May your mailboxes (and e-readers)
be filled with lovely, lovely books in 2013!
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Monday, December 31, 2012
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
Merry Christmas!
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Best wishes for
a wonderful Christmas
(and lots and lots of books under the tree!).
Monday, December 17, 2012
{misc.} wrapping up 2012
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This is pretty much the end of my blogging year, as I am off to China in a few days. I have never been there (although my sister has lived in Beijing for ten years), so that should be an exciting and different (and freezing) Christmas holiday.
I will likely read a bit on the journey, so I expect that I'll end the year with somewhere around 110 books finished. This is a big drop in numbers from 2011 (171 books), but in 2012 I had an almost bookless month travelling in the UK and France, and also a conference paper to prepare, with lots of not-counted-and-not-much-fun books being read early in the year.
Fiction came in at 93 books; non-fiction a paltry 11. E-books (71) whipped tree-books (33). Re-reads accounted for 9 titles. If I break down fiction, I have 26 books of the literary sort, and 56 all somewhat lighter (crime, mystery, action, espionage, historical fiction, etc.). 11 were really meant for children or young adults. Only 5 books were translated from other languages (very poor).
And my top reads? I have ruthlessly omitted re-reads (sorry, Georgette Heyer) and books I haven't yet reviewed (in this category, I loved Mary Norton's The Complete Borrowers and Cassandra Parkin's outrageously funny Lighter Shades of Grey: a (very) critical reader's guide to Fifty Shades of Grey) [and, no, I haven't read the original].
So… in the end, I have 11 FAVOURITE READS OF 2012 (yes, 11), in no particular order:
Lightning Rods - Helen DeWitt {REVIEW}
Wishing you all
a Merry Christmas and
a very Happy New Year!
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Monday, December 10, 2012
{review} lightning rods
Helen DeWitt Lightning Rods (2012)
Everyone gets crazy thoughts from time to time, it’s what you do about them that counts.
This is a book about a man who installs women as sex-workers in corporate offices. It is also a brilliant and funny satire on sex, salesmanship and corporate culture.
Joe is a down-at-heel and not very successful vacuum-cleaner door-to-door salesman when he is struck by a brilliant idea to counter sexual harassment in the workplace by providing a practical and anonymous outlet for all that pent-up corporate machismo. That the idea is born of his own particular personal masturbatory fantasy only makes him more convinced he is the man to sell it. And so the 'lightning rod' is born, along with a host of other masterful ideas that were not necessary but become a necessity - "a multi-million dollar industry that would improve the lives of millions of Americans."
This book is wonderfully grubby read: what if your crazy 'What if…?' porn brainstorm became embedded in corporate culture - and even law - all the way up to the very top of government?
So, what does a lightning rod, earning money to put herself through Harvard Law, do during the time she is required to "stick her fanny through a hole in a wall and let someone give her the old Roto-Rooter from the rear"?
She spent quite a lot of time thinking about which particular project would give her a real sense of achievement. What she finally decided was that this was the ideal opportunity to read Proust’s masterpiece, À la recherche du temps perdu, in French. The amount of time lightning rods were typically expected to be on duty would be just right for working through a French text. On the one hand she wouldn't be reading a lot at any one time, so she wouldn't get discouraged. On the other hand, it was quite a long book, so by the time she finished she’d probably have enough money for Harvard Law School. She could look at the volumes on her shelf and see how far she had to go. So she went to the university bookstore and bought the complete set, and she started at page one, paragraph one on her first day on the job. Sure enough, the idea worked perfectly. The fact that she had to struggle with the French meant she didn't have a lot of attention to spare for anything else that might be going on. She’d go through as much text as she could, underlining words she didn't know with a pencil. At night she’d look up the words and read through the passage again. The next day she’d read on. Within a month she was having to look up fewer words. Within six months she was reading the French almost as well as she read English—and that was entirely the result of doing it on a daily basis.
In sum: dementedly funny and rather shocking; perfect characterization; spot on narrative tone. Not for the faint of heart. I wonder how I would feel about this book if it hadn't been written by a woman? Do I become complicit in my own objectification when I think that it must be OK because it was written by a woman? Hmmm.
