I'm feeling a bit sad that the new novel by China Mieville The City and The City - did not at all agree with me and has given me literary indigestion. It was so hyped, has won sci-fi awards and is expected to win more, and I wasin the mood for fiction that breaks the mold. So I thought I was onto a sure thing. (Perhaps I would like other novels by this same author?).
I'm not giving anything more away about the plot than that it's a detective novels played out in parallel dimensions. I must confess to struggling to a third of the way through before I realised that I just wasn't enjoying it and decided to ditch it ... though I did a naughty and skipped to the end to see what happened in the end.
I did feel the central premise of the novel (the two cities idea) was fascinating, and I felt the rather atmosphere was well created (in some ways the novel reminds me of Orhan Pamuk's Snow) but I'm not big on allegorical fables a la Borges and Kafka. You tend to get the idea quickly enough but have just too many pages of tedium to troll through. And oh man, this book is bloody boring and over 300 pages!
Then there's a Dan Brown level of character development which leaves you just not caring about whether the murder gets solved or about what happens to dear Inspector Borlu. This is something so basic - fiction doesn't work if we don't care for the characters!
But worst of all is the appauling editing ... or rather lack thereof. One commentator on Amazon suggested that perhaps the wrong copy of the manuscript got sent to the publishers and I can well believe it. There are sentences that make no sense whatsoever! Other parts are so clunky that I did wonder if Mieville intended the language to imitate a foreign speaker who can't handle English too well. I sat on the plane down to Singapore today and marked 'em with a green pen. (Maybe I'm getting in the mood for my advanced Copy Editing Workshop tomorrow?)
Spot what's wrong here, for e.g. :
Corwi drove - she made no effort to disguise her uniform, despite that we had an unmarked car -
Arrrrgh!
Anyway, had the book been better I would have been happily still engrossed in it, instead of talking to you. So maybe a little boredom occasionally is good for one?
I'm off to the Publishing Symposium at the Singapore Writers festival and most probably away from this blog till Friday. Expect some updates after that of stuff I hope will be particularly relevant to local writers.
So while I'm gone, this is your space. What have you read recently? Any good?
Non-fiction and short stories are still my reads of choice at the moment. I finished Madness : A Bipolar Life by Marya Hornbacher very moving memoir of life with the illness - very well written, often harrowing but ultimately hopeful. A must-read if you know people who are bipolar and a book to put beside Kay Redfield Jamison's An Unquiet Mind. (I found my very cheap copy at Big Bookshop, and you can read excerpts from the book here.)
I read most of Gerrie Lim's In Lust We Trust : Adventures in Adult Cinema, at the hairdressers yesterday. Quite an eye-popping read (How does a nice Singaporean boy get mixed up in this? What actually goes on behind the scenes at the filming of porno movies - well aren't you also curious?), insightful and intelligent. (Bought by copy from Times bookstore.)
And now I'm toying with what to put in my bag to take to Singapore. Might give Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book a chance since it's almost halloween.
Must admit - am feeling a little tired and uninspired at the moment, and am busy with teaching practice observation which has me dashing off to schools all over the city. Time I think to throw things over to you guys - what are you reading and what do you think of it?
I've been in a very nibblish mood lately, reading bits and pieces of things but finding it hard to settle to a whole book. I've been mighty impressed by J.D. Salinger's short stories (my copy is one of Dina Zaman's pre-loved books) . Am also reading - among other stuff - Adeline Lee's short stories and Malaysian Essays 2, and about to embark on Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall. I'm also enjoying a compilation of the short short stories that won the Writers Digest competition last year - my own entry not among them (but now am beginning to understand what they were looking for).
The wonderful bookstairs above were found by Tan Twan Eng At Guagga Art and Books in Cape Town. (The bookstore's site appears to be down at the moment.)
Sorry guys to leave you all experiencing withdrawal symptoms. Really not good at blogging on the go (other laptops keyboards feel wrong, my fingers are cold). Have plenty to tell you about bookshop preamubulations, novels read (including The Carhullan Army by Sarah Hall and Netherland by Joseph O'Neill) historic libraries in rainy Manchester, and Tash's book launch. But you'll have to wait a few more days yet. But meanwhile ... well, I give you this space to tell each other what you've been reading and what you think of it. Be nice to each other.
So what are you reading guys ... anything good you'd like the rest of us to know about?
After I blogged about the shortlist for Romantic Novel of the Year Award, one of the nominees Linda Gillard was kind enough to put a copy of her book, Star Gazing into the post for me. And looking for a lighter read, I picked it up a few days ago.
