A Year in Books
2009's tally: 38 books. Not a patch on previous years (in particular the year of university degree and thus long-term unemployment) but a respectable amount nonetheless. However, sixteen of those books were fluffy Regency novels by one Ms Georgette Heyer, so I am slightly ashamed of myself. On the plus side, I managed to read some books I had been meaning to read for a long time..
Good reads: I discovered Andrew Crumey and I look forward to more books by him. Moebius Dick was my favourite out of the three Crumey novels I read in 2009. AS Byatt's The Children's Book was incredibly satisfying and I re-read the last twenty-five pages twice before finally closing the book. I finally read Donna Tartt's The Secret History and while I continue to struggle with North-American fiction (Atwood notwithstanding - long story) and I had a few quibbles with certain subplots, I enjoyed the read. The best read of the year was undoubtedly Michel Faber's Under the Skin. It was one of those "nasty little books" I love so much. An incredibly well-written, tightly plotted and genre-defying novel I know I will be revisiting in years to come. It's not often I find a new favourite read.
Uneven reads: 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. Flann O'Brien's minor classic The Dalkey Archive was also a comedic read but a more successful one. I was not entirely enthralled by it, though, but I am glad I finally read it. Junot Diaz' Oscar Wao was another book I thought I would love more than I did. I am still not sure why it did not work for me and it continues to nag me.
Bad reads: I really didn't like Ross Raisin's God's Own Country. It read like Raisin had read Iain Banks' vastly superior The Wasp Factory and felt the book needed sheep. Audrey Niffenegger's much-hyped The Time-Traveller's Wife was a huge disappointment to me. I thought it would be a genre-hopping, intelligent novel and instead it was chick-lit in disguise. Honestly, if I wanted romance or sheep-herding, I'd be reading Georgette Heyer. Wait a sec..
Goal for 2010: reading fewer Georgette Heyers, reading more from the unread pile(s), get hold of the latest books by Margaret Atwood and Colm Toibin.
Isn’t It Romantic?
A few weeks ago my partner, David, came down with the flu and I succumbed a day later. I suspect it was the dreaded H1N1 flu, although we cannot be sure. I was cooped up in bed for a few days which obviously led to me devouring one book after another. That is, one Georgette Heyer regency romance after another. To be absolutely precise, fourteen Georgette Heyer books. I'm in withdrawal as we speak.
The curious thing is that I started to really get into the socio-economics described by Heyer. Usually she is praised for her knowledge of early 19th century fashion and her distinct language usage (la!), but as I was lying in bed reading one novel after one, I started paying attention to money. Who has money? Who hasn't? What do they do with the money? How does money flow through the novels? How does money connect and separate people? Gosh, I almost feel like a Marxist literary critic..
A Civil Contract sees an impoverished aristocrat marrying a wealthy trader's daughter and through the marriage attempt to improve his estate's farming conditions. It is not a wildly romantic novel (no passionate embraces; no swooning) but a rather pragmatic look at class differences and social aspirations. While the book is far from being Great Literature, I found it convincing and interesting. I'm not sure I will read it again (unless I discover an hitherto unknown passion for early 19th C drainage problems) but it is certainly one of Heyer's beefiest novels.
The Unknown Ajax is a straightforward read compared to A Civil Contract. The hero and heroine flirt, chase ghosts, encounter smugglers and fall in love. Lather, rinse, repeat. What I loved about the book, though, was the fact that the hero is a Yorkshire woollen mill owner(!) and Heyer devotes several passages to the discussion of fleeces, crimp, sheep breeds, and the economics thereof. Just the thing to read when you're in bed and too weak to knit.
At the end of it all David pondered if I like reading Heyer because of a) the fashion discussions (I am a costume history devotee), b) the Yorkshire sheep or c) the many, many dogs with distinct personalities? I like to think it's a combination of all three plus the sparkling wit, the often ludicrous language and the knowing use of literary references (like the Shakespeare, Pope and Byron quotations in Venetia, possibly my favourite Heyer novel).
Speaking of things Romantic, I have begun knitting the Percy (Bysshe Shelley) shawl in Old Maiden Aunt 2ply alpaca/merino in the Bracken colourway. I paged through my well-thumbed copy of Shelley's Collected Poems earlier today and was amused by the doom and gloom I encountered. I had forgotten how Gothic he can be..
Ah, and the title? Enjoy Chet Baker's version of it on YouTube..
Books 2009: Andrew Crumey – Mobius Dick
About eighteen months ago I read Scarlett Thomas' The End of Mr Y. I really enjoyed it and recommended her to several people. I regret doing that now I've read several books by her. Earlier I wrote this:
I do not know why I’ve read three Scarlett Thomas novels because if you take away the colourful packaging of a) metafiction (”The End of Mr Y”), b) anti-consumerism (”PopCo”) and c) popculture (”Going Out”) you get pretty much the same novel.
