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Willoyd's Reading Log 2013


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Reading notes for week ending April 6th.

It's a fortnight or so since I added anything to this blog, and it's because of a combination of being away a fair bit over Easter, and being stuck into a biggie. I'm hosting the Reading Circle for the first time in May, and the book that's been chosen is Michel Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White, a huge doorstopper of over 800 pages. Because of the way work goes, May itself is going to be rather busy, so I thought I had better get going and take advantage of the Easter holidays. I'm glad I did - it's proving to be a really good read, and the pages, as predicted by one or two of the book's supporters on the voting and nomination threads, are slipping past with great ease. Not a lot is actually happening, but the characters are so beautifully developed and Victorian London (in all its different guises) so vividly evoked, that I hate putting it down. I'm about half way through, and wish I could devote more time to its reading. I'm glad though that I started early, as work still gets in the way!

 

I'm being a lot better on book acquisitions - needing to slow up as the list is piling up dramatically. Just a couple of sales etc taken advantage of with books I've wanted that have been on my wishlist:

 

The Spy Game - Georgina Harding (Kindle Daily Deal)

The Great Railway Revolution - Christian Wolmar (Kindle Monthly Sale)

The Great Sea - David Abulafia (Hardback - discount shop)

The History of Germany since 1789 - Golo Mann (Paperback - discount shop)

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Good to hear you're enjoying The Crimson Petal and the White, willoyd. I loved reading it, and ended up rationing myself to a chapter a day to savour it, as I felt I might rush it otherwise, but definitely a true pageturner. :)

 

Yes, it's also a bit of a relief: I belong to two F2F book groups, and the books since Christmas have been with one exception pretty dire, to the extent that I'm actually reviewing my membership of one of the groups, as we've yet to read anything I have remotely enjoyed since the group was set up last year (the books are chosen by the library service from a list of reading sets they have for their book groups).  They're generally meant to be 'good' books, but obviously just not my scene - and life is just too short!

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Good to see you're enjoying The Crimson Petal and the White willoyd :) I intend to start it as soon as I've finished my current read (so at some point this weekend hopefully!) Like you I'm expecting a busy month so keen to start early!

 

I also purchased The Great Railway Revolution in the kindle sale so will be looking out for your review.

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Reading notes for week ending April 13th.
A week dominated by Michael Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White, which I finished on Saturday evening.  I'm not going to write a review for it yet, as I want to save my comments for May's reading circle, but suffice to say that it stayed a great read to the end, an ending which took me completely by surprise.  Perhaps not quite an all-time great, as i think it was marginally overlong and could have done with a little trimming, but almost there, and maybe on reflection, who knows?  In the meantime, 5 out 6 stars.

 

And that's it - no books acquired, not a lot else read outside newspapers, and not even certain what I'm going to read next! 

 

(Later edit: started A Far Cry from Kensington - Muriel Spark).

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A Far Cry from Kensington by Muriel Spark ***
Set in the 1950s, this is Agnes Hawkins's own retrospecctive account of her late twenties, living in a rooming house in Kensington and working in the publishing industry for a succession of the then plethora of small publishers - now mostly subsumed to the big names.

This is very much a book of its time and place, mid-twentieth century London, and my favourite passages are very much where she describes people or places, such as her introductory thumbnail sketches of the residents of 14 Church End Villas, or of the employees of Ullswater and York. Simple, almost simplistic, they are masterpieces of summary, evoking detailed images in surprisingly few words.

Threaded through with a number of interconnected subplots and themes, including the mystery behind the persecution of one of the rooming house's other residents, the idiosyncratic nature of the respective publishers Agnes (mainly known as Mrs Hawkins throughout the novel) works for, and the repercussions of her outspoken honesty as the effects pursue her through at least three different jobs, the writing maintains a lightness and simplicity (that word again!) that makes the book very easy to read, but also occasionally leaves it feeling almost inconsequential. This is probably a mistake: the author is almost certainly saying a whole lot more than at first appears to be the case, but, whilst I really enjoyed this book, I couldn't get away from this feeling of triviality. This seems to be the case for a number of mid-twentieth century authors of a certain type - I'm thinking for instance of Barbara Pym. I'm sure they are much better writers than this, but, whilst I enjoy their books and will continue to read them with great pleasure, I do feel that I'm not always getting the most out of them.

