A girls’ guide to India

Way back in the 70s I was lucky enough to spend 29 days in India. So that’s why this book appealed to me. Like the cover the content is amusing and if you read the book in public you may find that people move away from you because most pages will cause your lips to break into a smile. Some people find that disturbing.

The author has travelled extensively in India and has amassed more than a backpack of hints, tips and essential advice which were screaming to be shared with more than a handful of travellers.

This is no dry tome of Nanny-knows-best facts. The book is cleverly divided into bite-sized chunks by letters of the alphabet. I found the book so interesting that I was up to M before I had even drawn breath. I forced myself to set it aside as I was in grave danger of resigning from my job, throwing a piece of string and a hot water bottle into a bag and catching the bus to Heathrow.

Rehearsals Begin ….

Surprise all around. Seven promising candidates banished from any chance of appearing in this production!

One entrant proved to be more suitable for a part than was immediately obvious and as you can see Mustard Indigo Tie-Dye is on stage for the duration of the performance. My initial thought was that he would make an ideal backstage team (back of the quilt) but his personality was uncrushable. My original favourite was an off-cut with a white background and crisp orange flowers and green leaves but in reality he couldn’t hold the note long enough and was sent home to the scrap bag with his tail between his legs.

Now the problem with Mr Mustard Indigo is that he can’t quite make it to the end of the run and I am frantically preparing some additional pieces to complete the season. This weekend I shall be dyeing and hope that I can create a piece of cloth that will fit in with what has already been sewn together.

Mr Mustard Indigo’s parentage is uncertain. I bought him at a jumble sale and he has lurked in my stash for almost a year. I wonder if he is the result of a union between an indigo vat and a session of rust-dyeing? I suppose I will never know. I am not so adventurous and so this Bank Holiday weekend I will be dunking some unsuspecting mousey bit of fabric in a couple of packets of Dylon.

Strange Words

Make sure you sit facing the door

and try not to hear the clippity-clop of your colleague’s shoes as they walk across the floor.

L I S T EN

one day a woman bought a book

she thought it was slim and contained almost nothing

but as she read she was entranced and couldn’t put it down

she was transported to another land and the magic took such a hold of her that she nearly forgot

to get off her train

“Strange Words” by Patrick Chamoiseau,

and in my edition published by Granta, is a charming little book of Creole stories.

I love the way the shape of the words on the page help to tell the story and draw you in.

The themes are as old as the hills.

A stranger who turns out to be something more than they first appear.

A young beautiful girl moves away from her family and is shown round her new home

but told not to enter some rooms….

I picked up this book with the intention of sending it to my baby sister who is currently writing her first novel which could loosely be classified as “magical realism”. But the book has cast its spell on me and every time I reach for an envelope the book whispers its transfixing incantation,

Keep me, keep me

I am  yours

F  O  R  E  V  E  R

Today I will mostly be …. auditioning fabric …

Now Reading …

Yes, I do know that the Beijing Olympics are in full swing but it is purely coincidental that this book was at the top of my TBR pile. Where did it come from and why did I buy it. Please don’t expect any erudite answer.

Some of you may remember that Simon of Stuck-in-a-Book posted some sort of question about an A-Z of favourite authors. Of course, now that I’ve gone looking for the original post, I can’t find it. Anyway, on a lunchtime jaunt to the newly re-arranged Kingston Oxfam bookshop I decided to find a few authors from the less populated letters of the alphababet. One lucky find was “Kitchen” by Banana Yoshimoto, described as “what it means to be young and frustrated in modern Japan”.

Although written by an author, also beginning with a “Y”, “The Garlic Ballads” by Mo Yan feels as if it is written about another time, rather than just another country. I knew that the book was set in almost contemporary times by references to items such as cars etc and, later on in the book, someone’s father had done something in 1949 but the feeling was of long ago. I was quite shocked to find that the time-frame is 1988 as so many of the behaviours and attitudes are archaic. It may be illegal to beat your young adult daughter but it still appears to be common practice. The chapters are headed with verses from ballads written by a musician about the garlic troubles. Garlic is a very profitable crop and the farmers are encouraged by the government to give much land over to its production but sadly there is a glut and intertwined with more personal stories we learn more about this agricultural situation.

I work for a picture library and over the past few months many images of the amazing Chinese Olympic buildings, the “Bird’s Nest, the water Cube”, have passed before my eyes. The images conjured up by Mo Yan in “The Garlic Ballads” provide a thought-provoking contrast.

It’s cold oop north …

… or so I have been told. TLM (The Loom Monkey) saw the quilt I had made for MLD (My Little Darling) and proceeded to tell me why he needed a quilt more than her. Having put the finishing touches to MLD’s red, black and white quilt while we were on holiday in Cornwall I had to immediately start work on TLM’s so that he can take it back to Durham with him for year 2.

I tried to use fabric I had already so the plain fabrics were from my stash and I spent real money on the patterned purple for the sashing and borders. I didn’t quilt it much because I quite like the puffy look. I quilted through the middle of each sashing strip and in the ditch between each coloured panel.

The quilt is not as big as MLD’s which would easily do for a double bed but having run out of room in the car when we brought TLM home I think restraining the size of it is a good idea. What it lacks in size it makes up for in brightness.

Harry and Hermione Have a Lovely Day

The academic year is over and it’s time for Harry Potter (alias The Loom Monkey) to return south.

But first he has to show Hermione (alias My Little Darling) around Durham

From Prebends Bridge that iconic view of the towers of Durham Cathedral

The sanctuary knocker

and those summer daisies that always add a magical touch to a graveyard

DGR at Dartington’s Way with Words literary festival

Readers in over 90 countries now log on to the daily blog of self-confessed bookworm Dovegreyreader, alias Lynne Hatwell.
At dovegreyreader.com book reviews, suggested “reading trails”, visits to literary events, stately homes and wonderful scenery rub shoulders with insights into the family life of this blogger who has the distinction of being archived for posterity by the British Library. Readers feel like members of an extended family as they share in events such as the publication of her drummer-boy father’s biography and the rescuing of a family of ducklings. As well as inspiring avid and lapsed readers alike, DGR is a health visitor in a scattered rural area. For years she has been advocating books as therapy and always has a shelf of books ready to “prescribe” to those in her care.

The blog has grown from many years of keeping a “book of books”, a list of all the books read by Dovegreyreader complete with her thoughts and comments. As happy in the 21st century as in any of the centuries about which she reads, Dovegreyreader has kept up with technology first of all moderating an online book group of like-minded individuals and then seizing the newfound joy of blogging. Along with her excellent suggestions for reading comes the chance to win books in periodic book draws. Publishers have realised the power of this blog and eagerly send DGR, as she is affectionately known, books to share with her coterie. All draws for these goodies are undertaken by Rocky, the cat, master of the aga. Anyone who finds themselves in need of reading suggestions, with the added advantage of the occasional chance to win a free book, should take themselves to www.dovegreyreader.com If a virtual taste of DGR is not enough, then tickets to hear her speak at Dartington’s Way with Words literary festival at 1130 on Sunday, 13th July 2008 are available for £5 from the festival website at www.wayswithwords.co.uk

Heirloom update

I now have 2 rows of 5 blocks all sewn together, another 5 rows of 5 to go. By the time i get to the end my suturing of the wadding will be so practiced that I will be able to moonlight as a surgeon.

