Willoyd's Reading Log 2013

[willoyd]

Feel free to get stuck in Athena. I'm only making brief posts the next few days as am only on mobile, on holiday. Visiting Watership Down, Jane Austen birth place, and Chawton house tomorrow!

[frankie]

Hey willoyd, just popping in to say you have a PM waiting for you, in case you've missed it

[poppyshake]

How did the visit go to Chawton Cottage and Steventon Willoyd? .. it's many years now since I was there. Was it crowded at Chawton? Is the Cassandra's Cup cafe still there?

[willoyd]

How did the visit go to Chawton Cottage and Steventon Willoyd? .. it's many years now since I was there. Was it crowded at Chawton? Is the Cassandra's Cup cafe still there?

 

Brilliant thanks!  We started at Steventon.  The church is the complete antithesis of a standard tourist attraction: tiny, buried away in the Hampshire countryside, looking  very much as it will have done in Jane's days, except for an added small wooden spire.  We had it completely to ourselves for the hour or so we were there.  It was slightly unnerving to find that pretty much all of the memorials in the church are to people who appear in the various biographies - brings them to life in a curious way. The church is lovely too.  We also found the site of the rectory, marked in a nearby field by the well that used to serve the house!

 

Chawton was certainly busier than Steventon, but surprisingly uncrowded given that it is the standard attraction, and it was half term.  It has a good feel - OK it's a tourist spot, but it doesn't feel exploited, and some of the exhibits are wonderful.   Yes the Cassandra Cup is there - we had an excellent lunch before visiting the cottage.

 

Had a visit to the shop at the end (it's in an outbuilding) - chuffed to pick up a good condition second hand copy of the first edition of Park Honan's biography for a tenner, signed by the author and dedicated to Helen (?) Lefroy - Tom Lefroy's first cousin (four times removed!) - a slight connection but makes the book even more interesting!

 

We also drove past Watership Down, and the previous day visited Uffington White Horse (Duncton Wood) and Wayland's Smithy (Puck of Pook's Hill) - quite a couple of literary days! Great fun!

[willoyd]

Portrait in Sepia by Isabel Allende *****
 
This was the November choice for one of my book groups, and one I looked forward to, as I had read and thoroughly enjoyed the earlier book in the sequence, Daughter of Fortune. Happily, Portrait in Sepia lived up to expectations!

Whilst Daughter of Fortune saw its main protagonists journey from Chile to California, Portrait in Sepia saw the opposite, with Aurora (grand-daughter of the Eliza and Paulina featured in the earlier novel) moving back from California to Chile. It's essentially a rollicking family saga, centred on Aurora, her relationships, especially with grandmother Paulina, and a mystery from her childhood which has caused her mysterious nightmares. Allende peoples her book with a rich and varied collection of characters and scenarios, but never loses sight of the central thrust of her novel. As with Daughter of Fortune, the women come over particularly strongly, even when they play a minor role, whilst, with the odd exception, the men are almost shadows, at best playing supporting roles - it makes a pleasant change from the norm!

Most of the book group enjoyed the read - several said it was the best in the (so far) short life of the group (we've been going about a year), a view with which I concurred. I think the only widespread criticism (which in itself is probably too strong a word) was that Allende set up so many interesting characters and situations, but never followed many of them up. There are at least a dozen books that could be based on what she included! Equally, she would introduce a topic or idea, but then not fully explore it, or even justify it from the novel's point of view. But then, as was pointed out, that's real life, and, above all else, Allende's writing brought the characters very vividly to, well, life!  Equally, another group member who hadn't been able to read the book commented that she was struck by how much we had to discuss given how slim the book actually was.  It was certainly that sort of novel, with events, characters and potential themes bursting out at you from the pages.

 

Interestingly, the one reader to dislike the novel was the greatest fan of an earlier book we read, Ian MacEwan's On Chesil Beach, and I have to say that I can't think of a pair of more contrasting writers: MacEwan focusing on and clinically dissecting the minutiae of a relationship and a single set of actions, Allende encompassing the broad sweep of life and three continents. For me, even though I do enjoy other equally clinical writers, there was no competition, with Allende winning hands down primarily due to her obvious passion for that life - the book was so much richer and more colourful, and, in this instance, all the better for it. It was like breaking out of prison into free air.
 

