- I did in fact manage to read 52 books in 2016, which I'm pretty sure will never happen again now I'm a proper adult at uni, and
- Now I've finished first year I can publish things I wrote without the university thinking I've plagiarised myself. Which is a bonus
Saturday, 14 October 2017
Okay so yes, I did disappear for months on end and yes, I only ever posted a few lines about books I'd read while I was here but
Saturday, 27 February 2016
Week four, book four
A book by an author you've never read before - NW
I was a little tentative going into reading this, even though I've had Zadie Smith's various books recommended to me by just about everyone I know.
She has a very distinctive way of writing, which was particularly noticeable in NW as it's told from several different characters' perspectives. I usually avoid reading anything like this at all costs (I once read a book set across eight centuries and via at least one ghost and I'm still not sure who was alive by the end).
Happily, though, NW does not jump perspectives from chapter to chapter, instead following one person's life in the months leading up to one weekend in summer, and then backtracking again and retelling it through another's eyes. It's pretty daunting to begin with, as the thoughts and surroundings of the first storyteller - Leah - are piled on top of one another. Memories, half-heard conversations, and that endless London rush build up to establish setting more effectively than just about anything I've read recently.
Since finishing NW I have read a handful of reviews, and a recurring criticism seems to be its slump in pace. I've been guilty of giving up on books that do this but I persevered here and didn't find the novel especially slow. If anything, I think a slower pace works in its favour, adding to this feeling of the oppressive, lazy city heat. I finished reading this while sat in a doctors' surgery on a grey January evening, and I still felt like I'd been transported to London in a bustling summer.
I really enjoyed NW, once I'd got used to Smith's writing style and lack of speech marks (this always, always throws me) and I've since found a copy of her book On Beauty in a charity shop, which I can't wait to start reading.
I borrowed a copy of this from the library but failing that it can be bought directly from Random House here. Here's the reading guide I'm following this year.
I was a little tentative going into reading this, even though I've had Zadie Smith's various books recommended to me by just about everyone I know.
She has a very distinctive way of writing, which was particularly noticeable in NW as it's told from several different characters' perspectives. I usually avoid reading anything like this at all costs (I once read a book set across eight centuries and via at least one ghost and I'm still not sure who was alive by the end).
Happily, though, NW does not jump perspectives from chapter to chapter, instead following one person's life in the months leading up to one weekend in summer, and then backtracking again and retelling it through another's eyes. It's pretty daunting to begin with, as the thoughts and surroundings of the first storyteller - Leah - are piled on top of one another. Memories, half-heard conversations, and that endless London rush build up to establish setting more effectively than just about anything I've read recently.
Since finishing NW I have read a handful of reviews, and a recurring criticism seems to be its slump in pace. I've been guilty of giving up on books that do this but I persevered here and didn't find the novel especially slow. If anything, I think a slower pace works in its favour, adding to this feeling of the oppressive, lazy city heat. I finished reading this while sat in a doctors' surgery on a grey January evening, and I still felt like I'd been transported to London in a bustling summer.
I really enjoyed NW, once I'd got used to Smith's writing style and lack of speech marks (this always, always throws me) and I've since found a copy of her book On Beauty in a charity shop, which I can't wait to start reading.
I borrowed a copy of this from the library but failing that it can be bought directly from Random House here. Here's the reading guide I'm following this year.
Week three, book three
A mystery or thriller - The Secret Adversary
Wow. I'm really bad at posting these each week.
I'm an absolute sucker for crime dramas, and especially period crime dramas. So when the BBC commissioned an adaptation of Agatha Christie's The Secret Adversary (broadcast last summer) I was interested to see these new characters, as I'd not come across Tommy and Tuppence before.
The two private detectives are not, perhaps, her most likeable creations, although they are at least a good deal more so than Poirot. Tommy can come across as rather pompous and a little slow, but he's mostly reliable and can be a quick thinker in tight situations. I found Tuppence really quite endearing, although I did get the impression that Christie didn't like her all that much.
(Is this just me? I find this with so many of Christie's female characters, especially young women.)
What marks The Secret Adversary out, too, is its setting. Beginning shortly after the end of World War I, it follows the now-unemployed Tommy and Tuppence setting up a detective agency and quickly becoming embroiled in the delicate international politics of the 1920s. It can get a little overcomplicated at times, and isn't always successful in building and sustaining tension, but at its heart there is a good thriller and the beginnings of a great writer.
