Don't get excited - I haven't finished this already.
I'm about a third of the way through and, as it may take me a while, thought an interim post may be in order. Also, writing a blog post means that I feel I'm making progress whilst not actually having to be reading the book.
At the moment, we still have Rachel sleeping in our room, and she seems to start waking up if I have the bedside light on, so my reading is mainly happening under the duvet with one of those little lights musicians clip onto their stands whilst playing in an orchestra. This isn't conducive to reading for long periods of time, though it does have the side benefit of making me feel like I'm about 8, reading after I'm supposed to have turned out the light and gone to sleep! It may be time to move her next door.
Anyway. Bleak House is interesting, so far. It has quite a light-hearted feel about it, despite the name. I think the characters are all intended to be lightly comical, and the names are predominantly ridiculous. It's not laugh out loud funny, but it may have been when written. It's fairly readable, and certainly easier going than other Dickens novels (Nicholas Nickleby, I'm looking at you). However, so far it seems to meander without particular intent, and is more like a loosely connected series of anecdotes than a novel. I do like to feel that there is narrative drive in a work of fiction and that the author is aiming for something...so far the reading experience is much like the last Harry Potter book where they wander around a forest for 600 pages. Apologies to Dickens fans for comparing this to JK Rowling! I'm sure it will go somewhere at some point but it does feel as though it could benefit from an editor's severe red pen.
Perhaps I'll go and read some more when Only Connect finishes...
Monday, 28 November 2011
Tuesday, 15 November 2011
1Q84
Now, this book isn't actually on the list but I thought I would talk about it anyway. Not least because my next read is Bleak House, and I suspect it may take some time. However, this is THE LAST DICKENS I WILL HAVE TO READ. Excuse the capitals, but I am excited. Bleak House may, in fact, be the last Dickens I ever read - I have improved on my previous record of struggling to finish anything but Oliver Twist, but have not been converted.
Anyway, I digress. 1Q84 is the new work from Haruki Murakami, a cult Japanese author and one of my all time favourites (I should thank my brother for introducing me to A Wild Sheep Chase, still my favourite, and giving me many happy hours of reading). Murakami writes in Japanese but works with two very good/sensitive translators and his novels are a joy to read. This one is broken into 3 volumes, volumes 1&2 published together, and 3 published slightly later - a week apart in the UK, but I think slightly longer in Japan.
I pre-ordered this on Amazon - one of the great joys of reading on a Kindle is that, as long as you leave the wireless connection switched on, a pre-ordered book is delivered automatically overnight, direct to the Kindle, allowing you to wake up in the morning and dive straight in. Or, wake up in the morning, see it's there, and spend all day desperately wanting to read it while you care for the baby...same difference!
The reviews of 1Q84 talked about this as having reference to Orwell's 1984 but I didn't really pick these up, other than the fact that it was set in 1984. Murakami is on his usual fine surreal form, exploring the story of Aomame, Tengo and Fuka-Eri who, through their contact with the world of the Air Chrysalis, find themselves in an alternate reality, which Aomame labels 1Q84 - Q standing for question. As ever with Murakami, there are recurring themes through the book - the preparation of food, ears, a lonely but attractive young man with an older married girlfriend, an unexpected role for sex in the drive of the narrative...
It's very difficult to describe this - if you haven't read any Murakami before, read Wild Sheep Chase or the Wind-up Bird Chronicle first, to get an idea of his style. Or Norwegian Wood or Sputnik Sweetheart which are still surreal but slightly easier to relate to. However, I would thoroughly recommend this as a very readable, intricate work. I couldn't put it down, and I'm sure I will go back to it more than once to appreciate the full intellectual achievement that it represents!
Next - Bleak House. < sigh >.
Anyway, I digress. 1Q84 is the new work from Haruki Murakami, a cult Japanese author and one of my all time favourites (I should thank my brother for introducing me to A Wild Sheep Chase, still my favourite, and giving me many happy hours of reading). Murakami writes in Japanese but works with two very good/sensitive translators and his novels are a joy to read. This one is broken into 3 volumes, volumes 1&2 published together, and 3 published slightly later - a week apart in the UK, but I think slightly longer in Japan.
I pre-ordered this on Amazon - one of the great joys of reading on a Kindle is that, as long as you leave the wireless connection switched on, a pre-ordered book is delivered automatically overnight, direct to the Kindle, allowing you to wake up in the morning and dive straight in. Or, wake up in the morning, see it's there, and spend all day desperately wanting to read it while you care for the baby...same difference!
