Libby's reading year: a quick catch up!

For someone so excited to write my first blog post I realise I have slipped under the radar recently but although I have not been blogging I have been reading as much as ever! This means I have three very different books to fill you in on.

The House by the Thames: and the People Who Lived There by Gillian Tindall

In my last post I promised that after reading The House By the Thames: and the People Who Lived There I would know all there is to know about the history of London. I feel that, although that was a slight oversight, I have definitely learnt a lot about 49 Bankside and that area through the ages.

49 Bankside and the small terrace of modest looking houses sits right up next to the millennium bridge, opposite St Paul's and in the shadow of the huge old power station which houses the Tate Modern. Having walked past those houses many times, I have long been curious about how they managed to survive and what kind of people live inside. The anecdotal history throughout this book is very interesting it explores the Tudor inn which once stood on the site, the boat men who carried passengers across the river to the theatres in Shakespeare's times and also the huge changes on Bankside at the time of the industrial revolution.

Sometimes in the past I have struggled to read non fiction; my love for novels springs from being able to immerse myself in a story and typically I did find some sections of this book more interesting than others. There is no denying that Tindall has done a brilliant job in creating a well written and accessible history and I wish I was as interested in the coal trade chapter as I was in the chapter describing the fire of 1666, but I am afraid that is probably more down to my short attention span than anything else.

I will feel inclined to bring my copy of The House by the Thames next time I am in that part of the city and use it as a sort of travel guide. There are definitely some particular anecdotes I think will stick in my head and others I would like to put in to context by giving Bankside a visit.

So, after my brief spell in the basement of the history section I decided to give myself a break back to fiction. With a novel which is also about a house....(drum roll)..

The Glass Room by Simon Mawer

I would like to start by saying that I loved this book. Much more than I thought I would after reading the first chapter, which I had to re-read having read the end. Set in Czechoslovakia in the late 1930s this novel revolves around the Landauer house: an innovative piece of modern architecture built for Liesel and Viktor Landauer by the architect Rainer before the gradual decline of their nation into war.

The novel is one about war, betrayal and attraction in a uniquely cold but beautiful setting. The glass house acts as a metaphor throughout the book- to begin with for the growth of the Landaur family and then, as the house passes hands from a laboratory for genetic experiments to a dance studio, for the cultural decline from decadence into war. The wholly believeable characters and the subtle way in which Mawer describes their precarious situation makes this a gripping, thought provoking read. Apparently the house in The Glass Room was based on a real historical landmark in former Czechoslovakia, which makes it even more fasinating for me. This is definitely a book that I would recommend and, although so far I have only read two, the best book I've read all year!

My next choice was made in a slight rush to avoid the prospect of a long train journey with nothing to read. I often find rash decisions are made in these circumstances but in this case I was sweetly surprised. I have gone from glass houses to glass..feet, strangely.

The Girl with Glass Feet by Ali Shaw

As the title suggest this book is about a girl whose feet are gradually turning into glass which she covers up with many layers of thick socks and some big policeman's boots. Set on a strange and in some ways magical small island, which we are led to believe, is somewhere in the very far

north.

The girl with glass feet, Ida, meets Midas a photographer come florist who is still coming to terms with his father's suicide and Henry Fuwa an obsessive science enthusiast who spends most of his day rearing mythical creatures which resemble tiny cows with wings. I really enjoyed both the lyrical fairytale descriptions and the subtle way in which Ida's transformation takes place. Even though the subject is obviously so fantastical the links with medicine and the modern day setting makes the glass feet thing almost matter of fact. The characters, too, are tragic but likable

and complex.

There are some beautiful parts to this novel which I really enjoyed and although I found the end chapters slightly over emotional for my tastes, (I don't want to say to much I case I give away spoilers!) This is an all round magical read once you ignore the cover which I think is way too girly and romantic.

I have already started my next read which, so far, I am very much enjoying. I will save that for

next time!

