Tag: books

House of Leaves in a day

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This is a review, if a review is meant to be written wide-eyed, a little uncertain of reality, of Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves. Known for being a scary cult novel approximately the size of the Argos catalogue, it is somewhat imposing. I started reading it last night, got about twenty pages in, and then today I continued reading and, in amongst other tasks like decanting homemade sloe gin, I read the whole thing. So I may be a little intense.

House of Leaves is 700 pages of text about an apparent documentary, footnotes both scholarly and telling stories in good postmodern style, appendices, pictures, and typographic display that can leave you dizzy. Each layer of the story – loosely the tale told in and by the documentary, the story of the writing and compilation of the main text by Zampanò, and the discovery, introduction, and notes by Johnny Truant – questions its own reality and others, meaning that reading the book basically requires a reader to question both nothing and everything. This is partly what makes it compelling: the sense that there might be a truth, or no truth at all, keeps you reading through chapters full of gaps from apparent scorchmarks or scientific analyses mostly lost.

The reading experience is perhaps the most important part. With its footnotes and appendices (some of which you are directed to only to discover there is nothing there), there isn’t quite an exact way to read House of Leaves. For example at one point, the option to read an appendix giving childhood background to the editor (who tells his own story in his footnotes) is offered, but to take this option is to read a series of letters that themselves form a not so simple story. The effect of this experience is to draw you into the uncanny, to be looking for where you must read next and whether it will be part of a narrative or a list of notable buildings that exist. It is more like an immersive experience.

Unnerving is perhaps a good way to describe House of Leaves. The layers of narrative and their layers of uncertainty mixed with a vast amount of fictional academic debate and references to real and fictional texts mean that the reading experience becomes unnerving, as expectations are denied and the nature of a text questioned. In my opinion, what is scarier than the stories within the book are the stories and parts of the narratives left on the outskirts, the ones in your peripheral vision and the ones that happen as you interpret what you read.

If these paragraphs haven’t convinced you yet, it is not an easy book to describe or recommend. I would say it is like a cross between the Lunar Park end of Bret Easton Ellis, Nabokov’s more postmodern stuff, and a confusing critical book about some abstract concept that uses popular references to try and explain its points. There’s mythology, horror, academia, and the kind of contemporary American novel where everybody takes so many drugs you lose track. House of Leaves is worth reading, though perhaps not in a day.

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(As apparent here, my secondhand copy has the added uncanny fact that it has a huge mysterious wave/dent running through it.)

Why reread?

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To reread or not to reread is one of the biggest issues book lovers can face. Rereading takes up time you could be reading any of the millions of books out there, so it can seem inefficient and a kick in the eye to the pile of unread books on the shelf. I begin with the caveat that at the moment I am not rereading very much because Goodreads won’t accept my rereads as part of my year’s books and I’m trying to double my year’s challenge on there and read 100 by the end of 2016. However, I do like to reread and am going to explain why.

Firstly, rereading allows you to savour details that you missed the first time, to take in foreshadowing and hints that didn’t make sense originally, and to generally enjoy elements that an initial read may not have caught. Books are long and full of words, so it is unlikely that a single read will allow you to notice them all. For favourite books especially, rereading a few times can really cement its merits in your mind and allow you to think about it whenever you want.

For the books that were less than favourites, rereading can allow for new perspectives. Maybe with time, knowledge, or experience, that hated book will seem a little better. For example, I recommend anyone who hated Frankenstein to try it again, especially literature students who know anything about the Romantics or gothic novels. It can improve massively (my best friend is a graduate student who studies the Romantics and the 18th century and loves Mary Shelley, but she didn’t like it when she first read it).

On the other hand, if you dare to reread a book you really hated, you also might be certain that you hate it, and with that remembrance have a better picture of its flaws to complain to people about or get into arguments about. Admittedly not the best form of rereading unless you’re someone who loves debating books with people.

