Skinflint Print

I really should have learnt from my Time Traveler's Wife experience

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:26:52 +0000

The only books that are being turned into films at the moment are either Harry Potter, or schmaltzy shite.

Alice Sebold - The Lovely Bones

I’ve had my copy of The Lovely Bones for over a year, but had been motivated to read it by the film release. I’m always convinced that I’ll somehow absorb the ending by cultural osmosis and have the whole book ruined by listening to some teenager talking about Peter Jackson’s film on the bus one day. I don’t even use buses anymore.

So, I sat down last week and started to read The Lovely Bones, and I was genuinely enjoying it. There was nothing challenging there, and it certainly wasn’t very funny, but I like the idea that the audience knew whodunnit and it’s just a matter of how they are discovered. I always used to wish that Agatha Christie took this tactic when I was going through my early teenage Poirot phase. (He shits all over Miss Marple.) So yeah, The Lovely Bones was lovely enough until about two thirds of the way through, when Ruth The Token Alternative Lesbian started having visions of dead people, then vacating her body so that poor little murdered Susie could have sex with her schooldays boyfriend. Ridiculous. And I normally quite like ridiculous. But this was romantic ridiculous, which I have zero fucking time for. And then, just as it was improving again and the rapist dude was being pushed into a ditch by a flying icicle, Susie’s parents got back together and she made her brother’s garden bloom with dead girl vibes from beyond the grave. What a load of shite. I was waiting for Ruth and Susie’s Dad and sister to track down Mr Harvey The Rapist and bludgeon him to death while the police dude who shagged Susie’s Mum turned a blind eye and was slowly consumed by horrible guilt. Things never turn out the way you want them too.

Alice Sebold - The Lovely Bones
Publication date: 2002
Publisher: Picador
Price then: £7.99
Price now: £2.50
Bought from: Richard Booth’s Bookshop, Hay-on-Wye
From the synopsis: Over the years, her friends and siblings grow up, fall in love, do all the things she never had the chance to do herself. But life is not quite finished with Susie yet…

"Secondhand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of..."

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 16:55:14 +0000

“Secondhand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack.”

- Virginia Woolf (via awritersruminations) (via unwrittenwords) (via booklover) (via reading-is-fun)

Exploding helicopters #10 Mark Hodkinson - The Last Mad Surge...

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:51:52 +0000

Exploding helicopters #10

Mark Hodkinson - The Last Mad Surge Of Youth

This was the damaged copy that I mentioned in my last post about Amazon Marketplace. The little rip is just under my thumb. I know what you’re thinking: THAT little bit of nothing is enough to warrant chucking this book onto the internet scrapheap? Apparently so.

There was, however, something more disappointing to follow. The Last Mad Surge Of Youth is interesting because each teeny tiny chapter (sometimes two or three on each page - do they even count as chapters?) jumped backwards and forwards in time, from 1980s working class England, where a group of schoolmates were forming their first bands and making their first fanzines, to retrospective wanderings from a couple of those band members later in life. One was famous, had a drink problem, and was still desperately trying to bring down the establishment from within, and the other had left the band at an early age, got married and divorced, and worked at a local paper. The pair of them were bitter and twisted old has-beens, they were just bitter and twisted about different stuff. Which is why this book was so disappointing.

Not only were the passages written about the young, anti-Thatcher Killing Stars so much funnier and more insightful, but the vitality of the characters at the beginning made the sections with Barrett getting wankered while he plays his own records all night long, or the bit where Carey has this empty, soulless shag in the back of a car after his wife’s left him, so very very pathetic. It annoys me that the pair of them are such fools, when just 500 words beforehand you’ve been reading about them standing up for their rights as a support band or slagging off employment statistics. Most of the bits I’m about to copy for you are from those early years. It’s a shame it couldn’t all be about then, but I guess the whole point is to communicate the fleeting nature of fame or the natural human need for recognition in life. It really is quite depressing stuff in the end.

“When you get good on an instrument you become a slave to the conventional.”
“Definitely,” agreed Carey. “Proficiency is a disease.”

Ian announced, his voice solemn, that he and Carl had ‘history’. They had met a week earlier at a nightclub where he had subjected Carl to a eulogy on cybernetics, the profundity of Dr Who and a painstaking, paints-peeling-off-a-my-wall dissection of Gary Numan’s lyrics. Ian’s leg had begun to feel warm and, reaching down, he discovered that Carl had pissed on him under the table.

“Let’s have it right, how can a few honkies from Slough or wherever play the blues? What do they know about rattlesnakes and sloshing about in a Mississippi swamp looking for rats to eat? Another thing: mouth organs. I fucking hate them. If you ever hear a mouth organ on one of my tracks you have my full permission to stick it up my arse, sideways.”

“Wasn’t it John Updike who said celebrity is a mask that eventually eats into your face?”
“I didn’t know you read Updike.”
I don’t. I just remember good lines and pretend to have read all these cool authors.”

Mark Hodkinson - The Last Mad Surge Of Youth
Publication date: 2009
Publisher: Pomona
Price then: £7.99
Price now: £5.54
Bought from: Amazon Marketplace

When 'Amazon' isn't a dirty word.

