Barbed Wire and Babushkas

Really enjoyed this travel book. Two British canoeists decide to row down one of the longest and least known rivers in the world.( well , unknown to the West.)  The Amur-or Black Dragon river to the Chinese- is about 4, 400 km long,starts in Mongolia, separates the sensitive countries of China and Russia for over half it's length and goes through the least known parts of wooded Siberia. I loved it because I knew nothing about this part of the world and I have been googling the towns and villages they rowed through on their way.  It took them 107 days and mostly they camped along the Russian side of the river.  They were not given permission by the Chinese authorities to enter Chinese waters or lands and often had to guess in which country Islands,which popped up in the middle of the river,were in!  They only made a mistake once by camping on a Chinese Island but the guards in the Watch tower were luckily quite chilled about it. 

This book was not really about canoeing but about the people they met along the way. Whenever they came across a village or city they would stay in a hotel and restock  food and people were obviously totally intrigued by them.  They could not comprehend that they were travelling the whole length of the river at all but were totally flabbergasted that they had rowed down from the nearest town! Funny. 

There was obviously lots of beaurocracy and a few times they were locked out of villages with barbed wire fences  with patrolling guards along the perimeter,because the local Russian border police didn't want foreigners entering the village. The guards probably wanted something to do.  It wasn't clear when this exhibition took place  but I would say from the lack of mobile devices and from music references about 1999/2000. Obviously the writer was having a great time and the tone of the book is not serious at all. More like VIZ in places, especially all the stereotypical lusty Russian girl references. But hey, this guy was writing from his heart and it was obvious that he had spent a long time writing a diary! 

 you get a clear feeling of how Russian policy after the break up of the USSR had basically left this area of Siberia to rot. The river wasn't really used by the Russians to move anything because the Transsiberian railway was so nearby whereas Chinese barges were constant going back and forth and up and down. There was high unemployment amoung local Russian  river dwellers and a general fear of theEntrepreneurial Chinese. Also the towns on the other bank, in China, looked far more affluent. Luckily the guys paid for a travel visa to go into a Chinese town for three days and they were blown away by the trade, noise and vibrancy of the town. 

 Other problems the two guys dealt with were being shot at by over zealous guards, being told exactly where to camp every night. Not having decent enough maps, being flooded out in their tents, having packets of noodles and cigarettes thrown at them by Chinese sailors, being mobbed by Russian prostitutues( really?!) and often getting beautiful gifts whenever they left a Village or town by the suddenly friendly border guards. 

!! I often thought the references to pissed Russian men and horny prostitutes was far too stereotypical and I hope the author was just over exaggerating. There was not much at all about the politics and history between the two countries. Obviously relations were tense though!   Apart from the fact that Russians took away this land from Manchurian Chinese because of the lucrative trade in fur trapping. (A similar story to the Gold Rush in California.)  but there was enough to give me a taster to find out more about this interesting, yet completely unknown part of the world. 

Cheers Diana for this great birthday present! 

Gone GIrl

Wow. I have devoured this book and haven't really been able to do anything of any value over the last few days apart from read this.  Considering the film is out and the book was a runaway success in 2012 I have done well in not knowing anything about the story.  The twist in the middle worked for me. I managed to not flick through the pages at all.  If you read this ( and I really think you all should if you haven't yet) then I recommend that you never 'accidently' look at any pages in the second half of the book.

I can't write much apart from this was a great escapist read. Bloody scary, sick ,funny and bleak. Gillian Flynn does a fantastic job in creating a post 2008 economic crash, dystopian, dysfunctional marriage. All I can say after reading this is THANK GOD I AM SINGLE! 

Right time to get on with getting ready for Christmas. thank god I've finished. I was truely addicted. Great fun! 

The Mill on the Floss

I 

I started reading this coz it was free on my kindle and then slowly, drip, drip, drip I got totally mesmerised. So much so that I had to buy the book. When a book is amazing I need a proper copy of it in my hand. To be honest I thought this would be really dull and heavy going in places but I would just give it a shot. But for me it was never dull, but sometimes difficult to understand due to the language. It has taken me an age to read because often I read bits twice or three times,because the language was just so beautiful or I didn't quite understand it!  Honestly, I have been totally transported away reading this. 

Elliot has the skill of putting emotions, ideas and pictures into your head in a way that I haven't witnessed, probably since I read the Lacuna by Kingsolver. Her topics are universal and it all seemed so modern. Human nature doesn't change and Elliot had such great insight due to being banished from her own family for being a weird intellectual, who was living openly with a married man.

What can I say, I am actually sad I have finished it.It's not perfect in anyway. the ending is so bad.I'm still in shock by how Geoge Elliot finished it off but the rest of it is great stuff.

The beginning third is based around Maggie and her older brother Tom, growing up in a Mill near the village of St. Ogg's. St.Ogg's is brilliant, a great depiction of small town England. I loved MAggie's Aunties.  Constantly disgraced, gossiping and judging. Maybe I am mad but I saw lots of humour in the way Elliot wrote about these characters. 

Maggie is bright, her brother isn't good at book learning. But Tom has a private education,the type his Dad didn't have. Mr. Tulliver uses His son to show society  that he has ' come up' in the world. Tom hates it all and MAggie's brain is left to stew. She has no formal education and picks up stuff from Tom's discarded books. She gets so frustrated she has a fetish doll she grinds against the beams of her bed.  Bloody hell, when I read this I knew I was in for a good read!!  People don't write like that these days.

Maggie running away to live with the gypsies was another highlight. So funny, yet so sad at the same time. Maggies's Dad is in debt, lives beyond his means and ultimately loses his Mill and his money. The guy who takes the  Mill and wins the law suit becomes Mr. tulliver's arch enemy. Infact Mr. Wakem is hated so much by Mr. Tulliver that the whole family have to witness and sign a curse on his name written by Dad in his shaky hand, in the Bible, the only book which they still possess. Again an image that I have never seen before. Melodrama in the most boring town in England. love it.

