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My Kindle Made Me A B*tch
I have seen many many many people drawing up pros and cons of e-readers versus paper’n'ink books. I have even done it myself. However, now that I have been using it for a couple of months, I realise that everyone has been missing a crucial point: e-readers make you a completely unreasonable so-and-so.
Say, for instance, you want to read My Cousin Rachel. In the past, you would simply have gone to the library and checked it out. But now, you head for the kindle store only to find it is not available. You huff and puff about this. Of course, you STILL COULD GO TO THE LIBRARY, YOUR KINDLE HAS NOT BROKEN YOUR LEGS. But now that oddly seems like too much effort. So you don’t read it.
Or say, that you think ok, well I think I might read Great Expectations instead. You head to the Kindle store. But you notice you have to pay for it! Even though Jane Austen is free, Dickens wants your cash! (Why is this, by the way?) And even though it is eighty six pence; approximately the cost of the packet of biscuits you have scoffed, you bitterly resent this. Of course, you STILL COULD GO TO THE LIBRARY, etc, etc. But you don’t. So you don’t read it.
And then say, you want to read Moonwalking With Einstein. But this is ten whole pounds for the kindle book! When it is only £8.17 for the paperback! (And this is still a pricey paperback, I think.) And you cannot understand this discrepancy! And you fret about it for days and days and days and regularly check back in desperation because THERE MUST BE SOME MISTAKE! But there isn’t. And eventually you begrudgingly do fork out the tenner, because you actually do really want to read this. And then you wistfully think back to that eighty six pence on Mr Dickens.
You are probable a nicer, less demanding, more patient person than I am. Your kindle has probably enhanced your life without destroying your soul. How do you manage it?
Sunday Salon: Some Stuff You Should Do Instead Of Whatever Else You Were Planning to Do Today
1) Head over to Reading With Tea to sign up for Advent with Austen. Only a month to go!
In order of likeliness-to-happen, my plans are to re-read Mansfield Park (reasons why to be explained in another post) join in the Sense and Sensibility readalong with the Sleepless Reader and read some of the unpublished works.
2) Go to the Indie Lit Awards and nominate your favourite book of the year so far. Go. Go now.
3) Visit Claire or Verity so that you can play Persephone Secret Santa this yuletide (love that word). You know how with most secret Santas you end up with something you don’t want and bitterly resent having to spend the money? NOT SO WITH THIS ONE.
Happy Sunday.
THE READATHON ENDS! FIVE DAYS LATE!
Um, so my readathon sort of fizzled out, because here in London we were finishing at 1pm and my friend Chris said he was coming over after Sunday lunch IE THIS SHOULD BE WAY AFTER ONE, CHRIS; and then at 11.50 he was all, I’ll be there in a few minutes.
So not only did I have to throw the book aside but also there was mass shower panic, because the nugget was the only one who was dressed.
Anyway this is much too much detail about my life. READATHON! You were a triumph. MY READATHON PERSONALLY! A little bit haphazard. I spent the first bit reading while fretting about my hostessing duties, the next bit in a whirlwind of the hostessing, the next bit cheating by watching X factor and going to sleep, the next bit checking in with you all in the middle of the night while feeding the baby, the next bit reading again, the final bit with Chris and Olly in the pub.
So actual reading, not so much. I enjoyed the hanging out with everyone, but I actually found the reading a little bit *eeeek how many pages can I read before I need to log on again* ie, not that relaxing. And for me reading = relaxing not reading = angst, so this was a new and unwelcome sensation. I think next time I may be a hostess and a cheerleader and let the reading slide so as not to feel overwhelmed.
I was going to fill in the meme but it’s been days and I was a rubbish participant anyway, so. I’ll just say FUN TIMES SEE YOU IN APRIL!
Eleanor Brown – The Weird Sisters
Every other blogger in the whole wide blogosphere was reading this, before every other blogger moved on to ‘The Night Circus’ but I am both slow off the mark, and unoriginal. Anyway, this is SUPER.
