PETRONA

Reading from 2007

Several people whose blogs I read regularly have posted lists of the books they have read during 2007, including links to their reviews or thoughts about these books. So if you are short of ideas for what to read, there is nowhere better to start than these thoughtful, individual guides -- untainted by marketing hype or publishing fashion, but what these readers sought out according to their tastes and (in the main) enjoyed:

Reading Matters: 65 books read during 2007 on a wide range of subjects, with links to reviews.

Stephen Lang: books read in 2007, including 49 novels, 9 short stories and one work of non-fiction (yes, it's Richard Dawkins!).

Magnificent Octopus on some bests and worsts of 2007.

John Self's Asylum: not one composite post, but just go there and keep scrolling down -- every post is a jewel of a review.

And at the Book Depository blog, Mark Thwaite rounds up various "book of the year" posts and articles from the blogosphere and the media, including dovegreyreader (fiction and non-fiction) and the Guardian readers' choices.

Buy, give and read a book this Jan

Via the deblog, it seems that January is the "semi parodic" (in the words of its creator, Foma) NaJuReMoNoNo month. The "semi parody" is of national novel writing month (November), or NaNoWriMo as it is acronymically known. Foma designates January as "national just read more novels month". Luckily the challenge is not too arduous, as one has to read only one novel during the month of January to qualify. Even so, I think January is the wrong month to choose for various reasons:

• December is the month when people have time off work in order to read novels (I've read 5 in the past 5 days, for example, compared with only 1 in the whole week before the Christmas break).
• Everyone has made resolutions in January so they are busy fulfilling all those "work harder, study harder, get more exercise" promises that by February will have fallen away.
• Nobody has any money in January to buy books because they've spent it all on Christmas presents or in the sales.

Whether or not you want to join in the January reading challenge, Debra (deblog suprema) reminds us that the quarterly "buy a friend a book week" (BAFABW) is next up FIRST OF JANUARY. The synergies are obvious.... but please stick to buying, giving and reading a book rather than getting into any NaJuReBAFABMoNoWMo-style monikers.

Slimmed-down literature

In an essay in the Philadelphia Inquirer magazine, Frank Wilson reviews the the first six Phoenix Compact Editions of the classics- Melville's Moby-Dick, Dickens' David Copperfield, Thackeray's Vanity Fair, Tolstoy's Anna, George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss, and Mrs. Gaskell's Wives and Daughters. Does the reduction of Anna Karenina's 800 pages to 384 sound appealing? Frank writes:

"There is nothing inherently wrong with what Somerset Maugham called "the useful art of skipping." Maugham himself in fact helped produce a series of abridged classics in 1948 called "Great Novelists and Their Novels."
But it's one thing for me to skip. I know what I've passed over and can go back and read it if and when I choose. It's another thing altogether for someone else - even a Somerset Maugham - to do my skipping for me. The only abridged book I can remember reading was the edition of War and Peace that I read as a teenager. It left out the historico-philosophical essays that Tolstoy interrupts the action with. (To tell the truth, when I finally got around to reading the whole thing last year, I found myself feeling retroactively grateful.)
No, the real problem with the Phoenix series is its premise - that you can take away just about everything from a great novel as long as you leave the "narrative line" intact."

Or, to reduce it to a compact form, as does Frank: "you'll never know what you missed".

Sunday Salon: Breakheart Hill

Breakheart Hill is the third novel I’ve read by Thomas H. Cook. The books all follow the same pattern: small-town America, narrator a father with wife and single child, some horrible event in the past, air of menace, twist in the tail.
In Breakheart Hill, a tragedy occurred in the summer of 1962 in the small southern town of Choctaw, Alabama, while the narrator, Ben Wade, and his friends were teenagers nearing the end of their high-school days. Kelli Troy is a new girl: a “Yankee” from Baltimore, who has no father and with whom Ben immediately falls in love – a silent love which he daren’t confess in case he’s rejected.
It gradually emerges that Kelli is a talented writer; she and Ben get to know each other well as a result of their work on the student newspaper. As she gains social confidence, Kelli is not afraid to question facts that her schoolfriends and the townspeople take for granted, such as why Black people are not allowed to enrol in school, and why there is a separate part of the cemetery for them. She hears of an annual race that was run every year on the nearby Breakheart Hill but which was stopped some years back. She begins to dig into the history of the event, finding out a horrible story of racism and evil. Despite their growing closeness as embryonic activists, Ben still can’t bring himself to declare his feelings for Kelli. As the school play is cast, and a nearby mall is picketed by Black workers, events come to a dramatic climax.
This story in itself is very well told, dodging back and forth in time, with some nicely observed vignettes of the teenage and adult versions of several characters. I particularly liked the somewhat creepy aspect that the adult Ben, who has become the town doctor,  knows what befalls all the characters and confides their fates to the reader when describing their pasts – one has a sense of the sword of Damocles hanging over the characters. A theme familiar to Cook’s other novels is also in evidence here: the nasty parent, in the shape of Ben's apparently solid father, who owns the local store – on this occasion the nastiness is sufficiently in the normal range to be hidden from all but Ben himself. But how has it affected the motherless boy?
Overall, the sense of dread is far too overdone for my taste. Rarely does a page go by in which the reader is not reminded of the awful event that is to happen to Kelli, and there are just too many heavy hints that Ben is involved. If these aspects had been reduced to about half their number, the book would have been a perfect little thriller. There are a few nasty surprises at the end that shock effectively and leave an unpleasant taste in the mouth, but a less portentousness would have greatly improved the impact of this otherwise well-plotted page-turner.

Reading John Malkovich

From an interview with John Malkovich, 54, in today's (29 December) Times magazine (not online):

"The community in which I grew up was not the most obviously cultivated or stimulating, but what my father and mother instilled in me was the belief that people are interesting no matter where you find yourself, and in Benton, Illinois, no less so than anywhere else. My parents shared a great curiosity about the world around them and were avid readers. That love of books is something else that was passed on to me and, in childhood, I spent much of my time in the local library, learning about places and things that lay beyond our city limits. A degree of intellectual restlessness established in me by them all those years ago continues to motivate me to this day."