The first third is all about MAggie's childhood. it cleverly explains the psychology behind why she behaves like she does when she is older. her fierce loyalty to her family and her older brother outway everything. Maggie grows up in isolation and poverty, totally discarded due to the shame of her Father's bankruptcy but she makes a secret friendship with the hated Mr. Wakem's son. Now he is a thoughtful, artistic hunchback.  Good God...George Elliot sure brings on the afflictions!

He is her intellectual equal,he falls in love with Maggie but of course Maggie only likes him as a friend. Yet more disaster befalls on Maggie. 

Due to Tom's wits and nerve( nothing related to his exclusive education) he manages to claw the family out of poverty and suddenly Maggie is back on the scene and her Aunties on her Mother's side agree to see her.  Suddenly Maggie meets Stephen Guest who is almost engaged to Lucy, Maggie's cousin. Stephen and Maggie fall madly in love with each other and the stolen glances, mad passions and drama of this part of the book were so good. yes, I'm the queen of Victorian literature but to be honest it wasn't melodramatic at all  just beautiful, honest and totally gorgeous to read and imagine. Infact, it all seemed strangely modern. Poor Maggie is totally bowled over by this gorgeous guy and just doesn't know what to do. As you have gussed things don't work out well and poor Maggie's emotions are totally pulled through the wringer. Infact George Elliot must have been emotionally fraught too by the last few pages of this book. She probably had no choice but to end it the way she did.

Another interesting point was how George Elliot writes about small town judgements on Maggie's behaviour. The differences between how men are women are treated is clearly shown but Elliot cleverly shows how everyone is treated so badly and how society loses so much potential from both men and women due to the way the ' World's Wife' judges everything. One other thing,Bob Jakin and his dog mumps. He is the kindest, most intelligent, funniest door to door salesman and entrepreneur in English literature. Why didn't  Maggie fall in love with him?! 

 

Alan M. Turing

Both interesting and annoying. This was the over sweet, incredibly censured, highly pompous, rose tinted spectacles biography of Alan Turing as written by his grief stricken mother in the 1950s.  Turing was the mathematical and computer genius at Bletchley Park who broke the Enigma Code which meant  German code  could be intercepted at the end of the World War Two. This meant the UK government could now work out where German submarines were under the Atlantic Ocean and the UK was able to safely get supplies across from the States. Turing basically stopped the Brits starving at their weakest and poorest point during the War. ( not that Sara Turing wrote about any of this stuff because like everyone she didn't really know what Turing had done during the war. It was all top secret then.) 

Anyway Sara goes on about leaving little cute Alan behind at pre-prep school and how he changed during puberty from a cute little genius to a dishevelled, eccentric mathematician at Cambridge. She keeps on about his floppy, messy hair and lack of girl friends and his 'disorganised' life. But she was also a bit of a maths wiz herself so was also able to talk about his first love of solving mathematical problems. I loved this part...getting inside his brain was amazing. Alan could read numbers at two and because he mixed up left from right he organised his own solution by putting a black dot on his left hand to remind him to start counting from that end! What a geek! 

She also talks about how he didn't need glasses because all of his thinking was done in his head not on paper. He never seemed to be holding a pen but was always dreamy, with his head in the clouds. Yes, he was a complete eccentric who could have moments of great kindness but mostly spent his time on unfathomable computational mathematics. Yes, he was truely the godfather of computer science.

The tragedy is that his genius went unrecognised. He loved travelling to the States and around Europe but by the early 50s the UK government had banned him from this pursuit due to the highly sensitive knowledge he carried around in his head. I don't think the establishment liked him, nor  approved of him but they sure needed him alive.

In 1952 Turing killed himself with an arsenic injected Apple bite. A clever way to die. His mother in the biography thinks it's an accident due to his slovenly behaviour but all of his close friends knew this was suicide. A tragic way for a British legend to die.

The introduction is the best part to this book it talks about Turing's homosexuality and how he really was absolutely OK and happy with his own private life and how it was all the other establishment figures around him and his family who had the problem. In 1949 Turing reported a burglary in his house but the policemen who came seemed more concerned about his personal arrangements with the guy he was with. He wasn't sent to jail but was forced for two years to have estrogen injections. This did nothing to change Turing's sexuality the injections just made him depressed and made him grow breasts.  Poor bloke. I found this part of the book really difficult to read.

I also found the end section written by Turing's brother interesting. It's of its time with 1950s stiff upper lip sentiment but is a more honest and open reflection of Alan's life. It was thankfully added after the mother had died.

The brother talks lovingly about Turing's brain power and his great sense of fun but also far too much about his 'base sexuality' and how nobody in the family ever accepted Alan's private world. The mother was always trying to change him and had basically written this memoir because this was how she wanted to remember her son as a super saccharine, snobby ,  uber-genius. Urghhhh!

But the revelation from the brother that Turing went to many psychiatrists not for his homosexuality but to remove the demons of his complete hatred for his mother, now that was an interesting revelation!!

Alan Turing absolutely hated her.  He hated that she abandoned him and that she seemed more interested in what other people thought than the truth and that she was always trying to change him.

What I get from this book is how Alan Turing was born before his time. A genius who was totally comfortable in his own skin who just wanted to be left alone to puzzle out mind blowing problems. If he decided to wear pyjamas all day, eat nothing but lollipops and have a boyfriend over then he was completly at ease with this. In the end though  the pressures all got too much.  A great British life was tragically taken away at only 41years of age. RIP. 

 

An Equal Music

I have read this book so quickly. It was a mad passion which took over my week. I haven't really wanted to watch TV or movies in the evening. I just needed to know what the hell was going to happen in this novel.

