Books 2010: Ishiguro, Larsson
As I was reading Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (or Män som hatar kvinnor, Men Who Hate Women, a much preferable title which I shall use forthwith), I kept thinking about my previous read, Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. What was it about Ishiguro's novel which singled it out as an automatic qualifier for the "Worst Read of 2010" post I will be writing early next year? What made it particularly awful?
Only a handful of books make it to my all-time God-Awful Reads list.
Jonathan Myerson's Noise is one: wildly inconsistent pacing, one plot dropped in favour for another as Myerson seemingly got bored with his original idea (or found himself incapable of writing the novel he set out to do) and a constant sneering, smug sense of contempt running throughout the book (the only consistent thing about it). Julian Barnes' England, England is another. Barnes had two great ideas (England as a theme-park and a Baudrillardian take on said theme-park) but could not get them to work in the context of a novel. A cautionary tale that sometimes you need to write an essay rather than try to work your ideas out in fiction. And then dear Ian McEwan with his Booker-winning Amsterdam, a book so contrived, self-indulgent and ill-executed that it has coloured my reading of everything else McEwan has written.
I think what bothers me about Never Let Me Go was the pointlessness of it. I cannot even pretend to loathe it as there is nothing there to loathe. I cannot point to any smug, self-inflated sense of importance (Myerson's Noise), any over-ambitious intellectualism running rampant (Barnes' England, England), nor any toe-curlingly bad writing and plotting (McEwan's Amsterdam). Ishiguro's book is just .. there. It doesn't challenge, doesn't engage, doesn't take a stand and doesn't make you think. I'm bothered by this (which could be argued is an achievement, of course).
By contrast I finished reading Larsson's novel this morning having raced through it over the course of the weekend. Män som hatar kvinnor is not my cup of tea. I am a squeamish reader who does not enjoy reading page after page filled with gory details or graphic sexual encounters. I also had real issues with the main characters (the main investigator, Mikael Blomkvist, was an author surrogate; Lisbeth Salander, Blomkvist's hacker sidekick, was a pile of clichés, or, as Joan Smith points out in her excellent review, 'a revenge fantasy come to life.'). Having said that, the book made me care. I cared about finding old photographs and piecing together what happened one afternoon in 1966. The plot was convincing (if too gory for me) and unpredictable. Larsson's real strength, to me, was his description of milieus: both the remote Hedestad community and the smart and educated Stockholm media intelligentsia were drawn with a strong, decisive hand. I do not think I shall be seeking out the two other books in Larsson's trilogy - I'm too squeamish and not much of a crime-writing connoisseur - but if you like your crime novels smart, well-written and compelling, I'd recommend Män som hatar kvinnor in a heartbeat.
Next: I need to read a book written by a women, I think. Mantel & Wolf Hall, here I come.
Knitting & Reading
Meet Larry the Leicester.
I am knitting Larry out of British Sheep Breeds DK in Bluefaced Leicester cream and brown. The pattern is Janice Anderson's free sheep pattern (pdf). I made a slight mess of picking up stitches around Larry's face (the decreases stand out more than I'd like), but I hope it'll even out once I stuff the toy. I'm knitting Larry on request, but I'm actually enjoying the process way more than I thought I would.
I'm really, really loving the BSB wool: it is a heady combination of the rustic wools I love so dearly (smells faintly of sheep, is unprocessed, comes in natural colours only) and the tempting butter-soft merinos I keep going back to (so very soft, feels great as you're working with it, next-to-skin smooth). I had no idea it would be so fabulous, although my friend LH has been in raptures over it for as long as I have known her. I really have to knit a jumper or cardigan out of it one of these days. Srsly.
In very related news, my knitting bag is safe. Don't ask.
I finished reading Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go on Friday and I was very disappointed. The book has a meaty subject matter and Ishiguro has the necessary writing chops, but instead of an "extraordinary", "enthralling" and "masterly" book I was left reading a rather tedious, flawed novel. I get that Ishiguro writes about people unable to live full lives, people who are somehow lost (even to themselves) and people who are out of step with time. I get that he "writes like someone impersonating a realist" with resulting defamilarization etc. Still, the novel has an extraordinarily clumsy dénouement, the plot has numerous gaping holes and the writing felt lazy as though Ishiguro was painting by numbers. Never Let Me Go just did not add up as a satisfactory read and I am left wondering if the glowing reviews (and subsequent prize-nominations etc) were the result of Ishiguro's reputation as an important British novelist or if I am losing my grip on what a good literary novel reads like.
Next: I have exchanged my book vouchers for Toibin's Brooklyn and Mantel's Wolf Hall. I even got Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo thrown in as a special offer, although I rather regret not getting it in Swedish (but then David would be disadvantaged).
