Willoyd's Reading Log 2013

[willoyd]

Reading notes for week ending Feb 9th
I'm now running two books side by side.  That's unusual for me, but the books are sufficiently different, that at the moment it's not bothering me at all.  The first one started was Antarctica by Gabrielle Walker.  This is proving to be a very easy and enjoyable read, but because it's a hardback, it doesn't travel very well, so I've also decided that now's the time to get stuck into Les Miserables!  I've intended to do so for ages, but never got around to it, but the arrival of the flim, which I'd love to go and see, has prompted me to get reading, as I really don't want to see the film before reading the book.  Hopefully, I'll finish before the film leaves the cinema (hopefully!).  After some umming and aaghing, I've decided to read the Norman Denny translation, as it seems ot be the best balance between readability and closeness to the original.  I originally got hold of the Julia Rose translation, but it reads as awfully modern, and I just couldn't get comfortable with it.  I've got it both on Kindle and in hardback, so there shouldn't be any problem with portability.  Am about a hundred pages in, and it's proving a joy, if a little bit of a heavier read than, say, Dickens. With half term coming up, I hope to make some progress, but also need to find some time to read this month's book club choices: Hans Fallada's Alone in Berln, and Yellow Birds (Kevin Powers). Much as I'm wanting to read both, for the first time I'm a bit irritated that they could get in the way of something I really want to get stuck into.

Just one book bought in the last week or so for reading, a Kindle Daily Deal: Bone River by Megan Chance.

Edited June 16, 2013 by willoyd

[Kidsmum]

We went to see Les Miserables last week at the cinema, i thought it was brilliant but hubby didn't enjoy it at all. I know what you mean about having to read the book first though i saw the trailer for Cloud Atlas which looks brilliant so i've had to bump the book up to the top of my pile. Hope you get round to seeing Les Miserable before it goes to dvd it's well worth seeing it on the big screen it in my opinion.

[Alexi]

I'd really like to read Les Miserables - I downloaded a version off the kindle, I'm not sure who translated it. I hope it's not too modern, though, I'd really like a go with a version as close to the original as I can.

[willoyd]

I'd really like to read Les Miserables - I downloaded a version off the kindle, I'm not sure who translated it. I hope it's not too modern, though, I'd really like a go with a version as close to the original as I can.

 

There are a few knocking around, but still surprisingly few.  The first was by Charles Wilbour in the mid-1800s, and that's the one used by Everyman and Modern Library.  Another 19th century  translation is by Isabel Hapgood, and that's the one that is used by a number of the for-free downloads, and by Project Gutenberg.  Both these appear in abridged and unabridged versions.  The unabridged Signet Classics uses a modern, 1980s, translation by Lee Fahnestock and Norman Macafee.  Penguin and The Folio Society use a slightly older one by Norman Denny, which is essentially unabridged, except for the removal of two passages to a couple of appendices at the end.  The most recent translation belongs to Vintage, who commissioned it from Julia Rose. 

 

If you Google "Les Miserables which translation", they all have their supporters, depending on what people are looking for.  A totally faiithful translation is almost impossible - French simply doesn't translate exactly into English (nor do any two languages!) - and anyway, such a translation is likely to read as very clunky.  I've gone for the Denny as I found some of the modernisms in the Rose translation somewhat irritating, whilst from what I found when dipping in and comparing, the Wilbour and Hapgood translations for me seemed to be lacking a bit in natural flow (although my 20-year old son read the Wilbour translation and loved it).   I'm about 200 pages in, and thoroughly enjoying it.   I didn't look at the Fahnestock-Macafee version.

 

Update on book acquisitions

Foolishly had a bit of an explore of the charity bookshops and local independent in Ilkley yesterday, who had a bit of a min-sale, and came away with more than I intended, so the pile to read grows ever longer:

 

Touche by Agnes Catherine Poitier

To Sea and Back by Richard Shelton

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

The Most Beautiful Walk in the World by John Baxter

Through The Window by Julian Barnes

Girl Reading by Katie Ward

The Pelican Guide to English Literature edited by Boris Ford (7 vols)

Shakespeare, For All Time by Stanley Wells

Edited June 16, 2013 by willoyd

[bobblybear]

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

 

I've heard rave reviews about this one. I've got it on my wishlist, just waiting for the price to come down a bit.

