Tag: reading

Eclectic Reader Challenge – Humour – A Walk in the Woods – Bill Bryson

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This was the category it took me the longest to decide on for the eclectic reader challenge. It almost seemed too obvious to pick Pratchett, Adams, Bryson, Collins, Maconie, all writers that had made me laugh out loud. At the same time, it seemed a bit risky to pick an author that I wasn’t sure of – maybe their humour wouldn’t appeal – so I decided to go for the tried and tested. Really, all of this was simply a justification for reading another wonderful Bill Bryson book.

I picked A Walk in the Woods because although I have never hiked the Appalachian Trail, I do like to hike and have done a long distance walk before so I thought I would have some empathy with what he went through.photo-3

As with all of the Bryson books that I have read, this was like being reunited with a particularly talkative old friend. The tone of the book is warm and friendly as if you were one of the fellow hikers that Bryson meets and chats to after a long days hike. Bryson is always engaging even when passing on historical detail which could be boring in a lesser writer’s hands.

Bryson, and his friend Stephen Katz, face many challenges on this walk, not least of which is their own lack of fitness at the beginning. They hit snowstorms, are assailed by insects, have maps that are dangerous in their uselessness and meet a fellow hiker so annoying that I would certainly have understood if they had murdered her in the middle of the night. In the end, they abandon her and go to spend the night in a motel.

Even when Bryson feels he is facing certain death – be it by bear, snow, sun or dehydration – he never loses his sense of humour and is quite happy to describe his own idiocy in as much detail as he describes Katz’s. He knows he is a little bit hopeless and that helps the reader to warm to him.

In the end, they do not hike the whole trail – the hundred mile wilderness at the end proves too much for them. And I must confess I was disappointed. Not because I felt that they should tried harder but because it meant the end of my journey with them, a little bit sooner than expected. A superb read for anyone who has ever donned a pair of walking boots.

Eclectic Reading Challenge – The Virgin Suicides – Book that was made into a film.

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Read as part of the Eclectic Reading Challenge.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book. I had an idea of what it was about and I was certainly curious. I haven’t seen the film although I would now like to see how it was done. I expected to find a narrative that was punctuated by the girls’photo-2 suicides, at regular intervals, keeping the reader involved. However, this book is much cleverer than that.

The narrative voice is one of the most interesting I have come across. It is ostensibly first person although ‘I’ is never used. It is written from the perspective of a ‘we’, the group of adolescent boys who are so fascinated by the Lisbon girls. This gives the voice a strange anonymity. Although lots of boys are named, give opinions and interact with the Lisbon girls, the narrator is not named. The voice is collective. This gives the story an universal feel. As if the boys represent all boys who are understandably fascinated by the teenage girls in their social circle. While the suicides are extreme, the lack of understanding between the boys and the Lisbon girls comes to represent the difficulties of communication between the sexes at this awkward time of life.

The first suicide occurs early in the novel and to my mind is the most devastating. The suspense that follows is even greater than if there had been a suicide every few chapters. I will not give away the ending but I could not have predicted how it would go. All the narrative is directed towards understanding the suicides of the Lisbon girls. However, the reader does not yet have the details of the rest of the suicides and so they are trying to understand something ephemeral, not quite real.

To my mind, the novel is about the painful transition from adolescence into adulthood. In this way, the deaths of the girls represent the death of childhood. Many of the boys who are visited twenty years on are past their prime, having had their best moments early in life. The girls have avoided the disappointment of life by taking control early on and killing themselves. They do not have to see the inevitable decay that begins to destroy the archive of their stuff that the boys keep. They escape the ageing process and instead remain forever beautiful and mysterious.

The reader is placed in the voyeuristic position of the boys who watch and note and obsess. The Lisbon girls are the unreadable difficult novel that they cannot understand. The girls are unknowable and the ordinariness of their deaths is baffling. Even with all the clues at their fingertips, understanding is not possible. This is perhaps the real tragedy. Not simply the girls suicides but the fact that whatever message they intended to send was lost in translation.

Eclectic Reader Challenge – LGBT – The City and The Pillar by Gore Vidal

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photo-1This book has been on my to read list for a long time, I’ve been meaning to read it for far too long. I’m not sure why it kept getting passed over, I always knew that I would enjoy it. So, I decided to read it as part of the Eclectic Reading Challenge to ensure that this was the year I actually read it.

Straightaway I was drawn in. The opening description of Jim, clearly devastated, in a bar getting drunker, detached from all around him was masterful and intriguing. I wanted to know what had brought him to such a low point. Although it was immediately clear that it related to his school friend, Bob, I had no idea exactly how devastating the ending was going to be.