Sunnudagr
Life itself has caught up with me, so I am running behind on important things such as answering emails, sorting paperwork and, well, doing the dishes. This weekend I have allowed myself some time off and will be cooped up in bed with books, hot tea and a warm duvet. I have finally accepted this is a necessity, not a luxury, if I am to remain relatively sane, capable and congenial. It only took me some thirty years or so.
I finished reading China Miéville's The City & the City the other night, though. I had previously tried getting through Adam Roberts' Swiftly (which felt like a disastrous date set up by an online dating agency based upon our preferences and demographics, but the spark wasn't there and we disliked each other from the get-go) and Mark Slouka's The Visible World (which I'm pondering giving a second go), so when I flew through Miéville's novel, I was relieved. I'd recommend it - particularly if you like smart speculative fiction or want a detective novel with an added flourish - although it was a bit too plot-driven for my taste. Also, I liked Miéville's light writerly touches such as naming the border area between the two cities "Copula Hall" (grammar nerd alert).
I'm now awaiting the paperback releases of Colm Toibin's Brooklyn, Hillary Mantel's Wolf Hall and, of course, Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood. What books are you looking forward to reading?
Knitting-wise, I have made some headway on my summer top (now forever known as "Frankie Says.." and I'm showing my age) and I have cast on for a second pair of socks(!) seeing as my first pair are lovely, warm and perfect for snuggling up at night (again, showing my age).
And now it is time to do said snuggling under the covers with a book. Have a lovely Sunday.
Warm and Fuzzy In Several Ways
For some odd reason I keep going back to the idea of a knitted dress. I found a machine-knitted dress in Monsoon (British clothes shop) which I absolutely loved (apart from the fibre make-up) and then I saw some jaw-dropping Briars and lengthened Dusty tunics. I just sit here in my cold flat and imagine how wonderfully soft, comfortable and warm they would be to wear. Then I remember how traumatised I get when knitting more than one sleeve or a slightly lengthy body. Maybe I would not go nuts knitting a dress or tunic, but the jury is definitely out on that one.
Plus, you know, I had the following exchange today: "Can I talk to the lady in charge of this?" - "That's me. " - "No, I want to talk to the slim one." Ouch. Maybe a soft, clingy knitted dress is a very bad idea, full stop.
Anyway. Finished object: my Kaiti shawl knitted in Rowan Kidsilk Haze (shade: Liqueur). I used just a smidgen over two balls (and you could totally get away with just two balls) on 4.5mm and although I really wanted to knit Sharon Miller's Birch, I used the top-down version, Kiri, to maximise the shawl-to-yarn ratio. This is a supersoft and very, very warm shawl.
(I'm not-so-slowly getting addicted to Kidsilk Haze - I'd love to knit a cosy jumper in KSH and have fallen in love with yet another Kim Hargreaves design: Veer from Rowan 32. The simple lines plus the quirky little details just stole my heart. )
Photo taken at the Kelvingrove Museum which is my favourite Glasgow museum, hands down. No matter how often I visit, I see something new and interesting. They even have a small, but exquisite collection of Early Modern Period art (one of my favourite ages). Afterwards we headed towards the Hunterian Art Gallery where, be still my heart, we saw a special exhibition on Albrecht Dürer in Italy and printmaking (including an incunabulum, phroawr). Seriously, seriously good stuff. I love my neighbourhood.
Reading the Past
The economic recession has claimed many victims. The first phase saw people losing jobs, companies going bankrupt and banks folding. Experts say that this first wave is over. Signs of economic growth are visible in the financial sectors. We are now living through the second phase: spending cuts have to be made. This is all very textbook Keynesian economic theory and I recommend reading up on John Maynard Keynes (quite apart from being a significant economist, Keynes was also part of the Bloomsbury group alongside Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster and Lyndham Lewis) if most of the current financial news leaves you confused.
Spending cuts hurt. Before Christmas, many of my physicist friends were shocked when spending cuts to the tune of £115m were made in the science research sector. When I graduated from university in Denmark some seven or eight years ago, I saw what huge spending cuts will do to scientific research. It was not pretty. My then-department went from being autonomous with at least six new PhD students every year to being yoked together with five other subjects and get one PhD student every other year. The departmental restructuring made for some interesting cross-pollination, but also for disastrous academic results.
And so I learn that Kings College London may have to shut down its Palaeography department in order to meet budget targets. No restructuring, no "let us marry you to Library Science (however awkward) or maybe History or how about Archaeology?" and no shuffling the cards. I am not just saddened. I am shocked. KCL is the only place in the UK to have a Palaeography department and, I believe, even the only place in Europe.
