A little light relief

I am still working my way through Crime and Punishment, and will make it through to the end.

However, as a little light relief, and also to put off having to pick it up just now, I was thinking about books that I would put on my top 100. My friend Jo, for her next significant birthday, has asked her friends and family to get her a copy of their favourite book. For me, this is akin to Nick Hornby's main character in High Fidelity (whose name I cannot for the life of me remember) being asked to put together his top 5 records. I couldn't estimate how many books I've read in my lifetime (on an average week's holiday, I'll read 4 or 5 if not more), and I have a nagging feeling that as soon as I pick one, I will think of 5 others I prefer!! So, to help me in my thinking for Jo's birthday (and Jo, if you're reading, you may like to stop now or no surprise for you!) - my top 100 books that everyone should read would include:

The End of Mr Y, by Scarlett Thomas - a brilliant mystery based on a PhD student who finds a work by the author she is studying in a bookshop - the work is extremely rare, and no-one alive has ever read it, because everyone who has ever read it has died or disappeared in mysterious circumstances. The book then follows her as she reads the book and gets drawn into the mystery of it. I won't go into any more detail because I think it's best discovered for yourself, but read it! Best book I read last year...I think!

The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon. The story of a small boy who is taken by his father to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a labyrinth of books which would otherwise have been in danger of being destroyed or forgotten. As a rite of passage, he chooses a book to take home, understanding that he is then taking responsibility for the survival of that book. As he reads the book and grows up, he becomes drawn into the mystery of the author. It's quite dark but absolutely compelling.

A Wild Sheep Chase - Haruki Murakami. Anything by Murakami could have made it onto this list, but this is the first one I read and so I think made the biggest impact. Murakami is one of Japan's most read authors of modern times, and with good reason. The plot of this novel is almost impossible to outline and do justice to - look it up on Amazon - but the key feature of anything by Murakami is the way he draws you into an utterly surreal and often comic world, but in such a way that you do not notice you're moving away from reality until you realise that you are reading about a character whose ears have the power, when uncovered, to improve sex, or the hunt for a manic depressive in a sheep outfit, or a hotel which has a hidden world on the 19th floor which very occasionally appears...and it seems completely usual. Murakami's powers of imagination and story telling are amazing, and I went on from this novel to read all of his other novels.

The Eyre Affair - Jasper Fforde. Books are again central to this (I'm spotting a theme in books that appeal to me!), but in a very different way. Fforde creates a world where travel into the interior of novels is possible, Swindon is the capital of England, dodos have been revived (slightly unsuccessfully), and time travel is not only possible, but used as a means of policing. Oh, and the Crimean War is still running by the 1980s. It can be read on a very simple level, enjoying the premise of the story - nominally a mystery, where Thursday Next (the main character) attempts to track down and stop the criminal who is kidnapping minor characters from the original copies of novels and holding them to ransom. If he doesn't get what he wants, he plans to kidnap Jane Eyre and murder her, meaning that Jane would disappear from all copies of the novel, and ruin one of the classics of English literature. (Martin would be glad of this, as he still holds that Jane Eyre is one of the dullest books ever written). Beyond this storyline, though, the novel is littered with literary references, and so can be read with a faint feeling of smugness/bewilderment as you place, or fail to place, the references. It's brilliantly constructed, funny, and gripping, and again I went on to read the rest of Fforde's work.

I could go on - I love recommending books - but will stop there, and try and work further through Crime and Punishment! If you try any of the above and like them, let me know...

Crime and Punishment #1

After Steinbeck & Rushdie, I went for something a bit more lightweight - the Hobbit. I wanted to then go onto something also fairly light - but started Crime and Punishment instead!

Now, I haven't finished this yet - it's been a pretty busy week and it's a pretty heavy book - but there's a lot in it and I'll probably forget my thoughts so far if I don't write about it part-way through!

One observation that made me chuckle - Roskolnikov's mother has just arrived, and is described as retaining some traces of her former beauty, despite being on the verge of old age - she is 43. Imagine the slating that an author writing now would get for defining a 43 year old woman as being on the verge of old age! Having said that, a chuckle is in a sense the wrong response - this is really just a reflection of firstly the general increase in life expectancy, and also the extreme poverty & harsh life lived by the characters in this novel would, I'd imagine, cause a woman to age at a far quicker rate than us in our more cosseted life here with anti-ageing creams and hair dyes and moisturisers proven to address the seven signs of ageing...

For those who aren't familiar with the novel, Crime and Punshment is set in pre-Revolutionary Tsarist Russia. Rodia Raskolnikov decides to carry out a murder for financial reasons, but also as a matter of principle - ridding the world of the evils of a money-lender who also conveniently happens to have riches that can be stolen after the event. Following this event (it isn't giving much away to tell you that he does it!), Dostoevsky examines the effect of guilt on Raskolnikov and his subsequent actions.

