A Slightly Bashful Return

The date is the 28th May, 2011. Almost a year after our last post. A terrible, terrible, display of laziness, I am sure you will agree. However, for the past year I have been living back in Australia, nearer to my dear sister, and the urge to connect over blogging was dampened slightly by our close physical proximity.

Now, alas, we are once again separated.

Where am I?

Not London again, at any rate. I am in Norway. For what reason? The best reason there is, LOVE of course.

Love, with all its glorious ups and downs (but mainly ups!) does lead one to some strange places. For example, I now find myself in a beautiful country, with scenery to shed buckets of tears over, people one can only hug impulsively upon first meeting cause they're just so darn cute and a household where it is quite acceptable to have caviar for breakfast (it comes in a tube!), but I don't yet speak the language properly. So my forays into job hunting have been limited severely by the fact that I sound like a drunken seal whenever I open my mouth.

Thus, I am reading again. This is a very happy thing for me. Between September when love arrived in Sydney and a month ago when I was still living in Sydney I read two books. IN SEVEN MONTHS. This is decidedly unlike me. But of course, when you have the choice between reading and love, it's easier than answering the question 'Coffee?'

Now, love is at work and I am rattling around a gorgeous big old house by myself. I have fallen back into reading with all the vim and vigour of my old days. Hopefully the sister will notice that I am blogging again and hold up her end. We may change our look soon. I know that Earhart has had some mild grumbles about the outdated look of the blog. So, fair warning, we may be UNRECOGNISABLE soon.

Now For Something Completely Different...

I have thought for awhile we need to streamline our categories. As in, browsers like yourselves should be able to scroll through our categories and be moved to click through, intrigued by the novels that hide within. I have doubts that many of you are interested in the category 'Meh' and I'm sure 'Underwhelming' inspires a similar anti-response. However, I do think that we should still have some sort of deadening category where we can lump together everything we don't really feel you should read (not good and not bad enough to be 'so bad it's good'... see Vampires: Twilight.) So I shall dedicate the next few minutes to working out how to amalgamate it all into one 'Don't click here' button.

I shall also presently put up another review. As you can see, once I get started, there's no stopping me.

I don't know whether Earhart shall continue to post here this year. She is RAWTHER busy and, in all honesty, I question her loyalty to the blog. She asked me the other day how 'attached' I was to the painting at the top of our page. 'Quite' was my frosty reply and she had the diplomacy to drop the subject. But I have my suspicions that her enthusiasm may be waning. We shall see. I have also attempted to draft in the other sister, now that she has finished all her exams and is a bona fide university student. She did not leap up and down in excitement at this amazing opportunity that was being presented to her, so, again, we shall see.

Watch this space.

The White Queen (Philippa Gregory)

The White Queen.

Not to be confused with The Other Queen.

Or The Queen's Fool.

Ye gods Philippa, at least PRETEND to try.

The name is only the pastel coating on one massive Paris almond of trouble. The Other Queen was quite bad. I didn't finish it, mainly because it jolted between three narratives and NOT ONE of those characters was mildly enigmatic. I'm sure they were interesting in real life, but Gregory, with this new magic of hers which has only surfaced in recent novels, managed to strip them of any remarkable characteristics or three-dimensional thoughts... a feat you must agree is impressive when one of the characters is Mary Queen of Scots.

Not a shrinking violet by any means.

However, in The White Queen Gregory has taken the gormless narrative to a new level of inanity. Her protagonist, the Lady Elizabeth Gray, tells of Edward the Usurper's rise to the throne, the death of her husband and her family's swinging loyalty all within the first page. She meets the king on the third page. She pleads her case, she makes him endure a mild bout of playing hard to get and VOILA they are married. The coronation is grand. Her family's new found power is cemented with several strategic weddings. Uproar! The man who put Edward on the throne is planning to put his brother on the throne instead!

This was a very VERY fascinating period in history. The warring houses of Lancaster and York were both deluded as to their own importance and grabbed what they could accordingly. So it is a splendid, nay, GLORIOUS feat on Gregory's part to have rendered these events monotonous and inconsequential. The above events I just described to you have all occurred within about the first three chapters of the novel. This, Ladies and Gentlemen, is where I stopped reading.

For one, it is exhausting to read at that kind of pace, especially when the quality of the writing is akin to something Mr Squiggle would churn out if he had to give a history lesson. Secondly, I have no love or hatred for any of the characters. None are captivating, all are stick figures in terms of development. (Admittedly, this is probably where Mr Squiggle could actually be of use.)

At the pace the novel is going I assume this (not small) book will cover about three hundred years of English history. Whilst useful for cramming for an exam on this period (admittedly, an exam at the University of Inferiority, where my major would be 'History Taught Succinctly and Melodramatically') I have no other use for this novel.