This book was not my normal choice but I have had it on my shelf for  about 2 years. I also got a copy for Catherine Blay and this is the first book I have ever read in tandem with another person.  Almost like a book club. (Sorry Catherine I'm writing this without talking to you first.) 

This is nothing like A Suitable Boy.( Vikram's Indian based, wrist breaking family saga.)  And looking back on it I can't really understand why I was so sucked in and loved it so much. I think it is because I just had no idea what the hell was going to happen and what on earth this book could be about. Nor how on earth it could end. It was a really different book to anything I have ever read. 

I was totally absorbed and sucked in. Looking back it all seems quite a boring predictable story but it wasn't. It was all so real. People you could touch, emotions you could feel and music you could hear. 

Vikram Seth's writing to me is pure magic. I love his style. I haven't read a book whose author gave so much love and focus to their craft since The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver. 

This book is on one level all about trying to rekindle the passion of lost love but more for me it was about the highs and lows of playing classical music. Vikram Seth was able to put into words what it must be like to be a classical violinist. Being a musician on one level makes you incredibly selfish, self obsessed, critical of others and possessed by your desire to make music your way. It also makes you aware of your emotions, the needs of the other players in your group, and the total joy of really living in the moment. 

I also loved that the main character in this book was not of the right 'type' to be a musician. A guy who became qualified through the free instrument he got at school in Rochdale and finally the 'owner ' of a beautiful, old Italian  violin given to him by a rich local woman. An instrument he hasn't been separated from for over 20 years.  In fact when the benefactor's  family start to get angry about their right to the violin when she dies is when i got really sad. Who has the stronger right to this beautiful instrument? 

This book is a love story but to be honest it was always quite doomed and dark. Vikram Seth is never scared of sharing people's emotions clearly; how selfish we are, how we can hurt each other and how in the end we can't ever truely go back to how things were in the past.  

But his style got quite indulgent and over poetic and by the end the book had turned into a weird kind of poetry anthology which got on my nerves a bit.   The best thing about this book for me was the great love of classical music. Now I have a list of pieces from the book which I have listened to on YouTube and they are all great. Thank you Vikram Seth for putting your love of music into words and sharing it. 

The Song of Achilles

S

I think I have turned into a number one fan of  Greek story telling. I loved all the myths as a kid and have happily returned to them.  This book was a retelling of the Iliad by Homer from the perspective of Patroclus, Achilles friend and lover. I have an extremely jumbled and muddled idea of what the Iliad was about and the characters in the Trojan war but now I kind of get it. There is no way I could wade through the poetry of the original so this book was perfect. What a great story!  Even though the original was written nearly 3000 years ago it all seems so relevant with topics on love, lust, pointless wars being fought in the East, honour, pride, families and friendships.

This is a time when Greek gods lived, walked and talked with humans and I loved how the author incorporated gods and goddesses into the story. The boys, Achilles and Patroclus are taken away for three years to live high up on a mountain with a centaur and Achilles water nymph mother is an angry, bitter and jealous goddess who knows Achilles is the strongest man in the war but also knows her son will die whilst fighting. She can't change his destiny. 

This story fleshes out Achilles and Patroclus' life. The joy of their childhood and then the pain of having to partake in such a long and pointless war. I liked the other characters too; the diplomacy of Oddyseus, the kindness and charm of Briseis, and the power crazy madness of Agamemnon. Achilles comes across as selfish and egotistical to be honest, but as soon as he finds out about the death of Patroclus he goes on a crazed , vengeful, killing spree around Troy. What I liked about this version was how the story easily came alive. Even though some of the dialogue seemed a bit unnatural it was still a great read. 

 I've checked characters on Google to see if they really were in the Iliad and it all seems based on the original. A kind of alternative viewpoint.  ( Apart from the fact that Patroclus  should have been older than Achilles and although it was implied that they were lovers, it was never definitely stated. ) I especially liked the ending. I love a good, bloodbath chariot battle and for me Patroclus was the real hero. 

It's all Greek to Me

Y

Wow, I have done something I haven't done for years. Read a book from cover to cover in one night. I loved this. I was wandering around Bicester library on Wednesday and picked this up. It looked fun and an easy idiot's guide to all things ' Ancient Greek' and well to say I have devoured it is an understatement. I loved it. Charlotte Higgins has bought the Greek world alive for me and placed it in an accessible relevant , enjoyable context. 

So many books are based on Greek myths and ideas so sublimally I already knew a bit of this stuff. But to access so much in such a handy guide was brilliant.

  I especially loved the descriptions of Homer's classics the Illiad and the Odyssey and the concise outline of the amazing story behind Oedipus. ( I'm reading a book on the background of Achilles at the moment and I thought browsing through  this could help me understand more but it has done far more than that.)

  I loved the Titan and  the Olympian gods feuding and how everyone plays dark tricks on each other.  Tantalus chopping up his son into little bits to feed to the gods was total psychotic comedy. 

  My favourite quote was 

'Don't call a man happy until he's dead' 

Before today I have always misinterpreted this quote to mean that life is so shit that the only good thing to do is die.  (Twisted I admit.)  Im so glad I now know the real meaning which is  that life is so full of twists and turns that our happiness factor can change at any time. We must never  presume that things will stay the same and get too smug or too depressed. Life is an open book until obviously we cease to exist. I much prefer the proper interpretation! 

In fact that is what hit me most about this book. The way the Greeks expressed this randomness of life. Excepting love, pain, loss, war, dying young, unfairness and fairness. Greek gods lived for ever squabbling and watching humans as if from a VIP box in Wembley stadium but humans live a charmed short life full of many ups and downs. 

