Freewheeling Andy
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Posts posted by Freewheeling Andy
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Hmm. So first let's put together a little list for myself, so I can work out what the year's reading has been.
Michael Chabon - The Yiddish Policeman's Union
Philip Roth - American Pastoral
JG Ballard - Miracles of Life (autobio)
Joseph O'Connor - Redemption Falls
JK Galbraith - The Great Crash of 1929 (Non-fic)
Orhan Pamuk - Istanbul (Non-fic/autobio)
Joseph O'Neill - Netherland
Evelyn Waugh - Brideshead Revisited
Timothy Egan - The Worst Hard Time (non-fic)
Rose Tremain - The Road Home
Iain Banks - The Steep Approach to Garbadale
Junot Diaz - The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Paul Theroux - Dark Star Safari (non-fic)
Dan Brown - Angels and Demons (worst book ever)
Cormac McCarthy - No Country For Old Men
James Hamilton-Paterson - Cooking With Fernet Branca
Jan Morris - Venice (non-fic)
reading - Aravind Adiga - The White Tiger
dipping in and out of - Peter Ackroyd - London: The Biography and Herve This - Molecular Gastronomy.
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Well, given that it feels like I've not been reading much this year, that's actually pretty impressive. Non-fiction always takes me a long time to read because I need a narrative to grasp hold of. And there's some really great stuff in there, too, particularly the Ballard, the Galbraith and Brideshead. All of which are spectacularly fantastic books (although the it's hard to judge the Ballard for non-Ballard fans, so that's not actually a recommendation).
There's some pointless fluff, and one staggering work of astonishing awfulness, but actually, it's a really good reading year.
And with some real surprises. For example, the Joseph O'Neill Netherland is great, Brideshead is just infinitely better than I'd feared.
The biggest disappointments were Oscar Wao and Jan Morris's Venice, both of which I came into expecting to absolutely love, and neither of which made any real impact on me.
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I read this ages ago. If I remember right, the mood changes through the book, and the ending is slightly at odds, as Waugh's opinions shifted dramatically through the writing of it. He became far more cynical about the BYTs of the 20s, and thought of them in less and less of a positive light, so the jokey first half becomes slightly darker mooded than the second.
I don't remember it with anything like the fondness I have for either Scoop or Brideshead Revisited. But it wasn't a bad book.
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Well, thank christ for that. I finally finished Jan Morris's Venice. Looking at previous entries, that means it's taken over a month. More than a month, to read a 300 page book? Ouch.
Funnily, it's not actually bad. But the complete lack of narrative drive kills it. And the tendency to list items, and the obsession with minutuiae of Venice. Beautiful writing, but utterly turgid, and I'm ecstatic to finally be able to move on to something else.
No idea what that will be, yet.
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I, for one, HATED the following,
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
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Madness. Madness! This is crazy. The men in white coats are coming for you now.
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... I must say Pablo and Andy, you make that of being a female author an uphill struggle indeed!
I know I've admitted earlier to having a male-dominated bookshelf and steering well clear of the Kinsellas and Gregorys of the world, but not all women writers are Katie Fforde. Some may be more like Jasper Fforde, if you give them a chance to prove it to you.
I suggest shopping by genre, rather than gender; the sparkly covers of chick-lit and the flamboyand dresses of historical romance are fairly self-evident - should these be missing, and upon reading the blurb you do no stumble across words of soppiness and trauma, give the female author in your hand a chance... you might be surprised by the high ideas that can be made to harbour in our needlepoint minds.
I'd hate to think someone would put my (future) book back on the shelf upon noting my name and deciding that, since I'm a girl, it necessarily follows I write for a public of giggly girls.
Oh, no. I know that it's my problem. I suspect I have an internal prejudice that takes quite a lot of effort to overcome.
I'd rather women didn't have to take the George Elliot route.
I'm just trying to explain why my bookshelf is probably 90% male. Why my list of favourite authors is 100% male. Why my list of favourite books is 100% male authors.
I don't think it can just be coincidence, so I'm trying to offer up an explanation.
I know partly it's because more books are written by men than women; and that travel writing is dominated by men. But I don't think that can explain everything.