Edited November 12, 2013 by willoyd

[Marie H]

Great review of Portrait of Sepia willoyd  . It's in my TBR pile, as Daughters of Fortune was my first novel by Allende, and it was a cracking read. Same for Islands Under the Sea, that was a great book too .

 

[willoyd]

Sweet Poison by David Gillespie ***

Not surprisingly, given the title, this book is about sugar or, more precisely, fructose, and the damage that it is both causing and can cause given its prominence in our diet. Written in a straightforward manner, Gillespie tries to pull together as much of the science as he can, and looks at how fructose is digested, and how the body responds. Essentially, owing to the fact that we are, in evolutionary terms, more geared up to digest glucose, the answer is that the body doesn't respond, at least in recognising that one has consumed a whole pile of sugar/calories, whilst the fructose itself gets converted to fatty acid and stored by the body. Thus drinks like fruit juice are far more dangerous than milk, or even alcohol!

 

The book is obviously a polemic, but it is argued well, and is very convincing. Certainly, I have already cut my sugar intake, in particular the fructose that is increasingly prevalent in processed food (fructose in fresh fruit is not a problem, as the body recognises the fibre, and thus regulates itself much more effectively). It isn't the greatest literature I've ever read, but does have an argument well worth listening to.

Edited November 21, 2013 by willoyd

[bobblybear]

I've been reading a lot about the dangers of sugar and have been trying to cut my intake down (aside from fresh fruit), but it still tends to creep in there. It seems like they put sugar in everything these days! Have you watched

? It's quite interesting, though I didn't watch all of it; I imagine it says the same things that Sweet Poison does.

[Kidsmum]

I remember reading somewhere that the increase in our sugar consumption could be responsible for the rise in certain cancers. I don't eat sugary foods anyway but it is surprising what foods have sugar added to them. Salt is another bad boy that's nearly impossible to avoid unless you make everything you eat from scratch.

[willoyd]

Yes, Kidsmum, he includes material on the cancer issue too.

I started to watch, bobblybear, but then realised it was 90 mins long, so had better leave it till I've got a bit more time, but watching the first few minutes, yes he does seem to take a similar line.

It seems to me that whilst all sugar is worth reducing down, it's the fructose that's the real problem, mainly because it doesn't register with our appetite controls, along with the fact that, because only our liver can process it, a surfeit of it goes straight into fatty acids. The other sugars do register, so whilst they are still fattening, at least the body controls their intake to some extent (bearing in mind that, for instance, sucrose is half glucose and half fructose, and that's how the appetite treats it, only recognising half the sucrose).
 

[pontalba]

Very interesting, willoyd. 

 

Refined sugar/fructose et al  is a killer, no question about it. 

All the unrefined glop we put into our systems is just awful.

[poppyshake]

Oh why do I like sugary foods so much?

I think the experts, for the most part, agree that it's not so much fat that's the enemy .. it's sugar (but they fooled me into thinking the opposite with all those 'fat free' supposedly healthy foods )

I'm glad to hear that fruit is still good for you but fruit juice?  .. I always thought that was a healthy option  

 

[Brian.]

Here is a link to an article written in National Geographic magazine a few months ago about sugar which follows the same lines as the book. It's a real eye opener.

[Athena]

Interesting book! It's hard to avoid sugar, and it does taste nice. I don't eat that much sugary things any more and don't really miss it, but from time to time I might eat something sugary.

[Alexi]

It's getting more and more difficult to eat healthily IMO because a) in times when a lot of people are struggling it's much cheaper to eat junk! And b) as poppyshake says, we are all warned against fat and calories so much other evils go ignored.

 

Certainly fruit juice is promoted as a healthy option.

[willoyd]

Interesting article Brian - thanks! Confirms much of what is in the book.

 

Oh why do I like sugary foods so much?