I have focussed on the myths and plays but this book also covered the beginnings of western democracy, politics, science,  and philosophy. The first history/travel books of Heredotus and the beginning of recorded misogyny, the hatred/ fear of women. Spartans were the only girls to get an education and also join the army, whereas Athenian woman were mostly under house arrest.  

Yes, I loved this book. Funny, uplifting and informative. Filling lots of holes in my non-classical education! 

Clash of Kings and Storm of Swords.

R

For weeks I have been living in the land of Westeros and have slowly plowed through these  3 billion pages.  Of course I have loved them they are like Tolkien on speed. A mixture of medival high drama and politics, Lord of the rings, and Eastenders for over 18s. After reading so many back to back I need a break though, but I am looking forward to reading more.

I haven't watched any of the TV series and from what I hear they have pumped the programmes even more full of steroids and sex but I am glad that I am reading these with no images of characters or places. Occasionally  when I am feeling brave I google a character and see what they look like on the TV series. Often it's kind of OKish apart from the fact that Tyrion the Dwarf still has a nose and half his face intact. I think the actor must have refused to play the part with such facial deformities! 

I love how everyone is not completely good or bad.  as for Jaime Lannister...I WANT HIM here now! I've loved how his personality has developed so well. 

OK the books are a bit confusing with how they jump around from character to character every chapter but my kindle has been invaluable in letting me flick around and recap. I did find Daenarys' and Bran's chapters a bit dull by the end. She just kind of got lost out in the wilderness and now seems to be camping out as Queen in a far flung land. Bran is just waiting about trying to find a crow which will tell him what his powers are. Hurry up and get a plot line!!!! Plus I wanted the dragons to do something hot and dangerous. Hurry up and grow up dragons!

But I love Jon Snow and the Ice chapters and anything with the Lannisters and Tyrells.  As for the Others and the Lord of Light...what will happen? That weird Melisandre gets on my nerves. She reminds me of an evil, satanic, power crazy Kate  Bush.

  In the books the women are a bit cliched and flat and that's a bit disapppointing at times. (I was annoyed that Lysa was so pathetic when she temporarily joined the story at the end of book 3b. That moon door and Tyrion on  the high moving ice prison of hers in Game of Thrones were a highlight for me and I was looking forward to seeing her again.)

 George Martin is much better at writing male characters. (Not that I'm complaining too much! I do love a knight on a horse.)  I've heard that on TV the women have been both symbolically and literally fleshed out more.

Time for a break now...But will I manage it? I want to know what happens next! 

The White Queen

I never watched this on TV but I really feel that Gregory wrote this in the format of a mini-series script. Congratulations, it worked for her! 

 I enjoyed the story and the history. I have always loved the mystery of the Princes in the tower. So I feel like I have been reminded about what happened during the the dying days of the War of the Roses. Yes, a great story, good on facts but the characters were not real enough for me. Everyone was a cardboard cut out. As there were lots of women in this book  I thought I might get some insight into a  women's life in the 15th century but no, nothing but bitching and scheming with bits of witchcraft thrown in for good measure.  (Women hid away in a dark room for 6weeks before their babies were born, isolated from everyone but one maid. it would have been interesting if Gregory had told us what the hell this was like.) 

This is my first Philippa G book and to be honest I didn't really like her style. My GOD she sledgehammers the plot out, constantly repeating things!    Every character is introduced as 'Richard my son' or 'Edward, the King'. Every time someone speaks they clunkily refer back to past events to 'help the reader.'  OK, I'm taking this way too seriously but hey, I'm allowed to!

This book reminded me of a version of those TV shows on a Sunday evening on BBC 1 like Merlin and Atlantis. A kind of melding of modern day soap opera with folklore and history.   On TV it works because they play about and have a laugh but in this book it didn't because Gregory tries to keep within the true historical facts and it's just annoying.   This would have worked far better for me if there were dragons or wizards. Sorry Mel, I'm a harsh critic. 

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Y

Wow, I really enjoyed this book and have raced through it. Something really different, well written and highly interesting. it's a mix of social history, poverty, race, ethics, biology and an amazing history of cell research. The cancerous cells of this woman,who died in Maryland in 1951, have become the standard for so much research over the world.  Without Henrietta's cells there would be no modern vaccines. (polio would still be killing people)  no modern chemotherapy drugs, and no world standard for human cell research. Her cells replicated perfectly and never died. They were like a magic porridge pot for cell researchers in the 1950s. her cells were called Hela and are still used prolifically all over the world.  

So far so good, but Henrietta's family never found about their Mother's cells until 20 years later when a variety of scientists, con-men and TV reporters turned up at their door.  The scientists wanted more cells from close relatives to do more research into genomes and the reporters of course wanted a story.

Anyway things went badly for the extended Lacks family.  They were angry that drug companies had made money from their mother without their knowledge and they were highly ignorant about what cells were. Nobody sat down with the family and explained what their mother had done for science and that there were no clones of Henrietta wandering around. 

The Lacks family are extremely poor and ill educated. A family with their roots in tobacco farming.The kids all left school before 14 and were never good in school anyway because of their congenital deafness never being diagnosed. ( a symptom of Henrietta marrying her cousin.) The grinding poverty of their lives is extreme and in complete contrast to the other strand of the story about cell research in labs all over the world by scientists.

Anyway, in the late 90s the author of this book managed to get the trust of the family and through years of research and persistence this book was written.  In the end it's a tribute to Henrietta and how out of her hard life something good appeared. ( her cervical cancer cells were so aggressive due to HPV and constant syphillis infections from her playboy husband.) Infact the HPV vaccine is only here because of Henrietta's cells.

