Freewheeling Andy

I've had massive satisfaction from re-reading The Master and Margarita, and The Bridge Over The Drina. Many other books I re-read and get nothing from.

I was in Stanford on LongAcre in Covent Garden earlier. There current 3-for-2 offer could sort out a lot of my list. Although in fact I bought two Turkey guidebooks, and Number9Dream.

I think one of the nice things about Short History... is that it is light, and incredibly easy, whilst still working with some larger themes and not ducking them, and not being shallow or trite.

Not for everyone, probably true. But I think it's probably better "horror" than most horror novels that are about.

Jean-Baptise Grenouille was born in the most foul-smelling place in the foulest smelling city in the world, Paris. Yet despite (or perhaps because) of the place of his birth, he had no odour of his own, but a preternaturally refined sense of smell. In the end, he knows no pain, and has no real emotions, except for those associated with smell. He never develops morality, or drive, except for that related to his nose. This book is a fantastically evocative tale of someone with no "soul", brilliantly written, wonderfully dark. Grenouille is the master perfumier, has the greatest nose of all, and begins a quest to create the perfect odour for himself, the blank cypher. The book itself is full of feeling, despite the main character being basically soulless, being self-destructive, and the book itself being one of the blackest, most quietly brutal books I've ever read. A great book, I think.

I'll do a review later

Well, I was right. How beautifully dark and vicious. Nice writing, tight, concise, full of ideas, and completely soulless and violent. It leaves me feeling I've read a truly good book.

Just tarted it up a bit. This is going to be hard work, isn't it?

OK. Here goes. I'm taking the beginning of this year as my start point. Green have been read this year (or are being read) Red are in the "sitting by the bed" pile. I'm adding little blue stars where I know I've read books from the country, but not within the challenge time. Afghanistan *Albania - The successor, Ismael Kadare *Algeria American Samoa Andorra Angola Antigua and Barbuda *Argentina Armenia Aruba *Australia - Due Preparations For The Plague, Jeanette Turner Hospital Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bermuda Bhutan Bolivia *Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Brazil British Virgin Islands Brunei Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cambodia Cameroon *Canada - Life of Pi, Yann Martel Cape Verde Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad Chile China Chinese Taipei (Taiwan) *Colombia Comoros Congo DR Congo Republic Cook Islands Costa Rica C

I'm interested. Is non-fiction included? Are short-story collections? Or is it just novels?

I'm not plebian, but I'm no fan of caviar. Nor am I a fan of grits. I did like Monday's rosemary polenta, though.

Just started on Perfume by Patrick Suskind. So far it reads incredibly easily, but I suspect it will be thoroughly nasty.

Well, somewhere else on this site I called David Mitchell as the person writing the greatest literature in Britain at the moment. I'm sure that in a few years time my tastes will move on, but I've not read anything from Britain recently that comes close to Cloud Atlas, except, perhaps, his latest novel Black Swan Green. It's not a book about the Japanese Yakuza, it's not an exotic babushka travelling through time from the 18th to 25th centuries. It's a departure, to a suppsedly gentler age and place, and a gentler narrative form comes with it. The only structural excitment comes in the form of 13 self contained story-chapters, each from one of 13 months in the life of a 13 year old boy (well, he's 13 for most of it, although clearly with 13 months he must age at least once). Rural Worcestershire in 1982 may be the setting, and the stories may be those of an adolescent, but the themes are more universal, and this is one of those aspects that makes it a great book. The stories of being bullies, of desperation for acceptance, of outsiderhood, may seem simple, but they tell tales of the kindness of those you don't expect kindness from; they tell of guilt, of redemption. It's almost a moral novel, in the way it takes up the theme of the importance of being true to yourself, but that would make it sound trite. It's not trite. It's wonderful. It's got a light, light touch in the writing, is beautifully easy to read, has humour lacing every page, even when darker subjects are around. Mitchell has, like he apparently always does, moved one or two characters from previous books into this one. Robert Frobisher and Vivian Ayrs return in passing from Cloud Atlas, for example. That adds a little to the fun of the book, but it doesn't need much adding. There's so much going on. I would struggle to recommend it high enough. Lovely, brilliant, magnificent.

