50 years a reader |
An exploration of half a century of reading. |
It's been a bumper of a month for me - 7 books read and 2 more half way through. Thanks, largely to the library. Where would I be without free books? I can't claim they have all been the most enjoyable. I've been reading out of my 'comfort' zone perhaps, trying to make sense of some contemporary (and award winning) writing. Generally I'd have to say it's not really for me. There is something about it - too clever, too smooth, too weird, that doesn't quite appeal to me any more. In my youth, perhaps, when I was exploring new styles and ways of communicating and when my identity was less fixed so that books helped me explore myself. I don't really do that any more. Books now help me to explore other people and their lives (and lifestyle choices) and I'm not sure that I'd really want to engage with many of those I read this month. But it was an interesting experiment. And as I said, the library offers me the chance to read books I certainly wouldn't spend money on! BOOK 38 Margaret Ogilvy – J.M.Barrie I started the month on familiar ground. I've enjoyed all the Barrie I've read this year and this one was no exception. I loved this book. I could write so much more about it, but I’ll leave it at that. I read so many books this month that brevity may be welcomed. All I’d say is, read it with no preconceptions, really read it, and I hope ‘you’ll laugh, you’ll cry it’s better than Cats!’ BOOK 39 The Sunlight Pilgrims Not my cup of tea. I didn’t find anything in common with any of the characters and couldn’t understand how it is supposedly reflective of contemporary Scottish rural life/culture. I also had a few issues with the Okay, cold, very cold, very very cold, I get that. But the kind of community living far enough north in Scotland to be dark at 2.30pm in depths of winter (that’s got to be a good 100 miles north of where I am) would be used to cold, to snow, and would not need a bunch of nuns to come and teach them how to deal with it – or the kind of community pep talk that happens in the book. I’ve lived in rural Scots communities for the last 20 odd years and none of them have remotely been like this one. I’ve been in Vermont in depths of winter and seen how North Americans deal with snow. Something just didn’t gel for me. Nor did I really see the ‘magical realism’ in the story. Is this just used as a term when something isn’t ‘real’? Because it was realism that was lacking in this story for me. I’m clearly not the target audience but it doesn’t encourage me to read more by up and coming young Scots writers, that’s for sure. Maybe I just need to admit my day is over and be put out to pasture with my ‘old’ books. I’ll be happy enough there, believe me. BOOK 40 So I am Glad - A.L.Kennedy Sorry to say, this one totally passed me by. Back blurb suggests it’s ‘funny, strange and almost entirely wonderful.’ I didn’t find it so. I found it shocking really, and it just reconfirmed to me that 25 years ago when I quit the ‘rat race’ ‘urbanity’ or whatever the hell it was I quit when I took up my own rural life, I made the right choice. I have some vague recollection that the world can be like this for people. But I decided there was no way I wanted my life to be anything like any of the experiences any of the characters in this novel face – and now, 25 years on – it’s like a spectacular vindication that there are multiple universes – or at least a load of parallel possible worlds – no, not possible – real worlds – and that we choose which one/s to inhabit. This is not my world. I don’t recognise it. I don’t want to. And I don’t enjoy reading about it. Not blaming A.L.Kennedy, just revealing that if this is (and I’m sure it is) Scottish literary fiction then I’m clearly out of my depth. The good thing is I have no shortage of fantastic Scottish fiction to read (past and present) which bears no relation to this kind of novel. And I’m not sorry to be out of this ‘market’. It’s my world too and I am happy to say that there are obviously books out there for everyone – any experience, any view of the world – but we do have to find and pick ones we like if we don’t fall within the bell curve of the canon of Scots Literature which as a reader, I clearly no longer do! But this month I’ve been trying hard to engage with the ‘modern’ Literary Fiction of Scotland. Never mind the past being another country – the Scottish fictional landscape seems to be a completely different world to the one I inhabit. Book 41 Summer’s Lease – Sara Clark This was read on recommendation. I didn’t take to the first chapter, but was told to read on. I’m glad I did. It did finally draw me in to the world of the main character – Alex. Though I’m still not exactly sure what I read. I’m unclear as to how Alex came to be as socially anxious as he is – I wondered whether he and his brother George were on the autistic spectrum with parents who ‘protected’ them from the world or whether he had become this way because of their woeful parenting skills. Nature or nurture, I never discovered. Perhaps I was looking for a simple solution and that was wrong of me. The key thing is that Alex views the world very differently to a ‘neuro-typical’ person. Is this because of class snobbery as has been suggested to