Freewheeling Andy

Quite a few people (not always reliable judges of my taste in books, mind you) have been recommending Hiaasen. Perhaps I ought to give one of his books a go at some point.

By the way, I hope you get back to Cloud Atlas. Even if you don't like the style at the beginning, I think it's worth persevering with because the style shifts and changes.

I think I've only ever lost about 10 books, and they were loaned and not returned. I really ought to take a more sensible attitude, but I hate the idea of not being able to go back to a book if I remember an important passage.

Well, another day when I've read nothing. But then, I've been doing stuff, so I have an excuse. Had a hangover and tidied the flat in the morning. Went to watch a miserable defeat (how often does that happen?) in the afternoon, and I've just rolled home from eating couscous and then watching King Kong (which is a particularly silly film).

Just in case I haven't mentioned Ivo Andric's The Bridge Over The Drina enough on this site, I'll mention that it's a fantastic historical fiction covering the entire Balkan history from the Ottoman invasion to the first world war. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. And probably only for me. But I'll keep going on about it.

Well, I've read almost nothing today, apart from random on-line stuff that doesn't really count (although there's a nice Charlie Kennedy/George Bush alcoholics trying to run countries comparison somewhere).

I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else, mind. It's an utterly bonkers walk. But it was right for me at the time. I suppose it's a bit like doing a marathon in walking boots...

I got myself fairly fit over the summer, doing lots of walking and cycling (although my build, and my instinct to eat and drink, naturally counteract any exerciseyness). But I was just in the mood for wiping myself out, and Hoo was a fascinating place on the map and there were no roads, no towns, and no footpaths meeting the sea wall so you had to walk and walk and walk. And I got into the swing of it, and there was nobody around and it just felt great. So I kept going.

It was excellent. A friend was over from Switzerland, and we went for a couple of beers; then for a curry (I'm now completely convinced by the theory that you should drink gewurztraminer wine with a curry, after the second success in a fortnight); then to watch the skaters at Somerset House whilst drinking a glass of champagne. All on her expense account. I don't think much reading will be added to the reading blog today/tomorrow, as I've suddenly had some urgent work come in, and I've spent the last four hours at the climbing wall being inept and falling off and clumsy and am now completely shattered and still have to cycle home from the office.

The more I think about this, the more satifying the end becomes. If the book is a book about love, but about love being awkward, and fickle, and mucking people around for their entire lives, then the previously unsatisfying ending, although still not "happy" in the way an ideal world would produce, is much more in keeping with the whole timbre of the book.

Ooh! (Or hoo!) I was in High Halstow in about Novemberish, on possibly the stupidest walk of my life. I just felt like walking miles and miles and miles on the flat. I started from the nature reserve, walked down to Cliffe, then all the way around the Hoo sea wall as far as Allhallows, and then back inland. I think it was around 23 miles. I was very knackered at the end of it. A very spectacular place, although I can imagine it's not to all tastes. Huge expanses of sky, industrial stuff looming on the other side of the river, and down and upstream, and yet almost complete tranquility and marshes and birds and river/sea.

Hmm. Well I read almost nothing yesterday. I tried, but was slightly drunk on the bus home from beer, wine, curry and champagne, and wasn't really concentrating too well.

I never knew why the stars and crescent were on the Pompey thing. Cool.

I suppose, being a blog, I should update this when I can, rather than when I'm just finishing/starting a book. Give a sort of running commentary on observations. Actually, most of my reading since the last entry has been in Alan Davidson's Oxford Companion to Food (starting with the entry about Saanen cheese, the world's oldest cheese - sometimes up to 200 years old) and then some of the cheese entries in McGee's encylopedia of food. The Martha Gellhorn remains fascinating and horrible in equal measure - although the journeys are never complete horrors as she always seems to meet nice people. But her views on Africa from the mid 20th century, when travelling through countries which were still part of empire, are sometimes shockingly outdated, and sometimes remarkably prescient and cogent. The most shocking thing is the way she talks of the blacks doing this, and the blacks doing that, and the whites behaving differently. She's generally nicer about the Africans than the French, but the turn of phrase seems startling to the modern ear.