The first thing to say, I think, is that for the first time in this challenge I am absolutely gripped by the book I am reading. I was starting to worry that the 52 books I'd already read would turn out to be the only ones I like, and that it would be a year (or so) of forcing myself through depressing and overly complex works! This is complex - even to the extent that each of the characters seems to be referred to by two or three different names, and it has taken me until about the halfway point to really know who the characters are - and is certainly not a light or cheerful read. However, it is so well constructed that I have been completely drawn into the darkness of Raskolnikov's growing madness/illness/panic, and want to know where it is going next.

As I mentioned, the mother & sister have just entered the equation, and the depiction of dignity within poverty is striking.

More to follow when I finish! By the way, I'm reading the Wordsworth Classics version, which is giving me an eerie sense of doing my English A-level homework...

The Hobbit

Another book down - I've just finished The Hobbit. I think I made a token effort at starting this years ago and didn't get very far. I have very little interest in this as a genre, which is why I have never read any LOTR, or seen the films. However, one of the interesting things about this challenge is the removal of my personal taste from the decision as to what I read next, and it is definitely forcing me to widen my literary horizons.

I don't really know what to say about the Hobbit. It's very readable, although I have to confess to only skim-reading the songs, but I find it difficult to care about the outcome of a story that doesn't have any people in it. The depictions of dwarves, elves and goblins exactly mirror the standard literary definitions of those species, although I don't know if that's because Tolkien coined these characteristics. My ignorance showing itself, I think. If one feels so inclined, there are some general principles, or life lessons, that can be drawn from the Hobbit - the pursuit of money above all else erodes relationships & leads to conflict; a higher cause can unify parties previously divided by conflict over riches; the power of encouragement and affirmation in bringing about change (Bilbo believing that he could be useful and take the lead, because Gandalf has told him so); it's always a bad idea to leave the path in the woods; travelling down a river in a barrel will always be an uncomfortable experience.

The theme of food, or the absence thereof, runs throughout, as Bilbo learns that it's possible to shake the habit of a lifetime and survive a day or more without regular tea and cakes - perhaps a lesson we could all do to learn.

Overall - it is a book aimed at children, and it would be unfair to write it off for not being very deep!! It was easy enough to read, but I can't see myself becoming a big fan of the genre. I think I might finish off Crime and Punishment before I attack the rest of the LOTR books.

May your beards never grow thin. And remember, according to Gandalf, just because you had a part in making it happen, it doesn't mean that it isn't the fulfilment of a prophesy!

Books that would make bad musicals

Today, I was listening to the musical equivalent of Midnight's Children - not, I hasten to add, a musical of Midnight's Children (it wouldn't make a great stage show...an event occurs, all action on the stage pauses for 10 minutes while the narrator explains the metaphor we are supposed to be understanding...in song...action continues, 4 hours later nothing has really happened...). No, I was listening to the new Gorillaz album. I've really liked their previous work, but this is just rubbish. It seems to be a mixture of bad rap, 80s electro pop, and generally unmemorable music. However, I know that they have often been heralded as making innovative use of different musical styles and so I didn't feel I could just write it off. So, I listened through to the end. I tried really hard to understand what they were doing with the album as a whole, rather than just feeling complainy because there is nothing singable on it. I felt a bit uncultured because I was probably missing the point.

It seemed to go on for a long time, and nothing of interest really happens. I don't ever want to listen to it again.

So, I'm left with the question - is it too clever for me, am I missing the point, or is it just not worth listening to?

I'll leave you to draw the parallel - I don't think I need to hit you over the head with it!

That did start me thinking about books that would make bad musicals (I was driving to work, I was bored, and all I had to listen to was the Gorillaz album). So - Midnight's Children, Jude the Obscure (totally inappropriate subjects for song), The Wasp Factory. Strangely enough, I think the lingering, trudging misery of Grapes of Wrath might lend itself quite well to song.

I'm reading the Hobbit at the moment, by the way. Only 30 pages in but so far I'm pleased to report that it's more interesting than I remember it being last time I tried. The seven book Lord of the Rings Millenium edition is looming ominously over my reading future...

Salman Rushdie - Midnight's Children - done!

I have finally finished Midnight's Children. It's been an interesting experience. Trying to plough through this book has made me challenge the way that I read, pretentious as that may sound. I think I've mentioned previously that I read really fast - my driver to find out what happens at the end means that I do miss details, and generally don't think that much about what I'm reading other than taking in the outline facts.

Midnight's Children was impossible to read in this way. I've already commented that nothing seems to happen for the first 200 pages and, another 150 pages on, I realised that nothing was going to happen going forwards, in the way that I was looking for it - i.e. significant events, in the present tense, which caused an unexpected change in the direction of the story. The narrative voice is so distant (despite the fact that he is telling his own story), and bound up in metaphor, that all events are just below the surface of the text - I'm struggling a little to put this into words - as a reader, you actually need to read and digest the metaphor, the very visual language, and the narrator's own uncertainty about the accuracy of his memory to get to the heart of the story.

It's a difficult book to read.

