The Guardian's Blog, page 113
August 4, 2014
Tips, links and suggestions: What are you reading this week?
Your space to discuss the books you are reading and what you think of them
Welcome to this weeks blog. Heres a roundup of your comments and photos from last week.
Jenna Nicholas was reading Joyce Carol Oatess short story collection Give Me Your Heart:
Examining, in the way that only Oates can, the dark, jealous, obsessive, hopeless side of love, some of the stories are genuinely uncomfortable to read especially The First Husband but, as with all of the Oates Ive read, they are tightly plotted and brilliantly written. Not really light summer reading though.
Im having an enjoyable few weeks over the summer as I gradually amble my way through Iain Sinclairs London Orbital whilst going out on the odd day here and there to stroll around the Greater Manchester Boundary Walk a route around the boundary of the defunct county council. Mr Sinclairs route followed the ever so physical and audible presence of the M25 motorway whereas I am following a definitive line but one that is invisible on the ground. His route was around London, mine is round Manchester but the words affect the view nevertheless. Pyschogeography in action. It turns out not to be just a pleasant stroll around the edgelands but an exploration. Looking for evidence of the boundary on the ground. Whats the difference between one side of the line and the other? Does Beetham Tower, the always visible tallest block in the city centre, exert a centrepetal force?
Another random book choice. Never knew of its existence before it was laid before me on display in my local bookshop. I was amazed to discover it was translated by Anthea Bell - of Stefan Zweig translation fame - so of course, I had no choice but to purchase! Reminds me of a nouvelle cuisine dish: a purée of natural ingredients, combinations of small quantities of food presented with exquisite attention to texture and detail. Very French.
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By caminoamigo
2 August 2014, 11:28
Finished reading As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee its as wonderfully written as you would expect, similar to Patrick Leigh Fermor as someone else here has previously compared the two but without the rich vein of family history and local character that he ploughs so well in Cider With Rosie, having come straight from the latter book it couldnt help but feel a little flatter. He ruminates again on the idea of ancient living and caves connecting the past and present, but it is still just a young man walking through Spain and describing what he sees albeit done very, very well.
The opening third is easily as horrific as any horror story. As a small child Ursula possess the memories of her previous lives, but doesnt have the capacity to understand what they mean. Her fear and confusion prompt her to try to change things, but often the only solution is chance intervention from another person. Trying to tell other people what she experiences just further alienates her, and causes her parents to think shes crazy.
As a 34 year old man. I feel that I shouldn't be able to relate to this character, a fourteen year old girl, as much as I do. Though I suppose as it yet set in the early 90s. I wasn't far off her age in that time frame. Very enjoyable so far.
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By ID4534331
2 August 2014, 23:18
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A book for the beach: The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
I like big, fat books for the beach, enthralling enough to retain attention even against the warring attractions of sunlight on water and drowsy, sand-dry heat. I'm slightly too ashamed to read outright trash in public but this is definitely not the context in which I wish to challenge myself. Complex literary prize-winners are for domestic train journeys, with plastic-flavoured tea and rain worming across the windows.
My ideal beach read, therefore, is a thrilling story in a classy, classic jacket. Just give me sun, sea and The Count of Monte Cristo, and I will be happy as a pig in plop. You can keep your musketeers to me, Monte Cristo is the acme of Alexandre Dumas pere's oeuvre, demonstrating his inimitable mastery of high adventure, deadly intrigue, revenge, and general derring-do.
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Poem of the week: The Book by FT Prince
This week's poem, The Book, is by the South African poet, FT (Frank Templeton) Prince, who died 11 years ago on 7 August at the age of 90.
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August 3, 2014
A book for the beach: Kolymsky Heights by Lionel Davidson
I first read Kolymsky Heights during a heatwave a few years ago in Ukraine. Lying sweltering in an unbearably stuffy hotel room in Kiev, I'd never felt colder, immersed in the bone-chilling world of hero Johnny Porter, huddled in the depths of the Siberian winter.