New Age health solutions? Check. Schrödinger’s cat? Check. Main protagonist being into her math puzzles? Check. Slightly deviant sexual orientation painted in a fairly vague way? Check. C-category drug use? Check. Vegetarianism or some variant upon it? Check. Internet featuring heavily? Check.
Andrew Crumey's novel, Mobius Dick, has me hoping that I have found the novel I thought I had in my hands when I read The End of Mr Y. It is a dazzling, original novel which defies easy categorisation (postmodern metafiction? science-fiction? thriller?). Like Thomas' book, Mobius Dick takes its cue from theoretical physics, the idea of parallel worlds and the intersection between literature and science. However, unlike Thomas, Crumey is in full control of his material and does not take the reader on unnecessary detours (although getting to the "end" is quite a roller-coaster ride).
Will I read more Crumey novels and discover he is a one-trick pony much like Ms Thomas? I hope I'll end up discovering a new favourite author. Right now it feels as though I have. Explaining the plot of Mobius Dick terrifies me slightly, so suffice to say that it feels like a bit Jorge Luis Borges mixed with David Mitchell and a dash of early Alasdair Gray. Heady.
Books 2009: Gregory Maguire – Wicked.
First book read in 2009: Gregory Maguire's Wicked which is a retelling of "The Wizard of Oz" from the viewpoint of the Wicked Witch.
It read a bit like really decent fanfiction in the sense that it subverted canon, told the story via a secondary character and fleshed out the world of Oz (like, just how did they build the Yellow Brick Road and why?). Like much fanfiction, the book also adds a healthy dollop of sexuality to a familiar story.
Did I like it? If it had been fanfiction - i.e. self-published fiction by someone whose day-job does not involve literature - I would have sung its praise because it is clever, inventive and does a marvellous job at humanising a character who's cardboard Evil in the original book. But it's not the work of a smart fan. "Wicked" is professionally published, has a John-Updike-in-the-New-Yorker recommendation on the front cover and its author talks about his book being a parable for the Vietnam war. This is where I begin to have serious reservations.
"Wicked" simply isn't good enough for that sort of pretension. It's a fun read with its fair share of structural and characterisation problems (most of which are forgiveable, admittedly, except for the middle third of the book which is one big mess) but it does not go any deeper than that. Maguire sets up quite a few interesting points - the distinction between Animals/animals; attitude towards sexuality; the divide and interdependence of science/religion - and completely fails to follow up on these points. Other Half has another two Maguire books set in Oz. I will be reading them at some point, but I'm not in any rush.
Related: Gregory Maguire reimagines "The Little Match Girl" for NPR.
Currently Reading..
Heard sung outside on the street at around 9am: I do, I do, I do believe in faeries...
I finished reading Cormac McCarthy's excellent The Road yesterday. Its sparse, exquisite prose reminded me of Marilynne Robinson's Gilead as did the preoccupation with love and tenderness. However, while Gilead is about a place and staying there, The Road travels through nameless towns, through woods and across mountains. It deals with a world where there are no places or localities - insofar as 'place' is situated in time (cf. Foucault and the discussion of space/place) or in memory. McCarthy's book is bleak, austere and shockingly beautiful. It is also a strong contender for Best Read of 2008.
Speaking of which, one of the best reads I had last year was the flawed but absolutely fascinating The End of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas. I just picked up her PopCo and I am somewhat reassured by reviewers insisting that despite the ghastly cover, it is 'intelligent and witty'.
Finally, astute readers with stalkerishly attention to blog-details may note that I have re-designed Fourth Edition and that it now bears an astonishing resemblance to a certain blogspot blog I kept years and years ago. What can I say? I'm retro.
The Scandal of the Season
I am currently reading Sophie Gee's "The Scandal of the Season" and it is a bewildering read.
The plot outline: 18th century Britain. Catholics and Protestants live side by side uneasily. The young poet Alexander Pope is heading to London to make his name. He encounters a situation he'll later immortalise in the wonderful mock epic The Rape of the Lock. So, by all accounts you get literary history in the making, the (in)famous flirt between Lord Petre and Arabella Fermor (as immortalised in the poem), religious troubles and a look at the early 18th century landscape. Ms Gee knows a helluva lot about the period and therein lies the real problem of this book.
I cannot enjoy it as fiction. The characters speak wonderfully witty early 18th century English but they all speak in the same manner. There is no distinct turn of phrase, no subtle nuances to their voices and after a few pages it begins to grate. The characters are not fleshed out, they never leap off the page and the plot drags. Furthermore, because Sophie Gee has her characters repartee so beautifully, the more modern phrases she occasionally employs spring out and annoy. As an expert writing on the literary and political landscape of early 18th century London, Gee convinces, though. I wish she had written a nice, witty treatise on that subject - she has apparently written academic articles on the matter - but it's not very likely that little book would have made it to my little secondhand bookstore.
I did find Read for Pleasure through googling for Sophie Gee, so not all's lost.