For students, rereading can be very useful for having new things to say about texts. For general readers, it can enlighten or make books more enjoyable. So go and reread your favourite books, whether that means experiencing the prose style of Lolita again or giving the Harry Potter series another run through in case you missed an extra word or line about your favourite character.

Czech It Out

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Firstly, I’m sorry about that pun. Secondly, I’m here to recommend some Czech books, which were in turn recommended (and given) to me by my friend Marcela, who deserves the credit for that. It can be difficult to discover literature from countries not your own without recommendations, so I was lucky to be given some Czech books (in translation, as I know only a few words of Czech) and had the chance to find out about their context. All three books were quite different and I suggest to pick the one that appeals to you most to start off with.

  • How I Came To Know Fish (1974) by Ota Pavel – This memoir of Pavel’s childhood in Czechoslovakia during the Second World War doesn’t sound from this introduction like it would be a sweet, nostalgic story of fishing and family, but it is. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it turned out to be a quick, intriguing read that gives an unexpected viewpoint and the kind of story not often told. It is easily available in translation from Penguin’s ‘Central European Classics’ range, too, and is apparently popular for its nostalgic view of the rural past. Good for anybody interested in social history or looking for something insightful but not too intense.
  • The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984) by Milan Kundera – By far the most famous on this list (and the only one I had previously heard of), Kundera’s novel is famous for its philosophical slant which gives it a fairly imposing reputation. However, The Unbearable Lightness of Being is much more readable than its reputation implies, a novel of love and tangled up lives with the backdrop of Communist occupation. The characters, whilst consciously created by the narrator and described as such, are also intriguing in what they stand for and how they view love and commitment. A novel full of both rich detail and metafictional awareness of the acts of writing and thinking, this is a book to get stuck into. Kundera’s fame means that this is also easy to buy in bookshops or find in libraries. Great for people who like novels that make you think, and also fans of books such as Nineteen Eighty Four or Steppenwolf.
  • Saturnin (1942) by Zdeněk Jirotka – The most fun of the three, Saturnin is a comic novel about the narrator and his strange manservant Saturnin. Their adventures are a kind of mundane-bizarre that is very enjoyable and there are classic comedy side characters such as a money-loving aunt who speaks in maxims. The fact it is in translation does not detract from the humour and in fact it’s a fascinating blend of a Jeeves-like character with Czech writing. The copy I have is a beautifully illustrated hardback one which is well worth it as it is beautiful. For anyone who likes comedy of manners, absurd situations, and well-meaning interfering servants.

Marlovian tales: The School of Night by Peter Whelan

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Christopher Marlowe, playwright, poet, and probable Elizabethan spy, is the perfect kind of historical figure to include in fiction. The information about his life is both striking and mysterious, with unexplained gaps of time and a suspicious death. Peter Whelan’s play The School of Night is one of many fictionalisations of Marlowe and doesn’t do anything particularly notable, but that doesn’t stop it being enjoyable.

First performed in 1992 and thus predating the publication of Anthony Burgess’ fantastic A Dead Man in Deptford, The School of Night features Kit Marlowe at Thomas Walsingham’s home in Scadbury, attempting to influence life with dramatic performance. For Marlowe fans, the characters are familiar: Marlowe, Thomas Kyd, Thomas Walsingham and his wife Audrey, Walter Raleigh, and the infamous men surrounding Marlowe’s death, Frizer, Poley and Skeres. Questions of religion, scandal, and betrayal haunt the plot, again no surprise to anyone with familiarity of Marlowe’s biography.The interactions between the characters and the play’s dialogue are what particularly help to make it stand out, combining literary and historical references with the kind of sixteenth century intellectual banter that draws you into the world.

 As with many fictional Marlowe works, Whelan inevitably is drawn towards the Shakespeare question, weaving the more famous poet into the narrative and playing around with the claims that Marlowe either wrote Shakespeare’s works or was in deep competition with them whilst he lived. Whilst Whelan’s version manages to keep elements of this enigmatic, the plot requires the big Shakespeare question that Burgess was wise to sidestep in his novel about Marlowe. Luckily, Marlowe is written as a big enough character to keep himself central in his own narrative.