So - pleasurable, almost addictive, but also a mite frustrating! Certainly worth some exploration though, the three stars reflecting more my immediate level of enjoyment rather than my estimation of its quality as a piece of writing, for which I would probably be more generous.

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Capital by Maureen Duffy ****
A book that I found difficult to pin down.  At the heart of the novel is Meepers, homeless, living in a sequence of outbuildings and tower blocks found through his knowledge of the city, a self-made expert on London history, particularly the Roman period and the Dark Ages, obsessed with whether London ceased to exist or not during this period, and what that means for the future.  Interspersed with vignettes from London's past and the letters to his distant partner of Emery, the more establishment orientated academic who rejected Meeper's submissions for publication, but who then finds himself building up a relationship, even friendship, with Meepers, the whole provides a view of London that precedes the likes of Ian Sinclair, Peter Ackroyd and others - psychogeography in all but name - depicting the city at a time of severe change (the book was written in 1975, with Thatcherism and its impact on the capital still over the horizon (Duffy was being thoroughly prescient). 
 
  If that all sounds a bit too abstract or nouveau to make enjoyable reading, I found Capital a thoroughly engrossing, entertaining, and intriguing read.  Ultimately, it's a character centred novel, the character being London itself. It may have been written some forty or so years ago, but much, indeed most, is still pertinent today - but then some cities are timeless, or at least feel that way to those who inhabit them.
 
This is the third book in a row that I've read around the London theme - all three having been nominated for the May Reading Circle, themed on London, and I do feel on a bit of roll. I've another book to read for one of my face to face reading groups, but, having focused on London in fiction, I've also got a few more straightforward history books lined up for the near future now, so hope to read a couple of those over the next few weeks.

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Sarah Thornhill by Kate Grenville ***
The sequel to The Secret River, this is the story of the eponymous heroine, daughter to TSR's central character William, a transported convict, whose relationship with mixed race Jack Langland is affected by the prejudices and history of her family.  On the whole, it's received rave reviews on Amazon and elsewhere, and there is no doubting the author's skill in telling a story.  I loved her descriptions of the settings, whilst Sarah is a thoroughly believable, complex character who matures as she grows throughout the book.  Other characters, however, never really came alive for me in the same way, not even Jack. 
However, for some reason, I never really settled: the book got off to a good start, but about a third of the way through I'd had enough, and found myself skimming sections. It was only in the last third that recovered some of the absorption, only to find the ending probably the weakest aspect of the book - given all that had gone before, it all seemed a bit out of character, and thus somewhat unlikely. 
Why the initial disturbance though?  I think it's because the storyline was so utterly predictable: almost a cliche of nineteenth century narratives: feisty girl meets love of her life who's 'not good enough for her', thwarted they part, another more acceptable man comes into her life who she's not attracted to, all leavened with a sprinkling of stepmother influencing natural father and so on and so on.  I was also thoroughly irritated by the author's constant use of the word 'of' instead of 'have', as in 'would of'.  Yes, I know it was deliberate, but with multiple examples on some pages, it came close to driving me totally bonkers!  I'm not convinced that it's even a realistic speech pattern for the time.  Less irritating, but still making life occasionally difficult, was the author's reluctance to use speech marks - compete abandonment would be more accurate.  Nothing particularly serious, but all combined, it made reading awkward, and broke up my involvement.
So, rather like the curate's egg then - some wonderful, some totally offputting.  I came very close more than once to putting it down for good, but found myself wanting to read through to the end, to find out what happened to Sarah if nothing else, even if in the end it didn't really satisfy.  So, at the least, it deserves three stars and I certainly wouldn't be too fed up if I found myself with only another Kate Grenville book to hand.
 