As for the ethics of this book this has been complicated for me.  The story is a product of the American health system,the American education system, grinding poverty and race. The Lacks family are rightly angry that they are too poor to have health care and benefit from the the products which their mother 's cells helped to create but also they were all so badly educated they were living withsome strange godly fear that Henrietta still felt pain when her cells were tested on. Scientists are not the evil group in my opinion.  Johns Hopkins hospital/ University never sold Hela cells and shared their research with other scientists freely.  It was only when the cells had to be made on mass that drugs companies started to turn a profit on them. The problem is the health system in which the Lacks were embedded  A system which demonises the poorest and weakest in the community. 

The idea of informed consent did not exist in the 50s and doctors took samples from all cancerous biopsies from this hospital at the time. Henrietta just happened to be the perfect case. No cells ever reproduced in culture as well as hers. 

Anyway, if any of the above topics are interesting for you and you have a strong stomach then read this book.  It really made me think, the science was fairly easy to understand and the Lacks family story was interesting, irritating, annoying and heartbreaking all at the same time.  All I can say is thank god I don't have to deal with the American health system!  As for the history of black only wards and black only toilets and secret syphillis testing on the black wards in Tuskegee...it's a history that has to be read to be believed. 

The Secret Garden

My mate Nicky of Newcastle facebooked me a few weeks back to see if I had ever read this. She pursuaded me to get out my copy and reread it. So I did, a book I have had for over 35 years. I haven't read it since I was about 11 though and I know I really loved it then. Would it be the same as an adult?!

Well, I really enjoyed it. It is such a great book to read when you are feeling down, unloved and grumpy because these words describe the two main characters, Mary and Colin. Their personality and physical changes throughout the book are really amazing.  Their spoilt, selfish ways are the perfect antidote for each other and slowly they change to much happier and healthier children. And like them, you also get a real life enhancing boost when you read this book.

The garden though is the main pull of this book.  it is absolutely magical and even now, so many years later I could so quickly imagine again this absolutely amazing secret place. I could see it all laid out so perfectly. the mystery, the magic and the secrecy are so well described.  It really was still as exciting as when I read it as a kid.  This is weird for me because I hate gardening ( although I have done some today.). But I can still appreciAte the magic as these kids begin to grow and feel loved through this connection with nature. And the descriptions are just so vivid. Almost real.  (maybe all these clear pictures are because I read it so many times as a kid and the images all just came flooding back!

 Through the vivid descriptions of nature, growth, change and elemental forces and through rooting for 'Mary, Mary, so contrary,' you just feel really uplifted. You kind of think, if these spoilt revolting brats can change for the better then there is hope for me!

It's interesting to think about the few adult characters in the book. The only two caring adults seem to be dickon's mUm and Weatherstaff. Mrs. Medlock just can't be arsed with the kids and Mary's Mum was an ex pat socialite in India who just wanted to forget that Mary ever existed.  

I always loved the freaky beginning of the book when Mary's entire family and servants all die of cholera. That Mary stays alive through drinking wine dregs left at a banquet table is brilliantly grotesque! The levels of unstated abuse and neglect in this book are astounding.

As for Colin's dad, he is just pathetic.  Stuck in mourning for Colin's dead Mother and totally unble to sort himself out until he has 'a moment' in Italy and  realises that the soul of his wife is calling him back to the garden. 

 

Also, I wish Colin wasn't in the book so much.  his preaching and whinging and irritating ways got on my nerves a bit and because  I loved Mary I found that her voice was just pushed out of the limelight.  By the end it's all Colin's story.  he kind of hijacks it.

As for Dickon, wow, what a boy.  I fell in love with him all over again! only now do I see him as a Yorkshire based Peter Pan .  I'm sure he's still on the moor today with his whistle, his squirrels and his lamb. 

A Carpet Ride to Khiva

V

Yippeeeee. Finally after a long drought I finish a book. I have been trying to plough through 100 Years of Solitude and finding it impossible to pay attention or really care. I gave up.  Finally I feel like I have resurfaced from literally 100 years of pretentious boredom.  I've read it before and supposedly liked it. But I think I was dillusional at the time! 

Anyway, this book was great. A bit slow at the beginning but once it got going I couldn't put it down. (Plus now my kindle has upgraded I'm a bookworm again.)

I thought it would be a travel book about 7 years travelling along the Silk Road from China to Turkey, but it wasn't. The British guy writing his memories  lived in Khiva in Uzbekistan for seven years in his late 20s and early 30s. He is the same age as me (or thereabouts.) so lots of his history reference points are similar to mine.

He vividly created what life in Uzbekistan was like. A country in mad flux between Islamic traditions and collapsed Soviet policies. A country and an area which doesnt know it's place in the modern world. He desperately wanted to start a carpet weaving cooperative with help from UNESCO,employing women and local weavers who could remember the old local traditions of a skill which was totally dying out.

The beginning is a bit dull as he talks about settling in to this quite weird, Borat like hell hole of a place. I was beginning to wonder if he was sane to want to live in such a country. Thenslowly characters formed, stories were told and histories unfurled and the book began to race off in many directions.

I read about the history of carpet weaving in central Asia and how there isn't much local inspiration left. Most locals were making factory produced copies of Turkish carpets. The author took his first pattern from this one local fragment from the15th century. (The only bit left and residing in a museum in Greece.) 

He made up patterns, and also looked at old pictures and sourced natural dyes, ending up with a business which was able to sell great carpets to tourists.

It was interesting reading about the history of design and pattern in Central Asia and the great world of Islamic design.  Also the history of how Central Asians managed to sneak out the secret method from China on how to make silk and also how to get bright natural colours from madder Red and other natural sources.

Not only was it full of Central Asian history but also the stark realities of life in Uzbekistan now. How locals are victims of a strong Soviet system. How blind people and even just poor sighted people were totally institutionalised. How the KGB still works under a different name, the extreme corruption and how people open new mosques by celebrating with massive bottles of vodka.