I can see how this novel would have been so shocking at the time. While it is not explicit, it is unflinching in its description of the life of a gay man in the 1940s. It tells of Hollywood affairs, of the secrecy and sham marriages, of the underground bars, a complete other world. From a modern perspective, it’s effect was twofold. In some ways, it seems like this story should be centuries old, such a lot of things have changed. At the same time, some things haven’t. The question of whether or not a celebrity should come out or not would not be such a loaded one if we truly had left all those old opinions behind.

In the preface to this novel, Gore says that he felt that he was at a crossroads just before he decided to published this book. He’d already published two novels and had a certain amount of acclaim. He knew that once he published The City and the Pillar, this would change. In one direction, a glorious future, Gore describes it as the ‘holy Delphi’. Instead he chose to publish and ‘end up accursed in Thebes’. One can only imagine the level of bravery and honesty that this must have taken.

This is one of the best books I have read in a long time. I was genuinely upset at the end, not only because the ending was so awful but because it was finished and I was not still reading it. An absolute classic.

Eclectic Reader Challenge – Historical Mystery – The Moonstone

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Read as a part of the Eclectic Reader Challenge

As I have mentioned in this blog before, I enjoy a mystery and while it pleases me when I work out the answer before the end and I can give myself an intellectual pat on the back, it pleases  me more to be ultimately puzzled. I am happy to admit that The Moonstone kept me puzzled for the most part. By the time that the thief is revealed, I had worked it out but Collins had given me all of the clues by this point so it really wasn’t a great feat. Up until that point, I had been fumbling in the dark in the same way that the characters were.

I particularly liked the structure of this book and the way each character adds their own details to the story as well as their own personal view of events. Each character was memorable from Betteredge, with his Robinson Crusoe obsession, to Ezra Jennings with his hidden past; all were interesting, all were distinctive. As the story unfolds, the reader occupies a similar position to Sergeant Cuff, fooled by events as they stand, unable to see the whole picture until much later on. This is a masterful novel that keeps the reader’s interest at all times.

The Moonstone and the trouble it causes in respectable England seem to me to represent the punishment for colonial crimes that the theft of The Moonstone represents. That the precious stone is restored to its proper place is a satisfying ending even though the lengths the Indians go to get the diamond may be unethical. Their sacrifice for the diamond is greater than anything that the other characters go through in the course of the novel.

This theme of past crimes catching up is present throughout the novel – in the form of Ezra Jennings and his mysterious past, Rosanna Spearman and may be the ultimate reason for Franklin Blake to ask for all to give their version of events – so that his past cannot catch up with him and to ensure his good name in the future.

I expected this novel to be good as it had been recommended to me many times but I did not expect it to be so clever, so enjoyable and so satisfying a read. A must read for all fans of detective fiction.

DAY 30. – Book you couldn’t put down.

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First of all, I would just like to say that I’m not sure that not being able to put a book down is necessarily a mark of quality. I read The Da Vinci Code really quickly because I wanted to find out what happened but afterwards it felt a little unsatisfying – like snacking rather than having a proper meal. Sometimes books that are a little more difficult to deal with or slower to start are often ultimately more satisfying.

I find when I read detective fiction, they are always quite difficult to put down as there is always a mystery to be solved. Most recently, I read Come Unto These Yellow Sands by Josh Lanyon and read it really quickly. There was real depth to this book and I will certainly be reading more by that author. Currently I am reading The Moonstone and that is quite hard to put down and I am certainly curious about what will happen.

DAY 29. – A book you hated.

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I’m not really into hating books. Some books I don’t like obviously. But hate seems dreadfully harsh. Reserved, in fact only for books that offend in some way. Books that are blatantly racist, sexist, homophobic would be deserving of my hatred. Thankfully, I have not read many books that are.

There is only one book that I can think of that i have read recently that I have found offensive in this way. In my mind, Fifty Shades of Grey is anti-feminist. I know a lot of people claim that the ending of the first book is a feminist ending because she leaves him but the next two books obviously put a damper on this.

There are many annoying things about this book, not least that it really should be called Christian Grey and his ever-ready erection. I’m sure this is one of the things that women like about this book. Christian is always ready, no matter how recently he has already had an orgasm. That and the fact  that Ana has amazing wonderful orgasms right from the first. Every time. Then there is all the talk of Christians ‘considerable length.’ Actually that’s not offensive, it’s laughable. I’d have been happier if she had said Christian has an enormous cock. I find euphemisms much more cringe worthy for some reason. All the talk of inner goddesses had me cringing in much the same way. So far, so annoying but not quite enough to warrant hatred.

So here are two things that I really hated about this book. (I could choose more but these are the two that stand out.) Ana gives Christian a blow job in the bath. In fact, she deep throats him then he praises her lack of gag reflex. Really! Because they’re the words every woman is just waiting to hear. If a man had written this scene I am sure that women would have been appalled. Well, the fact that a woman wrote it doesn’t make it any less dubious as far as I am concerned.