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I'd love to say I'm impartial. I'd love to say "No, I just read good books, whoever's written them", but I think it's pretty clear if you look at what I read, or who my favourite authors are, or which books I think are the best ever written, it's pretty clear that I prefer male authors.
There are certainly a number of reasons - I like travel writing, and until recently the "interesting" travel was all done by men, so inevitably the classics of travel writing are almost all by male authors. But also broadly generalising - historically women wrote novels of emotions, which bore me silly, and men wrote novels of ideas, which I find more interesting. Clearly men wrote more than women, too, and were published more (and men wrote lots of stuff I hate, too, of course).
I suspect, on top of this, I have some innate prejudices which make me slightly averse to picking up books by women authors - totally unjustifiably - precisely because I've got the stereotypes above stuck in my head. So I'm casting stuff on the scrapheap that I shouldn't cast on the scrapheap, because somewhere deep down I unconsciously think "Oh, it's by a woman author, it's going to be all romance and giggly girls and deep traumatised emotions and trying to find a husband and the woman's experience and blah blah blah, and I want action and excitement and guns and spaceships and exotic places and high politics and blah blah blah"
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I would like to add Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon to the unreadable pile though. I have now tried three times to read that book and, as before, I've gotten lost within the first fifty pages. What the _____ is going on in there Tom?!
I don't think I'd ever recommend Pynchon to anyone. I've read two of his - but not Gravity's Rainbow. I loved them both, but they both took me months and months to read, and they were hard, hard work, and not really books I'd think other people should read, or would necessarily enjoy.
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I don't know anyone who's read 10 pages of Silmarillion who'd recommend it. It's legendarily unreadable.
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If you want to read Pavic's Dictionary of the Khazars you are a brave, brave person.
It's actually a brilliant, fantastically clever book. But it was one of the hardest books I've ever tried to read, really difficult to get a handle on. Fascinating, in a way, although you probably need to start with a fair bit of knowledge. But really, really difficult - up there with the UK translation of Labyrinths that I tried.
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Anyway, on the general subject of books about books and, in particular, books about authors, there's something I find generally very unsatisfying about them. I feel that there's a great lack of imagination or experience in an author who can only write about books or authors (or the settings they've lived in - bookshops or libraries or universities). It feels like it fails in the job of the author to try and speak to a full audience, it feels instead like they are just talking to themselves and other authors and critics (and I suspect that's why these books are so often well reviewed and prize-winning).
That's not to say there aren't great novel about books, and about authors. It's just that there's an awful lot of chaff, and it's an idiom that - to me - means that the writer has to work extra hard to produce something that I don't think is a failure of imagination.
Anyway, you may well want to explore Paul Auster, particularly Oracle Night.
A personal favourite (but a book which seems to polarise) is Flann O'Brien's At-Swim-Two-Birds, which is one of the funniest books ever written, and is a nested story-within-a-story-within-a-story-within-a-story sort of madness. Post-modern, in a way, but mostly just very funny.
I've read lots more, but right now I seem to have forgotten them - which is probably enough for me to tell you I didn't much like them.
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Ha. I absolutely agree that the repeated "said" is dreadful. It's just that if someone looks like they are deliberately using a thesaurus to try and keep variety in the language for the sake of it, that's almost as irritating.
Anyway, on to words I love:
I adore peripatetic. I think it's because of the lovely way it sounds off the tongue and in my head. It's not used nearly enough.
I also love non-sequitor (although, given my penchant (another favourite word) for bad puns, if someone makes a non-sequitor that's meant to be cutting and fails, I always think of it as "non-secateur").
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So, the word that bugs me most (apart from modern made-up words like worldview or mindset) is ennui. And I couldn't begin to explain why. I just don't like it.
Although I don't hate it as much as misuse of the "xxx and I" construct by otherwise intelligent people. At least that's usually not in books, and just in regular conversation.
As for the "said" debate, I dislike both. Multiple uses of "said" becomes very jarring; but trying to keep it all varied makes a book feel like a comedy English lesson with a teacher proving a point about lexicon. Once a conversation has started you really don't need either, unless a third voice is introduced (and even then you can often leave it out because context and voice can tell you who is speaking), unless you very specifically need to add the tone.
