In the meantime, 84 Charing Cross Road popped up in two quite unrelated discussions during the last week. So guess what I reread yesterday? My paperback copy has The Dutchess of Bloomsbury Street in the same volume, so that’ll be my reading for tonight. After that, it’s back to the search for the perfect book about Scotland. Only eleven days to go before I will be there myself.
Forfatter: Mirthful
The King is Dead – Sarah Shankman
In which we’re somewhat lonesome tonight.
A little sick of unsatisfying travelling companions, I followed Native Stranger with a Sarah Shankman (her of I Still Miss my Man but my Aim is getting Better fame) novel I picked up in Fjærland called The King is Dead. It’s a sort of a crime novel, and very entertaining. It reminded me, not only of how much of my reading has concentrated on the British Isles, but how much of what isn’t British is set in either the midwest (Minnesota and such) or in the Pacific north-west (Oregon, Washington, British Columbia). The southern themes of Shankman’s novels feel almost alien at times (what with all the Elvis impersonators, it almost is). The dialect certainly is. I also find myself getting the characters mixed up because of the similarity (to me) of their names, as if they were all called Billy-Sue and Billy-Bob (though, in fact, there wasn’t a single Billy). I hadn’t realised before quite how the regional nature of names actually affects the «feel» of a story. It’s the literal equivalent of «all chinese people look identical» – a fallacy which is true only in cases of unfamiliarity (did that make any sense whatsoever?). Whatever. I want to read more Shankman. I also want to read more «Southern» books, once I get over this Scottish phase. It was a timely reminder of how large (and diverse) the North American continent is. I have been thinking that I ought to read more books not written in English. Evidently, I ought likewise to consider some of those traditions in English literature that I have obviously been ignoring.
So much to read, so little time.
Notes and natives
In which we look for travelling companions.
Following Faintheart, I succumbed and reread Bill Bryson’s Notes from a Small Island, despite the fact that very little of it concerns Scotland (Scotland being the topic I’m supposed to be covering). It really is an excellent book. I think one of the reasons I like Bryson som much is that he’s as batty about Britain as I am. And in precisely the same way, too. We may complain about the plumbing (or ask «What plumbing? You mean they have plumbing?») and we may be bewildered by bus queues and picnics on the beach in a gale, but we love even the plumbing and the queues and the picnics, simply because Britain wouldn’t be Britain without them. (Cue the librarian walking into a B&B and exclaiming with delight: «Look! Separate taps for hot and cold water!» though if someone suggested she install such a system at home she’d be horrified, naturally, just think of the impracticality!) Which doesn’t mean that Bryson likes every place he visits, and it certainly doesn’t mean he doesn’t say some pretty cutting (though mainly quite funny) things about people and places, but at least you get the feeling that, on the whole, he actually likes travelling. What a nice change from Mr. Jennings.
I then ventured on Native Stranger, my other haul from amazon. This one is written by a Scot (his name, in fact, is Alastair Scott), and is as much an examination of how history has affected the Scottish mind and the Scottish landscape as it is about travelling, as such. I learnt a lot. On the whole, a very interesting account, but again, I found something lacking. I have no reason to think that Scott did not enjoy his trek, he seems interested in the people and places he meets, but the contrast to Bryson is there: he doesn’t convey any enthusiasm to the reader. Bryson can make me want to go places I had never even contemplated before. Having read Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods, only a strong dose of self-discipline kept me from packing my bags set off to walk the Appalachian trail just as soon as I could find a travel agency willing to sell me an airplane ticket. In fact, I was this close to just up and walking there, I was in Detroit at the time and it seemed like the experience would be worth a walk across a couple of states…
So I guess maybe that’s what I am missing. I am missing the ability in the author to make me sigh «I wish I were there too!» Not, like Jennings, «I wish I were there instead!» I want the author to give me the impression that I would like him/her as a travelling companion, and I guess a measure of enthusiasm is one of my prerequisites for travelling companions. And with that in mind, statements like these put me off:
«Lunchtime would se me turn Viking, invading a grocer and pillaging milk, pies, cheese, bananas and Mars Bars; and stocking up with Cup a soups, tuna and spaghetti for the evening. My diet seldom varied. Since I began travelling the taste of food has ceased to have much importance and my tolerance for monotony usually lasts a journey.»