Palaeography, the study of ancient handwriting, may sound like a very obscure subject - and really it is an obscure subject - but it is also incredibly important to scholars. Printing being a very recent invention, most available written material was done by hand and scholars need to be able to decipher handwriting. You get different writing systems (think Cuneiform), different alphabets (think how different the Phoenician alphabet looks to the Latin alphabet) and then different ways of interpreting the alphabets through writing. Pre-printing, many European kingdoms would have their own way of combining and forming letters - Johanna Drucker is particularly good on this, if you want to read more - and some handwriting is only intelligible to specialists who have studied handwriting traditions of a particular area (South Germany, for instance). So much material is now being made available by library specialists, but now I wonder who will be around to read, understand and disseminate this material.
(If I had know that Palaeography existed as a discipline when I started university, I would have ended up in a very different place to now. As is, most of my knowledge is filtered through print culture, so I apologise for any glaring mistakes)
The Accidental Woman
One of my favourite places in Glasgow has to be the Botanic Garden. When I first moved here, we lived less than three minutes away by foot and I always made a point of walking through the Botanics whenever I was walking to or fro work. Nowadays we live slightly further afield and my journey to work takes me another route, so I only get to wander around the Botanics on my days off. I like visiting often, so I can keep up with what is happening: that tree has lost its flowers, the little robin is nowhere to be seen, the cocoa plant has a new pod etc.
And in winter, the greenhouses provide great knitwear photo opportunities! Yes, 'tis my own Feather & Fan shawl. Apparently these shawls are like salted peanuts: you cannot have just one.
I finished reading Jonathan Coe's The Accidental Woman yesterday. Coe is one of my favourite contemporary authors and his What A Carve Up! is a brilliant dissection of Thatcherite Britain while I push the very affecting The House of Sleep on most of my friends. The Accidental Woman was Coe's debut novel and owes more to Coe's admitted obsession with experimental stylists like Alasdair Gray and BS Johnson than any of Coe's other books. From a technical point of view, The Accidental Woman is actually very good. The narrator decides to take an average, dull person, Maria, as his subject and the resulting novel is really about the narrator's attempt to construct "a novel", the writing process and the struggle to fit Maria into a conventional novel. The novel leaps confidently back and forth between the primary narrative and the behind-the-scenes bits which is rather astonishing considering this was Coe's first novel. However, the technical feat does make the book feel very dated (in a 1980s-high-on-metafiction sort of way) and the novel itself is deadly dull. Anyone teaching narratology might get a kick out of it, but, really, most people would do far better to read Coe's later books. They are equally well-constructed but also have the added benefits of plots, interesting characters, humour and political outrage.
Oh, and I watched the recent RSC/BBC production of Hamlet last night. I have seen several productions/versions of Hamlet in my time (that's what you get for the double whammy of being a Dane and studying English) and quite enjoyed the newest version despite a very, very, very hammy Ophelia. Oh, and I liked how the newspaper had headlines written in Danish..
Books 2010: Carter Beats The Devil
Something about 
early twentieth century arts and culture fascinates me. I like my so-called high culture as much as my pop culture and early twentieth century arts and culture loved to combine avant-garde ideas with popular culture. Some years ago I read Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. It told the tale of America's burgeoning comics industry but Kavalier & Clay was something more than just a paen to superheroes. Chabon had managed to write a novel about the twentieth century and about twentieth century America, in particular. Small, personal stories had been woven into a giant tapestry. Kavalier & Clay was astounding. Beautifully written and intricately plotted, it delivered both as a literary novel and as fast-paced action/adventure. I loved it.
Glen David Gold's Carter Beats the Devil was published around the same time as Chabon's novel. Like Kavalier & Clay, Gold's novel revolves around the idea of escapism in one way or another. Mainly taking place in 1920s America, Gold's book deals with illusionist Charles Carter who suddenly finds himself in trouble when President Harding dies shortly after having participated in one of Carter's illusions. Cue chapter upon chapter filled with vaudeville acts, flappers, Russian anarchists, baffling illusions, quirky scientists, and a lot of card-shuffling. It should be entertaining and it is entertaining - but unfortunately I have read Chabon's novel which not only shuffles similar cards better but also pulls off far bigger sleights of hand.
I did enjoy the book, though. I liked the description of vaudeville performers travelling around trying to entertain people but gradually seeing their audience fall prey to moving pictures (and, later, television). I liked reading about how illusionists worked: the patter, the agility, the teamwork behind the scene and how illusions were constructed (although they are rarely explained in the novel). I just have two main problems with CBTD. Firstly, the novel is too long for its plot. Gold tries to go for a Wilkie Collins-esque vibe and also gives world-building a fair go, but this results in a book about 150 pages too long. Secondly, the writing style is clunky at times. I know some people do not care about writing styles, but I do. I am one of those people who really do not care about the plot as long as the book is well-written (I like Alan Hollinghurst, for heaven's sake).
At the end of the day, Carter Beats the Devil was an entertaining read but it was definitely not The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (which you should read if you haven't already).