Another Year Older

Yesterday was my birthday and so I have no guilty conscience about having a bog-free day. Here are two of my cards: on the left, cowparsely from my baby sister, Anne and on the right a textile design by Jacqueline Groag from my work colleagues. Isn’t it wonderful when you receive just the cards that you would have chosen for yourself.

I am still reading, and loving, Eucalpytus by Murray Bail. The chapters have become shorter and are an ideal length for my four stops on the train from home to work and back again. I have to confess that I have almost consciously taken to catching trains that my “train friends” WON’T be on because of course you can’t really stick your head in a book when someone you know is sitting next to you and eager to chat about what an awful day / amazing holiday they have just had. Sometimes I even have to speak French, or to be more accurate, listen at French because a lovely woman from Paris travels in my direction every now and then. She speaks at breakneck speed and with a heavy accent so I have to maintain close eye contact, as well as watching the movements of her lips, in a vain attempt to use all my senses to take in the information so that my poor brain can compute the data into something that makes sense. I resort to smiles and nods and once every few paragraphs of her stream of consciousness I interject a v e r y s l o w attempt at a sentence which she corrects charmingly for me and then speeds off again in her narrative. So by leaving for work later than the train gang and leaving for home after they have travelled, I am able to breathe in the Eucalyptus fumes for a few moments.

It’s All in the Bag (almost a tutorial)

An idea of how to make a circular drawstring sewing bag

I thought I’d have another go at making a drawstring sewing bag and this time take a couple of photos to explain what I mean.

The basic requirements for this little bag are:

. 2 lined circles, one bigger than the other,

. cord or ribbon for the drawstring

. 2 large beads or buttons or some extra fabric to sew on the ends of the drawstrings

The circles have to be quite a bit larger than I imagined. I suggest drawing around a dinner plate for the SMALLER circle and one inch outside the dinner plate for the larger (outside) circle.

1. You will need to cut 2 of each of the 2 circles so you will end up with 4 circles, 2 big and 2 slightly smaller.

2. Sew all around the SMALLEST circles (right sides together) with approx a 1/4 inch seam EXCEPT FOR A GAP OF ABOUT 3 inches that you will need to turn the circle inside out. Turn this small circle inside out, press and then top stitch near the outside edge carefully closing the opening by neatly tucking the seam allowances inside. Put aside.

3. Sew the 2 LARGEST circles right sides together. you will need to leave approx a 4 inch gap for turning AND ALSO 2 one-inch gaps, opposite each other to use to thread the drawstrings through.

Turn this LARGE circle inside out and press. Top stitch around edge, EXCEPT for 2 one-inch gaps using the topstitching to neatly close the 4-inch turning gap.

4. Fold the SMALL circle in half and iron to press. Fold in half again & press with iron, and fold in half one more time and press again. Open up carefully and you should have folds that divide the circle into 8 sections. Using tailors chalk or ordinary blackboard chalk draw over these folds so that your circle looks like a cake cut into 8. (see first photo at top of page). Find a small circle (e.g a glass) to draw around in the centre of this circle (see above). This will look like the centre of a flower with 8 petals around it.

5. Place the SMALL circle on top of the LARGE circle equally (see photo above). Place a pin in the middle. Carefully pin in between each line so that you will be able to sew along both sides of each line.

6.Starting at the outside of the small circle, sew down the right-hand side of the chalk line till you meet the centre drawn circle, sew along the curve of this centre circle till you meet the next line. Sew along the nearest side of the next chalk line (towards the outside of the circle of fabric) and then back down alongside it until you meet the centre circle again. Sew along that section of curve and up one side of the next chalk line etc etc until you finally arrive back at where you started. ALL THIS STITCHING WILL SHOW THROUGH ONTO THE OUTSIDE OF YOUR BAG. These lines of stitching make eight small interior pockets for reels of thread etc.

7. Back on the largest circle, sew a second line of stitching one-inch inside your outside line of stitching (do not leave any gaps in this stitching.

8. With a safety pin, thread a long drawstring (longer than the circumference of your circle) in through one gap, all way around the circle and back out where it entered. Starting at the OPPOSITE gap, thread another long drawstring through the other gap, all around the casing and back out where it entered. You need to knot the paired ends of drawstrings and either tie a large bead or button through and knot securely so that they don’t disappear into the gaps or, do as I did and, sew each pair of ribbon ends into a piece of doubled-over fabric and stitch quite a few times to secure the ribbon inside the fabric. On reflection it would have been neater to make triangular-shaped “ends” to sew the drawstring/ribbon into.

I’m quite pleased with this bag apart from the fact that the inner circle shouldn’t have been so much smaller than the outer circle.Next time I will make them with probably only one-inch in difference between the two circles.

Somehow I should be able to make a circular pincushion that is permanently attached to the “flower centre” inside the bag.

It also needs an attached needle-case and attached small scissors holster.

Blame the alphabet

Back in April, Simon of Stuck in a Book listed his A-Z Favourites, one favourite author for each letter of the alphabet. Of course some letters had too many authors to choose between and Xylophone was not allowed as the name of a author. SiaB’s post came to mind during one of my lunchtime forays to the Oxfam bookshop. I decided that I would like to join the members of Cornflower’s Book Group who are about to read “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak. The Oxfam bookshop helpfully arranges their contemporary fiction alphabetically by author so I was concentrating my search on the final shelf. Alas not a Zusak in sight but I came away with five books tow of which were by authors beginning with “Y”. I haven’t read them yet as they are reserved for my holiday reading horde but I must at the very least commit the authors names to memory in case my life ever depends on finding an author for each letter of the alphabet. I suppose you all want to share my secret “Y” entires, do you?

Mo YAN - The Garlic Ballads
(apparently he has been referred to as the Chinese answer to Franz Kafka or Joseph Heller

Banana YOSHIMOTO - Kitchen
In an interview, the author states “I have in mind sensitive, somewhat adolescent people who are stuck between reality and fantasy. Young, rebellious people like to read my books, but I guess what I really like is to encourage adults who still have playful, adolescent minds”. This statement suggests that BY may have something in common with one of my favourite authors, Amelie Nothomb. After I have read “Kitchen” I will let you know if my supposition is correct.

I know, I did buy five books, didn’t I? The others are:

Dierdre MADDEN - The Birds of the Innocent Wood
Sarah STOVELL - Mothernight
Dan FESPERMAN - Lie in the Dark

I have instructed My Dearly Beloved many times to buy his books from the Oxfam shop. Until yesterday he has disobeyed me but he finally has to agree that some of my instructions are worth heeding. The lights in the OS are not harsh and intrusive, you don’t have to jostle your way past 2 for the price of 3 and promotional display hazards, the money goes to a good cause and the money you save can go towards ……. buying more books.