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 14:06:11 +0000

I have spent recent days reflecting upon the myriad of ethical standpoints that one can take when faced with Amazon Marketplace. You can buy second-hand books through them, and it works a bit like an agency for all the book dealers around. You browse on Amazon, you pay Amazon, and then Amazon tell the little old guys in Hay-on-Wye and on Charing Cross Road and, increasingly, in warehouses outside Milton Keynes where to send your paperbacks. Some of these warehouse-type places are actually operated by Amazon themselves, and generally sell old editions or damaged copies. Technically, not second-hand. For these sellers, you are able to use the Amazon order tracking system to see where your books are lingering the UK postal system.

Obviously, it’s a difficult call to make. Even the independent sellers who are selling genuine second-hand will be giving Amazon a commission for listing on Marketplace. And is it going against one’s ethics to buy a ‘new’ copy, albeit not on general sale due to cover damage or watermarks or something? By buying these copies, are we saying to publishers “it’s okay if you don’t treat these FRESHLY MURDERED TREES with respect, since there will always be a few misguided souls ready to purchase them”, or is it a case of giving the runt of the litter a good home, when it would otherwise sit, unloved, in its cold and lonely Milton Keynes warehouse forever more? What if the only place we can find a copy of S by John Updike at a reasonable price is through these dubious channels?

I’ve been testing the system, and in doing so, testing myself. In one transaction I bought a second-hand copies of S by Updike and a Simon Schama American history book, damaged copy of The Last Mad Surge Of Youth by Mark Hodkinson (all through sellers operated by Amazon), and then two collections of second-hand Ali Smith short stories, The Whole Story and other stories and Free Love and other stories, through independent sellers. The Schama and the Hodkinson still haven’t arrived though. Hmmm.

I think I’ll continue using Amazon Marketplace, simply because the range of titles available is unmatched, even by Ebay, but I’m going to try to stick with those independent sellers using it simple as another sales point. They might be little rural bookshops with limited winter trade, and would not be using Amazon were it not financially worthwhile. Perhaps when I phone Amazon to find out where the hell my Schama and Hodkinson books have got to, I’ll find their order tracking system useful, but I get the impression the Amazon-operated sellers are simply clearing their unwanted stock. The whole point in buying second-hand only it to try to prevent excess stock being printed in the first place.

Exploding Helicopters #9 John Updike - In The Beauty Of The...

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 13:04:00 +0000

Exploding Helicopters #9

John Updike - In The Beauty Of The Lilies

Just to be perfectly clear, I would never ordinarily read a book with such a shit title if it wasn’t by John Updike. John Updike is awesome. He writes books that are unlike most of the other writers I’m into. They’re normally about shit marriages, and In The Beauty Of The Lilies is different only in that it’s about several generations of the same family having shit marriages, and actually one of the marriages works rather well in an endearing aaaw, aren’t they such wonderfully simple folk? kind of a way.

It all kicks off with a pastor losing his faith wholly and suddenly in the opening chapter (brilliant brilliant brilliant). Then you meet the docile son Teddy, his daughter Essie, who becomes a movie star, and then her unloved son Clark, who is involved in possibly the most dramatic storyline in any of the Updike books I have read or even been aware of. It’s structured in four main parts, each for that generation’s protagonist, and when each story comes to an end it’s genuinely sad to say goodbye to that character, even if they do reoccur later. None of Updike’s characters are ever 100% likeable, and I find myself wanting to give some people a bloody good talking too, but that’s because he writes real people that you instantly believe in.

This isn’s a normal Exploding Helicopters post because there aren’t millions of take-your-breath-away sentences in the book. But there are take-your-breath-away moments, where you’re genuinely frightened or moved or over the moon. They won’t have the same impact here, without the individual backstories, but these are some of the moments that had me emoting like a bastard.

“My poor Dad wanted to believe and needed to believe and God stayed silent.”
“He’s not silent with me.”
“What does He tell you?”
Her hand had gone to the sensitive bump behind his fly. “To love you with all my heart,” she said. “To serve you, in the faith that you’ll serve me.”

“The M-16’s what they issued us in Vietnam. She’s a sweetie, when she don’t jam. There were a lot of complaints from deceased users about it jamming, so they renamed it from the M-16A1 to the M-16A2 and it worked much better. Here son. You hold her.”

“Clark? G-g-g-” She couldn’t say it, couldn’t get past the ‘g’. This simple word. He hung up while she was still trying. His own mother, and all those FBI eavesdroppers listening to her humiliation. “Goodbye,” she said in her bedroom to herself, looking into one of her mirrors, tilting her head this way and that. “Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, you idiot,” furious with herself.

How fucking sad is that? It kills me.

John Updike - In The Beauty Of The Lilies
Publication date: 1996
Publisher: Penguin
Price then: £6.99
Price now: £2
Bought from: Some place on Charing Cross Road, London. I didn’t write the name down because I am a bad blogger.

From the synopsis: “transcendence, higher reality, immortality, resurrections… a novel of accumulated wisdoms.”

