The Guardian's Blog, page 2
June 21, 2016
Poets' tour hits Bath: strawberry moon in a honey-dipped city
The Shore to Shore diary makes a second stop, where we are treated to warm enthusiasm and opinionated bookselling – and find more reasons to write
Day two of the Shore to Shore tour: summer solstice, 17 hours of daylight and the promise of a strawberry moon if we are lucky. Poets and poetry, baggage, books, trumpet, garklein flute, horn and crumhorn are slotted into the minibus, and we launch ourselves into a dreich morning – “out of the swing of the sea” – on our way to Bath.
Related: Five poets go on tour: Carol Ann Duffy's travel diary begins
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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 week’s blog. Here’s a roundup of your comments and photos from last week, including a novel on 90s culture, a study of mid-life crises, and books that help us practice acceptance and kindness.
Grace Barclay is reading The Once & Future King by TH White, and left this moving comment:
Why the story about King Arthur? As a survivor of all that life has thrown at me over the course of my 53½ years, I have finally decided to read one of the stories that has motivated me since the late 1960’s. Might for Right; not Might is Right. I live in South Africa, growing up in Apartheid. Was abused by a close family member. Have come to understand that life is never easy and we as human beings just cannot give up and let all the negatives take over. I practice in my daily life acceptance of other human beings, whatever their colour or religion or lack thereof. I do not give up, even in the face of overwhelming negativity from other people. I retreat strategically and then come back again, each and every day. This is what I am learning from The Once and Future King.
This is a beautifully written study of a man’s life, and a contrast between a hopeful inner life but an outer life that never realizes his full potential nor dreams. William Stoner finds himself in mid-life admitting to himself: “He was forty-two years old, and he could see nothing before him he wished to enjoy and little behind him that he cared to remember.” A tragic thought. He does have times of happiness, and it is interesting that the author thinks William Stoner had a good life. He did his job, in a field he enjoyed, knew passion, experienced friendship. But, to me, this is a very sad book, and yet a rich reading experience. contributed by
The book is about two teenaged girls in 1991 who live in a working class area of Pennsylvania. They are both alienated from a culture that expects girls to behave in certain ways, and the book charts how their longing for independence and unique identities goes awry. Kurt Cobain, of Nirvana, plays a huge role in it, as he is the music “crush” of one of the girls.
Continue reading...June 20, 2016
Interview with a Bookstore: Itinerant Literate, a bookstore on wheels
The booksellers at Itinerant Literate operate from a trailer, currently parked in Charleston, South Carolina
Interview with a Bookstore from Literary Hub is part of the Guardian Books NetworkScroll down for the staff recommendations shelfItinerant Literate is a pop-up bookstore in Charleston that first opened in April 2015. At the time, owners Christen Thompson and Julia Turner saw a vacancy of independent bookstores in their community, and, having both come from publishing backgrounds, felt they could fill it. The bookstore has turned out to be a quickly growing baby, and owners Christen Thompson and Julia Turner plan for it to ultimately become a one-of-a-kind bookstore on wheels.
Continue reading...Poem of the week: Tourists by Ruth Bidgood
A warm pastiche of an 18th-century travelogue, this is a touching portrait of the tourist’s comical but sincere search for exaltation in Wales
Tourists
Warner, setting out eagerly from Bath
at five on a lively morning
for the inspiring rigours of Wales
with obliging C----, equipped himself for adventure
with a rusty but respectable spencer
(good enough for North Wales, he said).
The travellers’ huge pockets bulged with clothes,
maps, and little comforts; their heads were full
of Ossian, whose horrendous glooms
they were gratified to recognise
one evening on the road to Rhaeadr
(though Ossian had not prepared them
for the state of the road, or the shortage
of bedchambers at the ‘Lion’).
Romantic tourists, no doubt, perpetual
outsiders, but willing to love,
and finding much “singular, striking
and indescribable”. They were comic
(embarrassed at being spotted,
with their pedlars’ pockets, by fashionable females),
but worked hard for their exaltations,
plodding twenty-five miles to Machynlleth
north over boggy mountains, or stumbling
two hours across rocks to find a guide
to Dôlbadarn ruins. They were uncomplaining
on Snowdon in a thick mist (they drank milk
gratefully, but longed for brandy), and did not grumble
when, at Aberglaslyn, salmon failed to leap
(only two would even try). Who can say
that at the end of August, leaving Chepstow
for flood-tide at the ferry, they were taking
nothing real away, or that their naive and scholarly wonder
had given nothing in return?