The School of Night is a worthwhile read for Marlowe fans, because unlike some other fictional versions of the playwright (for example, Tamburlaine Must Die) this one is solidly written and gets in all the major details or possible details of his life. For those more familiar with works centred on Shakespeare, the play may illuminate more about Marlowe the bit character in Shakespeare’s real/fictional life (though I’d recommend reading Park Honan’s biography of Marlowe too as the play format does not leave space for historical detail or elaboration).

Holiday Gift Books 2: The ‘Lighter-but-still-a-bit-cynical’ Read

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2016 has been quite a year for most. The list of ‘negative things that happened in 2016’ is too long to fit here and also unnecessary, as undoubtably everywhere will be compiling lists as their ‘best of the year’ features quickly turn into ‘worst of the year’ features (my personal recommendation is to watch Charlie Brooker’s annual take on the year, 2016 Wipe, which if previous years are anything to go by, will be bitter and depressing, but with the kind of realistic hope possible from a cynical comedy take on events).

As gifts go, 2016 wouldn’t be great. Instead, here’s some lighter reads, but not those that are overly schmalzy, twee, or mundane. Books that offer a bit of a smile, hopefully, but also don’t patronise you by trying to claim that everything is rosy.

  • America Unchained by Dave Gorman – Gorman is a comedian who currently has a very good show airing on Dave (the channel, I know it’s confusing), but I first knew of him through his books. When recently rereading America Unchained, it was clear to me that his account of a challenge to get from coast to coast in America without using the big chain companies, a journey beset with problems and the signs of an unchained world quickly disappearing, is still relevant today. As well as this, it is touching and funny and provided me with a look at parts of America you don’t always see on TV.
  • ‘Campus Trilogy’ by David Lodge – This trilogy that aren’t quite a trilogy, namely Changing Places, Small World, and Nice Work, are novels set on university campuses in Britain and America, featuring a lot of jokes about the disheartening side of academia (bear in mind these are quite dated now so even more disheartening) and confusions between British people and the rest of the world, particularly the USA. Particularly good to buy for English students/ex-English students who will understand both the literary jokes and the questions of what the hell to do with an English degree.
  • Spectacles by Sue Perkins – I’m not usually a famous person autobiography person unless that person is a writer with a tendency to write themselves into their works anyway (Isherwood and Burgess, I’m looking at you), but my mum leant me this and having got into Bake Off this year, I thought I’d give it a go. It’s a funny memoir with lots of self-deprecation and stories about dogs. There’s also a strangely accurate description of what its like to go to Oxbridge and have people tell you to make sure you don’t end up ‘going posh’ by the experience.

Holiday Gift Books 1: The ‘You Have To Have Read It’

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Books are a great gift, perfect for reading, keeping, sharing, and leaving on a shelf tactfully for years. However, sometimes buying books as presents can be tricky, with so many options vying for your attention and the easy tendency to get lost in a bookshop daze until you become convinced that your horror-hating friend really needs a set of Stephen King novels.

There are usually plenty of gift guides around, suggesting new releases and fancy hardbacks. Tables of novelty gift books, colouring books, cookery books, and TV tie-in books are all very well if the person in question likes something they are themed around, but what if you just want to give them a good read? I’m compiling a few lists of ideas, based around categories that you might think of when looking for ideas. The first is the ‘You Have To Have Read It’ book, those books that are often talked about and make great presents for the fact that they are genuinely very good.

