Freewheeling Andy

".. until its abandonment between 1850 and 1853, in the reign of the drunken and wildly extravagant Sultan Abdul Mejid, who was so enfeebled by excessive indulgence in the pleasures offered by his Haren that he was unable to enjoy even the incomparable views from his palace across the Bosphoros." A Traveller's Life by Eric Newby

Water! Not wine! I'm sure I'll be back on the wine by the weekend, though.

Yep, but now I'm thirsty dehydrated.

I'm not sure the dry vanilla whites are really what you get from Germany (well, there are some weisserburgunder type wines from further south). On the whole you're getting full, sweet or medium dry wines. Lovely, in my opinion, but not the kind of thing that would normally be to your tastes. I am, at the moment, completely wined out. After 3 days of touring Stellenbosch and Franschoek at the end of the trip to South Africa, and going to maybe 4 wineries a day and tasting maybe 4 or 5 wines at most of them, my palate is incredibly jaded and I need a few more days off.

Just added Japan and South Africa.

OK. Let's just continue this on into the new year, eh, rather than split it aritficially at Jan 1st. So, on the Christmas hols I read Dance, Dance, Dance by Murukami which was brilliant, and probably my favourite of his other than Wild-Sheep Chase. Complex and lovely and weird and cut between mundane and fantastical. Ah, yes. And then Disgrace by JM Coetzee which was equally wonderful in a very different way, all about race and fear and love in modern South Africa, and how people deal with what goes on. And then Field Study by Rachel Seiffert, a bunch of short stories by an old school-friend who was nominated for the Booker a couple of years ago. Great stories, some of them, others perhaps a little bland. Generally ones about normal people living normal lives. Others, and possibly the best ones, about the fractures in modern Germany. And I've just started Eric Newby's A Traveller's Life, which is so far rather fun but not much to do with travel in the first few pages.

I loved At Swim Two Birds when I read it. One of the funniest things I'd ever read. It was pretty weird, though, the multiple layers of stories within stories within stories.

This is Mitchell's second novel, shortlisted for the Booker prize. Some people ahve suggested it's his weakest, and his homage to Murukami. I think both criticisms are slightly unfair. On a basic level this is the story of a young boy on a quest to find his missing father. It's interweaved with a Yakuza crime tale. It's certainly the most Japanese of Mitchell's novels, almost exclusively set in weird, seedy, shiny, glossy, fractured Tokyo. But as Mitchell was a native of Tokyo when writing it, it doesn't seem like that dissonance you get from not native's placing characters in scenery that's unfamiliar to the author. The story of Miyake is interweaved, in each of the 9 (actually 8, for reasons that become clear) chapters/dreams, with different fragments - either from a world war two log book; or from Miyake's own imagination; or from dreams; or writings. The playfulness with the structure, along with the strength of the characters, makes this brilliant. All the more so because the hero-protganist is not a hero, his heroism comes from being basically mundane and normal, and he doesn't realise. This isn't the implausible genius of the James Bond style thriller - but then, I suppose, he doesn't save the world. I absolutely loved this book. I was browsing through some Amazon reviews, and it seems some people really dislike the ending. They're all wrong. How can a book that's all about dreams and the boundaries between reality and dream have anything other than an ambiguous ending (better still, it's an ending that you're not quite sure is ambiguous, although it probably is). Wonderful. If I gave stars to my book reviews, David Mitchell's books would get them all.

This is the literary political thriller. Literary, in the sense that it's pushing the boundaries of genre fiction. Lowell's mother died in a hijacking gone wrong in 1987. He always worries when it gets towards the anniversary. His life is a mess. Around 14th anniversary of the accident his father also dies semi-mysteriously. This novel plays with different characters, and different methods of story telling, pushing on this tale of international epionage, of the amorality of the secret services, of psychopaths. What seem to be a disparate and worrying collection of coincidences, enough to drive a reader insane, slowly coalesce, and you begin to realise why everything fits together. This book is harrowing, in places. There are some pretty gruesome scenes, but they aren't redundant. They are necessary. The setting of the book is the US East Coast in late summer 2001. It is clearly written to be a setting as a precursor to 9/11. Sometimes the nods to what happens afterwards are perhaps a little too knowing - always a risk with any novel set in the past. I don't think this is quite as grand and glorious as Hospital's other novel I read, Oyster, but it's still pretty excellent as it plays with classical references and metaphors to keep the story going.