The Times points to a website with "details of John Malkovich's online script project as well as other content reflecting Malkovich's life and interests."

Holiday quiz for the idle

Here are some questions of interest (to me, at least) that have been asked and answered in the blogosphere this holiday season. The answers may not be right, but they will save you the bother of dreaming up your own, and may generate a smile, or disagreement, or both.

Who will win next year's Oscar for best actress and actor? (See Guardian blog for an answer (actress) and the Guardian again for actor.)

What do I do when friends ask me to read their manuscripts, and I hate what they've written? (See Dr Sue at Buzz, Balls and Hype for an answer.)

What does Nature consider to be the greatest hits of science it has published? (See Nobel Intent for answer, or go direct to Nature's "history of the journal" website.)

Why does nobody comment at Google news? (John Battelle's Searchblog has the answer.)

What is the most inane book jacket design? (Light Reading has an answer that will be hard to beat.)

What are the ten worst jobs ever? (Female Science Professor lists hers here -- and what's more, she's done them all.)

Who was crime fiction's greatest polymath? (Answer to include: author, critic, anthologist, social historian, journalist, poet and biographer.) Check out Martin Edwards, who has the answer at his blog "Do you write under your own name?".

Have a lovely time reading the answers! I did. The blogosphere is such a sociable place.

Best worst movie lines

Guardian Unlimited: Arts blog - film: The best worst lines in film.

As it says on the label (above), what are your favourite worst lines in films? Ronald Bergan in the Guardian post at the link highlights a couple of beauties (but as usual with Guardian blog pieces, there isn't much more to it as the author of the piece can't remember the lines, as opposed to scenes, that he found funny in recent films):

• El Greco (bravely played by a British actor called Nick Ashdon) says to a priest that he expected the Inquisition to come for him, the priest replies, "They will, but there's backlog at the moment".
• Merle Oberon as George Sand in the Chopin biopic A Song To Remember tells the composer, "Discontinue that so-called Polonaise jumble you've been playing for days."
• In I Wake Up Screaming, Victor Mature, dining Betty Grable in a smart restaurant, impresses her with his sophistication by saying to the waiter, "We'll have the wine with the meal and coffee afterwards."

Do you have any favourites? "And did you enjoy the play, Mrs Lincoln?" is an apocryphal example that comes to mind, but whether it actually was in a movie I don't know.

What's right for booksellers

Martyn Daniels, author of the UK Bookseller Association's report Brave New World, posts here: Brave New World: Reviewing Our Predictions For 2007. What did the report get right and what wrong? Check out the link. Among the "right":

• The start of real POD services based not on short print runs but distributed printing at affordable prices. POD still moving at pace and people now looking to distribute to print rather than print and distribute. Foyles looked at the Espresso machine. Right
• Increased importance of Internet sales, emarketing and community engagement and participation. The Internet is clearly here and becoming pervasive in all markets. For the bookstores it is now a must do. Right

Yes, two definite "rights", I'd agree. Next for Martyn and co is to make their predictions for 2008. I'm watching.

The Life of the Blog

Via Books, Inq, here is an article, Timeline: The Life of the Blog, over at National Public Radio. It's an interesting archive of key points in the evolution of blogging -- skewed, not surprisingly in view of the fact that the timeline is on a news site, to the impact of blogging on politics and current affairs. I thought it petered out at the end, though. The list captures Twitter as a recent innovation, as well as podcasting, photostreams and video (vlogs), but fails to mention the late-2007 trend of the integration of blogs with social networking sites, whether big players such as Facebook or MySpace, or niche networks such as Nature Network or Crimespace, which support blogs. If I were starting out blogging now, rather than two and a half years ago, I would do so within a social network rather than as a standalone blog (I think! I'm never entirely sure I have captured all the pros and cons of these things.) One thing I can be sure about, though -- in another couple of months' time, there will be another blog trend spreading like wildfire across the Internet.

Quick post for Christmas hols

Via Amazon, here's a meta-list of their "best of" books in various categories for 2007. As they say, "happy shopping".

++ Sepulchre
++ Best Fiction Reads 2007
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/feature.html/ref=pe_10/?docId=1000119853

++ The QI Annual 2008
++ Best Humour Books 2007
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/feature.html/ref=pe_20/?docId=1000119863

++ On The Edge
++ Best Biographies 2007
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/feature.html/ref=pe_30/?docId=1000119553

++ Top 100
++ Customer Favourites 2007
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/feature.html/ref=pe_40/?docId=1000119963

++ The Blair Years
++ Best Political Books 2007
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/feature.html/ref=pe_50/?docId=1000120103

++ His Dark Materials Boxed set
++ Best Children's Reads 2007
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/feature.html/ref=pe_60/?docId=1000119623

++ Lewis Hamilton
++ Best Sports Books 2007
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/feature.html/ref=pe_70/?docId=1000119683

++ Best Books of 2007
++ Great Reads
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/browse.html/ref=pe_80/?node=10369441

Track Santa with Google

Via the official Google blog: Track Santa with Google.

"On Monday, December 24th, starting at 1 am PST, visit noradsanta.org to track Santa with NORAD on his annual trip. NORAD will use Google Maps to track several hundred of Santa's stops in over 200 countries and territories, and will embed videos of Santa's stops captured on their Santa Cams on the Google Map and post the videos on the NORAD Tracks Santa YouTube channel. Want to see more of Santa? NORAD will also provide a downloadable Santa Tracker file to track several thousand of Santa's stops in Google Earth. Santa's visits are only a few seconds long, and then -- poof, he's off to the next location. Click on the gift icons in Google Maps or Google Earth to learn more about the cities that Santa visits."

Sunday Salon: The Coffin Trail

Such is the disorientation of having some time off work that I hadn't realised it was Sunday until I opened up my rss reader and saw Clare's peaceful 6.15 and more energetic 12.15 posts.