Paul Torday - Salmon Fishing In The Yemen I didn’t think...

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 14:07:04 +0000

Paul Torday - Salmon Fishing In The Yemen

I didn’t think much to this book. The plot’s a bit shit and the characters are all two-dimensional ‘types’ and it’s written as a series of correspondence (i.e. a cop-out for a writer who doesn’t know how to string a proper chapter together), but it’s about salmon and I used to live on a salmon farm. I’m going to lend it to my Dad (he totally used to work for the company that Torday based McSalmon Aqua Farms on) so he can get all indignant about how this isn’t right and that’s not how salmon behave and doesn’t this Torday guy know anything? Should be fun.

Paul Torday - Salmon Fishing In The Yemen
Publication date: 2007
Publisher: Phoenix
Price then: £7.99
Price now: £1.99
Bought from: Oxfam, Macclesfield

From the synopsis:“As he embarks on an extraordinary journey of faith the diffident Dr Jones will discover a sense of belief and a capacity for love that surprise himself and all who know him.”

I haven’t bought any new books in a while, primarily...

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 13:52:00 +0000

I haven’t bought any new books in a while, primarily because when I moved house in the autumn my parents were like “Holy shit, have you actually read any of these?” so I’ve been doing a bit of catching up. Well, actually, I haven’t been doing that much catching up really because I’ve mostly been reading about how cultural policy and marketing the arts via social networking (yawn) but it’s Christmas break now so I’m hooking myself up to some Updike for a few weeks. And buying more books…

Things I have learnt about Leicester’s charity shops in the last week:

Oxfam is stupidly expensive.

Someone donating to The YMCA Shop either really loves of fucking hates Joanna Trollope.

British Heart Foundation need more shelving units.

Unlike Manchester, not every charity shop contains more than five copies of How To Be Good by Nick Hornby. Maybe it’s not that bad after all.

So, despite all my sociological research, I only actually bought a couple of things in the end. I got the Tennessee Williams collection because I quite enjoyed The Glass Menagerie at the Royal Exchange a while ago, I read Streetcar back in March when I was hiding from my auntie’s overwhelming wedding, and I’m one of those annoying over-enthusiastic types who wants a career in the theatre so I should really start reading some fucking plays once in a while, right?

The Augusten Burroughs book, I bought because it’s a “hilarious” tale about recovering from severe alcoholism, and I met someone recently who’s doing just that. Also, because what sort of a fucking name is Augusten Burroughs anyway? I just looked him up on Wikipedia and it’s not even his real name. He fucking chose the name Augusten. The world has gone mad etc etc.

To be fair, Tennessee is a pretty strange first name, but we kinda come to terms with strange names when they’re super-famous strange names. Cormac is weird too, in a frontiersman kinda way.

Tennessee Williams - Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore, The Night Of The Iguana (1982)

Augusten Burroughs - Dry (2005)

On being rich enough to have problems.

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 11:10:51 +0000

There’s no picture today I’m afraid, partly because my computer’s blown up and I’m in the uni library, and partly because I’ve left my mobile at home so can’t even do some kind of last minute attempt. To be fair though, my copy of This Book Will Save Your Life has the Richard and Judy’s Book Club logo in the corner and it’s not even a peel off sticker, it’s right fucking there so I don’t really want to preserve it’s image.

I’m also not going to do my regular Exploding Helicopters feature, because This Book Will Save Your Life doesn’t really lend itself to that. It’s no a “wow, what a fucking amamzing sentence” kind of book. In many ways, it reminded me a lot of Attention. Deficit. Disorder. by Brad Listi. Listi’s book is about a guy who is in search of himself following university, and after some bad news. The character or Richard, in A.M. Homes’s book, is about a guy who’s in search of himself after experiencing crippling pain. The pain is never really explained; you come to assume it was psychological, because Richard is lonely and bored, out of touch with his son and rarely leaving the house.

Now, I really enjoyed this book. It runs like a series of episodes which all feed into Richard’s new life as an emotionally stable and supported good guy. You never know exactly what’s going to happene next and all the characters are likeable, even his career-minded ex-wife. Homes’s writing is easy to read and engaging.

But, the thing is, and this may be heartless and naive and stupid and not without a little jealousy, but Richard is rich. He’s rich enough to not have to work and to buy cars for people and go on retreats and not panic when his house falls into a hole and his insurance doesn’t cover it. YOU CAN AFFORD TO FIX YOUR PROBLEMS WHEN YOU DON’T HAVE TO WORK. Hmmph. It was the same in Brad Listi’s book. His protagonist (Wayne, I think), makes money on the stock market before he has his little adventures, and that’s where Richard’s cash comes from too. Of course, it’s never simple, and I was gunning for Richard’s happiness throughout the book. I just have this barrier that prevents me from completely empathising with a man who has a nutritionist.

A.M. Homes - This Book Will Save Your Life
Publication date: 2007
Publisher: Granta
Price then: £7.99
Price now: £1.50
Bought from: Dude under the flyover on Oxford Road, Manchester

Exploding Helicopters #8Ali Smith - Hotel World Dear Ali...