The reviews of 1Q84 talked about this as having reference to Orwell's 1984 but I didn't really pick these up, other than the fact that it was set in 1984. Murakami is on his usual fine surreal form, exploring the story of Aomame, Tengo and Fuka-Eri who, through their contact with the world of the Air Chrysalis, find themselves in an alternate reality, which Aomame labels 1Q84 - Q standing for question. As ever with Murakami, there are recurring themes through the book - the preparation of food, ears, a lonely but attractive young man with an older married girlfriend, an unexpected role for sex in the drive of the narrative...
It's very difficult to describe this - if you haven't read any Murakami before, read Wild Sheep Chase or the Wind-up Bird Chronicle first, to get an idea of his style. Or Norwegian Wood or Sputnik Sweetheart which are still surreal but slightly easier to relate to. However, I would thoroughly recommend this as a very readable, intricate work. I couldn't put it down, and I'm sure I will go back to it more than once to appreciate the full intellectual achievement that it represents!
Next - Bleak House. < sigh >.
Sunday, 2 October 2011
David Copperfield
It turns out that finding time to read is pretty tricky with a tiny baby. Having found a bit of time to read, it is even trickier to find time to update a blog about it!
Small child is currently being rocked by Martin but shortly to be handed back to me, so, very quickly, David Copperfield.
The more Dickens I read, the more it confirms that I don't enjoy Dickens! DC was relatively readable but immensely depressing - without spoiling anything, I can say that each time you think it can't get worse, it does - rather Hardy-esque. It gave the impression of having been written for serialisation, but I don't know if that was the case or not...
won't be reading it again. To the Dickens fans out there, apologies for just writing him off. I still have to read Bleak House - joy. I would probably have given slightly more time to explaining why I was less than enchanted with it, were it not for the screaming child demanding my attention!
Small child is currently being rocked by Martin but shortly to be handed back to me, so, very quickly, David Copperfield.
The more Dickens I read, the more it confirms that I don't enjoy Dickens! DC was relatively readable but immensely depressing - without spoiling anything, I can say that each time you think it can't get worse, it does - rather Hardy-esque. It gave the impression of having been written for serialisation, but I don't know if that was the case or not...
won't be reading it again. To the Dickens fans out there, apologies for just writing him off. I still have to read Bleak House - joy. I would probably have given slightly more time to explaining why I was less than enchanted with it, were it not for the screaming child demanding my attention!
Saturday, 3 September 2011
Formatting traumas...
I went in this morning to update Les Miserables in the list and realised that my master list seems to have dropped the formatting - all of the ones which were blue, and thus read (not red!) have reverted to black. Gah. Will have to work out how to sort it out. In the meantime, I am reading David Copperfield and I think I counted that I have 15 remaining to read!
**Update - I couldn't make the colours work so I've just changed it to add sub headings. This may have been a more sensible way to do it in the first place anyway. And, I'm delighted to say that there are only 14 left, including David Copperfield. Unfortunately it also includes the complete works of Shakespeare and The Wasp Factory. I'm not convinced it will be easy to find time to read Shakespeare in the next...erm...18 years, and from what I've heard I really don't want to read the Wasp Factory! We'll see how we go - at least I'm making progress through the excess of Dickens on this list!
**Update - I couldn't make the colours work so I've just changed it to add sub headings. This may have been a more sensible way to do it in the first place anyway. And, I'm delighted to say that there are only 14 left, including David Copperfield. Unfortunately it also includes the complete works of Shakespeare and The Wasp Factory. I'm not convinced it will be easy to find time to read Shakespeare in the next...erm...18 years, and from what I've heard I really don't want to read the Wasp Factory! We'll see how we go - at least I'm making progress through the excess of Dickens on this list!
Saturday, 27 August 2011
Les miserables #2
To follow on from the last post, I did finish les mis. Definitely worth making it to the end. It is a spectacularly ambitious work, highlighting social issues, the general misery of the human condition, as well as the specific characters in detail. Read it for the sense of achievement, or to fill in the gaps around the musical, but it isn't an easy one!
Saturday, 20 August 2011
Les Miserables & things I'm looking forward to when no longer pregnant!
It's been a while since I last managed to write a post.
I've hit a point in the list where I've read everything that I actually want to read, and so it's becoming increasingly difficult to discipline myself to pick up the next book. It also turns out that being pregnant makes you really tired and makes it difficult to concentrate on intelligent literary content - who knew?!
Anyway, following diversions including re-reading the Stieg Larsson trilogy, Heartstone by CJ Sansom, and a number of chick lit and thriller books that I don't really want to admit to, I am now 68% through Les Miserables, in the English translation of course.
