A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail – Bill Bryson

More than anything in the world right now I want to go bushwalking. I have a fruity French dessert cooling on the bench; a cup of tea beside me; an awesome job and a shitload of books and knitting to play with, and I want to chuck it all in and go bushwalking. That’s what this book does (although I admit the urge is never far from the surface with me). I think this is one of Bryson’s best books. He combines his excellent sense of humour with involved research and human study. The relationship between him and his hiking companion, an old friend who, in intervening years has developed and recovered from alcoholism and gained a lot of weight, is really interesting and touching — the characterisation of his friend is fantastic. There’s introspection and analysis, as Bryson looks at why he — or indeed anybody — would find the hike so appealing and satisfying; and this is woven around a history of the trail, travel observations and commentary on the natural and man-made surroundings. It blends together really well.

Coraline – Neil Gaiman

What an awesome book. Short and juicy, with not one excess word or scene. It’s creepy, exciting and fun and it rocks. Coraline and her parents move into a new flat with a mysterious door that opens on to a brick wall. One night, Coraline hears the door swing open and discovers a passageway leading to a parallel world, where bizarre caricatures of her parents (and the other people in her world) live. They encourage her to stay, but she returns home: shortly after this, her parents disappear and Coraline has to go back through the door to rescue them. Totally cool and exciting.

American Pyscho – Bret Easton Ellis

I did a teensy bit of work experience in a bookshop in 2000, when American Pyscho was first blowing everybody’s mind, and it had to be shrink-wrapped on the shelf, lest some innocent browser missed the title, cover art, blurb and back-cover reviews and didn’t realise the book was moderately confrontational in its psychopathic violence and was accidentally traumatised while flicking through the pages. There are some startlingly violent chapters in here (pardon me while I clutch my pearls) and some pretty mean sex violence as well, but frankly, it works. The narrator is a classic rich yuppie riding the high that 80′s New York promised to that lot: I wasn’t there, so I can’t say for certainty it’s an accurate portrayal, but it feels very authentic. The obsessive fixation of the author with his daily routine, his clothes, his life, his coworkers’ and friends’ appearance; the details are overwhelming, suffocating. The lifestyle he leads feels hectic, desperate, shallow and occasionally terrifying. If I tried to live the way he does, well, I’d probably end up a bit odd too, but mine would manifest in obsessive cake stomping or something, not brutalising people. The question that hangs over you the whole time you read is “did he or didn’t he?” And there’s a lot to throw doubt on everything he claims to have done. Something I found really interesting is that I desperately wanted him to be an unreliable narrator. Even though I knew he was fictional, all his victims were fictional, I was already so emotionally attached that I really, really wanted him to be all fantasy. As a reader, that’s a testament to Ellis: he created characters so real and believable as to evoke understanding, if not outright sympathy, so that I wanted the horrific things to be fantasies. To summarise: violent, yes, but compelling, clever, interesting, and really thought-provoking. The themes of materialism and the lies of success really echoed and left me churning them over and over well after I finished. Pretty awesome.

Interesting (or not) (possibly not) (probably not) side note: the last Bill Bryson book I read was also about discovering America, small town America, called The Lost Continent. I read it immediately adjacent to Kerouac’s On the Road, which is also about discovering America; and as some sort of complement, read Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, an intensely English-flavoured book. This time around, I’m matching Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods with Bret Easton Ellis’ American Pyscho and contrasting it with Neil Gaiman’s Coraline. An interesting blend, fer sher.

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.

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.

The Beauty Myth - Naomi Woolf

A major work in feminist literature, it’s kind of astonishing to realise this book was first published twenty years ago. Truefax – check Wikipedia. Most of the book could have been written in the past five years, except you’d notice the absence of references to Twitter and the whole stripping-as-exercise-no-really-this-is-what-empowerment-looks-like movement. The general thrust of this solid and stimulating tome is the Beauty Myth theory: as women have become more socially, economically, politically and sexually liberated, our approach towards women’s appearances and bodies has shifted in order to re-establish control and maintain the status quo of repression. While judgment of women’s appearances and punishment for failure to comply have been an element of life for a long time, the rise of women’s power has seen an accompanying but disproportional rise in the standard to which women are held, as well as in the punishment that women are subjected to for failure to comply. Woolf discusses the ways in which the Beauty Myth finds expression and opportunities for repression: through clothes, diet, makeup/cosmetics/cosmetic surgery and weight. I loved this book: I found it not too enraging (a risk with reading up on any feminist — no, any human rights — issues: you exhaust yourself in fury), but sobering and brain-feeding. It stimulated me and challenged me to keep challenging the world we’re all trying to waddle through.

The important thing to remember is the Beauty Myth isn’t some grand conspiracy (“Those pesky dames want the vote, eh? Let’s invent bulimia! MUAHAHA!”) but a social force that needs to be looked at squarely and consciously rejected. By having your attention drawn to it, you’re well positioned to start noticing and challenging the Beauty Myth, which is really the only way our culture will ultimately defeat it. And, frankly, once you notice it, you’ll notice it everywhere. That sounds a little ominous, but once you get your jaw off the ground and realise how crippled women can be by the way others claim jurisdiction over their appearance, you can start rolling your eyes, making comments, and enjoying a glass of wine with similar-minded folks. Thank Christ for that.