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 08:24:00 +0000

Exploding Helicopters #8

Ali Smith - Hotel World

Dear Ali Smith,

I love you long time.

Seriously, any time you want. I’ve never really had any homosexual tendencies before but your words totally do it for me. Trains go direct to Cambridge (where you live) from Leicester (where I live) so just say the word and I’ll buy a ticket. If you don’t want me for my body, I’ll even come over to clean your bathroom. I guess it’s the least I can do since this little second-hand books project means that you don’t get a penny from me. I can even put a few quid in an envelope if that’s easier. Do you have PayPal?

Yours always (but don’t tell Cormac McCarthy - wouldn’t want him getting jealous)

Meg.

(and this time I’d throw myself willingly down it wooo-

hooooo and this time I’d count as I went, one elephant two eleph-ahh) if I could feel it again, how I hit it, the basement, from four floors up, from toe to head, dead. Dead leg. Dead arm. Dead hand. Dead eye. Dead I, four floors between me and the world, that’s all it took to take me, that’s the measure of it, the length and death of it, the short goodb—.

Bring me apples, Bring me (something), Bring me hazlenuts, Bring me wheat, Bring me good things, To eat, Kellogg’s Country Store.

The voice still sounded (inside her head all these years later) as if its owner had been brought up on healthy, very good things; it seemed to suggest that eating them every day had made her the successful and socially-upwardly-mobile singer of light classical repertoire that she was, and had got her the morally blameless job of singing on television about these good things precisely for the benefit of others.

a terrible way to lose someone close like we lost her in a department store in the sportswear dept & if we went to the customer service desk we could put a call out fro her over the intercom speakers this is a message for Sara Wilby your family is waiting at customer services could Sara Wilby please come back from the dead ah shit ah

The people who bought prescriptions in Boots the Chemist yesterday are feeling better, worse or the same. Some have colds. Some have infections. Some have nothing wrong with them. Some feel drowsy and ought not to operate machinery today.

See? Isn’t she just amazing?

As you can probably tell, Hotel World is about death; one death in particular but really about all deaths. How it is just normal and life goes on, and that sometimes ‘normal’ really means ‘rubbish’, but that’s how life is.

Totally fucking love you, Ali Smith.

Ali Smith - Hotel World
Publication date 2002
Publisher: Penguin
Price then: £6.99
Price now: £1.50
Purchased from: The dude under the flyover on Oxford Road, Manchester.

From the synopsis: “Brought together - and forced apart - by a bizarre incident involving a dumb waiter, we share their very different experiences of life in the aftermath of death, of pain and sorrow, of hope and love - everything, in fact, that the world dares to throw at us.”

You know what, you should totally read this book if you’ve lost someone recently. It’s one of those books that might help, like Jonathon Livingston Seagull.

Exploding Helicopters #7 Mikhail Bulgakov - Heart Of A...

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 11:29:14 +0000

Exploding Helicopters #7

Mikhail Bulgakov - Heart Of A Dog

This story is pretty inspired stuff really. Dude finds a stray dog and transplants a penis and pituitary gland from some murdered lowlife onto him. Then the dog turns into this semi-feral human who likes a drink and works in a government department to purge the city of cats. Amazing, right?

Except it just didn’t seem to flow especially well. I know better than to criticise the writing style of one of the most respected Russian writers of all time, so I’m guessing it’s either down to the translation or the fact that it was written in 1925 and just feels a bit dated. Either way, the book didn’t live up to its synopsis.

Out of the forty thousand or so Moscow dogs, only an idiot won’t know how to read the word ‘sausage’.

“Eat in the bedroom,” he said in a slightly choked voice, “read in the examination room, dress in the waiting room, operate in the maid’s room, and examine patients in the dining room. It is very possible that Isadora Duncan does just this. Perhaps she dines in her office and dissects rabbits in the bathroom. Perhaps. But I am not Isadora Duncan!”

“Doctor, would you please take him to the circus? But, for God’s sake, take a look at the program first - make sure they have no cats.”

Mikhail Bulgakov - Heart Of A Dog
Publication date: 1982
Publisher: Grove Press
Price then: $5.95
Price now: $8
Purchased from: Green Apple Books, San Francisco

From the synopsis: “His many misadventures, lecherous behaviour, and final denunciation of the doctor himself, drive the exasperated scientist to take most extraordinary measures.”

Exploding Helicopters #6 Cormac McCarthy - Cities Of The...

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:55:00 +0000

Exploding Helicopters #6

Cormac McCarthy - Cities Of The Plain

It has taken me so long to read this book that I can’t actually remember how it started, but that’s no indication of how well I liked it; more that I can’t organise my life at the moment.

I feel a little like a broken record on this site, since every other post makes some reference to how Cormac McCarthy is this great Messiah of misery, but he just fucking rules. No exaggeration. Cities of the Plain is the third book from the Border Trilogy, featuring John Grady Cole and Billy Parham, young cowboys who we met in All The Pretty Horses (Cole) and The Crossing (Parham). They have been through some serious fucking shit already, but seem to have finally got it together working on a ranch for a nice guy (Mac) and doing their cowboy horse whispering shit in the sunshine. Then John Grady falls in love with a dying prostitute and you know instantly that McCarthy is gearing up to flex his bleak muscles.

I was talking about Cormac McCarthy’s writing style to my housemate the other day actually. She loves the free and easy ‘spontaneous prose’ rubbish by Jack Kerouac, and I was explaining why she was very very wrong. McCarthy doesn’t worry about traditional sentence structure or denoting speakers or even punctuation, but his writing is fluid and poetic and feels like molten chocolate rolling around your head, whereas I just want to send Kerouac to night school. There are some proper beautiful bits in Cities of the Plain.

Someone at the far side of the arena touched the brim of his hat and the spotter raised one hand and turned and the auctioneer said now six no six I have six who’ll give me seven seven seven.

Anyways the dogs wont hunt on Sunday either. They’re Christian dogs.

Mr Parham, he said. Every male in my family for three generations has been killed in defense of this republic. Grandfathers, fathers, uncles, brothers. Eleven men in all. Any beliefs they may have had now reside in me. Any hopes. This is a sobering thought to me. You understand? I pray to these men. Their blood ran in the streets and gutters and in the arroyos and amongst the desert stones. They are my Mexico and I pray to them and I answer to them and to them alone. I do not answer elsewhere. I do not answer to pimps.

If that’s not enough to make you read it, there is an incredible knife fight near the end. Serious can’t-read-fast-enough excitement.

Cormac McCarthy - Cities of the Plain
Publication date: 1998
Publisher: Picador
Price then: not stated
Price now: £2.99
Purchased from: Ebay

From the synopsis: “Bound by nature to horses and cattle and range, these two discover that ranchlife domesticity is compromised, for them and the men they work with, by a geometry of loss afflicting old and young alike, those who have survived it and anyone about to try.”

Exploding Helicopters #5

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 21:48:00 +0100

Charles Bukowski - Hollywood

It took me a long time to get into this book because real life has been doing a rather good job of getting in the way. I’m a student again now, so people expect me to read shit containing actual information these days. Bastards.

It was convenient to be reading Hollywood during this transitional time to be honest, because it’s about a guy who’s been paid to write a screenplay and is watching the machinations of the film industry as it goes from that screenplay to the film premiere and beyond. Even if you could give it your full attention for a day or two, you’d still lose count of the number of times the film is cancelled and then refinanced by some shady Mafia deal or another.

And I don’t know if it’s brilliant or just distracting, but Bukowski doesn’t try very hard to hide the real identities of his characters. We have Tom Jones, Werner Herzog, Jean-Luc Goddard, Sean Penn and Madonna, and loads more, all with names only a few consonants away from their own. I liked being able to spot them, but I think I enjoyed the book more when I stopped bothering and just read it.

“It’s about a writer who couldn’t write but got famous because he looked like a rodeo rider.” “Who?” “Mack Derouac.”

“VISITORS? VISITORS? I NEED VISITORS LIKE A DOG NEEDS FLEAS! GO OUT THERE AND STUFF FROGS IN THEIR MOUTHS! PISS ON THEM! BURN THEM!”

“Listen, do you drink when you write?” “Yes, quite a bit.” “That’s part of your inspiration. I’ll make that tax deductible.”

He was silent a good two minutes. Jon lit a cigarette and waited. Then Friedman spoke, still looking up at the ceiling. “This could be an art film, couldn’t it?”

Charles Bukwoski - Hollywood
Publication date: 1989
Publisher: Black Sparrow Press
Price then: unknown
Price now: $11
Purchased from: Green Apples Books, San Fransisco

From the inside cover: “This is a work of fiction and any resemblance between the characters and persons living or dead is purely coincidental, etc.”

Hoipolloi theatre company set a rather fine example to us all.

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 21:51:01 +0100

Hoipolloi theatre company set a rather fine example to us all.:

Click on the link to read about a theatre company renovating their workspace and liberating some paperbacks found in a skip in the process. If you’re quick enough, you can help give them good homes.

Nostalgia = Alzheimer's Prevention #1

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 21:40:28 +0100

While I know there are some unscrupulous and dishonest show-offs in the world, I do try to avoid becoming one of them. Hence, I don’t buy books ‘for show’. I read them and share them and yes, I keep the ones that I love because I’m sure I’ll want to read them again sometime.

However, I have a confession to make. Earlier this week I bought a book that I doubt I will ever read. May I take this opportunity ot address the jury and assure them that this is a one-off, and I sort-of kind-of already have read it, and it was in self defense Your Honour.

This collection of plays was written by Steven Berkoff, but adapted from Franz Kafka’s classics. My final A-level Theatre Studies performance, way back in the depths of time (ie: 2002), used his version of In The Penal Colony and, if I say so myself, it was fucking awesome.

So, I’m going to file this baby away on my shelves and when I’m having a dinner party in five years time, surrounded by successful people, I’ll tell them all about how my A-Level Theatre Studies group were the best thing to come out of Cheshire since crumbly cheeese. Then I’ll run upstairs (in this fantasy I’m super-fit and healthy - and rich) and read aloud some passages while my ‘help’ prepares the crème brûlée.