me? I don’t think it’s that simple either. Certainly he came from a really dysfunctional family. It was an engaging read, but I left with more questions than answers which slightly frustrated me. Of course that’s the author’s prerogative and I don’t criticise her for it, just wish there had been more contextualising of what was going on (for personal taste) My personal taste of course is and should be irrelevant to any author. As a communication between author and (this) reader, however, I felt there was something missing. Which could of course just have been my lack of understanding or trying to make sense of something that isn’t there to be made sense of. BOOK 42 Dirt Road – James Kelman I’m not hugely familiar with James Kelman, think I’ve tried one or two before but they never really ‘took.’ This is his latest and I have to say that it had me wondering if he’s attempting a modern, Scots version of The Grapes of Wrath. As such it was an interesting concept, though to my mind not a patch on the original. But it did raise a lot of really interesting questions. The central character Murdo, is also socially inept (not to the extent of Alex in Summer’s Lease though) and the same sort of stream of consciousness element runs through it. I’m totally unmoved by the artifice that sees apostrophes removed from words like didnt, couldnt etc. Don’t know why. And the use of indirect speech. It all seems a bit like smoke and mirrors to me – the sort of thing that if a lesser writer did it would be criticised or sneered at – but from a ‘master’ like Kelman just adds to his ‘genius’ or ‘mystique.’ It had some interesting things to say about relationships and music, but I found the plot less than interesting and found my way plodding through it a lot of the time. Book 43 His Bloody Project Graeme Macrae Burnet My short reaction to this book, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize was underwhelmed. I’m not sure what all the fuss is about. I do like a good authorial/narrator/editor transgression and so it sort of started well for me. It is ‘constructed’ quite interestingly – and I suppose if you generally read straightforward thrillers it may seem quite different. But for the ‘unreliable’ or fictional author/narrator/editor type thing S.R.Crockett beats this hands down. Straying from Scottish Fiction ‘Wuthering Heights’ is the most perfect example of unreliable narrators and Crockett develops this (beyond Scott) into playing with the authorial role within (and outwith) a text. And I suppose it is within this framework that Burnet is working. But I found it a bit irritating – perhaps patronising. We are supposed to ‘believe’ that the ‘story’ is an original one but methinks he protests far too much. Roddy’s ‘story’ is far to ‘constructed’ (I use that instead of ‘well written’) to be ‘true’ per se. The artifice that surrounds it crumbles as one is so painfully aware of this being a cleverly constructed work of fiction – maybe it does draw from some real sources I don’t know – but fiction it most certainly is. And as a ‘psychological thriller’ it leaves me cold. It does raise some interesting issues regarding the nature of ‘sanity’ and ‘reason’ and delves into history regarding how society impinges on the life of the individual, but the reader is left to consider any depth of this themselves – the story just moves on stage by stage. There are a number of ‘voices’ of course, the ‘editor/author’, Roddy, a psychologist and an account of the Trial. For me it’s all just too well packaged to be believable and I feel like an attempt at ‘gulling’ is going on. Which is a good way to alienate me as a reader. I want to have a conversation, a communication with the author and/or characters not to be made to feel I am the butt end of some clever joke. But that’s just me. It was an interesting enough story, but again, for me, looking at 19th century society is best done through reading fiction written at the time. You get a different (and I think more important) insight without the ‘clever, clever.’ Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy this kind of playing around structurally. I know the complexities all too well from my own ‘Another World is Possible’ which does something not exactly similar but also plays around with the various roles allotted to those involved in fiction. I’m not damning the book – it was a service able enough read, but I couldn’t get excited about it and all the quotes vaunting its brilliance left me cold. In that respect it was like the Forever and Brilliant which I read some months ago. I guess I just don’t see fiction the same way that the ‘cultural elite’ see it. And I make no apologies for that. I'm coming close to the final countdown, with less than 10 books to read to make it to 50. Part of me wants to make them 'significant' but another part of me says that I know I'm going to be carrying on reading Scottish books for the next year and beyond, so it doesn't really matter - just read what takes my fancy (or the library provides) as the time comes.
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AuthorIn 2016 I will have been reading for 50 years. I'm going to celebrate this by reading even more and sharing what I'm reading. Archives
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