Heirloom in the making?

Yesterday I went to the second part of a two-part workshop on how to do “Quilting-as-you-go” tutored by Carolyn Forster.

On the first day, six weeks ago, she showed us masses of her quilts made using this method.

Then we had the tough job of deciding which block design we would make and we began cutting up fabric and piecing our blocks.

She showed us how each block was sandwiched together and quilted as an individual block, just leaving a couple of inches of the “frames” unquilted so that they could be joined together later.

Each of the completed blocks measures 16″ x 16″ and I have 35 of them all quilted up and ready to join together in rows. Each row will consist of 5 blocks and will have 7 rows, so it will be quite a big quilt. As they say in the US “you do the math(s)”.

On the left you can see one completed block, made up of a sandwich of: a pieced top, wadding, backing fabric. On the right is a bag containing the remaining 30 blocks waiting to be joined together in another 6 rows.

Not content with having been immersed in sewing all day I was so inspired by seeing Carolyn’s sweet little drawstring, circular needlework bag that I had to cut out and try to make one myself. Inside it had six pockets for reels of thread etc. i also made a matching needlecase. I can’t show it to you because I have packed it all up to send to a friend of mine. She has moved several times in the last few years and when I visited her in her latest home I was horrified that serial clearouts had left her without a sewing bag/box. She confessed to me that she had no needle and thread in the whole house. She has been on my mind since I discovered this distressing situation and now I hope that my late-night sewing session will ensure that her new home is complete.

On the reading front I forgot to tell you about the recently completed “An Artist of the Floating World” by
Kazuo Ishiguro. This lets us into the world of an artist in post-war Japan. Those who have read “The Remains of the Day” will be familiar with the author’s gentle measured style of writing which suits this story in which a widowed artist is faced with arranging a marriage for his second daughter. We experience with him the difficulties of adapting to social and political changes which have a direct effect on his immediate family.

i have moved on to “Eucalyptus” by Murray Bail which coincidentally also deals with how to ensure that a suitable partner is found for a daughter. We may laugh at Jane Austen’s Mrs Bennett and Emma with their matchmaking preoccupations but both books that I mentioned above emphasise that the problem is still uppermost in the minds of many a parent and friend. The quilt I am making is for my only daughter. She should really be making it herself as part of her bottom drawer and I should be making use of the ladies at my quilting bee to search out a spouse for her.

Today both Dovegrey Reader and Stuck in a Book write about similar subjects: the stories behind people at the end of their lives. It makes me wonder about the lives of those I see all around me. None of them appear to be “ordinary” but maybe that is the whole point of life or lives, each of them extraordinary in their own way.

The photo above is of the house where my father and his siblings were born. As I grew up I thought that my father was one of three children. After his death I learnt that he was one of four; he had a half-brother who he knew as his cousin until a day in the the early 1970s when his sister and half-brother came to visit us. After my mother’s death I discovered that in fact he and his siblings were the second family of his father.

Researching family history I asked my aunt to fill in some gaps for me. Little did I expect the thirteen page letter that arrived , spilling its contents into my head like a Catherine Cookson saga. The letter and my own research caused episode after episode to unfold until truth became as unbelievable as fiction. In 1850, in Oxfordshire a twenty-nine year old spinster named Charity gave birth to my grandfather Charles, a name he would convieniently share with his second family’s other grandfather. For several years they lived with her parents and siblings but by 1861 her father was dead, her brother was head of the household and she and her child disappeared from view. We can only imagine the dramatic scene in Episode x of this saga. “Father is dead, I am head of the family now and you can get out and take that bastard with you.” My aunt’s sanitised version of her father’s early life was that he grew up in an orphanage. The harsher reality was that he spent his growing and early adult years in the workhouse. Merely seeing the word on paper, or reading it in your head conjures up awful images. Superficially it doesn’t appear to have harmed Charles. It seems to have at least instilled the work ethic into him. He stayed on once he was an adult to become first a “porter” and later “Assistant Labour Master”. I suppose that the workhouse and Poor Law was the forerunner of the Social Security system and indeed my grandfather took advantage of the system as much as anyone sitting for their Civil Service exams in later years. By the beginning of the twentieth century he had risen to being Registrar and Relieving Officer for an area stretching from Henley to Ascot. In other words people came to him to register births and deaths and he doled out Poor Relief. When he died he left a house (see above), a field and a cow. Nor bad for a boy from the workhouse.

If you want to see next week’s episode now, the tune into Channel X !

Do you remember those twee little cartoons …. Love is ….

Well here’s my contribution to that genre: Love is ….. a TWODALOO !!

I’m frankly speechless. If you really want to read more then please do.

Where was the editor?

I’ve almost finished reading NOAH’S ARK by Barbara Trapido but I have been annoyed and distracted by a couple of errors which should I think have been picked up by an editor. Quite early on there was a reference to the books of Beatrice Potter. That niggled away at me and, although a little self-doubt crept in, I was in danger of being stared at on the train for chuntering out loud, “I know I’m right, I can’t have been wrong all these years.”

It upset me so much that when the train stopped at my station I left my bookmark in the offending page rather than the page I was reading. Of course I did nothing and next day on the train I reassigned the bookmark to its more usual function. Dear old B Potter popped up later in the book, this time with her name spelt correctly as BeatriX. I was pleased that someone in publishing knew the woman’s name enough to spell it correctly. However, I was still astounded with the inconsistency of things.

All this would have been forgotten but this morning, when I can’t be more than 12 pages from the end of the book I see that the editor has been slacking again:
Hattie at first was not to be coaxed from the darkness of her bedroom where she sobbed under a Hollie Hobbet quilt.

Now anyone who was around in the late 1970s will know that Hattie’s quilt was Hollie Hobby NOT Hobbet. I could forgive an alternative spelling of Holly because quite frankly I don’t know which is correct. We had an enormous real child-sized HH rag doll and I have a feeling that her removeable prairie-style dress might still be lurking in my house now. The location of the corpse of poor HH is something about which I have no idea.

Still looking good 50+ years on

Am I talking about the Heals curtain fabric in the background, COTTAGE GARDEN that originally sold for £10 9s a yard or the talented textile designer Mary White pictured here with her design?  Well if I look as good at 58 as Mary does at 78 then I’ll be happy and if I could ever create something as fresh and exciting as COTTAGE GARDEN , let alone something that still looks modern over 50 years later, the I would be ecstatic.

It’s no wonder that Mary’s daughter-in-law, Sarah Dening couldn’t bear to leave the unused designs gathering dust in the loft. Sarah is married to one of Mary’s sons and his penchant for wearing distinctive shirts must surely have been Sarah’s inspiration for bringing Mary’s “lost” designs to light as exclusive men’s shirts.

Mary never gave her designs names, she left that fanciful part of affairs to the manufacturers who snapped up her designs. Her clients read like a textbook of  textile design history: Heals, Liberty, David Whitehead, Turnbull & Stockdale, Gayonne …. I could go on because Mary was indefatigable in the way she traipsed around with her portfolio putting each new batch of her designs in front of  the textile buyers in Manchester and London.