Kolymsky Heights is, on first analysis, just another spy thriller. First published in 1994, it is essentially a late cold war era man-on-a-mission thriller with the emphasis firmly on the word cold. Porter is the only westerner who can hope to break into and out of a top secret scientific research base that is literally hidden inside a mountain in Siberia. (So secret is this base that nobody who ever enters is allowed to leave alive.)
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August 2, 2014
A book for the beach: A Girl is a Half-formed Thing by Eimear McBride
Bute, an hour and a half from Glasgow by car and boat, may not be blessed with palm-fringed beaches but is the perfect setting for this dark tale about the ties of family.
McBride's novel is a heartbreaking stream of consciousness not suited to a tropical climate. The Guardian review from 2013 starts with the warning that the book is not a "beach read", but there is a place for its grey overtones and insular protagonist among Bute's craggy rockpools and cross-looking clouds.
This is a book whose nameless central character exists in a claustrophobic world of religion tainted with superstition, with only her ailing older brother for support. Her desperate bids for independence and sexual liberation are curtailed by shame, a toxic mother and her brother's vulnerability.
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August 1, 2014
A book for the beach: In the Woods by Tana French
It's high summer in the countryside just outside Dublin, "a summer stolen whole from some coming-of-age film set in small-town 1950s". The sun is hot, cows graze along the verges, the ancient woods are a lush playground for children who run wild from morning till tea time. For three 12-year-olds, inseparable friends Jamie, Adam and Peter, there will be no coming of age.
After they fail to come home for their tea, police are eventually called, and a search of the woods finds only Adam, catatonic, his shoes filled with blood. The other children are never found.
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Poster poems: Cars | Billy Mills
Towards the end of 1955, Marianne Moore was invited to submit suggestions for naming the latest model from the Ford range of cars. For an obscure poet, Moore was something of a celebrity, known for her eccentricity and love of baseball as much as for her verse, and was quick to accept the invitation. Sadly, none of her suggestions made the cut, and so Americans found themselves driving the new Edsel and not the Utopian Turtletop.
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Trolls: now available on Amazon books
It may contain some passages judged by one Amazon customer to be "brilliantly written", but that isn't enough to spare Monica Byrne's The Girl in the Road a two-star kicking. The reason? Byrne has committed a political sin in presenting the scientific reality of climate change or according to this customer "a fantasy future where it turned out that Global Warming fanatics actually got something right". Worse yet in this user's eyes, Byrne's depiction of women fighting back against male violence makes her guilty of misandry "thick enough to plow". Climate change and gender politics, two hot-button issues for reactionary conservatives who have found a new outlet for their hate speech online reviews.
Negative book reviews are a reality of life for all professional writers. And the proliferation of user-generated reviews on sites such as Amazon and Goodreads make readers' opinions just as important as those of professional critics. But for authors like Byrne, politically motivated reviews are easy to spot. "There's an unmistakable tone," Byrne says. "And if they're using condescending or otherwise gender-coded language, that's a dead giveaway."
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July 31, 2014
Plague fiction why authors love to write about pandemics
Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy, Dan Brown's Inferno, Louise Welsh's Plague Times trilogy, Terry Hayes's bestselling thriller I Am Pilgrim, the TV series Utopia stories about pandemics (whether already raging or in danger of being unleashed) are currently rife, drawing on past outbreaks but also seeming to uncannily anticipate fears of the ebola virus. While such fictions can often be formulaic or trashily sensationalist, the theme of infectious diseases has long attracted illustrious authors ...
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What are YA books? And who is reading them?
After the costume-crowded overexcitement of the first ever Young Adult Literature Convention, brainchild of current children's laureate Malorie Blackman, many authors, readers and bloggers have been mulling over what exactly it is that makes a book YA. Is "YA" the same as "teen", and who is it read by? What are its requirements and restrictions? And what about "New Adult"?
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