So! Shakespeare-spouting father bestows Shakespearian names on his three daughters. Rosalind is sensible, bossy, dull, organising everyone, martyring herself and frightened of life. Bianca, or Bean, is fast, aggressive, trading on her looks while simultaneously losing them, big on attitude, short on morals. Cordelia is vague, impractical, swooshing about the road, a hippie in an age with no use for hippies. Ostensibly, Bianca and Cordelia come home to help Rosalind look after their mother, who has cancer. Really, they are just hiding from their mistakes; while Rosalind is hiding from life entirely.
The only problem with reading books about three sisters when you ARE one of three sisters is that your reviewing criteria becomes all messed up. Instead of concentrating on important things like story, themes, plot, writing; you become obsessed by ‘how much am I like Rosalind?’ (more than I’d really like to be, except less prone to floaty podge-covering clothes) ‘how much is Rebecca like Cordelia?’ (quite a bit, they both have a tendency to wander off, though Rebecca is more likely to wander to a rave than to a Woodstock-throwback) and ‘how much is Kathryn like Bianca?’ (not at all. Kathryn has no tendencies towards grand larceny or sluttiness).
Searching for yourself and your sisters aside, this is absolutely cracking. Intelligent, contemporary, believable women’s literary fiction, where people speak as people actually speak, is my absolute favourite genre. I would read this and only this if only I could find enough to satisfy me.
Unusually, the story is written as ‘we,’ where ‘we’ are the sisters and follow each sister in turn. It gives the book a chanty, magic spell feeling. Even though the boring side of my brain says that ‘we’ can’t possibly know various things. Like Shakespeare himself, this is comic and tragic – and fantastic.
Eleanor Brown was kind enough to send me not just one, but two copies of this book; as the postman appears to have eaten the first. Or possibly seen one of the reviews and kept it for themselves.
Charlotte Bronte – Villette
I’m sorry, but Vill-what? I was so excited and SO UNBELIEVABLY LET DOWN by this book. And also I’ve spent so many hours of my life desperately turning the pages in the faint hope that surely something, ANYTHING was going to happen, I can hardly bear to waste any more writing a review. But here goes:
FAINTLY CREEPY PRELUDE ONE: Lucy Snowe hangs out in her Godmother’s house and watches freaky-squeaky doll girl develop an obsessive crush on lion-maned Graham.
FAINTLY CREEPY PRELUDE TWO: Lucy Snowe works as a ladies maid for an eccentric lady. There is a thunderstorm. She dies.
ACTUAL STORY, SUCH AS IT IS, COMMENCES: On little more than a whim, Lucy Snowe goes to Belgium. Though she does not know anyone there, or speak the language. On little more than a chance remark, she heads off to Villette, where she gets a job as a teacher.
What I found most irritating about this book is that everything that happens is both extremely unlikely and completely obvious at the same time. Like, guess who turns up in this tiny town in Belgium even though Lucy hasn’t seen them for ten years? But though this factor topped the irritating charts, there is much more to annoy throughout. Mostly Lucy based. She is so sanctimonious and oooh, these evil chattels of Rome are always trying to convert me. And I hate smug foreigners, with their smug foreign Catholic ways. DON’T GO ABROAD IF YOU HATE FOREIGNERS should be the first rule of travel. Then she’s all, oh, I am so pure and I walk in the ways of the righteous, and yet for some reason, I have absolutely no problem with the fact that people are constantly going through my desk and my room.
Supposedly this is a classic of gothic literature. Sure, if by gothic you mean every time Lucy is in a bad mood, the weather goes stormy, and then she drivels on for about fifteen pages. Oh yes, that’s another irritating thing about this book: Lucy isn’t really given anything to do. So even if she was faintly interesting, she’d still be pretty limp as a protagonist.
Uggggghhhhh I can’t believe I wasted so long with this. Oh Charlotte, how CAN you let me down this way?