I loved his trips into Afghanistan to get looms, dyes and materials and his wonderful descriptions of this country too. The fear of being a westerner, the way he wanted to start a factory here just to stop local woman getting more and more depressed whilst imprisoned in their homes. The hideous beaurocracy he had to deal with to get back over the border. The problems he had with culture and language and how finally the corruption and envy  towards his business caught up with him and he finally became blacklisted in Uzbekistan. The ending involves him spending time as a stateless person in aTajikistani airport lounge. 

He comes across as a pretty unassuming guy who falls in love with a mysterious and unknown part of the world. I enjoyed living it all through his memories. People, places, colours, smells ,art and history all came alive.

Anyway, well worth a read if you are into this kind of stuff! 

Midnight in Peking.

What a great read. Cheers Carmel for the recommendation.  This book was a factual report of the real life investigation into the murder of Pamela, a 17 year old English girl found brutally murdered and mutilated under a tower in Beijing in the early hours of Jan 6th 1937. 

It is an account of how the investigation progresses and all the hurdles, dead ends and cover-ups which are encountered along the way. It all happens against the backdrop of fear of Japanese invasion and civil war between nationalists and communists, with the Brits trying to hang on to their interests by a thread. 

I loved the claustrophobic build up of fear and tension and the madness of the people. Everyone knew invasion by the Japanese was imminent. These were the last days of old Peking, and my God, what a place!

I absolutely loved the atmosphere the author created.  The characters and sense of place meant you could almost smell the fear, corruption and poverty hanging around the city at the time. The history of Beijing is told so well through the people who inhabit this book, both dead and alive. The grimy back streets, the rickshaw drivers, the opium addicts, the whores and pimps, the poverty stricken stateless Russians who supported the Tsar, Chinese thugs/nationalists/communists, Japanese thugs/ fascists ,the Jews, Koreans, British beurocrats and civil servants trying to keep face, exhausted coppers, American dentists,  nude dancers, hermaphrodite Russian madams with a heart. A great cast! I also feel like I have a personal taste of the events which befell Beijing during the 30s and 40s. Good god, what a time.

 Suddenly I understood why the Brits and French had to live in legations. These quarters were the only areas which were safe because of uprisings and rebellions. Laws inside these legations were different; the Chinese and British policemen were banned from investigating within their boundaries. This was so the Brits could keep face under such traumatic historical events which were unfolding around them. The thought that there was a sadistic murderer amongst them was just too much to admit.

What happened to Pamela scared locals to death. it was a highly grotesque murder. She was a fluent mandarin speaker, a girl with spirit why on Earth was she so hideously murdered? If you want to find out and have an interest  in the darker side of life read this book! 

Never Let Me Go

I have been meaning to read this book for years and have purposely never watched the movie. I lovedRemains  of the Day and have been waiting for a time to get my teeth into this.

Well I read it in just 5 days and it totally took me away to another world and yes, I loved it. This book sells itself as being about clone children who are bred to harvest their organs. But in my opinion this book is not about science fiction at all.  Infact I think it's all about the way we deceive ourselves about what the future holds.  We all know we are going to die and probably get sick and in pain but we just accept this and blindly and live our lives without many questions. This book makes us think about what it means to be human and what things in life are important to us. 

Back to the book.  these kids are all bought up in the beautiful surroundings of Hailsham House and the first half of the book is written from a teenage girl's perspective.  it's so well written. I can't believe this author would be so capable of getting inside a young girl's head. he did though and it was extremely realistic. These kids are different and know they are different but they only get ghostly snapshots and rumours of the life which is waiting for them.  There are scary rumours about donating and the euphemistic, completing. ( dying.) but not much else. no parents, no histories, no idea of careers or jobs or TV or fashion of life outside.  These kids live in a bubble where they make gifts for each other and get second hand clothes delivered once every few months. They also spend a lot of time looking at people's faces in magazines trying to find out who they were cloned from. 

Most of the time though they are making and creating things. Half of their stuff is taken away by the mysterious Madame and put in a gallery(or so they believe.) I loved this part, the kids think that the artwork is being used to prove they have souls and that two people in the future can use their artwork from when they were young to prove their love for each other and hence defer donating their organs. This bit was very clever because religion and belief  are never mentioned in this book once. This world has no room for God and the author shows how these young people grab instinctively onto quite profound issues of being human: like love, belief in something and the power of friendships.

As the book contines it becomes more and more bleak. Pitch black bleak. The way these young adults just accept their fate is beyond me. They live in a world which ghettos these people and then completely abuses them in the name of medical science. (Nothing is ever written about what is taken out of their bodies but after 3 or 4 donations everyone of them is dead. It's good that he leaves the science to our imaginations.) 

  But this book is beautifully written and the day that Kathy and Tommy have together in Norwich is wonderful. (Sounds so boring, but in this book life is so dull for these kids, any day away is amazing!)

One thing this book will do is make you totally aware that you have to grab life full on and live it to the maximum. 

I like this link discussing why the kids never run away or rebel from the fate which awaits them. 

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/apr/01/kazuoishiguro

Divergent

This was the only book I read on my holiday apart from Guide books and maps.  Anyway it's been a while since I finished it and to be honest I can't remember much.  It was a sort of 'lite' version of Brave New World. For me it was more Enid Blyton/cartoonesque than hard hitting dystopian teenage fiction.

The idea though was great, people are born into one faction with certain traits which you have to follow and live by.  For instance Abnegation are a group of people who only think of the welfare of others and lead grey, puritanical lives, whereas candour are a group who believe that the most important quality is telling the truth at all times.   Anyway these groups take on new recruits when kids turn 16 and Beatrice ends up in the Dauntless faction,the  place where people have no fear and happily spend their free time jumping off moving trains and fighting their deep fears in simulated worlds. To be honest these different factions felt more like Houses in Harry Potter's school.  Good old Beatrice or Tris as she is known ends up being divergent, that means she has the brains and ability to behave in different ways depending on the circumstances. hence she doesn't fit easily into one group. Being divergent is very dangerous...poor old Tris is in serious trouble.

