Lady Chatterley's Lover by D H Lawrence

This book, which I read initially for the Outmoded Authors Challenge but then added to My Year of Reading Dangerously as my January book, was one that, as I have mentioned before, I really did not want to read.
Now I have finished it, am I glad that I read it? I think so. Will I be reading any more D H Lawrence in a hurry? I don't think so.
I have very different feelings about various aspects of this book, so I'll deal with them separately.

The story.
I rather enjoyed this. It is melancholy, a story of how people can end up in situations where they feel trapped and unfitted for the world they are in. There is the literal unfitness of Clifford, the crippled husband of Constance, unhappy, unfulfilled, flitting between jealousy of his wife and acceptance that she should be with other men. There is Constance herself, who is in a marriage that is no longer right with a husband whom she gradually loses respect for; she is 'Lady Chatterley' to a town she cannot abide, with no friends to confide in.
But most of all there is Mellors the gamekeeper, and it is his character that is the most interesting. Educated and well-read, he had a successful career in the army making Lieutenant before being invalided out. He returned to the mining community where he was born but he no longer belongs there; he is caught between two worlds, not a part of the mining community but also not accepted by the upper classes, and in Lawrence's world there does not appear to be an effective middle class buffer between the two that Mellors could slip into.
This tension in his character is shown by the way he constantly slips from his cultivated 'proper' English accent into broad Derbyshire, often as a way of attempting to remind Constance that she is lowering herself by being with him. His sadness and lack of place in the world, which is alleviated somewhat by the love that grows between him and Constance, is the part of the story that I enjoyed; he is a very sympathetic character.

The writing.
I just didn't think it was that good. Lawrence is very repetitive, and his phrases and metaphors are clumsy at times. I understand that he is trying to show how deep-rooted a feeling is when he talks about bowels and wombs but it detracted from the story.

An example:
'But when she touched her steadily-lived life with him she...hesitated. Was it actually her destiny to go on weaving herself into his life all the rest of her life? Nothing else?
Was it just that? She was to be content to weave a steady life with him...'

The setting.
The setting of the story was great - it's where I live! Characters are constantly talking of popping to Sheffield for nights out, and Chesterfield and Mansfield are mentioned, and other areas with fictional names seemed very familiar. I read bits out to J as we tried to decide which towns the fictional ones were based on. The descriptions of the area in the novel do not make my home sound very pleasant though; it is depressing, dark and ugly, but this is an area of the country that the Industrial Revolution was not kind to. It has improved since then.

And finally, the sex.
This is the most famous part of the book, after all, and after reading it, it does seem to be the ultimate point of it, to break taboos and free literature from the restraint about talking of this natural aspect of human life. I understand the point of it, but I did not enjoy it. It is vulgar and over the top; there is no romance to it - I don't understand how Mellors and Connie fall in love, as they seem to just copulate like a couple of dogs.
The descriptions of the act are quite ridiculous and all in all, it would have been a better book with fewer sex scenes. If you listened to an audio file of me reading it, it would consist of tutting, 'Oh for goodness sake!' and at times laughing out loud - probably not the reactions that DH was looking for.

Still it did the trick, and we now have the legacy of complete openness in novels- the taboo is gone. Has this improved literature, where it seems sex scenes are obligatory in almost any new novel, regardless of the need for it in the story? Well, we all have our own views on that. I would not advise anyone to read the book for this aspect alone though. The descriptions are too ridiculous to be titillating.

So, on the whole mixed feelings. I think I will hold on to the story about Mellors and try to forget the other bits.

Benito Cereno by Herman Melville

This is a difficult book. It is not the language, it is beautifully written. I love Melville's writing; Moby Dick is one of my favourite books, a joy of a read. This book is difficult because of the subject matter.

WARNING: I can't talk about the story and my reservations about it without talking about the whole story, so THERE WILL BE SPOILERS! Don't say I didn't tell you.

On the surface this is a rollicking adventure of intrepid men fighting against a determined force of evil, but it is the form in which this oppressive evil is framed that is the difficulty of the novella. Captain Amasa Delano of a sealer spots a ship in distress and goes to help it, meeting the listless Captain Benito Cereno and crew much cut down, he claims, by disease and storms. The good American Captain attempts to be charitable but his feeling of unease is increased continually the longer he stays on the ship; something is not right either about Don Benito, the crew, or the cargo - as Don Benito's ship is a slaver. The slaves are able to walk around the ship and appear to have a lot of freedom, even to the extent of chastising the Spanish sailors, due to their help in the storm Don Benito claims, but the situation gradually develops into a more menacing one and it becomes apparent that the slaves are in revolt and have taken over the ship.
One of the most striking factors of Moby Dick for me when I read it was Melville's obvious admiration and respect for the whales. The magnificent and noble creatures were treated sympathetically in the narration and I expected to find the same level of respect from him when dealing with the human beings that were the subject of this story, but sadly did not. The slaves are depicted as a threatening body, intelligent, yes, but also savage and bloodthirsty. I did not find any empathy in the story for the plight of the Africans who were fighting to avoid being taken into a life of slavery.
I have read that this story has been interpreted in different ways and some have seen it as anti-slavery and abolitionist, but personally I found it hard to see this in it. The slaves are depicted as fiercely intelligent, and the scheme they have put together and the concerted way in which they carry it out is remarkable, especially when contrasted against the rather simple character of Amasa Delano, who is paternalistic, patronising and clearly clueless about the realities of slavery. He believes that the slaves should be quiet and respectful and trust that they will be looked after well, a view that grates harshly with modern sensibilities, but I did not see anything in the narration to put Captain Delano's views into perspective. His was the dominant voice of the story. The intelligence of the slaves in their attempt to escape does not seem to be admired or respected even tacitly in the narration; rather it is the reason the slaves are so fearsome. I admire Melville as a writer so I tried hard to read this as a positive enlightened story, but I just couldn't find it in there.