"I don't like too much of either way of doing it," said Andy
"Really?" muttered Bookjumper
"Well, it's redundant."
"Is it?"
"What do you think?"
"Oh, stop being so bloody patronising!" shouted Bookjumper
"Just making a point."
"Will you two just shut up," said Kell
"I'm right, of course, but if you want me to shut up, I will."
"Smug and patronising. Well, if he shuts up, I will too."
etc...
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OK. Astonishingly, I think the film might actually be as bad as the book. All the things that need explaining aren't explained. All the things that don't need explaining are expounded on in a very clunky, heavy-handed way (much the same as Brown does, but it's even more grating in the film because it's not done in the text, and Langdon will explain things to other experts as if they are complete morons. Or will do it in that terrible rhetorical way: "The Camerlengo?", said Langdon, "He's just the pope's chamblerain. But during the period before the election of the next pope, he holds the power of the office." Despite talking to high-ranking vatican officials. Gah!
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Off to see the film tonight.
As I've observed on my blog, I thought the book was some of the worst writing I've ever read. The plotting is juvenile, the "conspiracy" stuff is trite, the characterisation is laughable, etc, etc. But it's mostly just the prose that's so astonishingly bad. It's written in a half-journalistic way, with awful clunking metaphors, random insertion of pointless facts.
But, and it's quite a big but, it's actually perfectly fun to read, even if the writing is shocking.
And that suggests to me that it'll probably make a very watchable film. It will be the silly but moving-along plot without the dreadful writing. So I'm expecting a couple of hours of harmless fun.
Of course, the CERN, antimatter, illuminati, conclave nonsense is utterly risible, but probably not much more so than many other thrillers. As I said before, what makes it really bad is just the quality of writing.
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I actually love the stuff, you know. It's not vile. But it's marmite-like in whether you love it or hate it.
Anyway, the "narrator" is a foodie who creates utterly disgusting food, and that's one reason it's a regular ingredient of his. The other, I think, is that it refers to the relationship between Martja and Gerald, who should hate each other, who start off disliking each other, the same as people normally do with Fernet, and then perhaps acquiring the taste despite it's apparent lack of redeeming qualities. So there's a metaphorical meaning to the title as well as a literal one.
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Hmmm, and I always thought (courtesy of a very old Bill Cosby skit) that Fernet Branca was something to settle the stomach.
Quite a lot of Italians view it as a "medicine".
In a way, it is. It actually does settle the stomach, oddly.
But it's really mostly a digestif.
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Fernet Branca is one of those Italian herbal liquors, made from a bizarre mix of herbs, grasses and other things. Things like Cynar, made from artichokes; or Campari - the safest of them - made from something bitter and red; or Ramazotti and Averna, which are a little on the sweet side. Fernet, though, doesn't have the appealing rednesses of these other drinks. It's black, and syrupy, and looks scary. It's full of wormwood and gentian and all those other things that reek of 19th century hedonism.
The drink, though, isn't sweet as you'd expect it to be. It's bitter and harsh and powerful. 45% alcohol and, to put it politely, an acquired taste (although it is a taste I've acquired).
Gerald Samper, a British ghost-writer to the stars, has just bought a house in Tuscany. He is effete, slightly useless, an utter incorrigible snob, and a supposed foodie. Like so many others who move abroad, he wants peace and a change of scenery. He is one of our two narrators. Our other is his next door neighbour, who has also been promised peace and tranquility. She is called Martja and is a film composer from a non-existent former Soviet country.
The book is a comedy of misunderstanding and a satire on the people who live abroad. Funny and entertaining, and easy to read, as Gerald, recovering from ghostwriting terrible autobiographies of pop stars, tries to maintain peace with Martja whilst also trying to take on some new work. All the while they ply each other with the dreaded Fernet, claiming all the time that the other one is foisting the drink upon them. With lots of alcohol things get a little confused.