Ah. How the world has changed. "Adult books" used to be concealed inside less racy stuff. Now, it seems, kids books are concealed by adult covers.

Which is fine. I just think it's interesting to look back over your year.. plus it'll help you with the 2006 Book Club Awards! Btw, was 'Blook bog' deliberate?! Definitely dlebirate I was realise I was doing this Blog thing basically in the "current reading" section, and thought I'd isolate it. Although I'm not sure anyone will be that interested in my readings, but it'll be good for me to think about the books I'm reading a bit more.

Second book of the moment (and now the only book I'm reading) is Martha Gellhorn's "Travels with myself and another: 5 Journeys from hell" and is beautifully written, and utterly engrossing. It's very funny. You don't feel too sympathetic for her, either, because she doesn't play it that way. A very good thing, too. Travel books which have a "woe is me" element are annoying. Here she knows she's getting herself in a mess, and happily admits her flaws and faults. Her opinions are sometimes wrong, and the language definitely comes from an earlier era. Particularly with the section I'm on at the moment where she's travelling in Africa, in the 1960s (in Cameroon right now). Although even with this she admits her ignorance - a joy I've only ever found one other travel writer admitting, Eric Newby in his wonderful and deranged A Short Walk In The Hindu Kush (more Newby to come before long on this blog, I suspect). Anyway, I shall go home, and if I don't spend all evening eating I'll no doubt meander through some more of Martha's book.

Well, here goes. I'm not really sure it'll count as a blog, as such, just notes on what I'm reading, and when I'm reading it. 2006 started with me in the middle of two books. Well, I was right near the end of John Lanchester's Fragrant Harbour. It's a book I've fallen in love with. One of those big epic books, spanning decades, with different intertwined lives (except not that epic in length). I loved Lanchester's first book, The Debt To Pleasure, but was very disappointed by his second, Mr Phillips. I wouldn't even have bought this had I not found it in the second hand stacks under Waterloo Bridge. It's not, exacly, a return to form. It's a very different book to the previous two - more of a traditional novel. It's about Hong Kong "Heung Gong, Fragrant Harbour. Chinese Joke." Says one character. Not a subject that ever particularly interested me before, but he brings it to life, across the last 60 years. Anyway, I finished this whilst on a rattly and tedious train from Nottingham back south and had that "why couldn't it go on longer" feeling, and then moved on to the other book I'm in the middle of for the rest of that boring ride...

I've never even heard of it. Who's the author? What's it about?

Ah... On The Road. It was a brilliant book when I read it as a 20 year old, and an utterly dreadful piece of rubbish when I tried to re-read it as a 30 year old. I think it's, more than anything else I've read, a book for reading as a feckless youth.

Ha! Typically, of course, The Postal Service are another band I keep hearing recommended but haven't (to my knowledge) heard. I guess I'll have to try and find a couple of downloads.

What's Death Cab... like? Friends keep recommending the record to me.

I was chatting to a mate about this, and he pointed out something rather interesting. The book, though it is written in this nice romantic fiction kind of way is, at the very least, very ambiguous about the effects of love. With someone staying in a loveless marriage in the hope of getting back with the woman he loved; with that woman apparently living a spinsters life for years to arrive in an unworkable relationship, and then apparently waiting another 50 years to see that person one more time. And another who commits suicide after a single, short, failed relationship. And another man who's lived loveless and decaying for 40 years after his wife died young. It's actually a pretty damned dark book, when you look at it.

I just bought 4: Chavez Ravine by Ry Cooder Illinoise by Sufjan Stevens Dimanche a Bamako by Amadou and Mariam and LoveKraft by the Super Furry Animals. That's the trouble with Christmas shopping. Get me into the shops and I buy loads of stuff for myself. Oops. All of them are excellent. The Amadou and Mariam is chilled out African party music. Probably the best (possibly the record of 2005) is the Sufjan Stevens one, although it won't be to everyone's taste. Acoustic and mellow and quite odd.

No pizza, no burgers, no cakes, no pies, no chips? You know how many parents would kill for a child that healthy?