 

 

[willoyd]

Antarctica: An Intimate Portrait of the World's Most Mysterious Continent by Gabrielle Walker ****
With five visits, or maybe more by now, Gabrielle Walker is as close to a frequent visitor to Antarctica as it's probably viable to get, although she certainly meets some people who have clocked up some serious time in the far south. The blurb claimes that this is the first book to capture the 'whole story' of Antarctica, but if one is honest, to do so would take a far bigger tome than would be realistically viable. Instead, Walker plays to her strengths, the science, and has written a fascinating overview of (presumably some of) the main strands that are being researched on the continent. Starting at Macmurdo, Antarctica's unofficial capital, she divides the continent into four main areas, the Eastern Coast, the High Plateau (Eastern Ice Cap), the Peninsula, and the Western Ice Cap, and, visiting one or more bases in each area, introduces the work being carried on as well as the main characters and character of the bases themselves. In the process, she brings her journalistic skills fully to bear, not least in explaining all that science in straightforward, but still thoroughly involving, layman's terms; at least I could understand it, and I am definitely a layman! I also found the sections dealing with overwintering in Antarctica both fascinating and scary. Woven into this are many of the key episodes in Antarctic history, including the stories of Scott and Amundsen; Shackleton; Cherry-Garrard, Wilson and Bowers; Maudsley; Byrd.

The result is a book that,whilst maybe not covering the whole story, certainly gives one a vivid picture of what Antarctica is like, and that is like nowhere else on this planet. With temperatures capable of dropping to -80 degrees centigrade, months of darkness (enough to put people regularly under severe psychological pressure), all on almost unimaginable scales (3km depth of ice, underwater lakes the size of the Lake Huron, 50km wide glaciers, etc etc), the word unique is not inappropriate! Walker also reminds us how important Antarctica is in our understanding of global climate change, and how important its influence is likely to be as change happens, not least as a source of meltwater that could see sea levels rise dramatically, a theme that is gradually built on towards the final chapters, where she discusses the rapid and dramatic declines in ice volumes in the Western Antarctic, adding signficant meat to her final summary.

This book isn't high literature. It is, however, a well written, highly engaging and easily read account of the scientific and human side to Antarctica. It's a book that I can readily see myself going back to to dip into different sections, and one that has certainly enhanced my interest in this amazing continent.

Edited June 16, 2013 by willoyd

[bobblybear]

I've added that to my wishlist, as it sounds quite interesting. Sir Ranulph Fiennes departed not that long ago (this year, I believe) for a journey across Antarctica, the first during the Southern Hemisphere winter. The journey will take about 6 months and will mostly be undertaken in darkness. 

[Devi]

I've also added Antartica to my wish list! I've always wanted to do the new years eve flight over the Antartic!

[willoyd]

Reading notes for week ending Feb 23rd

I've had to put Les Miserables aside in order to get through my book club books for this month.  Started with Hans Fallada's Alone in Berlin at the end of last week, and am about three quarters of the way through.  It's received wonderful reviews, but I have to say I don't like it, and am really only going to finish it so I can discuss it properly.  It's a grim subject, which doesn't help, but I find the tone of it almost flippant.  I don't know whether that is deliberate to underline the horror of what is going on, but this continually jars.  And yet it is also very laborious, especially the dialogue.  Maybe it's a function of the translation from German (which, whilst I enjoy speaking, always strikes me as engendering a very laborious style of speech), and certainly I do seem to have a problem with German writers. I really can't emphathise with any of the characters either - they just don't seem real to me at all, and again this may be a function of the tone.  The villains (and there are plenty of them) are vile, but in a cartoony sort of way, whilst those who aren't seem to be all hopelessly, and helplessly, naive.  This may be how German society was under the  Nazis - that feeling of helplessness - but it all feels so simplistic, little children versus the horrible baddies, with just that underlying sense of brutality that makes it anything but a children's book.  Fallada might have intended all this, and it has obviously struck a massive chord with many readers, but for me it just doesn't work, and I can't wait to put it down for good.

 

In the meantime, I've sated my restlessness with a few more acquisitions in sales, charity shops etc - the danger of being on half term!.  I can't wait to tackle a few of them.

 

Toby's Room by Pat Barker

Chasing Venus by Andrea Wulf

About Time by Adam Frank

The Blackhouse by Peter May

Lewis Man by Peter May

Living, Thinking, Looking by Siri Hustvedt

 

We're planning to go cycling in the Hebrides for a week in the summer, so we both intend to give the Peter May books a go before then, both obtained through a Kindle sale.

 

 

Edited June 16, 2013 by willoyd

[willoyd]

Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada *

Not an awful lot to add to the comments in my weekly review earlier today.  I pushed on to finish the book this afternoon as I really didn't want it hanging around any longer.  In fact, it improved substantially in the final part, where the language much more closely reflected the horrors being experienced, but overall it didn't make sufficient impression to change my view of the book in its entirety.

 

Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers *

I also tried starting this, another book group book.  Barely got past the first two or three dozen pages, but I was already thoroughly irritated by the overblown ('poetic' is the word I've heard to describe it), stylised writing, and the detailed death and shooting.  I know that's the subject material, and I wouldn't normally being read this sort of book, but it's simply confirmed my prejudices, and I'm off to find some reading of my choosing - I am no fan of war orientated fiction, and that's now been four in a row.  There are other things to consider in this world.

