The Guardian's Blog, page 28
December 21, 2015
Tips, links and suggestions: what are you reading this Christmas?
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 – and we’d love to hear what you’re planning to read over the holidays. We’ll be back in the new year (and comments will stay open until then). Have the merriest of times, everyone!
VelmaNebraska has had the “pleasure” of reading Patti Smith’s first memoir, Just Kids:
I love the clarity and simplicity of her writing. She captures at once what it feels like to be an “ordinary” young woman as well as one who was clearly quite extraordinary, becoming adult in an extraordinary time and place, engaging with extraordinary people. The relationship she describes with Robert Mapplethorpe is deep and shining and touching. It is a relationship to envy: the product of loyalty, commitment, openness and the cultivation of very thick skin. This is a book that can’t help mythologising but I’m alright with that.
My mother lent me this book, which was bought at a train station by one of my elder sisters. It is a wonderful story about the wife of Ernest Hemingway told through her eyes. Although the book is mainly set in Paris and focuses on Hemingway’s road to success as a writer, it is really about a shy and insecure 28-year-old falling in love with an energetic 21-year-old genius. It is beautifully written and signposts the sense of impending doom for the relationship, whilst focusing on the joy of a young American couple in love in Paris in the 1920s.
What strikes me after a gap of maybe 15 years since I last read this is the simple yet oddly expressive prose Vidal uses. For once the comment on the jacket is actually accurate: “He can express in a phrase what a more solemn essayist would be hard pressed to put in a paragraph.” His wit and sarcasm are to the fore in most of the essays, but they never become carping – rather, they show up the lunacy that has been at the heart of American political life for the past century in an entertaining and amusing way. [...] The political essays are as good a chronicle of American history, post-independence, as you are likely to find in any more academic work. Finally, as an essayist I would say he ranks just behind Orwell in the pantheon of those I have read. This is a big book (1200 pages) in all respects, but is so readable the pages fly past.
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Star Wars' stories should not be limited to the cinema narratives
As with classical myths, the ‘para-canonical’ material – comics, novelisations and more – is just as legitimate as the big-screen tales
In 1980, when I was eight years old, my family took the closest thing we ever had to a foreign holiday. It was to the island of Guernsey. After visiting preserved sites from the Occupation, and the tomato museum, and a day trip by hydrofoil to France, I think my parents were running out of options for our entertainment. With some reluctance, I suspect, my father took my brother and me to a matinee of a film I had been pestering him about for some time: The Empire Strikes Back.
I must have been unusual as a viewer of that film, in that, despite beseeching, imploring, begging, pleading and throwing tantrums, I had never seen Star Wars, or, as I knew to call it, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. My father’s justification was that it would be on the television soon anyway, and there was no need for us to see it in the cinema. Moreover, we had plenty of “those Star Wars dolls”, as he referred to the action figures. Nor did we need more – “You’ve already got Stormtrooper” – and no argument about there being lots of Stormtroopers in the movie I hadn’t seen convinced him otherwise.
Related: Wookie books: the science fiction that inspired George Lucas's Star Wars
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Prison Reform Trust writing competition 2015: hopeful words after a tough year
With a record number of entries, this year’s work showed inspiring enthusiasm and self-discipline from the authors
Winning entries: listen to Terrianne’s rap/lyric on the theme ‘Working it out’, and read Ben’s article on the topic ‘Can prison work’It’s been a hard year for prisons in England and Wales. As well as nine prisoner-on-prisoner killings – the highest ever recorded – there has been a self-inflicted death every few days, thousands of incidents of self-harm and record levels of violence and drug use. But however dire the situation in our prisons may become, nothing can extinguish hope. The annual Prison Reform Trust writing competition always brings good reason to be hopeful about the people who inhabit our prisons.
Related: Can prison work? | Prisoner Ben
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Poem of the week: Visiting Star by Stanley Moss
A trick of the light provides the relaxed occasion for an irreverent contemplation of religious myths
Visiting Star
I woke at sunrise,
fed my dogs, Honie and Margie –
to the east a wall of books and windows,
a lawn, the trees in my family,
the donkeys and forest behind the hill.
Sunlight showed itself in,
passed the China butterflies on the window
so birds watch out, don’t break their necks.
On the back of a green leather chair for guests
facing me in sunlight and shadow, a sunlit Star of David,
two large hand spans square.
I call my wife to see the star
she first thinks I painted on the chair.
Soon she catches on -- no falling star.
We searched the room and outside.
How did the star come to be?
Without explanation. None.
The star visited a few minutes, disappeared,
or became invisible. Why?
I wondered if it was le bel aujourd’hui
or a holiday some Jews celebrate.