I realise that I never said below which were the lines of the poem that I found so familiar when quoted in Civilization; it is these:

'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'

Ozymandias

I should be writing about Benito Cereno this weekend but am finding it difficult. So instead more Shelley, possibly my favourite poet.
J suddenly quoted these lines at me earlier today saying I had wanted to know where they were from. I had no idea what he was talking about but apparently one day, many moons ago, while he was playing a computer game called Civilization these lines had been quoted by Leonard Nimoy and I had said they were familiar but couldn't think where they were from.
So today I have been informed by my husband that they are by Shelley - he is reading a book about heroes, or something similar, and the lines are quoted.
I have dug out the full poem and here it is, Ozymandias. I love it; as a person who thinks in words more than images, verses like this take me to the distant land in question better than a photograph would.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert... Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Presents and the young Arthur

A small haul from my birthday - courtesy of my husband and brother.

The DVDs are: the third series of Are you Being Served? from J; he got me the first two for Christmas, I love it, Mrs Slocombe is one of my heroes. And there's The Princess Bride, a favourite film, although when I quote from it at work no one knows what I'm talking about, inconceivable! And seasons 6 and 7 of Columbo which is as far as I want to go on DVD; the eighties' Columbos are just not the same. My main present from J will be a selection of organic plants from the Ethical Superstore, an online shop that has some great organic and eco-friendly stuff - we got our eco-kettle from there.
Books-wise, in addition to Mrs Lirriper, I got a guide to the superstitions of the British Isles from J, and a book of gardening quotations and Forever Summer by Nigella Lawson from my brother. I now have every book Nigella has written, I'm pretty sure, after I got Nigella Express as a late Christmas present. I made a butternut squash and sweet potato soup from the latter yesterday, which was delicious.

I spent a reasonably large part of my days off reading Arthur Conan Doyle's letters. They are extremely readable and, although the editors quote from his writing to show where he got various inspirations from (such as when, as a schoolboy, he expresses his utter loathing for mathematics, they point out that he made his arch-villain Moriarty a mathematician), at present it is less illuminating about Doyle the writer and more interesting, as any letters from the 1870s would be, as a description of ordinary people's lives a hundred and thirty years ago.
The childhood letters remind me of an edition of a diary I have by Richard Doyle, a fourteen year old boy who wrote and illustrated a year's diary for his father in the 1840s. The boy lived in London and witnessed, among other things, the wedding of Victoria and Albert and his descriptions of things like visiting the Royal Academy exhibition with the crowds, or rushing out to buy the latest part of Dickens' Master Humphrey's Clock are a fascinating look at how people lived then. This Richard Doyle grew up to be an illustrator for Punch, until he left because of the periodical's anti-Catholic sentiments, and was also, coincidentally, Arthur Conan Doyle's uncle. I hadn't realised that when I read Richard Doyle's diary, but it is very interesting now to read of 'Uncle Dick' in Arthur's letters and see him as a grown man.
Conan Doyle's letters are lucid and fascinating, even from when he was very young. Most of the letters are to his mother from when he was away at school or working away from home, and the editors have woven through them further facts and extracts from Conan Doyle's autobiographical writing to fill the gaps. I have got to the point where Conan Doyle is a struggling young doctor with a first practice of his own and his first household of himself and his little brother Innes; he is supplementing his income by sending short stories off to any periodical he can and receiving some successes and many rejections.
My only regret about beginning the book at the moment is that it is too heavy to carry on the train, so I couldn't read it during my commute. I am really enjoying it and looking forward to when he begins to write the Sherlock Holmes stories.

Time's Noiseless March

Time halts not in his noiseless march,
Nor turns, nor winds, as doth the liquid flood;
Life slips from underneath us, like that arch
Of airy workmanship, whereon we stood,
Earth stretched below, heaven in our neighbourhood.

Wordsworth

It's my birthday and, as I move into the latter half of my three score and ten, this quotation seems quite apt. A colleague who is joyfully approaching her fiftieth birthday decided to commiserate with me for my age - an age where all sorts of difficult decisions about career, family, etc have to be made before it's too late, whereas fifty is easy because that's all in the past- her words, not mine.

So I will be spending the day quivering with fear under the duvet, gnawing at my fingernails.

No, not really, a glass of bucks fizz and a couple of days away from work will perk me up. In reality I get very excited about my birthday even if the depression about getting older hits later (as it did on my twenty-fifth and thirtieth but not so much since then). We went out for a lovely meal on Saturday to celebrate which was a great start to the birthday week. My husband seems to think that birthdays should only last a day, which seems very silly - just a day? That said, as I had a bad afternoon at work yesterday (and on my Birthday Eve too), he gave me an early present to cheer me up. It worked, as it was a copy of the lovely Hesperus Press Mrs Lirriper by Charles Dickens et al.