Monday, December 3, 2012
{review} how to run your home without help
Kay Smallshaw How to Run Your Home Without Help (1949 [Persephone 2005])
All work is coloured by the spectacles worn. Look on it as fearful drudgery and it will never be anything else. See it as a job supremely worth doing, some of it creative, some more humdrum, but all demanding one's best, then running the home without help becomes a challenge and rewarding in itself.
People who think it is romantic to adopt a retro lifestyle (all those lovely clothes, pin-curls, proper stockings, etc.) should perhaps read this household manual to remind themselves that a large number of other less attractive things went along with the rose-bespectacled prettiness: limited rights for women, marriage as a career-ender, rationing, entire days spent doing the family laundry by hand, and the truly insanely Stepfordy Wifey idea that one should 'turn out' every room (EVERY ROOM) once a week.
Housekeeping may well (as Smallshaw suggests) be a form of "creative work to rank with the best", but there is a hell of a lot of post-war societal brainwashing going on to rebrand (unpaid) "ceaseless toil" in that way. Smallshaw's ideal housewife "has a big job, and one that can seldom be compressed into an eight-hour working day." She is a stay-at-home wife and mother or mother-soon-to-be (working [single] "career" women get a mention, but are not her target audience, despite working herself!).
The routine, as Christina Hardyment notes in her introduction to the Persephone edition, is "uncompromising". I felt exhausted (as well as uneasy) just reading this book.
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Housekeeping may well (as Smallshaw suggests) be a form of "creative work to rank with the best", but there is a hell of a lot of post-war societal brainwashing going on to rebrand (unpaid) "ceaseless toil" in that way. Smallshaw's ideal housewife "has a big job, and one that can seldom be compressed into an eight-hour working day." She is a stay-at-home wife and mother or mother-soon-to-be (working [single] "career" women get a mention, but are not her target audience, despite working herself!).
The routine, as Christina Hardyment notes in her introduction to the Persephone edition, is "uncompromising". I felt exhausted (as well as uneasy) just reading this book.
Smallshaw sets out ideas for organising the day, what one must do in each room, how much time to allocate to meal shopping and preparation (two to three hours a day - but, given that rationing is still in force at this time, some of this time is spent in the dreaded queuing). Smallshaw is interested in making her housewife more efficient, whether by introducing a smarter layout to the kitchen, better "method", or offering a review of labour-saving devices (the Bendix automatic washing machine, a crippling 65 pounds).
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Fundamentally, however, this is a book about unremitting drudgery from dawn to dusk and well beyond: Chapter 6 "The Daily Round"; Chapter 7 "The Weekly Clean", Chapter 8 "More Weekly Cleaning", Chapter 9 "Spring-Cleaning". Round about this point I think I would have drunk a neat cocktail of Smallshaw's favourite household chemicals: soda, precipitated whitening, DDT (!), paradichlorobenzene and oxalic acid ("useful, though poisonous"; coincidentally, I have recently read Death in High Heels). This however, would likely be classed as letting oneself go, as "[s]ome women will always". Housework makes you slim, ladies!
Before you call it a day, replace furniture and ornaments, re-hang pictures and mirrors, make up the bed and put up fresh curtains. You can sleep well tonight, knowing that even the Victorian housewife wouldn't have done a more thorough job.
In sum... I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is horrifying, and such a tonic against romanticising the past. I think my mouth started to hang open in shocked awe about midway through chapter 1 and never fully closed again. I do not own a teapot spout-cleaner or an upholstery whisk. I remain wholly puzzled by the concept of stringing currants as a leisure activity at the end of the day. (Do currants have strings?) I cannot think about the delights of "Offal Week" without feeling nauseated. I feel slightly guilty that labour-saving devices have freed up so much time that I happily waste on Pinterest rather than producing something truly and unforgettably creative, but books that are meant to make women feel bad are not going to make me change a single thing about my life of squalor independence...
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If you liked this... the wonderful diaries of Nella Last (for a taste of their wonderfulness, see the review at Stuck In A Book) give a first-hand view of what it is like to try to live up to these expectations.
Thursday, November 29, 2012
{misc.} a liebster award
As I wrote last Thursday, I was lucky enough to be tagged for the 7x7 link award by Danielle (A Work in Progress) and for The Liebster Award by Helen (A Gallimaufry). Last week I answered the 7x7 link's tricky questions. Today is the the turn of The Liebster Award: "The Liebster Award is given to web-logs with fewer than 200 followers. You answer the seven questions posed by the person who gave you the award, and then devise a further seven which you give to seven people to whom you in turn award the Liebster."
