is lovely? The sound of the spine cracking on a brand new paperback as you sit down with it, prepared to while away a few hours in blissful enjoyment.  You can’t go into a bookshop and browse new e-book downloads, can you? Clearly not. You have to buy them via the t’internet, which means you are stuck to your iPod or iPad or smartphone or whatever other gadget is currently replacing proper social interaction in your life.

True, you could also say that books make you antisocial, what with reading being a fairly solitary activity, but at least to get your hands on a physical book you had to go into a shop and interact with a sales assistant. Or if you borrowed the book from a friend or relative, then the chances are you had some sort of a conversation about the novel you were both going to end up reading. My nana and I had a mutual squealing fit at one another this week, all over a paperback novel. We were passing through the book department in the department store where I work, and happened upon the new PD James, called Death Comes to Pemberley. I mentioned, idly, that Pemberley is where Mr. Darcy lives in Pride and Prejudice, which of course spiked my Nana’s interest because she is of a generation that loves Jane Austen. It transpired that this novel was, indeed, a continuation of The Elizabeth and Darcy story, which meant my Nana and I had to chase each other to the till to each buy a copy. Why? Because a book about Elizabeth and Darcy is only ever a good thing.

My reason for the above digression? My Nana is (excuse the expletive) screwed if they stop printing books. She can’t even switch her DVD player on, let alone work out how to use Whispernet. And she’s fairly techie, compared to my Grandad and their circle of friends. My great-aunt finds electric windows on cars to be a challenge, so the whole realm of the E-Reader would most likely make her want to give up on life all together. I don’t think she’d want to live in a world where Mills and Boon weren’t easily available.

Don’t get me started on library closures. I think I’ve vented enough for one evening.

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.

Hilly Ground

Ooooh, joy unbounded.

Have finally got my greasy mitts on a copy of the new Susan Hill and I’m delighted with life.

Well, I got my mitts on it the day it came out but I had three essays due that week. So it’s taken me a few days to get around to it; I didn’t want to rush it, see.

Susan Hill, as you may have guessed, is one of my all-time favourite writers. The last couple of weeks have been excellent for anybody who is similarly inclined, with the release of a paperback edition of The Shadows in The Street, a collectors edition copy of The Woman in Black, and the aforementioned new novel, the sixth in her Simon Serailler series.  These are seriously popular novels, which heartens me because they’re not your average whodunit. There’s more of a literary fiction vibe about the series, but not in a scary way; think Kate Atkinson and her Jackson Brodie novels and you have the right idea.

Anyway, The Betrayal of Trust opens with massive flooding in the south of England, which causes a landslip that exposes some skeletal human remains. These remains are likely those of the daughter of a lord and lady who disappeared some fifteen years prior. Our hero is no faced with a cold case, in a police department plagued by cutbacks and dwindling resources. There’s also a secondary storyline about assisted suicide that I imagine will raise some debate; it’s not an area that people seem to be very comfortable with, but Hill tackles it with her usual skill and a sense of firmness that I quite liked. There’s also an economy of prose to the book; what other writers say in fifteen words, Hill will say in five. Five decent, fleshy words with not a wasted apostrophe. I approve heartily of this skill in a novelist. There aren’t many writers out there who can write so sparsely but so well.

If you haven’t read any of this series yet, I’d go out and get the first one, The Various Haunts of Men post haste. They are proper winter books for long nights in with the central heating on full blast and a nice glass of red wine. The new book is a solid eight out of ten-not the best in the series but still a damn good read.