I had hoped to get it for Christmas and was a little disappointed that I didn't but this second chance is the beauty of a birthday four weeks later (although not for my poor dad and brother worn out by present buying, as my Mum's birthday is the week before mine).
I finished Lady Chatterley's Lover for Outmoded Authors and My Year of Reading Dangerously at the weekend, and then read Benito Cereno by Herman Melville for the Seafaring Challenge (which makes me an Admiral, I'll have you know), both of which I will digest for a few days and then write about but I feel the challenges are under control, so today I will just pick up what I feel like. I am part of the way through a book my brother lent me the other week saying I might like it, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott. It is very entertaining and making me feel better about my writing, as the states of despair she describes pretty much match my own when I look at what I have written.
I've also been eying the collection of Conan Doyle's letters I picked up the other day, but have the guilty feeling that it is far too soon to read them (after all poor Kingsley Amis' letters having been languishing at the bottom of the book piles for a good few years) but as a birthday treat I think I will spend some time with them. And maybe some time with Columbo too, just the one.

The History of Witchcraft by Lois Martin

This book is from the Pocket Essentials series (ISBN: 978-1-904048-77-0), of which I have a handful about the history of occult subjects. This is not a book about the development of modern forms of witchcraft such as Wicca, but rather a look at the beliefs, and the religious and political atmosphere that led to the execution of people as witches, culminating in the Witch Craze in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries across Europe and America.
It is a compact little book but very well researched and written in a way that makes you want to keep reading. Beginning with descriptions of the developments of the core beliefs about witchcraft such as the Witches' Sabbat or their pact with the devil the book then describes the legal frameworks that were set up to deal with witches and the developments that led to the witch hunting frenzy in Europe from the fifteenth century. Lois Martin takes a measured approach to the subject, being careful to emphasise that there have been many exaggerations of the extent of the craze and also looking at contemporary views of people at the time of the accusations, which are often quite sceptical about the powers of the people accused as witches.
For instance, she describes how Kramer, one of the authors of the book, Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches), which was a central anti-witch text, was an unbalanced misogynist with a sordid preoccupation with the sexual practices of witches; this is not just a revised view from the twenty-first century - he was condemned by his own Domincan Order, his writing partner Sprenger dissociated himself from him, and the Bishop of Innsbruck released about 50 suspected witches that Kramer had imprisoned, calling him 'completely childish'.
The different views of the witchcraft beliefs at the time was the most interesting part of this book, for me, there was not just a blind acceptance of witchcraft but often political motives would be behind the trials.
It was interesting to note that despite James I's book Daemonologie, the craze for witch hunting was not strong in England. Indeed, James I wrote the book in response to a book by Reginald Scot in 1584 which provided a sceptical view of witchcraft, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, where Scot called for an end to persecution and described how people who believed they were witches were probably suffering from mental problems. Martin does describe possibly the most famous English witch hunting episode, the brief reign of terror of Matthew Hopkins, the self-styled Witch-Finder General. However, she describes how the beliefs about witches and their powers were different to on the continent so, although there were trials and executions, there were not the circumstances to spark a full-blown witch craze in England and even Hopkins was only a short aberrant incident.
It was also interesting to discover that the view of the Inquisition as the main torturers and fanatics responsible for the European craze is probably unfair; the Inquisition was very tightly controlled whilst secular authorities ran riot and there is an especially gruesome chapter on the use of torture.
And of course Martin describes the most famous episode of witch hysteria, the Salem witch trials. Again she gives a measured and interesting account of the episode and the manner in which it was stopped, when the accusers went too far and pointed at the Governor's wife. Politics again intervened.
She ends with a brief chapter which looks at the recent (as in the past couple of hundred years) scholarship into witchcraft and how the witch-craze and the figure of the witch is still being used for political purposes, being described as, for instance, a heroic anti-establishment figure and she briefly looks at the much criticised scholarship of Margaret Murray. This chapter was very interesting and I would have liked it to be longer, but Martin does give a useful Further Reading list at the end.
As you may guess I found this inexpensive little book fascinating and am bursting with all the information squeezed into it. As well as being very informative, it is a good read, and I can recommend it, whether you are new to the subject or know it well, as an excellent summary of this dark period of history.

Coraline by Neil Gaiman

'A woman stood in the kitchen with her back to Coraline. She looked a little like Coraline's mother. Only...
Only her skin was white as paper.
Only she was taller and thinner.
Only her fingers were too long, and they never stopped moving, and her dark-red fingernails were curved and sharp.
"Coraline?" the woman said. "Is that you?"
And then she turned round. Her eyes were big black buttons.
"Lunchtime, Coraline," said the woman.

I have never read anything by Neil Gaiman before but the number of good reviews from participants during last year's RIP challenge made me want to try his writing and this book, Coraline [published by Bloomsbury, ISBN: 978-0-7475-6210-8], particularly caught my eye. My brother has been a big fan of Neil Gaiman for many years, and he lent me a little pile of books to try, one of which was this.
Coraline is a children's book, so it was a quick introduction to Gaiman's work. My main thought as I read it was that I wish this book had been around when I was a child, I would have loved it. It is the sort of book I always enjoyed, very imaginative and perhaps a little gruesome. It is good to know that these sorts of books are still being written for children and it is not all 'real life' stories about broken homes or other similarly depressing subjects. Children have fantastic imaginations and should be allowed to let them run riot in books, as the books I particularly remember from my childhood did, books like Help I'm a Prisoner in a Toothpaste Factory, The Phantom Tollbooth or just about anything by Roald Dahl (apart from Danny the Champion of the World which I never really got the point of). If it had been around, I'm sure Coraline would have joined this list of favourites.
The story is about a young girl who is mooching about her new flat during the summer holidays, exploring the garden, and pestering her busy parents. There is a mysterious door in the drawing room, which opens onto a brick wall when her mother opens it but when Coraline opens it on her own she finds a passage into another version of her home. Here another mother and father, the same as her real ones apart from the buttons sewed onto their faces instead of eyes, welcome Coraline as if they have been waiting for her. At first it seems that everything is just as Coraline would dream in this other home, fantastic toys and food and lots of attention, but when she tries to go back to her real home, and finds the other mother does not want to let her leave and then steals her real parents, it becomes less pleasant.
The story follows Coraline's attempt to outwit and evade the other mother, who becomes scarier and less motherly by the minute, with the occasional help of a cat who is able to walk between the two worlds and, helpfully, can talk in the unreal one. The book is simply written but not at all patronising, and the story is quite scary as Coraline tries to rescue her parents and escape the unreal world. The character of Coraline is very good; she is brave and intelligent but not to the extent that she becomes too idealised a version of a young girl. She is a believable person in an unreal world. As an introduction to Neil Gaiman's work it was excellent and I am very keen to read the pile of his books for adults that I have waiting.

A Universal Medicine

While waiting for my computer to start just now I ran my eye idly over a nearby bookshelf and noticed a book I've had for years but never opened, Culpeper's Complete Herbal and English Physician Enlarged.
With my gardening passion renewed I picked it up to browse, to see if a seventeenth century view of plants could give me any hints; I'm a firm believer in learning from age old practices where possible rather than relying on modern chemicals to sort every problem out.
This often goes for medical matters too, I don't like to pop pills for every little ailment and would much rather try a natural remedy tried and tested over the centuries - within reason, however.
For instance, a remedy Culpeper quotes and comments on caught my eye in particular, and I had to share it here, but despite the fact that my garden will abundantly supply most of the major ingredients for this compound I will not be trying it; a visit to the local chemists seems far preferable.
Here is the recipe, I especially enjoyed Culpeper's comment at the end.

'Aqua et Spiritus Lambricorum, magistralis
Or Water and Spirit of Earthworms

College: Take of Earthworms well cleansed, three pound, Snails, with shells on their backs cleansed, two gallons, beat them in a mortar, and put them into a convenient vessel, adding stinging nettles, roots and all, six handfuls, Agrimony, Bettony, of each three handfuls, Rue one handful, common Wormwood two handfuls, Rosemary flowers six ounces, Dock roots ten ounces, the roots of sorrel five ounces, Turmerick, the inner bark of Barberries, of each four ounces, Fenugreek seeds two ounces, Cloves three ounces, Hart's-horn, Ivory in gross powder, of each four ounces, Saffron three drams, small spirits of Wine four gallons and a half, after twenty-four hours infusion, distil them in an alembick. Let the four first pounds be reserved for spirit, the rest for water.
Culpeper: 'Tis a mess altogether, it may be they intended it for a universal medicine.'

A weekend with D.H.

2008's weekends are shaping into a pattern already. The weather on Saturdays is nice, and I feel very lazy and decide not to do any gardening, but to leave it to Sunday on the assumption that the weather will still be nice.
Then I change my mind and go out, and I've begun double digging the parts of the garden I cleared last year and am attempting to clear the brambles and rubble from the parts I didn't. The weather on Sunday is then terrible which makes me feel very smug that I did force myself to go outside.
This Saturday I had an added push to get out of the house. I realised that January was slipping away and I hadn't begun my first book for the Year of Reading Dangerously, so I took the plunge and risked life and limb to pull down my edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover from the furthest corner of the highest shelf of the tallest bookcase in the house. Leaning over several precariously balanced piles of books, I inched it out from its dusty hiding place with my fingernails, took a deep breath and a fortifying swig of tea, and began. One chapter in, and I was heading out to do battle with the brambles as a pleasant alternative.
Here is a summary of my thoughts on the book after that first chapter:

Negative thoughts:
-The writing is turgid and dull.
-The characters are unpleasant.
-The discussions of sex are pushed into the story in a way that feels like a slightly creepy uncle has cornered you at a family party and is talking suggestively about something that you suspect he does not really understand or have any experience of.

Positive thoughts:
-I have Lady C in a volume which also includes Sons and Lovers and Lady C is half the length.
-Um… that was it.

If this had been reading just for me I would have put it back on the top shelf and forgotten all about it, but this is for two challenges, so on Sunday I went back to it determined to give it a good go, promising myself that I could skim-read all the nasty bits.
After a poor start, it has got better. Don't get me wrong, it is never going to feature in a list of my favourite books, but I did find myself beginning to care a little bit about the characters and the story became more interesting as there was more story and less sex. The sex scenes are dreadful, that hasn't changed, and I must say Connie seems to drop her knickers with very little prompting, but I do want to continue reading. I got to the almost half way mark, weaving the reading in amongst a Girls of the Playboy Mansion marathon day on TV, which provided light relief.
When I saw DH Lawrence on the list for the Outmoded Authors challenge I was surprised; he is an author whom I think is still very much a cultural reference point but maybe this is only true in the UK, and to people of my generation and older. Or perhaps most people are like me - know who he is and what he wrote, but haven't read much of his writing.
And it is interesting to finally read the book that caused so much fuss last century with the obscenity trial; I can't help feeling it would be a better book without these bits but perhaps that's just my prudish side. Here, for your delectation, are some of my favourite, cringe-making moments from the book so far - I want to get this out of my system now so that when I write about it properly for the challenges I can be a bit more objective!