Related: Poem of the week: Death makes dead metaphor revive by Denise Riley
Continue reading...Why books are a love magnet
Research from a new dating app suggests that users with shared reading tags make better matches. I didn’t use an app, but the trick worked for me
A few months in, I already liked the person who would become my husband quite a lot, but I properly fell for him on learning that we’d both loved reading Douglas Hill’s books as children. The Blade of the Poisoner. Master of Fiends. The Last Legionary books.
So I read with no surprise at all of startup dating app MyBae’s finding that users who include reading tags on their profiles were more likely to find a match. “Out of all our matches, 21% had related reading tags in common. This is much stronger than the average of 15% for all other matches that similar matches with music, films, or TV,” says MyBae, adding that “users spent longer in general” on the profiles of people with reading tags.
Continue reading...June 17, 2016
The best independent bookstores worldwide, according to readers
To kick off Independent Booksellers Week, here are some of our readers’ favourite indie book havens
What’s your favourite? Add it herePart I: The 10 best independent bookshops in the world – readers recommendRead our series of interviews with booksellersIn a year in which independent bookshops continue to struggle in the UK, we are loving the career change that has led Judy Blume to become an independent bookseller. In the US, indies are flourishing, and we’re hoping that passion (and business) will spread around the world. What better time to start sharing the love than in Independent Booksellers Week, an annual reminder of how precious well-stocked bookshops, run by enthusiastic and knowledgeable staff, are to our cultural life. Our readers have started by recommending ten fantastic independent booksellers around the world. Keep them coming in the comments or on GuardianWitness.
It’s great that the biggest bookshop in London is an independent, and even better that they’ve now sorted themselves out so you can actually find what you’re looking for there. How many of you worked at Foyles in Charing Cross Road back when it was still chaotic and un-computerised and everybody could expect to get the sack after at most a year? And being interviewed personally by Mrs Foyle in her private penthouse on the top of the building ... I spent the summer of 1997 in the Drama dept, those were the days! –Laudrup10
True to its title, this word-paradise brings forth the bests of the writer within, satisfies the devouring reader and bridges one to the world of ideas that are books.
The library is a much welcomed first - the collection is curated around its members and their literary love interests. An initial interview with the founders and a few recommendations later, one finds a thoughtful range of reading for children, adults and the rest of us.
Although it’s very obvious, and also not technically a (single) bookshop: Hay. A worthy trip for anyone into books of any description. If you’re going for the book shops, it’s best to do it as a separate trip when the festival’s not on. Takes a few days to do it properly – a long weekend in a B&B with nothing but books and country walks is very much advised. –Cubano1
They are the IN spot in DC. If you write a book, this is where you want to introduce it and a new book seems to be introduced every day (three on Sundays). They seem to have figured out that the way to keep a bookstore in business these days is to make it a community center: classes, book groups, children’s activities AND it’s where President Obama shops for his Christmas presents! –ajproc (via email)
I lived there for 22 years and is was the only shop I went to willingly and for no reason other than to browse. The staff are great. The atmosphere is great. The selection is great and they will order anything they don’t have. And in NZ, independent bookstores are hard to find. –Eamonn Morrissey (via email)
It feels like a second home for me and for most of its domestic & international visitors. It’s a community, people go there to give or take language lessons. Or to spend hours alone to read a book or press real or virtual keys of their devices that are used to connect the internet. The mood is invigorating. Massolit has a garden, I assume it is something unique. You may want to sit there for any purpose. To find tranquility on your own or to have a discussion with friends, sipping a cup of tea or or a glass of wine, leaving the world behind. The cakes are splendid and their coffee is legendary, the so trendy high-end kind. And the books. I always find something interesting, as they have a huge selection, including a significant variety written by Hungarians, translated to English. Massolit is also hosting exciting cultural events, frequently with live music. If you are visiting Budapest or learning or working in the country, it is a sin to miss it. – Zoltan Szombathelyi (via email)
Though it’s received quite a bit of global press (see Paris Review or the Guardian’s interview with its booksellers), this vast, museum-like bookseller is strangely absent from your list. It features several idiosyncratically designed spaces, well-stocked with multifarious titles, new and used. It’s at the epicenter of the urban renewal happening now in the historic core. –Estupido
At this bus stop along a dead-end road, not only do you get picked up and dropped off by the bus, you can also browse a small selection of books and pick the one you like best. And the best part of all: paying is optional and entirely up to you! The people of this tiny village have turned the bus stop into a cosy living room-like space, decorated with flowers, art work and even a big clock. It marks the slow passing of time during the long waits for the bus. I found this place by accident when I was visiting the church and cemetery of Terband looking for traces of my ancestors. –ID2813793
Continue reading...June 16, 2016
Food in books: the Yuk Hwe (Korean beef tartar) in The Vegetarian
Kate Young makes a very meaty recipe from the International Man Booker winner – despite its title – and remembers a steak so good it brought her to tears
By Kate Young for The Little Library Café, part of the Guardian Books Network
I couldn’t think of her family without also recalling the smell of sizzling meat and burning garlic, the sound of shot glasses clinking and the women’s noisy conversation emanating from the kitchen. All of them – especially my father-in-law – enjoyed yuk hwe, a kind of beef tartar. I’d seen my mother-in-law gut a live fish, and my wife and her sister were both perfectly competent when it came to hacking a chicken into pieces with a butcher’s cleaver.
