Today's suggestion is from Cereal Box Reader I would enjoy reading a meme about people’s abandoned books. The books that you start but don’t finish say as much about you as the ones you actually read, sometimes because of the books themselves or because of the circumstances that prevent you from finishing. So . . . what books have you abandoned and why?
Glancing through the books I marked as started-but-not-finished on the Unread Books Meme, there seem to be two main reasons why I don't finish some books. One is boredom and the other is because I dislike or can't empathise with the characters. Boredom covers rejected books like Gulliver's Travels or The Time Traveller's Wife or, much to my surprise, Cloud Atlas; dislike will make me put down a book quite quickly, but I don't start so many - I am usually good at picking books.
Recently however I've brought home quite a few books from the library that have been returned unread: this is because I'm always in a hurry at the library and have to pick "possible reads" rather than definite ones. The other is that our library is rather small and the selection limited - as time goes on I find myself having to pick books that I am less and less likely to read. A change of stock is always a huge relief!
I've always considered my reading to be quite eclectic, but now that I stop and think about it, I realise that I choose from a narrower range than it's comfortable to admit. I must remember to try to stretch my boundaries from time to time.
In case you haven't been challenged enough lately, here's another to add to your compulsive need to push yourself to your limit: The Canadian Book Challenge.The rules are simple: read 13 Canadian books (books by Canadians and/or about Canadians) before next Canada Day (That's July 1st for you non-Canadians in the audience). Make sure to blog about each one! I shouldn't take on anything else, really, but this doesn't have to be completed until Canada Day, so it gives me lots of time, even allowing for a 13-book challenge. It's going to be too difficult (well, expensive, I spend too much on Amazon Canada already) to manage a theme, as you can only get the "big" authors here in the UK, so I thought I would start with seven books between now and Christmas that were easy to come by:
Joan Clark, Latitudes of Melt
Mary Lawson, The Other Side of the Bridge
Marian Engel, Sarah Bastard's Notebook
Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake
Janice Kulyk Keefer, The Green Library
Douglas Coupland, The Gum Thief
Alice Munro, The View from Castle Rock
Then I'll move on to things that are more of a challenge to get in the New Year. As Ontario is rather over-represented here, I should be looking for books from the North-West Territories and Nunavut, I guess. Suggestions will be welcomed! Reviews will be posted at Geranium Cat's Bookshelf.
It was a bit of a risk to start reading her books with this one, but it came highly recommended, and Adele Geras managed the unimaginable: she made me interested in the preliminaries to a white wedding. Unlike many small girls, my daydreams did not focus on walking up the aisle in a fluff of white tulle, yearning instead after black velvet and sophistication (I also couldn't envisage myself agreeing to obey anyone, thank you) so it was a surprise to find that I really cared whether Zannah would ever have the opportunity to wear her dream dress. My sympathies were engaged from the outset by an excellent cast of characters including the quirky Charlotte and her lodgers, the appealing Isis (Geras does children well) and some infuriating men. Although 30-something years of marriage meant that it was fairly easy to identify with Joss's feeling that her relationship, if comfortable, was unexciting, the writing has an immediacy which should make it accessible to anyone. Descriptions are rewarding and the tearoom full of pictures of sinking boats will stay with me.
Because I read so much I take it as the sign of a good book if I think about it when I'm not reading, and this was one I was impatient to get back to. There are more books by this author to look forward to, including her work for children: someone who writes about children with such a deft hand will, I'm sure, write well for them, too.
I wondered if A Country Wife by Lucy Pinney would be too redolent of its origins in the pages of The Times for me, but it made quite a satisfying, if fast, read. Her writing romps along in ebullient fashion, once past the first chapter, which sounded much too like a Katie Fforde novel for comfort and made me wonder if I'd made a mistake. Would this true story of a young women who leaves a job in the city to marry a farmer be a catalogue of complaint about the isolation, the unbearable eccentricities of the locals, the mud, the closeknit nature of farming families, the demands of livestock? All are indeed there, but complaint is absent. The author is not smugly heroic in her reaction to these various vicissitudes, and it would be a stony reader who failed to empathise with her pain when they discover that their tenancy of the farm they have struggled to run is illegal, and that both farm and stock must be relinquished. Elements of the novel remain, in the feckless in laws responsible for the fiasco which leaves the young couple homeless, the hauntings, even perhaps the ultimate bathos of the unfaithful husband and broken marriage, but I am too painfully aware that families are like that.