In full disclosure, I knew about the underlying theory of The Beauty Myth before reading and so was already kind of in agreement with Woolf’s ideas as I understood them. Reading the full text did nothing to change that. The book concludes with a square and uplifting chapter (square as in a solid-footed, direct eye-contact, listen-up kind of attitude) that incites people, women especially, to band together and counteract the Beauty Myth with the third wave of feminism. I’m a bit fuzzy on my feminist history, so I’m not sure what wave we’re up to,  some twenty years later: but it’s not hard to see that despite some changes, we’re still snagged by the Beauty Myth. It still handicaps the women’s rights movement, and you still hear women — especially, I’m sad to say, young women in their late teens and early twenties — saying they aren’t feminists, largely because there’s a lingering fear of being considered unwomanly, humourless and, worst of all, ugly. But that doesn’t mean the feminist movement has abated: the Internet may sometimes seem like a petrie dish of misogyny at times, but I’ve learned more about sexual diversity, acceptance, sexual rights, the lie of gender roles, and feminism/sexuality rights through the Internet than through any other medium. It’s my belief that the boom in communication the net offers is leading to a boom in seeing things from others’ perspectives, but also a boom in folks matching up ideas — folks who might not get a chance to talk to one another otherwise are suddenly matching their ideas up and this is generating momentum with the potential for wonderful social change.

Where was I? Oh, right: The Beauty Myth. Delicious brain fodder and, hopefully, a stimulus for changing the way you see our fallible Western culture.

The Consolations of Philosophy - Alain de Botton

De Botton is one of my favourite authors. I love his writing: he is funny, candid, moving and articulate. Makes me think and challenges the way I see the world. I cannot recommend The Art of Travel enough. Oh, and Status Anxiety — corking good reads, both of them. One of the biggest strengths of de Botton’s writing is the way he structures his books: he uses chapter and subchapter groupings as a way of keeping his books focused and ordered. Consolations is divided into six chapters, each targetting a particular ill of life (heartache, inadequacy, difficulties, and so on) and then matching a sample of a single philosopher’s work to it. This way, he proceeds through the works of Socrates, Epicurus, Seneca, Montaigne, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. He keeps each chapter brilliantly concise and that’s what I admire most about his work: focus and brevity. He doesn’t attempt to go into too much detail with each philosopher, just enough to give historical context and a wee bit of characterisation, and then enough of that philosopher’s work to address the topic of the chapter. So this isn’t necessarily the book to turn to if you have to write a graduate thesis on Seneca’s attitude to grapes: but it is the book to turn to if you haven’t read a lot of philosophy, or if you’re the kind of person who assumes philosophy is some kind of ivory tower wankers’ hobby (honestly, the next person who tells me that philosophers don’t deal with real-world problems is getting a lecture about the way pro sportspeople are isolated from reality and then a freaking fork to the eye). You can really treat each chapter as a sample of that philosopher’s work, a jumping-off point.  The whole book is fun, interesting and stimulating. It’s also triggered an unexpected itch to read Nietzsche.

Original Bliss - A.L. Kennedy

So I was having a funky day the other day. I’ve hurt my hip running, so I was limping and feeling pretty sorry for myself. I’m glad it started raining — pathetic fallacy — while I hobbled to my happy place: the library near work. If there’s anywhere you can indulge in the kind of slow sidling walk which was an enormous relief on my sore leg, it’s between the shelves of the library. I was still burning for de Botton, so I was hunting for a copy of How Proust Can Change Your Life and my eye was caught by the vivid orange cover of Original Bliss. There were a few other Kennedy books on the shelf that I picked up as well, but Original Bliss is where it starts. It tells the story of the relationship between Mrs Brindle and Mr Gluck. She’s an abused, insomniac housewife in a crisis of faith and he’s a genius psychologist with an obsession with fringe pornography: she is fascinated by his work and thinks he might be able to help her find her faith, and he is in turn inspired by her and thinks she might be able to help him overcome his obsession. From this starting point, deep and complicated feelings emerge. It’s a really good read, but there are a couple of weaknesses. First, the awesomes: the dialogue is rich and real. There’s not a lot of it, because this is a novella about growth, challenge and private obstacles and so there’s a lot more discussion of what’s going on inside the characters, as expressed through their activities and internal descriptions. But the dialogue that does appear is rich, clear and catches you. Secondly, I loved the scenes with Mr Brindle. His actions are altogether despicable, but very well written. Thirdly, I loved the character of Mr Gluck (his first name — and Mrs Brindle’s) emerge as the novella progresses and you become more intimately acquainted with them). He’s real and lively and interesting and someone I’d like to meet. I didn’t have the same immediate magentism to Mrs Brindle, and it took me a little while to get into where she was coming from, but I liked her all the same. Fourthly, this book felt real. The people and settings felt real, clear and sharp and, as a reader, that really squeezes my toothpaste.

There were a couple of things I had to think about. I’m not sure if these are weaknesses in my understanding or weaknesses in the writing, but I want to talk about them. The thing about Mr and Mrs Brindle’s relationship is that I’m not sure how she wound up there and what kept her there. She doesn’t come across as a cringing victim, too frightened to move; she comes across as tired and, having lost her faith, a little hopeless but patient. I think there’s a close bond between staying with her abusive husband and losing her faith — perhaps there’s an element of self-punishment in the ritualised demanding cooking and cleaning, as well as the unpredictable violence.

