There are two piles of books on my bookshelf — actually, if I was going for strict realism, I would have to mention that these two piles are not alone, that the shelves are crammed full of the damn things, but for the purposes of this discussion, I want to point out that it is these two piles that are of most interest. So, there are two piles on my bookshelf: one is books that I have recently finished and are waiting to be returned to the library from whence they came; the other is books that are waiting for their entry cue. To this you could also add the smaller but no less pressing pile on my bedside stand — one library book, the last, whose completion will see the others return to their home with a papery sigh, and one thick in-progress reread. To this again you could add the ebook on my go-everywhere netbook: I usually have one waiting for me there. To this, further, you could add the huge, dizzingly huge, slightly nauseatingly huge stack of ebooks a friend just passed on to me. I could read every day, all day long, for a year, and not run out of things to read. And I wouldn’t get much else done either. It’s a pretty fantastic problem to have.

On Ravelry, folks talk of going cold sheep, committing to no-yarn-buying until a certain target is reached, usually a destash goal or a time limit. I’m starting to think I need to go cold  sheep on my books, which would be cold tree or something. Only some of them are ebooks, so that would be cold…mobi?  Got a few off my list lately:

The Female Eunuch – Germaine Greer

Fascinating, stirring, occasionally annoying, and crowded with fictitious characters. This was a pretty cool book, altogether:. Took me a long time to read, because there’s a lot to get through. In case you’ve had your head stuffed under the carpet for the past billion years, this book is widely regarded as the one that set off the whole pesky feminist movement (well, that’s how it’s seen in some quarters, anyway). At its core, it argues that a patriarchal society fundamentally dehumanises women by sexually neutering them; in taking away their sexuality (defused through various bewildering methods of repression, judgment, criticism and threat), the culture takes away women’s personhood. They become objects — mother, wife, mistress — rather than people. The book explores this theory in range of life contexts, looking at attitudes towards women’s bodies, education, careers, motherhood, relationships and so on. And overall, it’s pretty compelling: while this is an older text now (first edition: 1970), we haven’t progressed so far as a culture that these scenarios are laughable or antiquated. There’s a lot to like in this book:  there’s a lot of agitation, frustration and anger, as if we needed reminding why the feminist movement needs to keep barrelling along. It’s also funny, sharp and really readable. But at the same time, there are a arguments that seem a bit strawman-ish: depictions of fictitious scenarios that are then challenged and criticised. But on the other hand, these arguments portray undeniably familiar tropes that deserve to be challenged. At times the book charged way ahead of me and I had trouble keeping up with where the arguments were going; when Greer started describing her vision for communal childrearing I was surprised and had to backtrack to find out how we got there. But ultimately, this is the kind of text that makes you open  your eyes and look around and start questioning some of those familiar tropes I mentioned — questioning leads to challenge and thinking, at least some of the time, so that alone is a damn good thing.

The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl (Volumes 1 and 2)

While working my way through The Female Eunuch, I was, on the side, dabbling in some dear old Dahl. Ever read the short stories? No? Just the kids’ books, huh? Well, I’ll wait — chase up…hmm,  which first…how about Kiss Kiss? Have a look. Yeah. Creepy as fuck, eh? I loved Roald Dahl’s books as a kid, not least of all because some had the thread of macabre running through them — the cruelty in Matilda, the gross aggression of the Twits, and the sinister Witches and giants (from The BFG) — and in the short stories, he really pumps it up. They’re fantastic. Many of them are creepy and clever and cunning; they’re weird and fast-moving and gripping and they are great. This collection included Kiss Kiss, Over to You (all stories about war pilots and flying: creepy, clever, thoughtful and interesting), Switch Bitch,  Someone Like You and Eight Further Tales of the Unexpected. Particularly satisfying stories: “The Way Up to Heaven”, “The Visitor”, “The Old Switcheroo”, “Lamb to the Slaughter”, “Neck”, “Mr Botibol” and “The Bookseller”. Oh, and “Skin”. And — oh look, just read them. They’re gripping and interesting and have a very vivid, Dahl-esque, English flavour.  Enormously good.

Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories - Angela Carter

Whiplash! Going from Dahl’s short stories to Carter’s gave me serious author whiplash. So completely different in tone and themes. Angela Carter’s stuff is terrific: I love Nights at the Circus, and The Magic Toyshop was a corker too. Burning Your Boats is a complete anthology, containing the books Fireworks: Nine Profane Pieces, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, Black Venus and American Ghosts and Old World Wonders, and six other stories that were never collected (three early stories at the beginning off the book and three misc at the end). Carter tends towards the lush and detailed, and it’s interesting to read the stories in chronological order like this, because that lushness and detail is at its heaviest in her early stories, gradually thinning as her career progressed. So while I found the first three early stories a little unpromising — not bad, but not quite my cup of tea — by the time I had reached halfway through Fireworks I was pretty interested. And then The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories – a collection of retelling of fairytales — had me completely hooked. Favourites from Burning Your Boats: “The Bloody Chamber”, “Puss-in-Boots”, “The Kitchen Child”, “John Ford’s ‘Tis a Pity She’s a Whore’” and “Gun for the Devil”. Really juicy stories, ripe with action, sex, laughter and conflict, as with the best of Carter’s stuff.

The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon

I started reading Lot 49 in uni but never finished it. (True story.) Found it in my collection the other day and read it, cover-to-cover, in one sitting (more or less — there were toilet breaks). Oh wow, man, far out, awesome. Oedipa Maas is summoned as the executrix of an ex-lover’s will and finds herself nudged all around by hints of a conspiracy: but you can never be sure if it’s in her head or if it’s an external force she’s stumbled on. This kind of book is perfectly suited to a single-sitting reading, because the story builds momentum and you end up sustaining the perfect headspace for the creeping feeling of paranoia that Oedipa develops. Pynchon’s got a reputation for being twisty and involved and complex, but Lot 49 is readable and interesting, with plenty of motion and dialogue and interesting characters. I think it’s a good intro to his stuff — I hope so, because I’ve got V and Gravity’s Rainbow lined up next.

In a misguided moment of honesty, I decided to have a squiz at how many books I’ve got on the go at the moment: if I only count the ones I’m earnestly reading and can confidently explain what plot point I’m up to, it’s still too many. Good problem to have.

Do you do puzzles? I do. I’m talking here about jigsaw puzzles, those epic challenges of shape rotation, pattern matching and searching. (You can keep those ones that are a picture of nothing but baked beans, those are just guess-and-check exercises in martyrdom; you can tell they were invented for the “so-and-so likes puzzles, let’s see how they go with THIS one! haw haw haw!” market. Now that I think about it, don’t just need keep them, shove them where the pieces don’t fit. And stop that giggling.)

Tiny steps

My Dadini taught me to love puzzles. I have a huge memory file loosely tagged “puzzles, misc” crammed with memories of us working together, quiet and cooperating, or chatting and laughing, or whatever we needed. And as I grew up, I realised ‘need’ isn’t too far off. They’re good for you. They’re head-clearing and settling. Puzzles demand patience.

If anyone knows patience, it’s my Dadini. As a family, we’ve had plenty (no more thank you, I’m quite full) of health crises and physiological turmoil. Some acute and instantly chaotic, some tedious, eroding and long-term: and all can only be addressed with patience and problem-solving. Dadini and I — and a few other members of the immediate Familini — have chronic health issues: the kind that periodically flare into interesting crises, but are generally just day-to-day challenges in patience, compassion and respect for the body’s obstacles. (APPROACHING METAPHOR.)

Taking shape

With a puzzle, you know you have everything you need to finish, but to get the pieces in the right order, you have to patiently sort through them. As you get them in, the others start to make more sense and you can find their spots as well. You work on different parts of the puzzle — I’ll do the bit with the swan princess and you do the bit with the chainsaw psychopath and we’ll match them up later — and so the big problem becomes lots of little ones, much easier to work on. From chaos to order through patient nibbling.

(METAPHOR IMMINENT.)

Starting to come together

Which, it turns out, is an essential life skill. The patience needed to manage chronic health issues is a godsend and a hard one to learn if you don’t already have it. Ongoing health stuff brings loads of unique challenges. Not insurmountable, but hard enough to make you want to sit down and bite kelpies whenever you think of them. So what do you do? You break them down into smaller challenges and get those in order, then you link them together and suddenly you’ve finished half the puzzle. Sometimes you have to go really small: some days, just getting a cup of tea has to be broken down into tiny, shuffling steps. Thank God I have a Dadini who gave me those skills well before I needed them.

From chaos, a rooster!

I have a Dadini who taught me patience and the ability to see a big, dragging problem as lots of little, manageable ones. I have a Dadini who taught me that if you’re patient and logical, you can solve almost anything. I have a Dadini who taught me to solve problems so well that I do it for shits and giggles.

Happy birthday Dadini.

Here be readin’s! I’m knee-deep in the pages these days. This is a glorious development, a long way from my Masters’ studies, when the suggestion of reading anything longer than a case study or essay would elicit a terse, ironic chuckle and smothered sobs. I’ve got three (four?) others on the go, which I want to finish by the end of the year, but let’s focus on the ones I’m done with for now.