The Vegetarian, Han Kang
Continue reading...Is Gone With the Wind's nostalgia for slavery acceptable?
Eighty years old this month, Margaret Mitchell’s novel continues to charm readers, but is it also seducing them into bigotry?
It was a steamy August day in Atlanta and Margaret Mitchell was crossing the road to go to the cinema with her husband when she was struck by a car and dragged seven feet before the driver could bring the car to a stop. At the hospital, she hung on for a few days, her fans and family hoping and praying. At noon on the fifth day, 16 August 1949, the author of Gone With the Wind died, aged just 48.
The book she wrote lives on. First published in 1936 – 80 years ago this month – Gone With the Wind received a stupendous reception. Despite being sold at the high price of $3 during the Great Depression (around $52 –£37 – today), Mitchell was mobbed, losing a button and a lock of hair to eager fans on publication day. Between June and December, around 1m copies flew off shelves.
Continue reading...June 14, 2016
Ian McEwan's unborn baby – and other strange narrators
Nutshell, his forthcoming novel, is told from inside a mother’s womb. It’s a strikingly unusual point of view – do any others outdo it for oddness?
There’s the narrator of Conversations With a Cupboard Man, who was treated as a baby until the age of 17; Serena Frome, the spy from Sweet Tooth; or Joe Rose, the narrator of Enduring Love, who witnesses a deadly ballooning accident. Ian McEwan has a history of intriguing, weird or disturbing first-person narrators, but they have nothing on his latest in Nutshell, due out in September: the narrator is a baby, still in the womb.
“So here I am, upside down in a woman. Arms patiently crossed, waiting, waiting and wondering who I’m in, what I’m in for,” it opens. In a brief summary on his publisher’s website, the plot of the novel is revealed: “Trudy has betrayed her husband, John. She’s still in the marital home – a dilapidated, priceless London townhouse – but John’s not here. Instead, she’s with his brother, the profoundly banal Claude, and the two of them have a plan. But there is a witness to their plot: the inquisitive, nine-month-old resident of Trudy’s womb.”
Continue reading...June 13, 2016
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
Are you on Instagram? Then you can be featured here by tagging your books-related posts with #GuardianBooksScroll down for our favourite literary linksRead more Tips, links and suggestions blogsWelcome to this week’s blog. Here’s a roundup of your comments and photos from last week, including a disturbing collection of short stories and a JG Farrell novel that puts all other books to shame.
I am finding the entire collection disquieting, disturbed, off-kilter, and a little bit nasty
So far I’ve read six of the eleven stories and am finding the entire collection disquieting, disturbed, off-kilter, and a little bit nasty – all of this in the most stylistically delicious of ways. I find Mantel technically brilliant, in the same way I find a writer such as Alan Hollinghurst to be so; she is effortlessly assured, so clean and precise a writer that she becomes easy to read when what one is actually reading is anything but easy – and I relish that dichotomy: clear, simple style and cloudy, complex content.
Woth each passing week I am stocking up with a whole host of treasures. Just ordered the last part of the posthumously published trilogy on Sir Winston Churchill by William Manchester. One politician well worth reading books by and about ... Roll on November 8th!
I am so tired of polite, well-behaved, solidly crafted and oh-so-dull historical fiction
It’s the sort of book which makes you feel sorry for all the other books because they must know they don’t stand a chance in comparison and may as well just pack up and go home. The real joy of the book lies in the author’s utterly distinct voice and the force of his invention. I am so tired of polite, well-behaved, solidly crafted and oh-so-dull historical fiction (although I feel slightly conflicted about describing Troubles as historical fiction). It’s such a pleasure to read a book bent on illuminating a piece of history where the artistic vision comes at you roaring all the way.
Continue reading...The Guardian's Blog
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