Recent Reading

The Slap by Christos Tolkias 2011. Recounts, person by person, the repercussions in an extended Greek-Australian family of a father slapping someone else's unbearable child. Tails off into tedious psycho-drama in the second half. Would make a good film.
Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson, 2010. I can't help feeling that Kate Atkison underuses her talent in this series of books. They all hinge of on the coalescence of unbelieveable coincidences, a device that I think undermines her fabulous sense of character and narrative. Still a great read though. Best line - "ladies who lurch".
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell, 2006. I enjoyed this account of the mechanisms and effects of instant decisions and intuitions. I'm highly sceptical though about the theory that says that certain Americans are more impulsive because their forefathers hailed from the Scottish-English Borders where cattle rustling was rife and aggression the only means of survival. We are generally quite a peace loving nation, honest. Anyway, I enjoyed it enough to download "Outliers" and I'm in the process of finishing that.
A Widow's Story: A Memoir by J. C. Oates 2011. Blogged my reaction to this a few weeks ago.
The Chronology of Water: A Memoir by Lidia Yuknavitch, 2011. A friend recommended this authobiographical narrative in terms that were more incandescent than glowing and I was blown away by the writing which was quite unlike anything I have ever read before. Despite some reservations about aspects of the story (especially the complete absence of any self-criticism ) and its delivery - I object to being collared by authors as a singular "you" who probably doesn't "get it", I recommend this book wholeheartedly.
Solar by Ian McEwan, 2011. Extremely funny - I frequently guffawed at McEwan's portrayal of this puffed-up middle-aged man. I especially liked the bit where he "only half ran back to his car" after an altercation with a burly builder because "he had his dignity".
Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik, 2001. American journalist lives in Paris, writes articles about life there than realeases them all as a book. And it's a good one, if slightly dated now.
How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at An Answer by Sarah Bakewell, 2010. I loved this venture into literary popularization that cleverly intertwines a biography of Montaigne with readings of the essays. By half way through I was itching to read the essays themselves.
The Gravedigger's Daughter: A Novel by Joyce Carole Oates, 2008. A slightly tedious historical novel. I'm not quite sure what the point was.
Teach Us to Sit Still: A Sceptic's Search for Health and Healing by Tim Parks, 2010. I blogged my rather self-indulgent reaction to this quite brilliant book a while ago.
The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ by Sue Townsend, 1998. I had never read this and thought it was about time I filled this gap in my popular culture reference system. I read The Cappuccino Years too, but that's enough.

A Year of Reading

Here is the annual list of books wot I have read. I've been good at adding books to LibraryThing as I read them, so if you've been an attentive reader you'll have noticed all of these appearing in the sidebar. As usual, the ones I loved are the top, those I didn't are at the bottom and the middling ones are in the ... middle. I'm not providing links this year since due to the recession and because I know you're just as capable of googling as I am.