'When the girls came home for the summer holidays of 1913, when Hilda was twenty and Connie eighteen, their father could see plainly that they had had the love experience.' [Note: this coy expression is referring to sex, not romantic love]

'And he roused a certain craving passion in her, with his little boy's nakedness and softness; she had to go on after he had finished, in the wild tumult and heaving of her loins, while he heroically kept himself up, and present in her, with all his will and self-offering, till she brought about her own crisis, with weird little cries.'

'Connie had received the shock of vision in her womb, and she knew it; it lay inside her.'

'Her breasts were rather small, and dropping pear-shaped. But they were unripe, a little bitter, without meaning hanging there.'

'And he had to come in to her at once, to enter the peace on earth of her soft, quiescent body. It was the moment of pure peace for him, the entry into the body of the woman.'

Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini

Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini (Barnes & Noble ISBN: 978-0-7607-55969) was my first book of 2008, and what a book! If you have ever had an idle fantasy about being swept away by a romantic pirate then this is the swashbuckler for you! And there are plenty of sea battles and fights for the boys too. It is pure fantasy to lose yourself in, and it's fabulous.
Mr Blood is a doctor who unwillingly becomes involved in the Monmouth rebellion against James II and is tried and sentenced to death but, luckily for him, the tide turns against so many senseless deaths shortly before his execution and instead he is deported to the West Indies to be put into slavery for the rest of his life.
Blood is a doctor and leads a relatively easy life in captivity compared to his fellow slaves, and while there meets the niece of his owner, Arabella Bishop.

'"I think I know you, sir." said she...
The stranger came to a standstill upon being addressed.
"A lady should know her own property." said he.
"My property?"
"Your uncle's, leastways. Let me present myself. I am called Peter Blood, and I am worth precisely ten pounds. I know it because that is the sum your uncle paid for me. It is not every man that has the same opportunities of ascertaining his real value."'

There is of course a film of this book, starring Errol Flynn; it's a long time since I saw it but this passage seemed so familiar that I think it must be in the film.
Blood eventually, after much suspense, manages to escape and heads up a band of pirates, becoming Captain of a ship which he called the Arabella and the terror of the West Indies. He is not a pirate like the others though; sign up for Blood's ship, which many wanted to because he was the most successful pirate around, and you sign up to strict articles that forbid any of the nasty business with prisoners, especially women, that other pirates indulged in. Blood may be a pirate but he is also a gentleman.
Although there are parts of the story which are reminiscent of factual accounts of pirates, and there were the occasional band of pirates that signed up to articles that that included not harming women, generally if you were female and were taken into a pirate ship a quick death would be the best you could hope for. If you want a truer picture of pirates then read Captain Johnson's book which I've mentioned before. This book is a fantasy, and Sabatini is great at writing romance that even warms my heart (as someone who hides behind a cushion during soppy bits in films).
This is not just a romance though, the soppy parts are few and far between; it is a swashbuckler first and foremost, and there are many scenes of daring plots and fights where Blood engineers victory against overwhelming odds. The politics of the time also play a large part in the story; the pirates are pawns in the machinations of the great countries of the seventeenth century, Britain, Spain and France, and all the nations will not scruple to work with the pirates when it suits them, and hunt them down as vermin when it doesn't. Blood is caught up in this, sometimes profiting, sometimes suffering as a result.
I've read one other Sabatini which at first I found a little difficult to get into as the writing was a little too self-conscious and pedantic, but this book is well-written and sets off to a flying start, grabbing me from the word go. It is fast-paced and just a whole lot of fun.

Boston Adventures part two: Cambridge

On the second day of our December holiday in Boston we went to Cambridge. We set off early and went to a little diner for a really good breakfast, J's hardly stopped talking about what a great meal it was since we came back. I had a slight problem as I forgot the American for fried eggs - it's 'over easy' - but the food was wonderful.
Then we went to Harvard, which was a university much like any other. Lots of buildings of different ages and styles in different states of repair. While looking around we found the new home for the Boston Globe Bookstore, which we had looked for on the first day, in a glass building, very different from the building in the guidebook. It was a travel bookstore; we had a look around but didn't make any purchases.
The one thing I really wanted to do in Cambridge was to visit the house where Henry Longfellow had lived, so I dragged J and my brother all the way out to it. It was bitterly cold and quite a long way down a residential street. We eventually got there and- it was closed for the season. This was a disappointment. The house was lovely though, here is a picture.