Oh and the cover is embarrassing. I feel self-conscious on the tube.

WHAT HAPPENED GREGORY?

You used to be FAB!

The Other Boleyn Girl? That was brilliant!

The Virgin's Lover? Intelligent bodice-ripping at its very best!

Do you know what I think, dearly devoted readers? I think Philippa has stopped writing. This and the last novel (The Other Queen) are terrible. The only reason they were published is because they have her name attached to them. THUS I strongly suspect Philippa is using her millions to holiday in Barbados and has left her ideas for plot lines and characters lying around her house. Great Aunt Millicent (who is house-sitting) has found these notes and decided to do Philippa a favour and bang out a couple of novels. Unfortunately, Great Aunt Millicent is not very worldly and her only foray into reading has been historical Mills and Boons.

In light of this, I suppose we have to cut her some slack. Milly, these are not that dreadful, all things considered.

If, however, my hypothesising is incorrect and Philippa is just churning out this junk herself... I profess myself disappointed.

Rating: 2/10.

I've just remembered I reviewed an earlier work of Gregory's (that I was less than enamoured with) here. Nevertheless, her current work is more substandard than anything I could have imagined.

And we've changed the font to accomodate Internet Explorer/ Safari/ Firefox and Google Chrome. You're welcome.

Junky (William S. Burroughs)

I actually started writing this review about a week ago whilst on Skype with Alcott, got one sentence in and promptly forgot about it. If my posts are a little sporadic for the next couple of weeks it is because I am currently writing reviews for FOUR publications (if you count this one) and seeing as this is the only one for which I get no money... it may be put on the back burner. This is not to say that I don't love writing reviews here; this is the one place I can write a review and completely slate a book should I so desire. Not so with my other forays into reviewing. Anyway, rejoycement over negative review ability aside here is a book which I LOVED. It is also a book which confirmed my belief that I don't really want to be a heroin addict, and also made me yearn (just a little) to have lived in the Beat Generation. I am talking of course about Junky by William S. Burroughs.

Although published as fiction, it is pretty well accepted that this is an autobiographical (or at least semi-autobiographical) account of Burroughs' own addiction. The main character is called William, last name Lee - the maiden name of Burroughs' mother and a majority of the incidents in the book were, surprisingly enough, incidents in Burroughs' own life. The book starts with Burroughs' first shot of morphine, details his many attempts at 'quitting for good' and lets you in on all kinds of secrets which you probably would know nothing about if you (like myself) have never taken heroin cut with milk sugar (bought from a shady Mexican lady) and cooked it up in a spoon over a Bunsen burner.

Through a series of really interesting musings about junk as a way of life, not just as a trip, you get to see inside Burroughs' head. And what a messed up place it is. We are talking about the man who shot (and killed) his wife when he convinced her to put a shot glass on her head so he could re-enact the William Tell shoots apple off son's head incident. Except with a gun. And he missed the glass and got his wife instead. (The same wife who is pictured on the cool first edition cover which I got thanks to the wonder of the internet - the very pulpy novel cover depicts an actual scene in the book.)

Anyway...I am running out of steam already with this review that never really got off the ground (although it got further off the ground than Alcott's first attempt at a Blackberry Wine review) - But this book is an amazingly written account of a narcotics addiction that spanned Burroughs' entire lifetime... it is fascinating... just go read it. Okay?

(ALSO - I am the proud new owner of a MacBook - have discovered blog looks kind of weird and small in Safari - sorry about that to all you Mac owners who have known this for a while and wondered why we insisted on using such tiny font - not our choice I am afraid.)

Apologies

General and varied apologies to Earhart and our dedicated followers. I will resume regular posting next Monday, for now I am madly attempting to finalise other work and reading and blogging have fallen by the wayside.

The Slap (Christos Tsiolkas)

Absolutely wonderful news about good ol' Christos winning the Commonwealth Writer's Prize for The Slap. Even more exciting that it has now been optioned for television. I'm absolutely delirious for Tsiolkas, on an artistically-fulfilling front as well as a monetary one.

It's just seems such a damn shame the book was so reprehensibly awful.

The Slap is set in Melbourne and follows a group of middle class suburbanites as they deal with the fallout after one of them slaps a child who is not his own at a barbecue. What follows is a crude storyline (in content and style), where the generally sensationalised characters are cobbled together in all their selfish and seedy glory to form a stilted plot. I almost wrote a 'plot that limps along', but this indicates a certain underdog aspect of the characters or story, thus rendering this initial thought of mine incorrect. Rather than limping, the novel careers along hopelessly like a drunken, blind neanderthal on an obstacle course.