It seems that this determination has rubbed off on Sarah Dening with her business Pigletchops that is producing Mary’s original designs for a whole new generation. In the 1950s Mary benefited from a good life style thanks to her designs being produced by British companies. In view of this Sarah has vowed that these British designs will be printed in the UK and the products will be totally made in the UK. That sounds easy enough but as we know most of what we wear has not originated in the UK. It took a lot of hard work for Sarah to stick to her principles but she has done it and the shirts now available at Pigletchops have labels that proudly celebrate this feat.

MAGICAL REALISM : a plan

A short while ago I wrote about my ignorance of the genre MAGICAL REALISM. I decided that something should be done to fill this gap in my literary knowledge and went a-clicking  on those book sites  that we all know so well. I’m off to Cornwall for a week at the end of June and so I have decided that that will be an ideal way to begin my foray into magical realms.

I’ve selected three books, the two you can see here; “The Medusa Frequency” by Russell Hoban and “Nights at The Circus” by Angela Carter. I am waiting for “Threshold” by Ursula Le Guin to arrive.

With a bit of luck The Medusa Frequency may prove to be a crossover book, meaning that it can crossover from my reading pile to that of mu husband. This doesn’t happen often, the most successful crossover author so far being Brian Moore. I love Brian Moore’s works for the Roman Catholicity of them. If you were educated in a convent books like Brian’s seem to exert a certain hold. The other half reads them because they tell an exciting story and you can’t really argue with that.

My Other Life

I’ve been having an exciting few days. On Friday I was interviewed by BBC TV about the 1950s textile designer, Mary White. I did some original research on her about ten years ago so they decided to ask me about her.

Then yesterday I spent the day in a “private functon” at Liberty. What a great life, sitting around in between visits by members of the press eating dainty sandwiches, strawberries and cream and later on afternoon tea.

Meanwhile Mary was being interviewed in person and on the telephone. I could get used to this sort of life.

When Mary, a freelance designer left off traipsing around to manufacturers with her huge portfolio of designs and concentrated on bringing up her children and teaching pottery she put all her unused designs up in her loft. The children grew up and when one of her sons married his wife discovered the hidden treasure and decided it shouldn’t languish in the loft. Now she runs pigletchops.com and Mary’s “lost designs” are being used on a series of men’s shirts. These are being issued in limited editions of 100 and are best described as Mid Century Modern for Men.

I spent quite a while talking to Piglet Chops proprietor, Sarah Dening and she let slip that they are about to launch an item of women’s clothing that will be just the ticket for the coming summer months. I can’t wait to find out what this new item will be because at the moment I just wish I was a man because I would have to have those shirts.

Mid-Century Modern for Men (as seen on www.retrotogo.com)

Pigletchops offers limited edition men’s shirts made from classic 1950s Mary White textiles

A mix of the old and the new - new shirts made from vintage textile designs - Pigletchops limited edition Mary White textile shirts.

Mary White was a successful textile designer in the 1950s - producing textiles for the likes of Heals, Liberty, Edinburgh Weavers, David Whitehead and Turnbull & Stockdale. In fact, some of her designs reside in places like the V&A and The Whitworth Gallery in Manchester.

The shirts are the work of Mary’s daughter-in-law, produced in limited numbers (100 of each) from 1950s designs created then stored away…until now. All the shirts are semi-fitted, made of 100 per cent cotton poplin and have a two-button single cuff. They retail for £149 each.

Find out more at the Pigletchops website

If you are wondering why I’ve suddenly stopped talking about books or yarn then I will explain. Back when I was a very mature student I went to a jumble sale and caught glimpse of a pair of curtains that yelled 1 9 5 0 s to me. I dragged those curtains out, handed over my 50p (’cos they were just clearing up and had to get rid of everything) and decided I would do my dissertation on them, When my tutor told me there was no way I could because I would never be able to find enough out about the designer it was like red rag to a bull and the rest is history. The curtains were “Cottage Garden” by Mary White and manufactured by Heals.

I’m thrilled that Mary White’s work is being seen again or rather in the case of these designs, for the first time because these are designs that she didn’t let anyone buy at the time. They have been biding their time in her loft and now when we are ready to appreciate such things again she has allowed them to be used in these limited edition shirts. I can’t help wondering if young designers of today will prove to have work that stands the test of time so well.

Daughter as Muse

Different people  see  different thing don’t they?  I just saw a  Dutch  painting photograph but of course when I looke later I could see that it was young girl with a carrier bag on her head! Artist/Photographer Hendrik Kerstens has documenting his daughter as she grows up. I don’t think that my own daughter would be so obliging.

http://www.witzenhausengallery.nl/artist.php?idxArtist=12&offset=0

An orderly Q

Every morning I get out of bed, put a load of washing on, make my breakfast and retire with it for my daily dose of blogland. My favourites are saved on tabs in my web browser and are abbreviated to: DGR, HD, RJ, SiaB, AH and LWD. Two of those are little-known private interests but I’m sure that you can all guess the identities of the first four. It was over on Stuck-in-a-Book that I came across reference to a Roman writer, Quintilian. Recently, in blogland, there has been a smattering of alphabetic lists of favourite authors. This was started by SiaB as an Alphabet Meme and then picked up by other bloggers. SiaB provides us with a handy list of those who picked up the meme.

This morning Siab wrote about a book he has just finished. It is non-fiction and references other writings, including those of Quintilian. What a prize for someone doing the alpha meme and who only has Arthur Quiller-Couch so far for the Q entry. Quintilian is writing about education, more precisely about the education of an orator but he does seem to exude an amazing amount of common sense. He begins in Book One by talking about those who have a hand in the education of an individual, beginning with the nurse and the parents. He moves on to write of learning the alphabet, and of writing:

The accomplishment of writing well and expeditiously, which is commonly disregarded by people of quality, is by no means an indifferent matter. Writing itself is the principal thing in our studies, and by it alone sure proficiency, resting on the deepest roots, is secured. A too slow way of writing retards thought, and a rude and confused hand cannot be read; and hence follows another task, that of reading off what is to be copied from the writing. 29. At all times, therefore, and in all places, and especially in writing private and familiar letters, it will be a source of pleasure to us not to have neglected even this acquirement.