It's a nice idea, isn't it, and a chance to get to know one's fellow bloggers a little better?
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Helen has set me these seven questions:
1. Describe your ideal home library/study: I live in a messy Victorian house with a messy family of messy book lovers. A bit like this:
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I often dream of living in an empty white box. Like this:
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(OK, it has a few books in it.) Or this?
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In an ideal world, I would have a room for all my books together: a proper library room. The shelves would stretch to the ceiling. There would be aisles and aisles and aisles. No book would suffer the indignity of being stored in a box in the shed. And, like Helen at A Gallimaufry, I would want a ladder in this room to z-o-o-m along the shelves.
Z-o-o-m...
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(Or maybe not.)
To go with my library, I would require a dedicated room for reading and thinking: a comfortable chair with a colourful crochet cushion; excellent lighting, natural and artificial; wooden boards; white walls; a sprinkling of my favourite art works; a bar cart (gilt [oh the guilt!] with wheels); window boxes of white geraniums in our hot summer, pink cyclamen in autumn/winter, and yellow and white narcissi in spring. At frequent intervals I will be brought cups of Earl Grey tea and, I think, shortbread. Perhaps the occasional tarte au citron. A ginger cat will slumber peacefully on the floor (I'd rotate the ginger cats each day).
To go with my library, I would require a dedicated room for reading and thinking: a comfortable chair with a colourful crochet cushion; excellent lighting, natural and artificial; wooden boards; white walls; a sprinkling of my favourite art works; a bar cart (gilt [oh the guilt!] with wheels); window boxes of white geraniums in our hot summer, pink cyclamen in autumn/winter, and yellow and white narcissi in spring. At frequent intervals I will be brought cups of Earl Grey tea and, I think, shortbread. Perhaps the occasional tarte au citron. A ginger cat will slumber peacefully on the floor (I'd rotate the ginger cats each day).
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2. With which literary character would you spend a week’s holiday in the location of your choice? Oooooh...
(N.Y. might require more comfortable shoes)
3. Name two new authors whose work you think will last the test of time, and explain your choices.
No, sorry, pass. I almost always read authors who have already stood the test of time. Or else I read books where it isn't important to me that they don't stand the test of time.
4. If you could live in a novel, which one would it be and why?
One would have to choose carefully. I like having hot water and decent plumbing and reliable refrigeration and the right to vote and own property. I would prefer not to have to fend off vampires or zombies or Hounds of the Baskervilles. I like cities. Ideally I'd live in a really good hotel. The climate shouldn't be too hot. I'm going to need some help here....!
At Bertram's Hotel? (But I might get murdered.)
At Hotel du Lac? (But I might die of boredom.)
Grand Hotel? (But an impoverished aristocrat might steal my baubles.)
5. Is there a literature from a particular time and place (medieval Chinese, nineteenth-century Russian for instance) which is a favourite of yours?
The ancient (classical) world, which I studied at university, and on which I still do a bit of work.
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6. What book have you read in the last year or so which you feel so evangelical about you would press it on everyone you meet? Joanna and Ulysses, by May Sarton. It is a beautiful little book about escape, renewal, Greece, and the importance of having a dream. And it has a donkey in it!
7. If you had to memorise a novel or book of poetry to preserve it à la Fahrenheit 451, which would it be and why?
Memorise?! Well that removes my desert island book from the list: the Oxford English Dictionary with all of the volumes shrunk into two and a big magnifying glass.
How about Oedipus Rex by Sophocles (though I feel really bad about abandoning Shakespeare to the flames): an incredibly powerful and timeless story about fate and personal responsibility. I suspect we'll need to remind ourselves about personal responsibility should we find ourselves in a book-burning era.
Oedipus. He had cat problems:
Oedipus. He had cat problems:
Gustave Moreau 'Oedipus and the Sphinx' (1864).
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Now I should pass the Liebster Award on to seven other people, but everyone seems to have done it now on the blogs I read. If you'd like to answer the questions, please do, and let me know how you go!
Thank you Helen for tagging me - I really enjoyed doing this.
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