Now I've always had certain preconceptions about romantic fiction, based on the one-and-only Mills and Boon novel I read years ago on a fishing boat from Tioman (there being no other reading material at hand), but Gillard manages to very nicely shatter them, and to keep this fussiest of readers with her throughout.
Marianne is in her forties, and has been blind from birth. She was widowed in her twenties when her husband was killed in the Piper Alpha oil rig disaster. She's long given up on love, and now, living with her sister finds her pleasure in attending concerts and long walks. She's fiercely independent, and so stubborn you sometimes want to shake her. But her courage comes through time and again.
Of course, the author places a bloke in her path. She encounters Keir literally on her own doorstep when she accidentally drops her shopping and he comes to her aid. Later, she agrees to visit his home on the Isle of Sky where he lives an almost hermit like existence when he isn't on the rigs. (He's another oilman, yes, and there are for Marianne disturbing echoes of the past throughout the novel.)
Keir's the kind of hero I would fall for myself in two shakes. Never mind the tall, dark and handsome (which Marianne of course can't appreciate in the same way, of course) he loves classical music and nature, is involved in conservation work, and is able to paint the beauty of the island for Marianne through words alone.
I loved though the second love-story in the humourous sub-plot - Marianne's sister Louisa writes vampire novels set in Edinburgh and falls for her much younger goth assistant.
The writing is good, the charcters well drawn and the dialogue realistic. An interesting theme of ways of seeing and perception runs through the novel, and Gillard helps the reader to inhabit Marianne's blindness.
The pacing of the novel just right and (quite cleverly because you always believe romance novels are written to a formula) the reader is led to a point where the happy ending no longer seems a safe bet. One of the main events that propels the plot, Keir's misadventure in Kazakhstan, and its aftermath could have done with a bit more space (but then, I suppose, Gillard would be wandering into the territory of the thriller and away from the romance).
So, yes, there are love stories that steer clear of all the mush and the cliches and heaving bosoms and provide even a jaded old cynic like me with an enjoyable read.
And now I've wandered into genre fiction of a different kind - caught up in the darkness of Irving Welsh's Crime.
Am also savouring Alina Rastam's new collection of poetry All the Beloveds ...
So ... what are you reading, guys, and is it something you'd recommend to the world?
I must confess to feeling like lighter reads at the moment. For me that usually means non-fiction. And I find it easier to take my book out of the house than to be distracted by things I need to do at home.
Today I had a lovely long lunch at the P.J. Hilton with the excellent company of Elizabeth Gilbert. Or at least her book Eat, Pray, Love.
It was actually my Christmas tree present from someone in our book club, and perhaps not something I'd have otherwise chosen for myself - a travel book as much about an internal journey for healing in the aftermath of a painful divorce and a failed love affair, as it is about the places she visited.
Structured to resemble a string of prayer beads, the books falls into three sections of 36 chapters each. She takes a year out of her life spending four months each in Italy (to enjoy a love affair with the language and enjoy the best of the food); India (where she confronts inner demons in an ashram); and Bali, Indonesia (where she plans to spend time with a traditional healer ... except that life seems to have other plans for her).
Sure, Gilbert is a bit of a flake sometimes, but she is very good company warm and funny, and actually pretty wise. Although she doesn't get to see an awful lot of each country (in India she never leaves the ashram, and in Bali it's only at the end of her stay that she leaves Ubud to see the beaches!), the real pleasure is in her descriptions of the characters she meets and the conversations she has. She's willing to open her heart and learn, willing to bend down to listen.
I enjoyed the Bali section the best as she lands up in Ubud which is of course a place I know well, and I think she describes it with clear insight, including her observations about the expat community.
Anyway, I look forward to the next journey she takes me on, and will also be slipping copies of this book to a few friends I know will enjoy it.
I'm also reading The Collected Poetry of Dorothy Parker - another book which fell into my hands serendipitously. This scruffy old volume (1931!), ex-library, and broken spined, was rescued from a flea market by a friend who always brings me scavenged books. She's more than a little bit wicked, and her little verses, which look so tame and domestic at first, really do bite back. I should though slip this copy in the microwave, I think, as I'm sure there are all kinds of microbes hanging out among the pages.
My next read is Child 44 by Tom Rob-Smith. Our book club members chose it and I have barely a week to get through it now. I did begin it and got mightily put off by a cat being hunted for food when I think one of the starving humans should have sacrificed his body for the sake of the rest and let the moggy be! (I really am going to set up that Society for the Prevention of Cruetly to Fictional Cats.) Am not overly impressed with the writing - it's a bit simplified reader, and just hope the plot makes up for it. Even a few pages in I'm quite shocked that this made the Booker shortlist - where got standard lah?
Still, will try to read with an open heart and let you know how it goes.
Googling around looking for other book related stuff, I came across this beautiful image - actually one in a series of adverts produced for Anagram Bookshop in Prague.
And it's a good opportunity to ask you guys - what are you reading - or what have you recently read? I love to hear about your recommendations because I discover all kinds of new stuff that way ... and also because it lets me know what interests you most.
I've been a terrible nibbler lately - jumping in and out of a whole lot of books. I'm savouring the last one or two stories in Shi-Li Koh's Ripples - about which more later. I'm happily dipping into Amir's collection of funny politician sayings. I think i'll pick up Brian Christy's The Lizard King next as I really need some non-fiction in my diet and this is a topic close to my heart.
Bibliophibians (n.pl) - those who are drowning in books to the extent they develop special gills.
I loved this cartoon by David Maliki at Wondermark.com [found via and via]. (Go to website to see full size.)
Speaking of drowing in books - what are you reading now?
My current reads are 1) Lionel Shriver's harrowing We Have to Talk About Kevin which is our book club pick and 2) Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash which young Ted recommended to me one day in Kinokuniya when I said I fancied reading some more William Gibson. Who'da thought I would love cyberpunk? It's amazing what becoming a resident in a metaverse does to you.
More about both later, as well as about other stuff recently read and still being read around these two picks.
I'm going to be pretty busy today running a creative writing workshop for IKIM (my third). So I'm just going to leave you this space to tell us - what are you reading? And is it any good?
I promise that I will be back to answer the question myself later!
This is one of those mornings when I have lots of good stuff to blog but sadly no time to sit here and put stories up. It feels like the right time throw the ball to you
Being away from my computer for a day in deepest darkest Alor Gajah gave me some much needed reading time. I finished Chiew-Siah Tei's Little Hut of Leaping Fishes am very much looking forward to meeting her later today. (I have of course much more to write about both author and book).
This is just a moment to pause and ask you, what are you reading and is it any good?
I've been freewheeling for the last few days - reading magazines and non-fiction (Tim Butcher's excellent Blood River) while working up the energy to plunge back into fiction!
A young boy is taken by a relative to the house of a wealthy, somewhat eccentric man with long hair to work as a houseboy. His new master is a good man with a lovely speaking voice and a large library. He is concerned about the boy's education and gives him books to read. The boy does his best to please his new master and win his heart with his culinary prowess. The man has friends who comes to the house to discuss politics against a background of political unrest (leading to civil war) while the boy listens. There is one special woman in the man's life whom the boy falls in love with too.
Has anyone else noted the close similarity of the opening chapter of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half a Yellow Sun (my current read) and Romesh Gunasekera's Reef? Nothing more than coincidence, I'm sure, but it's making me feel quite weird ...
This, anyway, is my next read, a long-overdue want-to-read from my burgeoning to-be-read-shelf. I am as usual running behind with the reviews here of things read, but hope to post more as soon as I have a backlog of articles out of the way.
But what are you guys reading? I'm sure we'd all love to know.
Oh how rude of me. Here I am telling you about all my favourite reads and I haven't asked you all for the longest time: what are you reading? any good?
I remember a fairy story about a magical cooking pot. You could lift the lid and smell what delicious things are cooking in all the kitchens of the world. I feel like that every time you answer this question because you make me so hungry ...
I feel shamefaced that it's taken me so long to read Ian McEwan's Atonement. As I said earlier, I was halfway through it when I was asked to review or proofread something else. I put it aside. Other books interposed themselves (as books are wont to do). It went back onto the bookshelf, surrounded by other books I know I will love, but haven't had the time to open.
This is one instance when being a member of a book club really helps. My friends chose it as the January read - no doubt nudged by the release of the film which some of them have seen.
Atonement is now my favourite of McEwan's novels (a position previous held by On Chesil Beach, A Child in Time and the first terrible chapter of Enduring Love):
It's breathtakingly good, so beautifully written and carefully detailed that you are drawn right in ... to a large English house on a stiflingly hot summer's day, to the war ravaged landscape of France as an army retreats to Dunkirk, to a London hospital swamped by the war-wounded in the aftermath.