This is all very pertinent to the moment for me. I have just been encouraged to start writing real letters to a friend again. This is something that I haven’t done for quite a while and most people I need to correspond with have an email address and as long as your communication is welcome you are usually guaranteed a speedy response that doesn’t involve relying on the uncertain services of the Royal Mail. Please don’t get me started on that topic or I will join Elaine, of Random Jottings, in what she calls GOW (Grumpy Old Woman) mode. So far I have received the first epistle from my friend and after having to reply to her using my daughter’s chewed old school fountain pen I dragged myself away from desk in my lunch break and bought myself an ink converter for my lovely black and gold Waterman’s pen and a bottle of Havana Brown. She should have received my letter by now but I am not quite sure how many days it will take her to decipher my squiggles. Perhaps if I had been given ivory letters to play with as a toddler, as Quintilian advises in his Institutes of Oratory, so that I could learn their shapes as I learnt their sounds then my writing would now be more legible?

still reading: FUGITIVE PIECES by Anne Michaels

I know you all think I’m an incredibly slow reader but that’s not really the case. I’m not as fast as some people I know like supersonic Random Jottings, or as prolific as Dove Grey Reader, as learned as Harriet Devine, or as amusing as Stuck-in-a-Book. I’m just what I call a “lapsed reader” because I don’t make time to read any more. I rely on the 13 mins of travel time on the train from home to work and back again but unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your point of view, I have amassed a posse of what we call “train friends” or “the train gang”. It works rather like velcro. I started talking to one woman on the platform one morning and we progressed from nodding and saying hello to having deep meaningful discussions about the virtues of different types of bag (yesterday’s conversation). Another friend has a penchant for colourful hats and stripey socks so it was natural that I should make her acquantance. She knew someone else etc etc . Now we really need to reserve a carriage just for the gang. About half of this merry brood get on at a previous station so we have to stand in the right place and look out for them in the carriage and invade any empty seats around them. If we were brave enough we would evict the intruders that were sitting on what should be our seats. Shamefully we have become such a rabble that some people DO offer to move when we board the train and they scuttle away to a quieter part of the carriage.

So with a large morning and smaller evening party of friends to join I rarely get as far as opening my book. If I do you can guarantee that within one paragraph a fellow velcro-pal appears and all chance of literature disappears.

I don’t know what I expected when I picked up Fugitive Pieces, certainly nothing like the book I found. I was drawn to the cover and the title. I think I expected memories of a woman, not realising that the head on the cover is probably that of a young boy. A clever title. It took a while for it to dawn on me that both the traces of music and geological references are “fugitive pieces”. I’m on the final stretch of the book. I was momentarily confused when the main protagonist changed and I’m not really sure why that was done as I’m not out of my confusion yet.

Anne Michaels is a poet and if she wasn’t considered as such before the publication of this book then she surely would have been recognised as such after this book made its way out into the world.

Magical Realism - a genre I didn’t know existed

I’ve been chatting to my sister about the book she is writing and she said she was afraid that it might head off to chicklit territory if she wasn’t careful and lose the MAGICAL REALISM element. Now call me me ignorant but I didn’t know there was such a genre. She was trying to get her youngest to bed so couldn’t give me an idiot’s guide to the genre so just gave me an example you have to accept the magical things that happen if a book also contains such mundane things as people getting on and off a bus.

Well of course I went off a-googling and found this:

Felix Grant (http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824/magreal.htm#beginning ) says:
Magical Realism is, like all such categorisations, impossible to define precisely. It also overlaps other genres — including “fantasy” and “science fiction.”

He then proceeds to list 7 books widely considered to belong to the canon of magical realism and a further 18 that he teaches about on his lit course. I didn’t do very well with the list. I own 3 of the 25 books, started two, put them aside: bought another for the woodcuts rather than the book but DID read and enjoy it. I’m wondering if I should gather some of these volumes to my ample bosom and take them with me on holiday next month and explore a new genre. Anyone else up for exploring new territories? You can see the full list below with my notes about my scant knowledge of the books listed.

Watertight agreement on a “canon” is difficult to obtain, and I wouldn’t claim it for my list. Perhaps the first seven titles below could be said to belong within the canon; beyond that the borders are hazy.

These seven are generally accepted and quoted by a range of authorities as definitive examples of Magical Realism:
* Carey, Peter (Australia) Illywhacker
* Carter, Angela Nights at the Circus
* Kundera, Milan (Czech) Immortality
* García Márquez, Gabriel (Colombia) One Hundred Years of Solitude
* Rushdie, Salman (UK/India) Midnight’s Children and Shame
* Swift, Graham (UK) Waterland

I think I STARTED Illywhacker but put it aside
Heard of Angela Carter but not Nights at the Circus
Heard of Milan Kundera but not Immortality
Heard of Salman Rushdie and Midnight’s Children (started it, can’t remember finishing it) but not Shame
Heard of Waterland but not Graham Swift

A lot of fiction which predates the term Magical Realism is nevertheless recognised as falling within its definition. The most obvious example is Kafka, and in particular:
* Kafka, Franz (Czech) Metamorphosis
Yep heard of that

I teach my own lit courses on the basis that the following are indicative examples of the range covered by the Magical Realism label, and my immediate colleagues are in general agreement, but they are not sanctified by universal acceptance! I’ve limited myself to one book per author only for brevity and clarity.

* Allende, Isabel (Chile) Of Love and Shadows author but not book

* Aitmatov, Chingiz (USSR) The Day Lasts More Than A Hundred Years NO

* Doctorov, E L (US) Loon Lake author but not book

* Eco, Umberto (Italy) Foucault’s Pendulum heard but not read

* Fowles, John (UK) A Maggot heard but not read

* Gearhardt, Sally M (US) The Wanderground heard but not read

* Golding, William (UK) The Paper Men author but not book

* Greenland, Colin (UK) Other Voices NO

* Le Guin, Ursula K (US) Threshold author (thought she was scifi / fantasy)

* Hesse, Herman (Germany) Magister Ludi author but not book

* Hoban, Russell (US/UK) The Medusa Frequency NO

* Hoeg, Peter (Denmark) The History of Danish Dreams author but not book

* Hospital, Janette T (Australia) The Last Magician NO

* Lessing, Doris (UK) The Memoirs of a Survivor author but not book

* McEwan, Ian (UK) The Child in Time author but not book

* Read, Herbert (UK) The Green Child YES - READ IT -GOT IT - bought it for the woodcuts!

* Ransmayer, Christoph (Austria) The Last World NO

* Saxton, Josephine (UK/US) Queen of the States NO

Thrilling Moments

I’ve just been reading about wonderful performances experienced by Elaine at Random Jottings and I was immediately reminded of one of the best birthday treats of my life. Back in the very late 1970s I was still living at home, in Bath, but was just about grownup and earning my own living. We were lucky enough to have the wonderful Bath Festival held in the city every year and I had usually been involved in fringe events with my drama group. This particular year, I decided that I would buy a ticket to every single lunchtime performance. As they were short concerts, and in the day, they were much more affordable. I worked as a Civil Servant so I saved up plenty of flexi-time so that I could get myself to and from the concerts as well as allowing time for the performances themselves.

I can hardly remember what I saw and heard except for the concert on my birthday. The performer was a pianist, a dark foreigner with a beard. He played Bartok which I believe is probably not the sort of thing for neophyte concert-goers……. but ….

……….. his hands posed above the piano he played as if his very being depended on the music .. the music was alive and I could feel it. I have never before and never since felt that way about any music. I knew it was something special. As a single entity, the audience was bowled over by his performance and we clapped and clapped and clapped and clapped and clapped and clapped until our hands ached. He was so unassuming. He humbly stood and bowed at the end of the piece, almost as if he was thanking us. When the applause would not die down he seemed stunned as though he had not known how well he could play and what an experience it was to hear the music that eminated from him.