All NF and no F makes Lucinda a Dull Girl

Well, I'm poised to move onto the Science
shelf at Mr B's and have a fascinating title
lined up: Michael Brooks' 13 Things That
Don't Make Sense. Before I dive into that
mind-bending treat, I thought I'd pen a
few thoughts on my final 'holiday read'.
Everyone in the shop raves about spy
master Eric Ambler and has their own
favourite - but Uncommon Danger is
the one title none of us has read yet,
so I thought I'd give it a go.

Uncommon Danger features a stock
Ambler premise: an ordinary man finds
himself embroiled in the world of
espionage - this time, it's a journalist,
Kenton. His quick descent into the shadowy
underworld of spies is totally convincing and the pace of the unfolding drama is relentless. There are kidnappings, shootouts, bond-style death evasion and a tentative love interest who is
anything but token. The language occasionally reminds you that this was written in the 1930's and there are a couple of fantastical lucky breaks needed to move the plot on, but I'm happy to roll with this - plus, the premise that big business can occasionally dictate global politics remains disturbingly relevant. Kenton's constant reappraisal of himself, his principles and his capabilities is one of the most succinct pieces of character development I've read in ages. Plus, Ambler is pinpoint accurate with his descriptions which keeps the whole thing super-pacey. When we are told in the prologue that 'Mr Baltergehen twisted his lips slightly. It was his way of smiling,' in one line we know all we need to know. What a treat!

Oh please, not that one again...a list for bored parents everywhere (by Mrs B)

It would seem that organising bookselling at the Bath Lit Fest and bringing up a small child leaves little time for reading - at least not for reading books without rhyme, pictures or soggy-edged corners. The pitiful few pages I manage in a day mean my own reading plan is limping slowy along, awaiting the end of the festival.

In the meantime I go to bed and dream of plum pie in the sun, tigers who eat all the cakes and of lions who are too fierce and sent back to the zoo. I had hitherto been ignorant of just how intimately you get to know children's books as a parent. It doesn't matter how many books you have at home (and you can imagine, we're not short of a few), the same favourites are revisited again and again and then some more. And it's only when faced with such daily repetition that you fully realise the benefit of a great children's book.

So here are mine (and Miss B's) very personal favourites which are genuinely fantastic and which I am happy to read time and time again, and which I have not tried to hide away or pretend have gone to Grandma's house.

1. The Tiger Who Came to Tea - Judith Kerr. A true classic but one I didn't know as a child myself so am just as enamoured as Miss B with the wonderfully hungry, smiley tiger and the terribly polite Sophie and her mum and the trip out in the dark to the cafe for sausages and chips.

2. Green Eggs and Ham - Dr Seuss. Again, I wasn't read these as a child and hadn't appreciated just how fantastic they are. The fun fast rhymes are funny for an adult too and are just so different and wonderfully odd compared to most other books out there.

3. Papa Please Get the Moon for Me - Eric Carle. This lovely pop-up board book was given to us as a present when she was born and was the first book we read to her when she was just weeks old, lying wide-eyed on the bed staring up at the moon unfolding. I am sure it has fuelled her obsession with the moon ever since and we still read it as a perfect goodnight story. Gentle, sweet and beautiful words to match the pictures.

4. Bear on a Bike - Stella Blackstone. As bear goes off on his travels to the market, to an island, to the forest, to a castle on different forms of transport, this has been a hit with Miss B I think because of the bright colours with lots happening on each page and for me for the above-average rhyming sing-songy words which make it so much nicer to read than the dull-dull "that's not my..." style book.

5. Mr Magnolia by Quentin Blake. A recommendation by my friend Karen as her favourite book as a kid and we sell it by the dozen at Mr B's. Of course there are Blake's quirky illustrations but coupled with such a wonderfully simple and silly story of Mr Magnolia only having one boot throughout until someone thinks to buy him a new one at which the cast of characters all shout whooppee for Mr Magnolia's New Boot! It makes me smile every time.