I do intend to finish it, of course, but had a few interim observations. Firstly - it's unfeasibly long, and really frustrating to read. Clearly, no-one ever taught Victor Hugo the virtue of short, concise sentences, or of using one example to illustrate his point. One sentence can easily span half a Kindle screen or more. When in descriptive or comparative mode, he seems to be unable to use less than 8 examples...one piece on slang lasted for three chapters without actually shedding any light on the slang that the characters subsequently used. He seems to have taken the central story, which is genuinely gripping and brilliant, and used it as a vehicle to propound long rambling theories on various social scenarios, the battle of Waterloo, street kids in Paris...etc. I'm sure that all of these are worthwhile in their own right but it creates a really disjointed literary effect - events are moving along apace, something significant is about to happen in the story, the reader is fully absorbed and interested...and suddenly you are expected to transfer your interest to a drifting series of chapters on another topic entirely. Most do have some relevance - for example, the description of Waterloo sheds light on the relationship between Marius and Thenardier - but this link could have been created without spending hundreds of words outlining the military strategy for the battle, the misunderstandings, the blow-by-blow account of the advances and retreats. For me, it has the effect that every time I start getting into it, one of these sections comes up and kicks me out of the reading zone.
It's not unreadable by any means but it does drag. I'll see how I feel when I get to the end!
Meanwhile, I'm just about to go into my 4th week of maternity leave. It's been surprisingly easy to stop work and become accustomed to a gentler pace, for the time being. As the end of the longest 9 months ever approaches, I've had some time to think about things I'm looking forward to...
I've hit a point in the list where I've read everything that I actually want to read, and so it's becoming increasingly difficult to discipline myself to pick up the next book. It also turns out that being pregnant makes you really tired and makes it difficult to concentrate on intelligent literary content - who knew?!
Anyway, following diversions including re-reading the Stieg Larsson trilogy, Heartstone by CJ Sansom, and a number of chick lit and thriller books that I don't really want to admit to, I am now 68% through Les Miserables, in the English translation of course.
I do intend to finish it, of course, but had a few interim observations. Firstly - it's unfeasibly long, and really frustrating to read. Clearly, no-one ever taught Victor Hugo the virtue of short, concise sentences, or of using one example to illustrate his point. One sentence can easily span half a Kindle screen or more. When in descriptive or comparative mode, he seems to be unable to use less than 8 examples...one piece on slang lasted for three chapters without actually shedding any light on the slang that the characters subsequently used. He seems to have taken the central story, which is genuinely gripping and brilliant, and used it as a vehicle to propound long rambling theories on various social scenarios, the battle of Waterloo, street kids in Paris...etc. I'm sure that all of these are worthwhile in their own right but it creates a really disjointed literary effect - events are moving along apace, something significant is about to happen in the story, the reader is fully absorbed and interested...and suddenly you are expected to transfer your interest to a drifting series of chapters on another topic entirely. Most do have some relevance - for example, the description of Waterloo sheds light on the relationship between Marius and Thenardier - but this link could have been created without spending hundreds of words outlining the military strategy for the battle, the misunderstandings, the blow-by-blow account of the advances and retreats. For me, it has the effect that every time I start getting into it, one of these sections comes up and kicks me out of the reading zone.
It's not unreadable by any means but it does drag. I'll see how I feel when I get to the end!
Meanwhile, I'm just about to go into my 4th week of maternity leave. It's been surprisingly easy to stop work and become accustomed to a gentler pace, for the time being. As the end of the longest 9 months ever approaches, I've had some time to think about things I'm looking forward to...
- Being able to turn over in bed without waking myself up
- Having normal size feet and even wearing heels from time to time
- Looking at clothes in shops that I could feasibly enjoy wearing
- (Losing weight allowing)...Eating nice cheese, pate, cured meats...I miss Brie and goats cheese more with every day that passes!
- And of course the odd glass of nice red wine or a pint on a sunny day. Pint of lager, that is, not pint of wine...
- Not having the spectre of labour looming over my future!
- Being able to walk normal distances, and even run occasionally
- Regaining my taste for tea and coffee so I can finally take advantage of the espresso machine I bought Martin for Christmas
- Not having to cope with acquaintances and strangers thinking that my body is public property - why do people think it's acceptable to touch a pregnant stomach when they wouldn't at any other time?
- Not feeling like I need Inspector Gadget arms to reach things
- Being allowed to lift things without being fussed over - I do of course appreciate that people care, and there's a good reason for it, but it really doesn't sit comfortably with the independent and capable person I have always been!