I also had a problem with Gluck’s pornography addiction. The addiction itself was pretty interesting, although I was initially a little defensive about it because I don’t subscribe to the assumption that liking S&M porn makes you a damaged deviant. Later Gluck makes it clear he gets off on porn because he knows it isn’t real; that he is sickened by real-life sexual violence, but then, I’m a little annoyed that he had to say that: it’s not like a character who loves action movies has to remind the reader that he’s doesn’t really like beating people up, ya feel me?  But the “cured by love of a good woman” motif gave me pause. I’m oversimplifying that, of course. He was cured because he wanted to be and she provided the motivation, but it’s still a theme I’m wary of. I think it runs the risk of being a little glib. Similarly, I’m a bit unsure about Mrs Brindle’s actions towards the end of the book: I don’t want to give away anything here, but I’m not sure I fully understood the motivations that lead to her gambling with her life in the way she did. On the whole, I think the story works really well. The characters are flawed and interesting, and it plays with themes of crisis and resurrection and love in a mature and thoughtful way. As I mentioned, I borrowed a couple of Kennedy’s other books and I’m looking forward to having a chew on them as well. I like the way she writes and I like her characters. Good stuff: worth reading.

The Magic Toyshop - Angela Carter

I first fell in love with Angela Carter when I read Nights at the Circus which I recommend to everyone which such fervour that I’m no longer sure where my copy is (if anyone sees it, tell it I miss it and I hope it’s doing well). Angela Carter writes exciting stories with vivid, sexy prose. Something that struck me in both Nights at the Circus and The Magic Toyshop is the presence of the body. As someone who is pretty constantly aware of the presence of her own playful walking meat, it’s wonderful to read prose that doesn’t disregard the flesh. I don’t mean to imply that the books are obsessed with the body in all its sweaty, tangy, smelly glory, but I mean it isn’t ignored, either. Smell and the sensations of hair and mouth caught my attention throughout The Magic Toyshop, and the bodies of the characters are more or less ever-present and part of their characterisation. It’s a bit of a coming-of-age story, but that’s a bit of an easy and twee category to apply. The main character, Melanie, is the eldest daughter of a recently-orphaned trio sent to live with her uncle and aunt, whom they have never met. Her uncle’s cruelty, her aunt’s muteness and her aunt’s brothers’ allure are mysteries she is thrown into and needs to make sense of, as she comes to terms with her growing sexuality. The undercurrent of menace in the house must be resisted and ultimately brought to the surface and fought if she is to survive in any meaningful way. It’s a really good read, but it felt a little underworked. I felt like it lacked the depth and polish of Nights at the Circus: it felt like a book that could have come early in Carter’s career, solid but could have been improved. The characters were interesting: they felt a little fairy-tale-ish at times, especially the cruel uncle: but as the uncle was challenged more and more, the other characters began to feel more real, flawed and attractive. I think The Magic Toyshop was great, but if you haven’t read much of Angela Carter’s stuff, I’d still push you towards Nights at the Circus first.

The Anatomist - Federico Andahazi

Hmm, a tricky one: the story of the trial for heresy of Mateo Colombo, a 16th-century Venetian doctor who claims to have discovered the clitoris. The heresy trial is obviously politically motivated, and to be honest I’m not really sure where the heresy thing comes into it. He frequently dissects cadavers to study anatomy and to give lectures on same, but he has friends in high places that stop him being charged with that; the heresy thing seems to be focused on the clitoris thing.  The trial makes for really engrossing reading.  Mateo Colombo’s argument is, essentially: the clitoris is to women what the soul is to men. In men, he argues, arousal doesn’t have to lead to orgasm because the passions subside, the erection goes away, and whatever was driving the arousal vapourises, all under the guidance and will of the soul. Women don’t have a soul, so they need a physiological way to govern their behaviour – the clit . This is how I understood his argument, anyway: I could be barking up the wrong fallopian tube here.  The misogyny of the folks in The Anatomist is overwhleming: there are only two women in the book, a superlative whore (complete with ominously empowering and lascivious episodes from her childhood), the best in the city and the most expensive; and a sweet widowed nun (whose clitoris is the one that Colombo discovers).  Mateo Colombo’s vanity is aggravating (“discovered” the clitoris my arse: as if people, especially women, didn’t suspect its existence already — I had this thought in mind before I even started reading, and it may have prejudiced me a bit); the rigid religious idiocy of the people involved makes his trial a strawman trial, and the conclusion left a kind of bad taste in my mouth. I didn’t feel like Colombo had fought the odds and overcome enormous prejudice to change the world, I just felt like he wanted to be famous as the man who discovered the clitoris. Lives of others were essentially unimportant to him, except as they reflected or enhanced his reputation: his treatment of the dying pope is particularly revealing, as is his behaviour towards the previously-mentioned nun. Whenever I dislike a book, I feel like I must have missed something, like I’m just not clever enough to appreciate it or I’m not looking at it the right way around or something; but The Anatomist really didn’t do much for me. Not a terrible book, but not a lot of fun, either.