So, this morning I finished reading The Coffin Trail by Martin Edwards. I enjoyed this book a lot, not least because it is set in my beloved Lake District, but also because it has a good plot and strong characters. Highly recommended if you like police procedurals -- the main detective is a woman, Hannah Scarlett (lovely name, I wish I'd been called that) -- with a "local mystery" theme. The Coffin Trail is the first of a series, so I shall definitely be reading more.

And what is a coffin trail (or corpse road) you may ask? From Wikipedia (emphasis mine): "In late medieval times a population increase and a concomitant expansion of church building took place in Great Britain inevitably encroaching on the territories of existing mother churches or minsters. Demands for autonomy from outlying settlements made minster officials feel that their authority was waning, as were their revenues, so they instituted corpse roads connecting outlying locations and their mother churches (at the heart of parishes) that alone held burial rights. For some parishioners, this decision meant that corpses had to be transported long distances, sometimes through difficult terrain and usually it had to be carried unless the departed was a wealthy individual. An example would be the funeral way that runs from Rydal to Ambleside in the Lake District where a coffin stone, on which the coffin was placed while the parishioners rested, still exists. Many of the 'new' churches were eventually granted burial rights and corpse roads ceased to be used as such."

Northern Lights diminished

Among the usual collection of Christmas holiday season movies is The Golden Compass, the film of Philip Pullman's wonderful Northern Lights. I saw the film a few weeks ago with my stepdaughter and two daughters, between us ranging in age from 150 (me) to 24, 16 and 12. We all think we enjoyed it, but we aren't too sure - something of a curate's egg.

The younger generation all felt that you had to have read the book in order to understand the plot and hence enjoy the film. I wasn't so sure -- because for me the film was "good enough" (in the sense that the Harry Potter films are "good enough" renditions of the books though lacking a dimension or two), but it had two stand-out dreadful flaws. The first of these was a voice-over right at the start, which solemnly explains the entire plot in words of one syllable -- what Lord Asriel is doing in the North, the existence and meaning of dust (including detail from book 2) and all you ever could want to know about daemons. Hence, dramatic tension was ruined.

The second horror was that the film ended three-quarters of the way through the book, destroying the terrible balance of Lyra's two parental confrontations and hence the awful power of the story. One of the many reasons why Northern Lights is so thrilling is that Pullman is not afraid to go "all the way" with the evil parent motif -- not just with one parent but both. The author backs down somewhat, but not very far, in subsequent books (one reason why they are weaker); the fierce independence and strength of Lyra, such a fresh character in all of fiction, is severely undermined by this bizarre plot decision.

I can forgive the omission of Lord Asriel's dramatic slamming of the head on the table of the senior common room to the shock of the dons, and (apart from in a brief aside) the gliding over of Iorek Byrnison's true status. These, and other, simplifications weaken impact but don't detract from the power of the story. There were lots of very good things about the film, as described in two excellent reviews at Stephen Lang and at Material Witness. But I can't forgive the awful, unnecessary dumbing-down of the initial voiceover, and I was left high and dry by the decision to truncate the story before its end. It is as if Far From the Madding Crowd ended before Bathsheba finally reciprocates Gabriel Oak's devotion, or as if Othello ended at the death of Desdemona.

Book of the year: Den of Thieves

Ask most people to name their favourite book of the year, and they will take some time to think about it. Not so Jenny (age 12) who instantly responds: the "Cat Royal" series by Julia Golding. Of the series, her favourite is "Den of Thieves", about the French Revolution. From the Amazon synopsis: "Den of Thieves" is the thrilling third volume in the "Cat Royal" series, following the huge success of "The Diamond of Drury Lane". Our hardy heroine, Cat Royal, finds herself homeless, travels to Paris, becomes an underground reporter, nearly gets hung for being a traitor to the revolution, and is baffled by attention from numerous suitors; all the while being disguised as a prissy ballerina! As the French Royal family flee, Cat discovers the power of the people. Vive La Revolution! Once again, Julia Golding will have you captivated from page one.

Since then, we have had (again via Amazon) ..."Cat-O' Nine Tails". In which, Cat becomes an unlikely recruit for the British Navy, takes passage to America and navigates her way through a fiendish plot to do away with Lord Francis, heir to a dukedom. From the grand Assembly Rooms of Bath to the wilds of a new frontier, Cat finds she is for once quite out of her depth. All aboard, Cat's going abroad.

Jenny is desperate for February, which brings us the fifth installment, Black Heart of Jamaica.

Some new reviews at Euro Crime

A couple of my reviews have recently been published at Euro Crime:

Raven Black, by Ann Cleeves, an absorbing mystery set in a remote Scottish island community; and

Dead I Well May Be by Adrian McKinty, a "post-Godfather Odyssey", boiled as hard as it goes.

Other books reviewed last week at Euro Crime are Peter James's Not Dead Enough (reviewer Terry Halligan); Karen Meek (Euro Crime herself) on Michael Dibdin's Back to Bologna; and Laura Root's take on Armand Cabasson's The Officer's Prey.

One of the many delights of Euro Crime is comparing reviews of the same book. From this set, you can read Sunnie Gill's opinion of Raven Black (I liked the book but not as much as Sunnie, who raves about it); and my view of Not Dead Enough (again, I liked the book but not as much as Terry, who found it "simply amazing").

While you are at Euro Crime, don't forget that you have until 31 December to win a copy of Thirty-Three Teeth, Colin Cotterill's second book about the chief coroner of Laos in the 1970s. I reviewed the book here, and can highly recommend it and its predecessor The Coroner's Lunch (reviewed on Euro Crime here by me, and here by Karen C) as perfect holiday (or any other time) reading.

   

Book reviews that caught my eye

Some notable book reviews I've read over the past week or two:

Scott Pack on Deanna Raybourn's Silent in the Grave. I am not usually a big fan of historical crime or of comic crime, but this one (Victorian era) sounds as if it might be an exception. It's first of a series.