Playing fair, I told myself: watch out for
a crucifix anywhere before which
contrition saves condemned souls –
watch in the forest for portraits of the Virgin,
the wheel of Dharma down the road,
that teaches ‘save all living beings’,
when the moon is full a crescent moon
reflected on a wall or lake.
Watch for flying horses!
I read the news of commandments broken.
Thou shalt not kill.
I write between the lines
Thou shalt not steal
seventy-five years from the life of a child.
Next day, I found my Star of David
was a glass sun and star reflection of
a tinkling shimmering wind chime made in China.
A pleasing, godless today fills my study.
December 18, 2015
Which books do you love to give to others? Share your photos, stories and memories
Which is the title you like to share with people at every opportunity? Or the one book you think more people should read? Which memories do you treasure around books that have been given to you?
Share your stories and pictures of the books – and the people they remind you ofIn the season of sharing, the opportunity arises to give plenty of books as presents – but which titles to give, and to whom? Here, readers and writers explain which books they wish more people had read and why they want to share them with others this Christmas season. Which are yours? Some of our Twitter followers already shared their choices – here are some of their choices. Do add yours in the comments, on Twitter by tagging them as #GuardianBooks – or by clicking on the blue “Contribute” button, to share pictures. We will publish a selection on the Guardian site.
@GuardianBooks Never Let Me Go by @Kazkazuo Ishiguro – a book that will simply never leave you pic.twitter.com/mpdHiOB2pD
@GuardianBooks mine is definitely The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Given that one so many times
@GuardianBooks My beloved battered copy of the Barrytown Trilogy. pic.twitter.com/ruqROswGTG
@GuardianBooks Kartography by Kamila Shamsie is a staple book gift. And Diving Belles by Lucy Wood - beautiful writing & a beautiful book
@GuardianBooks Staring At The Sun by Julian Barnes sorry no pick but sister daughter husband friends have enjoyed as much as I have
@GuardianBooks 'The World of Yesterday' by Stefan Zweig. I've recommended to everyone I know. Bought it for my mom. pic.twitter.com/eJ5pEf3XTH
@GuardianBooks The age of innocence by Edith Wharton. No pic to hand but I give it at every opportunity
. @GuardianBooks Possession by AS Byatt. Read it every year, cry every time & recommend it to everyone. So far, all have loved it too.
@GuardianBooks Pookie Puts the World Right great to share with children, moral of help others & look after yourself pic.twitter.com/iGSo2GRGoH
@GuardianBooks Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernière. It tells every love story ever told. It's wonderful.
@GuardianBooks Oh but also, even more so, The Guts by Roddy Doyle. Forced this on a number of people. pic.twitter.com/0Huyazex67
@guardianbooks: It will be...''Why you act the way you do'' by Tim Halaye. It is self exposing, actually I gave it out to a friend -Cosmas
@GuardianBooks This: Synthesis:Weave, I've given it to loads of people in the hope of getting them to read it. :) pic.twitter.com/rw9JWMJMHm
@GuardianBooks this one. Always a crowd pleaser. pic.twitter.com/ghQa85xQRz
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December 17, 2015
Food in books: the marshmallows from Tomorrow, When the War Began
Marshmallows bring back memories of carefree childhood holidays in Australia for Kate Young. Remembering their appearance in a favourite young adult series, she shares a recipe apt for both summer barbecues and winter nights
By Kate Young for The Little Library Café, part of the Guardian Books Network
But try as we might we couldn’t get it all in. Some of the bulky items were a big problem. We ended up having to make some tough decisions, between the Vita Brits and the marshmallows, the pita bread and the jam doughnuts, the muesli and the chips. I’m ashamed to say what won in each case...
Tomorrow, When the War Began, James Marsden
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December 16, 2015
A wolf in Jutland: Dorthe Nors on the writing life in Denmark
As she returns to nature in her native Jutland, author Dorthe Nors reflects on the state of Scandinavian literature – from why crime fiction dominates publishing to why she wishes Danish men would read more
By Dorthe Nors for The Writing Life Around the World from Electric Literature, part of the Guardian Books Network
A couple of years ago, I moved away from Copenhagen. I say that because I want to tell you something about what it’s like to be a writer in Denmark. Most Danish authors live in Copenhagen. It is there that you find the literary scene – called simply “the scene” if you actually manage to become part of it. I lived in Copenhagen for seven years. On the one hand, I wanted to become part of the scene but couldn’t. On the other, I didn’t want to. No, I did not want to be part of the scene.
* * *
In a small population where just about everyone is related, artistic milieus are decidedly claustrophobic
There’s bread in crime fiction, but we can’t all write crime fiction
'Can you pay your bills?' It means, in all its presumption, 'Are you a burden on society? A parasite? A threat to us?'
I wish that Danish men would read more, and that Danish men would read women
In Scandinavia, anyone with a free and different nature is considered a threat to the existing culture
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December 15, 2015
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 – and thanks for sharing your best reads of the year. Please continue to do so in the thread or by email to marta.bausells@theguardian.com for inclusion in an upcoming piece.
