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!

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!

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!

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... :-)