Timepieces – Drusila Modjeska

A quickie! A selection of ten essays by an excellent prose-worker, which reflect on her writing life. Really really gripping: I ended up reading the lot in a day or two, but I had to go back and renibble a lot. They’re short pieces, but you’ll get a lot more out of the book if you take the time to pause between essays and think about each one.

It’s a really interesting book. (Side note: I say “interesting” a lot, but I say it seriously and with the intention of attracting its truest meaning. I say it to mean it fed my brain, left me thinking, and gripped my attention while I was reading.) Modjeska covers a fair bit of ground, but comes back to writing and culture, especially in Australia. Part I: In “Apprentice Piece” and “The Australian”, she talks about where she came from (as a writer), who influenced her, who taught her a lot (other writers, specifically). She also writes about location and creation in “Working Room”, and about meditation, travel, place and self in “The Traveller’s Husk”. She talks about the process of writing “Poppy”, especially how it affected her, her family and so on.

In Part II, she talks more broadly about art, literature and Australian culture. “On Not Owning a Grace Cossington-Smith” discusses the concepts of value, possesion, etc.; and framing of art and artists “Framing Clarice Beckett”. She also writes about memoir, fiction and the blurring of the two: the process of constructing memoir/biographies and how as much is revealed by what is kept in by what is glossed over — the construction of a reality for the reader is achieved as much by the lies told as the truth given (“The Englishness Problem”, “Memoir Australia”). In the last essay. she describes where she sees Australian writing at the moment and where it’s going. It was a really interesting read: quite short, but totally crammed full of interesting stuff. Loved it.

The Island of the Day Before - Umberto Eco

Oh Eco, I love you. This book is the first Umberto Eco novel I read. In the space of one weekend, while at the coast with my family, I devoured it: I had to write an essay on it for Postmodernism the day after we got back. I’m glad I didn’t try and do it in the space of one weekend again, but it’s such a lush, rich, wonderful book that it probably wouldn’t be a huge burden to try and do so. It’s spectacular. It explores time, history and narrative in a truly Eco-ish way. It’s the story of Roberto de Casale, marooned on the abandoned ship, the Daphne, which is anchored in the bay of a glorious tropical island. Roberto passes his lonely time exploring the ship and writing letters to his unrequited love, “the Lady”, upon which the narrator claims to have based the story. The letters tell the story of Roberto’s past and explain how he wound up in this situation, as well as giving you a chance to figure out his character and how his experiences have changed him. As the story grows, the spectre of his imaginary half-brother, Ferrante (who emerged during his childhood as a result of a hyperactive imagination and some false conclusions about his parents), grows and Ferrante begins to take on a life of his own; meanwhile, Roberto becomes aware of the presence of another person on the ship. The mystery thickens and that’s as much of the plot as I’m going to tell you. I’ve already used the word lush in this paragraph, but I’m going to say it again. Lush lush lush: the atmosphere and the landscape in this book are lush. It feels incredibly real and beautiful — you feel sea breezes and taste salt while you read. It’s exciting. Meanwhile, the book is presenting you with some pretty awesome themes.  How do experiences shape us? What stories do we tell each other; what’s the role of the audience and the listener in the stories we tell? Does the way we tell our stories shape our personalities? Is the Other a listener, an audience, or do they have their own narrative with which you need to interact? Some of the dialogue is dense and really thorough: you have to be prepared to seriously engage here, not skim — but if you’re reading anything by Umberto Eco, you probably know that already. In his writing, everything counts. Every thread is flawless and necessary and beautiful. It’s completely worth the concentration. Whenever I stopped for a break while reading, I felt like I was looking at the world with a new mind, refreshed with warm sea winds and excited about the world; an enormous reward.

Oh man, I love this book.  Easily one of my favourites.  My Eco-binge continues with Foucault’s Pendulum, totally different in flavour but just as exciting and gripping.

Moving on: I have been guzzling books lately, some really awesome ones. Wanna hear?

Poppy – Drusilla Modjeska

On the back cover of Poppy, if you go looking for the tags, it says “Biography” and “Fiction”: it’s a memoir about her mother’s life, mental unravelling and reconstruction, questing and death, all slightly fictionalised but not completely. This fascinates me. It asked me a lot of questions about how we know people. We construct people we love through our interactions with them, which means that all the children of a person have a different person as their parent. Perhaps, to share that parent through a book means to present the essential elements in such a way that the reader can construct their own understanding of that person — which doesn’t have to be the same understanding that the writer has of that person. The book talks about some other pretty potent stuff, too: the role of women in relation to those who depend on them (in the context of a traditional husband/children arena, specifically) — what gets given away in service to those who are loved? What are the beloved taking without realising? Can love be completely given without compromising so much of the self that it is nearly negated?

There’s a lot of loss in this book: it opens with Poppy’s birth with her dead twin, a figure that reappears sporadically while examining her life. There’s loss of marriages, lovers, life, mental stability, assumptions — people are changed and broken down and rebuilt (in other words, normal life) and all of this circles around Poppy.

I first read this book in 2001, when I was in my first year of uni, and I think I lacked the life experience to make sense of a lot of the themes in it: I found in interesting and moving, but reading it now has been a very different experience. Still a good book, it challenged me to think a lot about the way lives weave together; relationships, sacrifice, and how we give to and take from those we love.