Another couple of tourists (clutching the same guidebook we had) also turned up and wandered around the grounds while we were there, so I didn't feel quite so stupid.
Then we walked back and visited my second choice, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnicity; I wanted to see the exhibits of Native American culture and how it developed from contact with Europeans. This was very interesting; my favourite exhibits were the large totem poles, a coat which had been made as a copy of a European army officer's coat and the little dioramas of Native American tribe settlements.
We wandered through to the Natural History Museum where, while J was fascinated by the crystal collection, I noticed that it was snowing. Really, really snowing.
We emerged from the Natural History Museum and walked back to Harvard Square through the blizzard, ducking into a diner for a burger for lunch. Happily, this diner was next door to the Harvard Bookstore where we went next. New books were on the ground floor, remainders and second hand in the basement. It was a wonderful bookstore, with so many good books that it was a bit overwhelming, and I found I couldn't pick anything. Luckily I came to my senses before we left and remembered that I had wanted to find some more of Wendell Berry's books before I left the US. They had three, one of which was Jayber Crow which I already have . This was one of the most beautiful books I have read in a long time so I snapped up the other two, Andy Catlett: Early Travels and That Distant Land.
Then it was my brother's turn to choose where we went and we headed to MIT (in case you're wondering when J gets to choose, he likes to pick where we eat after mulling over restaurant guides, which is how we found the diner in the morning). We set out, trudging through the snow, realised we had gone the wrong way and after what seemed an age, gave up as it was getting close to time for the MIT Museum to close and I was fearful of being stuck in the snow. So MIT was left for another day, and we headed back to the hotel where J and I sat watching the Boston news stories about how terrible the weather was. We seem to spend a lot of holidays watching local news stories like that!

Hitting the Sales (book-addict style)

A number of other bloggers, far more virtuous and strong-willed than I am, have been posting their determination to not buy any books during January. I didn't post this as I knew I would not make it alive and sane through the month if I tried it, but privately I did decide not to buy any books for as long as humanly possible this year.
Today I snapped. For the past week I have been walking past Blackwells who have a big sign in their window advertising a sale, and my demons have been tempting me and whispering in my ear that all the good books will go to other people, people who won't appreciate them like I will, if I don't get in there quickly. So this lunchtime I went in for a look - I realise eight days abstinence is quite pathetic but I am weak.
I like the Blackwells sale; as an academic bookshop the cut price books they put out tend to be a bit more interesting than other chains' sales. And there are also second hand books from those that students sell back to them. I picked up two book in the sale and one second hand.


First, a couple of half price hardbacks. The first was irresistable, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: His Life in Letters, edited by John Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower and Charles Foley. It is quite a heavy book, not one to take on the train, but looks set to be fascinating. I love reading letters; I suppose I am just nosy, I love to look into other people's lives. Only diaries beat them generally, although diaries can sometimes be a bit depressing, depending on the diarist. Kenneth Williams' diary, for instance, is not one I'd recommend as a cheer-you-up read if you are feeling a bit down.
Then I found Orhan Pamuk's Other Colours: Essays and a Story. I have never read any of this Nobel Prize winner's work, but this collection of essays on a variety of subjects from Mario Vargas Llosa or Camus to barbers or why he didn't become an architect looks very interesting. I read a lot of essays, but very few from the twentieth or twenty-first century so it will do me good to come a bit up to date. The book also includes his foreword to Tristram Shandy, my favourite novel as I mentioned recently, so I will be interested to read that.
Finally a second hand Oxford World Classics paperback of an eighteenth century sentimental novel, Henry Mackenzie's The Man of Feeling. I have mixed feelings about sentimental novels, I tend to veer more towards Henry Fielding than Samuel Richardson in my taste in eighteenth century literature, but as long as I know in advance that it is a sentimental novel (so I'm not waiting in vain for the satire or cynicism), I find them quite enjoyable.

The Dead Travel Fast by Eric Nuzum

In this book (published by Thomas Dunne Books, ISBN: 978-0-312-37111-1), writer Eric Nuzum, intrigued by the prevalence of the vampire in our popular culture, sets out on a quest to discover why the vampire has such a hold on our collective consciousness. To achieve this, as well as researching the history of the vampire and the vampire in literature and film, he drinks his own blood, tries to watch every vampire film ever made (sounds fun at first but not something to emulate!), attempts to meet people who think they are vampires, takes a vampire tour of Romania, goes to a topless vampire review in Las Vegas and makes a pilgramage to Whitby! The results are very funny, in places a little creepy and always interesting.
This is not just a jokey look at vampires, it is a thoughtful look at the role of the vampire in our culture and there is a lot of research interwoven into these entertaining episodes, such as information about Vlad the Impaler, or (the part I found particularly interesting) the history of how Bram Stoker developed Dracula, or a consideration of why the figure of Dracula has become such an icon.
I learned several things from this book, for instance: Bram Stoker spent a couple of years writing Dracula, whom he originally had intended to call Wampyr; his wife was extremely protective of the rights (which is why Nosferatu is not called Dracula); and Stoker had a close relationship with Henry Irving, managing his theatre for him.
I also learned that I do not particularly want to search the internet for vampire sites; apart from the viruses that Nuzum's computer picked up while doing this, I don't think I want to meet the sort of people who believe they are vampires. Not that they seemed particularly scary, but some were a little too intense.
The more modest vampire fascination, which I share, is a general one however. One of the most eye-opening parts for Nuzum appeared to be when he began watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer as so many of his friends and colleagues, whom he would never have suspected, came out as complete Buffy-addicts.
This book was very interesting and also immensely readable, mainly due to the way Nuzum weaves the historical fact amongst his own personal experiences and descriptions of the people he came across during his quest. Although he met some unusual people Nuzum does not use them as the butts of jokes but attempts to understand the motivation behind their obsession. Often it appears that the image of the vampire as a lone figure, ostracised by society, allows people to identify with them with the power of the vampire as an additional attraction.
This was a good book to end the year with, I can highly recommend it. To finish, here is one of my favourite bits, when Nuzum and his wife are visiting Whitby and wearily trying to find the Stoker Seat, a bench dedicated to him that gives a panoramic view of the places in Whitby mentioned in the book.