Announcing Austen In Advent
Unpeel your ears, my friends, for I bring you tidings of great joy. December is always a pretty stressful time, what with all the shopping and the wrapping and stuffing your face and the partying even though you inevitably have a cold. This Advent, why not change gear and join Alex, Iris, Ana, Mistress of Ceremonies Yvann and I in celebrating the 236th birthday of Jane Austen? We have christened this December Austen in Advent, because why not.
In true Jane Austen style, participating is ever so polite. Simply head on over to Reading With Tea to sign up; then come December, make yourself some cucumber sandwiches, sharpen your wits, and revel in six of the best books ever written. As Jane wrote, the person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid. You don’t want to be stupid, right?
Your hostesses will be inventing revealing more of the extravaganza nearer the time, but the jubilee will include:
A readalong of Sense and Sensibility
Sunday night viewings of Austen classics, complete with group gossip on twitter
The honour of achieving one of our levels of Austen-awesomeness:
1 point: Aunt Norris
2 points: Mr Collins
3 -4 points: Mr Bingley
5-6 points: Captain Wentworth
7 or above: Mr Darcy
To gain points, simply read books or watch films. Extra points for TV adaptations, because those require much more investment. Books can include modern spin offs and biographies; not just the big six.
Come play with us, says Mr Darcy, in a smouldering way.
Amy Chua: Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother vs Naomi Stadlen: How Mothers Love and How Relationships are Born
Like I said over here, most parenting books are basically insane. All of them say TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS, when what they mean is DO NOT TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS, FOLLOW MY RULES. ALL OTHER PATHS LEAD TO SHOPLIFTING AND WORSE. They hector. And while the general rule for life is: everything in moderation; the general rule for parenting books appears to be: no moderation, only extremes.
Case in point: Amy Chua. I am a little bit torn on this, because on the one hand it is an enjoyable read if you like car crash books. On the other hand, ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
This is the book equivalent of that really annoying thing people do at dinner parties of being deliberately provoking and controversial just to whip up attention.
Basically her idea of raising children is to choose them an instrument and then scream at them for eighteen years until they are successful. Both her children are extremely talented musicians, but that is not surprising when she makes them practice fifty hours a day and not let them go to the loo unless they’ve completed their etudes (what’s an etude?)
I mean, it is funnyish, as it’s written tongue-in-cheekly. And at one level, she knows that she’s absolutely barking. I think. But it can’t have been fun for the kids at all. And how can she be a reasonably amusing writer when she is such a joyless parent?
She says, when it works, it works. Sure, if your definition of ‘it works’ involves running across Red Square screaming because your daughter says she doesn’t want to eat caviar. Lady, no one likes caviar. No need to call her a barbarian and a juvenile deliquent. You are teaching them nothing except how to be melodramatic. Also, I hope you’ve been saving for the therapy bills.
But it was a nice easy read and made me think I’m not really doing such a bad job after all (*ponders which instrument I can use to exploit Cerys*)
Anyway, after that, I’d thought I’d just mention Naomi Stadlen’s book.
I can’t remember much about the content, I just remember the sense of relief in reading it. She has run a group for mothers of tiny people for about twenty years, and this book is based on common things they say. Stadlen is the only person who has broken the trend. She does not tell you what to do. She does not want to undermine you. She wants you to know you are not alone. Reading her book was like having a nice warm bath. Lovely. Highly recommended.
Mary S Lovell – The Churchills: A Family at the Centre of History
Yes, yes, I began my foray back into reading with a 600 page biography spanning five hundred years. Why not, eh? Especially as this one starts off in Ye Tudor Times, then becomes an elaborate episode of Downton Abbey, and then Winston saves the free world, hurrah.
Ok, well it is not STRICTLY Ye Tudor Times when the Churchill dynasty commences, but the Stuarts are near enough the Tudors (says the girl with the history degree). John Churchill is ye lowly soldier but marries Sarah, who is a stormy sort of gal, but is best buddies with Queen Anne and so John is promoted a lot. Which is lucky for England, because John turns out to be the greatest general in history and triumphs in many battles. So then England says, thank you John and Sarah, here is Blenheim Palace and you can be a Duke and Duchess.