 

 

Edited June 16, 2013 by willoyd

[willoyd]

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn *

 

So much for a book of my choice.  This promised so much when dipping in the bookshop.  I don't know whether my mojo is starting to come under pressure, or whether I'm just not as tolerant or patient with books, or something else, but this is another book where I've got fifty to a hundred pages in, and I just can't stand it.  I can't abide the lead characters (both about as self-centred and needy as each other), it reads just liike any one of a couple of dozen other so-called thrillers, and I'm sitting there asking myself the questions "Why?  Do I care?".

 

As I didn't, I stopped.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 30, 2013 by willoyd

[bobblybear]

Oh dear! I've heard such good things about this book! My library has a copy, so I might borrow it rather than buy it, just in case it doesn't live up to the hype.

[Devi]

I hope your books begin to improve sooner rather than later!

Edited February 25, 2013 by Devi

[Kidsmum]

I've seen Gone Girl in all the bookshops & was tempted to buy it myself glad i didn't bother now. I'll be interested to see what you make of Peter May's The Blackhouse i bought it after Amazon recommended it to me but didn't really rate it.

[willoyd]

Thanks Devi!  I'm sure they will, and I've got several I'm really looking forward to.
 
Kidsmum, Bobblybear - it may be just my mood rather than the book itself.  I've also found over the past few years that I've got less and less interested in that sort of book.  I used to read loads, but I've found that my tastes seem to be gravitating more towards those that are more character driven.  Plot driven novels, e.g. thrillers etc., just don't hold me any more. I should have learned by now, but I keep picking them up thinking they're going to be great, and then realising that although they initially appeal, once I get into them I rapidly start losing interest.  i do like a fair bit of crime - but it's again those with strong characters or an equally strong sense of place - e.g. Leon, Camilleri, Simenon, Mankell.  To be honest, I hardly ever remember the plots in detail, but just love the people and places involved.
 
I think that probably explains why the three fiction six-star books I've read in the past twelve months are the ones they are: Pure, Between the Acts, and David Copperfield.  Copperfield has a strong plot line*, but in the other two it's distinctly subsidiary (hardly extant at all in Between the Acts!).  What marks them all out is a very strong (huge) sense of place (and time), and an equally strong focus on the characters (Copperfield has the most amazing set I've possibly ever met in a book).
 
BTW Kidsmum, I see you're reading Cloud Atlas.  How are you finding it, as I've just bought it with a mind to read it before seeing the film?
 
*Well, on second thoughts, I suppose it does, but even then it's still subsidiary - what marks the book out are the string of characters David gets to know as he progresses through life.  In fact, the plot is of virtually no interest by comparison at all now I think about it!

Edited December 30, 2013 by willoyd

[Athena]

I hope your books improve soon. It makes sense that taste changes throughout the years, ie. I like different things now than when I was a teenager (for example I used to read more thrillers and less contemporary fiction). I hope you find some nice books soon that you'll like a lot, reading is at its most fun when the book read is really good! Good luck .

[Kidsmum]

BTW Kidsmum, I see you're reading Cloud Atlas.  How are you finding it, as I've just bought it with a mind to read it before seeing the film?

 

I'm only about a quarter of the way into it but so far so good. It's very strange, different stories which i presume will all tie up together at the end but sometimes you feel like your dropped into the middle of a story rather than at the beginning which surprisingly works quite well. Anyway i'm enjoying it so far & looking forward to seeing how they manage to make it into a movie 

[willoyd]

Underground, Overground by Andrew Martin ****
The writer, also author of the Jim Stringer series of railway based detective mysteries, obviously has a passion for railways, and it shines through throughout this history of the London Underground.  Full of fascinating stories and information, it is quite a personal take, but, having read one or two others, it appears pretty sound historically, and is certainly one of the most readable: this is very much a conversation with the reader rather than a formal 'history'. I thoroughly enjoyed it, which was certainly a relief after a string of disappointing novels.  A good, solid, four stars.

 

I had both my bookgroups this week, where we discussed the respective novels, neither of which I had rated well.  Overall, the reaction to Hans Fallada's Alone in Berlin was significantly more positive than mine: out of the ten there, 2 mildly disliked it, 2 hated it (I was one!), whilst the majority remainder were of the opposite mind!  Nothing I heard changed my mind, which was slightly different to the second group, where we discussed Kevin Powers's Yellow Birds.  Again, the reaction was fairly mixed (and again, I was the most extreme negatively), but the discussion did get me wondering that some of my negativity might have been down to reading it directly after the Fallada book - I just wasn't set up for it.  Certainly, I'm more inclined to give it a go again some time.  But not right now! 