Fine, so food isn’t the be-all and end-all (at least, interesting food isn’t) of life in general or travelling in particular, but one of the joys of travelling is to sit down to a good meal at the end of the day, with a good companion (a person or a book, I don’t mind either way). Or to have a picnic consisting of slightly dry bread and flat fizzy water on a cliff in a downpour. The food doesn’t have to be good, but it has to be part of the experience. I don’t know. Somehow, that one comment about food set the mood of the whole book for me. I never got in tune with the author after that.
Still, as a grounding in Scottish history and modern sensibilities it was a good read, not to be sneezed at.
Bill Bryson, if you ever read this (I don’t know why you should, but if you do), please, please, please write a ‘Notes from a Small Island 2’, and spend a little more time in Scotland and a little more in Wales.
Faintheart – Charles Jennings
In which we advise the author to stay at home next time.
I finally got hold of a couple of travelogues of Scotland of the sort I was looking for – thanks, yet again, to amazon – and started Charles Jennings’ Faintheart on my way to Stryn last week. It’s pretty entertaining, but still, I am far from satisfied.
It’s very funny in parts, his description of sheep, for example: «a sheep wandering across the road looks somewhere between a big dirty hairy dog and a maggot on stilts». He also made me want to visit the Glasgow Necropolis, a «non-denominational ‘hygenic’ graveyard» in Glasgow like Pere Lachaise in Paris. So what’s the problem?
Well, the exact problem is a bit hard to nail down, but I get the feeling that it is all slightly pointless, somehow. It’s not so much that he doesn’t have a «purpose», like, I don’t know, travelling around the coast of Britain counter-clockwise, and that this makes him move around in a rather unstructured way. I have no quarrels with a little well-applied randomness. And it’s not that he doesn’t have a specific purpose for going to Scotland, like, I don’t know, drinking a measure of scotch in every pub called Mac-something, either. You shouldn’t need a purpose to travel anywhere. It’s more that he gives the impression that the only reason he’s in Scotland in the first place is that he’s decided to write A Travel Book, and then picked a piece of paper with «Scotland» on it out of a hat. He doesn’t seem to want to be there. That’s it. Much of the time he really seems like he would much rather be somewhere else. Like back in the office London. What sort of idiot would rather be back in an office in London than travelling around in Scotland, even if it’s raining? And if he would really rather not be there, why doesn’t he just go home? Find another country to write a travelogue from? Write a completely different sort of book? Why can’t I be in Scotland instead of this embittered and whiny journalist? And if he actually does want to be there, and is enjoying himself, why does he keep giving the impression that he is constantly disappointed and/or depressed?
Another thing that left me unsatisfied is that there is virtually no contact with people. If you read the bit about Two Feet, Four Paws, you’ll remember that I chastisised myself for being unreasonable in craving contact with people in Spud’s case. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect just a little human intereaction from Jennings, though. After all, he spends most of his time in pretty populated places. He goes to several pubs, for example (though he finds most of them dismal – why doesn’t he move on? Don’t tell me there are no nice pubs in Scotland, because I won’t believe you), and we are treated to some delighful conversations – but they are conversations he overhears, he never dares involve himself at all.
Still, I like the bit about the sheep.
I Still Miss my Man, but my Aim is Getting Better – Sarah Shankman
In which we go south.
Just finished Sarah Shankman’s I Still Miss my Man, but my Aim is Getting Better. It has to be one of the best book titles ever, which is a bit of a pity in way because it leaves the poor little book a lot to live up to. And it doesn’t quite manage. That said, it’s highly entertaining. The novel’s set in Nashville, and centres on Shelby, who’s left her good-for-nothing husband to come there to make it big as a songwriter. Take an ex-husband who just doesn’t understand the phrase «it’s over», add at least three jealousy-dramas, a crookster with nothing to loose, a kidnapping, an old star who’s been in hiding for 30 years, rather a lot of Smith & Wessons and kitchen knives and two angels, one good, one bad, who have their separate ideas of how the story would best turn out, and you’ve got yourself a rippin’ good yarn. I can think of worse ways to spend a Sunday afternoon. And now, pretty much inevitably, I’m listening to Patsy Cline and wondering whether I can get hold of These Boots are made for Walking.
