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.

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..

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.

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.

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.

Secondly, the new Winter Knitty is up. If I weren’t still working on David’s sweater, I would cast on for Mr Darcy for him.

Thirdly, I just finished reading AS Byatt’s The Children’s Book this morning and I have all these thoughts running through my head.

Yesterday I wrote briefly about whether I connect with favourite authors because they have shaped my ways of thinking or I connect with these authors because they mirror the way I think? The egg or the chicken?

When I go on one of my solitary walks, I often get sentences or lines of poetry running through my head. Sometimes I just “hear” fragments, other times I get an entire stanza. The regular visitors include Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Silent Noon, DH Lawrence’s Gloire de Dijon, and John Donne’s Holy Sonnet XIV. Most often, though, I hear TS Eliot. It runs the gamut from his most famous works like Prufrock and the Waste Land to lesser known pieces from Inventions of the March Hare. I view the world through words and many of these words came from Eliot. I am vaguely amused by this – after all, I am not the first nor will be the last to define myself using others’ words.

And so AS Byatt. I first read one of her books one week into my university years. All these years later, Byatt is one of those very few authors whose entire oeuvre I have read. I connect with her books – they are filled with solitary bookish women surrounded by a far too material world. Last night I watch an interview with her and closed my eyes when she said: “All I ever wanted was to live a life of the mind.” In a world defined by emotions, feelings and exteriors, I am drawn towards her books of ideas, thoughts and interiors.

The Children’s Book is exquisite. It is a messy book insofar as it describes a messy world and also is also slightly messy structurally. A proper review would be far too long – you can find good reviews and synopses elsewhere – but it suffices to say that I really liked it. I re-read the final fifteen pages twice and I suspect I will revisit the novel just as I have revisited several of Byatt’s other novels.

But am I drawn towards Byatt because I am a solitary bookish woman (bound by class) who just wants to live a life of the mind? Or have I become a solitary bookish woman because I spent my formative years reading books by AS Byatt (and EM Forster)?

Thoughts of a dry brain in a chilly season.

Tania of Cherry Makes is a good craft friend of mine. We have never met, of course, but that has never stopped me from forming friendships. Recently Tania came up with the intriguing idea of Ten for ‘10: “Simply choose ten things that you think will expand your skill set, and resolve to make something that tries your new skills out”.

I want to participate in Ten for ‘10, but have been thinking hard about what I want to achieve craft-wise next year. Without going into too many details, my life might just undergo a few changes in the next few months and I find it difficult to think beyond the next few weeks. So I am expanding Tania’s idea to go beyond craft and include other things too. It is not a New Year’s Resolution wrought early, in case you are wondering, but more like things I feel I may have neglected lately.

1. I want to read more than I have in 2009. Or, rather, I want to read better quality than I have in 2009. I find it easy to curl up with frivolous little books, whenever I’m feeling sorry for myself, but I should also curl up with books that make me think (because I love books that make me think and sometimes I forget this).
2. I should watch more films. We went to the cinema once in 2009 which is plainly ridiculous. We watched a few on DVD, but there is definitely room for improvement.
3. I want to feel comfortable baking with dried yeast. I grew up using fresh yeast for bread-making and since moving to the UK I have been reluctant to scale this molehill called “dry yeast”. Enough.
4. I should really get around to knitting a pair of socks. It is not that I cannot wrap my head around sock-knitting, it is more that I’m not entirely convinced I will enjoy the process.
5. Make Flyte, the jumper of my dreams. I have the yarn and I have the pattern. I even have a tweed skirt that’ll look extremely fetching together with the jumper. Enough dithering.

Five more aspirations tomorrow.

Finally, are you following the Drops Christmas Calendar? Each day leading up to Christmas, they’ll unveil a new pattern. Hey, I’m Scandinavian. We love doing things like this (stayed tuned for tomorrow for a bit more on Scandinavian holiday madness).

I have a lot of time for Alasdair Gray. He is one of those novelists I am never sure whether people will like or not. I tend to recommend Poor Things as the gateway to Gray’s oeuvre: it reads like a postmodern feminist Frankenstein; it is exuberant and giddy; and it is wildly entertaining.  Unlikely Stories, Mostly is a rare beast: a short story collection which feels like a cohesive book and which is also a compulsive read. The stories ranges from short childhood snippets to the fantastic typographic fantasy of “Sir Thomas’ Logopandocy” about Sir Thomas Urquhart (it remains my favourite piece by Gray).  Lanark tends to divide people – my boyfriend still cannot believe that I like a book that nasty and unpleasant, but then again he has not read Gray’s 1982, Janine which is Gray’s tour-de-force in sheer unpleasantness and utter despair (and I really like that one too).

I once spent a lot of time looking at how Alasdair Gray imagines the Book as an object. 1982, Janine is not only a typographical wonder (at one point the protagonist attempts suicide which is portrayed in visual poetry) but its hardcover is beautifully decorated by Gray himself. I always try to get hold of Gray’s books in hardcover whenever I can because underneath the dust jackets, you get elaborate beautiful books. Gray also writes his own blurbs, controls the typesetting and draws his own illustrations. The Book of Prefaces is as close as Gray has come to a postmodern Gesamtkunstwerk. The book is beautiful, of course, but Gray adds an extra layer by writing prefaces to the selected prefaces and writing prefaces to those prefaces. It is all rather dazzling.