'I noticed three older people chatting on the street corner, two of whom were leading dogs. For some reason (probably the odd number and the presence of dogs), I was convinced they were local. I walked up and asked about the Stoker Seat.
They looked at one another, then back at me.
"You mean the bench?" one asked.
"I guess," I replied, "I really have no idea what it is."
"There's a bench around here with a plaque on it. It's green I think."
I looked out at the line of forty or fifty green benches that run along the cliff every twenty yards or so for as far as we could see.
"Any idea which one?" I asked.
"No," he replied. "But if you plan to find it before sundown, you'd better get started now, shouldn't you?"
"Right. What happens at sundown?"
"Vampires, lad," he said, curling his fingers and baring his teeth. "The vampires come out to get ya."
He laughed; we didn't.'

The Bell in the Fog and other stories by Gertrude Atherton

Gertrude Atherton was born in San Francisco in 1857 and live to the grand age of ninety-one. She started writing at an early age, against her husband's wishes, and later became a protegee of Ambrose Bierce. However, I did not find that many of these stories show Bierce's influence, either in the writing style which is more straightforward and less verbose than Bierce, or the content, apart from a slight element of grotesqueness in The Striding Place.
Another more obvious influence on her was Henry James, to whom Atherton dedicates The Bell in the Fog, and it is easy to draw parallels between his ghost stories and hers, mainly in the way they are not really ghost stories.
This collection of stories (published by Wordsworth Editions, ISBN: 1840225408) is well written and engaging but, rather than being supernatural tales to send shivers down your spine, they focus on psychological aspects of people's lives. The characters are not haunted by spirits but rather by mistakes of the past or by lost opportunities.
One parallel that can be drawn between Bierce and Atherton is that there is a definite theme through many of her stories, as there was through his. For Bierce it was the futility of the Civil War and the horror that man can do to man; for Atherton it is the way in which lives can be wasted as people wait for love, money or opportunities until they realise too late how futile and pointless the waiting has been.
The strongest example of this was a very moving story, A Monarch of a Small Survey, where the companion to the sister of a rich man, disappointed of independence on his death, realises that she should have taken a chance earlier on in life and done anything rather than pass her days in this monotonous existence waiting for her life to begin. The sister of the rich man, who inherited everything from him, realises this too, and while spending the money on luxury and increasingly ridiculous attempts to look young, would give anything to be in her forties as her companion is, rather than in her seventies.
The most painful part of the story is the flicker of hope that the companion receives when a handsome young man pays her attention; although she knows that he is just being pleasant to her and has no romantic intentions, as he awakens this feeling in her she realises what she has missed in her life.

"When that letter came twenty-five years ago offering me a home, I wish I had flouted it, although I did not have five dollars in the world. I wish I had become a harlot - a harlot! do you hear? Nothing - nothing in life can be as bad as life empty, wasted, emotionless, stagnant! I have existed forty-three years in this great, beautiful, multiform world, and I might as well have died at birth for all that it has meant to me. Nature gave me abundantly of her instincts. I could have been a devoted wife, a happy mother, a gay and careless harlot! I would have chosen the first, but failing that - rather the last a thousand times than this! For then I should have had some years of pleasure, excitement, knowledge -"

My favourite story in the collection, although it took a little getting into, was The Dead and the Countess, and it is the nearest to being supernatural. A priest is concerned about his graveyard and the poor dead in it as a railroad has been built nearby and the noise awakens them; he hears them wailing and complaining every night. At the same time a countess who lives in the area, who has had a married life of neglect, is dying and she asks to be buried near the railroad to hear the trains that are travelling to Paris. The story is only near being supernatural because it implies that there is more than a chance that the poor and overworked priest is imagining things. Atherton's favourite theme is present here too, as the countess' life has been wasted and her husband, too late, is regretting the way in which he treated his young wife. The ending has a marvellous twist which made the whole story for me; perhaps, above all the others, this story does have a touch of Ambrose Bierce about it, but Gertrude Atherton is far kinder to her fellow humans.
With all the stories being of this psychological type, it seems strange that they are in a collection in the Mystery and Supernatural list of Wordsworth Editions, as they do not really fit the usual form of ghost stories, but it is good that they are being republished. She is a very good writer, and deserves more recognition than she has had. Although I drew similarities between her short stories and Henry James', I enjoyed these more; the characters are engaging and human despite the sadness that seems to weigh over all of them. She wrote a large number of books and after reading these short stories I would like to read her novels.