  • The Secret History by Donna Tartt – A classic ‘can’t put down’ novel from the early 90s, a time when university students didn’t have mobile phones so could genuinely drive all over town looking for each other, as they do in Tartt’s book. Simply described as ‘eccentric classics students go somewhat crazy’, The Secret History is both very well written and very enjoyable to read, with a hilariously unreliable narrator and seemingly mysterious characters. Buy for students to remind them they’ve not resorted to murder yet or for pretentious people who will want to be the characters, regardless of how terrible they are.
  • The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde – The play for anyone who has read a few quotations by Oscar Wilde and wants to see that wit in action. A ridiculous comedy about late Victorian society and perfect for getting anyone into reading drama, as it is quick paced, funny, and has a fairly small cast of characters to keep up with.
  • The Humans by Matt Haig – The sort of book you’ve probably seen in bookshops and had people recommend to you, if you’ve not read it. A novel about being out of place and seeing everyone else as ‘other’, it is touching and funny and would make a perfect gift for both avid readers and people who are less into books. Or if you want to buy for someone who has already read it, go for Haig’s The Radleys, which is a similar kind of book but about suburban vampires.
  • Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh – Whilst not traditionally a book you’d give at Christmas, Trainspotting is a fantastic book and a great gift for those who need their next challenging, edgy book or teenagers who want their fiction dark whilst still funny at times. Also, with the second film coming out in the new year, it’s a perfect time to read the novel.

Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood

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Brave New World, Brave Old Questions: Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood

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What does it mean to adapt Shakespeare? Margaret Atwood’s contribution to the Hogarth Shakespeare series, a take on The Tempest titled after an insulting name for Caliban, asks this question, with knowledge that it is a old question without an easy answer. When discussing previous novels in the series, I have pointed out how many reworkings of Shakespeare there have been and how these end up inevitably compared with each other. Hag-Seed is open to comparison for sure.

For starters, comparisons with the Canadian TV series Slings & Arrows are beyond obvious. Hag-Seed is also set in the world of Shakespeare festivals, breakdowns, and life imitating art. In both, actors and directors fail to see the divide between the play and the world, inhabiting a certain famous line of Shakespeare’s. Reworking Shakespeare often requires this sense that Shakespeare’s world can easily bleed into ours, as is required in Atwood’s novel to engage the inmate actors.

Hag-Seed also focuses upon the use of Shakespeare in prison rehabilitation, a subject discussed both academically and in theatrical productions like the Donmar’s current trilogy (which also uses The Tempest). However, in Hag-Seed the rehabilitation is more focused upon the central character of Felix than the prisoners who, while important, do not learn as much as the grief and revenge stricken man who teaches and directs them.

Atwood’s method of combining performance of The Tempest with a man who – delusional or not – sees himself as a version of Prospero creates a metanarrative about trying to fit Shakespeare to particular purposes that ultimately ends up more ambivalent than perhaps to be expected. It is true that the plot concludes in keeping with the ending of The Tempest, but the play is also something that must be broken away from, with Felix needing to relinquish his version of his dead daughter Miranda. The actors imagine afterlives for their characters, performing more reworkings suggesting how Shakespeare can be full of possibility.

The novel is both enjoyable and at moments a touching look at grief, but also feels in some ways to be a comment on the Hogarth series: full of literary references winking to those in the know, but also questioning the usefulness of projecting Shakespeare onto everything. A late written play that questions genre and all-mighty authorial power, The Tempest can be both a strange and an engaging play. Like The Tempest, Hag-Seed questions what comes before it but also uses these tropes and expectations. Felix’s plot involving the play may seem contrived, but it has to work, because it works in The Tempest.

Miss Treadway and the Field of Stars

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I won a copy of this upcoming book in a Goodreads giveaway recently and I have written up a proper review on the site, so if you’re interested in detailed comments or other details, it’s here. Over here, however, I’m going to do a quick fun review.

Miss Treadway and the Field of Stars by Miranda Emmerson is a mystery about a missing actress and the woman trying to find her, set in 1960s London. Read if you like:

  • diverse, interesting cast of characters
  • well-written London
  • not romanticising the past but looking at problems within the plot
  • the BBC tv series The Hour, especially when in series 2 they won’t stop saying Vice
  • fairly light but not shying away from big issues type fiction
  • the kind of accuracy that means the 68 bus does indeed go via Elephant and Castle to Tulse Hill

Digital Competitiveness

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Book vs e-reader debates have become so boring and pointless that it would be preferable to read the terms and conditions of joining the Kindle Store* to read anything about whether the page or the screen will prevail in the battle of How To Read™. I am not here to get involved in this: I am happy to use both and for people to read in whatever way is convenient to them. I am here to discuss a specifically e-reader phenomenon that happens when I use mine.