I was so pleased that I had gone to that performance not knowing anything about the music or the pianist. No one needed to tell me, I just knew he was an amazing pianist, I could feel it. His name was Andre Tchaikowksy and it wasn’t until he died a few years later that I found out that I “should” have thought he was something special. That is probably the mark of true genius. It is obvious even to those who have no idea about such matters.

When my birthday comes round later this year, don’t bother racking your brains for the perfect present because nothing will ever come anywhere near what he gave to me that day. I tremble now when I remember it and I doubt if I will ever feel like that about anything ever, for the rest of my life.

The James Lipton Questionnaire

Goodness me, I’ve never been tagged to do a meme before. Harriet tagged me and as a consequence I now have to answer questions which look easy when you see someone else’s answers but not quite so easy when you are the one in the inquisitor’s chair. I

What is your favorite word?
Lugubrious, but I have yet to use it in normal conversation.

What is your least favorite word?
diffident

What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?
Fresh air, clear skies, birdsong

What turns you off?
Rush hour travel to central London (Thankfully I only do that once or twice a year)

What is your favorite curse word?
Poodles!

What sound or noise do you love?
Breaking waves

What sound or noise do you hate?
The same annoying woman who talks inane chatter on her mobile EVERY morning on MY train. I wouldn’t mind if it was a quick, “shall I pick up some milk on the way in” or “I’m running a bit late……” This woman just witters on and on and on and on and on and says absolutely nothing while her grating voice drills into my brain and spoils any chance of reading a book.

What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
Something to do with textiles.

What profession would you not like to do?
Anthing to do with sport, especially competitive sport.

If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?
“Come on in, this is a TOTALLY smoke free area “.

Now I’m tagging Elaine over at Random Jottings to do this! Can’t wait to see your answers RJ

No other book?

As I suspected, I felt disinclined to have Gilead as my travelling companion for the week. As is often the case I just had to go for whatever was to hand, which happened to be

NO OTHER LIFE by BRIAN MOORE

Another book written by a man. There have been quite a run of those in my recent reading but this is not just any man, this is an old friend. Such an old friend that I know that his name is not pronounced Bry-ann but something like Bree-an. His novels are usually slim, simply written, usually centred around one person in a way that is almost female. He was born and grew up as a Roman Catholic in Northern Ireland and in many of his novels there is no way to get away from the church. In fact the novels go even further and have the main protagonist as a Catholic priest often questioning his own belief.  I have just dipped into the first few pages, far enough to discover that this priest has lived in Ganae, a fictitious Caribbean country, teaching in a school for the elite of the country for thirty years. He has reached retirement and we begin to look back at his life in this poor country.

Over on Anne’s blog, she also has spread her wings for sunnier climes and has been reading a book set on the island of Crete, a place where she lived for several years, and which is the setting of her novel in progress. She confesses that she picked up the book she is reading because of where it is set. I picked up mine because of the author but other recent reads were chosen by the name of the character in the title and the delightful cover design. Is there right or wrong reason to choose a book?

Sunday Salon: Mr Pip has gone

I can’t keep up with all these erudite book reviews and I’m always terrified that anything I do write will act as a spoiler so instead I will just lay a few words on the screen / page:

simple life
fish out of water
trouble and strife

in the water
fish out of water
can life be simple?

That’s all folks - see you next Sunday in the Salon. I’ve picked up Gilead by Marilynne Robinson but I’m not sure if I will stay the course yet. It’s beautifully written and I appreciate the idea of it but I’m not sure it’s the right book for me at the moment.

SUNDAY SALON: Nearly finished - what’s next?

During the past week I have been reading

I was so engrossed with it that just as I stepped off the train at my station, and the automatic doors shut, I realised that I had left my other bag with a file from work and a poster for my son on the seat INSIDE the train. The ticket office was just closing and the chap there tried to call the station at the end of the line, but just as he had expected they had left for the evening. So I had an unexpected 30 mins of reading time, whilst I slowly froze, waiting for my train to come back in the other direction.

I could have kissed the guard when I discovered he had my bag in his guardsvan. He looked extremely uncomfortable when I expressed my feeling of gratitude to him! I still have a few pages left so I will save any comments till later. For now I will just say that it has turned out to be a surprising book.

So what will I turn to next? I’ve just popped over to Harriet’s blog. In fact I still have it open in another tab as I am lapping up the Sonific music she has playing there at the moment. Harriet has tempted me to consider reading Sarah Stovell’s ….

I don’t have the book yet so I may have to read one or two from the tottering TBR heap first. Have a good Sunday Salon everyone.

 

I’ve not read “The Needle in the Blood”

Maybe this will get me in the mood.

Slattern or Seraph?

After my steaming cup of tea, brought to me by MDB (My Dearly Beloved), I made my usual visit to DoveGreyReader. No mention of books this Saturday morning. just domestic stuff about removing cat’s stitches and vacuum cleaner bags. DGR confesses that removed from her appliance she has no idea which bags to buy. Surprisingly that is the sort of info that I do have up my sleeve when out shopping. So that set me thinking. Normally I veer to the slattern end of the domestic manager scale but in a few areas I am fully winged and haloed.

So I thought I might share a few of my virtuous practices with you all, and invite you to pat yourself on the back about your domestic management skills. So without further ado ….

1. I know which vac bags to buy for my dust-guzzler and I write the date that the bag is changed on the new bag.
2. I hang a spiral-bound reporter’s notebook near the kettle and have trained the WHOLE family to write down items BEFORE they run out. Unlike a friend of mine who tried to implement the same scheme, my family do not abuse this notebook by writing items such as Porsche, Viagra for Dad etc.
3. All members of the family have been trained and adhere to my laundry system. Dirty clothes are placed in the correct place. (Training to retrieve correct “person pile” of clean clothes is still in progress).
4. Recycling is well-organised and family adhere to implemented system.
5. Rubbish putting out is organised and involves a 2-member team. To avoid fox scavenging I place bag(s) ready to go out last thing at night before rubbish day & MDB puts bag(s) out as he leaves the house early in the morning. Usually the foxes have gone off to bed before he does this so no mess.
6. A Large HOUSE file/ring binder keeps all appliance purchases & repairs & building works bills & receipts in one place. I can easily look back to see when things were purchased / repaired / installed. This has proved invaluable when dealing with recurring drain problems with our water authority as I have a full log of all my calls to them.
7. A large CAR file / ring binder does the same for road tax, MOT, insurance, services, repairs.
8. Household Address Book. This little book is a treasure trove of trademan’s phone numbers.
9. Composting container on draining board > bucket on patio where mixed with pet rabbit poo > compost bin at bottom of garden.
10. Bulldog clip on back of front door holds letters ready to be posted.

So those are my seraphic ways. I am not going to share my slattern ways with you as they are too numerous.