Berkoff/Kafka - The Trial - Metamorphosis - In The Penal Colony
Publication date: 1988
Publisher: Amber Lane Press
Price then: £4.95
Price now: £2
Purchased from: Tin Drum Books, Leicester

From the introduction to In The Penal Colony: “A machine so fiendish and diabolical that its blueprints could have been designed in Hell.”

There is no doubt that the cheapest way to enjoy books is to...

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 15:08:00 +0100

There is no doubt that the cheapest way to enjoy books is to swap them between friends, passing on recommendations as you go. For years my Mum had a shelf in her office at work that was used by the whole team as a mini-library. After various department reshuffles however, the shelf has been retired and she now sends her books my way once she’s done.

Sometimes this is awesome, like when she recommended White Teeth by Zadie Smith, or Then We Came To The End by Joshua Ferris. Mostly though, it involves “a touching love story” or a “forbidden love” or a “tale of sorrow and epic loss” and other such schmaltzy nonsense that features a women on the cover, running her fingers through sand and looking a bit gutted about something. I’m always prepared to be proven wrong in my rash and biased judgments though, so this week I’ve read The Divide by Nicholas Evans. The woman on the cover of this book looked so upset that she’s hidden most of her face with her massive hand. She also looks kinda green. Perhaps that was what she was so sad about.

I chose The Divide out of all the books in the From Mum pile because the synopsis mentioned a ranch out West and I’d just finished The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy, so felt like I was in the horsey zone or something. I had a head for dusty landscapes and Stetsons.

But, somewhat inevitably, The Divide was less about coyotes and much much much more about how residual anger from a divorce can “tear a family apart”. Excuse me while I attempt to stifle my yawns. When the story did eventually become less predictable, with a fugitive daughter contacting her estranged parents for an emergency cash injection, the prose itself replaced all the banality previously provided by plot. “Give me back my daughter, you bastard!” It makes me cringe just typing it here.

So I guess what I’m saying is, recommendations from friends and family can often be the best way to find new authors, but never trust a book which has a woman looking a bit upset on its cover.

Nicholas Evans - The Divide
Publication date: 2006
Publisher: TimeWarner Books
Price then: £6.99
Price now: Free from Mum

From the synopsis: “In a journey of discovery and redemption that takes us from the streets of New York to the daunting grandeur of the West, The Divide tells the story of a family fractured by betrayal.”

I hath returned! You can all throw off your mourning clothes...

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:31:45 +0100

I hath returned! You can all throw off your mourning clothes and dance once again.

I have tales to tell of foreign climes, of desert skies and city nights and trying to take a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge in fog. And of Green Apples Bookshop, on Clement and 6th Street in the Richmond neighbourhood of San Francisco, where I thought I was going to have to buy another suitcase to accommodate my purchases.

Going to bookshops when on holiday is often disappointing. Go one way and they’re all in foreign languages; go the other and the self-help section is the whole shop. My guidebook told me that Green Apples was going to be different though, and a brief web search confirmed that it had not been closed down my bibliophobe zealots in the years since my guide’s publication. I got the number 2 bus from Downtown over to Richmond on one my my last days in the States (thus protecting myself from book-assisted starvation) and it was super-easy to find on the intersection, what with bright green canopies and outdoor shelving. The fiction and music departments are even separated into an entirely different building, three doors away, so that us story-fans are spared the self-help basketcases.

Since most of my favourite writers are Americans working in the 20th century, I spent about two hours there in total, browsing every shelf in the place and bringing a continuous stream of novels back to the counter. My budget restrictions meant that my choices were whittled down again before paying (So long Pulp by Bukowski! Farewell Kafka’s Amerika! Adios Life After God by Douglas Coupland!) but it was still worth bringing that extra canvas bag…

John Updike - Bech Is Back (1982)
John Updike - Bech At Bay (1999)

I suspect it’s going to be some time before I come across any literature as well written as Updike’s Rabbit books, but until I do, I’ll stick with him.

Truman Capote - Music For Cameleons (1980)
Truman Capote - Other Voices, Other Rooms (original publication date was 1948 but no date on this edition)

This is where I get a bit shallow, because although I adored In Cold Blood and read the whole thing in one day, I thought Breakfast At Tiffany’s wasn’t so hot, and I’ve honestly chosen these books simply because the edges of their pages are dyed yellow and orange. I do kinda want to come to some kind of firm opinion about Capote too of course. Hopefully these will be more like In Cold Blood than Breakfast At Tiffany’s.

Mikhail Bulgakov - Heart Of A Dog (1982)

This book has one of the most amazing synopses I’ve ever read. A stray dog has his testicles replaced with those of a petty criminal who died in a bar fight, and then he gets a job in a city department, employed to rid the place of cats. This is what reading is all about.

Richard Farina - Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me (1969)

It looks like someone’s tried to set fire to this book, and the final pages have only just escaped unscathed. It’s about “an amoral collegiate hipster” so I felt a connection between us instantly.