Kingdom by the Sea – Paul Theroux
In which we sigh deeply.
Well, I read the chapters on Scotland in Paul Theroux’s Kingdom by the Sea. I would have read the whole thing, except when I went to get it from the shelf I was of the impression that I had read maybe the first couple of chapters, and then I found my bookmark (receipt for lunch at the Red Lion in Arundel) more than half the way through. So I figured if it was no more memorable than that then I certainly couldn’t be bothered to read more than the pertinent 3 or 4 chapters.
This book is celebrated as a «classic» in travel literature. The blurb on my copy calls it: «His candid and compulsive account of a journey round the coast of Great Britain.» Well, I obviuosly didn’t find it compulsive the last time I tried it, and I can’t say it has improved on me much. And is he candid? They’re not asking much, are they? Ok, so he says «I came to hate Aberdeen more than any place I saw» and calls it «an awful city». I dunno, maybe he was the first one to do this sort of thing (were travel writers embarrassingly positive about everything they saw before Theroux?), and maybe he’s just lost some oumph in comparison with his contemporary colleagues?
Still searching for that elusive travelogue from Scotland that will really make me feel that I want to be where the author is, eat in the cafe he/she eats in, scale the same mountain. Theroux was not it.
Two Feet, Four Paws, walking the dog 4,500 miles – Spud Talbot-Ponsonby
In which we walk and then walk some more.
I’ve just finished Spud’s book (Spud Talbot-Ponsonby being a bit more of a mouthful, and I’ve been on first-name basis with her throughout the book) – Two Feet, Four Paws, walking the dog 4,500 miles. Though very enjoyable, and definitely recommended, it left something to be wished as a travel journal. It’s not Spud’s fault, really (nor is it Tess’, the dear thing), in a way it’s mostly my fault, as I was looking for quite a different sort of book when I picked this up.
The story is, of necessity, a bit «rushed». Covering ten months’ walking in a overcomable number of pages is bound to leave the reader feeling out of breath, we are never allowed the time to linger for much more than a paragraph before being hurried on a few more miles along the coast. To me, this was equally unsatisfying for the places I knew nothing about, but wanted more information on, such as the Scottish towns that I will have the chance to see in September, and the places I know fleetingly or intimately from having been there myself; Blackpool, Llandudno, Aberystwyth, St. David’s (which would be pure bliss if there was just one pub with decent food), Carmarthen, Swansea, Burnham-on-Sea, St. Ives, Mousehole, Penzance (Janne and I walked the stretch from Penzance to Mousehole in the driving rain at New Year), Falmouth (where we anchored the yacht for the night and I was nearly drowned by rain – again), not to mention the stretch from Rustington to Shoreham-by-Sea, where I’ve walked and cycled so much I no longer know which bits I haven’t covered, and finally Hove and Brighton (with the delapidated West Pier, which in many ways is better worth a roll of film than it’s neighbour which is still going strong) – they all passed in a blur, and I wanted to grab Spud’s sleave and make her slow – if not her steps, then at least her narration.
On the other hand, just reading about walking made me want to walk. Solvitur ambulando, it is solved by walking, is a phrase Spud repeats, and how well do I know what she means. And if you can walk with the sea on your left (or right, frankly, I don’t care which), then so much the better.
As a guide to Scotland, of course, it wasn’t much good, but then it’s a bit unfair to expect that just because that was what I was originally looking for when I went to the bookstore. It’s like picking up War and Peace and expecting to find Dorothy Parker (or vice versa). Another thing I, quite unreasonably, missed was contact with people. The thing that makes travel literature come to life for me is anecdotes of «meeting the natives», in a book about a girl and a dog walking a largely solitary coastline is unlikely to produce much of that (though what little there was was worth reading the rest of the book for, even had it not been worth it for other reasons).
