Jonathan Pinnock's Blog, page 14
January 13, 2015
My Year of Reading
Last year I read 95 books. I was a little disappointed at this, because I really wanted to break the 100 barrier. I suppose I could have got a bit closer by counting all four volumes of “Dancers at the End of Time” as separate items, or indeed breaking up Lydia Davis’ collected stories into their consistent volumes. But then I might have had to rule that some of the shorter pamphlets and Kindle Singles didn’t really count as proper books either. So I’ll stick with that 95, with a note to myself to do better in 2015.
The books are a mixture of random stuff I’d had lying around for years, stuff I bought specially, stuff that I happened on in charity shops and – this was a new feature for 2014 – set texts for my Creative Writing MA. I’ll leave you to guess which.
Here we go. No star ratings, because (a) I can’t be bothered rating every single one and (b) I find it very awkward when there are books by people I know in there. I mean, obviously everyone I know is worth at least 6 stars, but some are worth 7 or 8, if you see what I mean.
And yes, I know there are two Dan Browns in there, and probably his worst two as well. Humour me.
Armitage, Simon
Book of Matches
Atwood, Margaret
The Handmaid’s Tale
Barden, Jenny
Mistress of the Sea
Barden, Jenny
The Lost Duchess
Barrett, Colin
Young Skins
Benson, Fiona
Faber New Poets 1
Birnie, Clive
Cutting Up The Economist
Boo, Katherine
Behind the Beautiful Forevers
Bradley, Lloyd
Sounds Like London: 100 Years of Black Music in the Capital
Briggs, Raymond
Ethel & Ernest
Brown, Dan
Deception Point
Brown, Dan
The Lost Symbol
Bryson, Bill
Notes From a Small Country (re-read)
Calvino, Italo
The Complete Cosmicomics
Chabon, Michael (et al)
The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist
Cleave, Chris
Incendiary
Conan Doyle, Arthur
The Hound of the Baskervilles
Cook, Lin (ed)
Something Like Fire: Peter Cook Remembered
Cope, Wendy
Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis
Coutts, Marion
The Iceberg
Davis, Lydia
The Collected Stories
Dickinson, Ash
Slinky Espadrilles
Didion, Joan
The Year of Magical Thinking
Duffy, Carol Ann
The World’s Wife
Engel, Matthew
Eleven Minutes Late
Fleming, Ian
Diamonds are Forever
Fleming, Ian
From Russia With Love
Fleming, Ian
Dr No
Frost, Toby
End of Empires
Gaffney, David
More Sawn-Off Tales
Gebbie, Vanessa
The Half-Life of Fathers
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins
The Yellow Wallpaper
Gleick, James
Faster
Gough, Julian
CRASH! How I Lost a Hundred Billion and Found True Love
Gough, Julian
BANG! The Great Somali Goat Bubble
Grant, Linda
I Murdered My Library
Greer, Bonnie
Entropy
Gudgion, Geoffrey
Saxon’s Bane
Haynes, Steve (Ed)
The Best British Fantasy 2013
Hilary, Sarah
Someone Else’s Skin
Johnston, Jennifer
This is Not a Novel
Johnston, Jennifer
Grace and Truth
Karlinsky, Harry
The Stonehenge Letters
Kellaway, Lucy
Who Moved My Blackberry?
Kerridge, Richard
Cold Blood
Kurkov, Andrey
Death and the Penguin
Larkin, Philip
The Whitsun Weddings
Larsson, Stieg
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Larsson, Stieg
The Girl Who Played with Fire
Larsson, Stieg
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest
Littler, Richard
Discovering Scarfolk
Logan, Kirsty
The Rental Heart
McBride, Eimear
A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing
MacDonald, Helen
H is for Hawk
McEwan, Ian
Atonement
McGough, Roger
Melting into the Foreground
Malcolm, Janet
The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes
Milligan, Spike
The Essential Spike Milligan
Mitchell, David
Ghostwritten
Moorcock, Michael
The Dancers at the End of Time
Moore, Alison
The Pre-War House and Other Stories
Powell, Dan
Looking Out of Broken Windows
Powell, Gareth
Ack-Ack Macaque
Priest, Christopher
The Dream Archipelago
Pryor, Richard
Pryor Convictions
Ridgway, Keith
The Spectacular
Rohan, Ethel
Out of Dublin
Ronson, Jon
Them (re-read)
Rose, David
Posthumous Stories
Royle, Nicholas (Ed)
The Best British Short Stories 2013
Sage, Lorna
Bad Blood
Schalansky, Judith
Atlas of Remote Islands
Sedaris, David
Me Talk Pretty One Day
Simpson, MJ
Hitchhiker: A Biography of Douglas Adams
Smith, Ali
The Accidental
Sobel, Dava
Longitude
Tatsumi, Yoshihiro
A Drifting Life
Thayil, Jeet
Narcopolis
The Fiction Desk
New Ghost Stories
Thompson, Ben
Ban this Filth!