6. Welcome to the Zoo by Alison Jay. A wordless book with lots of different scenes at the zoo all beautifully illustrated. Look more closely and you see each page is interconnected with the others, with stories flowing from one page to the next with lots of v funny touches clearly designed for parent readers - I am entertained by new little things every time in a remarkably sophisticated "where's wally" (but better) kind of way.

7. One Ted Fell Out of Bed by Julia Donaldson. This is a corker of a book for bed-time story to get them all sleepy and I honestly don't tire of the rhyming text, despite having read it pushing a hundred times. Ted falls out of bed and plays with all the dolls and in toy cars and trolls and floats up on balloons until he gets all sad and builds a staircase of building blocks to try to get back into bed with his sleeping owner.

8. Harry the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion. My personal favourite as a child - or at least the one I remember the most. An American classic about a dog who doesn't want a bath and runs away playing in lots of dirt and then needing a bath to get clean for his family to recognise him. Lots of trucks and trains, tunnels and then a warming cosy coming home story with fabulous illustrations from the 60s.

9. Each Peach Pear Plum by Allan Ahlberg. Of course. Can't imagine this not being on every parent's top 10 list. Every inch of this is perfect - the clever, sweet rhymes all referencing other children's tales, the intricate, homely comforting illustrations with touches of humour and

of course it heavily features plum pie which surely makes everyone's belly feel warm.

10. A Squash and a Squeeze by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. This is my favourite from the array of great books by this duo where a lady thinks her house is too small until she has to share it with various animals.

Mrs B.x

Lucinda's Reading Challenge 2011: Psychology

I'm fighting jet lag but just had to

pen a couple of thoughts about

Richard Sennett's ace book
The Craftsman. Even the cover
is fab (and drew the custom
official's eye when my bags
were searched at the airport!)

The good news is that this is the
first of a trilogy that Sennett is
writing about the philosophy of

material culture. This first

instalment is all about how we

perceive craftsmanship and

the lengths we go to to improve

the things we make. Richard Sennett

sees craftsmanship everywhere: in the honing of a piece of Linux code as much as in a piece of Ancient Greek pottery (where makers' marks started to become an important aspect of the finished article).

There are specific discussions about how we experiment and engage repetition to improve our craft - including some really interesting sections on violin fingering techniques, left and right hand jazz piano practice and glass blowing. It's fascinating to consider that the Craftsman will change his physiology through practice to perfect technique.

Biology and science in general, however, don't have all the answers. I found it rather romantic that science still can't come up with an answer as to why a Stradivarius sounds so good and why musicians can spot a replica every time. This intangibility of expertise means that the demise of the craftsman often means the demise of the technique. Richard Sennett ironically (as an author) shows how language is totally lacking when trying to communicate how to make something: the myriad micro-decisions that must be made when boning a chicken for example can never be written down in an accessible style - although one of our fave cookery writers Richard Olney is given praise for his gorgeous prose!

The mixture of history, practical information and thought means that this book is never dull and I reckon it's a must for anyone who has ever made anything using care and attention! Richard Sennett's references to craftsmen throughout history (be they artists, philosophers or scientists) are all intriguing. With one eye on the biography shelf - which I will be visiting in the near future - I think I've found a soul mate in John Ruskin. He's the Victorian artisan who championed individual hand made items over the homogeneity of industrialised mass production. I'm keen to find out more about him. Now, back to the zeds.

Lucinda's Reading Challenge: Philosophy Section

I'm blogging from a secret holiday
location and although poolside

might not be the most appropriate

place for a heavyweight piece of
political philosophy, I can't deny

that there are advantages to

reading this book in an environment
isolated from media bombardment.

John Gray's Black Mass is a thought
provoking and serious examination

of historical (Bolshevik Revolution)
and contemporary (War on Terror)
examples of Utopian ideology driving flawed policy.