 
Because, in evolutionary terms, we are designed to look for sweeter foods! Problem is, sugar is highly addictive, so when it becomes readily available.....!
 

I'm glad to hear that fruit is still good for you but fruit juice?  .. I always thought that was a healthy option  

 
It's often portrayed that way, but certainly in the sports coaching I used to do as my job (and we're going back a decade or so now), our standard dietary advice was to not drink fruit juices as they were simply the sugar and water from the juice with none of the real 'goodness' of the fibre.  Our understanding has changed a bit (I wasn't aware of the inability of the body to recognise the calories in the fructose in fruit juice for instance), but the core advice hasn't changed.  And the very fact that fruit juice is a processed food made it a food to, at best, limit.  Whilst I do occasionally eat food with sugar in (I'm a sucker for cakey foods like sponge puddings etc!), I've tended to avoid fruit juice for a while now.  The good news, though, is that alcohol isn't part of this problem (whatever it's other problems!). When I was on my diet (and when I go back on every now and again!) I tend to drink coffee, tea, herb teas, semi-skimmed milk (it's a brilliant recovery drink when training) and alcohol free beer (I'm rather partial to Becks Blue!). 
 

It's getting more and more difficult to eat healthily IMO because a) in times when a lot of people are struggling it's much cheaper to eat junk!

 
I'm not sure I agree with that. It's certainly much cheaper to eat junk processed food compared to non-junk processed food, but a healthy diet can be very cheap. However, it requires more care, and thus time, when shopping. You also need to know what you are shopping for, and food education in this country is abysmal (especially since domestic science was replaced with tne arrant nonsense that it is design and technology (I have to teach it!).

Edited November 16, 2013 by willoyd

[Alexi]

Well, based on the fact snacking on an apple is healthier than snacking on a doughnut (although apples are a sugary fruit!):

 

At tesco, a packet of five jam doughnuts is 60p. A pack of five apples £1.85. It's quite cheap to eat crap.

[willoyd]

Well, based on the fact snacking on an apple is healthier than snacking on a doughnut (although apples are a sugary fruit!):

 

At tesco, a packet of five jam doughnuts is 60p. A pack of five apples £1.85. It's quite cheap to eat crap.

 

Can't argue with that, but that is why I also threw in my comments about needing to shop with care and food education.  I'm not saying that there aren't families who are struggling horribly, but for the majority of people who are 'struggling', food in the UK comes way down the list as a proportion of expenditure compared to the rest of Europe - we don't prioritise it as much.  The doughnuts may do for a short-term snack, but longer term they are horribly expensive in terms of nutrition, health etc etc (e.g. you don't need, indeed want, extra sugary snacks if you are eating proper meals).  And shopping for fruit and veg in Tesco is expensive....

 

But I do recognise that this all takes time, energy, education etc., and it's all very easy to make these comments when I'm not one of those faced with the sorts of issues some people are.  I'm just all too aware of what the impact of this sort of eating is having on children - the sugar addiction is all too clear, as is the impact on their health.

Edited November 17, 2013 by willoyd

[Kidsmum]

 Certainly fruit juice is promoted as a healthy option.

 

We watched Trust me i'm a Doctor on TV the other week & i remember them saying that there's as much sugar in a fruit smoothie as in a glass of coke . I think a lot of the foods that are marketed as healthy are just as bad for you as the junk it's so confusing for people 

[willoyd]

We watched Trust me i'm a Doctor on TV the other week & i remember them saying that there's as much sugar in a fruit smoothie as in a glass of coke . I think a lot of the foods that are marketed as healthy are just as bad for you as the junk it's so confusing for people 

 

I think it was in Cycling Weekly a couple of weeks ago where they compared a cup of coffee with a fruit smoothie as to what was the 'healthier' option.  The coffee won!

 

I think it's like all foods: it can all get a bit faddish if one is not careful.  The answer is surely moderation?  If you are eating a sensible, balanced diet, with lots of unprocessed foods, then the occasional 'baddie' is not going to do much harm.  It's when it becomes a staple, or when the diet gets massively out of balance when the problems arise.  Personally, I think why the 'Mediterranean diet' (for instance) is so successful is because it's generally well balanced (with little sugar!), and because people sit down and have meals together, so there's not a lot of snacking on rubbish in between times.