Next: Jonathan Coe's first novel, The Accidental Woman.
Still Waters
Yes, it continues to be cold. The novelty of snow has long worn off. My sole source of weather-related amusement is the media who insist 60,000 people will die in the Big Freeze, the British Army is being set in and the beginning of food shortages lead to soaring prices. Yesterday night BBC News ran a Breaking News! story which was - and I kid you not - that snowflakes were seen falling in London. Panic, panic, panic.. but I do find it annoying that we have to pour hot water down our loo every few hours so that the pipes do not freeze. One part of our apartment building had to be shut down because the pipes burst. If ever there was an argument against pipes being stuck to the outside of buildings and exposed to the elements, then this is surely it? Oh you wacky Britons.
While I was at work yesterday (and hello to those of you who came visiting), David went for a walk along the River Kelvin. It is almost completely frozen and signs are up warning people against letting their dogs run unto the ice. Despite all the stern signage, Dave did spot a few illiterate animals out and about on the ice - including a little mink drinking a bit of water. I continue to be amazed at how much wildlife we have on our doorstep, even if we live in the middle of a sprawling city.
I'm currently reading Glen David Gold's Carter Beats the Devil which I gave David for Christmas (he hasn't had a chance to start it yet as he is reading his way through the other five novels I gave him). I bought it because I knew how much Dave had enjoyed Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and I got a similar vibe from CBTD. If you like Kavalier & Clay, early 20th century popular entertainment or maybe even Wilkie Collins, I think CBTD might appeal. I'm certainly enjoying the glimpses into vaudeville performances, music halls and larger-than-life personalities.
Finally, I'm listening a fair bit to Martha Wainwright's album of Edith Piaf songs, Sans Fusils Ni Souliers A Paris. You can get a taste of it by watching Martha singing L'Accordéoniste on Jools Holland's show (youtube link). Her darling brother is touring Britain in April and I'm hoping for a concert ticket for my birthday.
Kettle Pot Black
I have always been slightly uneasy about my geek tendencies, but there is no denying them. I worked briefly for a computer gaming magazine in my early student years, I have a respectable selection of polygon dice, the shelves boast both Geoffrey Chaucer and William Gibson, and I have seen Star Wars more time than I care to admit. I even saw Revenge of the Sith twice in theatres which is geek dedication, I will have you know. But I won't stand for just any dross just because it has a spaceship, clever future technologies or a ray-gun. No, I like my genre indulgences to be smart, interesting and ambitious (.. or have Ewan McGregor wielding a light sabre).
We watched Franklyn tonight. A strange little genre film starring Ryan Phillippe and Eva Green - the sort of film B-list actors do between mortgage-paying big studio films and which often end up their best showcases (Gangster No. 1 is still Paul Bettany's best film, for instance). I liked Franklyn, I really did. It felt like a British cross between Dark City and Donnie Darko with beautiful photography and stunning art direction to boot. I am not sure it would appeal to people with little interest in "geek stuff" but if you like your slightly surreal alternate realities and high concepts, this film might just appeal. As David said to me earlier: "If I had watched this two days ago, it would have been my favourite film of 2009".
Speaking of "high concepts" I was mildly amused to see Adam Roberts' review of the new Jasper Fforde opus in The Guardian.
A kind of pleasant implausibility has always been at the heart of Fforde's appeal. (..) Shades of Grey, while not laugh-out-loud funny, is agreeably and pleasantly eccentric, cleanly written and nicely characterised. (..) The first 250 pages are narratively underpowered and rather diffuse. Fforde's young protagonist, Edward Russet, putters around his world, and the reader slowly builds up a picture of how things work. The second half is more gripping, and a climactic expedition (..) becomes page-turningly exciting. (..) I finished it with the sense that there's less to it than meets the eye. The narrowness of the high concept is, finally, too much a sort of meagreness, and too little a scalpel edge.
Compare this with my own recent review of Roberts' own Yellow Blue Tibia (in which I sadly omit to mention the strained comedic tone to the first 250 pages and the painstakingly eccentric characters which litter the entire novel):
I read Adam Roberts’ Yellow Blue Tibia this holiday season and I wanted to love it. Its premise sounds like something I would like – Soviet Union, science fiction writers and the possibility of multiple realities – but I ended up being disappointed. Roberts’ writing is sloppy (as is the editing), the tone is uneven and the book does not live up to its premise until fifty pages from the end when you get the feeling Roberts is finally writing the book he wants to write. I was very unimpressive with a running gag about a man with Asperger’s Syndrome which was wholly unnecessary to the plot and jarred badly. Still, the last fifty pages or so redeemed the book from being merely a bad read. It was an uneven and occasionally interesting read.
Maybe Roberts should have called his book Kettle Pot Black instead.