 

Which all leaves me a bit at a loose end as I really don't know what I want to read next.  Whatever - I'll go and have a good browse of the bookshelves later - one thing I can be sure of, which is that this is the slowest start to a year's reading I've had for a long time, since at least before I started keeping a diary back in 2006.  It's also felt very scrappy.  Is this the effect of the book groups, as I've not really got stuck into many books of my own choice this year yet?  Will have to wait and see I suppose.  Anyway - off for a browse.
 

Have made a couple more acquisitions lately:

 

Blonde - Joyce Carol Oates

Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell (Kindle)

Polly, The True Story behind Whisky Galore - Roger Hutchinson (Kindle)

Complete Works of Emile Zola (Kindle)

The Telegraph Book of the Tour de France (Kindle Sale)

Edited December 30, 2013 by willoyd

[willoyd]

The Glass Painter's Daughter by Rachel Hore ****
My first book by Rachel Hore, and, whilst not exactly great literature, it proved to be a solid, thoroughly enjoyable, if rather predictable, read. It certainly came as somewhat of a relief after a number of damp squibs - mainly books that aimed high but never really worked for me. The Glass Painter's Daughter doesn't do that, looking rather to be simply a good, well balanced, story, and to that end it proved all the more satisfying by ably fulfilling its role. The format and subject material weighted the odds significantly in its favour in terms of pleasing me: the historical mystery sans thriller component, the interwoven and interconnecting stories through time, and the presence of an interesting theme which felt well researched) at its heart (in this case, stained glass!) were all elements that had instant appeal. Yes, it was a bit 'obvious' in places, particularly in terms of the characters, and, yes, it was equally sometimes a bit predictable, but overall it gelled well, and made for a very enjoyable read, which I found myself unwilling to put down. A welcome change!

Tried reading Starter for Ten (David Nicholls) for my book group.  Really couldn't stomach more than around 50-60 pages.  I so disliked this - the 'humorous' take on a nerd's eye view on life, desperately trying to prove himself to the beautiful woman, all set in a stereotypical view of student life.  Dullsville, particularly marked by some desperately shallow characterisation.  I did have One Day available to read, but can't say I'm hurrying to it.

Have now started, on the recommendation of Ooshie, Barbara Vine's King Solomon's Carpet. It's certainly got off to a good start, and is a completely different prospect to the Nicholls book. Like The Glass Painter's Daughter it's set in London, but here the city has a far greater role in the development of the story. Am about half way through, and thoroughly enjoying it. Looks as if it could start to twist about though!

Books acquired

The Scottish Nation, A Modern History - TM Devine

A Quiet Flame - Philip Kerr (Kindle sale)

The One from the Other - Philip Kerr (Kindle sale)

Edited December 30, 2013 by willoyd

[willoyd]

King Solomon's Carpet by Barbara Vine *****
I first heard of this book barely a week ago, mentioned almost in passing by Ooshie on the May Reading Circle nominations thread. The main thrust of the book, following a disparate group of individuals who make up the household of what is now an ex-schoolhouse and whose lives as Barbara Vine writes it centre around their journeys and experiences on the London Underground, was one that instantly appealed. For once this year, the book lived up to the blurb!

The story is one of those where individual lives, imitially largely independent, gradually weave together, or at least interact, to contribute to a greater whole: each thread is seen very much from the point of view of whichever protagonist is being focused on at that point, enabling the author to really get her teeth into the characters, who really do come fully alive, if almost universally damaged in some way. Gradually the threads pull together, building up into an increasingly dark series of events, the last denouement being acted out on the very last page. Looming through it all is the underground itself - very much a character in its own right, and not an overly friendly one at that either, with its dark tentacles spreading throughout London, those tentacles providing the subtext to and many of the connections between events and lives.

This was definitely my type of book, satisfying on pretty much every level, and sufficiently 'different' to provide a refreshing change to much of the all too predictable writing I've had to wade through lately. With an early start to the Easter break due to the arrival of excessive amounts of snow, I was able to read the last couple of hundred pages at one sitting and I loved every second. Thank you Ooshie!

Edited December 30, 2013 by willoyd

[Chrissy]

Strangely enough, although many many books that are mentioned on the forum get listed on my wishlist, 'King Solomon's Carpet' appealed to me straight away and I had bought a copy before I had exited the thread that mentioned it!

 

So glad to read that you enjoyed it. It may be a little while before I get to read it, but am glad that I have it. Thanks from me too Ooshie.

[Kidsmum]

I've added King Solomon's Carpet to my wishlist 

[Janet]

I added it to my wish list after reading about it too!

[Devi]

I'm going to add it to my wishlist too.

[~Andrea~]

Me too, it does sound good. I saw a Barbara Vine TV adaptation (years ago) which I thought was really good if quite dark. She's Ruth Rendall under another name isn't she?