Rushdie plays with the reader's perceptions throughout. Saleem expresses doubt about the accuracy of his dates & memory, leading me to believe that the parallels between his life and the life of India as a nation are delusions of grandeur, entirely in his own mind, rather than the cause & effect that he believes. However, his arrest and subsequent events at the end of the book indicate that the group of children (obviously now adults) are seen as a significant threat - they clearly have some significance and relationship to the life of the nation beyond Saleem's own mind, leaving me then to revisit my previous perceptions. Having said that, belief in the events of the novel to any extent do involve a suspension of disbelief - but for some reason I find it easier to do this in relation to the magical powers of the children than in relation to national events. Perhaps a reflection of the individualist society we live in, perhaps a limit in my imagination - who knows?

I did also find the level of coincidence in the novel, putting lost friends & family in entirely random places to be found by Saleem, difficult to believe in. However, perhaps I'm being difficult to please here - I can't help but contrast this to the Grapes of Wrath, where I complained about the way that loose ends were not tied up, and people were never heard from again. Saleem ties up all loose ends in the narration of his story, sometimes convincingly, sometimes fantastically, and sometimes admitting that he doesn't know, and this is the way he likes to believe that it happened.

There is a passage which really stuck with me:

Who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I've gone which would not have happened if I had not come. Nor am I particularly exceptional in this matter; each 'I', every one of the now-six-hundred-million-plus of us, contains a similar multitude.
(p535 of the Vintage Books edition)

This is written in the context of his significance to the Indian nation (and gives a good example of the style of prose that I found so difficult to skim read), but I thought this was a great way of summarising an individual's impact on the world for those looking for their own significance...leaving questions of God and higher meaning to one side for the moment!

Having reached the end, I'm left with an appreciation of the complexity of this novel. I suspect that I might have got more out of it had I known more about the period of history it covers, or had I read the beginning with the same mindset as I read the end. However, I still feel that the metaphor is heavy handed...Rushdie wants to leave you with a particular interpretation of Saleem's significance, actions, and life, and therefore interprets this through the voice of the narrator. There is very little space or scope for a sense of discovery that comes with a subtler metaphor - I feel, rather, that I've been beaten about the head with what he wanted to say!

Would I read it again? I doubt it...but I'm glad I didn't give up this time.

Onto the next - I might go for Lord of the Rings or Nineteen Eighty-Four for something slightly gentler.

Midnight's Children - an interim report

I thought I should post something about Midnight's Children, even though I still haven't finished it, because it is taking me a while to read. I know it isn't a long time for most people, but as I read at the speed of light, generally, and this is something of a plod, it feels very slow.

I mentioned to my friend Simon that Midnight's Children was my next project; he said that this is one of the few books that he's started and failed to finish. This filled me with dread, as we tend to like the same books, but I carry on regardless - I have a challenge to complete!

So - Salman Rushdie. Simon's difficulty in finishing this novel is entirely understandable. It was 100 pages before anything happened, and 200 pages before the main protaganist, Saleem, is born. Given that the first 200 pages is laden with future hints about his birth, this seems like a long time to spin out the anticipation. Once Saleem enters the picture, the pace speeds up a bit and this is where I started to get interested, but if I didn't have another compelling reason to finish it, I would have given up before then.

You can't argue with the quality of the writing. Rushdie plays with form, both in choice of words & in the punctuation & structure of sentences, to create mood and impact. There's a particularly striking scene, with the retelling of a dream about a witch killing children, where he does this to great effect; and another where the repetition of the colours saffron and green in every element of a description creates a sort of driving rhythm that supports the urgency of the situation (Saleem's birth), as well as linking it in with the birth of India as a nation. His description of Amina taking a knife to her verrucas is, unfortunately, particularly vivid...my feet are curling themselves up in self-defence just thinking about it.

There is an enormous amount covered in this novel. Indian independence, the political system, Partition...childhood events, accidents, turbulent family life, and of course the magical realism elements of Saleem's psychic links with India's other "midnight children". The novel is written self-consciously - Saleem is writing his own story, and frequently breaks off to comment to Padma, his companion. This obviously gives him the advantage of hindsight, and the ability to hint at future events, but from a stylistic point of view, I find it much harder to become absorbed in the story - I feel as though I'm sitting by the narrator, watching from a distance, rather than being one with the story.

This could also be partly due to spending almost four hours today reading whilst on a train to and from London at unsocial hours - much more difficult to get involved (particularly when the seat in front is occupied by someone playing a game on their iPhone without switching off the sound - grr - but I'll calm myself as this is not a forum for train rants!).

So far - hmm. This is an enormously accomplished book, it's very well constructed, and complex but easily followed. It's difficult to get truly involved in, in the sense of emotional engagement, because so much of its style and construction is about creating parallels between people & events of national significance. When Rushdie gets involved in the "real time" story that he's telling, it's immensely compelling, but this does tend to happen in fits and starts, and so many misfortunes fall upon Saleem, both physical and emotional, that it's difficult to see him as a three-dimensional character rather than a living metaphor. Maybe that's the point & I'm just not sophisticated enough to like it!

I suspect I will be glad I've read it, when I finish it, but I'm not quite near enough the end to feel that yet! More to follow- about 150 pages to go, I think...