Anyway, the story goes on and on and to be honest I lost the will to live a bit whilst reading. (Although I was sucked in and had to finish it!)  This book is a semi- clone of The Hunger Games because characterisation is weak and completely one dimensional. The only thing which matters is an urgent plot full of strange violence.( Violence which failed to make me feel scared or raise my blood pressure. Violence which managed somehow to seem pretty damn lame, tame and dull.  maybe I'm just too dark!!!)   There was a rather annoying love interest theme too involving lots of looking at each other longingly, sighing and stroking bits of each other's bodies. The plot was really underdeveloped. This could have been so much better if the author had created a more believable world.  To be honest the Chicago of this awful future was not described at all.  Most of the plot just happened in the equivalent of a Hogwart's school playground.  Anyway the end was quite good. One ,because the story finally got fairly interesting and two, because it was the end.

The Happy Prince and other stories.

The Nightingale and the Rose.

The Devoted Friend.

Today on the bus I read 4 stories by Oscar Wilde.  God knows if I read the really,really easy peasy children versions on my kindle, or what, but by the end of my morning commute I had read all 4.
Anyway, they were great.   Loved them. Loved them, loved them!! I think I will read them all again tomorrow too.
 I especially liked the The Nightingale and the Rose. It was almost too painful to read as the beautiful singing bird slowly  impales her heart into the thorn of the white rose to give it the blood red colour. (To me verging a bit on the gory and the sexual...but maybe I was bit over sensitive  just because I was reading too early on a bus with an empty stomach!)  To top it all off, once the guy gets the rose it is rejected by the woman he loves, so he just throws it away. charming!
As for the last one...umm. Again the moral of the story is a bit twisted and rather difficult to get, but by the end I was totally distressed and angry  Thinking 'what the hell?'   Poor Hans being taken for such a devoted fool.  The hold of his twisted, rich landlord over him was tragic. To me the moral of this story was don't abuse your position of power and don't just blindly follow the rules and ways of others.
As for the first two.  They were just great as well.   The wonderful swallow and all-seeing prince on his podium.  And the grumpy old giant who has a second chance.
What a great journey to work.  Reading them has now made me want to pull out  my volume of Hans Christian Anderson. Bring on the Fairy Tales!

PS They were the original versions:
 http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/authors/wilde.html#TALES

The Great Gatsby

                                       

In just a few days I have devoured this book. I have even enjoyed being stuck in traffic jams so I can read more and more. It might be a short book but my God, it's in an intense, poetic, yet stripped back style and wasn't really an easy read.

Fitzgerald books have alwaysreminded me of school and the grimness of reading set books when you haven't really got a sodding clue what is going on!  Anyway I understood and enjoyed it far more this time. Maybe 25 more years of life experience  helped! 

. 

No single person in this book is pleasant apart from the narrator, Nick. He is the only honest  character in the entire book. Everyone is deceitful, living a lie, keeping up appearances or living in a dream world. Everyone is vapid or dull apart from GATSBY.  He has a spirit, a life force, good looks,a mysterious   unknown past,history, brains and courage.   The only tragic flaw is that he is living a lie, a usurper in this world of the perfect American Dream. 

Today everyone would have found a release from  all their tension by going on a programme like Made in Chelsea or selling gossip to the Sun. These people are the monied, uber priveliged, bored twenty something's of the 1920s.  All they do is throw parties, drink mint juleps, gossip , lounge about, gossip, drive fast cars around, gossip, bitch and shop.  But yes I loved the tragic Gatsby and all the time I was thinking "get that annoying Daisy out of your head Gatsy!"  He made all this dodgy money for one reason, so he could be living near to his beloved Daisy, who he first met back West when he was a soldier. He has put Daisy onto a serious pedestal, built her up to be the most important thing in his life. He loves thinking and dreaming about her and when they finally meet things then start to fall apart.   The reality just can't live up to the dream and she absolutely fails Gatsby.  

Daisy and her husband are so fantastically foul.  Poor Gatsby has his heart totally broken and the end is so sad. Yes, I did cry! I'm in love with Gatsby... cricky he was so dumb to still hold a candle for that awful, vapid Daisy!

People say this book is a love story. I'm sorry, I disagree. To me it was a highly cynical, yet beautiful read about how hard it is to fit in if you don't have the right background or credentials and how  love is far better  in the mind than the close up reality. Illusion is the most important thing. Keep up the appearances and hide what you really think at all costs. Infact hide things so well and so deep that in the end you finally give up thinking about anything or anyone.

Palace Walk

Y

 What a great  book.  For the last two months I have been a fly on the wall inside the house of the Egyptian, Abd al-Samad family during 1914-1919, seeing everything, both good and bad. I have been a witness into their most personal actions, thoughts and feelings. Mahfouz has done a wonderful thing. He has invited  readers into the heart of family life and then stripped the people's hearts  and their lifestyle's bare. By doing so we get a clear picture of what life was like in Cairo at the end of Ottoman rule and the beginning of British military rule. 

The head of the family is Ahmed, he is married to Amina and has five children. Ahmed is a complete control freak at home. Everyone is scared of him. He is a highly religious, upstanding ,moral member of the community who rules his family with an iron fist. How he is viewed by the community is of the greatest importance for him.  No member of the family would even consider questioning him or disobeying him. He keeps his wife and two daughters under strict house arrest. Their only view of life is through the upper floor window grills and a bit of fresh air when they put the laundry out on the roof. The boys go to school and the only knowledge the girls get is through snippets the boys tell them. I am witness to their cloistered view of life.  The laughs they have over the coffee brewing times together and the gossip as they make bread. Their bitchiness, their humour and their love for their brothers is apparent. But they NEVER question their meagre and poor existence and when Amina does venture out once, she pays heavily for it.  These women are lovely and funny and it's a tragedy that they are prisoners. They truely are birds without wings. 