Recent acquisitions, all Kindle Daily Deals or Sales:

Secrecy by Rupert Thomson

She Rises by Kate Worsley

Dark Star Safari by Paul Theroux

John Saturnall's Feast by Laurence Norfolk

The Complete Mapp and Lucia by EF Benson

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Bankside by David Brandon and Alan Brooke ***
This is a history of this part of Southwark, in south London, and a fascinating area it is too (made all the more so for me by the fact that I was born close by, and that I bought it having just visited the area for the umpteenth time). The book itself is an interesting read, filling in a lot of the holes in my knowledge of the area, anything but dry - indeed it has quite a personal feel to it, the authors not being without a sense of humour!
Chapters are themed rather than chronological, focusing on different aspects of the district: religious buildings in one, crime and punishment in another literary connections and theatres in yet another, inns providing the focus for another, and so on. This has the advantage of providing a ready focus for each chapter, and the opportunity to draw thematic connections, but it did mean that the strong chronology sometimes became obscured, and there were several instances of duplication (yes, we know The Globe was destroyed by fire, you've told us twice already....). It also meant that some chapters became a bit listy: we've dealt with one church, so let's just move on to the other, and then a third, and so on.
Those caveats aside, this is a well-written, entertaining history of one of the most interesting areas of London, from which I learned much, and which will provide a useful and readily accessible source of information when I come to check something up. If you are anything but an expert on this area and want to find out more about it, this is well worth a read.

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The Last Viking by Stephen Bown ****
Roald Amundsen all too often gets a rotten press in Britain, being cast almost in the role of the nefarious villain who cheated in beating Scott to the South Pole. One of Stephen Bown's self-professed aims behind the book was to help put the record straight. That is not to say that this is some sort of hagiography: Bown makes no bones about Amundsen's weaknesses, but he also brings out his many strengths, not least his all consuming commitment to polar exploration, his passion for being perfectly prepared, and his superb (but not faultless) leadership skills that generated almost universal loyalty and approbation from the men who worked with him. Nor is this a biography where every twist and turn, every nuance of the written record, is examined in microscopic detail. Amundsen's life is full of adventure, almost larger than life, and the author makes sure that none of this sense is lost, telling a story that fairly rattles along, with just enough time to pause and reflect where necessary. The result is an enthralling story told by a writer with a huge but well balanced sympathy for his subject.

I have to admit this broader brush approach did have a slight downside: I never felt that we really got inside Amundsen's personality, rather that we were on the outside looking in. There were occasions where I would have liked to hear a bit more of Amundsen's own voice rather than an author's rather cool analysis. And there were occasions when we rattled through events rather too quickly for my taste. However, these are relatively minor points. Roald Amundsen has for too long been seen in this country as a mere adjunct to the Scott story. Stephen Bown has not only given him the prominence he deserves in his own right, but amply demonstrated that, at least from Amundsen's perspective, the South Pole expedition was but one event in a life full of others of equal stature. Not only a good read, but probably an essential one for anybody interested in polar exploration.

Recent acquisitions:

A History of the World in Twelve Maps - Jerry Brotton

The Norman Conquest - Marc Morris

How England Made the English - Harry Mount

Umbrella - Will Self

This is Life - Dan Rhodes

A Foreign Country - Charles Cummings (Kindle)

The Apple: Crimson Petal Stories - Michel Faber


 

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The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf *****
This is Virginia Woolf's first novel, published, eventually, in 1915, after many redraftings. It centres on the journey made by a young woman, Rachel Vinrace, out to South America on her father's yacht, and her subsequent sojourn in her aunt's villa there, where she mixes with the local English community, meeting her future fiance, Terence Hewit. It is almost a classic Bildungsroman, but with twists!

As with almost all Woolf's novels that I've read to date, I love her style. There is something very cool, calm, limpidly lucid about her writing which makes me want to read and absorb every word she writes - there's no skimming if you want to gain anything of the force and full meaning of her writing! All too often, readers focus on the plot and bewail the lack or paucity of it. Well, there's certainly a plot here, but, as ever, that's not the point, as it's about the character, the impact of those around her on her, and the influence of social mores and limitations. (The problem is that, as I write this, I realise how completely inadequately I'm summing up the threads and issues upon which the book is built. But then it would take several pages to deal with them properly, something that neither introduction in the Oxford World Classic edition I read came anywhere close to coping with, especially the one by Frances Spalding).

That's almost the weakness of this book though: there's almost too much going on, and at times, particularly in some of the dialogue where I really started getting lost. It's definitely a book where I would have benefited from an annotated edition! However, gentle persistence saw me through each small labyrinth - this is not the first time I've not fully got to grips with her books in midstream on first reading - steadily moving towards what turned out to be a powerful denouement which, whilst flagged up (and "spoilered" by commentators who assume you don't read their introductions and critiques until you've read the book) still took my breath away.