Red Shoes – Carmel Bird

While I was hanging around the Australian women writers section of the library, hunting for Poppy, I took a wrong turn at Albequerque and found a shelf full of Carmel Bird, a writer of whom I had never heard. Intriguing! I grabbed Red Shoes because it was the most eye-catching in both design and blurb content.  It’s a book about the life of Petra Penfold-Knight, leader of a cult whose followers must all wear read shoes.  The story covers Petra’s life, from the grim circumstances surrounding her birth, through her childhood and young womanhood, to her rise as a cult leader. The cult is a terrifying place, through Petra’s work.

And a damn good read it is, too: it’s told by Petra’s guardian angel, which is a motif that carries the risk of being hackneyed or trite, especially if the writer chooses to use the angel as a moralising figure, but Bird completely avoids that trap and uses the angel as an omniscient narrator with personality. The agnel’s narrative is clever, clear and funny, but also describes some extremely grim and gothic matters, and those two elements work brilliantly togther.  It’s a really, really good read.

One of my favourite things about this book is its Footnotes: the last third — about a hundred pages, in the edition I read — is explanations of ballets, artistic works, historical figures and motifs in pyshcology or mythology that feed back into the book. There are footnotes to “Red Shoes”, “Cinderella”, “Catherine de Medici”, “mandala”, “reflexology” and so on. I loved this. You read through the narrative and, when prompted, you can go and read this background/supporting stuff in the footnotes and they’re like extra threads that you weave into the story. I thought it was totally cool; an awesome way of layering the motifs and meaning of the book. Loved it. I’m really looking forward to getting some more of Carmel Bird’s stuff when I take this one back to the library.

The Love-Artist – Jane Alison

Holy freaking cow, what a great book. So: Ovid, the justly celebrated Roman poet famed for his erotic poems Amores (The Loves) and Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love), is being toasted all over Rome; but overhead, there’s a little moralistic grumbling from Augustus, the rigid, censorial emperor. To let Rome cool off a little, to have a break following the release of his Metamorphoses and to seek inspiration for his next work, Ovid takes a break to the Black Sea, where he meets Xenia, a witch, a medicine-woman and a seer. They fall in love and he brings her back to Rome. The novel covers from the release of the Metamorphoses to Ovid’s exile: his ambitions, Xenia’s visions, the culture of Rome and the politics at play are all clear and simply shown — Alison hasn’t used a cast of millions, but creates Rome with fantastic succinctness — and the way relationship between Ovid and Xenia grows and swells and changes is gripping. Plus there’s some awesome sex, witchcraft, poetry, jealousy, prophecy, intrigue: the works. I love this book. It’s fast, sensually vivid, and exciting, and really well written. Nice one, Jane!

tumblebrown bix!

I made bikkies! I went to the library! Apparently I am four years old, because this was enough to make me twinkly-cheeked and rosy-eyed. If you are feeling at all ennui-ed, perhaps a little pallid or blue with the ongoing round of daily life, may I suggest a visit to a library and some bikkies to stir your cockles? Sure, it won’t cure your cystitis, but it’ll put a positive spin on it.

Which do you want to hear about first? The library, you say? Huh, I would have thought the biscuits, but okay, whatever. (Here’s another picture of biscuits to keep you going.)

See? Bikkies! Lovely! Keep reading.

To the library! I loved the local library when I was a kid. It was a high point of the school holidays when Mum would take me and my brother there: you had ten books for two weeks. Decadence. I usually had them all bowled over in the first few days, some a few times, and then we’d have to go back for a refill about halfway through the school holidays. This experience was repeated often enough that, in my head, library = magical free book world. So today I went to the library I haunted when I was at uni, reactivated my card and presto! Magical free books! I got a buzz akin to that which I felt as a wee tacker on school holidays — which exploded into a Festival of Wow when the dude at the library desk explained to me that, as a grownup, I was entitled to forty books at once, for up to six months! (Unless someone else puts in a request for one, in which case I have a fortnight to get it back to them.)

I am a happy little camper/clam/Vegemite. Imagine a world where you can just waltz in and borrow books and then, when you’re done, you can give them back. You don’t have to worry about finding room on your bookshelf, or packing them when you move, or anything. SPREAD THE WORD! PEOPLE MUST KNOW!

People must also know about these biscuits.

See, I told you there were bikkies.

Perhaps this was another nostalgia thing? Probably not. Date and ginger biscuits are pretty timeless. My demands: they had to be not-too-sweet, chewy, and totally loaded with ginger. Chewy Spicy Ginger Cookies? Touché, Internet. This recipe has exactly what I want, plus awesome pictures.

Only I couldn’t leave it alone. Two reasons: I lacked molasses and crystallised ginger; I wanted dates. Here’s the recipe, revised for spoonfully tastes (and reflecting gaps in my pantry as I discovered them).