Ahmed is a complete bigot and lives a double life.  in the evenings he goes out to soirees, gets drunk, sings, sleeps with prostitutes and even has an affair with the neighbour. He loves spending time with these charming and beautiful women. He loves their vivacity and it comes across that prostitutes are the only truely free and independent people in the whole of Cairo!  It's a shame that society deems that he will never ever see the fun loving side of his family at home. He is not a part of that loving, personal family world.

Mahfouz goes deep into the workings of the brain of a  bigotted , religious fundamentalist. He shows us how Ahmed tries to morally justify his dubious existence. It really is scary and a lesson into the minds of religious fanatics the world over! Very clever writing indeed! 

Ahmed's oldest son Yasin is a fat, lazy sloth who is bored most of the time. It is interesting watching him start to behave just like his father.  But unfortunately he doesn't have his father's wit, intelligence or looks and he ends up being really depraved with servant girls in the house. This results in Yasin's wife ordering a divorce. It's stressful watching Ahmed having to process his oldest son's dabauched behaviour.  The complete disregard for wives is revolting. Yasin sees his wife as nothing more than a pair of shoes and says " I can throw out a pair of old shoes, but how on earth can a pair of shoes disregard their owner?"  Yasin has no power either though, every little aspect of his life is controlled by his father.  This obviously results in his appalling behaviour to his wife (who obviously had been chosen for him by his father.)  Yasin equates married life to nothing more than an April Fool's chocolate. It looks good, you take a bite and it's full of garlic! 

Kemal is the youngest member of the family and lots of the book is retold through his eyes. He is great, a 10 year old boy full of fun and love and interest in life. He loves his Mum and sisters and has no idea about why they are restricted to staying in the house. He hates it. He asks them lots of questions  about marriage, love, babies and war and all he gets is ignored or slapped. He goes to school keen to learn and as most teachers  and students are striking  against British rule there is no one there to teach him anything. This 10 year old boy is the held up mirror through which we clearly see the system. A young, freedom loving, great little guy trying to live happily amongst the idiocy  surrounding him!   I am sure that Kamal is the author himself, showing us how impossible it is to live a satisfying life under such  a religiously repressive and highly immoral society.  Appearance is everything and shame can be bought on a family  by just one unveiled peek of a women's head through an open window.  It's hard to believe that this is a portrait of only 100 years ago and even worse to know that many countries the world over still live by these morally reprehensible codes.

Mahfouz is a writer, who loves people and loves life. By getting into the minds of the members of this one family he cleverly shows that Egyptian society can't move on until there is more freedom for all. An independent Egypt will only work if both men and women are allowed to florish. The people I have met in this book are great. Real people, warts and all. It's just clear that this repressive lifestyle where women are kept under the thumb and men have to lead sordid double lives has to change for the sake of his beloved country.  I wish he were still alive because it would be interesting to see what he would make of Egypt now.  

A great read, but Mahfouz deserves a far better English translation! Come on someone, retranslate it! 

The Ice Princess

I haven't read crime fiction for ages but I do like a bit of Nordic murder so I thought I would give this a go.  I enjoyed it and have spent my last few weeks on the train reading it, but I also know I will quickly forget it.  It wasn't too taxing but I still didn't manage to work out who the murderer was. I really thought I was on the right track, but I wasn't!  

 There were lots of sentences about making coffee, adding sugar and stirring it. Infact the whole book seemed to have a coffee making fetish.  Weird!  Maybe the Swedes are all just fanatic caffeine addicts.

I enjoyed trying to puzzle out who did the dirty murder but I also like a twisted, strange, eccentric, mad, alcoholic, depressed and autistic sleuth to solve it, but the main policeman and his lovely girlfriend were just too normal and boring for me.  The only thing they liked doing was making and drinking coffee together.  

This book is the first in a series of 8 or so. So maybe the characters will develop over time but I don't think I will read another one yet. 

 In fact yes, this book was OK, but just a little bit bland.  If it were ever to be televised it would be on ITV 3 on a week day!  

A Clash of Kings

I have been reading this book for over a month now and it's time to STOP. It's defeated me, I'm done. I'm a shadow of my former self. I am now a corpse like WIGHT prowling the frozen lands of the North, dazed and confused, thinking I am from the cast of LOST.   My  New Year's resolution is to just give up and move on!  

This book has been like a boa constrictor round my neck and I have finally cut loose.    Unfortunately according to Amazon there are about 50 million people who disagree with me but hey, maybe they are just sticking with the TV show.  Now that sounds like much more fun! 

Life is just too short to carry on reading this.  I am sadly  50% through but I just can't handle it any more! 

it's a shame because I liked the first book but this is just a sea full of margarine. I deeply respect the script writers of the TV series for dredging the good bits out of this over long saga and making HBO, the actors, themselves and Mr. Martin lots of money. 

I do like the idea behind the books though and think it's perfect for a TV series.  I just can't take the structure and rambling style of the writing anymore!  I have heard there is lots of sex in the TV series.  Well,  all I can say is this book might be better if there were more sex in it. (Probably not though.) 

 Also George Martin should be banned from writing from the perspective of grown women.  It's unbelievable that they are all either semi clad sex goddesses with dragon babies (Danerys) mad evil bitches who slap men's faces a lot and scream (Cersei) or boring whinging mothers whose chapters  are completely dull. (catylyn.)  At least the men and child characters are far more interesting!

Right enough...must go and feed my dragons. 

PS can anyone lend me the TV series?