Brothers Judd on I am Legend by Richard Matheson. I re-read this book on holiday 18 months ago, and rather liked it again even though vampire novels aren't my thing. It's an economical little chiller, and so far as I recall, a then-startlingly original blend of genres. Brothers Judd liked it less than I did. Now it has been made into (another) film, this time with Will Smith in the Charlton Heston role. I don't know if I'll go and see it or not.

Scott Pack again, this time on Atomised by Michel Houllebecq. This is one of those iconic books that seems to indicate you are cool if you've read it, but I have never managed to bring myself to actually do that. Having read Scott's views, I don't think I've missed anything.

Karen of Euro Crime reviews The Christmas Bow Murder by Brian Battison, as part of her Its Christmas Crime series. Looks diverting. While at Euro Crime, this isn't exactly a review, but Karen features the synopsis of the last and eagerly awaited (by me) Frost book, title Killing Frost, by the late R. D. Wingfield, out early next year. The first four books were excellent, dark police procedurals. I saw only a few of the TV series, in which the character of Frost is considerably softened. The books were much better.

Material Witness reviews Sephulcre by Kate Mosse, and likes it a lot. I am not so sure, I still have an unread copy of Labyrinth at home, so really ought to read that first. I feel put off by the hyperbole and the mixed reviews of the earlier book. It seems from the Material Witness review that Sephulcre might be better, but the "Da Vinci Code" genre of historical conspiracy/religious-supernatural isn't my thing, I feel - In general I prefer the laws of the universe to be followed in the books I read (boring of me, no doubt).

Here's another Material Witness review of a book that seems more up my street, Meltdown by Martin Baker. Hot stuff, in more ways than one.

David Montgomery of Crime Fiction Dossier reads his first "alphabet" mystery by Sue Grafton, T is for Trespass, and likes it. (The post is not a review, though.) I have enjoyed this PI series to date, having read all of the books. Although I look forward to T, I'm quite happy to wait for the paperback.

Is there anyone who doesn't adore Ken Bruen? Crime Scraps here reviews Priest. I am seriously going to have to read this author, I don't think I've come across a reader of crime fiction who doesn't think he is fabulous, and he wins lots of prizes and awards, too. Crime Scraps on Priest: "a powerful brilliant dark book, full of insight in to the human condition, and with wonderful little vignettes about interesting characters."

And finally, for this post, Karen C of Aust Crime Fiction on I See You by Gregg Hurwitz. This book seems to be another for the "must read one day" list.

Philip Pullman: the podcast

You've read the books, you've seen the (first) movie, now at Guardian Unlimited: Arts blog - books: Guardian book club podcast: Philip Pullman, listen to the podcast (47 mins).  From the Guardian blog:

"In this month's Christmas book club, John Mullan turns his attention to Philip Pullman's expansive, magnificent His Dark Materials trilogy.

Listen to the podcast of last night's book club event, in which Pullman talked about Milton, morality and heading for the Arctic, and answered some searching textual questions from younger audience members."

Lesson in climate-change science

There are two very good letters in today's Times, in response to a rather poor one yesterday. Good on Chris Turney and Anthony Seaton, and no comment on Lord Leach (for reasons of length, Prof Seaton's and Lord Leach's letters are on the post continuation sheet).

Sir, Lord Leach of Fairford’s letter (“The false certainties of climate change theory”, Dec 20 and in the post continuation below) espouses a bizarre mixture of half-truths and misinformation. I find it entertaining that someone who in previous correspondence claims to be a non-scientist can so confidently list a series of “facts” that are wrong. The evidence for human-driven climate change is overwhelming: the world is warming up because of elevated greenhouse gases, the climate models can explain the cooling of the mid-20th century and if anything, projections for the future are conservative; reconstructions of the past imply the climate system is more sensitive to greenhouse gases than we might like to acknowledge.

No one is denying that scientists should be sceptical (that is our job), but to imply that those who deny climate change are somehow ahead of their time is wholly misleading. The greats who did so in the past put forward evidence that broke the consensus of the time and moved the science forward. Those who continue to deny climate change muddy the waters of action and delay the urgent measures we so desperately need. If Lord Leach still feels challenged by the science I suggest he reads some accessible blogs on climate change, such as www.celsias.com or www.realclimate.org. [Maxine adds: or Climate Feedback, the blog of Nature Reports Climate Change.] Once he has got up to speed on the science, Lord Leach might wake up to the considerable problems we face and make a more valuable contribution to the public debate: how to get ourselves out of the mess we’ve created.

Professor Chris Turney

University of Exeter

(Prof Seaton's and Lord Leach's letters are below.)

On first becoming a published author

Via Macmillan New Writers' blog, a post from one of their number, Michael Stephen Fuchs, on his blog Dispatch from the Razor's Edge, about the lack of happiness, riches and sex arising from publishing your first novel. Or, as Michael writes in his post header: "The following piece was sorta kinda commissioned by someone at Salon.com, which subsequently decided they had much more important things to run in December. No other organ has rushed to publish it – no one wants to hear the truth, man! – so here it is (in the usual place). "

Here's an excerpt:

"I have friends who think I must be rich after being published on a recognizable imprint. Bwahahaha! With the arrival of my first royalty check, I learned that ten years of writing had netted me the same amount as two weeks of doing computer shit for an investment bank. (And, yes, my book actually did pretty well – by the modest standards of first novels.) The fact of the matter is that the world is drowning in fiction (most of it awful, admittedly). And it is a very vain thing indeed to think the world needs your book – much less that they'll pay you gazillions for it.

As far as I’m aware, I have not, up until this very moment, gone out on a date with one single woman as a result of being a published author. Not one."

A list of lists for the holidays

The Internet is full of people who love categorising items into groups, and also provides easy ways to achieve that goal. List mania is at its highest before holiday seasons: summer and winter. I find so much on the Internet in the usual run of things and bookmark them all away for the aforementioned upcoming holidays when I might have time to read them. So the lists, for me, are gilding the lily. Enough said, here's a bit of meta-listing (a post of links to lists) just in case you have the odd spare moment in the next week or two:

Easing in gently, here's a short list: Susan Hill's two best books of the year (one fiction, one non-fiction).

