Unsuggestions for me

Librarything has souped up its recommendations function, and included an 'unsuggester' - where you can see the books that, based on your library, are not for you - or so it thinks. This seemed quite fun so I had a look at mine. Here is my top twenty books Librarything thinks I am never going to read:

1. 1 Shopaholic Ties the Knot by Sophie Kinsella
   Queen of the chick-lit, which is just not me - yes, I will never read her books unless I am stuck on a desert island and desperate (we're watching a box set of Lost at the moment so I am considering this as a distinct possibility and will be taking many, many books next time we fly).
   
   
2. 2 Shopaholic Takes Manhattan by Sophie Kinsella
   See above
   
   
3. 3 Myra Breckinridge by Gore Vidal
   Now this is strange, as I've just bought a copy of his Selected Essays - perhaps I forgot to add it to my library.
   
   
4. 4 Insensitive Semantics: A Defense of Semantic Minimalism and Speech Act Pluralism by Herman Cappelen
   I'm not sure, does this sound interesting or deadly dull? - anyone have it?
   
   
5. 5 Bold spirit : Helga Estby's forgotten walk across Victorian America by Linda Lawrence Hunt
   This sounds interesting, I want it.
   
   
6. 6 My Sister's Keeper: A Novel by Jodi Picoult
   I've seen good reviews of her books and received one as a present but I expect LT's right here.
   
   
7. 7 Harry Potter Paperback Box Set (Books 1-6) by J.K. Rowling
   Oh Librarything, you so crazy! The only reason I wouldn't buy it is because I've already got them all.
   
   
9. 9 Dreamland by Sarah Dessen
   Where's 8?
   
   
10. 10 Daat Mikra Atlas by Yehuda Elitzur
    I suspect I wouldn't be able to read this, so probably right.
    
    
11. 11 New Moon (Twilight, Book 2) by Stephenie Meyer
    Twilight book 1 didn't make the list - wonder why?
    
    
12. 12 Sloppy Firsts: A Novel by Megan McCafferty
    Now this title is just nasty.
    
    
13. 13 Cookin' With Beans and Rice by Peggy Layton
    I'm not keen on beans, but I am a vegetarian so I could be persuaded to buy this. Wouldn't be my first choice for a cook book though, I must admit.
    
    
14. 14 Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality by Donald Miller
    I do like to read books about spirituality but tend to prefer ones written by people like St Augustine, so yes probably right.
    
    
15. 15 The Purpose-driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For? by Rick Warren
    This sounds like a self-help book which I'm allergic to.
    
    
16. 16 The Mercy of Thin Air by Ronlyn Dominigue
    No idea, but I'll take LT's word for it.
    
    
17. 17 Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Sisterhood of Traveling Pants) by Ann Brashares
    The title made me laugh but I suspect its either chick-lit or YA, neither of which I tend to go for.
    
    
18. 18 The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
    This makes me think it's a romantic novel about a girl with glasses being swept off her feet, not my sort of thing. Apologies to Stephen Chbosky if that is completely wrong but it shows the power of titles I suppose.
    
    
19. 19 Can You Keep a Secret? by Sophie Kinsella
    Here she is again, my number one author I'm never going to read!
    
    
20. 20 The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks

Never heard of it but I'm intrigued, a notebook... what is written in it?

If you are on Librarything I recommend checking this out, it's quite fun, although I was surprised to see Dan Brown didn't make an appearance until the 100 spot on my list.