I've often been left in two minds after reading one of VW's books. On the one hand, I feel I've struggled to understand what the books been about, indeed what has been going on at times: in short, puzzlement! On the other hand, I feel as I've gone through a very intense experience, and emerged the other side all the better for it.  She certainly makes her readers think  Second and even third readings have often helped sort out the former, and I suspect that this will be the case on this occasion too.  I've already had a dive into the commentaries I've got on Virginia Woolf, which have gone some way to sorting out some of the threads, so may be a reread isn't too far in the offing. On the other hand, I need a bit of a rest!  In the meantime, whilst this doesn't quite rank alongside what for me are her real 'greats', it certainly ranks as an excellent, challenging (it's this really gains the fifth star), read, all the more impressive when one remembers this was a first novel.

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Reading notes for week ending 1st June
Unusually, having finished The Voyage Out I didn't have a book lined up to follow on, so spent a day or so browsing.  I eventually settled on The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet more by happenstance than anything else, but, around a quarter of the way in, it's proving an enthralling read if a little predictable.  That's my daytime, away from home, reading anyway, as I'm also about a quarter of the way through Dominic Sandbrook's Seasons in the Sun, his history of Britain from 1974-79, which I started reading having been to see the play This House transmitted from the National Theatre (one of the best plays I've seen in ages).  Unfortunately, it's also far too hefty (I have it in hardback) to carry round.  If any book belies the priority of fiction, this is it: it's an absolutely riveting read, and one that I wish I had room to carry with me as, when I'm stuck in, I really don't like putting it down.  I have to though, not least to give myself time to absorb what it's all about. 

 

Only (!) a couple of acquisitions this week:

 

The Watchers by Stephen Alford (all about espionage and counter-espionage in Elizabethan times)

Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver

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Re de Zoet...I read the first part....can't remember exactly how far I actually got, but I totally loved the first bit with the woman...but then it turned to the Dutchman, deZoet, and I just couldn't be interested.  The first bit was so very moving for me, the next part seemed anti-climatic. 

I should go back, I know.

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I have to say, the spoilering in introductions is one of my biggest pet peeves! It's titled introduction, therefore surely supposed to be read before the main event?!

Boy, good question.  But half the time the introductions, I find, are rather obscure without having read the book.  Take Lolita, for example.  What new reader is going to know her married name?  I sure didn't.

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I always dither about whether to read them because some, such as a recent one I read for The Color Purple can really put the book in context. Some of them, as you say, must be designed for someone who has already read it!

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I have to say, the spoilering in introductions is one of my biggest pet peeves! It's titled introduction, therefore surely supposed to be read before the main event?!

x

This always confuses me too. But I've learned so now I read it after the book, only shortly skimming the introduction (if I remember.. sometimes I don't).

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I have to say, the spoilering in introductions is one of my biggest pet peeves! It's titled introduction, therefore surely supposed to be read before the main event?!

 

I do so agree!  I have learned to leave the introductions until after I've read the book.  The trouble then is when, as with The Voyage Out, the introductions are inadequate.  I suspect some fall between the two stools of wanting to be introductions, and therefore not giving away too much of the plot, and critiques which would need to address the same.  There were two introductions with The Voyage Our.  It might have perhaps been better if one had been written as an Afterword instead. BTW  I did notice that the cover said the book came with an introduction by Angelica Garnett, who was the author of neither of the introductions actually included!

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The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell ******
Set at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in and around Nagasaki, this is ostensibly the story of the sojourn at Dejima, the Dutch trading enclave there, of Jacob de Zoet, a young clerk with the Dutch East India Company, who has left the Netherlands to earn his fortune so that he can marry the woman he loves.  It is, however, much more complex than that, and though Jacob does feature throughout the majority of the book, there are some significant sections where the narrative is seen much more from others' perspectives, including Orito Aibegwa, a highly skilled Japanese midwife with whom Jacob falls in love, Ogawa Uzaemon, a Japanese interpreter working with the Dutch, and John Penhaligon, captain of the British frigate HMS Phaeton.
 