The Road, Cormac McCarthy (pure desolate brilliance)
Toast: The Story of a Boy's Hunger, Nigel Slater (funny, sad and satisfying)
Out of Sheer Rage: In the Shadow of D.H.Lawrence, Geoff Dyer (alternative auto/biography)
A Lie about My Father, John Burnside (a (mostly) bad man)
Fall on Your Knees, Anne Marie MacDonald (vast story set in provinical Canda and another bad father)
Fascination, William Boyd (16 brilllant short stories. Boyd is a master of all things fiction)
Skating To Antarctica, Jenny Diski (memoir and travelogue)
The Way the Crow Flies, Ann-Marie MacDonald (childhood Canadian detective fiction)
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, Maggie O'Farrell (Scottish story of old age and deception)
Crow Lake, Mary Lawson (I seemed to read a lot of Canadian fiction this year and this was another good one)
The Other Side of the Bridge, Mary Lawson (provincial Canada ....again)
Eurydice Street: A Place in Athens, Sofka Zinovieff (one of the best "living abroad" books I've read, recommended by Mike of Fevered Mutterings)
The Accidental, Ali Smith (I loved some of the wordy riffs in this book)
Paris Trance, Geoff Dyer (I'm glad I discovered Geoff Dyer this year)
Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered, Geoff Dyer
Stuart: A Life Backwards, Alexander Masters (homeless but not completely hopeless)
The Smoking Diaries, Simon Gray (He died just after I read this)
I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away, Bill Bryson (he still makes me laugh)
The Patience of the Spider, Andrea Camilleri (I read about one of these Inspector Montalbano a year - for the Italian food rather than the intrigue)
Quartier lointain : L'intégrale, Jirô Taniguchi (this graphic novel was a present and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it)
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, Steven D. Levitt (poponomics)
Saint Maybe, Anne Tyler (one from the back catalogue, as reliable and comforting as ever)
Clear Waters Rising: A Mountain Walk Across Europe, Nicholas Crane (he walks from Cape Finisterre to Istanbul, with just his two legs!)
The View from Castle Rock, Alice Munro (Another Candaina one. Short, sometimes autobiographical, pieces about the past)
The Memory Keeper's Daughter, Kim Edwards (twisty)
Consider the Lobster, David Foster Wallace (I'd like to rad more DFW)
Rosengarten, Janice Galloway (a quirky exhibition tie-in about midwifery)
On Chesil Beach, Ian McEwan (not his best IMHO)
The Art of Travel, Alain de Botton (bits and pieces of non-fiction)
Michael Tolliver Lives, Armistead Maupin (old friends)
Memoirs of a Highland Lady, Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus (I’m still dipping into this 19th C diary)
The Uncommon Reader, Alan Bennett (mildly amusing)
The Sea, John Banville (I think I liked this, but I can't remember very much about it)
The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl, Shauna Reid (gaun yersel Shona)
Mister Pip, Lloyd Jones (good if you love Dickens. I don't think I love him enough)
Echo Park, Michael Connelly (beach reading)
Arlington Park: A Novel, Rachel Cusk (mildly depressing novel about women in London suburbia)
The Missing, Thomas Eidson (the film is good too)
The Cone-Gatherers, Robin Jenkins (I thought I was going to like Robin Jenkins, but I didn't)
The Pearl-fishers, Robin Jenkins
Something to Declare, Julian Barnes (only for Flaubertophiles)
The Pilot's Wife, Anita Shreve (I think that this might have been the second time I had read this novel, but it didn't make much of a mark the first time)
Chasing Mammon: Travels in the Pursuit of Money, Douglas Kennedy ( a little dated now)
Sorbonne Confidential, Laurel Zuckerman (cf. last post)
Blood, Sweat and Tea: Real Life Adventures in an Inner-city Ambulance, Tom Reynolds (read the blog, shouldn't have bought the book)
Petite Anglaise, Catherine Sanderson (ditto)
Bananas in Bordeaux: Self-sufficiency for Dreamers, Louise Franklin (a blog that wasn't)
Burning Bright, Tracy Chevalier (I've enjoyed some of Chevalier's other novels but I never got to the end of this one)
Longitude, Dava Sobel (I like popular science but I just couldn't get into this)
Treasure Islands: Sailing the South Seas in the Wake of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson, Pamela Stephenson Connolly (some people have too much money)

The vast majority of these books were provided by Bookmooch and most of the rest by my Mum - thank you both!

Shock of Recognition

I've been busily bookmooching over the past couple of weeks — sending paperbacks off and receiving them too. One of those I mooched is by Carol Shields and called The Box Garden. The novel came out in 1977 and in many ways contemporary references seems almost as exotic as those found in Jane Austen with mentions of permapress dresses, vistadomes, consumerism, communes, back-combing and the Women's Movement (with capital letters).
I'm only half-way through the book, but here's a snippet that provided a jolt of recognition:

G. tends to forget exact references. Information seeps beneath her pores, for she is an intelligent woman, but it is always disjointed, disassociated; she's never never been the same since she underwent shock therapy.

In a couple of days I'll be referring to that book with the green cover, you know, the one by the Canadian author called Caroline thingy that takes place in the eighties or was it the seventies? And I don't even have the excuse of shock therapy....yet.


Give away your books at BookMooch.com

April 23rd, Foreigners and Aliens

I spent far too much of yesterday obsessively searching for a half-remembered quote from a book (but which book?) on the subject of April 23rd.

My garbled memory of the passage tells me that April 23rd is not only Saint George's day but also Shakespeare's birthday and Dantes' birthday (or perhaps deathday). For this reason, in some countries (which countries?) the date is associated with literature and it is traditional to give the gift of a book on this day (but to whom?).

I didn't give any bookish presents yesterday but I did join BookMooch which I'd been meaning to do ever since Heather told me about it.