Now it’s time for you to pat yourself on he back and pass on your ways of good household management.

Hit or Miss?

What is that causes us to warm to a book or not? Why do we like one and not another? Why do we like parts of a book but not all of it? I am having trouble answering all these questions. When someone recommends a book to me I long to love it as they have done but life isn’t like that. I’d heard people waxing lyrical about “Drowning Ruth” but it all sounded a bit weird so I stuck my fingers in my ears and sang “la la la I’m not listening”

Friends and relations noticing I was back in a reading phase tossed titles at me hoping they could get me back in the reading chair permanently. My “baby” sister had just finished “Notes from an Exhibition” and was sure I would love it too. It’s set mainly in Cornwall, has a female artist as one of the main characters with huge dollops of family life, one member of the family at a time looking back. I remember seeing the author’s name on the cover “Patrick Gale” and thinking, “oh, it’s by a man”. Did that influence me? Would it have been better if I didn’t know? I thought that I had immediately sensed a different way of writing. It felt like reportage. Like “best-seller speak”, like those airport books that MDB (My Dearly Beloved) picks up when he is away from home. They are efficiently written and make you have your kit bag all packed and ready for the route march to the end of the book.

 

“But she was awake and her brain was fizzing in a way that would have had Jack Trescothick testing her blood and reviewing her prescription had he known.”

 

 

 

So let me think carefully. I pick up the Gale book and turn to the beginning and read the first page. As I do that, in my head I am writing about me doing just that. Bingo! I’ve got it, possibly. I would have written my actions in the first person and the book is actually written in the third person, so it is reportage. Someone else is doing the telling even though that telling is concentrated on one person. Quickly I cast my mind back to “Drowning Ruth”. Yes, of course, that was in the first person. I remember being mildly annoyed that when the person telling events changed it had a heading of “Amanda” or “Ruth”. I compare it to the book that my baby sister is writing and  which also swaps from one protagonist to another but manages quite well without signposting the fact. I’ll have to have a look at books I have read and enjoyed and books that I didn’t enjoy quite so much to see if a pattern emerges. On the train home tonight I read more of “Notes from ..” This time a description of an insignificant character,

 

 

“She was slight and almost oriental-looking, with very straight dark hair that swung forward across her face whenever she looked down. She had shrugged off her suede coat to reveal a neat subfusc outfit like a woman barrister’s on television. Her silk blouse was undone one button further than she probably realized so that one cup of her bra kept moving in and out of view.”

 

 

Now that’s definitely NOT my sort of book but as if to emphasise the point it became even worse:

 

“When he woke thirsty a few hours later and stumbled to the bathroom for a drink, he found his cock and balls were aching from use in a way he had last experienced in the first solitary frenzies of adolescence.”

 

 

Would a woman have written that? Would she have bothered? After that I need something more innocent to decontaminate my reading area. When I started blogging today I intended to write about “The Battle for Gullywith”. Bloomsbury kindly sent me a proof copy of this and so I feel duty bound to attempt to review it. The problem is that although I had devoured the opening chapters that were posted on Susan Hill’s website I find that I am not running out telling all and sundry to read it. First of all it is a children’s book so perhaps it has to be read in a different way. Personally I don’t think that is the case because I am perfectly eager to be caught up events and taken off to impossible places. At least, that’s what I tell myself but when I think of everything I enjoyed as a child maybe I really do like my feet firmly on this earth. It doesn’t have to be my usual place on this earth. I can happily move in with the Railway Children, Pollyana or the March sisters and pitch camp with the Swallows & Amazons. I also have no objection to time-travelling but I suspect that I have a preference for ordinary life when I live in the past or flit from one time to another. I don’t mind there being one or two people visiting from another place or time but I had trouble with accepting those very tortoises in the Battle with Gullywith that DoveGreyReader enthused over. I suspect that I may become jittery when too many things don’t line up.

 

I have nothing against tortoises. When I was young we had Tommy who appeared to enjoy being carried around the garden by our dog and my next-door neighbours still have two elderly specimens who race up and down parallel to our fence and disturb the silence of our garden when spring comes and the sap rises and their shells crash one against the other. However, I couldn’t cope with the multitude of these creatures in Gullywith. I kept hearing a little voice saying “they are not an indigenous species”. Have I grown up so much that details like that ruin my enjoyment of a jolly good story? I wouldn’t have minded if they were mythical creatures like dragons or griffins or phoenixes or even psammeads but every time they blinked their beady eyes at me that little voice niggled away.

 

The Battle for Gullywith began with Olly, a ten year old boy moving from a perfectly good home in London to a falling down, out of the way ruin of a house. When he encounters a dog and tomboyish girl of course I knew they would become great friends but I was not prepared for the amazing locations that would be visited and events that would ensue. I had difficulty with this split between the real world and the “other” that happened, usually at night. Perhaps I can’t cope with fantasy. I never even attempted Lord of the Rings and dismissed The Hobbit with hardly even a cursory glance. I enjoyed books where amazing things happened but those amazing things were timeshifts or the ability to move into a parallel but just as ordinary world. In Toms’s Midnight Garden, when an old clock strikes thirteen Tom is able to slip from his time into the past but the place is the same, a real place, the garden as it was rather than as it is now. Moondial by Helen Cresswell uses a similar device to transport children back to a prior age. 

 

Maybe I just haven’t got a big enough imagination to deal with these leaps into other worlds  within our world. That’s probably why Lord of the Rings et al never grabbed me. I only ever managed the first Harry Potter. I’m sure that there will be many eager imaginative children out there who  will  totally immerse themselves in the  two worlds of  Olly  & unusual  friend KK but  I’ll stick to simple time shifts in my children’s  books and please don’t  make my adult books too adult.

Sunday Salon: As Sunday draws to a close.. a Gale blows in

Less than an hour to go before Sunday is over and I’ve just read the first six pages of my next book. This one was recommended by my baby sister.

See you all in the salon next Sunday. Happy reading if you manage to get any done in the week. Be strong those of you who are on a book-buying diet.

Sunday Salon: Ruth didn’t drown

So I have done hardly anything today except read. You could say that Ruth has been drowning in “Drowning Ruth”. I’ve already seen a comment from someone who said that the they were annoyed by the book but that it redeemed itself by the twist at the end. Someone else, Ann, I think said that it split her reading group. I seem to remember that a lot of people raved about this book a month or two or a year ago. So where will I place myself or will I just sit on the fence? I can’t explain what it was that kept me reading so avidly. Maybe I just needed a reading day. Maybe I’m just back in a reading phase of my life, after all I did find it difficult to put “The Brief History of the Dead” down or have the really good books just worked their way to the top of the TBR pile? I have a penchant for books that are set in a Noman’s time. You know what I mean. It’s Little House on the Prairie time, Little Women time. Heidi time. We know the characters wear petticoats and don’t drive around in cars and a woman’s place is usually in the home apart from our heroine who is a bit tomboyish or feisty and knows deep in her heart that women are equal to men. So although the book clearly starts just after the end of the Second World War because Amanda tells us that “if I had not gone home that March in 1919, Mathilda my only sister , would not be dead” it is also in my favourite Noman’s time. The way that the protagonists deal with what arises is of course all due to social expectations and mores of the time but it isn’t really what people do but rather the feelings and relationships that feed into the situations that arise.