Here's a collaborative list: favourite TV shows of the year (previous year's lists are linked) at the Organ Grinder (Guardian).

January Magazine's editors have chosen their favourites from thousands of books: fiction, non-fiction, crime fiction, children's books and "art & culture". Congratulations to Linda Richards for a magnificent, and no doubt exhausting, achievement in putting all this together.

After that lot, you will be relieved to see a list of one: Uriah Robinson's non-fiction book of the year. Looks like a good one to me.

Back to the Guardian, this one is top 10 DVDs to give this Christmas. I daren't even look at it as I still haven't watched any of the sets I impulsively bought after a blog discussion on the topic about a year ago.

David Montgomery of Crime Fiction Dossier is asking a range of authors and others to nominate three favourite books. The recommendations are collected at this link -- all I can write is "help"!

Books with a Christmas theme are being featured currently on Euro Crime blog in the series "It's Christmas Crime", aggregated here so you can see the list of short reviews and Yule-themed covers. 

Last but most definitely not least is CrimeFic Reader's excellent "books for Christmas 2007" series that has been running on It's a Crime! for a month or so. Here is the aggregate link from which you can see the whole set of recommendations (so far) by an impressive range of authors, nominating some tantalising books.

Buying books for Christmas

It is getting rather close to the wire now, but incessant emails tell me that you can still buy Christmas presents at a wide range of online stores and delivery will be guaranteed by the day itself. If you are like me and haven't got round to doing very much about the upcoming festivities [yet], then this post on the Picador blog, An idiot's guide to Christmas gift buying, is for you. Read it in about five minutes, log on to Amazon, and you are done.

If I were to buy books for members of my family this Christmas, these are the ones I would buy:

Max Perutz and the secret of life by Georgina Ferry [which I am not buying because it isn't yet out in paperback] - perfect gift for any biophysics professors in the vicinity.

Fateful Choices: ten decisions that changed the world 1940-1941 by Ian Kershaw [list price a shocking £30, Amazon UK price £18 -- I only hope he doesn't write too many more one-year episodes] - perfect gift for freshman A-level history and government&politics student who likes thought experiments as well as the dry facts.

The Secret Countess by Eva Ibbotson. Macmillan is reprinting some of her more grown-up novels. I am not sure if they are intended to be read by teenagers or adults, but both my daughters love these coming-of-age novels with a dash of history.

The Roman Mysteries Treasury by Caroline Lawrence. Jenny has wolfed down the 13 or 14 books in the Roman Mysteries series to date in a big splurge this autumn and is writing her own title featuring the same characters (it is brilliant, though I say so myself), so this "dipping in" book, with information about ancient Rome and the "making of" the TV series (most of which she didn't see, apart from one episode featuring a friend from school) - will be welcome while she waits for the next "proper" book to come out.

The Golden Compass official illustrated movie companion by Brian Sibley. Although the movie received a mixed reception chez Petrona, this book will be great, I can tell you confidently without having sneaked a look at it already (oops). It will be full of pictures, behind-the-scenes information and let the curious know how all those special effects were created. We are great fans of Brian's Lord of the Rings and Narnia books, and I can guarantee we'll all be dipping into this one. [Brian has a great blog too.]

What about me? I don't want any books, because I have such a vast pile already that I can't wait to start reading.

Euro Crime's Scandinavian lists

The title of Karen's recent post at Euro Crime blog speaks for itself: Scandinavian Crime/Mystery novels coming out in 2008. In her post, Karen provides links to two Amazon lists, one UK and one US, as some of the books are coming out at different times in the two regions -- lists that I have eagerly checked out.

As well as the first novel of the "millennium" trilogy by Stieg Larrson, noted by Karen as having already generated quite a buzz before its January release by the new MacLehose Press, there are some tremendously exciting delights in store: new books by Asa Larsson (whose Sun Storm was wonderful - my review is awaiting publication); Karin Fossum (I've read two excellent books by her in 2007, Calling Out For You and Black Seconds, review awaiting publication); Jo Nesbo (author of Redbreast - not yet read -- and The Devil's Star - read but apparently not reviewed); Harkan Nessar (this year I have read his excellent Borkmann's Point and his not quite so good follow-up, The Return (review not yet published); Henning Mankell (stories); and almost Arnaldur Indridason -- his next title has been put back to 2009 as his translator, Bernard Scudder, has sadly died recently. I adored Voices and The Draining Lake (review not yet published) in 2007.

There are a few other authors new to me on the list: if their novels are up to the standards of the other authors Karen has included, then 2008 is definitely looking very good indeed. And that's just a few of the excellent Scandinavians. No doubt there are similar delights in store from the Italians, French, and all points East and West.

J K Rowling podcast at Leaky Lounge

In a serendipitous Harry Potter-themed post to follow from my last, Leaky Lounge is featuring a Christmas Harry Potter podcast, first of two parts published today. The Leaky Cauldron and Mugglenet have long been J. K. Rowling's favourite Harry Potter sites, and she's shown her appreciation several times in the past. From the Leaky Cauldron's announcement about the new podcast:

"It is the first in-depth fan interview since the interview we did in 2005, and Jo's repartee was everything we knew it would be: informative, warm, funny and chock-full of canon revelations as well as statements about the writing and publishing of the series. We had such a great time recording with her and hope that you all enjoy the output!" There will be a transcript published soon afterwards

The interview was conducted just after the sale of J. K.'s handwritten book "The Tales of Beedle the Bard", so contains discussion of that topic as well as plenty of debate about horcruxes, homosexuality, Neville's role, whether "the trio" graduated from Hogwarts, how Dumbledore found out what happened in Godric's Hollow, and lots of other delightful detail. Check it out at this link.