Eh? I did warn you it was a dense read. He sets out his stall in very convincing manner: human societies across the globe have repeatedly sought a post-apocalyptic Utopia with generally disastrous consequences. This is more than a simple 'the grass will be greener over the hill' doctrine - the idea that we are wedded to thinking that the old must be swept away and obliterated first is a scary prospect and yet John Gray provides ample back up to his claim that left and right, religious and secular movements all appear doomed to follow this hopeful path into folly. I like the fact that Gray tries very hard to remain impartial and even when he does offer a more polarised position (such as some of his assertions about the motives and consequences of the Iraq invasion) a lot of it has probably drifted towards mainstream thinking anyway! More crucially, I managed to follow all his arguments pretty easily - with one caveat - being a piece of highbrow thinking, knowledge of political history is assumed along with some expert terminology (thank goodness for internet dictionaries). Well worth the challenge - and I hope that upon my return, I shall be able to turn a more informed eye to any Chilcot Enquiry editorials! Oh - more good news: the positives I took from Karen Armstrong's 12 Steps to a Compassionate Life can co-exist quite happily alongside this piece. Her approach calls for individuals to change - not for any political or institutional directive to impose a regime. Next up: Richard Sennett's The Crafstman, which may turn out to be the perfect holiday read...'what motivates us to work'. But right now, I'm off to catch a water taxi to the beach.

Mr B's 2011 Reading Journey Book 3 (Texas) - End Zone by Don DeLillo

As Chris Rea once said, "Warm winds blowing, Heating blue sky, And a road that goes on forever, I'm going to Texas". Aaah. What warming thoughts for a January evening with a violent and chilly wind blowing into Wiltshire fresh from the Russian steppe.

Fans of high literature will be delighted to learn that I opted to go beyond the Road to Hell liner notes for my Texan read, instead going for an early novel by American literary behemoth Don DeLillo. End-zone is a novel set at a West Texas college - the side of Texas characterised by colossal skies and military bases and test-grounds. The story is narrated by (American) football player Gary Harkness who has started and abandoned studies at various other colleges before attempting to settle down at the r

emote and comparatively minor Logos College. Gary's life consists of playing football, having somewhat bizarre pseudo-intellectual conversations with his teammates and worrying about his obsession with nuclear conflict. Sound like a bizarre and slightly impenetrable basis for a story? You betcha.

Here's what I liked about End Zone. First, I liked the dark and often oddball humour, particularly through the gradual development of the peculiarities and neuroses of Gary's team-members (one of whom wets the bed, another of whom is named after a fridge).

Secondly, I liked it as a piece of sports-writing (a genre I like and which I think is often under-rated and wrongly regarded as incompatible with great literature) . Most of the novel could be enjoyed by anyone with no knowledge of American Football whatsoever (other than the basic idea that the team dynamic is crucial and that, at its messiest, its brutal and warlike) and it's certainly not about sport per se. However the 35-page "Part 2" consists of a description of the team's crunch match and would be tough to endure if you had absolutely no knowledge of or interest in the sport.

But for me the downsides of End-zone outweigh the upsides. The characters seem subordinated to the wider game of drawing endless parallels between on-field and on-battlefield combat, which culminates in teacher Zapalac's damning conclusion "I reject the notion of football as warfare. Warfare is warfare. We don't need substitutes because we've got the real thing".

In the latter stages of the novel the conversations between the characters become too oblique and filled with subtext that even they don't seem to have any handle on - at least for simple me with my preference for at least one of plot or compelling characters. Much of the overly intellectual chatter is no doubt intended to be amusing, but it bored me and took away from a novel that in any event doesn't head towards any great plot climax.

End Zone is an interesting novel and will be enjoyed by the more philosophically and militarily minded, but it says something of DeLillo's monolithic later works that this is considered one of his most accessible. Nearly everything he has written sounds great in summary and I really want to like his writing. I'd love to know which others of his people have enjoyed so I can give another one a go.

Cover Notes: End Zone is published by Macmillan and a new edition comes out in March. That's the lovely new nuclear-football yellow and black cover. I read the first cover on this post which is the outgoing edition now out of stock at the publisher. I found a copy in Foyles on a rare treat to myself - a genuine browse as a book-buyer in someone else's bookshop.