Being the greatest living Albanian author isn't exactly the kind of accolade most people would want - damning with faint praise might even be understating this. But in fact Ismael Kadare is a brilliant author, winner of the International Booker, talked of as a potential novel laureate (and not just by me). This, his most recently translated novel, is a tale of intrigue set in the ruling elite of communist Albania. The designated succesor to The Guide (clearly Enver Hoxha, or a proxy for him) has been found dead. The question is, was he killed or was it suicide? This novel is written in an intriguing way - the authors voice is completely detached [i wonder how much of that is a consequence of the work being translated first from Albanian to French, then to English; and how much is deliberate]. It's an interesting conceit. We end up looking at the architect of The Successor's house, at his family, at his rivals in the Politburo, and at the coroner. All of their lives, their thoughts, are filled with political fear, concern about the nature of suspicion in a closed society. This is a fascinating book, although probably not my favourite of Kadare's. It works as a political thriller, but not in the traditional sense of a thriller. The detached voice and strange environment probably mean it won't be for everyone, but that doesn't make it any less of a good novel.

Ah. It was marvellous. What is real, what is dream, what is written, what is in Eiji Miyake's head? Is it SF? No. Is it cyberpunk? No, not really. I guess, like Murukami, it's cyberpunk set in normal urban Japan. But it's not Murukami, it's most definitely Mitchell, with it's multiple voices, it's playing with stories, it's fragmentation leading to a whole. I guess a more linear story than Ghostwritten or Cloud Atlas, but certainly not conventional like Black Swan Green. Ace, anyway. Now to Dance, Dance, Dance.

If your thing is the spectacular, adventurous, really, really pushing it, ambitious stuff, then you'd love both Ghostwritten and Number9Dream, although probably appreciate Black Swan Green less. Anyway, I'm still buzzing after finishing Number9Dream.

I'm not sure he knows how to write a bad sentence. Just finished Number9Dream and I'm mostly sad that I've now read all of his books so far. It's magnificent. I think people who said it was really just rehashed Murukami are really desperately underplaying how wonderful it is (that's nothing against Murukami, by the way). So far: 4 novels, all of them spectacularly brilliant, and properly ambitious. Best writer currently writing in English that I can think of.

I drank a lovely, but slightly past it's best, 1982 Chateau Lagrange last night.

It's a suet based pudding, made with loads of dried fruit and alcohol that last for ages, and you cook by steaming in a ceramic pudding bowl and then leave for months; and reheat before eating. It's lovely. I wouldn't put any sauce on at all. Just a bit of brandy, set fire to it, then huge great dollops of double cream, and huge great dollops of brandy butter.

OK, more seriously, if you want to cook with cured ham, look for things you'd cook with slices of pancetta, speck and parmaham in Italian cook books. That is, if what you mean by cured ham is what I mean - dark, but more translucent and bacon-like than cooked ham is. I had a wonderful piece of quail wrapped in crispy cured ham the other day - I think they just baked it. Much easier is getting chicken breast, stuffing it with a home made pesto, and wrapping in thin slices of cured ham and sticking it in the oven for half an hour. Or saltimbocca. If you can get veal escalopes, saltimbocca is great and easy (stick a couple of sage leaves inside a veal escalope, wrap in ham, hold together with a cocktail stick, fry in small amount of olive oil for 3 or 4 minutes each side, leave out warm, and make a simple picatta - shallots, chicken stock, wine, lemon juice - to pour over it in the same pan, getting the meaty flavours into the sauce).

Give it to me?

Kell, to me it really depends on which way round the fame works. Someone like Gordon Ramsay or Heston Blumenthal became famous for their cooking, and their fantastic restaurants, and only later went on to TV. You were paying the premium before they were on telly. I'm not sure how true that is of, say, Jamie Oliver or Gary Rhodes or (heaven forbid) Ainsley Harriot. I think if someone from TV opens a restaurant you'd be right to be cynical; but if someone runs a 3* restaurant and then gets recruited to TV, then it's probably fair to trust that the restaurant is pretty good whatever the chef's fame.

Now starting on Mitchell's Number9Dream

I finished Due Preparations For The Plague, which I really enjoyed. A genuinely interesting thriller, playing with the voices used. Incredibly dark, very big themes, very nicely written, like Hospital's other book I've read, Oyster. The big qualms with it for me were the predicting of the known future, having a book set pre-9/11 written post 9/11, when the book covers the subjects of terror and of Iraq.

Ah. I'm really glad you enjoyed it, Rennie. Some people I know felt it was a bit flat because it wasn't the same as Cloud Atlas and Ghostwritten, it wasn't so expansive and crazily ambitious. But they're wrong.

I really enjoyed the first 80% of it. I didn't find it at all difficult to read. The end of it was, for me, remarkably unsatisfying, but other people I know completely disagree with me and love it all. Read it, though, it's well worth your time. I've never seen the movie, though. Nor do I intend to. But Kell, don't let Penelope Cruz's presence put you off seeing Volver.

Added Albania and Australia

I absolutely loved Black Swan Green, and think Mitchell's one of the best authors writing in English at the moment.

Oh, and those quantities make way too much pasta.