Date and Ginger Chewy Bikkies

What you use:

• 2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 tsp ground cinnamon
• ¼ tsp ground nutmeg
• ¼ tsp ground ginger (desperately wanted more: alas for an ill-stocked spice box!)
• ¼ tsp salt
• ⅔ cup dark brown sugar
• ⅓ cup honey
• 1 large egg
• ¼c canola oil
• 2 Tbs fresh grated ginger
• 90g dried dates, finely chopped

What you do:

• Turn the oven on to 180°C/350° F.
• Whisk the honey, brown sugar and oil until it looks thick and mixed; add the egg and ginger and whisk until it’s frisky and foamy.
• Pile the flour into the middle of the wet ingredients, make a little divot in the top, then pile in the dates, baking soda, salt and spices. Mix these into the flour in some sort of half-arsed attempt to make up for your reluctance to comply with the instruction to mix your dry ingredients in a separate bowl. C’mon, we’re not here for a washing up party.
• When you’ve convinced yourself the flour, dates, soda, salt and spices are all properly mixed, get gung-ho and mix them into the wet ingredients waiting below.
• Roll your biscuit dough into wee balls (you may need to dust your hands with flour), put them on a greased tray and flatten slightly. When cooking, they’ll puff up but not spread much, so if you don’t like high-dome bikkies, flatten them more. Shove ‘em in and cook ‘em! Mine took about 12-15 minutes.
• Optional step before putting them in the oven: roll balls in sugiaar, or cinnamon-sugar mix, for crunchy goodness.

What you get:

You will need to provide your own whiskey and pencil.

What you will say:

“Mmmm! Mmmmfff, mmyeah, mmm. Mmm. S’good. Mmmnother, pleeff?”

What I will do slightly differently next time:

• Crystallised ginger. The original recipe has the crystallised ginger mixed through and sprinkled on top, and frankly I think that is the best thing in the universe. Delicious.
• More powdered ginger in the mix — not my fault, but still.
• I overcooked some slightly. I won’t do that again. That should go without saying, but I wanted a third thing so that my “what I would do different” list didn’t contain just “add more ginger”.

I have tasty sexy delicious chewy ginger biscuits. I have library books. I am one happy, if dorky, individual.

Portrait in Sepia

Oh my God. I first encountered Isabel Allende’s writing while studying: I read The House of the Spirits. And it didn’t blow me away. Beautiful and interesting and unlike anything else I had read? Totally. But (*wrinkles nose, clutches handbag with both hands and tilts chin in towards the chest*) a little violent. Honestly, I’m starting to think anything I said between the ages of 19 and 22 must’ve have been damn near impossible to distinguish because my head was up my arse the whole time. I’m also not proud of how I dressed, but that’s another story. My point is that I recognised some of the good points of The House of the Spirits, but I didn’t let that get in the way of being haughty and superior. I regret it. I’m glad I gave Portrait in Sepia a whirl, because it is incredible. In. Cred. Ibble.

The story covers three generations of the del Valle family, told by Aurora del Valle as she tries to find a cause — and solution — for her recurring nightmares. From this starting point, you’re lead through a beautiful and fascinating family history. The characters are rich and lively: when I finished the book, I felt like I’d just come back from a lengthy stay with them. One of the best things about the realism of these characters is that there aren’t really any classic villains or heroes or anything like that, they are alive, complex, flawed and wonderful people. Some you like, some you love, some you dislike, some you despise: but you always understand them. You know them well enough to see the morals and reasons that contributed to their decisions and actions. Brilliant stuff.

It’s a luscious and sensual book, too: the sexual relationships between characters are discussed and give you unmatchable insight into the individuals — their motivations, attitudes, and the dynamics between them. There are references to foods and comforts (and discomforts) that only heighten the reality of the world you’re in while reading. The roles and status of women in Chilean culture (of the time — the book is set during the first half of the twentieth century) is explored in a wonderfully unintrusive way.

This is such a good book. I’m so glad I read it.

Evolution’s Rainbow

From my non-fiction pile! Evolution’s Rainbow (by Joan Roughgarden) is an exploration of diversity of sexuality in animals and humans. And what a hoot! It’s fascinating to read about the many ways sexual/reproductive/family behaviour is revealed in the animal kingdom and leads you to wonder how anybody ever came to think of homosexuality, bisexuality or transsexuality as aberrant, as they’re so widespread. Reptiles, fish, birds, mammals — including primates — get frisky in such a huge variety of ways that we as an observing species seriously need to scrap heteronormativity. It’s downright laughable to assume that the slot-A-tab-B approach is the “right” one, and yet that is exactly the perspective that has coloured all zoological observations for the last umpteen centuries.

The book moves on to discuss the diverse expressions of sexuality in humans, and it is really interesting stuff. This section discusses sex and gender in relation to embryonic development, which was pretty eye-opening for me, and then goes on to discuss particular issues in human sexuality. From debunking the idea of the “gay gene” to discussing genetic research, this section talks about sexuality from a genetic level, and damned interesting it is, too.

The third section discusses cultural variations on the two-gender model, looking at different cultural approaches to transgendered, intersexed and homosexual folks. Really interesting and revealing stuff, especially if, like me, you’ve been reared in a pretty heteronormative world. There are also some horrific statistics on violence against transgendered folk, a matter that gets less attention than it should because, frankly, a lot of people aren’t sure where they stand on the matter of transgender. So the media aren’t sure how they want to spin it, viewers/readers/listeners aren’t sure how to respond to it, and the incidents tend to get quietly swept aside as “too hard”. Which emphasises the importance of this book: people aren’t sure about transgender and intersexuality (hell, a lot of people are still struggling with homosexuality) because we have been taught, for centuries, that the heterosexual approach was the Right Way, across the entirety of species on the planet, except for maybe plankton, mushrooms and viruses. Homo-, bi-, trans- and intersexuality have all been underreported or pushed aside during zoological study, reinforcing the myth that they’re genetic cockups.

