Callum McLaughlin's Blog, page 55

The Sweetest

To place a kiss upon your lips

and watch it melt like snow

would be the sweetest gift of all.

Skill vs. Enjoyment

Lolita

I recently read – and loved – Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. When it came to reviewing it on Goodreads however, I found myself feeling stumped. There was no denying that the skill of the writing, the effectiveness of the techniques used and the impact of the story were amongst the best I’ve read, but that’s not to say it was necessarily always an ‘enjoyable’ read.

A book that centres around a paedophile is always going to be uncomfortable to consume, no matter how charismatic he may be. The dynamic between Humbert and Lolita is fantastically realised, with the power play and sickeningly dysfunctional relationship very deliberately sending chills down the readers’ spines and holding us at a distance. This inability to be swept up in the story is where my difficulty in choosing a star rating came from however. Should I give it the five stars I felt it deserved for the sheer talent necessary to have written it, or knock a star off because it left me feeling cold at times (albeit deliberately so)?

Ultimately I am well aware that the actual rating you give a book matters not a jot; it’s what it makes you think and feel that really count, and in that respect, Lolita is probably one of the best books I’ve ever read, even if not the most enjoyable. It was this that got me thinking, what do we (or should we) give more merit to when judging a book; the skill of the achievement or the pleasure of the reading experience?

I’d love to chat about it in the comments and know what you give more weight to.

*Just for the record, I ended up giving Lolita four stars, but also added it to my ‘favourites’ shelf. I felt that was a fair compromise. You can read my full review here if you would like.*

August Wrap Up

All the books I read in August.

With another month coming to an end, it’s time for another wrap up. Throughout August, I managed to finish 11 books (5 novels, a novella, a poetry collection, a non-fiction book, a play and two graphic novels.) This took my total for the year so far up to 91, meaning I may well hit my target of 100 books sooner rather than later, which is nice.

Overall it was a very enjoyable reading month, with lots of gems to talk about. A real highlight was Nin Andrews’ collection of prose poetry, Why God is a Woman. The interlinked poems tell the story of an island where men are descendants of angels who become the sexualised objects of the ruling women once they hit puberty and begin to sprout wings. Hugely approachable in its language, yet fiercely intelligent in its satirical look at the gender roles we carve for ourselves within society; I loved it.

I also loved The Trees by Ali Shaw, a strange but wonderfully realised book that defies genre, weaving together elements of adventure, fantasy, mythology, love and self-discovery in lush prose. The story follows a group of survivors who attempt to travel from England to Ireland after the ground erupts with endless numbers of trees which destroy buildings, displace people and harbour mysterious secrets. The characters are the driving force, with each of them being distinct and very well developed.

The Reason I Jump was an eye-opening and touching little book written by a Japanese schoolboy to try and dispel myths surrounding autism, from which he suffers, and aid people in better understanding how he and people like him think and feel.

I was glad to read another David Mitchell, with Slade House being a fun riff on the haunted house set-up that became an intricate fantasy story that tied in nicely to The Bone Clocks, which I read last month. It was also fun to revisit Peter Pan for the first time since childhood, whilst This One Summer provided wonderful escapism, perfectly capturing the time in life when we are on the brink of adolescence with a quiet, charming story and beautiful artwork.

I won’t go into my full thoughts on Harry Potter and the Cursed Child – though I have done a review on Goodreads if you wish to read it – but I can’t really not mention it since it’s the talk of the book world right now. In short, I thought it was a fun, action-packed read that would no doubt be mesmerising to see performed in a live setting, but as an entry in the overall Harry Potter franchise, I thought it was riddled with plot holes, relied on (and messed with) the prior books too much rather than trying to stand on its own merits, and felt disjointed from the series as a whole. Essentially, it really showed that Rowling wasn’t the principal writer and as such it will never feel canon to me. That said, it has been pretty nice and nostalgic to have the Harry Potter buzz back in the world.

Thanks for stopping by. I look forward to seeing what September has in store for me in terms of reading adventures.

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What was your favourite read in August?

Reminder to Breathe

Don’t think I wouldn’t bleach my bones

if fate handed me the bottle.

How am I supposed to tell you that

while you’re chasing dreams in Nashville

and he’s searching for happiness

at the bottom of the ocean,

I’ll be lying on the bathroom floor

counting one, two, three

and praying you don’t forget

how much you used to like my company?

Better to feel the bite of cold worrying my skin

than the panic that frays my edges

and tries to break me every single day.

I’ve had daydreams of the easy way out

and nightmares of eternity,

that’s why survival is a victory and

breathing is the only way to heal.