Challenges and resolutions

At the third of January, I'm not doing too badly with the keeping my New Year resolutions - I've lasted longer than I expected! Last night, despite being baulked of my planned vegetable casserole by a plague of locusts evidently having hit the supermarket just before me, I adapted my plans to what I could get and cooked a pasta sauce from Nigella Bites, still including fresh vegetables and much healthier than the frozen pizza I almost gave in to in despair.
It is the threat of snow, I think, that makes people panic-buy and sure enough, when I left the house this morning, it was snowing lightly, in big soft flakes. By the time I got to work three quarters of an hour later there was a covering of about five millimetres, so it was hardly a blizzard. After Boston, where the same amount of time left a covering of about four inches, I laugh at this pathetic snow attempt.
I have a couple more of 2007's books to write about following the time spent reading over Christmas, and then it will be into 2008's books. One New Year resolution that was complete madness was to get the TBR pile down to under 300. It was madness because I wrote it under the mistaken impression that I had a TBR pile of about 350, but I have just been on Librarything and realise it is actually 460. So here is a revised resolution- get the TBR list down to 400. Frankly, if I end the year with it still at 460 I will have done well!
The first book of the year that I will finish soon is Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini, which I am enjoying enormously. I really want to see the Errol Flynn film again now, and hope it's on soon. That is for the Seafaring Challenge, which runs till the end of the month, so there's still time for me to make admiral. I think I may not manage the Outmoded Authors challenge completely. I have a few more books to go but the sticking point is going to be the Radclyffe Hall, I just have no desire to read it. I enjoyed The Well of Loneliness when I read it at seventeen, but because that was so long ago Hall feels like a teenage read to me. There are still two months, so I may yet pick it up and hopefully be pleasantly surprised.
The 2008 challenges have started, which for me is the Russian Reading Challenge and the Year of Reading Dangerously. I am being very good and keeping away from others, despite the fact that there are so many interesting ones out there. I was very tempted by Kate's Short Story Reading challenge but I read a lot of short stories anyway, so decided to just enjoy the reviews from the participants and no doubt pick up lots of recommendations which will make keeping that new year TBR resolution very difficult.

Master Humphrey's Clock by Charles Dickens

This is a lesser known work of Dickens and to be honest I could see why. I have it in an old volume with American Notes and John Forster's Life of Dickens.
Originally published in serial form, the characters of Master Humphrey and his friends who make up the small club named Master Humphrey's Clock and tell each other tales, were created as a framing device for short stories. However, one of the short stories developed a life of its own to become The Old Curiosity Shop and after a while Dickens dropped the conceit of it being from this club and only re-introduced Master Humphrey as The Old Curiosity Shop finished and to introduce Barnaby Rudge before ending the club for good.
The character of Master Humphrey, an old crippled man who lives a quiet life, and his friends, especially a deaf gentleman who has never shared his name with Humphrey but is his closest friend, are quite sweet but do not have the same attraction or interest that the characters at the beginning of The Pickwick Papers do and their personal stories are not developed particularly - apart from, to an extent, Humphrey himself. Dickens seems to have acknowledged this, as about half way through he brings Mr Pickwick into the story, who comes to see if he can join the club. Unfortunately I had forgotten how much Mr Pickwick himself always annoys me, and there is a bit too much of what a wonderful person he is, too much grinning and running back and forth shaking people's hands. It all felt a bit forced. Luckily at the same time Dickens also brought back Sam Weller, with his father Tony in tow, and they made up for the irritation.
It is the parts with the Wellers, mainly the father Tony, that are the best bits of this story. Sam Weller is now married with children, the eldest of whom is little Tony, four years old and the apple of his grandfather's eye. Tony Weller Snr and the little one visit Master Humphrey's housekeeper for tea and the proud grandfather delights in telling the lady about the tricks the boy gets up to.

"'It's wery wrong in little boys to make game o' their grandfathers, an't it, mum?' said Mr. Weller, shaking his head waggishly, until Tony looked at him, when he counterfeited the deepest dejection and sorrow.
'O, very sad!' assented the housekeeper. 'But I hope no little boys do that?'
'There is vun young Turk, mum,' said Mr. Weller, 'as havin' seen his grandfather a little overcome vith drink on the occasion of a friend's birthday, goes a reelin' and staggerin' about the house, and makin' believe that he's the old gen'lm'n.'
'O, quite shocking!' cried the housekeeper, 'Yes, mum,' said Mr. Weller; 'and previously to so doin', this here young traitor that I'm a speakin' of, pinches his little nose to make it red, and then he gives a hiccup and says, "I'm all right," he says; "give us another song!" Ha, ha! "Give us another song," he says. Ha, ha, ha!'
In his excessive delight, Mr. Weller was quite unmindful of his moral responsibility, until little Tony kicked up his legs, and laughing immoderately, cried, 'That was me, that was;' whereupon the grandfather, by a great effort, became extremely solemn."

These sections surround a number of short stories, which are very good, as Dickens' short stories generally are.
There is a tale of a man who is locked into a guildhall and overhears the two statues of giants, Gog and Magog who come to life at night, telling each other stories.
I particularly enjoyed a tale about a man who is waiting to hang for the murder of his young nephew; it is written from the murderer's point of view with a brilliant ending as the crime is revealed.
There is also a very good story about a young man in James I's time who volunteers to hide out at a gallows to face the witches that the locals are convinced are there every night but who finds himself involved in another sort of adventure.
Overall it was interesting to read a Dickens which is entirely new to me, and it was good to see the Wellers again. It is not a classic but enjoyable nevertheless, with some excellent stories.

Happy New Year!

New Year Resolutions
To spend more time on the garden.
To get the TBR list down to a reasonable level -under 300, say (this will be broken, I can guarantee).
To eat better food: more fresh vegetables, less pre-packed rubbish.
To give Anthony Trollope another go.
To spend more Saturday afternoons watching operas, rather than endlessly re-watching Columbo (just keep the Columbo watching to a reasonable, non-obsessive level).
To write more ghost stories.

That will do, before I am tempted to put something crazy like start exercising.

Happy 2008!