The other thing that Christian says that should have women screaming in outrage is “You’ve had six orgasms so far and all of them belong to me.” So Ana is not even allowed to own the pleasure of her own body. Was this book really written in these last few years? To me, it seems hard to believe because the sexual politics in this book are so ridiculously old fashioned. It would be amusing if so many women didn’t love this book.

I’m not even going to comment on the whole s/m thing. Enough words have been shed over this book already. I am told that I should read the other books because they explain Christian’s background but to be honest I do not need to know because there is no excuse for the way he makes Ana act and the things that he does to her. That is as true in fiction as it is in real life.

 

Day 27 the book that has been on your to read list the longest.

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As I mentioned earlier in this challenge, I have been trying to knock off some of the longer residents on my bookshelves. Earlier this year, I read The Story of the Eye by Gearge Bataille. I bought this when I was at university. Only twenty years ago. Pretty appalling really, especially as it is classic erotica. Forget 50 Shades of Grey, this book was genuinely shocking.

Books that are still on my shelf from this time are:

  1. Death comes for theArchbishop – Willa Catha
  2. Dead Souls – Nikolai Gogol
  3. The Well of Loneliness – Radclyffe Hall.

It makes me feel a little guilty. As if I was somehow hurting their feelings. I will have to read at least one of them this year.

Eclectic Reading Challenge – New Adult – The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

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I’d not heard of the New Adult genre before I signed up to do the Eclectic Reader Challenge – although I suspect that it means books for teenagers that adults would like to read – but I looked it up on Goodreads and The Hunger Games was one of the first books I noticed and I’d been meaning to read it for a while.

I really enjoyed this book. It had everything really – action, strong characters, a serious point to make and it was exciting enough to keep you turning the pages. In fact, I could not put it down. IMG_0030

The character of Katniss and her relationship with fellow tribute, Peeta was compelling and I think teenagers particularly would be drawn into their potential romance. I do think this is clearly aimed at a teenage audience but that didn’t stop it from being an excellent read.

The idea of the hunger games is completely apt and believable. I could imagine Channel Four commissioning it. And people would watch it and vote for different ways for the contestants to die without a seconds thought. Well, hopefully not but it certainly wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility. And to me, that is the definition of what good science fiction should do – take some aspect of the current reality and magnify it, show what would happen if we took it to its logical extreme.

If I had to make a complaint about this book, I would say that I thought some of the plotting was a little heavy handed – for example the changes to the games rules annoyed me a little. But this in no way spoiled my enjoyment of this book. And while I haven’t rushed to the shop to buy the next one, I know I will read it. Perhaps when I’ve got through a few more of my to read list.

DAY 26. – Book that makes you laugh out loud.

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This was a difficult one. I don’t read a lot in the way of funny books. An obvious choice would have been Terry Pratchett or perhaps Douglas Adams as both their series of books have made me laugh out loud. However, choosing a single book by either of these authors was impossible. In the end, I decided on Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson which is on of the best travel guides to Britain you could hope to read.

I have read a few of Bryson’s travel books and they are all immensely photo (6)amusing but what is particularly good about this one is that I knew the truth of Bryson’s observations. Whenever I climb a hill in the Lake District, I think of Bryson puffing and panting his way up Haystacks and try and convince myself that it will be worth it when I get to the top. As Bryson knows, it always is but he describes the way you wonder what on earth you are doing when you are about halfway up perfectly.

Bryson has an easy going style which makes it feel like you’re having a chat with a good friend. I recently read A Short History of Nearly Everything and felt, at least for a short while after reading, that I understood some of the science involved, largely due to Bryson’s humorous and open style. His description of some of the early eccentrics of science and geology were truly wondrous to behold. It seems that there is no subject that Bryson could not make entertaining and funny.

DAY 25. – The most surprising plot twist or ending.

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My first choice here is The Life of Pi. It should be obvious that the story of Pi and Richard Parker cannot possibly be true. A boy in a boat with a Bengal tiger, obviously it could not happen. But the skill of Martel’s writing means that you are completely drawn into the situation. You never doubt it for a moment and in fact, if you are like me, you want to believe in the story that Pi spins even when you know the truth.

As this is a story about faith and belief, it is fitting that belief wins over the rational, logical version of events. For me, before this book, I never really understood the impulse towards religion but this book suggested how it was a solace in difficult times and how it helped people cope with terrible events. I wouldn’t say that I am now religious but I at least understand why you might be.

My second choice is The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks. This is a disturbing book with one of the most unsympathetic narrators I think I have ever come across. This is a bildungsroman like no other, although you could say it follows in the tradition of books such as The Catcher in the Rye and A Clockwork Orange. The violence is gruesomely inventive and unlike anything else I have ever read. Even the horrors of the book could not prepare me for the ending. I won’t spoil it for those who haven’t read it but it is cruel, humurous and wonderfully inventive. It puts the rest of the story in another light.