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...

• 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!

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!

Middlemarch - finally!

Ok, so I have finished Middlemarch at last.

It's very long.

I started with a pre-disposition to dislike it due to my only previous Elliott experience (Silas Marner), and to be fair to Middlemarch I have to say that this was far less dull, turgid, irritating . However, it started well - there seemed to be lots of characters that might develop into interesting relationships and interactions, and things seemed to move along quickly. Until the second or third chapter, or whenever it is that Dorothy marries Mr Casaubon. From that point, all the pace and drive seemed to drop out of the writing, and it then took hundreds of pages to get to a conclusion which was quite obvious from the beginning. I don't mind a predictable ending as such, but I do object to having to read quite so much to get to it!

I also found that the characters didn't develop from their promising start - each one had one or two key characteristics, and demonstrated these throughout, meaning that they were more like cariacatures. The book is too long to do without character depth, and 99% of them were irritating - particularly Rosalind (or was it Rosamund? I should be able to remember that). As I've noticed before, I find it particularly difficult to engage with fiction where I don't like, or have a genuine interest in, any of the characters.

So, it's finished - it's not as bad as I expected but I won't be rushing to read any more Elliott.

Whilst reading Middlemarch I also read:
The Ice Cream Girls - looks like a lovely floaty chick lit kind of book, is actually quite a traumatic book about a violent teacher paedophile. Good, readably, but be warned!
Victoria Coren's poker book - brilliant
The last two books in the Millenium trilogy - I'd read them before but still found them gripping.

I think I now understand why Middlemarch took so long!

Ulysses - a failure, but whose?

So - James Joyce, Ulysses...stream of consciousness narrative. I've tried to read this book 3 or 4 times before and never got beyond page 43. I can tell you this as the bookmark was still in there from the previous aborted attempt. I can even date it, as the bookmark is a train ticket - October 2003, when I apparently optimistically tried to start reading Ulysses on the train from London to Langley Mill near Nottingham, on the way to see the software provider for the recruitment database I was working on at the time. I remember the trip quite clearly, but not the book. Telling. Anyway. On this attempt I was absolutely determined not to be beaten - I've found books difficult before, and have made my way through them, and on this challenge, I didn't see not finishing a book as an option. I have tried really, really hard. I've made it all the way to page 200, and so far all I can discern as having happened is: - Some young men who unfathomably houseshare in a tower have breakfast - One goes to work and gets paid - A man walks to the shops and buys a kidney for his breakfast, which he forgets about when cooking but just manages to catch before it burns - Those two men plus some others spend a lot of time discussing funerals and then attend one. That's it. 200 pages!! And another 700 to go. When I first starting reading this I asked on Facebook whether I was being thick in not finding it easier to read. Apparently, I am not alone in this, and my friend Joanna described stream of consciousness narrative as "having no narrative". She's an English teacher by training, so I trust her opinion on this! The thing is, I'm sure that if I really focus closely on drawing out what is happening, there will eventually turn out to be a narrative, slow-moving as it may be, hidden within the stream of consciousness. Not many books have defeated me, and I know that I am capable of reading it and understanding it, if I try hard enough. However, I just don't want to! There are too many books in the world, let alone other things to do, to waste time reading something as unintuitive and unenjoyable as this just to be able to say I have read it. I do also understand that literature is not all about the narrative, and what happens in the end - it's about the way the journey is portrayed, the display of intellect, the use of techniques to create a particular effect. I've read other books - A Suitable Boy is a great example, actually - where it is so long and involved that you have to stop focusing on what's going to happen at the end, and just sink into the way the story is told, the characterisation, relationships, and the style of writing. It took me three months to read, but I didn't mind because it felt like an achievement, it's intellectually challenging, but there is pleasure to be had in the act of reading. Ulysses is not like this. Thus far, there is no characterisation, no appearance of relationships between the characters...there aren't even really many finished sentences. It's impossible to sink into because the stream of consciousness is so difficult to follow, and if I relax and read at anything approaching my usual speed, I get to the end of a page and realise that what I've just read has no meaning. Sometimes, a slower re-reading also yields no meaning... And I think that's the problem - it doesn't display any of the characteristics that I associate with either a pleasurable read, or a difficult but worthwhile read. The story isn't compelling, the characters are neither likeable nor interesting...nor are they really anything more than names on a page. The language isn't beautiful. It isn't teaching me anything about a historical context. It feels, if I'm honest, like it has been written just to be clever, with no other redeeming features. According to one of the soundbites on the back, it gives an unmissable flavour of Dublin life. Really? So far, it hasn't given a flavour of anything outside of two people's internal monologues, and they appear to be two dull people! At about page 140, one of the characters said something along the lines of "Shite and onions! Life's too short for..." (and I can't remember what). And that's the conclusion I've come to - life is too short to read another 700 pages of something I won't really take in (including the last 200 pages with no punctuation - what a treat) and therefore I am declaring Ulysses a failure. Mine, really, as Joyce managed to finish it, but I couldn't. I'm sure that die-hard Joyce fans (if there are any, I've never met one) would tell me that I'm missing something, but I am left with the suspicion that this is one of those books which people recommend to sound intellectual, whilst not actually having read it. Don't bother, unless you have unlimited time on your hands! If anyone has any wisdom into what I'm missing, let me know - I can't promise I'll try again but if there is a better understanding to be had of why this is considered to be such a key piece of literature, I'd like to at least know! Ulysses passes onto the very small pile of books which have beaten me (Nicholas Nickelby, Ian McEwan's Saturday, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, and this...I think that's it), and I will move on to the next thing. I need to find something on the list which isn't painful to read, and preferably doesn't take place in France or on a ship, as I need a change after the Count of Monte Cristo! Any recommendations? Rant over... :-)

Heartof Darkness

In a slightly unexpected display of commitment, I have read another book - Conrad's Heart of Darkness, described as "the first 20th century novel". To be fair, it's very short - 100 pages - which somewhat makes up for the length of the Count of Monte Cristo. I may have read it too quickly as it hasn't made much of an impact on me. The novel is based on the first-person narrative of a sailor describing a voyage he made into the "heart of darkness" - Africa. It's very much reflective of its time, and I found the casual approach to enslaving the "natives" difficult - his first experience on arriving in Africa is seeing a chain gang, who are dispassionately described but clearly on the brink of starvation, over worked, and uncared for. I understand that this is in part a reflection of the time - but it was written in 1890, a good half-century after slavery was outlawed, and so I would have expected the mentality to have changed. I always find it difficult to engage with the characters in a novel where they display these sort of attitudes - the natives are not really acknowledged as people at all, and the narrator expresses surprise when he finds that he is sad "in a way" about the death of one of those travelling with him ... because he had become used to keeping him in order. Other than this, it's one of those novels which isn't so much about events as about creating an impression and atmosphere via descriptions of places...I have a tendency to skim-read descriptions, looking for the real action, so I suspect I haven't really taken the best out of it. Certainly very readable, but I didn't find that it particularly engaged me. What to read next? I have a horrible feeling that it's time to take on Middlemarch, or possibly another Dickens or Russian extravaganza!

The Count of Monte Cristo

It's been quite a long time since I last posted. The Count of Monte Cristo is a very long book and I really struggled to wade my way through it. However, with the assistance of time waiting in airports and on planes I have finally reached the end - hooray! This mainly makes me happy because I can now read something else without guilt (bearing in mind that I have read at least 2 quick reads - with guilt! - as light relief whilst struggling through to the end of this). This is quite a difficult work to write about because I can see that it is a masterpiece - the ideas, construction, depth of imagination and sheer quality of writing make it so. However, it's densely plotted with complicated twists and turns, and the mid-section (about 250 pages !) was so long and apparently unrelated that by the time I got to the end section (about 350 pages...) I had entirely forgotten the cast of characters from the beginning. Given that this is a revenge saga, and only makes sense in the context of what happened at the beginning, I think this contributed to my lack of enjoyment. I would be tempted to read it again to see if I could gain a better overall picture, but it's so long and there are so many other books in the world to read! I found it ultimately unsatisfying and hollow - this is probably the intention, as it is built around the Count's determination to revenge himself on three individuals who did him a significant wrong, and he finds that revenge is not as sweet as expected....therefore there isn't a resolution that is pleasing to the reader despite an attempt at a vaguely happy ending. This can be appreciated from the literary point of view but not necessarily enjoyed as such! Definitely worth a read if you have a lot of time on your hands, and a good memory for characters through a long, twisting, turning plot. I have neither, but I'm glad I made it to the end! On another note, someone recently suggested to me that I diversify into blogging about parenthood...obviously not quite yet as I'd be writing about parenting a cat, but from later in the year. I'm undecided...writing about books is easy for me, and unthreatening as I can write in the personal but without actually mentioning anything personal; parenthood would be a whole different thing. We'll see - might come back to having time on my hands, and learning to type with one hand only!

Seeing Ben Folds

We went to see Ben Folds in Manchester last night and I wanted to blog about it. It's slightly outside my normal remit of books and cake, but I have justified it to myself on the basis that he is on the Lonely Avenue tour, an album co-written with Nick Hornby, and including some short stories written by Nick, therefore it was a literary activity. Clear? Good!

A warning, first - below, I will talk about the songs he uses to open and close the show, and some highlights of song selections. If you're going to one of the later gigs, and would rather be surprised, stop reading now, and come back and see if you agree with me when you've been!

The gig was at Manchester Apollo which was quite a nice venue, although not in such a great area. It used to be a cinema, and the Stalls area is now all standing, with seating in the circle. The main highlight of the venue for me (which maybe tells you something about my age) - we failed to get cash before going in, so went to the bar and asked if we could pay by card. No, but there's a bar on the top floor that takes cards. Up we went, and found the bar at the end of a quiet corridor that looked like it didn't lead to anything interesting. Not only did it take cards, but it was empty (when we arrived, though others followed), and was full of big white sofas and armchairs to chill out in. A cut above the average bar at a gig!

So, duly relaxed, we took ourselves off to find our seats in time for the support act, Kate Miller-Heidke, an Australian singer-songwriter. We were unconvinced for the first couple of songs, and started to write her off as a generic girl singer (lovely voice but difficult to distinguish from any other). However, as she progressed, we were much more impressed - some really interesting songs, imaginative use of voice techniques, a bit of comedy (check out "Are you f*cking kidding me?", a song about Facebook, but please note the parental advisory warning on lyrics!!), and an absolutely astonishing range. Definitely worth a listen.

Then it was time for Mr Folds. Last time I saw him, about 9 years ago now, he dual-toured with the Divine Comedy, and did his piece solo with a piano. This time, he had a four piece band - bass, the most energetic drummer I have ever seen (sorry Dan Matthews), a guy who switched between synth, French horn and random percussion, and a guy who switched between guitars, additional drums, and other random percussion. And, of course, himself on a grand piano.

I can't remember every single song that he did. They played for just over 2 hours, with 5 or 6 songs from Lonely Avenue, and the rest spread pretty evenly across the back catalogue. Highlights for me were...

- Opening with Levi Johnston's Blues, from Lonely Avenue - probably the best song on that album, about Sarah Palin's daughter's pregnancy incident.
- Belinda - another great song from that album
- Still fighting it
- Annie Waits
- Bastard
- Cologne, from Way to Normal - by far the best song on that one
- You don't know me, featuring Kate M-H as the female voice, again demonstrating her fantastic range, and performed with brilliant interaction between the two of them that really brought out the character of the song
- Landed
- Hilarious cover of Sleazy by Ke$ha, chosen because it was #1 in the iTunes chart at the point where they were deciding which cover to do. Don't know the original but I'm pretty sure the cover, whilst funny, was musically better!!
- Finishing (pre-encore) with Philosophy...still brilliant.

In terms of songs, as I write this, every one I remember is a highlight, so I'll stop there before I basically type out the set list in a random order. In terms of the show, I love the energy that Ben Folds puts into it - even at the end, after 2 hours without a break, he was bounding around as frenetically as at the beginning. He plays the piano with such force that he broke one of the strings, and so quickly that you start to wonder if he has 3 hands, or at least extra fingers. I've always loved his musicianship - as a pianist (albeit not a very good one), I can recognise how advanced his piano composition and technical ability is, and love the way that he makes the piano often the leading and central component of his music. After 2 hours, it felt like every song had been a fantastic choice, but at the same time, I could think of about the same number of songs again that I'd quite like to have heard, which is a testament to the strength and variety of his back catalogue/body of work. But most importantly, for a live performance, you can tell that consideration and planning has gone into every song - he doesn't just turn up and play through the catalogue, but brings something new to songs I've heard hundreds of times.

Only one criticism - the venue isn't that big and it wasn't sold out. Manchester, what's wrong with you?!

If you haven't heard anything by Ben Folds, go and check it out. The man's a genius - fact!

Next blog post...normal service will be resumed if I ever manage to get to the end of the Count of Monte Cristo. It's good, but my word it goes on for a long time!