Finally, Roughgarden wraps things up with an Appendix of policy suggestions: adjustments to education and research approaches that would create a world more inclusive and respectful of a greater spectrum of sexualities. Which is pretty awesome: Roughgarden has taken a solid body of research, presented compelling arguments, and then outlined a set of strategies to implement this new knowledge. It’s great. This is a fantastic read: illuminating, fascinating, eye- and mind-opening, and very well-written. Juicy stuff for your brain to chomp on.

Numinous Subjects

While we’re talking non-fiction, I also read Numinous Subjects, by Lucy Tatman, which you can download for free from the ANU in a range of formats and. Well. Whoa. It’s all about the three traditional sacred female figures (in Judaeo-Christian-based theology): the virgin, the whore and the mother. I downloaded and read it on a whim and it’s pretty mind-blowing stuff. Far from being a dry academic text, it rockets along with bursts of euphoric, free prose that explore the sacred vs religion (the unbound vibrations of the numinous vs a structure that tries to make sense of it) and the roles of women in religion. It celebrates the virgin-whore-mother figures, exploring their roles and their sexuality in relation to divinity. I had a barrel of fun reading it: it felt electric and involved and exciting.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Holy cow this one is good. I understand it’s Tartt’s first novel and it’s incredible. Six elite Classics students (passionately committed to Ancient Greek) at a Vermont university are involved in an accidental death and then a murder: that seems like such a bland and glib summary, but I don’t know how to convey to you the sheer richness and involvement of this book. The characters are living, laughing, weeping people; the locations are vivid and the action is gripping. But above all that, the atmosphere is flawless. It moves between melancholy, funny and frightening, from scene to scene, while always building the sense of menace and unease in the background, culminating in the students’ ultimate downfalls. This isn’t a murder mystery, it’s a tragedy. And it is magnificent: strong and beautiful and moving, as a tragedy should be.

There are themes of falling from ideals; what happens when literary adoration meets reality; individual tragedy and grief, whether as a result of the actions of the self, the actions of others or circumstance; the truth behind relationships and their destruction by horrific events — oh, this is a helluva story. This story is powerful, exciting and moving and I loved every minute of it: I think I finished it in about four days, but time grows fuzzy with a book this involving.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt

Another murder and another book lush with atmosphere: but they are entirely different worlds. Moving from The Secret History to Midnight triggered a bit of atmosphere whiplash, but I recovered quickly. The atmosphere in Midnight is as rich as that in The Secret History, but completely different in feel. It’s set in Savannah, Georgia, and explores the full spectrum of emotional and cultural colours such a setting implies: there’s hoodoo, there’s forceful, aggressive, joyous sexuality, there’s heat and insanity, there’s death, insanity, history, feuds and rigidly observed social rituals. The book is soaked in Savannah’s cultural vibe and you really feel like it couldn’t be set anywhere else. The murder doesn’t take place until halfway through the book, with the first half made up of character studies and vignettes. And, despite the current trend of advice to writers, which seems to say over and over “anything that isn’t plot is pointless!”, it works brilliantly. It feels like a murder story that gradually reaches boiling point and then charges on for the rest of the book.

This isn’t really a murder mystery, and, it turns out, it isn’t really a novel, either; apparently it’s based on fact. (I love reading books and then discovering that about them.) But it is exciting and engrossing, funny in places, dark in others, and so, so vivid that if you read too much in one sitting you’ll find yourself thinking with a Southern twang. It’s great.

The Name of the Rose–Umberto Eco

A murder mystery set in a medieval monastery, starring a genius Franciscan friar and his Benedictine novice! There’s sex! Lies! Scandal! Heretics! Whoredom! Politics! The Spanish Inquisition! Shady pasts, dubious futures! Suspect motivations, secrets, betrayals and passion! Holy crapoly, it’s got it all. And then there’s the religious debates: the role of laughter and imagery in religion; there’s semiotics and biblical theory; there’s debates about the nature of heresy and power and money in religious orders. This, people, is not a light read. The plot is involved and complex, but then the debates among the characters about these major, complicated issues make things even more challenging — but totally worth it. Every discussion they have is stimulating and fascinating, and leaves you thinking.