While I was fruitlessly skimming though books looking for the elusive passage (I could clearly visualise it three-quarters of the way down a right-hand page), I came across this much more interesting paragraph about the difference between expatriates and foreigners. I've never liked the term ex-pat and in fact I hadn't ever heard it bandied about much until I started reading so-called ex-pat blogs. Alasdair Reid explains what the word means to him in Whereabouts: Notes on being a Foreigner, a book I mentioned in my last post.

[Expatriates] have left their own countries on a long lead, never quite severing the link with home, never quite adapting themselves to their exile, clinging to one another for company, haunting post-offices, magazine stands, and banks, waiting expectantly for money from home, anything at all from home. Expatriates are generally getting their own countries into perspective, to the point where they feel strong enough, or desperate enough, to return to them. Foreigners, conversely, live where they are, leaving their pasts and countries behind them for the place they take root in. In one sense, they are lucky: they are free to enter a new context unencumbered, with clear eyes, and are often able to savor a place in a way that escapes the inhabitants, for whom it has become habit. But however well a foreigner adapts himself to a place and its inhabitants, however agile he becomes in the lore and the language, there is a line he can never cross, a line of belonging. he will always lack a past and a childhood, which is really what is meant by roots.

The picture above which is me à la Modigliani (and yes, I have to agree, I look more alien than foreign) was created here. You too could see what you would look like if you were black/white/asian/a man/woman etc.

Preserve us not from the list-makers

"Oh Lord, preserve us from the list-makers. And then preserve us from those who comment on the lists" says Judith Flanders. This didn't deter me from having a look at the results of a Waterstones survey in which the bookseller asked its staff to name their favourite five books written since 1982 — the date Waterstones opened its first branch. I liked a lot of the books on the list: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime, The Shipping News, The Poisonwood Bible, The God of Small Things, The Crow Road, Snow Falling on Cedars, Love in the Time of Cholera. Some I thought were tripe: Chocolat, Birdsong, Notes on a Scandal, The Da Vinci Code.

I'm not sure how I would have answered. Perhaps I would have included five of these:

The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin
Footsteps by Richard Holmes
Whereabouts by Alastair Reid
Findings by Kathleen JamieNight Falls on Ardnamurchan by Alasdair Maclean
Morvern Callar by Alan Warner
La Route Bleue by Kenneth White
No Great Mischief Alistair Macleod
The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver

It would seem that I have a penchant for travel books with one-word titles by Scots, preferably called Ala/isd/tair. What about you?

Think About It

I've almost finished The Girls, a novel about conjoined craniopagus twins. It's one of the many books that my Mum brought me when she came for a short stay last week. She had discussed this one at her reading group and although she enjoyed it, she felt that some of the detail wasn't quite right. Take this passage for example:

Our mother grunted and pushed.
From anus. To clitoris. Her tissue tore.

"I was once a midwife," she told the group, "and that just isn't possible. Think about it."

I am Mum, I am.

Give and thou shalt get rid of stuff

Last week the postman brought me a brown paper parcel full of Chinese cookery goodies — at least I think they’re goodies, I haven’t actually tried them yet. Anne had received a load of free samples and she was generous enough to give the extras away on her cookery blog.

In the same spirit, I’m decluttering my bookshelves this week and giving away the paperbacks in the list below. I’ve already blogged about the difficulty of getting rid of books that are surplus to requirements so this isn’t an act of generosity, it’s housework. If you’d like any of the books just leave a comment telling me which one(s), then drop me an e-mail at lesleygrah@gmailhaha.com (but delete the haha) with your postal address and I’ll post them off to you (or I'll give them to you in person if you live close enough). Don't be shy, ask for several if you need lots of reading material. Don’t send anything in return but if you like, you could get rid of stuff give something away on your blog too. Hey, a giveaway meme!

We are the World, cue swaying.

The Books (They’re not all great works of literature — but some of them are, I just happen to have doubles)

• Moon Dust by Andrew Smith
• Uncle Tungsten by Oliver Sacks
• Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris
• Jigs and Reels by Joanne Harris
• The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Crichton
• The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
• The Kiln by William McIlvanney
• The Adventure of English by Melvyn Bragg
• Death and Restoration by Iain Pears
• Three Junes by Julia Glass
• Brother and Sister by Joanna Trollope
• Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre
• The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon