Reading Matters

Reading Matters meets ANZ LitLovers

One of the great things about this blogging malarkey is meeting people you wouldn't normally meet without the magic of the internet.

Over the years I've met very many bloggers in person, from both the UK and abroad, and it's always been a rather enjoyable experience. Not only is it lovely to put faces to names, it's great to talk about shared loves, namely books -- and quite often blogging. In many respects it's like meeting friends you just haven't seen in a very long time.

Yesterday Mr Reading Matters and I had the very great honour of spending an afternoon/evening in the company of Lisa from ANZLitLovers and her husband, Tim, both of whom were in London as part of an extended trip to Europe. Over coffee for us, and tea for them, and a bountiful supply of gorgeous cakes (courtesy of Bea's of Bloomsbury), we whiled away several hours while the rain poured down outside. Before we knew it evening had arrived and it was time to decamp to the nearest pub.

Lisa and I had a great time nattering away about books and literature... and books and literature... and... well, you get the picture. And speaking of pictures, we had one taken for the record, which you can view on Lisa's travel blog.

Thanks, Lisa, for a great day -- we must do it again, but next time in Melbourne!

A month of bookish highlights

John Lennon famously said that life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. I couldn't agree more. In the past month, my work life has gone a bit haywire, and for reasons I can't talk about right now, it's had a rather adverse impact on my reading. I just haven't been in the mood to read, but it hasn't stopped me from doing bookish things. Here's a rundown.

Dinner with a McGahern obsessive


Earlier this month Mr Reading Matters and I had dinner with Australian blogger Trevor Cook and his wife Julie, whom we first met a few years back. Trevor had just returned from Dublin to visit his daughter but while in Ireland he made a little side trip to County Leitrim, the home of the late John McGahern.

Regular readers of this blog will know that McGahern is my favourite author, but my knowledge of McGahern's life and loves is nowhere near as thorough as Trevor's. Mid-way through our meal I had to ask Trevor how many times he'd read That They May Face the Rising Sun because I couldn't keep up with all the scenes he kept referencing and all the characters he kept talking about. Turns out he's read it three times!

Trevor's now back in Australia, but he has posted two lots of photographs taken on his McGahern trip, which can be viewed here and here. It has me itching to take a trip myself, but I'll have to read the book again to make sure I'm completely up to speed just in case I bump into the Shah!

 

A week in the Lake District

We spent a week in Cumbria, pottering around the Lake District in our hire car and enjoying the scenery and late summer sunshine, between September 4 and 11.

Of course the Lake District has many literary connections, including Beatrix Potter and the Lake Poets (Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey), but I was more interested in Haweswater (photographed above), which features in Sarah Hall's award-winning novel of the same name (currently sitting unread in my TBR), and Holker Hall and Gardens, which is home to the Cavendish family and has the most amazing library I've ever seen.

Unfortunately photography inside the house was not allowed but this page on the official website gives you a pretty good idea of how lovely and lavish the library is. With the sun streaming through the big windows, overlooking a truly stunning garden, I just wanted to sink down in one of the sofas for a day-long read!

(I should probably also point out that while on holiday, and unable to find the required concentration to read fiction, I taught myself how to do suduko, and I've become slightly addicted to it ever since. I use the games on my BlackBerry, but once my supply of 150 are exhausted I'm going to have to hunt out a book or two. Recommendations welcome in the comment box below.)

 

In conversation with Friedrich Christian Delius

On Friday September 17 I did my first "literary gig" and chaired a conversation between German man of letters, Friedrich Christian Delius, and his translator, Jamie Bulloch, at the Big Green Bookshop in Wood Green, North London.

The event was quite intimate, by which I mean there were only nine people in the audience, and two of those were from the publishing company and one owned the shop! But it was lovely to see three fellow book bloggers -- Simon from Stuck in a Book, Simon Savidge and Polly from Novel Insights -- in the audience.

I was terribly nervous, but once we got underway, I found I really enjoyed the conversation, which covered everything from the setting of Delius' book, Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman, to the challenges faced by the translator. I'm not sure his wife, sitting in the front row, appreciated my questions about the Nuremberg Rally and Albert Speer's architecture though!

I was buzzing afterwards, more from a sense of relief that it had gone okay and I hadn't made a complete fool of myself. It was lovely to chat to everyone, including Meike and Maddy from Peirene Press, and Jamie, the translator. It capped off what had been a rather traumatic week in the office, and I was still on a high about it two days later!!

Many thanks to Meike for asking me to chair the evening -- it was a big risk to take but I'm honoured to think she thought I would be more than capable! It's just a shame that so few people turned up, but as I pointed out, that far north of the river and even I begin to feel faint! It's a long trek to make on a Friday night...

(Meike wrote a lovely piece about it on her blog, and Simon T. had some nice things to say, too.)

 

A visit to Spitalfields market

It was Open House London last weekend, so after Mr Reading Matters and I ventured up to the 17th floor of the Broadgate Tower, we took a stroll around the nearby Spitalfields market. There's a couple of great book stalls there, including one that just specialises in old Penguins, worth a visit if you collect them, and another that had some good deals on recent literary fiction. Sadly, I didn't buy anything, but then I had different priorities on the day: at 11.30am I was sat drinking a glass of white wine while nibbling a selection of cheeses. Decadent? Moi? Never!

 

A drink in the Courthouse hotel

On Thursday evening I caught up with a old colleague for a meal in Soho, followed by a drink in the Courthouse Doubletree Hotel, a grade II listed building which was originally a real magistrate's court. (One of the bar's quirky features is that you can sit in the original holding cells for a drink, a little too claustrophobic for my liking. I should also point out that we saw a mouse run across the floor, and we are pretty sure it was real, and not some fakery to make the experience feel authentic! And no, I wasn't drunk at the time.)

There's a couple of literary connections, but the ones that tickled my fancy include the fact that in 1835 Charles Dickens worked as a reporter in the building for the Morning Chronicle (the bar actually offers a Charles Dickens cocktail made out of two kinds of rum) and, in 1895, Oscar Wilde took the Marquess of Queensbury to court on a criminal libel charge. There's more history on the official website.

So, as you can see, it is entirely possible to be literary-minded even when you are not reading novels! What literary-inspired things have you been up to lately?

Triple Choice Tuesday: Genevieve Tucker

Welcome to Triple Choice Tuesday. This is where I ask some of my favourite bloggers and other bookish bods to share the names of three books that mean a lot to them. The idea is that it might raise the profile of certain books and introduce you to new titles and new bloggers.

Today's guest is Genevieve Tucker, who orginally blogged at Reeling and Writhing but now concentrates mainly on Mulberry Road.

Genevieve has been blogging about books from Australia since the beginning of 2005. She has four children and has trained as a librarian, but spends most of her time keeping her 25-year-old autistic son cheerful and sensible, and trying to get him somewhere to live. When that's sorted, she says she might have more time for reviewing books online.

Without further ado, here's Gevevieve's Triple Choice Tuesday selections:

 

A favourite book: The Girl Green As Elderflower by Randolph Stow

This is a brief but deceptively deep novella, a tapestry of old and new tales, framed by the device of a visitor settling into an ancient place, by recently deceased Western Australian author Randolph Stow.

I'm going to read this novel again right now. Unfortunately, I have heaps of favourite books, though, so that's not exactly a representative choice. I also love The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald. They are possibly the only books with 'flower' in the title that I like, though, apart from botanical folios.

A book that changed my life: Rhyme and Rhythm (Green Book)

This is the poetry book my mother gave me for Christmas when I was twelve and which I still own. It's a remarkably good collection for children of that age. I wonder if my grandmother helped her pick it. I have looked on Abebooks and found that it's part of a series of school texts, published in the UK in the 1960s. There are about three of the Green books still around.

I studied poetry in two languages at university in my twenties and still read plenty of poetry. I think most of the books I read modify my life in some way. So many writers are just people to me, as I get older, rather than bards or sages, telling the stories I won't hear anywhere else unless I'm really listening and watching. Most do that for me, if I am paying close enough attention to the person speaking.

 

A book that deserves a wider audience: The Delinquents by Criena Rohan

Well, I could have chosen all of Randolph Stow and Gerald Murnane's books -- and Carpentaria by Alexis Wright -- but I am plumping firmly for something of broader appeal. The Delinquents, by Criena Rohan, is a novel about the 1950s in Brisbane and Melbourne by an Australian writer who tragically died very young, with her last work lost. It is a perfect little story of young love gone awry, and was made into a film starring Kylie Minogue, who surprisingly did a damn good job with what was left once the scriptwriters had finished with it. There is a magnificent tirade from the main character, Lola, about three-quarters of the way through, that is unforgettable.

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Thanks, Genevieve, for taking part in my Triple Choice Tuesday!

What do you think of Genevieve's choices? Have you read any of these books? I'm keen to read The Girl Green as Elderflower because I've read two of Randolph Stow's novels in the past year and found them incredibly powerful. I read The Delinquents about the time the Kylie Minogue film came out circa 1989, but don't remember that much about it!

Bookish news bites for a Monday

• I don't much see the point of book trailers, but maybe I'm missing a trick? Voting is now open for the 2010 Book Video Awards, a prize designed to find the best video trailer for crime fiction produced by young film makers from the National Film & Television School. You can find out more -- and vote -- via the Foyles website.

• The 13th Graham Greene International Festival gets underway in Berkhamsted, just north of London, later this month (September 30) and Vintage Classics are giving away two tickets for the morning of October 2 and a library of Greene books. (Berkhamsted, by the way, is a really delightful place. It's worth a visit, even if you're not a Greene fan. I highly recommend walking along the picturesque canal and popping into one or two of the pubs on the waterfront.)

• One of the oldest literature festivals in the country, the Lancaster Literature Festival, has an exciting programme of events planned for 10 days next month (October 15-24). Special guests include Scottish crime writer Ian Rankin, British author Anne Fine and Irish short story writer Claire Keegan. Bookings are now available online.

• I'm afraid Jonathan Franzen's new novel, Freedom, is going to be everywhere over the next month or so. But this review by Blake Morrison has me itching to read it.

• Meanwhile DBC Pierre's latest book, Lights Out in Wonderland, has slipped under my radar. That's until I read Sinead Gleeson's interview with the author in today's Irish Times. Anyone read the novel? It sounds intriguing...

'Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman' by Friedrich Christian Delius

Fiction - paperback; Peirene Press; 115 pages; 2010. Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch.

It is rare for me to read a book more than once, so it must be exceptional for me to read it three times. But with Friedrich Christian Delius' novella, Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman -- which won the 2009 Evangelical Book Prize -- that's exactly what I did. And it got better and better with each read.

The story is a simple one. It is January 1943 and a 21-year-old German woman, residing in Rome while her husband is redeployed on active service in North Africa, takes a stroll from her accommodation -- a guest room in an old people's home run by Evangelical nuns -- to a concert at the church on Via Sicilia. She is eight months pregnant with her first child.

During the walk, which takes roughly an hour (a little shorter than the time required to read the novel), she admires the beauty of the Roman streets, thinks about her unborn child, reminisces about her courtship with her husband, Gert, a preacher-turned-solider, and tries not to worry about the future because it is out of her hands and, in her view, up to God's will.

There is little plot or action of which to speak, because the novel works primarily on the basis that you are inside this woman's head and privy to her most intimate thoughts. It's not exactly stream-of-consciousness, but her inner monologue feels incredibly authentic as it leaps about from one subject to the next and keeps coming back to the issues that most concern her -- how much she misses her husband, for instance, and how she cannot bear the stares of Italian men wherever she goes.

But during her walk, there's a real sense that Margherita is trying to come to a crucial understanding of what it means to be German under the Third Reich and how her strong evangelical belief might be blinding her to the harsh realities of war. On more than one occasion she admits that "it was better not to know too much" but she is conscious of the need to pray for victory, although, somewhat tellingly, this is not out of pure national duty, but because it might bring her beloved husband home much sooner.

While she seems alarmingly naive -- she believes that "no bombs would fall on Rome, that was certain, it was obvious, the English would not raze the Eternal city", nor can she understand "why there is not enough bread in wartime, and why it is getting even scarcer" -- there's a real sense that maybe she's keeping her thoughts in check because to do otherwise might prove too confronting to her sense of national identity.

Indeed, national identify is a recurring theme, as Margherita constantly mulls over her foreignness and the foreignness of her surroundings and the people she meets.

Other themes include her thankfulness -- for food, shelter, safety -- and her unwavering faith in God. It's clear she is very religious, but there’s a telling passage, towards the end of the book, where she recalls how her father, a preacher, tried to lead workers, communists and Nazis “away from political ideas and win them for heavenly salvation” . And later still, she comes to realise that the Nazis subverted religious symbols, in particular the eagle of John the Evangelist, for their own propaganda.

For such a “gentle” book there are some very hard-hitting ideas about politics and religion in it.

Of course, I can't conclude my review without mentioning the book's "selling point", which is largely that it comprises one very long 117-page sentence. It's not quite as off-putting as it might sound, because it is written in bite-sized stanzas, with plenty of commas, to guide your eye. In fact, it has an incredible rhythm, with a gentle, lilting, almost musical quality to it, making it a joy to read.

And finally, if you've ever wanted to travel to Rome, this book will have you itching to book your flights. Delius writes so evocatively of its streetscapes and architecture that it feels very much like a love letter to a beautiful city.

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Just a reminder that I'm "in conversation with" Friedrich Christian Delius and his translator Jamie Bulloch at the Big Green Bookshop, London, Wood Green, N22 tomorrow evening -- Friday September 17 at 7pm -- to talk about this book and some of the issues I've hinted at in my review. Feel free to come along for an evening of free entertainment (and hopefully not too many uncomfortable sllences) and a glass of wine. But if you can't make it, and have a question for the author, do leave a comment below and I'll do my best to ask it on your behalf!

Triple Choice Tuesday: Lizzy's Literary Life

Welcome to Triple Choice Tuesday. This is where I ask some of my favourite bloggers and other bookish bods to share the names of three books that mean a lot to them. The idea is that it might raise the profile of certain books and introduce you to new titles and new bloggers.

Today's guest is Lizzy of Lizzy's Literary Life, a brilliant lit blog filled with all kinds of reviews (and plenty of Edinburgh Festival book coverage for those of us who couldn't make the long haul).

Lizzy, however, is keen to point out that she is not a Pre-Raphaelite supermodel. She's not even a Lizzy, but she did have a bedroom plastered with Pre-Raphaelite posters during her teenage years and has always worn her hair long as a result.

Other lifelong habits include bibliophilia and a TBR that grows faster than she can read. As a result she usually has three or four books on the go at once. She maintains an interest in German literature in translation. Having lived in Germany for a decade, she likes to keep the connection.

Lizzy currently lives in Scotland.

 

A favourite book: The Dykemaster by Theodor Storm

I have a soft spot for the novella and that is due primarily to the Nineteenth Century German author Theodor Storm, who wrote 50 of them. They've not all been translated into English, though there's now a good selection available thanks to recent efforts of Denis Jackson. I would love to recommend all four volumes. However, if I must choose only one, then it's The Dykemaster -- Storm's last novella, generally regarded as his masterpiece. Set in Schleswig-Holstein, it tells of the constant battle against the sea and of an outsider's battle against a closed community. Storm was a lyric poet and so the language is at once beautiful and atmospheric. Jackson's translation matches this and yet reads so naturally. You'd think his text was the original.

 

A book that changed my world: To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

I've read Harper Lee's classic six times now, my first reading at the impressionable age of 15 when it was an O-level text. Despite this handicap (!), To Kill A Mockingbird taught me the sheer exuberant joy of great literature and spawned in me the desire to be well-read. Thirty-seven years later I continue to work on that...

A book that deserves a wider audience: The Existential Detective by Alice Thompson

Simply because the 2010 Booker shortlist is everywhere and other books hardly get a look in at the moment, I'm highlighting a recently published novel that is as good as anything I've read from this year's Booker list. Crime noir has its own conventions. Alice Thompson incorporates and subverts most of them in a modern plot involving artificial intelligence, the Russian mafia and child abduction in an Edinburgh suburb. It's clever, controlled and contains more layers than I imagined possible in a slim volume of only 166 pages.

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Thanks, Lizzy, for taking part in my Triple Choice Tuesday!

What do you think of Lizzy's choices? Have you read any of these books? I've never heard of Theodor Storm before, but I was intrigued enough to find (via Google) an entire website devoted to him and his works. Apparently "his best work ranks with that of Thomas Hardy", so that's him added to the wishlist then! As for To Kill a Mockingbird, I, too, read this at school and hold it in fond regard: I keep meaning to read it again to see if it's as brilliant as I remember it to be. The Existential Detective sounds completely fascinating -- and I love the cover art (which is highly reminiscent of Australian artist Jeffrey Smart).

'The Canal' by Lee Rourke

Fiction - paperback; Melville House Publishing; 224 pages; 2010.

I first heard about Lee Rourke's The Canal on John Self's Asylum. John's review indicated that it was a novel about boredom, and having grown up with the edict that "intelligent people never get bored" I was intrigued to see how it was possible to write a story about this subject that wasn't -- how should I say this? -- boring.

Indeed, I'm happy to report that The Canal, easily consumed in a few sittings, is the least boring novel I have read in a long while. I found it so thought-provoking that I committed what I regard as a cardinal sin, as far as books are concerned, and defaced every second or third page by underlining entire passages and scribbling notes in the margins.

Admittedly the narrative style may not be for everyone, because it initially comes across as being rather dull and repetitive, a style I assume Rourke employed deliberately given the subject matter. I was immediately reminded of Magnus Mills' narrative voice and found it comforting rather than frustrating.

The story is a simple one, about a man who gives up his job in order to wallow in boredom of his choosing. He does this by sitting on a brown bench beside a murky canal in North London and watches the world -- mainly cyclists and pedestrians using the towpath, swans and Canada geese on the water, workers in the ugly office building on the opposite bank -- passing by. 

I liked my spot across from the flat-screen monitors and superfluous balconies. I liked being bored -- I liked what it was doing to me. The word "boring" is usually used to denote a lack of meaning -- an acute emptiness. But the weight of boredom at that precise moment was almost overwhelming, it sure as hell wasn't empty of anything; it was tangible -- it had meaning.

Much of the story is written stream-of-consciousness style as the man takes in his surroundings and ponders the meaning of the universe. As you would expect, there is relatively little action (or, indeed plot), but the novel works by creating moments of high tension in stark contrast to the "boring" nature of the narrator's first-person voice. Chief among these is the arrival of two "outsiders": the first, an attractive woman who joins him on the bench, and reluctantly becomes a part of his new "boring" world; and the second, a group of menacing teenagers, who threaten his personal safety, on more than one occasion.

Indeed, it's the arrival of the teenage hoodlums -- the Pack Crew from a neighbouring council estate -- that throws up several intriguing ideas about boredom that Rourke explores over the course of his novel. One, is the link between boredom and violence, and the second is the link between boredom and acting impulsively.

I've always been able to understand impulse. It is something that is instantly recognisable to me. It is something tangible, that I have felt, intrinsically, throughout my life. Even as a young child I understood impulse. I understood that there were no real reasons to my actions, as much as anyone else's. I wouldn't necessarily call myself a violent man, but, on impulse, I have acted violently.

Rourke takes this notion further by drawing comparisons with 21st century terrorism (the 9/11 terror attacks and the 7/7London bombings are recurring themes), by suggesting that terrorism is nothing more than acts of bored violence. "They [the terrorists] have nothing else to do. We are empty."

Rourke makes many other highly astute observations that reveal so much about the ways in which we lead our urbanised, technology-dependent, work-dominated lives. He constantly hones in on the ways in which technology is a threat, not a savior (in one scene the narrator compares the canal dredger to a "monster from the deep, like it was about to come back to life and terrorise us all") and how we waste our lives at work, missing the small things (such as the flight of a swan lifting off from the canal) that gives meaning, and joy, to our existence.

There are recurring metaphors about nature surviving in the face of urban development -- urban foxes on the towpath, the beautiful waterfowl swimming on the ugly canal -- and how there is no escaping the encroachment of traffic, because even in the most desolate of locations the sky above is still filled with helicopters and aeroplanes.

I could go on... but I won't. Needless to say, The Canal might be a book about boredom, but there's little or no risk of evoking that emotional state in the reader. This is a novel pulsing with ideas and theories (and lots of facts about London, if you're that way inclined), and one that's likely to tell you more about the human condition than any textbook possibly could.

A short hiatus

I'm taking a short blogging break, but in the meantime, you might like to check out the following links:

• A five-minute interview with Ian McEwan. (BBC News)

• An interveiw with Mohsin Hamid, author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist. (New Statesman)

• Dan Brown 'most unwanted author', says Oxfam. (Telegraph)

• How much do you know about Ray Bradbury? Take this quiz to find out! (Guardian)

• Australian-born author Geraldine Brooks to receive US peace prize for lifetime achievement. (Dayton Literary Peace Prize website)

See you in a week or so.

Europe's war-time novelists achieving posthumous success

I think this is a serious hint that I need to dig my copy of Suite Française out of my TBR pile:

There is a growing demand for new translations of European fiction and nonfiction from the years leading up to and including World War II. The trend is most prevalent in France and Britain, where rediscovered European novelists from the 1930s and 1940s, such as the French writer of Ukrainian-Jewish origin Irene Némirovsky, the Austrian-Jewish writers Stefan Zweig and Joseph Roth, Hungary's Sándor Márai and Germany's Hans Fallada, have each sold hundreds of thousands of books over the past few years.

Read the full story at the Wall Street Journal.