This novel is more overtly political than some of Christie's later work, but still with the twists and turns you'd expect from her writing - I had no idea who the criminal mastermind, Mr Brown, might be until he revealed himself - and the lightly humourous dialogue Christie came to master is there almost from the start.
The Secret Adversary is available for free here. Here's the reading guide I'm following this year.
Wow. I'm really bad at posting these each week.
I'm an absolute sucker for crime dramas, and especially period crime dramas. So when the BBC commissioned an adaptation of Agatha Christie's The Secret Adversary (broadcast last summer) I was interested to see these new characters, as I'd not come across Tommy and Tuppence before.
The two private detectives are not, perhaps, her most likeable creations, although they are at least a good deal more so than Poirot. Tommy can come across as rather pompous and a little slow, but he's mostly reliable and can be a quick thinker in tight situations. I found Tuppence really quite endearing, although I did get the impression that Christie didn't like her all that much.
(Is this just me? I find this with so many of Christie's female characters, especially young women.)
What marks The Secret Adversary out, too, is its setting. Beginning shortly after the end of World War I, it follows the now-unemployed Tommy and Tuppence setting up a detective agency and quickly becoming embroiled in the delicate international politics of the 1920s. It can get a little overcomplicated at times, and isn't always successful in building and sustaining tension, but at its heart there is a good thriller and the beginnings of a great writer.
This novel is more overtly political than some of Christie's later work, but still with the twists and turns you'd expect from her writing - I had no idea who the criminal mastermind, Mr Brown, might be until he revealed himself - and the lightly humourous dialogue Christie came to master is there almost from the start.
The Secret Adversary is available for free here. Here's the reading guide I'm following this year.
Saturday, 23 January 2016
Week two, book two
A play - Spring Awakening
I've had an incredibly busy (it's sort of ridiculous) first fortnight or so back at work, so I decided to take it easy for the second week's text and pick a play, and again one whose plot I know quite well.
And then I forgot to publish this post for a further week.
As will become apparent, I'm something of a theatre fan, and I absolutely love the 2006 musical adaptation of the play. For those who don't know it, the musical of Spring Awakening is in many ways historically accurate. Its costumes and dialogue are largely as they would have been in early twentieth century productions of the original play, and dialogue in particular has been kept deliberately close to Wedekind's text.
And then there's the part where the score is made up of modern rock songs.
It sounds utterly bizarre, but this actually works really well, and is definitely in keeping with Wedekind's play. The 1906 Spring Awakening is forward-thinking, it's perceptive, and its message was so important and so refreshing at the time. It's a play about teenagers and at least partly for them. (It's also targeted pretty clearly at the adults raising, teaching, and preaching to said teenagers.) A rock score makes sense. Like the play, it's refreshing, and its melodies, lyrics, and choreography are so vibrant and youthful. It's two-thirds energetic joyful youth and a third heartbreak looking at the lives of these children from over 100 years ago.
I really enjoyed the play, especially the handful of scenes that were totally new to me. I'm trying to be spoiler-free, but at one point a character's father tells us repeatedly that "the boy was nothing to me" while clearly grieving for his lost son. Obviously, seeing a parent say anything along these lines is always distressing, but the man is utterly destroyed and swearing otherwise to keep it together. (Of course, this same emotional divide between a detached father and an anxious son is what did much of the damage in the first place.) The nature of this scene in the musical means that the father is mute - pretty neat, especially given the tyrannical control he displays over his son until this point - while the other children grieve aloud. To read Wedekind's play and see the father totally break down - but still not admitting it! - really got to me.
I'm not convinced by my translation of Spring Awakening and might look out for other versions of it throughout the year, but I'm glad I read it. Fair warning: the story is pretty heavy and contains discussion and depiction of child abuse, underage sex, suicide, and abortion.
I read the Ziegler translation, available for free here. Here's the reading guide I'm following this year.
I've had an incredibly busy (it's sort of ridiculous) first fortnight or so back at work, so I decided to take it easy for the second week's text and pick a play, and again one whose plot I know quite well.
And then I forgot to publish this post for a further week.
As will become apparent, I'm something of a theatre fan, and I absolutely love the 2006 musical adaptation of the play. For those who don't know it, the musical of Spring Awakening is in many ways historically accurate. Its costumes and dialogue are largely as they would have been in early twentieth century productions of the original play, and dialogue in particular has been kept deliberately close to Wedekind's text.
And then there's the part where the score is made up of modern rock songs.