Thompson, Harry
Tintin: Hergé & his Creation
Thorne, David
I’ll Go Home Then, It’s Warm and Has Chairs
Toibin, Colm
The Testament of Mary
Tolkien, JRR
Mr Bliss
Townsend, Sue
Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years
Turnbull, Bill
The Bad Beekeepers Club
Vale, Brenda and Robert
Architecture on the Carpet
Watson, Mark
Hotel Alpha
Weaver, Dave
Japanese Daisy Chain
Wilson, Anthony
Riddance
Winchester, Simon
The Surgeon of Crowthorne
Wodehouse, PG
Joy in the Morning
Wodehouse, PG
The Mating Season
Wodehouse, PG
Ring for Jeeves
Wodehouse, PG
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit
A few observations…
Series
I continued my journey through P.G.Wodehouse and continued to find it rewarding, with the exception of “Ring for Jeeves”, which was well below par, proving that you need both halves of the double act present to make the comedy work.
I’m still working manfully through the Bond books. They’re certainly improving, but not quite the classics I’d been hoping for.
I was very sad to get to the end of Adrian Mole and even sadder to know that there won’t be any more now.
Things I should have read aeons ago that turned out to be every bit as good as I expected
This year’s prime contender has to be “The Handmaid’s Tale” – an absolutely terrific sustained piece of dystopian fiction.
“Making Tea for Kingsley Amis”, as well as a classic that I should have read by now, was also easily the most entertaining poetry book I read this year. Which brings me on to…
Poetry
I read more poetry books than ever this year, and many of them had some excellent moments. Generally speaking, though, I must confess that I’m still struggling find the kind of stuff that really appeals to me. I always come away feeling a bit of a lightweight. Possibly because I am.
New discoveries
Biggest discovery of the year was Jennifer Johnston. I literally bought “This Is Not a Novel” for 50p, and then only because a charity shop was selling off books at two for a pound and I needed something to go with “Eleven Minutes Late” (God, I sound a cheapskate). I love her style: very spare, straightforward and not a single word out of place. I intend to read a lot more of her work in 2015.
I’m also looking forward to reading more Ali Smith. “The Accidental” was the first of hers I’d read and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I could certainly read more of Colm Toibin, too.
I’d had the “Atlas of Remote Islands” lying around on a coffee table for several years and I’m so glad I got round to reading it. It’s one of the most evocative books I’ve ever read. It’s also a thing of beauty.
“The Silent Woman” was the biggest surprise. It was one of the MA set texts and I wasn’t looking forward to reading it at all, knowing little of either Hughes or Plath beyond the stuff that everyone knows, but it’s one of the most riveting non-fiction books I’ve ever read. A fascinating insight into a whole strange world of literary fandom and factionalism.
Anyone else out there read and enjoyed / hated any of my 95? I’d be fascinated to hear what you think.
[UPDATE: Forgot to mention that the best short story I read last year, by a country mile, was Simon Bestwick's "Dermot", in "The Best British Fantasy 2013". Utterly chilling and morally challenging story, brilliantly told.]
December 30, 2014
The Canonisation of St Geoff and Other Stuff
I haven’t had much in the way of short stories or poetry published this year, but this one, “The Canonisation of St Geoff”, in The Pygmy Giant, just snuck in under the wire.
Its genesis is quite interesting. In our very first Professional Skills workshop at Bath Spa, our tutor, Celia Brayfield, asked us to pick a word and then write down as many connotations as we could think of around it. We then passed it to the person next to us so they could add a few more. Then we had half an hour or so (I think) to write something using that material. And this piece (somewhat edited since) is what emerged. My word, incidentally, was “Saint”, for reasons which one day may become clear. Or not.