It's well worth a read. Not just for the story, but also, as Gerald narrates, he also throws in recipes that he, as the self-confessed foodie genius, creates. Nothing you'd ever want to eat, or cook, or even search out the ingredients for (otter? smoked cat?). But just for the sheer hilarity of the ideas. And for the fact he uses Fernet Branca in most of the food.
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And now I'm reading Jan Morris's Venice, which isn't really Travel Writing, as such, but also isn't anything else. Again, like travel writing, it's about a foreign place, and a mix of reportage and history. But it is static. He/She (the only transgender travel writer around, no?) writes beautifully and evocatively, but is perhaps too much in love with the subject for the book to grab me as it might. I'll surely have more thoughts when I'm further in, though.
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Not long ago I finished Paul Theroux's Dark Star Safari, which I really enjoyed. It's him revisiting an Africa he knew as a young man in the early 60s, and travelling the length of the continent overland. I found it insightful and interesting, but it did bring to mind this hilarious piece I read in Granta once, about how to write about Africa.
http://www.granta.com/Magazine/92/How-to-Write-about-Africa/Page-1
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So, after the astonishingly awful Angels and Demons I read Cormac McCarthy's No Country For Old Men, which is probably very good. The prose is lovely and sparse, and the lack of moralising is great. But having already seen the Coen brothers film which now appears very literal, but with added pathos and black humour, it seemed a bit redundant.
Then I read James Hamilton-Paterson's Cooking With Fernet Branca which is a very entertaining and quite funny satirical trifle taking the wee out of expats in Italy. With some of the most hilarious recipes I've ever encountered.
And whilst on the subject of expats in Italy, I'm now reading Jan Morris's Venice, which is, as far as I can tell, a bit like her Trieste book, a meditation about the city. Part history, part reportage, part travel writing. Interesting so far, although whether I'll stay engrossed to the end is not so obvious.
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I think it's fair to say I won't be venturing back into Brown's ouevre. It stank. In spades.
I'm astonished the man is a succesful author. I can believe he might be a screenwriter, but a novelist? That suggests people have read one of his books and then gone and bought another one. Which just baffles me.
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Well, I've finished it and, astonishingly, it managed to deteriorate further. I'm not averse to light reading (which might surprise some). But this is another step beyond. It was actually excruciating. The spectacular unsubtleness, the dreadful plotting, the hideous prose, the mechanical wooden characters, and the massively telegraphed twists, combined with the assumption that the reading is an utter gurning moron.
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Oh yes, it's not the worst reading I've ever done. It's perfectly easy to turn the pages. But it is just about the worst writing I've ever encountered. And amongst the most factually bollox.
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I have always wanted to read travel writing but have never known were to start so this thread has really helped me.
It's an interesting question - where to start with travel writing?
I'd think the first question you need to ask yourself is "what areas am I interested in?" Because although travel writing can make you interested in places you previously had never even thought about, I'm not sure that's the best entry point. The best entry point would surely be somewhere you like.
Then ask yourself: Do I want to read something substantial and classic, or do I want something light and breezy; and Do I want someone travelling in the last few years, so I get a picture of what it's like now, or do I want someone travelling decades ago, to give me a picture of a time I never knew?
If you're starting with light and breezy, and are interested in Japan, Will Ferguson's Hokkaido Highway Blues would be a great start.
If you want absolutely classic travel writing, and are interested in Central Europe in the 30s, Patrick Leigh Fermor's Time Of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water would be brilliant for you.
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I've only read fractions of Bryson stuff, mostly newspaper articles. Not any of the ful books. Those pieces are nice and light, but they do play a bit with cliches which begins to grate; and generally he's travelling round places that don't excite me greatly (the US and UK).
Actually, the only US travel writing that I've read that's really stuck in my mind is a fantastic book by Jonathan Raban called Old Glory, where he travels down the Mississippi from Minneapolis all the way to New Orleans in a small boat. It was written in the early 80s, and is spectacularly evocative; a mixture of Huck Finn combined with the desolation of rust-belt depression in cities like St Louis.
The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas
in Previous Reading Circle Books
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I intend to grab a copy as soon as I finish The White Tiger, chesilbeach; although I'll probably be contributing mostly just a little behind the sensible schedule. I was just bogged down in the quicksand of a previous book.