A Whole Week

After a day working at home on a conference paper, which I always expect to be relaxing but actually ended up in eight solid hours staring at the screen writing and re-writing the same passages, I am now at that wonderful point - the first morning of a week off.
J has big plans for the house, and is currently four storeys high up some scaffolding looking at the roof, which is terrifying, so to calm me I am thinking about what reading I want to get done this week. A whole week with nowhere to go is a rare treat, and I want to make the most of it.
Don't hold me to this but at the moment I am planning the following:
Finishing books I am half way through: Pale Fire by Nabokov, which I am really enjoying, and All the Fun's in How you Say a Thing by Timothy Steele, the latest stage in my quest to learn everything there is to learn about poetry. This was a book recommended by Stephen Fry at at the end of his book.
I also ought to finish Pandora in the Congo, which I am not enjoying as much now. I think I need to lower my expectations and then finish it on a lazy afternoon.
Scenes from a Clerical Life by George Eliot, which caught my eye the other day when I was looking through a pile of books. I have an up / down relationship with her, Mill on the Floss was dreadful, Middlemarch was wonderful. So I'm always a bit wary of her. I want to read it this week as the edition is a lovely old Everyman, with the gold leaf on the spine, and I hate carrying those in my work bag, they never look quite as good afterwards.
I'd like to get quite a way through Hans Holzer's Ghosts which has been sat on my desk for the past few months. It is a huge volume of descriptions of hauntings and paranormal investigations carried out by Holzer; I like to read big books when I'm on holiday, the sort of book that is an effort to carry around.
And on that theme, a large Folio edition I would like to read this week is Montaillou, about the Cathars - a group deemed heretical in the fourteenth century, when the Catholic Church launched a crusade against them. I have found heresy a fascinating topic since reading The Name of the Rose.
I want to spend some serious time with some poetry books, e.e.cummings is my favourite at the moment. He wrote such beautiful, funny, and often, despite how they first appear, very formal poems. One I read last night ended with this phrase:
'Spring)and everyone's
in love and flowers pick themselves'.
Poetry like that takes my breath away.
Then I hope to get through a couple more of Plutarch's Lives, and there will of course have to be some Columbo time and maybe, if I can get away with it without my husband noticing, some Hart to Hart - I know its bad but I love it so much, I'll do my penance in the garden. I also hope to catch up on writing about the ever-increasing pile of books I've read recently before they slip from my mind for ever. Should be a good week.

Oriental Ghost Stories by Lafcadio Hearn

This is yet another excellent collection in the Wordsworth Mystery and Supernatural series. Hearn is an American writer who moved to Japan and wrote stories from his adopted homeland that depicted Japanese and Chinese legends and folk tales.
This collection is very interesting and a different sort of read to the typical Western ghost stories of the same period (end of the 19th, start of the 20th century). The introduction talks of how the stories are reminsicent of fables and this is true, but there is also a streak of horror that makes them something unusual. As well as looking back to traditional folk tales, these stories show where the modern Japanese horror that we are familiar with now, through films like The Ring, comes from.
The main difference with the stories I usually read that stood out is that Western ghost stories have backgrounds; there is a history behind the haunting that is explained, for example a tragic event has left its mark, a person wronged returns from the grave for vengeance, or some elemental force has been unwittingly unleashed by a curious innocent. The explanations may not always be rational but they are there. These Japanese and Chinese tales are different: things just happen. Spirits, demons and goblins (but don't think cute little green creatures with big eyes; these tend to be disguised as human and hungry for human flesh) are an accepted part of life. Walk down the wrong road and you will fall prey to them. Act wrongly in your life and you will become them.
The influence of Buddhist mythology is strong in these stories and they reminded me of Wu Cheng'en's Monkey (in the translation by Arthur Waley), a collection of stories about a Buddhist priest trying to find enlightenment in the company of Monkey (anyone who was a child in the 1970s and '80s will know the TV series that they inspired). In these stories Monkey comes across many an ogre or monster who will happily devour any passing human and these ghost tales are the same.
The writing style is similar to Monkey; the tales are simply told, however they often containing stark and shocking images such as a ghostly samurai ripping the ears from an inoffensive musician. There is little attention to creation of spooky atmosphere or time given to lavish gothic descriptions. The shock of the story is often the point of these tales, not the atmosphere created along the way.
And it is these flashes of surreal horror that make them stand truly apart from Western ghost stories. For instance this from Mujina:

'"O-jochu, do not cry like that!... Tell me what the trouble is; and if there be any way to help you, I shall be glad to help you." (He really meant what he said; for he was a very kind man.) But she continued to weep,- hiding her face from him with one of her long sleeves. "O-jochu," he said again, as gently as he could,- "please, please listen to me!... This is no place for a young lady at night! Do not cry, I implore you! - only tell me how I may be of some help to you!" Slowly she rose up, but turned her back to him, and continued to moan and sob behind her sleeve. He laid his hand lightly upon her shoulder, and pleaded:- "O-jochu! - O-jochu! - O-jochu!... Listen to me, just for one little moment!... O-jochu! - O-jochu!"... Then that O-jochu turned around, and dropped her sleeve, and stroked her face with her hand; - and the man saw that she had no eyes or nose or mouth,- and he screamed and ran away.'

The stories are a fascinating glimpse of another land's culture and history; Samurai warriors meet with ghosts and goblins while on missions for their lords, wandering buddhist priests are given shelter which turns out to be not so well meant. Hearn explains all the points that will puzzle a western reader in expansive footnotes; I feel I have learnt a lot about Japanese and Chinese culture from reading these stories. Hearn is a writer who is not now well known but I would like to read more by him and learn more about Japanese and Chinese culture and folklore.