Then they begat multitudes, bible style, and there are Dukes who spend the money and are irresponsible, and Dukes who save the money and are boring. But we skim over those so that we can quickly get to the rest of the good stuff from the mid 19th century onwards.
Here is where Downton kicks in, because gracious me, how they live! The servants and the dinners and the palaver and the ladies changing four times a day and never wearing the same dress twice!
However, obviously this does not come cheap. At all. The Eighth Duke, he is in a quandry. He needs the cash, but all the likely candidates round England are also struggling. But what is this across the Atlantic? Why, there is a treasure trove of Astors and Vanderbilts and CHA CHING! Let me get myself a Yankee bride, he thinks, never mind their funny accents and forthrightness. And the American mothers, they think, let me bag a Duke for my daughter, never mind their coldness and weird sexual interests and the fact that they will not be faithful for half a second – they will have a title.
Meanwhile, the Eighth Duke’s little brother is all, I do not have a palace, what shall I do? I know, I’ll become Chancellor of the Exchequer, and I will have a whirlwind romance with the most beautiful American of all, and after that I will have a son called Winston. (And then I will get syphillis, which will be much less fun and my wife will sleep with approximately everyone she meets but these are the prices I must pay).
And then there is WINSTON, who is positively LOOMING across the entire book. The image of Winston with his his bowler hat and his cigar is so prevalent in my head, it is hard to imagine him doing his youthful derring-do. But there was a time before he was flashing victory signs, when he was escaping from a South African prisoner of war camp and walking across South Africa despite not knowing where he was or speaking the language. And when he wasn’t single handedly holding the nation together with a ration book and a piece of string, he was winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. Dude was busy.
The writer is obviously clearly very much in love with Winston, which means you do end up finishing the book with a little crush on him, however weird that is. Alas, we have no chance with Winston, because one of his most defining features is how much he loves his wife. Bah, but also, ahhhh.
And then there are various Churchill children (who, inevitably, find it extremely difficult to measure up to the Churchill yardstick) particularly his very irritating eldest son. But I feel that here the writer may have let her Churchill love blind her just a teensy bit. When Churchill is going on about his star of destiny and how he has been saved for a purpose, she is all, YEAY WINNIE. But when poor Randolph aspires to same, she is all AMBITIOUS WASTREL. Bit harsh.
There is so much in this book that many many many interesting things are dealt with in a sentence. Like when Churchill’s mum commandeers a medical boat and sails it off to South Africa to help in the war, or when his aunt becomes the first female war correspondent, or how someone else whose name now escapes me sponsored Amelia Earhart’s Atlantic flight. The Churchills bring new meaning to the definition of overachieving family. Even the failures fail spectacularly.
Occasionally I felt she could have done with a thesaurus – people are always finding Blenheim ‘stifing,’ never anything else – but this is a minor quibble with an epic scope.
All of which is to say if you like your history full of PEOPLE and can keep track of various Dianas and Randolphs (if this family has a shortcoming, it is that they are unimaginative namers) then you should definitely check this out.
A Visit To Agatha Christie’s House
Ok, so it doesn’t LOOK particularly exciting, but this is Agatha Christie’s holiday home!
If you needed further excitement, YOU CAN GET MARRIED IN AGATHA CHRISTIE’S DINING ROOM! YOU CAN PLAY ON HER PIANO! YOU CAN GO ROUND HER LIBRARY AND CHECK OUT HER BOOKS!
Though when I was doing some detectivising myself nosing round her books I noted that some of the books were published AFTER SHE HAD DIED. This was a Miss Marple style clue that it is not actually HER library, but more a library in her house, which random family members have added books to over the years. I did find it unlikely that Mrs Christie would be reading Michael Crighton, even if she wasn’t dead.