James Dickey - Deliverance (1971)

This has got a gorgeous cover with a big blue eye staring out from the undergrowth. I’ve never seen the film, but I do quite like banjo so I’m sure it’ll be a serene little exploration of the South…

Cormac McCarthy - The Orchard Keeper (1993)

McCarthy is fast becoming my favourite ever writer, so I couldn’t leave this on the shelf.

Vladimir Nabokov - Invitation To A Beheading (1989)

I’ve often thought this guy sounded pretty cool, and my ears prick up at anything likened to Kafka. This appears to be a absurdist in much the same way that The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien was, if a little darker. But maybe I’m just thinking that because the cover isn’t bright pink like The Third Policeman.

Douglas Coupland - Miss Wyoming (2001)

I think I might be approaching Coupland Saturation Point, whereby one more book about cynical and disaffected young ‘slackers’ would just tip me over the edge, but then every time I read his stuff it flows so easily and I can appreciate it on several levels. This is most likely due to the fact that I’m a cynical and disaffected young slacker.

William S Burroughs - Naked Lunch (1992)

I’m dubious about this to be honest, because I don’t generally enjoy books that are just the publication of drug experiences, but this has been recommended too many times to ignore.

Charles Bukowski - Hollywood (1993)
I’m excited about this one because whenever I open a random page I find myself sucked in to men shouting “HUNGER STRIKE!” or “I AM COMING TO KILL YOU TONIGHT!” or “I had to piss, asked directions to the crapper”, more of which I would like to see in literature, if any novelists are listening.

Uncorrected Bound Proof (of awesomeness)

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 16:12:49 +0100

Generally speaking, when I discover a new favourite author, I go on a massive binge of their stuff and don’t read anything else for ages. This was the case when I first fell in love with Kurt Vonnegut, but with Ali Smith I’ve been desperately trying to ignore my cravings and ration her books, because there are only a handful of them. She’s done plenty of short story collections to ease the withdrawal rattle, but I am a novel reader through and through. So, since devouring Girl Meets Boy I have read (count them) four whole books before jumping on her debut novel, Like, like a smackhead who’s spilled her methadone.

Like has given me further proof that Ali Smith and I are psychologically linked. We were both born in Inverness. We both now live in England. She writes especially well from the perspective of a child and I have the mentality of a child. And now, in Like, she says that Virginia Woolf is rubbish and Carson McCullers is ace. When I read those bits I was like “I think Virginia Woolf is rubbish too!” and “Carson McCullers is ace!” When I move to Leicester I’m going to go to Cambridge for the day and look for her so I can tell her all about our psychological link. As if she’d need it explaining… I should probably also slip her a fiver because she hasn’t actually benefitted financially from me buying her books at all. But my auntie did once buy me a brand new copy of Other Stories And Other Stories so I guess that’s okay.

Anyhow, I wanted to tell you about buying ‘uncorrected bound proofs’ today. Because the copy of Like that I’ve got is not actually the finally published version, meaning that there are a handful of spelling mistakes and the printing isn’t of great quality. Publishers send out preliminary copies like this to be proof-read before publication, and they often find their way into the second hand market. Before reading Like, I’d also read an uncorrected proof of Exit A by the dude who wrote Jarhead. Sometimes they’re more expensive that ordinary copies, but if you’re a big fan of a particular author, it’s nice to have something especially limited. This is the reason why footballers drive Aston Martins.

Ali Smith - Like
Publication date: 1997
Publisher: Virago
Price then: unpriced
Price now: £14
Purchased from: Oxfam

From the synopsis: “A seductive and exhilarating story of what it means to be alive at the edge of the twentieth century: here is a story of what it’s like.”

D'you reckon it's pronounced Niff-en-EGG-er or Niff-eng-er?

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 22:40:49 +0100

There are only so many times you can ignore a book recommendation, especially when something you had dismissed as a schmaltzy romance is recommended by a dude who writes stories about zombies. So, adding Adam Marek to the list of people who had recommended The Time Traveler’s Wife finally tipped me over the edge. Plus, with a film version currently in cinemas, there was limited time left before somebody unwittingly spoilt it for me.

Audrey Niffenegger - The Time Traveler’s Wife
Publication date: 2005
Publisher: Vintage
Price then: £6.99
Price now: a copy of No Logo by Naomi Klein
Purchased from: swapped via Read It Swap It

From the synopsis: “The extraordinary love story of Clare and Henry, who met when Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-two and Henry thirty.”

Judging by the time I have spent with my head in its pages in recent days, I should have adored The Time Traveler’s Wife and, in many respects, I did. I cared about the characters’ fates from the very start, their situation was somehow believable despite clearly being utter nonsense, and the novel was structured so that I just had to keep reading. Niffenegger is a gifted storyteller, without her prose being distracting in any way. With some of my favourite authors, I find myself looking away from their books after a particularly astute phrase or paragraph and forgetting about the story while I think about how amazing they are. With this book, it was all about Henry and Clare and their story which, ultimately, is a schmaltzy romance.