Soundtrack: I've mostly been listening to Paul Heaton's brilliant "Acid Country" album whilst reading End Zone. Highly recommend it.

Nic's 2011 Reading Journey - Book 2 (a first diversion)

Having made the decision to head West in my Reading Year journey, from Tim Gautreaux's Louisiana into Texas, I then spent far too long mulling over an appropriate Texan read. While I was thinking about it, I made my first permitted diversion - to read a book about journeying. The way I see it, any time I fancy reading a book about journeying this year as an interlude to my round the world journey, then that's just fine. And let's face it. I can make the rules as it's only me playing.

The book in question was "Roads" by Larry McMurtry. It came to mind because McMurtry is a Texan book legend in various guises. First and foremost he is the author of many novels and screenplays many of which are set in Texas (and many of which are now out of print in the UK sadly). His masterpiece is the epic Pulitzer-Prize winning Texan novel, Lonesome Dove which spawned a similarly epic mini-series starring the likes of Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones and Angelica Huston. Secondly he is the owner of a colossal bookshop in Archer City, Texas where he still lives and works.

If I picked Lonesome Dove for my Texan book, I'd still be there in months, but I realised I had an unread copy of "Roads" in my bookcase, so I thought I'd honour Texas' most celebrated author by reading that.

In "Roads" McMurtry sets out to enjoy America from its interstate highways - eschewing the standard "backroads" approach and deliberately limiting his numerous 2-3 day trips to bombing down the length of the country's major arteries. It's a bizarre concept for a travelogue and it threatens to give a very rushed and blinkered view of the States.

The saving grace is McMurtry's open and self-effacing attitude towards the comfortable and infinitely achievable journeys he has planned, "I have been impressed by the extraordinary stamina of the real explorers, from Mungo Park to Wilfred Thesiger. In contrast I hardly feel my little spurts along the interstates deserve to be called travels at all". He goes on to explain his attitude to roughing it in the great travel writing tradition, "Hardship is not something I seek, or even accept. I cheerfully confess that if the Hotel du Cap in Cap d'Antibes were a chain, I'd stay there every night".

"Roads" is thin on geographic description - other than some beautiful accounts of the prairie landscape. But McMurtry's journeys are brought alive by the author's anecdotes and memoir pieces - most of which are book or film related. There's lots of entertaining name-dropping and the book doubles-up as a guide to the literature of many of the American states (which is handy if you're a bookseller planning a reading journey across the Continent). Here's one of my favourite moments:

"My bitter dislike of Arlington goes back ten years, to a day when I embarrassed myself by getting hopelessly lost in it while attempting to take the world-famous globally traveled author Jan Morris to lunch. Not long after this I complained about Arlington in a novel called "Some Can Whistle", but nobody read that novel so no one heard my complaint".

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed "Roads" even if I wouldn't personally stick to McMurtry's straightline routes. It's certainly made me want to read more of McMurtry.

(And seriously, he has written A LOT - here are a few more names to conjure with in case you fancy digging some out - The Last Picture Show, Streets of Laredo, Terms of Endearment, All My Friends Are Going to be Strangers, Moving On, Brokeback Mountain (screenplay)).

Long Lost Friends

When you spend a lot of your time recommending books, you tend to focus on recent books the may not yet have seen, or else you delve into your brain to recall great reads from the past. Inevitably though, I forget some of the fantastic books I read many moons ago. So last night I had a good rummage into the dustier corners of my bookshelves and pulled out a handful of old friends I never remember to recommend but which I will endeavour to from now on. Here they are:

1. Gould's Book of Fish by Richard Flanagan. A extraordinary, original, grotesquely funny novel set in 19C Tasmania at a time when all the convicts were being shipped over. Beautiful writing, intense and fairly crazy in parts.