Rowling and McEwan together

I hope that Susan Hill is not wrong in her HONOURS PREDICTIONS. Few could disagree that Ian McEwan is an author of great quality, even if his books are not to everyone's taste. But I have no sympathy for the envy and snobbery that one sees expressed about J. K. Rowling. It is impossible to exaggerate what this author has done for reading. She has encouraged thousands, even millions, of children to begin and continue reading; she has stimulated the imaginations of similarly vast numbers of already literate children (just look at the school playgrounds and the "continuation of Harry Potter story" internet sites); she's written a series of books that adults can read and which stands up in its own right --- the august Economist selected Harry Potter 7, quite rightly, as one of its books of the year*; she's kick-started a moribund part of the publishing industry; and she's an individual, unspun and unspinnable. I admire her tremendously.

[*The Economist's view: "Books written as part of a series that start well almost invariably fall off in quality. Not so the seventh and last HP, the end of the decade's most successful morality tale, which shows J.K. Rowling at the height of her magical imaginative powers." HP7 was one of ten selections in the fiction&memoirs category, Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach being another.]

In the Woods at the Times book group

Tana French's In The Woods will be the next title to be read by the Times book group. Alyson Rudd, editor of the group, writes: "This is a real treat for Christmas. In the Woods is a classic murder mystery with plenty of twists and macabre detail." She continues: "This is Tana French's debut and is startlingly accomplished. Many detective stories are described as “superior” to differentiate them from the many lazy and predictable thrillers out there — but this really is. French writes beautifully and is far from lazy when it comes to sprinkling clues and red herrings and developing the characters."

You can read my review of this book over at Euro Crime. I began: "Although long, IN THE WOODS is a cracking read. I have often read the word "unputdownable" to describe a book, but in this case it is true: I was glad I started the book on a weekend and had no other commitments, so I could finish it in a day." Crime Always Pays similarly features reviews and news about this and Tana French's next book, The Likeness, as part of a sparkling showcase for the Irish crime-fic and wider literary scene.

The Times book group seems to me to be on a roll just now. Their most recent discussion was of Cormac McCarthy's The Road -- a book that I know has evoked mixed reactions in the blogosphere, from praise to dismissal. Alyson Rudd again: "Amid the stench of death, the fear and the anger, some do the right thing. They maintain morality, they believe in God or, if not God, in humanity. The son is a messiah. He is young, he has not been captured and he knows what is good and what is sinful. Above all, he wants to help others in a world where most think that they have no choice but to put themselves first."

The Times book group main page is here, with an archive of a dozen discussions of titles varying from Stef Penny's The Tenderness of Wolves, through Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, to Tom Perotta's Little Children. I've always liked this group's discussions -- although some choices are, in the event, unpopular, I think that the book concerned is always given a chance for its best shot at persuading you to go out and read it. 

Sunday Salon: Scent of the Night

I've taken all week to read a short book, "The Scent of the Night" by Andrea Camilleri (superbly translated by Stephen Sartarelli), finally finished it this morning. As ever with this series, set in Vigata, Sicily, the theme is that of rage against "progress", as the island becomes covered by the concrete of half-finished road schemes or construction projects. In "The Scent of the Night" the protagonist, Inspector Salvo Montalbano, becomes violent in his fury about the irrevocable change being forced upon his long-established way of life. He has two places where he goes to think: a rock on the jetty by the sea and an old olive tree. He finds himself driving late one night, drunk, and thinks he is at the crossroads where the olive tree grows. But he can't see it, and so thinks he must be mistaken as he comes across a band of asphalt. He goes to investigate, but can recognise nothing in the landscape that is familiar to him. Then, in a patch of moonlight, he sees a new house, finished but not inhabited. Montalbano stumbles to the back of the house, and cries out. "The great Saracen olive tree lay before him, moribund, having been felled and uprooted. It was dying. They had cut the branches from the trunk with an electric saw........He reached out and placed his hand over the space of a particularly wide gash. Under his palm he could still feel a slight dampness from the sap; it was oozing out little by little, like the blood of a man slowly bleeding to death". The rage felt and vengeance wreaked by Montalbano is fierce, and it is this violent mourning for a lost way of life which both haunts and drives all the books in the series.

Right at the end of "The Scent of the Night", Montalbano goes for a walk along the jetty for a cigarette at his customary rock. "He just wanted to sit there and listen to the sea swashing between the rocks. But thoughts come even when you do all in your power to keep them away. And the thought came into his mind concerned the Saracen olive tree that had been cut down. Now he had only the rock for a refuge. All at once, though he was out in the open air, he felt strangely as though he was suffocating, as though the space allocated for his existence had suddenly shrunk. By a lot."

No need to apologise

I couldn't agree more with this post: A Book A Week: Blogging Without Obligation. Blogging is something I like to do, not that I have to do. There are only so many variants on the theme of "sorry I haven't had time to write a post", and they aren't that interesting to read (unless someone has not blogged recently because they won the Nobel prize, I wouldn't mind reading that!) Feeling under pressure to keep up a regular posting rate, I was guilty of this practice myself, probably for far too long, until Frank Wilson pointed out to me the simple truth that I blog because I like to, not because I have to. Less is more.

Coyne on Watson in the TLS

There is an excellent and, to my knowledge, fair and accurate, account of Jim Watson's life, attitudes and achievements in the latest TLS by the excellent scientist and writer Jerry Coyne --- wrapped up as a review of Watson's latest book. If you are at all interested in this topic, do read the TLS article. I reproduce two paragraphs below.

"It would be easy to condemn Watson as arrogant and opinionated – he is – but a more nuanced look at his past reveals an infinitely more complex individual than that typically portrayed in the media. When he took a job at Harvard University, some of his colleagues found him so abrasive and lacking in inter-personal skills that one of them remarked that he wouldn’t put Watson in charge of a lemonade stand. Yet with an intuitive flair for recognizing scientific talent, he founded a department at Harvard that became a world-beater. Although Watson can seem relentlessly self-centred, he flouted scientific convention by unselfishly refusing to put his name on his students’ publications. And despite repeated statements about women that can only be viewed as sexist, he has ardently supported the work and careers of his female students."