The animals, of course, are endlessly engaging; Samb, the handreared sheep, with whom Lucy is happy to curl up in the sun "in a tangle of arms (and legs, and hooves)", the sow brought in to dig the garden, who stops when she has dug herself a bed, the various (inevitable) dogs, and horses. The children, too, come across as people in their own right. Perhaps the most amorphous picture is of the husband, Charlie, whose abstractions, motives and eventual absence are simply too alien to comprehend. Battling with grief at her abandonment, Lucy must also keep livestock fed and cared for until they can be sold.
The final section of the book deals with Lucy's picking up of the pieces against a background of the last foot-and-mouth epidemic in 2001. As a columnist for The Times she was aware of the already calamitous state of farming in Britain, and she writes sensitively of the agonies that farmers went through with the destruction of their animals and the loss of their livelihoods. I found this part of the book particularly painful, remembering too well the anxiety of that time. Nonetheless, the book ends on an upbeat note (and a small victory for morris dancers!)
It will be interesting to compare this book with my other "farming" read, I Bought a Mountain. That is also - though not overtly - a book about a farmer leaving his wife, though in Firbank's case his wife not only became famous for her prowess as a sheepfarmer, but also for her defence of the local landscape. Even with my re-reading of Firbank incomplete, I can see parallels - particularly in the depiction of the other inhabitants: it's hard not to paint the locals as "characters", even if it's done with understanding and affection. This will be the subject of further posts.
This morning's post brought the new Victoria Clayton book, A Girl's Guide to Kissing Frogs. I can't wait to read it, though I know, of course, that I shall compulsively save it up for a special occasion. (This is A Family Issue: much to the despair of everyone else, I'd happily save the Christmas presents until Boxing Day, or maybe even Easter, to savour the pleasure of anticipation. I don't know anyone else who does this.)
Anyway, back to the book: not only is it by an author I particularly enjoy, but the heroine is a ballet dancer and it's set in Northumberland. What could be more blissful? It will be like reading Ballet Shoes all over again - actually, I could read that too, come to think of it.
In contrast, Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential also arrived. He's such a huge influence on both sons that I decided I had to read it, but it should be amusing too. Saw some of the series adapted from it a while ago. My favourite moments came from the episode in which an entire kitchen brigade attempt (and fail) to despatch a delivery of rabbits. Unfortunately, the satellite box died before we finished watching. At the end of the book I shall probably know far more about nefarious kitchen practices than I really want to, and will never eat in a restaurant again.
Huh! Last night, when OH and I settled down to watch an old Midsomer Murders which he had thoughtfully taped, we had to contend with: neighbour mowing grass (ride-on-type mower), late low-flying jets, someone cutting a field of barley and the usual chorus of collared doves and wood pigeons. This morning it's more jets, more harvesting, more mowing and the farm buildings next door being demolished. The latter is going to continue for months, of course, since when those buildings are down, the rebuilding of the stone barns will start.
Working at home isn't always idyllic.
Early August and I have finally decided to take the plunge and start a blog, mainly for my own purposes. In fact, I rather hope that no one else will ever read it, as I don't expect it to be very interesting to others. At the moment I am waiting to be able to take some holiday, so am trying to save up the best in the "to be read" pile for when I can celebrate having got through the most urgent stuff at work.
In the blog I intend to comment on what I'm reading (novel thought!). Not lit crit, these will be comments on content as well as style, and probably no use at all for someone who wants to know whether they might want to read something.
I'm getting towards the end of A Dance to the Music of Time. It's been a long time since I read it first, and has been a real pleasure to rediscover. I read a criticism of it somewhere (Amazon?) which said that it compared very badly to Brideshead Revisited, and that the characters were cardboard cutouts. This suggests that the reader didn't get beyond the first books - one of the things I like best is that the story unfolds in such a leisurely fashion. In Book 11 I have just read more details of the protagonist's childhood that complete earlier information. In this sense it's reminiscent of The Alexandria Quartet, where you're not even sure what is going on until late in the third book. These were authors who expected a bit of work on the part of their readers.
Myrren's Gift is a library book - I've looked at it in bookshops for some time and decided I'm not sure I'll enjoy it. On the showing of the first few pages, I may be right, but I'll give it a bit longer.
I Bought a Mountain is the first of a number of Firbank's books in my "to be read" pile, and is one of the re-readings (the other being Log Hut). It was published in 1940 and the occasional "unreconstructed" comment jars a little these days (on the contrariness of the Welsh, he says all women are like that). I'm struck already by how restless Firbank was when he was young. There's something of the remittance man mentality about him, though I suppose that once he got to Japan he may have settled down a bit. The extent of restlessness will become more evident in the second book, I think. Anyway, I'm reading with interest.