Other thoughts: I do not like book covers where there is a child crying on the cover (who has, I assume, just been physically hurt); I do not like sexual descriptions where I feel the need to wipe MY EYES out with disinfectant after having read them; and parvenus who adopt a manner of superiority through the employment of too much glitter and Lycra are probably the most annoying people on the planet.

This novel marks the expiration of my tolerance for these novels of modern fiction hailed as glorious when they are, at best, the least awful of a bad bunch and at worst, better never to have been written in the first place. This does not, of course, cover all modern fiction. That is a ridiculous notion. But I am feeling disillusioned and thus am exaggerating accordingly. It worries me sometimes, that humankind has penned every original thought and must now rehash other people's brilliance (and idiocy) for all eternity.

Honestly, it keeps me awake at night.

Thus I made a monumentous decision last night (I have not cleared this with Earhart but anticipate it will not cause her much grief. Also, I am aware monumentous is not actually a word, but I believe it should be). I want to scrap the Monthly Classic, as I would rather turn to these for my main reading material now. It DEPRESSES me, going into the library, standing in front of the classics section and allowing myself a single, miserable title. Think of the riches I shall feel endowed with, now being able to stand there and pile my arms high with Bulgakov, Camus and the like.

I shall, of course, then pop over to the romantic lit section and grab a couple of pastel coloured delicacies. I like to think of them as the literary equivalent of the macaroon.

Oh, and I am still to post on Lord Lucan (William Coles' latest) and must delve at some point into Kate Grenville's The Lieutenant.

Basically, I will still be posting on a wide range of genres, but will allow myself (ourselves) more than one measly classic a month.

Rating: 3/10.

Easter Hiatus

So, what are you all going to read for Easter?

The pile by my bed looks quite unappetising at the moment. I have Astrid and Veronika... a novel I chose simply for the cover. I am now having second thoughts since I discovered the author wrote the book in New Zealand. Dave Eggers' How We Are Hungry should be brilliant, but considering it's a collection of short stories I doubt I'll get that emotionally involved. For the Easter Weekend, the most solemn occasion on the chocolate calendar, I think some emotional involvement is called for.

Which just leaves The Master and the Margarita. I've read it before, but it's going to be the April Classic and a re-reading is justified I feel.

Away I am to spring festivities in the west, so I will be on hiatus until Tuesday.

EDIT: I, Earhart, will also be hiatusing this Easter, I am not going to 'the west' (?) but I am however having a party, and then I am delving into a crime read. Very not me I know, but we'll see how it goes...stay tuned.

Words of Love

And so it died an abrupt, premature, yet appropriate death

We're discontinuing the "Book You May Have Missed" segment. Earhart was the first to voice her woes on this front, with April fast approaching it was her turn to do the segment and she was stressing as to what title to choose. We had a confabulation and decided that it is a bit of a redundant segment, as we have trouble choosing a book we think you may have missed as we assume everyone reads as much as we do. Alternatively, a book you may have missed even if you are an avid reader is a problem as we probably missed it as well and thus wouldn't think to post on it.

Sigh.

OK, that worrisome topic dealt with I am now in search of something else to stress about.

And now for something completely different...

There was an article in the Guardian this weekend on Ayn Rand and how sales of Atlas Shrugged have jumped since the economic downturn. Take a gander at the article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/mar/14/books-news-ayn-rand-sawday

This article got me thinking about how many dyslit novels I have read, which is a disturbing number. Earhart has read even more, so between the two of us we are rapidly approaching the lunatic fringe.

Dyslit? Qu'est-ce que c'est?

Dystopian Literature is a genre of books which are set in a future which is so dysfunctional as to be the antithesis of a utopian future. Also known as cacotopian literature, it is not to be confused with anti-utopian literature, which opposes a perfect society.

If this all seems a little too much like hard work, think of it this way. These would be the books Tyler Durden reads. And who doesn't want a little piece of that?

The genre covers such comforting gems as nineteen eighty-four, Fahrenheit 451 and Brave New World. Most of the time they are SUPER depressing, creepy and upsetting.

Earhart and I LOVE them.

Thus, I go on to announce a new regular post... monthly we will have a featured dystopian novel. We hope that this will not only generate a greater interest in the genre, but will also contribute a few more passionate (yet SEDENTARY) anarchists to society.

This month will be Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, which I will post shortly.

Apologies

We are both overly busy and important at the moment; reviews and posts will return on Monday.

Coming up:

Stardust by Neil Gaiman
A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali by Gil Courtemanche
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Recovery by Stephen Benatar

NOT Coming up:

Paths of Glory by Jeffrey Archer.

Apologies...

We're not sure where all the content has gone on the front page, but we are working on fixing it.
By that I mean I am hoping it will right itself.
I will give it a few hours and if we are not up and running I shall do something...

EDIT: Clearly, it has righted itself. There is much to be said for doing nothing.