Initially the “cast list” is small, almost claustrophobic and for the majority of the novel it feels that it will stay that way but as we learn more the doors open up, it feels as though a breeze from the lake will blow some of the stuffiness away but disconcertingly this breath of new air just complicates the truth that we have come to believe or suspect.

Once again it is demonstrated that secrets hardly ever remain so. Once again we learn that a small adjustment of the truth leads to compound untruths and that every action we take is likely to have repercussions that can be good or bad.

This is just the sort of book that I would be pleased to find if I was  on holiday in a remote cottage somewhere and the weather turned nasty. Pile the logs on the fire, heat the milk for the cocoa and be pleased that Aunty Mandy isn’t sending you out to move the sheep.

Sunday Salon: Stickers are bad enough!

Aaaah!

 

I’ve already confessed in a comment on my sister’s blog www.anneholloway.wordpress.com that I bought two books while doing the weekly shop at Sainsbury’s. I never look at the books in supermarkets because there is no ambience in those places. The lights do my head in and in some of them (certain branches of Tescos, Safeways + M&S I actually feel sick if I subject myself to more than a few minutes instore. But she tempted me by saying she’d picked up a certain book and couldn’t put it down. So I looked and found .. and was also lured in by the cover of another book. Subliminal recognition and I didn’t even know it! When I got home I realised the cover was by Petra Borner about who I waxed lyrical a post or two ago.

I didn’t need the book, I have a TBR mountain range but I bought the book. But I have been punished. Now that I take the book in my hands I see that the “Richard & Judy’s book 4 club, Galaxy British BOOK awards 2008″ sticker is NOT a sticker but is printed ON the book all over my beautiful Petra Borner cover. WHY?????? The words “Mister Pip” and “Lloyd Jones” need no explanation or apology they are after all the title and author of the book. I have no complaints about the discreet “Shortlisted for THE 2007 man BOOKER PRIZE” but I feel that Richard & Judy, Galaxy et al owe me that circle of cover that they have denied me. Please don’t deface my books it’s bad enough that there are so many tacky covers out there.

OK - rant over …… for now.

Sunday Salon: Ruth is Drowning in Books

I’ve made a supreme effort in the last week and a bit to do more reading. It’s not that I don’t love books and reading it’s just that there are never enough hours in the day. Please don’t lecture me about how if I spent less time at the computer reading everyone’s blogs then I would have ample time for books. I don’t want to live in isolation. I enjoy being part of a community. When was at school it was a community that passed around absolutely anything by John Wyndham. Now I can see why I enjoyed his science fiction so much. Of course the central theme of each work was something strange and amazing but the setting and the people were so normal. Take out plants that can walk, children that can control your mind or a beauty product that can make you live for ever and the books are just about people living together and getting on with life.

I don’t enjoy adventure stories or films or rather I don’t unless how the protagonists go about getting through the adventure is an integral part of the novel/film.

So back to today’s reading, Drowning Ruth by Christina Schwarz. I heard this mentioned on at least one blog months or maybe even a year or so ago. With my name in the two-word title it was inevitable that I should take a look at it sometime.It sounds as though it will be a murder mystery but the simple storyline of one sister returning home, and moving in with her younger sister who never left, promises plenty of the quotidian domesticity that I love.

I am not quite at the halfway mark (page 105 of 276 pages) and the yarn is beginning to untangle but never at a pace too racey for my homely self. I have to get myself back into the book as I received my first ever uncorrected proof and I felt obliged to read that immediately. Luckily I had halted at a natural break in the narrative. So I could waffle on here for a few sentences / paragraphs /pages … or I could go away and READ!

The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier

Two streams running independently, alternating chapter by chapter. One stream is a large city, the other a lone woman in the Antarctic.

What do we remember and more importantly who do we remember? How many people have you met in your life? Is it fifty, one hundred, several thousand? Write them down and soon you realise it’s like that old puzzle where someone asks the king for one grain of rice to place on the first square on the chessboard and then double the amount for each subsequent square. By the time you get to the other side of the chessboard how many grains of rice will you have?

When does someone really die? Is it when they cease to breathe or is it when there is no one left who remembers them?

The problem with trying to tell someone else about a book is that if you say too much you may spoil their reading of it. Let me just say that I really couldn’t put this book down. So much so that I walked out of the house this morning without my handbag. I was so engrossed in the book on the train that I didn’t notice the ticket inspector asking for tickets and it was only then that I realised I had no ticket and no way of paying for one. To quote DGR, “Caveat Lector”!! Reading can damage your reputation.

To those of you who may be surprised at how quickly I have read this book (for me) let me explain that there are two reasons for this. The first is that I didn’t want to put it down. The second reason is that I was enjoying the book so much, even after the first few pages, that I read most of the first chapter out loud, in bed, to MDB (My Dearly Beloved) and since then he has been trying to booknap it from me.

SUNDAY SALON: Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat

OK I’ll have a go at this Sunday Salon thing as well. Let’s hope I’ve done the right techy things to get it to work. I have my doubts.

“We are each going to our mothers. That is what was supposed to happen. Your mother wants to
see you now.Sophie. She does not want you to forget who your real mother is. When she left you
with me, she and I, we agreed that it would only be for a while. You were just a baby then. She
left you because she was going to a place she knew nothing about. She did not want to take chances
with you.”

The narrator, Sophie has been raised by Tante Atie, her mother’s illiterate elder sister. All she knows of her real mother she has learnt from this mother substitute. She only knows her mother’s voice from the spoken cassettes that are sent several times a year. Then one day the inevitable happens, a ticket is sent and Sophie must join her mother in New York.

“My angel, she said, I would like to know that by word or by example I have taught you love. I must tell you that I do love your mother. Everything I love about you, I loved in her first. that is why I could never fight her about keeping you here. I do not want you to go and fight her either. In this country, there are many good reasons for mothers to abandon their children.”

And so it is that Sophie moves from the simple traditional way of living in Haiti to the life of an immigrant in New York, looked down on and called names by classmates. In her luggage she carries not only her few belongings but the weight of the past.

In her mother’s apartment she discovers a photo,

“I moved closer to get a better look at the baby in Tante Atie’s arms. I had never seen an infant picture of myself, but somehow I knew that it was me. Who else could it have been? I looked for traces in the child, a feature that was my mother’s but still mine too. It was the first time in my life that I noticed that I looked like no one in my family. Not my mother. Not my Tantee Atie. I did not look like them when I was a baby and I did not look like them now.”

Though Sophie, her mother and other Haitian friends now live in New York tradition casts a long shadow. The old ways are not easy to leave behind.

“Haitian men, they insist that their women are virgins and have their ten fingers.

According to Aunt Tatie, each f