- And, of course, actually having a baby and getting on with being a parent rather than just being a bit nervous about what it will be like!!
I know that's very much off the normal topic for this blog but thought I'd share. Now back to Les Mis!
Monday, 30 May 2011
Germinal
I think it's quite obvious which books I enjoy based on the length of time between posting. I started Germinal on Thursday, after finishing Middlemarch, and have just finished it. Yes, I admit, it is shorter, but it is also eminently more readable.
I knew nothing at all about this novel before I started reading it and, due to reading on the Kindle, didn't even have the back-of-the-book blurb to inform me. This meant that I had no expectations at all.
Germinal is a French novel, set in a mining community during a period of industrial unrest. Etienne, a stranger who arrives in the community at the beginning of the novel, seems to act as a catalyst for change, with the mood in the community moving from utter poverty-stricken resignation to open anger, and a strike.
The story itself is fairly straightforward - scene setting, establishment of characters, the major event of the strike, and the consequences of that. However, the strength and impact is in the way that the people, community and their way of life is so starkly portrayed. I can't remember reading anything else which so accurately portrays the poverty of life lived just below the breadline; the day to day struggle to put the basic necessities on the table, and the social indignities. The few characters who were richer obviously threw this into sharp relief, but did not come off well in terms of the way they persisted in believing that the miners had enough when they were clearly starving.
One thing which was quite striking was the portrayal of relationships and sex within the community - the younger community members were depicted as being continuously at it, in the absence of cash to pursue any other forms of entertainment. There is probably some accuracy in the value placed on these relationships - inevitable, and ideally resulting in marriage, but with marriage delayed as long as possible so that they could continue to contribute to their parents' households - and the individual partnerships rang true, but the idea that the countryside was littered with couples wherever you turned seemed somehow improbable.
The other element which makes this novel something approaching a masterpiece is the exploration of individual responses to the situation, with the strong, driving background of the mob mentality. There is very little judgement of morality, with the reader left to make their own decisions, but with the impression that personal morality no longer really counted for anything. Without giving anything away, there is both injustice and justice in terms of the people who are injured and killed during the strike, creating the strong message that the individual was helpless in the situation, and good was not rewarded.
It is a work of unremitting gloom. However, it's definitely worth reading - I'm not sure I'd say that I liked it, but I gained an insight into a piece of history, and couldn't put it down. One word of warning - don't under any circumstance read this if you already suffer from claustrophobia, or know someone who works in a mine!
I knew nothing at all about this novel before I started reading it and, due to reading on the Kindle, didn't even have the back-of-the-book blurb to inform me. This meant that I had no expectations at all.
Germinal is a French novel, set in a mining community during a period of industrial unrest. Etienne, a stranger who arrives in the community at the beginning of the novel, seems to act as a catalyst for change, with the mood in the community moving from utter poverty-stricken resignation to open anger, and a strike.
The story itself is fairly straightforward - scene setting, establishment of characters, the major event of the strike, and the consequences of that. However, the strength and impact is in the way that the people, community and their way of life is so starkly portrayed. I can't remember reading anything else which so accurately portrays the poverty of life lived just below the breadline; the day to day struggle to put the basic necessities on the table, and the social indignities. The few characters who were richer obviously threw this into sharp relief, but did not come off well in terms of the way they persisted in believing that the miners had enough when they were clearly starving.
One thing which was quite striking was the portrayal of relationships and sex within the community - the younger community members were depicted as being continuously at it, in the absence of cash to pursue any other forms of entertainment. There is probably some accuracy in the value placed on these relationships - inevitable, and ideally resulting in marriage, but with marriage delayed as long as possible so that they could continue to contribute to their parents' households - and the individual partnerships rang true, but the idea that the countryside was littered with couples wherever you turned seemed somehow improbable.
The other element which makes this novel something approaching a masterpiece is the exploration of individual responses to the situation, with the strong, driving background of the mob mentality. There is very little judgement of morality, with the reader left to make their own decisions, but with the impression that personal morality no longer really counted for anything. Without giving anything away, there is both injustice and justice in terms of the people who are injured and killed during the strike, creating the strong message that the individual was helpless in the situation, and good was not rewarded.
It is a work of unremitting gloom. However, it's definitely worth reading - I'm not sure I'd say that I liked it, but I gained an insight into a piece of history, and couldn't put it down. One word of warning - don't under any circumstance read this if you already suffer from claustrophobia, or know someone who works in a mine!
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