Courage

You ask me to describe the taste of the ocean,

I tell you it’s salt, sorrow and seduction.

You ask me to describe the smell of roses,

I tell you it’s sweaty palms and freshly pricked blood.

You ask me to describe the look of longing,

I tell you it’s wide-eyed and close to home.

You ask me to describe the sound of silence,

I tell you it’s the time between ‘I love you’ and ‘I love you too’.

You ask me to describe the feeling of numbness,

I tell you it’s when the courage never comes.

Let’s Recommend | Mental Health

Let’s recommend books that explore mental health.

Another recommendation post is long overdue, and this time I’ve decided to recommend books that explore mental health issues. I tried to include a decent mix, both in terms of content and form, with fiction and non-fiction offerings to choose from. As always, I would love to hear your own recommendations for books within this important and yet often overlooked area.

The Man Who Couldn’t Stop by David Adam

This is Adam’s account of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), which comprises his personal experiences, case files, scientific facts and research from throughout the years, making it a very thorough examination of what it means to live with the condition. As someone with OCD myself, it was certainly an interesting read and one I highly recommend if you want to dispel the myths and understand why people aren’t really ‘a little bit OCD’.

Alice and the Fly by James Rice

Chronic phobias, schizophrenia and obsession are the issues explored here, in a story that is dark yet poignant. Most interesting of all for me was the look at class divides within society and the importance of realising that mental health troubles can affect us all.

Stammered Songbook by Erwin Mortier

The short passages in this book read like prose poetry or contemplative diary entries, detailing the author’s frustration at mourning for a mother who is present in body but not in mind, having succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease. This was another one that hit home on a personal level for me, as my own grandmother is currently suffering from increasingly debilitating dementia, with Mortier’s poignant words capturing the feelings of helplessness very effectively.

The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Filer

The Shock of the Fall is a vivid and captivating story about a young man’s descent into grief and mental illness following the death of his brother, his eventual breakdown, and his journey to recovery. This is another offering where the darkness and poignancy strike an ideal balance.

Iris Grace by Arabella Carter-Johnson

Written by Iris’ mother, this is the real life story of a little girl with severe autism. It’s worth pointing out that autism itself is often not officially considered a mental illness, but many of its symptoms – such as a lack of communication skills and social anxiety – manifest themselves in similar ways to mental health conditions. It is an honestly written, beautiful glimpse into the power of art and the unbreakable bond between man and nature, as Iris unlocks her world through painting and a magical friendship with Thula the cat.

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What are some of your favourite books that explore mental health issues? Let’s chat about them.

Where I Come From | A Prose Poem

Where I come from the princess saved herself while the prince was on a gap year. She was slaying dragons as he sat on a rock somewhere, writing poems about the sun and dreaming of a quiet life. For the record, it wasn’t her step-mother that locked her away. They get on rather well, in fact.

Where I come from we dress our boys in yellow and our girls in green, just to keep their options open. We tell our sons who want to be our daughters that they have always been our daughters, really. We have a little cry together and look toward the future. We’ve got a lot to live for after all.

Where I come from we don’t have to teach our women to cover up their skin and stick close to their friends because we’ve already taught our men that no means no. We send them out to make their own clumsy way in the world without chips on their shoulders or glass ceilings above their heads, just thirsty hearts and open minds.

Where I come from, you’re all more than welcome. It really is a beautiful, beautiful place.

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* Inspired by Nin Andrews’ collection, Why God is a Woman.*

The Diverse Books Tag

Let’s promote diversity in literature.

I was kindly tagged by the lovely Tash over at The Bookie Monsters to take part in The Diverse Books Tag. I’m a big supporter of the call for better representation in literature, so am more than happy to get involved. I’ve included mostly books I’ve already read, but also chose a few books from my TBR to encourage myself to keep reading diversely.

You can find the original version of this tag here, but without further ado, let’s get started!

Find a book starring a lesbian character

For this I’ve picked A Portable Shelter by Kirsty Logan, a series of interwoven short stories that follows a lesbian couple as they await the birth of their first child, taking turns to tell it fairy tales that mask truths about our own world.

Find a book with a Muslim protagonist

I’ve decided to go with I am Malala by Malala Yousafzai. I’m well aware that Malala isn’t a protagonist but rather a living, breathing, and quite remarkable human being, but I thought it would be nice to include some non-fiction, in the spirit of diversity. Malala is a teenage girl who campaigns for peace and girls’ education rights who survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban.