As so often in McEwan's novels, something completely unthinkable happens and destroys the lives of all involved.
Here the testimony of a thirteen year old girl, Briony Tallis, sends an innocent man to gaol for a rape (or molestation) that he did not commit. Was it simply a misunderstanding from which Briony found it impossible to withdraw once events were set in motion? Was she the victim of her own over-dramatic imagination? Was she simply jealous of the sexual passion that had been ignited between her sister, Cecilia, and Robbie?
Whatever the truth, Robbie's lower social status weighs against him. He is the son of the housekeeper, hitherto treated as a member of the family, and Mr. Tallis has even paid for this education at Cambridge and is willing to finance his further studies in medicine. But that relationship seems now to carry no weight. He is sentenced while the true perpetrator of the crime is not even suspected, although all the clues are there.
Cecilia pledges her love as her man is led away, but really can there be a happy ending for the two? And can Briony ever really atone for the harm she has caused?
One of the biggest delights of the book for me was the post-modern twist towards the end which has the reading flicking back to re-evaluate the story in the light of new evidence.
I shall give no more than that away, even though I'm dying to. (And no spoilers from you lot either!). It's enough to say that I found the book moving and unputdownable and surprising.
Back in 2001 I remember banging on to whoever would listen about how glad I was that Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang won the Booker that year. Now, while that book still remains a firm favourite, I'm forced to reconsider!
I love to know where novels I love came from. McEwan explains in an interview on the Barnes & Noble website how the novel was born from a single arresting image (arrived at after 15 months of false starts!) that of:
... this girl stepping into the room with a bunch of wildflowers. The room has a certain kind of elegance, there's a young man outside she wants to see -- but doesn't want to see -- and there is a vase that she is looking for on a low table by a french window. And I don't know why, really, and I certainly didn't know why at the time, but I thought, This is a toehold for me. This is the beginning of whatever it is I'm going to write.
He had set out with the vague ambition he says of writing a love story:
I had this thought as to whether it was possible, at the end of the 20th century, for the literary novel to explore the subject of love in quite the way it was automatically a subject in the 19th century. I mean, have we wrapped ourselves in so much irony and self-reference that we can no longer simply tell a love story?
... a young woman's reading of gothic novels causes her to misunderstand everything around her. And I've often thought that I would rather like someone with imagination to cause some sort of havoc.
For me there were echoes of several other novels, though I've no idea whether they influenced this one - most especially L.P. Hartley's The Go-Between (country house, class distinctions, adults sexuality and a child misunderstanding things, a child carrying letters) and E.M. Forster's A Passage to India (a false accusation of rape, a changed testimony).
Those in our book club who have seen the film rate it very highly indeed, and here's the trailer which I also think gives the flavour of the book.
Anyway, it's been an awful long time since I asked you, but what are you reading at the moment and what have you been reading?
Am a chapter or so into David Davidar's The Solitude of Emperors (supposed to be interviewing him tomorrow but only just got the copy).
I'm nearly finished Catherine O'Flynn's What Was Lost, also the Silverfish collection, News From Home. Am also enjoying several other books including Awang Goneng's Growing Up in Terengganu, and Sam Jordison's Annus Horribilis. Intend to post something about them next week.
Am also dipping into a number of non-fiction things including Malcolm Gladwell's Blink and Paul Auster's The Red Notebook. Warehouse sale purchases!
And talking of warehouse sales not only is the Pay Less one on this weekend, but Times is having a sale in Kajang.
I'm off to Singapore in the morning for the Writers' Festival and this blog will be in hiatus until I get back on Sunday night. Have a great weekend, and do slip a note in the comments about your current and recent reads so that you can keep each other entertained in my absence.
(Photo is of a Kansas hoarding by Khayal. Seem to have mislaid the original URL ...)
Haven't asked you for a while what you're reading, and I'd love to know!
My reading has been totally disrupted this week as the house is upside down with builders and decorators doing their thing. Mind you, a bit of colour splashed on the walls does make one extremely happy ...
Am still on Nicola Barker's Darkmans, but it's such a brick of a book that I can't carry it around in my bag and at home, can only read it at the dining table! I am very much enjoying it though and don't mind the length. I'm resigned to it taking me a while, and slipping a different book into my bag for when I go out.
I've also finally read Everything Bad is Good for You Which I found a cheap copy of, thanks to the generosity of Big Bookshop. TV programmes are getting more complex, computer games make you brighter, blogging increases your IQ. There's a lot of good news here for the geek and couch potato!