Initially, it seemed to be a fairly straightforward story centring around Jacob's role as the 'honest' clerk brought in to help clear up the corruption that was rife in Dejima and his burgeoning love for Orito, but it became so much more, not least because what seemed to be a little predictable soon became anything but.  This turned out to be one of the most fascinatingly complex, multi-layered books I've read for some time, with a rich cast of characters and a plot which the author was prepared to take his time developing to the full.   And the plot is superb, with some brilliant twists that I never saw coming, twists that you are able to savour as Mitchell favours them growing on you rather than knocking you flat in a few lines.  The surprises are no less for that. I also enjoyed the fact that the author constructed much of the the overarching narrative by developing what were effectively a number of smaller stories: thus the Phaeton incident*, whilst being an almost self-contained story, turned out to make a signifiant contribution to the development of the Jacob-Orito narrative, adding to the sense of layering and enhancing the richness of the book.

As is my wont, since finishing the book, I've had a bit of a mooch through the online review pages, and it's interesting to note that, whilst the majority of commentators have given this a high rating, there's a fair number who don't: comments about too many characters, too much cross-referencing needed, too many sub-plots, too slow a pace etc etc are scattered throughout.  Interestingly, comparisons with the likes of Wolf Hall and A Greater Place of Safety are made more than once.  Which to me, says that this is all about what you like in a book, and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is a prime example of the sort of novel that I can't get enough of: Overall this is an absorbing, all embracing, and highly rewarding read, a rock solid five stars.  As usual, the sixth will have to wait for the moment.

*Since finishing the book, I've read how quite a bit of the book draws on real-life history. Thus, for instance, there really was a Phaeton incident, and aspects of Jacob de Zoet draw on a real-life employee of the Dutch East India Company, one Hendrick Doeff, who wrote a memoir of his time in Dejima. Whilst it's interesting to make comparisons and see where history and fiction coincide (there are plenty of these tie-ins in addition to the two mentioned, but discussing them could spoil), there is no doubt that this is fiction!


 

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Re de Zoet...I read the first part....can't remember exactly how far I actually got, but I totally loved the first bit with the woman...but then it turned to the Dutchman, deZoet, and I just couldn't be interested.  The first bit was so very moving for me, the next part seemed anti-climatic. 

I should go back, I know.

 

Now I've read it.....That first part is like a prologue, however, the book doesn't stick with Jacob; later on, it reverts to Orito ('the woman') mixed in with Ogawa, and then it takes yet other viewpoints later.  Orito is central to the whole story though - indeed it could almost be entitled round her.

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Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder ***
Not my usual reading choice, but it is the Reading Circle's choice this month, so decided to give it a go. It's essentially the story of a year in the life of a young girl living a backwoods life in Wisconsin in the second half of the nineteenth century, and is the first of a series of extremely popular books, especially in Wilder's native US, where it has classic status. And I can see why. For its target market, children (mainly girls) of around 6-10 years old (?), it looks an excellent read, and one that I'd certainly recommend to those in my year 5 (9-10 years old) class, although I think, again, most of the boys would find it of rather limited interest. Offsetting this is the insight it gives into a completely different era and place: it's a very evocative picture of a lifestyle that certainly none of the children in my class will have experienced.

Even for an adult, the content is interesting. It really becomes obvious how self-reliant these pioneers had to be. This obviously applies to their diet: much was made of all the different food that was grown, made or hunted, and the ways it was prepared or gathered, but other vignettes were perhaps more revealing, for instance the description of how Laura's father even made his own bullets.

So, much on the plus side, but I have to say that I was glad it was such a short book (140 pages of fairly substantial print, including line drawn pictures), which took no more than an hour and a half to read, because I found the writing quite dull. It isn't a dull book, it's just that it is aimed at young children, and the language and sentence structure set up very much for the younger reader. It was fine for a quick read, but after a while felt rather repetitious and monotonous linguistically.  I wouldn't have wanted to spend much more of my personal (as opposed to professional) time on it. This is reflected in my star rating: I suspect that if I was a younger reader coming to it for the first time, I would be rather more generous.  However if you are better at reaching beyond those barriers, then Little House in the Big Woods could prove a thoroughly rewarding read!

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Now I've read it.....That first part is like a prologue, however, the book doesn't stick with Jacob; later on, it reverts to Orito ('the woman') mixed in with Ogawa, and then it takes yet other viewpoints later.  Orito is central to the whole story though - indeed it could almost be entitled round her.

 

Thanks for that willoyd, that means I'll certainly go back to it in the future.  I probably would not have before. :readingtwo:

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