And as fate would have it, I have ended up in Glasgow. Alasdair Gray lives just a few streets down from me (I may have said “Good afternoon, sir” once or twice), my local pub features his artwork and my boyfriend has drawn him at art class. Strange how these things work out.

Read more about dear Ally Gray and his artwork or his writing and remember that Poor Things is the best place to start. Meanwhile I shall continue to chase sunlight.

Anyway, allow me a moment of indulgence as I track the ones I have read:

• 97: The Brief, Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. I posted about this book earlier this year. Generally favourable towards it, still.
• 66: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. It is not my favourite Mitchell novel (which is either yet to be written or Ghostwritten, depending upon my mood) but CA is great. Still cannot believe anything this clever ended up as a serious contender for the Booker Prize (miaow).
• 62: Fingersmith by Sarah Waters. I still have not made up my mind regarding Sarah Waters as a serious novelist, but her Victorian novels are very entertaining.
• 61: The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst. Or, That Gay Novel Wot Won The Booker. I said it then and I’ll say it now: Hollinghurst writes exquisite English and his sentences are ever so beautiful, but he still needs to find the right plot for his style. I will read Hollinghurst just for the way he uses the language.
• 46: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. Maybe I should try this one again because I didn’t get the hype surrounding it.
• 30: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Okay, I read this one for work, mkay? Sentimental drivel of the worst order with incredibly implausible plot points. Mawkish and horrid. No, I didn’t like it and I don’t care if this book changed your life, omg.
• 29: The Accidental by Ali Smith. This one really got book people talking but I left my copy at Aberdeen Bus Station on purpose as it left me absolutely cold.
• 25: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon. For some people this book was a revelation (you know who you are). I couldn’t connect with it (which is rather apt for a book about autism, I guess).
• 22: The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman. This is a bit like Marmite, I suppose. Some people love this book; others could not get into it all. For the record, this is one of the few books that reduce me to tears every time I read it. Go on and mock me.
• 19: The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. Or, Yet Another MAJOR North-American Novel That Karie Just Couldn’t Get Into At All.
• 17: Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling. My favourite is still the Prisoner of Azkaban, but Deathly Hallows did make a Saturday at work pass that much more quickly. I actually cannot recall the plot.
  
• 12: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. Dear The Times, Eggers has become an incredibly influential publisher and he does very wonderful things with the-book-as-object, but we can surely agree that he should never ever be allowed to write another book. AHWOSG is one of the worst books I have ever read in my entire life – and I have read quite a few.
  
• 10: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. When compared to Eggers’ novel, The Da Vinci Code comes across as an astounding piece of literature with a keen eye for detail, a witty turn of phrase and an intricate plot. When compared to standard literature, Brown’s novel is an overblown piece of ludicrous prose, flat characterisation, ridiculous plotlines and simplistic thinking. I read it for work and got exactly what I thought I’d get: an airport novel which earns brownie points for not having a picture of Tom Hanks in an awful wig on the cover.
• 9: Atonement by Ian McEwan. I get the feeling that I would not get on with whoever edited this list because this book is yet another one of my literary pet hates.
  
• 2: Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. Is this chosen for its literary qualities or because of its cultural significance (i.e. “omg, the Iranians are people too!”). I enjoyed reading this but I wouldn’t put it second on such a list.
• 1: The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I described this novel as “superb” and it continues to nudge me ever so often. Exquisite sparse prose and incredibly moving, I have no qualms about this being called “the book of a decade”.
  

I’m knitting with my bright orange 2-ply baby alpaca (yes, the colour is accurate in the photo). It is underspun, rather fragile and almost angora-like soft. And I’m knitting Percy, a pattern which I have previously attempted to knit. I’m now halfway through my second repeat of the dastardly Chart B and I might add in another repeat before doing the edging chart, just to make the shawl a bit bigger. It almost seems a shame to knit an intricate pattern in fuzzy yarn, but the process knitter in me actually Does Not Care. It’ll be a mad, colourful and warm shawl – and I will have conquered Chart B. That is all that matters.

I am still ill, alas, but I think today I will actually get dressed!

And here’s a little news story which may cheer you up:

Rumors of a city of 25,000 lesbians have led hordes of men to contact Swedish tourist authorities and swamp the nation’s Internet providers. Chinese media especially have spread the tale of “Chako Paul City,” supposedly founded in 1820 in northern Sweden by a man-hating widow who banned males, reports Australia’s Daily Telegraph. Inhabitants then turned to lesbianism “because they could not suppress their sexual needs,” goes one recent account in China’s Harbin News service. Swedish tourist authorities are baffled. “I’ve no idea where this came from, but it’s not true,” said a spokesman. “At 25,000 residents, the town would be one of the largest in northern Sweden, and I find it hard to believe that you could keep something like that a secret for more than 150 years.”

(I cannot remember how I came across it – if it’s via you, please let me know so I can credit)