The picture shows three highly respectable print publications containing recent work of mine that I don’t think I’ve mentioned here previously. Issue 13 of Ariadne’s Thread contains my poem “Parable”. The Eleventh Annual Ultra-Short Edition of The Binnacle contains my flash “99942 Apophis. Finally, Unthology 6 contains my short story “Hay. Pee. Ah. Wrist.” It’s always nice to have stuff published, but even nicer to see it in print.
December 16, 2014
Happy Birthday, Jane!
Yes, it’s Jane Austen’s birthday today. And quite coincidentally, it’s also the fifth anniversary of the online publication of the prologue to Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens. Doesn’t time fly, eh? And what a surprising number of things have happened since then.
Anyway, I thought it would be nice to celebrate this with a new special, as we haven’t had one of those for a while. So here’s Mrs Darcy and the Fairy Godmother. Hope you like it.
December 4, 2014
When the Man from Del Monte Says Meh
So, do we start this with “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” (always a bit suspect, that one) or “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about” (which doesn’t really stand up to close inspection, either)?
Oh well.
I got reviewed by Songlines magazine. I like Songlines. I’ve had a subscription to it since it first came out. So I was quite excited when I heard that they were going to review Take It Cool, although I was more than a little apprehensive. I had a vague feeling that the music press might be a little more picky than, say, Family Tree Magazine (pick of the month, remember – oh, that seems so long ago now).
The thing is, it’s not actually a bad review. It’s more of a meh review, and what’s really annoying is that I can’t complain about much of what the reviewer is saying (although I don’t quite understand that bit about “Jammin’”). The only thing that we strongly disagree on is whether or not the book was worth writing. Although that is, I guess, quite a fundamental difference of opinion. It’s Dennis I really feel sorry for – I feel like I’ve let him down somehow.
Still, the book has now had three print reviews, of which the first two (in the Scottish Herald and Family Tree Magazine – did I say it was their pick of the month?) were excellent. Two out of three ain’t bad, after all.
So I won’t be cancelling my subscription to Songlines. It is still an excellent magazine, even if they do get things ever so slightly wrong every now and then.
November 20, 2014
National Short Story Week
Is it that time of year already? Apparently it is, and I’m not talking about that festival beginning with C either. No, I’m talking about National Short Story Week, the time when the entire nation comes together to celebrate the short form.
As is customary on these occasions, the week has been preceded by a competition for young writers and the resulting truly excellent anthology has just been published. Go and buy yourself a copy now – you won’t be disappointed. Not only that, but all the proceeds go to a terrific cause.
Well, come on, what are you waiting for?
While you’re visiting the NSSW site, you might also like to read this interview that Ian Skillicorn (aka Mr National Short Story Week) did with me, in which I talk about short stories and Take It Cool and stuff. I think it’s quite interesting, but then I suppose I would.
October 31, 2014
TAKE IT COOL on Kindle!
We’ll kick off this post with some excellent news for those of you out there who suffer from paper allergies: TAKE IT COOL is now available on Kindle, at the very reasonable price of £3.84. And if you’re still hesitating over whether to take the plunge, you can even download a sample to try out, via the very same link. Get IN, as I believe the young folk say.
By the way, in case you’re wondering why the posts are coming a little more sporadically than in the past, blame the Creative Writing MA. At the moment, I’m just about keeping up with it as well as the rest of my real life commitments, but it doesn’t leave a lot of space for stuff like this place. The good news is that I am absolutely loving the course and – so far at least – getting out of it exactly what I was hoping to get.
October 13, 2014
Thresholds
Every year the people who run the Thresholds short story forum hold a feature writing competition. I entered it for the first time this year, with a piece that drew heavily on this blog post from around this time last year. I didn’t make the long list, but they decided my piece was worth publishing anyway, which is nice. And here it is. I still think it’s relevant.
October 1, 2014
BBC Radio Bristol
It struck me on the way home from Bristol today that a live radio interview to promote a book is a bit like a first date. You’re desperate to make a good impression and anxious to keep the conversation flowing, even though half the time you’re wondering “What in God’s name did I just say that for?”
But it was a lot of fun. Steve Yabsley, BBC Radio Bristol / BBC Somerset’s lunchtime presenter is a really nice guy and he managed to put me at my ease very quickly. He’d also done a lot more research than I’d expected, and he was able to keep nudging me back on course when I was in danger of going off-piste.
If you fancy listening to it (I haven’t dared to yet), it’s available here for the next seven days. My bit starts at just after 32 minutes in.