Find a book set in Latin America

Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez is a highly respected Latin American novelist and I haven’t read any of his work yet, so I’ve picked one of his most widely celebrated novels, One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Find a book about a person with a disability

Marie-Laure, the protagonist of All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, is a young blind French girl forced to flee with her father during WWII. For a book that follows a blind character, I thought the prose itself and the imagery were wonderfully vivid.

Find a Science-Fiction or Fantasy book with a POC protagonist

For this I’ve decided to go with the Saga comic series by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples. I’ve chosen this mainly because it has several POC characters, most notably Alana, the kick-ass principle heroine. However, I also chose it because an interview with writer Vaughan stuck in my mind in which he admitted that the racial diversity is due to the artist, Fiona Staples, who asked, ‘why does Alana have to be white?’, and in doing so brought to his attention his own habit of assuming characters are white by default, which I think is a fascinating topic and something many of us are guilty of.

Find a book set in (or about) any country in Africa

To throw a little more non-fiction into the mix, I’ve gone with We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a very short and approachable book in which Nigerian author Adichie compared her experiences as a woman in both the US and Africa, which I found interesting. I would also like to try some of her fiction, which is often spoken of very highly.

Find a book written by an Indigenous or Native author

I’m going to cheat slightly with this one because the author, Jean Craighead George, was not Native as far as I’m aware, but her book, Julie of the Wolves, follows an indigenous Inuit girl torn between her native culture and the pressures of the outside world who flees her home and, lost in the Alaskan tundra, is taken in by a pack of wolves. This caught my attention years ago but I never got round to reading it, so I’m glad this question brought it back to mind.

Find a book set in South Asia (Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, etc.)

For this I’ve chosen Parvana’s Journey by Deborah Ellis, which follows a young girl’s perilous trip across war-torn Afghanistan to try and find her family. This is technically the sequel to The Breadwinner, which I also recommend, but despite having read this book many years ago, I particularly remember being moved by the ending, and it has stayed with me ever since.

Find a book with a biracial protagonist

Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You centres around a mixed race family with a Chinese father and an American mother in 1970s Ohio. The book opens with the death of the family’s ‘favourite child’, and follows the ways they deal with this grief and try to understand the nature of her demise. One of the major sub-plots revolves around the grandmother’s previous attempts to stop her daughter marrying an Asian man, highlighting the racial tensions that existed at the time.

Find a book starring a transgender character or about transgender issues

Stella from The Sunlight Pilgrims by Jenni Fagan is a fantastic character, who just so happens to be transgender. Feisty, brave, funny and inquisitive, she has a wonderful relationship with her supportive mother, Constance, and along with a newcomer to the remote Scottish caravan park they call home, they try to find their place in a world they no longer understand for different reasons, in this quiet character driven story set against the backdrop of an impending Ice Age.

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There we have it. I’m going to tag Stephanie and driftinglexi, if they would like to do it, as well as anyone else who wishes to take part.

Battlefield

And when all was said and done

not a single tear was shed,

she just fell before the moon

and begged it bleed some answers

into the inky sky,

the swirling sea that longed

to swallow up the stars

and hide her in its darkness.

But she rose from her bloody knees,

her body a battlefield,

and sought victory in the comfort

of a dingy waiting room,

paperwork,

pokes

and prods,

for her bullet is the truth

and boy does it sting.

July Wrap Up

All the books I read in July

As we come to the end of July, it’s time for another reading wrap up. Throughout the last month, I managed to finish 9 books (4 novels, a non-fiction book, a poetry collection, 2 graphic novels and a book of fairy tales). This takes my yearly total thus far up to a nice round 80, keeping me well on track to hit 100 before 2016 comes to an end.

It was a good reading month overall, with lots of enjoyable books in the mix. I was especially happy to finally read a David Mitchell book – I’ve been wanting to try his work for ages – and wasn’t disappointed, so I hope to pick up more from him soon. The Bone Clocks is a multi-layered, intricately planned out fantasy saga that spans several decades and weaves together with immense skill.

Another highlight was Tender Morsels, a whimsical fairy tale inspired novel with some very dark themes but a lot of heart. I also thoroughly enjoyed Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur, a collection of simple yet beautiful poetry, and The Arrival by Shaun Tan, a silent graphic novel that manages to tell a poignant and very timely story about the struggles of immigrants without using a single word; relying instead on Tan’s stunning artwork and clever imagery.

Truth be told, there wasn’t really a bad read to be found this month, so I’m excited to hopefully continue that trend into August.

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What was your favourite read in July?