LiteraryWanderings recommended the memoir Girl in the Dark by Anna Lyndsey:
I couldn’t help but feel empathy for Anna who informs the reader of what her life is like when living with debilitating light sensitivity. I’ll be honest at first I found I was sitting outside of the book too much, but as the book progressed I was drawn in, this could be partly because I felt that the writing seems to strengthen but maybe because I was finding the subject matter so interesting. If you’re looking for something different to read this could well be it. Anna is one inspiring lady.
I’ve finished Suttree, the fantastic novel by Cormac McCarthy. It’s two hundred pages longer than Blood Meridian, and is funnier and more contemplative than other McCarthy books I’ve read. I’d previously read Harold Bloom dismissing it by saying it was just like Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! So I was annoyed to find that it wasn’t at all like Faulkner’s text. In fact, I’d argue that it’s a more independent text than Blood Meridian, which has clear affiliations with Moby Dick and William Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico. If I had to compare it to anything, I’d say it’s like a strong Patrick White novel, somewhere between Tree of Man and The Vivisector. As to criticisms, I feel that it trails off awkwardly at the end, not for the first time with McCarthy, and I’ve managed to catch him repeating himself at times. I’ve often had a sense of de ja vu reading McCarthy, so this time I was prepared :)
If you’ve read post-apocalypse novels published in the last ten years and liked what you read, please give me a pointer. I’ve read The Road (The Dog Stars is better in my opinion) and after seeing Shaun of the Dead in 2004, I can’t read of or watch zombies without laughing. So, have you anything for me?
The book is by Kevin Barry, a writer previously unknown to me, and one whom I would have missed if not for the Guardian. Beatlebone dropped in America about two weeks ago, and I have not heard much about it. If there hadn’t been such a fuss about it over here, I wouldn’t have known to pick it up. And am I glad I did.
The premise is that it’s 1978. John Lennon is 37, going on 38. He is tired. Years before, he bought a tiny island off the Irish shore, and now, battered by fame and haunted by memories, he wants nothing more than to go out to his island, the one he hasn’t visited since he bought it, and put into practice what he has learned in Primal Scream therapy. He wants to go somewhere that no one can hear him and scream and scream and scream his pain away. Or so the theory goes. [Read the rest of the comment here.]
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Andrea Levy's The Long Song gives the silent majority a compelling voice
The funny and fierce narrator at the heart of Levy’s novel about slavery in 19th-century Jamaica – December’s reading group choice – flies in the face of narrative convention and gives the silent, black majority a chance to speak out
“The whole of everything is never told,” said Henry James – and often we don’t even get the half of it. The 300-odd-years of slavery in Jamaica from the 16th century until abolition in 1834 is a case in point. It was black Africans who were forced to endure slavery in Jamaica. But it was white Europeans who wrote their immediate history. In her afterword to The Long Song, Andrea Levy explains that she found precious little documentary material written by the black majority. Nearly all contemporary accounts of the life of slaves came from the European perspective. And whether they were written by well-meaning abolitionists or slave owners, they came, says Levy, through the “weird” filter of European racism.
Related: Andrea Levy's The Long Song for December's reading group
Related: The Long Song by Andrea Levy | Book review
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December 14, 2015
Wilbur Smith: a writer's memorable quotes you may want to forget
The bestselling novelist has given an interview in which he gives spectacularly short shrift to his nearest and less than dearest
Perhaps we should start a new blog series. It would run every Monday, and it would lay out the most extraordinary comments by authors in the press over the weekend. The first contender for the slot? Wilbur Smith, the bestselling South African novelist, interviewed for the Sunday Times magazine. As it’s subscription-only, here are a few choice quotes (although you can see a bit more of it in the Mail):
On his previous marriages:
Two of them died on me, the first one hates me and this one loves me, so I’ve covered the whole spectrum.
I first saw Niso 16 years ago. I was in WHSmith, in London’s Sloane Square, browsing around the Dan Brown section. She was young, in her early 20s, and I was as randy as a stallion in a ranch full of mares. So I said to her: ‘Come across to this side of the bookshelf, where the important writers are.’
I don’t see my kids, they’re men and women in their 50s and 60s and they’re not part of me. They’ve got my sperm, that’s all. I can be hard. I don’t want to be, but I don’t like being hurt. They were important to me at one point, make no mistake – very important – but not now. It’s sadder for them than it is for me, because they’re not getting any more money.
Hey, kids, how ever much of a pain I may be, I'm not Wilbur Smith pic.twitter.com/Xq0B2a0j7x
What are the chances, seeing how Dan Brown met his wife while she was browsing Wilbur Smith books in DHBrown?
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