By the way, when you’re waiting to be let into the studio complex, you get to sit on the sofa that used to be used for BBC Points West. Apparently this is worthy of a plaque:
In other news, I started the MA course on Monday, and I’m really enjoying it already. Unexpected highlight so far was starting to read my first set book, Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Living, and finding out on page 24 that she and her late husband used to watch Tenko. Fellow fans of Ed Reardon’s Week (and I assume that includes any writers out there) will appreciate how satisfying I found this.
September 24, 2014
Phase Two
I usually think of Phase One of my writing career to have begun around about September 2004. OK, I’d had software books published before then, and I’d also dabbled a little bit in creative writing, but September 2004 was when I decided to have one last bash at carving out a proper writing career for myself. I started off gently, by re-joining the local writers’ circle and becoming a regular entrant in their competitions. Then I started to reach out further, joining various internet forums and submitting stuff left, right and centre, until slowly I began – in a small way – to make a bit of a name for myself.
BRAG ALERT WARNING: There’s a bit coming up that sounds like I’m bragging. But it’s contextually necessary. Trust me.
If I were to go back a decade in time and tell my ten-years-younger self what had actually transpired in those years between 2004 and 2014, I would have been pretty amazed to hear that I’d actually managed to get three VERY different books accepted by respectable publishers, had one of them (briefly) in WHSmiths’ charts, had the other two reviewed in the national press, had a story read on BBC Radio 4, had the same story read by a bunch of naked women in New York (actually, that’s probably one to save for my 12-year-old self), won several prizes for short stories and poetry, had several poems published (where did THAT come from?), appeared in 40 anthologies, read my work in public on many occasions, had random strangers get in touch to say how much they like my work and so on and so on and so on.
BRAG ALERT ALL CLEAR. RETURN TO YOUR HOMES. I REPEAT, ALL CLEAR, RETURN TO YOUR HOMES.
And yet. The thing is, I still don’t have a clue what I’m doing. I’ve never had any formal training (beyond what I learnt along with everyone else at that writers’ circle and those forums – and don’t get me wrong, I learnt a hell of a lot from them). I’ve never had a mentor. I don’t have an agent. My writing career, such as it is, is a bunch of random events with no underlying logic to it. (Vanessa Gebbie’s interpretation of this as me not wanting to be pigeonholed is far more generous than it deserves.) To be honest, right now, I haven’t the faintest clue as to what I should be writing about. I have a few ideas, sure (I’m very rarely short of them), but they’re currently showing an alarming tendency to self-destruct a few thousand words in. Whether this is because I don’t have the right skills or if it’s simply because I’ve lost confidence in my writing doesn’t really matter. The plain fact is that there’s only one way I’m ever going to find a route upwards and out of this.
I need to go back to school.
So tomorrow I’m off to register for the MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. I’m going to be taught how to write by People I Have Heard Of. It could of course all go horribly wrong. I may find it impossible to fit it all in with the day job. I may not even like being taught stuff at my age (it’s been a while, after all, although I was delighted to find out recently that I won’t be the only extra-mature student there). But it may just be the start of something wonderful.
This is the campus, by the way. They have peacocks there and all.
Phase Two, here we come. Wish me luck.
September 17, 2014
The Caterpillar and the Beeb
Lots of excitement here at Pinnock Towers. First of all, I had a sudden urge yesterday to see if I could get a few more of my strange animal poems for kids published. So I dug out a selection, read them through and fixed some of the scansion (amazing what you find when you go back to something with a more critical eye). Given that (a) the only place I know of that publishes that kind of thing is The Caterpillar and (b) they’ve published a couple of mine there before, I decided to send them to The Caterpillar. Classic marketing skills on display there.
Anyway, I had a very positive response the same day and some of them will indeed be appearing in either the next edition or the one after that. I’ll let you know either way. Seriously, if you do have kids who enjoy reading (or indeed kids who don’t and bloody well ought to), it’s a terrific magazine. Oh, and did I mention that it’s published people such as Michael Morpurgo, Frank Cottrell Boyce and John Hegley. That last name may make readers of TAKE IT COOL prick up their ears, as they may recall that I once almost formed a band with him.
The other even more exciting thing is that I’ve just been invited to be Steve Yabsley‘s main guest on his lunchtime show at BBC Radio Bristol / Somerset on Wednesday October 1st. Make a note in your diaries now. I will too, with a special addendum telling me to get there several hours in advance, unlike my Ujima Radio cock-up.