We also started a game of Make Your Own Agatha Christie Style Dinner Party. You will need any of the following:
A retired colonel recently back from India
A rich and snobbish widow
An embittered teacher or other struggling single working woman
A person who is secretly related to one of the other attendees and is in disguise
A butler who knows more than he is letting on
A visiting Hollywood starlet enjoying the quaint English customs
The bookish librarian/secretary/generic geek type
A gardener who was a batman in the war
The slightly dysfunctional but extremely pretty debutante
The local village bad boy who will initially be the focus of the investigation
Simply assemble your preferred combination, bump one of them off and away you go.
How Nuggets and Books Combine
Hello internets. How are you? Thank you for all the lovely comments on the previous post. I appreciate it 
First, obligatory cute nugget photo:
This is my pensive yet contented face. I can convey a surprising range of emotions with my splendid eyebrows.
It’s hot and humid as all hell here, and she does NOT like it. We are semi naked a lot. Some of us wee on the floor. These are occupational hazards.
She makes the heat worse because she seems to believe that she is a scarf and that her natural place is round my neck. So even though (probably because) it’s 100 degrees, she doesn’t want to be put down EVER. She wants to be put on my chest so that she can nugget herself, with great exertion and sighing, up my left shoulder, put her knees on my throat and her toes by my right ear. It’s sweet, but pretty inexplicable.
I have temporarily wiggled her down to my stomach where she is sleeping with her head on her mini arms so that I can write this. I am sure that I am supposed to be sleeping or doing the washing or feeding me/her but you would not believe how my fingers itch to type. Apparently the wordpress app was designed for just such moments.
I have not yet got to the point of having a brain which functions sufficiently to take in new books, so I thought I would tell you about a few books which fall into a specific niche category: Books You Should Not Attempt To Read In The Early Stages of Labour, Because They Will Not Hold Your Attention, And Dear God, You Will Need Distracting. Admittedly, my research into this topic was shortlived, but I think still worth sharing the findings.
Anita Shreve: Rescue. I read Fortune’s Rocks at uni and absolutely loved it, and I have spent the past ten years reading every other book she has written and being disappointed every single time. Now I think back, I think that is because student me misinterpreted melodrama as actual deepness, but never mind. (Also, the essential plot premise is properly creepy).
So. Rescue. This is characteristically Shrevey in that the main players are magnetically drawn to each other and convey this by not saying very much but saying it in a way which is supposed to show how they ACHE for the other. And then there is a random tragedy, kaboom. Except this time I did not even get to kaboom, because it was just too annoying. Ambulance man develops unlikely relationship with troubled lady he saves from accident. He does not say very much but what he does say conveys how much he ACHES for her. But it was really boring and I gave up. Shreve always seems to think that spare prose = DEEP whereas I think EMPTY.
So then I tried The Eyre Affair because a blogger I read (can’t remember who – is it you?) really loves them and the premise of kickass heroine solving literary crime is right up my street. Also, the main character’s name is Thursday Next and who doesn’t want a name where you can use alternative forms of punctuation after it? (Thursday Next? Thursday Next! Ace.)
But. Normally, when I read these sorts of books there is way too much Establishing Exactly What Variety of Alternative Universe We Are In. I had the opposite problem with The Eyre Affair. We were helter skelter into Inexplicable Batshit Happenings, with Multiple Acronyms and Dialogue Assertions Like You Know What They Are Going On About, When You Clearly Don’t. Admittedly, some of my ‘just not getting it’ might have been because my mush-brain was also thinking about things like imminent birth, but still.
So then I went on to the second book of the crazy monk Shardlake series, because when in doubt, read about Tudor Times. And this was a big success even though the plot was thinky and Shardlake went with his usual habit of reminding you multiple times that he was a Melancholy Hunchback. But I only made it through 130 pages before things really got going. I picked it up again yesterday, read two pages and couldn’t for the life of me remember a single thing that was going on. I think I’ll have to start again. But I genuinely do not have the concentration span at the moment. I’m going to wait a couple of weeks until we go on holiday, because then there will be the All-Knowing All-Cuddling Grandma to supervise nugget while I read a bit. (Or maybe sleep).