It sounds utterly bizarre, but this actually works really well, and is definitely in keeping with Wedekind's play. The 1906 Spring Awakening is forward-thinking, it's perceptive, and its message was so important and so refreshing at the time. It's a play about teenagers and at least partly for them. (It's also targeted pretty clearly at the adults raising, teaching, and preaching to said teenagers.) A rock score makes sense. Like the play, it's refreshing, and its melodies, lyrics, and choreography are so vibrant and youthful. It's two-thirds energetic joyful youth and a third heartbreak looking at the lives of these children from over 100 years ago.
I really enjoyed the play, especially the handful of scenes that were totally new to me. I'm trying to be spoiler-free, but at one point a character's father tells us repeatedly that "the boy was nothing to me" while clearly grieving for his lost son. Obviously, seeing a parent say anything along these lines is always distressing, but the man is utterly destroyed and swearing otherwise to keep it together. (Of course, this same emotional divide between a detached father and an anxious son is what did much of the damage in the first place.) The nature of this scene in the musical means that the father is mute - pretty neat, especially given the tyrannical control he displays over his son until this point - while the other children grieve aloud. To read Wedekind's play and see the father totally break down - but still not admitting it! - really got to me.
I'm not convinced by my translation of Spring Awakening and might look out for other versions of it throughout the year, but I'm glad I read it. Fair warning: the story is pretty heavy and contains discussion and depiction of child abuse, underage sex, suicide, and abortion.
I read the Ziegler translation, available for free here. Here's the reading guide I'm following this year.
Monday, 4 January 2016
Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
In my last post I mentioned that one of my targets for this year is to read at least 40 books (not including rereads) and happily I've already finished one. I'm working roughly to this guide that I found last January and followed, more or less, throughout 2015.
However I'm not following it terribly closely, as I had no idea Bridget Jones's Diary was published in 1996 until I Googled it just now. Still, it's a good way to read outside of my usual taste in authors.
Bridget Jones's Diary is something of a cliché choice to start the year with, but I genuinely love the film and I think a reading challenge like this is easier if you start with a story whose ending you already know. Sure enough many of my favourite moments were there, although sadly not the bit where she eats Branston pickle out of the jar. (I mean, who doesn't have days like that?)
Over the course of this year I'm trying as much as is possible to avoid buying the books I read from Amazon (pay your taxes, guys. Come on) and instead making use of my local charity shops, independent bookshops, and library. Failing that, authors' own websites can be a great way to ensure they get a decent cut of the profits, and Bridget Jones's Diary can be bought directly from Picador here.
However I'm not following it terribly closely, as I had no idea Bridget Jones's Diary was published in 1996 until I Googled it just now. Still, it's a good way to read outside of my usual taste in authors.
Bridget Jones's Diary is something of a cliché choice to start the year with, but I genuinely love the film and I think a reading challenge like this is easier if you start with a story whose ending you already know. Sure enough many of my favourite moments were there, although sadly not the bit where she eats Branston pickle out of the jar. (I mean, who doesn't have days like that?)
Over the course of this year I'm trying as much as is possible to avoid buying the books I read from Amazon (pay your taxes, guys. Come on) and instead making use of my local charity shops, independent bookshops, and library. Failing that, authors' own websites can be a great way to ensure they get a decent cut of the profits, and Bridget Jones's Diary can be bought directly from Picador here.
Friday, 1 January 2016
Day one.
So, it's 1 January. Already.
The idea behind this whole blog is that I'll be using it to share with you, the world, and probably my mum, my everyday thoughts, annoyances, and baking escapades.
This could go either very well indeed or fizzle out in February, because
- My everyday thoughts are theoretically already recorded every day in a journal I started last 1 January. I put said journal down in a Sensible Place in March and didn't find it again till early June (which hopefully won't happen with a website), but I did then atone for this by writing every day for three months solid
- My everyday annoyances - Achilles' heels, one might say - tend to become very rambly very fast. There's always Feynman's idea about how writing down problems helps solve them, but I think he was talking about, like. Quantum mechanics, and stuff
- My baking escapades - I am a terrific comfort zoner in baking. I started a year ago and I've made the same chocolate brownies recipe maybe four times?
Anyway, a few goals for 2016:
- Audition for at least two shows: I'm big on amdram and it'd be great to keep this up
- Read at least 40 new books: 52 would be great but I might die
- Work on decorating cakes: I am atrocious. I have decorated one cake, ever (this year's Christmas cake) and it took me about seven hours and I used almost a kilogram of icing sugar and I think there's still some in my hair a week later
I'd also like to post here at least once a week - if nothing else, it might help me keep track of what books I've read. I tried this 52 books thing last year but forgot to write them down and have genuinely no idea how I did.
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