I read this in my first year at uni, mostly out of pretentiousness. I enjoyed it, but it was way out of my league. I thought so at the time, too, but I enjoyed the ride all the same. To reread it now was really satisfying: I was gripped. I wanted to participate in the debates the characters were having and ask them for more explanation. If I left my bookmark in a particularly compelling point, I worried about the characters while I wasn’t reading it. I fretted that they wouldn’t catch the murderer in time, or at all (I could remember how the murders were committed, but not by whom). Completely fantastic. The language lush and the themes challenging, complex and inspiring; and the characters so real that I count them people I know (I can’t think of any higher mark of a writer’s skill than to create characters that I have to actively remind myself are fictitious). What a delicious book. A hard one: you’ve got to concentrate while you read, because the conversations take subtle and significant turns that, if missed, will result in baffledom down the line. But a hard book is not a bad book. The Name of the Rose is fantastic. It also triggered an Umberto Eco lust that I was happy to further indulge:

Baudolino–Umberto Eco

Baudolino rocks. I just finished it this morning and I’m basking in the sticky, dazed, happy afterglow: I keep going over memorable scenes in my head and thinking “oh yeah, that bit was awesome!”. Baudolino, the main character and narrator of most of the book, is a storyteller in the richest, most involved sense: he’s a first-rate linguist and liar, and these two aspects of his personality form the basis of his life story. The book is his retelling of his life story to a Greek, Niketas, he rescues from Constantinople, which is crumbling under the Fourth Crusade. His life is incredible, full of friends, journeys and adventures, and lots and lots and lots of lies. Good ones, strong ones, that serve a purpose greater than the pleasure of hoodwinking: they’re nearly always to prevent death or help people, but they’re lies on an epic scale — which, naturally, leads you to wonder how much of his life story is true and how much is made up. (I think it’s all true. Well, you know, true in the book.) Anyway, I don’t want to say too much about the plot because you should totally read it, but here’s a few major points to moisten your literary tongue. Baudolino, as the adopted son of Frederik I, is involved in the debates about empire and the papacy from a very early age. He’s educated in Paris and helps his adoptive father with his ongoing battles — some bloody and horrific, some comical and near-bloodless — throughout Europe; ultimately book is about Baudolino leading his friends on an epic journey through medieval Europe in pursuit of Prester John, a mythic Christian king, to help resolve the Holy Roman Empire political issue for good. The story and the setting call upon historical fact, myth and religious legends, and the whole adventure is lush and fascinating as a result. Man, I love this book. Umberto Eco, if through some bizarre set of circumstances, you happen across this review (I know if I were an internationally-acclaimed historical scholar, semiotician, novelist, essayist and academic I would have nothing better to do than Google myself looking for random blog reviews of a novel I published eleven years ago), I want to say a sincere thank you for writing this book. It must have been hard, but enjoyable, work, because it’s magnificent.

It’s an exciting romp and adventure, and then it stirs your brain pot and it’s a challenging text on the nature of narrative, stories and lies, and then there is commentary on love, human motives, ambition, searches and quests, and then there’s tears and sex and battles and fun and jokes and religious reliquaries and drunken barfing. And unicorns. It’s incredible. Next on my Umberto Eco list: The Island of the Day Before. I read it in Year 12 for a class in postmodernism, and love-love-love-loved it to pieces, but I suspect, like The Name of the Rose I didn’t understand all of it. I’m really excited about rereading it and see what I find this time around.

Five Quarters of the Orange–Joanne Harris

This is the neglected, rediscovered, and passionately re-embraced novel I was talking about when I was agonising about collecting something New And Sexy from the Book Exchange.

Man, I learned a lot. This book rocks, but for completely different reasons to the two Eco novels just mentioned. Characters: interesting, believable, compelling, and I worried about them and got angry with them. I put the book aside at page 104: the narrator was up to no good and I was angry with her. She was making me tense. The funny thing is, it had taken me ages to nibble my way to page 104 — months, actually, and I’m a fast reader. Anyway, at page 104 I got the huffs and went off to read something else. Then, two days ago, I picked it up and flicked it open (I may have even had a sneer on my face, but I’m not certain) to reassure myself that yes, it was over between us, and I needn’t feel guilty about chucking it aside and grabbing that new book I wanted so badly. Well. It was like we rekindled the spark or something because WOOF I could not put it down. I read it while I was supposed to be working, I read it while I was knitting (held it open with my toes — thanks yoga!) and it was the first thing I thought of when I woke up yesterday morning. “I wonder what happens next in Five Quarters?” I was sold. I roared through the last 300-odd pages in less than twenty-four hours. And I’m glad I did. It has lots of juicy goodness: characters that earn their happy ending through meeting their faults and maturing; love conquering, if not all, then a helluva lot, and certainly the baddies; an horrific past faced; pain resolved; forgiveness, triumph, and the most lush-sounding foods and recipes mentioned casually but significantly. The senses get a good workout in this book, especially smell, and I loved it. This is a cool book: easy to read (I believe that the hiatus at page 104 was a result of my own immaturity rather than a weakness in the book) and interesting.

Plus I think I learned something about finishing what you start, but I’m not going to keep that as a hard rule. I don’t you should finish a book just because you began it: life’s too short to read duds. But I’ll keep in mind that sometimes I get bored with a book not because the book sucks but because it and I are just not on the same wavelength at that point. Which sounds a bit hippy-wafty-wavy-poo: what I mean is that sometimes a book will be better when you’re in a different frame of mind. And that can take years. Look at me and The Name of the Rose: I liked it when I was eighteen, but I freaking LOVED it at twenty-eight, when I understood more of it. I should read it again when I’m thirty-eight and see what’s different.

Five Quarters of the Orange is interesting and exciting: I’m going to return it to the shelves of the Book Exchange at work so that someone else can have a go.