2. A Passage to India by E.M Forster. A classic but one I often forget to recommend. Superb novel set in 1920s India against the backdrop of the British Raj where a young British lady accuses an Indian Physician of attempting to assault her on a day trip out to the Malabar caves. A hot and dusty tale of prejudice and racial tension amid setting suns and rickshaws.

3. Moonfleet by John Meade Falkner. Also a classic - this time one for younger readers. A tale of smuggling in the 19C off the English coast. Storms, diamonds, castles, shipwrecks and a teary ending. Who needs Harry Potter?

4. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. A brilliant Nigerian novel (written in English) set in late 19C within a group of villages focusing on their leader, Okonkwo and his family and the influences of British colonialism and Christian missionaries on their traditional way of life. A very powerful book which has really stayed with me.

5. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. This was one of those books I was vaguely aware of but didn't really know anything about until a couple of years ago and was then surprised at how much I loved it. The story of a very young German soldier in World War I and all the horrors and psychological trauma he endures. Sounds pretty intense and it is, but it is also poetic and beautiful and thought-provoking and tender and human. Ah. Just superb.

Mrs B

Customer tip No.2 "Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter" by Tom Franklin

Well, so far, so very good with customer recommendations. This book is a gripping read and I have no nails left to prove it. It fits into the increasingly popular "literary crime fiction" genre - not one I am hugely familiar with, although I have read a few recently (my favourite so far being "Black Water Rising"). Set in deepest rural Mississippi, yall find it real hard to put down once you've gone picked it up. Yall also be talkin to yoselves in southern drawl for days to come.

The story centres around an oddball loner, Larry who locals suspect was involved in the disappearance of a young girl ten years previously. Focus comes back onto him when another girl goes missing and he is found bleeding from a gun wound in his own home. Local cop Silas knew Larry from school and his investigations lead to him confronting his own past, as the story flashes back to their days as young boys growing up in the woodlands - one a middle-class white boy, the other poor and black. This is the real beauty of the book for me - the journey it takes back through their lives in a tough, rural landscape with its rednecks and its racial tensions, as mistakes are made that resonate long into the future.

The prose is delicious, it really is. His sense of place is incredible - I was completely immersed in the humid summers of the south - the dust-track roads, the mosquitos, the greasy diners, the squawking chickens and lonely road-side motels. For all the harshness of the backdrop though, it has a warmth and humanity it could easily have lacked - a deep sense of goodness and ultimately of love. His rich characters remind me of something from an Annie Proulx or Cormac McCarthy novel.

So thank you Mr W and Mrs S for the recommendation. A big thumbs up from me and one of those rare books that are likely to be just as popular with men and women. It's been shortlisted for the Edgar Awards in the states and will be keeping my fingers crossed for it.

Vlashka isn't around tonight to help me choose my next read from my "customer tips pile" so I will get back to the brilliant "Freedom" by Jonathan Franzen - a hefty tome that lives by my bedside being slowly digested in between customer tips.

Please keep the suggestions flowing.

Night.

Mrs B

Lucinda's Reading Challenge: Short Detour

Black Mass is dense enough to have its
own gravity field - which is my speak for
"I'm having to read it s-l-o-w-l-y".
I shall be reporting back shortly...but
for some lighter Philosophical relief, I
have been dipping into Roland Barthes'
Mythologies, a selection of essays written
in the middle of the 20th century. The
spotlight is thrown onto a diverse selection
of icons, signs and behaviours surrounding
the development of mass culture. The essays are
succinct, thought provoking and often witty. My
favourite thus far is his observation of how a margarine
advertising campaign worked by appearing to slate the
product, before adding a resounding 'but' right at the end.
Barthes shows how the same strategy can be used to create
positive feeling towards institutions like the French Army.
And then you get to thinking that this idea of appearing to 'tell it like it is' to promote something is actually ubiquitous in our media heavy culture. It's always refreshing to be given a new view of the world and its workings and I can certainly recommend Barthes as
an entertaining guide. Right, now back to the serious stuff.