"The book’s epilogue, though bizarre, is its most illuminating part. Despite having left Harvard over thirty years ago, Watson takes it personally that biology is, as he sees it, in decline there. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard’s local rival, has come from behind to overtake the biology programme he lovingly and successfully tended during his years as a Harvard professor. Part of the problem is Harvard’s recently deposed president, Larry Summers, who, in Watson’s opinion, combined arrogance and ignorance of matters scientific with a determination to expand Harvard biology. The result, Watson notes, is over-expansion and science done on a “B+ level”. Summers, however, was not undone by his vision for Harvard science; rather, he was hounded from office after making public comments about the possibility that women are under-represented in science because of innate differences between the sexes. It is ironic that the final chapter’s account of a public figure laid low by unwise comments about genetic differences parallels in many ways what may be the final chapter of Watson's career."

Save that "scrap" paper

From Nature this week (13 Dec issue p. 932), it seems that it might well be worth hanging on to that thesis or early draft novel you wrote all those years ago:

"A formerly top-secret document produced by controversial rocket scientist Wernher von Braun for his PhD dissertation sold for US$33,000 at auction in New York last week.The 166-page thesis, Design, Theoretical and Experimental Contributions to the Problem of the Liquid-Fuel Rocket , was classified as 'top secret' by the Nazi government and, although written in 1934, was not published until 1960.

After working on rockets for the Nazis during the Second World War — his exact motivations are still debated — von Braun was spirited to the United States to work on missiles. He later became the first director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. After what the auction house Bonhams describes as “heated bidding”, the thesis sold for $3,000 more than its original estimate."

In a comment to the story, Austin B. Carter writes: "Werner Von Braun spent his first years in the U.S. in my home town giving lectures at various venues, which I eagerly attended. He explained his future plans to explore space utilizing an intermediary space station in earth orbit and/or on the moon. Explained Mach number. But his most interesting talking points were about how little energy it takes to influence first conditions that then go on to control vast natural phenomenon like Atlantic Hurricanes. My reward for being a fan was an invitation to witness the last V-2 Rocket blast off from the White Sands, NM Missle Range. Even at a distance of one mile, the roar was deafening." 

An Eyeless Depostion?

Without wishing to get too nested, Meg Gardiner of crime fiction fame and Lying for a Living blog highlights an article in Vanity Fair by Christopher Hitchins:

"Asked how Robert Ludlum might have titled a Shakespeare play, Salman Rushdie came up with The Elsinore Vacillation, The Rialto Sanction, The Dunsinane Reforestation, and The Kerchief Implication, before we made him stop."

I wish I could do this kind of thing, but I lack the imagination. The Island Juxtaposition? The Hunchback Machination?

Crime Scraps challenge

CRIME SCRAPS: QUIRKY QUIZ: THE EXAMINATION  is a pretty tough quiz. Not for Uriah are the simple one-question "norms" of the blogosphere: here we have a Baker's dozen of mini-conundrums, with an Italian accent. I only know three of the answers without doing some research. Luckily, we have until 1 January to submit our answer, so put that in your Christmas pudding and pull out a plum. (If you would like to know more details of the "plum", or prize, please see here.)

Norman, Doris and Petrona!

At his post normblog: Books and the internet, Norman Geras discusses Doris Lessing's Nobel prize acceptance speech. While praising Lessing's comments about a hunger for reading in African countries, Norm highlights this quote:

"How will our lives, our way of thinking, be changed by the internet, which has seduced a whole generation with its inanities so that even quite reasonable people will confess that, once they are hooked, it is hard to cut free, and they may find a whole day has passed in blogging etc?"

Norm provides five ways in which the internet can interact positively with books: people read on the internet; the text of many books is available there; one can find out about books; and buy them; and people are blogging about books on the internet.  All excellent points, Norm, and I was delighted to be included in his list of examples of people undertaking this activity, in the illustrious company of blogs like Keeper of the Snails, Random Jottings...., and more. Thank you, Norm.

However, Doris Lessing has a sort of point. The internet can be a great time-waster. But then so can anything else -- before the internet came along, people managed to waste their time just as effectively as they do now.

Movie updates of the classics

In our stimulating discussion about movies that are better (arguably!) than the books they adapt, Henry Gee writes: "I would point to the film Clueless, which is Emma set in modern Beverly Hills, as the very best Austen adaptations that there has ever been."

Clueless is one of those films from which I have seen 2-minute segments  about 100 times, as I've been in and out of the room during three girls' perpetual enjoyment of it. (Personally, I'd rather read Emma, but I'm an old stick.)

Henry's comment made me think about other presumed good updates of the classics. My daughters love some of these, watching them over and over again. Apart from Clueless, there is:

Ten things I hate about you (Taming of the Shrew)

O (Othello)

She's the Man (Twelfth Night)

Bride and Prejudice (you guess it)

Pretty Woman (Pygmalion) (Unlike all of the above, I have actually seen this one from beginning to end, years ago in the actual cinema.)

Great Expectations (Curaon version)

And, via BBC TV: Shakespeare ReTold (updates of Macbeth, Midsummer Night's Dream, Taming of the Shrew and Much Ado About Nothing).

I'm not sure whether to count big favourites The Importance of Being Earnest and An Ideal Husband because although they take liberties with the originals, they are essentially the originals -- most of the dialogue is Wilde's, even if not all of it is from the works being portrayed. (And you can shut your eyes in the Reece Witherspoon fantasy passages easily enough.)

Can anyone think of more?

Dilbert slows down on blogging (not?)

The Dilbert Blog: Going Forward describes Scott Adams's decision to reduce his blogging frequency, for understandable economic reasons.

...."the blog has been a source of tremendous artistic satisfaction. I enjoyed being relatively uncensored, and interacting with the readers on fun topics. That’s why I will continue blogging, albeit less controversially. I’ll just do it less often, especially over the holidays. It’s hard to tell the family I can’t spend time with them because I need to create free content on the Internet that will lower our income."