A Thrilling Weekend

After finishing Edward Hirsch's How to read a poem I felt like reading something that I could just lose myself in with little demand for thought, so what better than a thriller or two for the weekend, full of hardboiled manly detectives and femme fatales?


Now, is that a cover, or is that a cover? I have no idea where I picked this little gem up from; a pulp fiction collection from, I would guess, the '50s or '60s. The very first page of the first story contained the phrase 'ace detective', so I knew this would fit the bill perfectly. When I finish it and write about the stories perhaps some more experienced thriller readers will be able to tell me if any of the 'popular authors' are known at all.
First, however, there is a more modern thriller that has claimed my attention. Regular readers may remember that I have a small obsession with that friendly neighbourhood serial killer, Dexter Morgan, and while on a payday-treat mooch around the bookshop yesterday I heard his siren call and was unable to resist the latest book any longer, Dexter in the Dark by Jeff Lindsay.


It is my perfect escapism, a hundred pages slipped down last night without any effort but it is well written and witty enough so that I don't feel that I have to take my brain out of my head and leave it on a shelf to go mouldy to be able to read it. So far it is just as good as ever, and I am enjoying the fact that the books are now completely divorced from the TV series (which is inspired-by these days rather than based-on) as it just means I get Double Dexter.
I have also bought a couple of more serious books but this weekend I am losing myself in the murky world of crime and punishment, and glamourous women pointing guns at ace detectives.

Six Random Things meme

Thanks to Eva who tagged me for this meme. Six random things about me: now to try to think of things a bit different that I haven't already talked about a lot, without getting too personal - here goes.

Random thing 1: As it has felt like summer recently: I can't stand beach holidays. I find the idea of laying in the sun for hours at a time quite deadly dull; I could take it for maybe a lazy hour, but a week? Forget it. The idea of lots of reading time is attractive but I'd rather not be on a beach to do that, but at home with easy access to the kettle for cups of tea. For holidays I prefer to be in a city, with galleries, museums and churches to visit, and some good restaurants afterwards.

Random thing 2: I have a tattoo - a solar eclipse in black, red and yellow done ten years ago and still looking quite good, mainly because, as above, I am not a sun-worshipper, so it hasn't faded much. I never did any sort of biology at school and therefore have no idea how the tattoo stays put on my arm when I thought all our cells died and were replaced on a regular basis. I'm going to go for the 'it's magic' explanation.

Random thing 3: I once mentioned how I have a favorite one of Heff's girlfirend's, being an avid (and slightly ashamed) fan of Girls of the Playboy Mansion - but I have to update it. It was Holly, but now it's Bridget. She seems the most sorted and likeable. And she has a cat.

Random thing 4: I'm a vegetarian, and have been for eighteen years now, but don't really like that many vegetables. This can be a problem. I think it may be that I wasn't exposed to many more than potatoes, carrots, cauliflower and peas (which I hate- they are the devil's pellets) as I grew up. I'm always happy to try new things and have discovered some vegetables over the years such as aubergines that I do like though. However, I do like green vegetables such as cabbage and brussels sprouts, as does my husband which is lucky and probably quite strange.

Random thing 5: I hate purple. Don't know why, I just think it is a horrible colour and cannot understand why so many people paint their walls with it. Ugh.

Random thing 6: I collect cartoons and caricatures from the 1800s, by people such as John Leach, George Cruikshank and Robert Seymour. I don't have that many, maybe twenty or so or so picked up over the years. The collection's on hold at the moment as most are in boxes while the DIY-machine takes over the house, but as soon as the rooms start coming together I will be hunting out more through the power of Ebay. I find them charming to look at but they can also be an interesting insight into life before photography. They often depict ordinary people's lives, the sort of things that weren't captured by the great artists of the day. My favourite is one by Robert Seymour of a gent ordering a plate of veal and ham in a chophouse - I love the view of a typical restaurant and waiter (making allowances for caricaturing of the people, of course) that this shows.

This has been going round the blogosphere so I'm not going to tag anyone specific - anyone who feels like sharing, though, consider yourself tagged!

In Sarah's House by Stefan Grabinski

'Suddenly the silence was rent by a terrible, piercing scream. It was so terrifying, so searing, that despite my previous resolve I ran back into the salon.
It was dark inside. A moment ago it was awash in streams of light, and now it was shrouded in a thick pall of darkness. The electric lights were off; gone was the glitter of the fantastic girandoles. The scream stopped abruptly. Into the room seeped hollow, stifling silence.'