[willoyd]

Armchair Nation by Joe Moran ****

Non-fiction writing seems to have dominated my recent reading. Armchair Nation is a history of the preferences and habits of the British TV watcher since the earliest, pre-war, transmissions, cut off in their infanthood by the arrival of WW2. On the way it treads some fairly well worn paths: the influence of soaps, the impact of different innovations such as colour TV, satellite and so on, although much of the earlier material was very new to me. However, although those paths might be worn, the author brings a degree of fresh insight to them, several myths being gently blown away in the process, not least the 'golden age' of TV, whilst the legendary status of some historical highlights may be just that - legends - when the facts suggest something somewhat different (I will leave them undetailed, to be found by the reader). What is not challenged though is the prominence and influence of the television in twentieth and twenty-first century social history.

 

Overall, this is an easily readable, involving account which doesn't attempt to detail the minutiae of TV history, rather focusing in on a number of themes for each era. It's well referenced, if somewhat over-reliant on one or two sources (George Mackay Brown's name appears ad nauseam) but doesn't read like an academic history, being rather obviously aimed at the general reader instead. I certainly found it more entertaining than many of the programmes it discusses!

Edited November 21, 2013 by willoyd

[willoyd]

An Unsuitable Job for a Woman by PD James ***
I've been meaning to try one of PD James's crime novels for some years. OH has a goodly selection on her shelves, so there hasn't been much excuse, but I've not quite got around to doing so. However, this one was chosen for one of my F2F book groups this month, so the day of reckoning finally arrived!

It was a pretty painless introduction too. At just over 200 pages, it's a slim tome, and it proved to be a fairly light, easy read, occupying a pleasurable few hours over a couple of days. The plot wasn't overly stretching, the characters were reasonably well fleshed out, and it trotted along at a reasonably relaxed pace. And that was about it, which surprised me as I was under the impression that PD James was a distinct cut above the norm of crime fiction; I suppose it depends who one judges her against, but she doesn't strike me as any stronger than the likes of Dexter, Dunant, Hill, Leon, Mankell et al. Cordelia herself had a lot of potential, and I was disappointed to find out afterwards that James only wrote one other book about her, but my feeling after reading this introduction is that she really needed a series to get her going. It certainly felt like that one was being set up - perhaps one was, and then the author decided there wasn't a huge future in her? A pity, but standing on its own, it was enjoyable enough, without amounting to very much.  Having said that, I enjoyed it enough to want to read more James novels, as this sort of book definitely fills a very useful niche.

PS - I sort of remember the TV series starring Helen Baxendale, even if I can't recall any details - and remember it as being really good (but then Baxendale usually is). Thinking about it again, this did feel that it might be better suited as a TV film.

[willoyd]

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Anne-Marie Shaffer and Annie Burrows ****(*)

This was a reread for one of my book groups of a book I hugely enjoyed some four years ago. It's an epistolary novel (one of my favourite formats) set in 1946 and focusing on the growing friendship between Juliet Ashton, a writer struggling to 'find' her next book, and the members of the eponymous book group, all survivors of the German wartime occupation of the Channel Isles. It's a lovely book, ranging through the full gamut of emotions from the thoroughly light hearted and humorous all the way through to the tragic, but it is ultimately life affirming. Even on second reading it was almost unputdownable. It doesn't completely hit every button for me as aspects of the story are just a little bit too pat, almost cliched, as are one or two of the characters, but I did find this far more emotionally affecting than the superficially more serious Alone in Berlin which had little positive impact on me earlier this year. The GL&PPPS is a book I could certainly come back to in another four years, maybe less!

Edited December 9, 2013 by willoyd

[Athena]

I'm not sure where from, but I've heard this title before (well, it's not one that someone's likely to forget).. Nice review !

[Kidsmum]

I really enjoyed The Guernsey Literary...... book , i think it's a good book to give as a present as i can't imagine anyone not enjoying it