No matter how smoothly the story rattled forward, and how much I cared about the outcome, once I’d finished it I couldn’t help thinking that it all seemed just a little bit contrived. SPOILER ALERT. When Henry dies, it’s in the arms of his wife as their friends and family countdown to the New Year, rather than one day when he was doing the dishes. When he meets his daughter in the future one time, her teacher allows her to leave her school excursion to spend time with him, even though he’s been dead for five years and could well be a child rapist. For every person who won’t believe in time travel until they see conclusive proof, there are two others who just kinda go “oh right, I get it.” And the bit at the end where Clare is 82 and is embraced by her long-dead husband? I’m sorry, but Niffenegger totally put that shit in to add value to the film rights.

That said, I haven’t really been able to put it down.

Exploding Helicopters #4 Cormac McCarthy - All The Pretty...

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 16:21:00 +0100

Exploding Helicopters #4

Cormac McCarthy - All The Pretty Horses
Publication date: 1994
Publisher: Picador
Prince then: £5.99
Price now: £2.43
Purchased from: Ebay

From the synopsis: “The ride is exhilarating, the journey fetching, haunting and draining, like any great step worth taking.”

I’d first heard of Cormac McCarthy when the Coen brothers adapted No Country For Old Men a couple of years ago, but the first of his books that I read was The Road. I think they’re currently making a film of that too, with Viggo Mortensen and Charlize Theron, although I can’t imagine how they’ll manage to sell a film featuring a baby roasting on a spit that isn’t some kind of sick gore-porn thing. I don’t believe any film will capture the unrelenting and ever-mounting tension from the book, especially when you consider the fact that nothing much happens. It is purely McCarthy’s incredible prose that makes it what it is.

But I’m here to talk about All The Pretty Horses, not The Road. I’ve been struggling to remember if I’ve ever actually read a western before this, and I certainly can’t think of one, but then this isn’t exactly your standard Clint Eastwood-at-the-saloon kind of affair. It the story of two teenage boys who take off from their ranch homes in Texas and travel into Mexico, getting into trouble and falling in love and staring death in the face in bandit-run jails.

McCarthy has a way of writing that brings vast country to life, including its problems and threats. He links long sentences together with loads of conjunctions and builds sweeping imagery really well. And the way he talks about shocking violence as if it’s just another thing to survive, like a summer lightning storm or a long day’s ride, is almost frightening in its intensity. It takes a lot for my to overlook his lack of apostrophes, but he’s just brilliant enough that it doesn’t matter to me. Or, I should say, it dont matter none.

“His father took out his cigarettes and lit one and put the pack on the table and put his Third Infantry Zippo lighter on top of it and leaned back and smoked and looked at him.”

“There was a show was supposed to come through Uvalde, town of Uvalde, and I’d saved up to go see it but they never showed up because the man that run the show got thowed in jail in Tyler Texas for havin a dirty show. Had this striptease that was part of the deal. I got down there and it said on the poster they was going to be in Ardmore Oklahoma in two weeks and that’s how come me to be in Ardmore Oklahoma.”

“You like chicken and dumplins Mr Cole?
Yessir I do. I been partial to em all my life.
Well you’re fixin to get more partial cause my wife makes the best you ever ate.”

“The hacendado was less sure. But there were two things they agreed upon wholly and that were never spoken and that was that God had put horses on earth to work cattle and that other than cattle there was no wealth proper to a man.”

The Unbearable Lightness Of House Clearances

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 14:16:00 +0100

There are, obviously, downsides to putting your grandparents in a care home, but let it never be said that I pass up an opportunity for some freeloading.

Helping Mum clear out their house recently turned up a few little niceties. Neither of my grandparents were big readers, but Grandpa did have his specialist subjects. For instance, if I harboured a great interest in sailing (*ba-dum-tish*) or wanted to read up on the life and times of a golf commentator, I would have been spoilt for choice. Sadly, I am neither rich nor bigoted enough to take part in these sports, and must make do with nonsense poetry instead. Such is life.

Sophia Morrison - Manx Fairy Tales (1991)

This book is a little irritating because the writing on the spine is upside-down. If you’re browsing in a bookshop and you come across one of these contrary bastards, you have to flick your head from one side to the other and then back again, like you’re rehearsing for a part in a shampoo advert. There are some lovely little pictures featuring Celtic knot patterns before each story though, so the hair swishing is all worthwhile.

The Book Of Nonsense (edited by Paul Jennings) (1977)

I love nonsense poetry. One of my favourite books of all time is The Courtship Of The Yonghy Bonghy Bo by Edward Lear. My Dad used to read it to me when I was little and we used to laugh about how the pictures of the Yonghy Bonghy Bo looked like him. And he used to explain which words were real and which ones Edward Lear had just made up. It’s such a sad poem, especially the picture from the cover where he escapes on the back of a turtle having been knocked back by his love. She stays and wishes forevermore that she made a different decision. “Still she weeps, and daily moans, on that little heap of stones…” Sob!

Somerset Maughan - Collected Short Stories 2 (1972)

This is more of a gamble considering I haven’t yet read the last Maugham book I bought, but if nothing else its pages are all soft and orangey. Mmmm…