I inserted a jokey extract from the book some time back about the dangers of reading, but it turns out that Johnson is a staunch defender of the value of print books, even while he explains that in our participation of life online, we are reading perhaps more than ever before ...
I have been moving books around and decided to make a list of all the unread books I have which I really want to read. I gave up when I counted 50 titles. Really I must not buy any more. (But I have already broken that resolution several times this week ...)
I'm off to the wilds of Pahang again for a couple of days, visiting my student-teachers. It's very frustrating this time because the shortlist for the Booker is going to be announced tomorrow and I won't be around to blog it! (Thanks Deepika for offering to update me by SMS!)
Can you believe that there aren't even newspapers to be had in Kuala Tahan? (Or decent chocolate bars.) Shall just have to console myself with a stroll in a nice bit of primeval rainforest (left) and hope the tigers don't eat me.
Meanwhile my feeble attempts to read my way through the Booker longlist have petered out. I began Animal's People and really am enjoying it (do hope it makes the shortlist) ... but I find that I can't read novel after novel and in-between crave the roughage of some well-written non-fiction.
I picked up Alan Weisman's The World Without Us from Kinokuniya on Sunday (hadn't even intended to go to Kino - a friend dragged me after our long-time-no-see-meet-up-tea at the Mandarin Oriental) and I'm finding it totally riveting. Just the read I need.
I leave you this space to have a party and entertain each other while I'm away. Just be nice to each other.
I'm still on my Booker marathon, though I haven't been able get the complete longlist yet. That's probably not such a bad thing as I'm a slow (and thoughtful?) reader, especially now as my reading is done in odd moments between dashing out to schools to see trainees teaching.
In the last week I've finished Peter Ho Davies' The Welsh Girl, and am now about a third of the way through Nikita Lalwani's Gifted. Have much to say about both later on. (Supposed to be reviewing 'em.)
Also picked up a copy of Zaid Ibrahim's In Good Faith the other day in MPH. I don't usually read book written by politicians, but Zaid is a neighbour and a friend. (Should one admit to having friends who are politicians? Should politicians admit to having friends who are monkeyspondanskaraoke singers bloggers?)
Anyway, he seems to be making the right noises about things like freedom of speech. (He's so distressingly sensible, he'd actually make a half-decent blogger, I think.)
So c'mon then, whet my appetite for the books currently in YOUR hot little hands!
Am off today to the deepest wilds of the Pahang for the next three days, not for fun, but for work: I'm visiting trainee teachers in their schools and am looking forward to the change of scene very much. While I'm away, let me leave you this space to talk about the good books you're reading ... though I suspect most of you are deep into your hard-won Harry Potters.
I have books to write about when I get back. Recently read Mukhtar Mai's In the Name of Honour (which took me only a couple of hours!), and a novel from my to-be-read shelf - William Boyd's Brazzaville Beach. I've been dipping into Tunku Halim's collection of spooky stories 44 Cemetery Road in odd moments too and leave it on the dining table so I can have a quick snack on it while I'm waiting for something to cook.
Now I'm trying to decide what to put in my bag for my trip ... hmmm ... lots of books shouting Read Me! Read Me! Impatient devils!
I also leave you with some pictures of bibliochairs which I've been waiting to post for a while. Can't remember where I found the first two or who sent them to me, for which I apologise profusely, but I think they're all pretty clever!
An end to storage problems?
A novel way of using up remaindered books?
And a clever use for old Yellow Pages! (This one was on display at Central Market Annexe recently but I can't find my note of the artist's name.)
A favourite place to read ... at the hairdressersand many of my books have snips of hair between the pages to prove it.This is Felix of Cut Above, by the way, a guy who is eternally patient with my hair.
Have just finished reading Hari Kunzru's new novel My Revolutions for review. It isn't out until end August, so I was very happy to get my mitts on it ahead of time thanks to Abby of Kinokuniya. It is very good indeed but that's all I can tell you for now.
Just started reading Tinling Choong's FireWife since the author will be here end of the month and is kind enough to volunteer to do a reading for us at Seksan's. Forty pages in I'm still not sure what to make of it. What is the centre of it? What holds it together? I like the energy and the humour of the writing, but the language is a little self-conscious ...
Anyway what book's in your hands this week?
Don't miss me too much Wednesday as I will be in Kota Bahru again and then hurrying back to go see Alias Grace with Animah. So where got time for blogging??