Vinland – George Mackay Brown

I was seduced by the damn gorgeous cover: muted fern green and fawn, with ghostly nordic/celtic coils watermarked over a hazy picture of a sailing ship. Serrr-wooon. Vinland, my Vinland! It tells the life story of Ranald Sigmundson, starting off with him going to sea with his Dad, leaving his poor old Mum to try and run the farm on her own. Ranald shows preternatural sea legs and good sense: he runs off from his Dad (who’s a total stinker, by the way) and joins a merchant ship. They find out later that his Dad’s ship was wrecked shortly after, and so begins Ranald’s life on the merchant ship. He shows preternatural skill at trading and bargaining and earns the ship a tidy profit. When he eventually makes it home and is reunited with his Mum, he shows preternatural skill in running the farm: he single-handedly drives out the blackguards who have been exploiting her, resurrects the farm’s good name and rules with wisdom and courage unheard-of in one so young! And so on. There’s lots of moments were someone refuses to be taken in by pomp and sasses an authority figure (usually our hero, and usually a king/prince/laird/etc.), and then the authority figure quivers briefly with rage before slapping their knee and ROARING with laughter, declaring that it’s a refreshing change to be told the truth. The sassy individual is then rewarded with a position of advisor and usually a fair whack of gold. (I suspect in real life the sassy individual would be killed fairly quickly). Our hero marries and has children, and the lives and adventures of those children as they grow and have their own children is recorded. The hero ages and his thoughts turn towards preparing himself for death.

On the whole, it’s not a bad read, but it’s a bit hard to take it seriously. The hero is preternaturally good at everything he turns his mind to, and shows wisdom and compassion beyond his years, even when he’s really old. A few of the characters are predictable and so feel easy and two-dimensional, and there’s one or two scenes whose development/endings are obvious as soon as they’re established. Having said that, it’s an interesting reflection on life and the atmosphere is lush and enjoyable. Vinland is set in pre-Christian Scandanavia, so there’s lots of revelry (mead, bread, cheese and honey, mostly), some battles, farming, and a fair bit of politics. Pretty escapist stuff, with a shake of reflection and philosophy.

so i am glad – A. L. Kennedy

My second dabble with A.L. Kennedy’s work, the first being Original Bliss, so i am glad tells the story of the relationship between (main character/narrator) Jennifer Wilson and a dude who shows up and moves into the vacant room in her share house. They’re expecting someone called Martin, so she calls him Martin: but it becomes apparent he is not Martin, but Cyrano de Bergerac, the 17th-century French writer and duellist. The way their relationship unfolds is really lovely and interesting: there’s setbacks, and both Jennifer and Cyrano have some very dark patches in their lives. But the strength and beauty, tenderness and growth that becomes apparent as their relationship deepens is touching and warming. I liked it a lot. Jennifer is a character who feels real to me: the narrative voice is convincing, fluid and articulate, especially the way she nudges against difficult matters and then darts away, to later talk about in depth — it feels a lot like talking to a new friend, as they test the waters to see how much to reveal about themselves. The change and growth in Jennifer over the book is wonderful. This isn’t a story that shirks the grime of ordinary lives, but it glows beyond it. I like it. Currently reading another one of Kennedy’s books, which I’ll talk about down the line. I like her stuff.

Quantum Man: the Undiscovered Sex – Ken Fegradoe

Okay, this one was tricky. The blurb opens with the question at the core of the book: “What does it mean to be a man in a world of dissolving sexual stereotypes?” The plot of the book is straightforward when you summarise it — it’s about the relationship between a man and his beloved partner, as they move in together and have a baby. But it covers a ton of turf in the process of answering the first question. The book explores the ideas of identity and what contributes to them — what makes a man, what makes a woman, what makes a child — and the way those ideas are challenged/demolished/reinvented in the context of a relationship. There’s a lot to like about this book: the sense of ideas bubbling and developing away as you read them, the sense of humour, the pace of the language (which isn’t necessarily a reflection of the pace of the plot, mind you: the baby’s birth takes two or three chapters). At first, I found it a bit self-indulgent and frustrating. I tend to be pretty sceptical of gender-based assertions, especially that motif of women being sacred, cosmic, in tune, emotionally fine-tuned, etc., while men have forced themselves away from their primary, intuitive understanding and civilised themselves to their detriment. I don’t think this is a gender issue: I think ignoring intuition is a person thing, regardless of gender. But I really dig the idea of fluid identity, reevaulated and reformed as your life changes and the people in it shift. So, overall: fun read, didn’t agree with all the ideas, but that’s totes okay.

Books are fun. Reader 4 lyfe, yo.