Update
(Here is one I prepared earlier, i.e. last night:) This is not good. The diary seems to be stopping me from updating this reading log (would that be a rlog or a glog, I wonder?). I will try to improve the frequency, especially because this is going to have to be some post to get me up to date…
Hornblower… Finished the series. Thought once again what a pity it was that there are only 10 books. Reflected that I am glad there are 20 Aubrey/Maturin books (O’Brian), especially since they are infinitely better than Forester’s books, although there should have been more. There should always be more books, good ones, that is.
Read some more Sayers. Thrones, Dominations arrived, so I dropped everything to read that. Kjetil was a bit miffed, as he was visiting that week, and I became rather engrossed. Lovely book. I don’t think I would have noticed that it wasn’t all Sayers’ work if I hadn’t known (it was finished by Jill Paton Walsh), and also suspect that the bits I did wonder at were probably Sayers’ own. At least considering JPW’s statement that the majority of the letters she’s had saying «that’s not the way Sayers would have wanted it» actually referred to Sayers’ own passages.
And, of course, I’ve been reading No Logo. It really is highly recommended. Even if you don’t want to get involved in actual activism, and even if a boycott of all the brands that deserve being boycotted is virtually impossible (unless you start producing everything yourself), knowing why others become activists and exercising a little bit of consumer awareness when shopping is no bad thing. And if you think, as I vaguely did, that the main focus of the book is the exploitation of the «third world», you really should read it. The main impression I am left with is that the so-called globalisation is not only an economic and ecological threat, first and foremost it is a cultural threat. Corporate thinking is taking over our cultural space. That can’t be good. Read the book!
On a lighter note, I got hold of India Knight’s (my favourite columnist) new novel, Don’t You Want Me. It is a vast improvement on her first, My Life on a Plate, and that is very good, so this is rockin’. The most enoyable parts of Don’t You Want Me are, in fact, the parts that are most like her columns, rants of various kinds on any topic that happens to be remotely related to the plot. There are also a couple of hilarious scenes when the main character takes her toddler to an extremely PC playgroup. I suspect, however, that the reason I liked it so much more than the first one, is that this has a perfectly happy ending of the «and they lived happily ever after» sort. I like happy endings.
The new job gives me plenty of bus-time to read. It makes up for the fact that getting to work now takes 45-50 minutes instead of 20-30. So I read Populärmusik från Vittula on the bus. Risky stuff, as it’s of LOL quality, and that sort of thing tends to startle the other passengers. Apart from being side-achingly funny, it is a very enjoyable book on many levels (though enjoyable might be the wrong word, it’s rather tragic in a way), and fully deserves all the attention that’s been lavished on it in the Scandinavian media lately (and how often does that happen?).
This weekend I read Arthemis Fowl, after having put it off for ages, thinking I probably wouldn’t like it much. I finally caved in (due to the «what to read while waiting for Harry Potter 5» hype), hoping to be proved wrong. Unfortunately, I wasn’t. It’s decently written, but suffers from a severe lack of likeable characters. People talk about Harry Potter being immoral and bad for children, well, what about a twelve-year-old criminal mastermind? How moral is that. Ok, so he loves his mother and he has a soft spot, preferring not to kill people (or fairies), but that really does not make him sympathetic. And the other characters aren’t much better. By the end of the story I was rooting for something to go wrong and blow up and kill everyone involved so the rest of the world could get on with it, and good riddance. NOT a book I will put on my «what to recommend to children (of any age)» list (notice that I have NOT linked to this book).
I’ve also read, of all things, a couple of so-called «erotic classics», The Story of O, which was more disturbing than erotic, really, and Uten en tråd (Jens Bjørneboe). I can see why the latter caused a stir when it was published in the latter half of the 60ies, but in a way I also wonder at it, because it is so obviously written to provoke. I thought I’d read Mykle next, the other serious Norwegian author tried in court for publishing obscene/pornographic material. Unlike Bjørneboe, Mykle apparently was caught unawares by the hullaballoo, he was simply trying to write good literature. Hopefully that will mean the books are better worth reading, and possibly have an actual plot (I like plots).