I was pointed to CB Editions by Rob of The Fiction Desk, and you can read his thoughts on another of their publications, Days and Nights in W12 here. I recommend a look at the CB Editions website; there aren't many books on the list yet but the ones they have are interesting. The books themselves are simply presented but very attractive. I can also recommend their efficiency; I ordered In Sarah's House on a Thursday night and it fell through the letterbox Saturday morning!
The book I ordered is a collection of tales by a Polish author who died in 1936, Stefan Grabinski (translated by Wiesiek Powaga). I had never heard of him, but as the tales are of the eerie and supernatural it was a natural choice. It was very interesting to read a collection of eerie stories not written by an English speaker - I have realised that I have very few.
One of Grabinski's collections contained stories set in the world of the railway and a couple of the stories in this collection have this setting. The Dead Run is about a man's obsession with a piece of railway track that was decommissioned when a quicker route was built. The story is psychological, exploring the power that the dead run and the railway as a whole have over this man and how his pride in it is a way of fulfilling his dreams, while simultaneously refusing to face the truth that it is a sham job; it explores the effect that this duality has on him and is a very powerful story.
Another powerful psychological story, again set in the world of the railway, was Szatera's Engrams which describes a man's horror of the way life slips away minute by minute and how he discovers a way to catch hold of the past. His descent into obsession is horrifying and captured beautifully in such a short story. This story also deals explicitly with the theme of split personalities and doubles that are explored by a number of other writers (e.g. Bram Stoker in Crooken Sands, or Dostoevsky in The Double).
It is the title story, In Sarah's House, that caught my imagination the most. It begins with a man meeting an old friend who used to be the life and soul of the party but who is changed, drained of his youth and exuberance and firmly blaming it on a relationship he has formed with a strangely long-lived woman called Sarah. The story then traces the narrator's struggle with the woman. Although framed as a vampire story, this is very much about the fear of man of the effect of sexual obsession for a woman and how dangerous women can be to men's life and vitality. I found this story fascinating but quite a blunt instrument; Grabinski's own love life was not happy and this story appears to be an articulation of his anger and fear of women, and is perhaps an attempt to do on paper what he felt he could not do in life - resist them and thereby nullify their power.
This theme was also in The Black Hamlet, a piece which has the quality of a dream. Again there is a femme fatale who lures the narrator with her false charms. As a woman I found these stories beautiful but felt pity that someone could have such a dark view of my sex. I felt like a curious outsider, dispassionately looking into this man's mind and wondering why it had become so twisted. Despite the anger in them, I don't think they are threatening stories, just sad.
There are also a couple of more straightforward chillers; White Virak, the first story in the collection, is about chimney sweeps who disappear while sweeping out a disused brewery chimney. The Grey Room is a story about the ability of buildings to 'remember' strong events or presences, an idea common in occult and paranormal literature and nowadays known as the 'stone tape theory'.
A number of the stories are written in the first person in quite a simple style, but the descriptions in the stories are at times beautiful. The stories are set, as the best supernatural tales always are, in a recognisable world. It is the modern age, full of trains and medical opinions, but still the other side permeates through the veil and touches ordinary people in unexpected and devastating ways. Obsession is a major theme in this collection, be it for a woman, or a dream of what life should be. Whatever an obsession is for, though, it is always shown to be destructive.
It is an interesting and varied collection that appears to have been written by a man whose strong feelings come through in the stories very clearly. Grabinski is a writer who deserves to be remembered more than he is; I can highly recommend this collection.

Auden's Notebook

One of my trips this week involved a visit to London and, as my train arrived half an hour early, I managed to squeeze in a short visit to the British Library, one of my favourite places on this planet.
I was intending to see if I could find any curiosities in the bookshop, but for some reason it was closed and instead I visited the Ritblat collection, the Library's permanent exhibition of some of its treasures such as the Magna Carta.
I had a quick glance at some of my favourites, Edward VI's diary, Captain Cook's journal and a letter from Jane Austen to her sister Cassandra. I discovered a journal written by Samuel Johnson while on a trip to Wales with Mrs Thrale which I have never noticed before and lingered over that for a while, examining this hero of mine's handwriting, but what really caught my eye was a notebook of W H Auden's, a poet I have loved for many years.
I mentioned a while ago that I have begun writing poetry again and, as I experiment with different forms, I find myself counting syllables and working out rhyme schemes in a way that seems, to be honest, quite unpoetical. It was heartening to see that in Auden's notebook of drafts he would also do this.
The notebook was open on a page with a poem (I could not decipher the writing sufficiently to be able to tell you which) where on the left hand side Auden had noted the rhyme scheme in the usual A,B etc way, and on the right of every line he had written the number of syllables. Proof, if proof was needed, that although a large part of poetry is inspiration it comes together through careful crafting.
I have spent the morning rearranging the books on the shelf above my desk, previously home to law text books which, as I no longer need easy access to them, I have replaced with my books on and of poetry that were previously scattered around the house. I am now going to take my collection of Auden and read the poems with a greater understanding of how he worked on them.