What exactly makes a "cult classic" into a cult classic? Is it that it treats obscure subjects? Is it that it offers an insight for those normally on the sidelines of society? Or is it that it's just not very good? A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole came in with spectacular recommendations from all kinds of sources (online dating women I didn't date, the blokes in Waterstones on Gower Street, old friends, newspapers), yet it didn't live up to the hype. Perhaps the joy of something like this is discovering it for yourself and discovering it's better than you were expecting. My expectations were perhaps too high. It's not a bad book. Interesting, fascinating in places. Ignatius J Reilly is the main protagonist, and in a cast full of horrors, such as the incompetent effete policeman who is forced to work in fancy dress, or Miss Trixie the decrepit, senile office assistant. Ignatius, though, is huge, fat, lazy, greedy, creates his own ailments, hates the modern world, and hides behind his mother. The book is, in most basic terms, how he is forced out into the world to work, and the destruction and havoc he wreaks as he continues his tirade against 20th century New Orleans and its vices. The characters are big, the satire is strong, the comedy is there, but there was something soulless about the book to me, perhaps all the characters being slightly hateful. The funny thing is that I think about what I've just written and it seems so negative. But I don't want to put people off reading the book, now I come to think about it. It's too interesting, and too different, to do that.

I know I've prattled on about Cloud Atlas more than enough on here for you people to imagine that I must have immediately gone and bought the rest of Mitchell's ouevre. But I haven't, I've been reading other stuff. But the other day I found a paperback copy of the new novel, Black Swan Green, in the airport. I've been reading it for the last few days and it's utterly wonderful. Completely different to Cloud Atlas, without the structural pyrotechnics. But the subject matter is different, and it doesn't need to be showy. I just thought it was wonderful, and I'm now at the point where I'm having to seriously restrain myself from pelting down to Waterstones and buying Number9Dream and Ghostwritten tonight. I love his ease with style, I love the way he creates fascinating and grim characters, I love the wry humour that comes from so many lines. I love the fact that huge sweeping themes are so subtlely covered. In Cloud Atlas about loss and death and transience; in Black Swan Green there's the obvious stuff about adolescence, but also again about transience, about prejudice, about failed relationships. Wonderful.

Just finished Black Swan Green. Magnificent. Beautiful. Wonderfull. I now concur with the general mood that David Mitchell is probably the greatest British author writing at the moment (or is the British author producing the greatest writing, perhaps). So deep, so much big theme being covered, yet with such a light touch. Gobsmacked, I'd say.

Pigs trotters are really, really nice (when cooked well).

I think English is his third language. (Isn't that a bit depressing).

I was a bit underwhelmed by Confederacy of Dunces. I'll do a review later, but suffice to say that although it's fun, I struggle to see quite how it became such a legendary cult book. I'm now reading Black Swan Green which is wonderful, although completely different to Cloud Atlas, and far, far less showy.

I loved Lolita when I read it, but when I went back years later I found it hard work. I was discussing it with Stewart a while back. It is an excellent book, beautifully written. I hope you enjoy it, Kell.

I've happily eaten snails and frogs legs; I've eaten a weird rodent (called labba) in Guyana; I've eaten snake and alligator; I've eaten a bizarre mix of roast pork, blood and intestines when in Portugal (although I struggled); I was eating cold marinated octopus in Italy last year. Although some of these are a bit extreme. I'd generally try the local speciality, whatever it was, unless it's andouillettes, which I've never got past the smell of. And probably the same would apply to storstromming if the opportunity arose.

Always try weird local stuff, even if I haven't a clue what it is.

I've not read any more yet. I've go t a stupidly big to-read shelf at the moment, and frankly the more I thought about Babylon the less I really liked it. There was too much of the drug stuff, I thought. What would you point me towards?

You've done most of it already, Kenny. The obvious one you're missing is The General Of The Dead Army, which I love. It's about an Italian general going to Albania post WWII to try and recover the bodies of fallen soldiers, and his encounters with a German officer trying to do the same, and of the obstructions put in their way by Albanians who resent their presence after what they did during the war. It's so wonderful, but it's one of the bleakest books I've ever read. I take it, from that list, that you are a fan.

I didn't spot The Old Man And The Sea in there. I've read that, too. Along with, obviously, For Whom The Bell Tolls. I can hardly remember either of them, though, having read them so long ago.