This Saturday saw me on the prowl for more Saxegaard books, and I had amazing luck at one of the second-hand book-shops at Majorstua, where I found the last Ina-book, Ina og Ingolf (which means I’m now down to missing only four Ina books to complete the collection). Obviously, that’s what I read Saturday evening.
I’m sure I’ve left something out, this doesn’t actually seem like a lot for one-and-a-half month’s reading. I’ve watched a lot of television, though (bad girl!), and I’ve read at least one trashy romance of average quality (no, I’m not going to tell you the title, there’s no point, they’re pretty much all the same anyway).
Right now I’m in one of those «too many books at once» moods, where I have a hard time settling down to one book, because there’s so many others I’d like to be reading at the same time. Consequently, I read a chapter of one and then swap to another one and then back and then to a third, and sometimes end up just turning the television on instead (which is quite stupid, really, as that’s just going to postpone the finishing of the books further). Anyhow, I am currently in the middle of the following:
Two Feet, Four Paws, the travelogue by a girl, Spud, who, with her dog, Tess, walked the coastline of Britain in order to raise money for Shelter. Very enjoyable, though I have not yet come to Scotalnd, which was what I was looking for when I bought the book (trying to read as much about Scotland as I can before I go in September).
The Port-Wine Sea, by Susan Wenger, fellow O’Brian fan and member of the Gunroom – the book being a parody on the beloved series. Immensely satisfying.
Hele verden er min, Annik Saxegaard – another of Saturday’s finds.
Big Chief Elizabeth, by Giles Milton, is reminding me why I so seldom read history. Despite being avidly interested in the subject, I tend to find «proper» history books too heavy going (remember I do a lot of reading on the bus and such places), on the other hand, «popularisations» like this are just too lightweight – I keep looking for more depth, more source references, more detail, more critical reflection (not PC condemnation of anything resembling racism and sweeping generalisations).
Sangen om den røde rubin (Song of the Red Ruby), Agnar Mykle – as mentioned above, I’m only a few pages in, though, so no opinions to vent yet.
Those, as well as several others, including Min son fäktas mot världen by Björn Ranelid, which I stranded in half-way through sometime around Christmas and still really want to finish (I was enjoying it before I got stuck), but can’t quite work up enthusiasm for. We’ll see. I’ve also got the Chaim Potok biography by Abramson on the table, and I want to get started on it in order to write a proper Potok page for the bookshelves – there is very little good information on Potok on the web, and I feel I ought to at least try to remedy it somewhat.
Updates will (probably) follow once any (or all) are finished.
Ahem
Nicolette’s right, I haven’t been very good at keeping this up to date lately. Lots of other stuff going on… But she is also wrong, I haven’t had time to read that much, having visitors (ahem) sort of slows me down a bit. However, I finished Potok’s The Book of Lights, which is a facinating story – and such lovely language. It deals with a son’s feeling of guilt for «the sins of the father», and, as always with Potok, the difficulty of finding one’s place in the world.
I also read most of Lord Peter, which is the collected short-stories about LPW – I had read some of them earlier, so I read all the «new» ones and reread some of the others. I’ll take my hat off to DLS any day, her skill at evoking real live characters is more than admirable, in fact, I can think of few authors who outdo her, and none within the limits of «genre writing».
At the moment I’m rereading the Hornblower series – I’m about half-way through Lieutenant Hornblower right now, and it caused some confusion this morning when I excused my lateness with «I was in the middle of a battle at sea and got a bit distracted».
The Bookman’s Wake
In which we remember that we like books.
Finished The Bookman’s Wake by John Dunning last week. Lovely combination of whodunnit and book-about-books. The «detective», Cliff Janeway, is a retired cop who runs a second-hand bookstore, so anyone who’s into bookdealing (or buying) should love it. Of course, the crime is book related. It’s only the second in a series (the first is Booked to Die and is highly recommended, too), and though it’s from 1995 there do not seem to be any more. Grumble, grumble. Why do all (ok, maybe not all, but a helluva lot of) my favourite authors decide to stop writing the moment I start really liking their work?
Also finished The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club. Almost done with the Wimsey books, now. Well, «done» is not the right word, I suppose – I plan to reread them all shortly.