A ramble and how other people buy books

Today was my only day in the office after the magical vanishing Bank Holiday (gone before my very eyes!) as I am here, there, and everywhere this week, attending workshops and conferences. This is tiring, but does mean that I will have a few hours on the train for some quality book time with no distractions, which will be very welcome. I hope to finish both books I'm in the middle of - Pandora in the Congo, and How to read a Poem and fall in love with poetry by Edward Hirsch.
The latter I picked up after reading about it on Fiske's blog. It is a good follow-up to the Stephen Fry book; I was anxious not to have my newly reawakened passion for poetry peter out and to fall back into the lazy habits of only occasionally picking up a poetry book on a rainy afternoon. I want poetry to be a permanent part of my life again, as it was in my late teens, early twenties.
This book is less straight-forward than the Fry one, more about the meaning of poems - or at least what they convey to Hirsch - than understanding the mechanics. I think a good comparison would be if you were learning to draw the human form and one teacher shows you muscle structures and how the body is put together, where as the second enthuses about the beauty of the human form. While you can be caught up by the second's enthusiasm for the beauty of the whole, the first will give you a better understanding of what you are drawing and greater understanding is, I think, often a key to more enjoyment. Which means: I think I am reading these two books in the right order.
Fry has given me an excellent grounding in the basics and mechanics of poetry (but, don't mistake me, is also very good at writing enthusiastically and engendering this in the reader) and I am prepared effectively for Hirsch's book which looks more at the effect of poetry and its meaning. I have just read a section about a villanelle by Elizabeth Bishop and although Hirsch briefly explains what a villanelle is, the detailed introduction to this beautiful form given by Stephen Fry made it much simpler to appreciate the poem and the sentiments of Edward Hirsch. At the moment, although only part way through the Hirsch, I can recommend both books, but I think they work best in this order.

In my one day in the office this week, here is a depressing snippett I heard in the kitchen while making a cup of tea:

'I just go into Waterstones and choose a book with a cover that takes my fancy.'

'So do I, you can judge a book by it's cover.'

Hmm. I am as guilty of anyone of taking pleasure in a beautifully made book, and of being irritated by a bad cover (such as that for my copy of Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther) but to base my buying on the cover alone is quite a terrifying thought. What would I end up with I wonder? However, I suppose it reminds me that not everyone is like us in the devoted-to-literature (in its widest sense) world of book bloggers. The casual reader will be driven by different impulses and the publishing companies have to take note of them if they are to survive.

A post about being lax

I seem to have been rather lax with the blogging recently, both posting and keeping up with everyone else's, there don't seem to be enough hours in the day. And that is only going to get worse as we have Grand Theft Auto IV in the house and as soon as J leaves the playstation alone for a moment I will be spending some serious quality time with Niko Bellic, stealing cars and taking on drug dealers and the Mafia.
I've been reading quite a bit too though, often to the background noise of gunfire and car chases as J plays the above mentioned game, but it didn't stop me losing myself completely in the last part of Anna Karenina which I finished this morning; what a masterpiece it was, there is no other word for a book so rich and compelling. I also read a collection of stories by a Polish writer, Stefan Grabinski, last week which I'll write about soon, and am part way through Pandora in the Congo and enjoying it quite a bit.
I don't know if it's my hay fever starting up but my head feels very heavy at the moment, possibly why I am finding it hard to write posts, so until I have taken enough Beconnaise to sooth it here is a link to a story in the Guardian a couple of days ago. I wasn't sure if I wanted to laugh or cry when I read about this biography of a mistress of Louis XIV being withdrawn because the biographer used a fictional diary as a major primary source.
I suppose the biographer was confused because the author of the diary is a historian, however another comment on the story at the Literary Saloon quotes this comment by the author:

Même si "le Journal secret de Louis XIV" semble l'oeuvre du Roi, il me faut avouer que je suis l'auteur du pastiche

[Even if this 'secret journal of Louis XIV' looks like the work of the king himself, I have to confess that I am the author of this pastiche.]

Even with my limited French language skills I can work out 'Je suis l'auteur du pastiche'. I think on reflection this story makes me want to cry, I do far less interesting research at work and check the publications I use. And from now on I will be double and triple checking, as I suppose the lesson from this is there but for the grace of God...
Now, to ensure there is one part of my life where I am not being so lax, I have to go out and finish my interrupted planting from last week.