Before that, I must note the weird fact that I constantly forget I own a Kindle. I’ve had one for nearly two years and I forget for months at a time that I own one. This fact perhaps makes this phenomenon more pronounced, as reading on an e-reader is something I don’t do every day. Somehow, I have not developed a sense of Kindle object permanence, like a baby with an impressive reading age.

The phenomenon I am talking about is reading competitiveness – with myself. When I read physical books, I have a tendency to vaguely track how I’m doing, page-wise. At some point near the start of my reading a book, I will look and see how many pages it has, then throughout the book will occasionally pause to think ‘oh look, a quarter of the way through’ or ‘over two thirds now!’. With an e-reader, or at least on my basic Kindle, there is a percentage at the bottom of the screen. A dangerous percentage.

This week I have read three books on my Kindle: Atwood’s MaddAddam, the vampire novella Carmilla, and a music memoir called I Blame Morrissey. Each book, of differing lengths, genres, and styles, was read by me as if I was in competition with the Kindle. I even chose Carmilla from my to-read collection because it was short and easily achieved. My eye could not stop looking at that percentage. Past 75% I knew I was on the home straight and would speed up even more. In short, I have a problem.

What is weird is that I am not a competitive person. I quite recently was beaten six games in a row in Trivial Pursuit by my best friend and I did not care, just enjoying playing. I am the kind of person who is willing to let other, competitive people win if that might be good for them (and I like them, of course). Against my Kindle, however, I am determined. And I wonder if anyone else becomes competitive at the sight of that little percentage, goading you into reading a little more, a little faster. Trying to win at reading.

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*Note: The terms and conditions of joining the Kindle Store could be thrilling: I, like everybody else, have never read them.

Acceptable in the 1580s: novels set in the late 16thC

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The late sixteenth century isn’t exactly an unheard of time: Shakespeare, Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots, the Spanish Armada, Walter Raleigh, playhouses, tobacco…there was a fair amount going on. And they wrote plenty of literature too, about, well, all of those things, plus devils and murder and magic, which admittedly either did happen or some people believed did happen at the time. Novels set in the period also tend to be full of these things, plus people drinking a lot of beer and speaking random Latin.

This isn’t to be disparaging. I love books set around 1570-1600. Here are some recommendations in varied styles and genres, so I can convince others of my favourite time period.

  • A Dead Man in Deptford by Anthony Burgess – Burgess’ novel may well be the book I recommend the most. His last novel, it is in my opinion his best: the story of Christopher Marlowe, infamous playwright and possible spy, also infamous lover of tobacco and boys. Rather than get bogged down with infamy, though, Burgess plays around with words, historical accuracy, and what is acceptable to say in public in 1590. Read if you like blasphemy and cat puns.
  • The Sword of Albion by Mark Chadbourn – A three part series called Swords of Albion, this is the combination of historical fiction, spy thriller, and fantasy series involving the Unseelie Court. Will Swyfte is the most famous spy in Elizabethan England and he knows it. The supporting characters really make this series and the magical plotlines are tightly woven with historical events. Plus Marlowe is a character in the first two, and if you hadn’t guessed from my first recommendation, that’s a major selling point for me.
  • Hue & Cry by Shirley McKay – For those who prefer a gripping plot, this mystery is the right choice. Set in Scotland, it tells a story of scandal and murder in the town and university, plus an appearance from the young James VI and a troublesome horse. The characters and rich historical draw you in as much as the plot, making this a great way to immerse yourself in the sixteenth century and then forget that you can’t start offering people weird herbs and seeds to cure illnesses once you’ve left the novel.