My family and other animals

Due to rubbish traffic over the last few days into and back from work I have been stuck with this book club choice for many hours. OK, I know it's a classic and all that and a puffin book (sorry, but the language is so outdated there are not many kids who would enjoy this unless they are beetle loving freaks...but beetle loving freak kids would rather be hunting for beetles than reading this I guess.) but my god, it has bored me rigid and infuriated me. maybe that is because 40 something women with no pets ( and no children) are not really its target audience I suppose.

It annoyed me because there is not enough about his family, it's all about Gerald's love of beetles, pigeons, turtles, dogs and general creation as seen through his 8 year old eyes in his run down villa in Greece. 

The descriptions are lovely I suppose ( but not that great) and ultimately dull if you don't get off on natural history. Plus my annoyance comes from the language . I dislike all this privileged, upper class, rather batty British literature nonsense. Durrell's family, his mother, his sister and two older brothers are all obvious eccentrics with weird ways but local Greeks are the ones who are called 'mentally defective'. Somehow over a couple of pages the Durrells seem to pick up almost perfect Greek, how do they manage that?  Who is supporting their hippy like existence in 'romantic' 1930 s Corfu and why does no one seem to work or do anything apart from waft around in lots of capes and cloaks, sunbathe a lot and let Gerald run lose to collect beetles with Roger the dog? 

I haven't finished this book. I can't, I've had enough and will donate it back into the charity system. But reading this has made me realise that I am a lover of people and plot in my books. Daft individuals and whimsical characters, with a heavy dose of animal antics and barely veiled British superiority just doesnt do it for me. 

God, I sound awful slagging off a puffin book. But hey, it's the truth!   Come to think of it I never liked Wind in the Willows as a kid. How I felt reading that ,so long ago, is probably similar to how this book made me feel; bored and irritated! 

The Various Haunts of Men

 This book was awful. A total waste of time. The only joy I have in writing this is that this copy cost 9p from Help the Aged Charity shop. A bloody ridiculous price. I didn't help the aged much did I? but they had the last laugh because I was dragged down into a grim, surreal 'Little England' reading this nonsense. I was forced to finish it because I needed to find out who the murderer was. I think Susan Hill cast an evil spell over me and forced me to waste valuable hours reading this tripe. I got dragged down into a totally unsatisfying, boring and badly plotted story. Don't ever read this!!

I think my love of decent crime series on TV like the Bridge and the Killing have set my standards really high and books like this are just a total disappointment. I'm going to give it back to Help the Aged!!  Ha. 

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

 I have just realised that I have just read two books about French men on the trot.  This has been on my bookshelf for years and I've never read it and I fancied a short read. (One of my friends became inspired after reading it to become a speech therapist.)

Well what can I say really, I can't be negative about a book written by a guy with locked in syndrome. A man who dictated this book letter by letter to his speech therapist via the blinking of his one eye. This being the only part of his body which still moved after his stroke. What dedication and commitment by the pair of them to write this.
Of course it is a short book and a totally unsentimental account of how Jean feels in his cocooned  prison.  He has no ability to communicate but feels everything.  All he can do is blink and look out of his one, functioning eye. To see how people in the care system treat him is heartbreaking.  When he wakes up to see a doctor sewing his left, unworking eye up it's awful. Not once did this doctor interact or communicate with him about what he was doing and his total, abject fear that this Stasi like doctor might routinely continue on and then sew up his other eye, the only opening left to him on the world around, was absolutely terrifying. Just thinking about this part of the book makes my heart race.

This book makes you feel incredibly grateful for all the little things and also how resilient people are but the dream  like sequences make it a bit of a dislocated read.  I suppose this is what Jean Bauby wanted us to feel, as close to the truth of what it is like to be completely locked in and unable to do anything apart from swivel your head and look through one eye. It is also a lesson in humility. This guy was the editor of Elle magazine one minute and 'locked in' the next. I loved how unsentimental he was and also so observant. I loved the way he described how different friends tried to communicate with him via his alphabet board , it being the ones who liked scrabble who fared the best. Jean Bauby died in 1997, one year after finishing this. What a testament to leave behind. 

How to live. A life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer.

 

Wow, what a great read. For the past week I have been taken away to meet, get to know and respect this amazing man of words, Michel Montaigne. If you are anything like me you might not have a clue who he was. Well he was born in 1533 near to Bordeaux, France and he was the first ever blogger. He wrote over 103 essays and invented the word. (essay not blog.)  But these essays were far from boring they were his thoughts, warts and all. They were all encompassing one question, how to live? ( a direct French translation because there isn't really a good English one.) he poured his heart out and wrote rambling, personal essays on things such as How not to be drawn into a pointless argument. How to protect your house. What do you say when your dog wants to play and you want to write.  He wrote about canabilism, smells , coaches and thumbs.  Any oddity really which came into his mind he wrote about it. ( but the titles were deceptive, often hardly anything in the title was covered.)

Well this book is not his essays but about him, his life, the times he lived in, the writers through time who admired him ( including Shakespeare)  the Catholic Church which banned his essays for over 200 years, the mad ISIS like world of religious war he lived through,his travels, his kidney stones, his tower he wrote in, his love for his friend who died of plague, his crazy childhood where he was bought up by peasants for 3 years and then suddenly transported to the upper class protected life where people could only speak Latin to him and he was woken up in the morning by lute players. 

All respect to Sarah Bakewell she definitely remains in the wings writing this book but she is so damn clever splitting the book into 20 different chapters which are the basis of how Montaigne tried to live his life. Sarah Bakewell in this book attempts to answer Montaigne's question of 'how to live ' as she thinks best fits him. And to be honest, she does a fine job!

 Of his own addition he was neither very intelligent, nor hardworking but my god, he poured his soul out into his essays and this is what people love so much about him, his absolute honesty and his ability to put himself into the footsteps of other people. Not only did he try to view things from other people's perspective but also from an alien view. Infact it was his writings on animals which got him banned on the Catholic reading list until the 1850s! 

 Reading this book both relaxed me and comforted me. It made me laugh and cry because basically all the crap in the world is a cycle. If anyone lived through bad times, Montaigne did but he managed somehow to keep a clear head and kept things downright human. Reading what he put down on paper makes you realise how the basics of good and bad human relationships haven't  changed at all much over time. ( well, ok people aren't ripped to pieces anymore on a wheel here in Europe) To be honest I'd much rather Montaigne were alive today so I could vote for him in six weeks' time. He'd do a grand job in parliament.  Ok, he came from a wealthy family but his life was far from easy and the best thing is he wrote down EVERYTHING! giving just support and belief to people in themselves  in this mad world, and inspiration to countless writers. 

I don't think I'll read the essays yet, but one day I will.  I'm sure they will infuriate me with their ramblings and archaic waffling on. But Sarah Bakewell has given me a perfect introduction to a 16th century French  blogger, the Greeks and Romans who inspired him,and the later people,who in turn, were both inspired and infuriated by him. Fab read!