Although I almost always enjoy reading the posts on the Dilbert blog for their original and clever humour (one or two topics excepted), I never read the comments as there are usually more than 100 per post, and who has the time? (I do love the way Scott Adams interacts with his readers, uses them as a creative resource for his posts, and hence increases his traffic even more, no doubt.) Maybe somewhere in the comments to the linked post above is an explanation, or maybe the whole post was a joke, but I'm relieved to note that Scott has posted every day (apart from weekends) since writing it a couple of weeks ago, which is exactly the frequency he's posted for as long as I've been reading him. That's good news.

Urban terrorism, French style

From The Week, 30 Nov 2007 (I know, I know):

An underground "cultural guerrilla" group has been marauding round Paris and ruthlessly restoring the city's landmarks. A court heard last week how members of the "Untergunther" movement broke into the Pantheon in September 2005 and set up a secret workshop behind its famous dome. Under the supervision of a professional clockmaker, they then set about repairing the antique clock that city officials had allowed to rust since the Sixties.

Here's the story at the Guardian, which from the date (26 November) is the source for The Week (no online version) extract above.

Holiday non-reading

Some perennial themes of book blogs clash and implode over at the Guardian. Jean Hannah Edelstein wrote an apt piece called "Frank nonsense and gold: the mystery of the Christmas bestseller", in which she took a book with the ghastly title of "Do Ants Have Arseholes" [no link will be provided by me], currently number 1 on the Amazon bestseller list, as an example of the mindless, derivative rubbish that is published at this time of year. She also discusses the motives of those who buy this sort of book as a gift, and concludes: "My fellow dedicated readers, now is the time for us to rise up against the tyranny of the derivative Christmas book!" Good for her, say I.

In an extraordinary countermove, Nicola Barr, the agent who sold this title to the publisher, and who is now therefore raking it in, herself was given space on the Guardian book blog to write a shamelessly self-interested, complaining piece called "If you're going to rubbish a book, read it", in which she attacks Jean Hannah Edelstein's article as if it had been a review of the book, plugs (and links to) two allegedly good reviews in the UK national press, and continues with her onion well to the fore to provide a detailed account of the saintly work of literature and all connected with it.

There are many comments to Nicola Barr's article, several of them incoherent and several more from people who don't seem to have read the earlier article (which is clearly not a book review but an article about this type of book and its marketing -- complete with an off-putting quote from the blurb as evidence) but are not short of an opinion on it. That apart, I was relieved to see that Nicola Barr did not get any sympathy: her article is mainly characterised as a disingenuous piece of marketing, her claims that the book is a "word of mouth" bestseller being received cynically. The book isn't one that many commenters (if any) feel inclined to buy even after reading Nicola Barr's fervent pitch for it. At time of writing, the comment thread ends with a gracious paragraph from Jean Hannah Edelstein herself, who demonstrates a good nature as well as excellent conflict-resolution skills.

Christmas offers from Amazon

Amazon UK is currently running a promotion of "Christmas must-have books" at £1.99. Included in the offers are some crime fiction: Dying Light by Stuart McBride, Out by Natsuo Kirino and I'm Watching You by Karen Rose. I also discover from Amazon that Michael Connelly's latest Harry Bosch novel, The Overlook, is now out in paperback in the UK, price £5.99. That's going straight onto my Christmas list, if I can wait that long.

Hopes raised and dashed

I received an email today from Abe Books, in response to a query I had left on their site a long while ago about a book I remember vividly as a much-loved favourite from my very early childhood, but which has long been out of print. Imagine my excitement when I read the subject line "Abe books has found the book you want". But I was soon to have my expectations crushed. Here's the email text:

"We have matched your Want with one or more books now available on our Web site, including the following (please note that only the lowest and highest price matches made today are displayed):
1. Mr. Fork and Curly Fork: a time story,
Banner, Angela
Edmund Ward Ltd, 1956, Hardcover,  , FICTION:: CHILDRENS FICTION READING LESSONS LITERACY ANGELA BANNER PRIMERS, Clean hardback tightly bound in blue cloth with red titles, cloth has minor rubbing at corners, no inscriptions. 88 pages, colour illustrations throughout. Uncommon book by the 'Ant and Bee' author. 100
Bookseller: Aucott & Thomas, a member of IBooknet, Hugglescote, LEI
Price: £ 77.00"

That's nearly £1 per page.

Headline opportunity of the year?

MISSING PRESUMED DEAD’s PRESUMED DEAD is MISSING.

Go read the story.

Books, films, chalk and cheese

Movies better than the books that spawned them is the title of an article at SignOn San Diego, which I picked up via Books, Inq., who in turn picked it up from Dave Lull (who, as Books, Inq.'s blogger, Frank Wilson, once wrote, is probably single-handedly responsible for maintaining the Internet).

But, back to the plot. Here's the list, with my comments in brackets: The Graduate (film good, can't recall if I've read book, no wish to now); The Birds (film and book (a longish short story, in fact) about the same -- good suspense build-up, disappointing end); Shane (book great, a massive early influence on me, not seen film but I know that people acting opposite Alan Ladd had to stand in a trench); Babe (managed to avoid both, thankfully and amazingly, given ages of film and my children); The Godfather (liked the book, found the film bloated and boring); Wizard of Oz (disagree, book (read as a child) was far better than the film);  To Have and Have Not (quite liked the book, can't remember if I've seen the film); From Russia with Love (both are good if light, but different. If I had to choose, I'd say book was better); Carrie (tough one, both excellent of their genre, though too cruel for me in both cases); The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming (avoided both, I am thankful based on the title).

Jeff in Frank's comments suggests The Natural -- I quite liked the film (well, the Robert Redford bits at least), I may well have read the book but it didn't leave an impression. I've thought of a lot of films I've seen of books I've read, and I can't think of any examples of films I've liked better--- though some have been impressively different and hence distinctive in their own way. I am sure there are some, though, so will leave this post here to see if any float into my mind in future. (Children of Men by P D James is one possibility -- but it is so long ago that I read the book that I need to read it again to remember it.)

If I can think of any examples, I will log them in the comments. Of course, I can think of lots of books that I found better than films made of them, but that isn't the point.